Archive | February, 2010

The mystery revealed

Turned out yesterday’s series was part of an advertising campaign for Alfa Telecom to promote the “Ehkineh” service. Someone from Alfa’s advertising agency e-mailed me the below video later last night and revealed that they were behind the idea and executing it.

In total, 6 shows were crashed on several radio stations during the day, and in this video you can listen to 3 of them that were recorded.

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Crashing morning shows?!

Do you hear any morning radio show on your way to work? Well I do, and I usually move from one channel to another (a bad habit I know!) to check on what announcers have to say every day, other than promoting the Acai Boost and Via Ananas pills!

Anyway, something weird happened today when some person crashed the morning show on Nostalgie! I was listening to the Nostalgie girl talking when a woman apparently entered the studio and used her microphone to tell her husband she is pregnant with twins!

And it doesn’t stop here, I told a colleague about it few minutes ago and she said the same thing happened on RLL!!

Any idea what is that all about?

Update:

One of the readers claimed she heard a similar thing on Saw El-Mada. So we got 3 similar cases? I smell something fishy, especially given what Ibrahim wrote also! (Check the comments below).

Update 2:

Yara (check comments below) just sent me this voice clips she recorded by chance (for god knows why!) on Sawt el Mada’s radio station where the presenter’s housekeeper interrupts her morning show because she ran out of water. LOL, hilarious thing!

You can download it by clicking here, or listen to it online.

[audio:https://www.plus961.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/sawtelmada.mp3|titles=sawtelmada]

Update 3:

I heard another person crashing another show!!! This one was hilarious, I was returning back home and listening to NRJ, a woman called Steve Peters and started yelling at him asking for “Abou Toni”, Steve sounded quite puzzled and kept telling her it’s a radio station! At the end she told him he’s wasting her units, so answered that she could have used the “ehkine” service!

I’m sure now it’s an organized thing, and I think I know who’s behind it… will keep you updated it was kind of a viral campaign by Alfa Telecom!

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Mashrou3 Leila – Raksit Leila video

I’ve been playing Raksit Leila for a while now, and I was delighted to see the official video coming out few days ago. Great music and great work on the video!

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Stolichnaya and the girl in the bathtub

I was heading towards Gemmayze last Friday when I came across this red truck. Everything appeared normal from a distance until I got closure, there was a bathtub in that truck with a girl sitting inside and apparently enjoying it, at least her seductive legs movement said so!

Stolichnaya Gemmayze 1

Stolichnaya Gemmayze

The whole thing turned out to be a promotion for Stolichnaya’s Stoli Gala Apple, which explained the use of a girl (eve) enjoying the forbidden fruit (an apple), it is just the bathtub that I couldn’t explain!

Anyway I think it was nice, although some people might claim Stolichnaya crossed the line, but you should have seen the traffic around the truck, they definitely succeeded in grabbing the passengers’ attention. Another proof that sex sells!

Update:

In addition to the two photos I took above, I found these photos on twitter from @fadisabbagha. (Special thanks to @MayaZankoul)

Stolychnaya Gemmayze 3

Stolichnaya Gemmayze 2

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ArabNet – Nurturing the Internet Ecosystem in the MENA

arabnetlogo

Highly anticipated and finally here is the first international conference for the Arab internet industry: IBAG, International Business Alliance Group, presents ArabNet 2010: Trends and Opportunities in Arab Web Business. The conference will be held in Beirut on March 25-26, 2010 with the support of Endeavor Jordan, the Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship, the Syrian Young Entrepreneurs Association and YallaStartup!.

ArabNet is bringing together the internet community to network and help launch the hottest startups from across the region — that means you! Top investors, internet executives and leaders from Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, AdMob and Intel will adress subjects that are critical to the Arab Web Industry including: e-commerce, gaming, mobile, content, online advertising, social networking, new media, and start-up fundraising.

Key to the conference are pitch sessions: Ideathon & Startup Demo.  This is the place to match talent with opportunity.

The Ideathon is looking for 10 select entrepreneurs to introduce their fresh startup ideas to eager investors in a rapid-fire pitch session.  Similarly, the Demo will select startups with innovative products to pitch and exhibit their companies for the duration of the conference.

We are currently accepting applications from entrepreneurs and startups from all over the region with strong ideas and products.

Visit ArabNet.me to learn more and apply.

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Lebanese blogosphere weekly link roundup (2010/02/14)

Sorry for being late on this week’s roundup! 10 new link for this one.

See you next week!

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Taking things into your own hands!

What to do when you’re just fed up waiting for something to happen? Best thing is to take matters into your own hands! And that’s what fellow blogger Mustapha did while waiting for the Daily Star IT people to renovate their website.

Few days ago Mustapha launched the Better Daily Star Project (BDSP), a website that he built on his own using the WordPress CMS and a theme to fit the content (newspaper style). The new version created a buzz on twitter the day it was published, and while a lot of people welcomed what he did and admitted it is way better than the current DS website, others just accused him of doing an illegal work (copying the articles) and to which he replied by writing this FAQ page inside the project’s blog.

But isn’t this Illegal?
Probably. But I’m not making any money out of it (in fact, I’m paying some in effort and hosting fees), and I promise that as soon as they do something about their site, I’ll gladly bow out. Besides, it will cost them more to sue me than to actually fix their site and let me off their back.
And in the same page, he stated that it isn’t hard at all for the DS staff to upgrade their existing website, at least the new version didn’t take a lot of his time.
Why am I doing it. What’s the point?
Well, I am trying to say this: If one guy (yours humbly) can use freely available opensource software (wordpress if you must know) to create this alternative, arguably better website in two weeks, why can’t a newspaper with an actual IT department do it? In other words, I’m shooting down the argument that it would be too expensive to do. Listen to me well: They’re just being lazy.
Finally, here’s how Mustapha’s version of his favorite newpaper looks like, let’s see how much time will it take until the Daily Star website gets a real upgrade!

facelift-large

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I got a rose to decode!

Have you heard of Ivy? She has been blogging for 2 months now rebelling against some of the Lebanese society standards by motivating single girls to make the first move and hopefully have a good valentine this year instead of just waiting for guys to approach them!

Ivy's Mission

Ivy's Mission

In no time, Exotica felt excited about supporting Ivy’s cause, and they were ready to team up with her in organizing a Valentine related event called “Decode My Rose!” which consists of distributing roses to single girls to give to the guys they like!

Two girls from Exotica distributing Ivy's roses at Gemmayze

Two girls from Exotica distributing Ivy's roses at Gemmayze

So I decided to go with my fiancée last night to Gemmayze to check on the Decode My Rose campaign, and yes she made a move on me (as if she needed to do that!) by handing me this one.

The flower I got

The rose I got

And now I just have to decode it…

How to decode your rose

How to decode your rose

fiancée
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Lebanese blogosphere weekly link roundup (2010/02/07)

Time to have a look at what the Lebanese bloggers were writing about in the past week. 9 Links for today.

See you next week!

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