Archive | September, 2011

Cedarcom wants to suspend 3G in Lebanon

Do you remember back in March how the guys at Cedarcom pretended to be fighting for a faster internet in Lebanon and gathered more than 40,000 fans around them?

The same guys are now working hard to take us back to state zero by suing the Ministry of Telecommunications for launching 3G! And it might be just a coincidence that the new service can go much faster than their Mobi, which they themselves have admitted it cannot go beyond 1Mbps, at a cheaper price. You can read more about the issue in The Daily Star and Al-Mustaqbal.

Now can someone tell me what were the real goals of their campaign for a faster internet?

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My last valentine in Beirut

T-GROUP PRODUCTIONS presents ‘My last valentine in Beirut’, the first feature film to be produced in 3D in the Arab region ever, with one of the highest production costs and biggest production team.

The movie will have a world wide release with professionally crafted plans of marketing mixes and distribution.
The people behind the movie offer decades of experience in the movie business, and master exciting edgy storytelling and visual side effects.

This movie will bring a unique movie experience to the middle east and worldwide as it will bring together the touching history and cultural heritage of the region, together with the latest international technologies in the movie business.

So far the trailer is getting so much negative comments on Youtube, to which the video uploader replied with the following.

To all people who are adding their comments, thank you, we respect your honest opinions. Nevertheless, for those of you who are trying to drag the movie into z PORN category: judging a movie which you have never seen from its trailer which is only for few minutes makes your comments irrelevant and unaccountable for, and doesn’t reflect what z movie is about but only what you think in general about Arab girls. I think you might want to look at the big picture.

To me, the trailer looked really cheap, and producers seem to be overusing sex to sell their movie, it’s even like they’re begging to have it banned like “Help”!

Anyway, regardless of the movie’s topic, why did it have to be shot in 3D?! Did they want Juliette’s figures to be as real as possible when people watch it?

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Hazmieh road

A friend of mine sent me the below photos showing how Al-Sayyad roundabout and Hazmieh road should look like after all the current work is done there.

I hope it’ll end soon!

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Here’s to launching the 3G service in Lebanon!

Last day I got a phone call from a gentleman in MTC Touch telling me that I will be granted the 3G service for a 1 month free trial period, and so right now I’m among the lucky people who got to participate in the pilot testing of this service in Lebanon. An yes I’m so excited about it!!

The service got activated at around 1PM today on my phone and didn’t require any special configuration to run. I randomly started loading websites and found the connection to be pretty fast compared to home ADSL and the crappy GPRS. Below are two tests done using speedtest.net after I shared the connection with my laptop.

As you can see, download is @ 1.7Mbps which is superb compared to the current internet speeds, while upload is varying between 0.11 and 0.22Mbps. Ping is of course higher that it is supposed to be, and I hope it’ll improve soon. Note that I was in Beirut central district at the time of this test, and I guess speed might vary depending on your location.

3G subscriptions will be available for both postpaid and prepaid lines, and data transfer will be limited to 4GB/month. It isn’t clear tough how much will the operators charge for it.

I’ll hopefully be posting more updates on the connection quality and speed throughout this trial period.

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Mounting the same license plate on two different cars

These two photos, taken by Mr. Mohamad Machnouk at the same time and in the same parking lot, show different cars with identical license plates. As the plates color shows, these two cars seem to be owned by some Lebanese judge. Talk about abuse of authority!

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Shouf Cedar Reserve

I’ve always heard people talking about the Shouf cedar reserve, but I never knew it was really that nice until I visited it last weekend thanks to a couple of friends.

We were originally planning a visit to Maaser El-Shouf village but then got tempted to continue further to the cedar reserve, the largest nature reserve in Lebanon containing 25% of the country’s cedars, and to our luck there was some festival ongoing in Maaser and shuttle service to and from the reserve was offered for free.

Entrance tickets are at 5,000L.L, and once you’re inside you’ll get to choose among 3 hiking paths with different lengths and each showing you different parts of the reserve. We chose the shortest one, a 1.2Km walk that took around 25-30 minutes to complete with awesome views and feel. Definitely worth a visit especially if you’re showing some tourists around the country.

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Yara Khoury at Miss Universe 2011

If you thought Rahaf Abdallah was an exception last year, then take a look at Yara Khoury’s answers at the web interviews in Miss Universe 2011. Looks like acting stupid is the new hot thing, and I say acting because one seriously can’t be that stupid by nature!

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Nazl El-Sourour on video

Have you even seen any of Ziad El-Rahbani’s plays on video? Below are 3 videos from the timeless “Nazl El Sourour”.

I never understood why is Ziad refraining from releasing the full videos of his plays. Some claim he’s just waiting to make some good money by selling them if he ever went through a bad time.

Thanks @_kaled

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