Beshr Kayali

SpahQL: Query, manipulate and manage JSON data effortlessly.

Tue, 22 May 2012 14:24:25 +0300

SpahQL: Query, manipulate and manage JSON data effortlessly.:

Think of SpahQL like jQuery, but instead of handling DOM elements, it handles JSON data. Instead of CSS selectors, you use SpahQL queries. It’s a querying system for JSON data, aware of hashes, arrays, strings and booleans.

Video

Mon, 14 May 2012 17:33:15 +0300

#CurationRotation and why you should get involved

Mon, 07 May 2012 09:29:41 +0300

#CurationRotation and why you should get involved

Announcing TweetWeek Syria!

Thu, 03 May 2012 13:57:26 +0300

Announcing TweetWeek Syria!:

TweetWeek Syria is a localization of the Swedish Curators of Sweden and TweetWeekUSA projects and the concept behind it is based on the #RotationCuration model. You can read more about it on Wikipedia.

Different curators will have full control over the TweetWeekSyria account on Twitter every week, allowing them to share their visions, perspectives or ideas to mass audience using the Twitter platform.

Similar to the TweetWeekUSA project, TweetWeekSyria is not an official account for any association and is in no way related to any organization, ideology or religion. The sole purpose of this project is to provide a wide platform for Syrians around the world to share their thoughts and express their opinions without any censorship.

The project will kickstart on the 1st of June 2012 and the account on Twitter will begin to be managed by someone who is yet to be selected using a public voting platform. Voting will begin on May 29th and will be open for three days. If you’d like to nominate yourself or someone to take control of the account for the first week, please click here.

"The Long Reader exists not just because creators Beshr Kayali and Mohammad Kayyali think it’s a..."

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 15:28:29 +0300

“

The Long Reader exists not just because creators Beshr Kayali and Mohammad Kayyali think it’s a clever idea — and it is — but because there is a newly awakened appetite for this kind of content. And it shows what could happen if the hunger grows so gnawing and ruthless that it ultimately devours the whole enterprise.

also adds:

But that, in some ways, is maybe even more of a nightmare for publishers: the idea that scraping or republishing content, as long it’s in the name of “discovery,” isn’t wrong at all. It’s just a service.

”

- Very interesting thoughts on a service @beshr and I created on a weekend :) (via digitalhunt)

GitHub hacked...

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 10:22:59 +0200

GitHub hacked...:

….

Putting aside the way GitHub handled the situation (quickly and with aplomb), the main issue is that GitHub was vulnerable to an incredibly simple and well-known Rails hack that has probably existed since the site’s inception. Ruby experts like Michael Hartl and Eric Chapweske have been writing (and warning) about the mass-assignment vulnerability since 2008, when GitHub was first launched. In short, it’s highly likely that Egor Homakov was not the first person to exploit GitHub in this way. We would’ve heard about it if a large project had been deleted out of the blue — but maybe hackers have been quietly modifying code bases for their own, nefarious ends.

….

Lightning Talks To Remember

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:38:24 +0200

Lightning Talks To Remember:

A History Lesson

Lightning Talks first appeared at PyCon (Python Conference) in 1997, at that point it was just called “Short Talks”. The name “Lightning Talks” was first coined by Mark Jason Dominus, one of the leading Perl developers, for a similar session at Yet Another Perl Conference (YAPC) in 2000.

Lightning Talks gradually became a meme at tech conferences and events, with varying formats according to venues, and time-slots usually ranged between 30 and 90 minutes for the session.

To make a Lightning Talks session exciting and rapid, the length of each talk is usually 5 minutes (varies between 1 and 10 minutes).

9 Reasons Why You Should Submit a Lightning Talk for the ArabNet Developer Days

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:19:43 +0200

9 Reasons Why You Should Submit a Lightning Talk for the ArabNet Developer Days:

For this year’s event we’ve announced that during the Developer Days we’re going to have more lightning talks and we’ve put up a call for papers.

So far we’ve had an amazing and diverse array of talent come on board, but since there are a few of you out there that might still be hesitant to join, I thought I’d provide more information on why I think every single person attending the developer days should submit one, so that those who have cold feet might be encouraged and do so!

So, without further ado, allow me to start my list:

In 50 years?

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 22:09:22 +0200

In 50 years?

youranonnews: STOP SOPA THE ESSENTIALS: Summary and bill text...

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 08:46:34 +0200

youranonnews:

STOP SOPA

THE ESSENTIALS:

Summary and bill text of SOPA - H.R. 3261: link

Summary and bill text of PIPA - S.968: link

Congressmen who support SOPA and how much money in donations they received to support it: link

IN DEPTH:

Companies that support SOPA - link

Companies that oppose SOPA & PIPA - link

Video: What is PIPA and how will it affect you? link

SOPA 101: An Infographic - link

Tech Law & Policy: House takes Senate’s bad Internet censorship bill, tries making it worse - Analysis of SOPA & PIPA - link

First Amendment Legal Analysis and Implications of SOPA - link

Stanford Law Professors React to SOPA and PIPA - link

Infographic: What SOPA Means for Business and Innovation - link

FAQ: How SOPA Would Affect You - link

GET INVOLVED:

Take Action Checklist to Stop Censorship - link

Join @YourAnonNews and @AnonymousIRC and pledge not to tweet between 8AM-8PM EST (1300-0100 UTC) on 18 January [check your local timezone here - Use hashtags #SOPAblackout and #J18

Add the following banners to your Twitter pic: “CENSORED” - link | “STOP SOPA” - link

How to contact Facebook and Google to support the January 18 SOPA blackout - link

Contact your local Representative with info and a widget to find them by EFF and Wired for Change - link

Plugin for WordPress to protest with a blackout: link

Click “attend” on the FaceBook event page - link

digitalhunt: Kinetic Sculptures. Interesting ideas. Finger Mk...

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:39:54 +0200

digitalhunt:

Kinetic Sculptures. Interesting ideas.

Finger Mk II by Nik Ramage for Laikingland (by laikingland)

Started a new thing! Best technology related #LongReads of the...

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 15:06:00 +0200

Started a new thing!

Best technology related #LongReads of the week…

Subscribe here: http://tinyletter.com/beshrkayali

Announcing Sawt, a tiny app for discovering the best of Arabic Indie Music.

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 23:14:00 +0200

Sawt is a tiny discovery tool for Arabic indie music.

You can visit Sawt here: http://sawt.ep.io

Limitations:

Works only on Google Chrome & Safari
No way to keep track of what you listened to (history)
No way to specify what genre of music to listen to

I haven’t worked on this much (weekend hack) so it’s not completely done yet.

One of the cool things I wanted to have in this release is iOS support. Sawt is fully compatible with iOS Safari (iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad), so you can listen to/discover Arabic indie music whenever you like.

More features are coming in the next release: Personalized stations, listening history, and more…

Follow updates on Twitter.

Screenshots:

Desktop (Google Chrome)

iPhone:

Not Disappointing At All!

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 17:23:57 +0300

Not Disappointing At All!:

4S or 5, it really doesn’t matter! What’s amazing is how much buzz the Apple brand can generate no matter what they do, and if it’s anything, it’s actually good!

The fact that some people are disappointed by the iPhone 4S is by itself disappointing! Three reasons for that: A) It’s just a phone, so get with it. B) It’s Apple, that’s how they roll. C) It’s got a set of cool new features! I don’t understand what the fuss is about!

And with that out of the way, we can have a little recap of what happened yesterday at Apple’s “Let’s Talk iPhone” event.

Photo

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 17:20:24 +0300

Kinetik, Social Networking for Apps

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 10:09:00 +0300

Kinetik, Social Networking for Apps:

In light of the success of activity-specific social networking apps, a new San Francisco based startup recently introduced its application Kinetik - providing people who are passinate about mobile applications to discover and share their favorite apps.

Short Film ‘The Black Hole’ A sleep-deprived office...

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 09:19:14 +0300

Short Film ‘The Black Hole’

A sleep-deprived office worker accidentally discovers a black hole - and then greed gets the better of him.

Director: Diamond Dogs

Production House: HSI London

Audio

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 10:41:00 +0300

Take It As It Comes [Vivian Girls]

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 10:31:12 +0300

Take It As It Comes [Vivian Girls]

G+ as a Blog?

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 22:11:00 +0300

So, some people have actually started using Google+ as a blog.
Here’s my analysis on this:
Pros:

It’s dead simple to share stuff, you can even share stuff directly from your Gmail (or any other Google service for that matter, through the top bar, though I would love to see a Chrome extension that adds that bar everywhere).
Realtime: One of the greatest thing about G+ is the realtime effect. Once you post something, BOOM, it’s there! You don’t even have to work on promoting your post, it’ll immediately reach everyone who’s following you.
You can Edit your posts after you post them, which is cool
It works really great with embedding YouTube videos and Links
You have total control over your post’s privacy settings, like posting it to a certain group of followers (circles) or disabling comments or reshare features.

Cons:

You can’t have scheduled posts. I’m sure there’s some kind of a hack around this, but it would still require some work
You can’t have analytics or any kind of ads on your G+ stream (as far as I know)
There’s no way to add other social sharing buttons, like a Tweet button or a Facebook Like button (yeah right)
No threaded comments

Honestly, I wouldn’t think of this, at least in the mean time, specially that Google+ is squeezing really tight on G+ business profiles (or any other profiles without a real first name and last name).