Beshr Kayali

Lightning Talks To Remember

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

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).

The “Type Fluid” experiment. Complete set can be found...

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 20:03:51 +0300

The “Type Fluid” experiment.

Complete set can be found here: http://www.skyrill.com/blog/2011/07/03/type-fluid-complete-set/.

A Panel on Django in Journalism from DjangoCon 2008

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 19:08:13 +0300

A Panel on Django in Journalism from DjangoCon 2008

Taken with instagram

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 09:42:31 +0300

Taken with instagram

They’re having this for lunch I guess :) (Taken with...

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 14:40:33 +0300

They’re having this for lunch I guess :) (Taken with instagram)

Taken with instagram

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 07:03:20 +0300

Taken with instagram

Richard Stallman (Taken with instagram)

Fri, 27 May 2011 08:17:17 +0300

Richard Stallman (Taken with instagram)