Hatem’s Diaries

Via Sadri

WOOF is something pretty useful to share files in linux without running a webserver permanently, you type :

$ woof filename

and tell the recipient the URL woof spits out. When he got that file, woof will quit and everything is done.

Wednesday night I went on a two days trip to Medina, this was my first visit !! For someone who live that close what a shame, but hope to go again more frequently in the future because I really love it. Departure 10h09am, the bus reached the limit of Makkah, Taneem or Masjid Aicha, at 10h50pm, and around 11hpm we was already out of the city direction Medina Munawra. The bus just stopped at 1am to have a cup of tea and dinner, then continue after half an hour. Arrival at Medina at 3h35am, after the last checkpoint we passed beside Eir mountains. And around 4am I was already walking in the Haram of Medina Munawra.

Something that I have never seen anywhere, the Haram doors were closed and hundreds of people waiting outside. It was pretty cold, and it’s great because there is no place to keep my valise. I just put it in front of the door, so anyone interested can take it When the door opened I went inside for the first time, impressed how big is the Haram compared to Makkah, especially that it was absolutely empty.
Continue reading Two days Trip in Medina Munawra

Just to point you that my RSS and ATOM feeds moved to Feedburner, now you can simply use for my blog :

http://feeds.feedburner.com/HatemDiaries

Just experimenting this on my blog before moving the entire network to Feedburner. I have this in mind since long time, but well the decision have been taken yesterday after a discussion with Keith Schacht, CEO, JobCoin. I won’t disclose what’s coming in detail, but in short term I moved to full feeds syndication.

Update : Redirection have been established, the move should be more transparent now. Just for testing I have added the feed counter, while it should take 24h I think before adding something. I hate zeros, but hey we have to deal with it

Last year when I first heard about iToot, I think i have submitted my blog. It was my curiosity I think, not me !! But hey, this is very fast, one year later an email jumped in my inbox :

Dear Blogger,

Thank you for your submitting your blog to toot, we really appreciate all the effort you put into it and the fact that you choose to submit it to toot. We will be reviewing your blog each time we add more blogs to toot, so please be patient with us.

Before we get into the details, we need to apologize for not getting back to you about your submission earlier, but the toot team is still a very small team and we have had a very busy year getting our newest product, Ikbis, the Arab world’s first photo and video sharing site, rolling into the world. Please check Ikbis out, registration is very simple and it is just another way of sharing with us what you have. We would really appreciate your feedback on it!

Many have been asking about the criteria for which toot blogs are chosen, and mainly, when choosing blogs, we aim to represent the mosaic of views, opinions, and demographics of the Arab world. We seek diversity; blogs that add to the mixture of our selection, from several perspectives, such opinions, topics, and the levels of seriousness/silliness. We also try to maintain an evenhanded male-female ratio, as well as a balanced geographic location ratio. The other important criterion for us when choosing blogs is each blogs lifespan; we seek blogs that have been around for a while and that have a loyal audience and good or promising amount of traffic.

That said, there really is no “scientific” way to choose what goes on toot, and perhaps some of our biases as a team sometimes affect our selection, but after all, in the end, we are not a general Arab blog aggregator or a “Technorati replacement”. We are also a very small team, and with toot’s hand-picking policy, toot is built on the idea of having a small number of blogs, so although we like a lot of the blogs that are sent to us, we cannot add everyone as it becomes impossible to do the handpicking.

We hope to add more blogs to toot soon, and we would love it if you keep us updated with what’s happening on your blog, such as upgrades, design changes, or new ideas. Happy blogging, and don’t forget that we would always love to hear any feedback you have for us.

Blog on,
The toot Team

My Apologies, your network is great, I didn’t visit it again since last year, and not interested anymore to take part in it. And please excuse my curiosity, see you next year !

This is the first clone that really make mad today, I took the screenshot below from a website called phpmagazine.org which is simply stealing phpmagazine.net logo. If you visit the website it may take you in confusion, I don’t care for the layout design, menus and the way it’s organized but please don’t steal our logo !! I send a message via their contact page, and hope to have an answer because seriously I don’t want to make a legal case, but I will!

The logo in question was created in April 2006 by Rob, and you can find the new phpmagazine.net logo announcement here

Update : the DNS point to a certain CEOTEX.com website, and with some luck the whois isn’t protected. The domain owner is a certain Maher Ahmed, from Egypt. It’s almost 1am here, and I’m really tired, hungry, and sleepy but expect a call from me tomorrow morning inchallah.

Domain name: CEOTEX.COM

Registrant Contact:
   Racku, Inc.
   Maher Ahmed (maher2day@yahoo.com)
   136 Algomhuria Street
   Mansoura, NA 35516
   EG
   +1.20104800485
   Fax:+1.20104800485

Update : I called today Maher Ahmed, who confirmed that he own the domain name and the website. He told me that the design is temporary and it’s going to be changed.

I can confirm that it’s difficult to do something legal in such cases, but there is lots of alternatives from closing the domain, hosting account and so on. Since hosting company is US based, laws are very strict, and it’s mentioned with details in TOS. But it’s always better to resolve it a l’amiable.

Update 2 : I checked today the link, the logo have been removed and replaced with another one. Issue resolved.

AJAX Magazine got the scoop this week to announce Morfik WebOS AppsBuilder 0.9.16.1 even before Morfik itself. There is a complete coverage on three parts including different features of the AJAX IDE and technology used :

• Part 1 : Morfik Technology and the database tools provided
• Part 2 : Morfik RAD tools as the Form designer, Reports designer, and webservices
• Part 3 : Programming with Morfik, debugging, profiling, Scriptor, performance

Tomorrow there will be a tutorial on how to create a simple application in the Morfik IDE, and there will be probably a part 4 and 5 later on Morfik architecture and business usage.

QRCode is one of the new standard developed by DENSO(Japan) and which aim to replace the old barcode. QRCode is 2D barcode with a large capacity to stock data, small printout size and High speed scan. I have a barcode Reader in my N80 compatible QRCode, so I’ve written OpenQRCode a one page free QR code generator. The usage is very easy simply enter the text you want then hit the generate box to get your code. You can then download and use it wherever you want, you can even make a badge for your website with your Name, URL, Email … Add it to your prints …etc. The website simply use nifty corner and jquery for fun

• Visit Open QR Code Website
• Learn more about QRCode

Someone asked me today about Text To Speech (TTS) and how to use it with PHP. Many confuse PHP VoiceXML project to TTS and voice applications, but the answer is more easier. For example if you have windows you can simply use Microsoft TTS, that you can use via COM without installing anything. This is a simple Hello World :

$TTS = new COM("SAPI.SpVoice"); // Load the MS TTS using Com
$TTS->Speak('Hello world!'); // Speak Hello world

But if you are looking for something on other platforms you might look at the freeTTS for Java, Festival, or IBM TTS for more professionals applications and more language support.

The Number one sales on Amazon Harry Potter is available now for pre-order Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Speculation continues as to which character will die in the seventh and final chapter of J.K. Rowling’s wildly popular series, and you surely want to find out. The publisher, Scholastic, has announced a release date of July 21, 2007. Visit the detail page on Amazon.com for complete details on the book and the Pre-Order Price Guarantee.

There are two editions for Harry Potter, Standard and Deluxe. Hurry and pre-order your your Copy, I’m not sure if this can wait until July 21.