Archive for the ‘Review’ Category

Amethyste Phoenicia

I will cut the crap and just go straight to the point: you want a REAL lounge bar/club? Go to Amethyste Phoenicia Beirut. No questions asked.

What I don’t like about this country is the lack of of REAL lounge clubs/bars. The ones that I know are pseudo lounges, you can kick back and enjoy a few drinks between 8pm and 8:30pm and after that you will hear some… Continue reading

Unwrapping the Ipad!

I tried to keep things under the radar, but here it is, me unwrapping and playing around with the Ipad! (I know there are exactly 1001 articles JUST like this one but what the hell!)

Everybody is waiting for the Ipad in the middle east and Lebanon. Mac Shop is taking pre-orders, delivery in a month and prices START at 900 USD (plain rip off) so without further ado… Continue reading

Google Arabia features

In my previous post I was wondering (nagging?) about the fact that no links to the maps are apparent on the main page etc etc…I hit a few local Google pages (middle east) to check if it’s a Google Lebanon thing, I noticed something else…

They all have the exact same menu. Nothing is different except a few languages (which is a nice touch… Continue reading

Google Maps Offering Directions in Lebanon and Amman…but!

After a long wait we finally have routing/directions on Google maps for Lebanon.

I was like a kid enjoying an underskirt view for the first time! but what struck me was that there are no links/mentions (still) to the maps on Google’s Lebanon page! nothing! zip! nada!

I thought it would be in the “more”… Continue reading

My experience with…Jibayat

Long one, bear with me though…thank you

“Alfa Telecom” (managed by Orascom) have different payment options for post paid phones, which is totally great: automatic withdrawal from bank, paying at accredited points, bill collectors passing by…

Now I’ve been afraid to have the automatic withdrawal from bank for the sole reason that I can name 8 persons who had trouble with automatic withdrawal from the bank (in other… Continue reading

Arabic Search Engine Comparison

Well, as I predicted a few months back when Yahoo bought Maktoob, Yahoo started creeping in the Arabic search engine market (doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out), unfortunately though, my question on LinkedIn was deleted from the group Arabic Search Engine Marketing for some weird reason.

Anyways, I ran a few tests on several search engines, Araby, Ayna, Bing, Google, Yahoo/Maktoob. I came to… Continue reading

Ketchup UX

I am brainstorming lately on how and what to present in a few days/weeks about user experience.

The audience will be folks (tweeple!), most are bloggers, all are internet savvy, but the vast majority is not familiar with user experience design.

I decided to take an ascending approach, just to familiarize everyone with UX and explain that UX is omnipresent and affects our daily lives…

What’s better… Continue reading

Ajnad, far superior and more accurate than Yamli…errrmmm

In a comment about yamli.com I was told that Ajnad.com is far superior and more accurate than Yamli.com

I thought it would be cool to compare both side to side, here’s what I got (click to enlarge)

Ajnad

I hate to say this, but this is a MAJOR fail. In the transliteration domain, Yamli is still king!… Continue reading

souq.com revisited

Souq.com has a new interface, it’s more like a bit of tweaking but still a lot is missing and the whole essence (experience) is still lacking. I know I know, “…but it’s working”.

Personally, I believe that it should go through a simple cycle, “functional, fast, pretty” It is functional (technically speaking); fast (again, technically speaking) but not pretty (usability/ux wise)

The dominant tool on souq.com is the… Continue reading

A mistake

Dear Tweepi,

When you notify the user that he’s not “logged in” you have to provide him/her/it/so-so with a link or a way to actually sign in to use your services.

You are still in “beta”, you have a nice service going on there, so I’ll cut you some slack.