TradeFlow21 » Tech

Scientists Create 52 Artificial Rain Storms in Abu Dhabi Desert

Al Rio — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 21:14:45 +0000

Excerpts of a Daily Mail article:

The savings using the Weathertec technology are huge with the system costing £6 million a year while desalination is £45 million.

Building an ionising system is about £7 million while a desalination plant would be £850 million and costs a lot more to run.

Some scientists are treating the results in Al Ain with caution because Abu Dhabi is a coastal state and can experience natural summer rainfall triggered by air picking up moisture from the warm ocean before dropping it on land.

But the number of times it rained in the region so soon after the ionisers were switched on has encouraged researchers.

Professor Peter Wilderer witnessed the experiments first hand and is backing the breakthrough.

The director of advanced studies on sustainability at the Technical University of Munich, said: ‘We came a big step closer to the point where we can increase the availability of fresh water to all in times of dramatic global changes.’

Full article with graphs here.

ICANN approval means big tech opportunity, more in Middle East

admin — Mon, 10 May 2010 02:17:39 +0000

On Friday, the Associated Press reported that ICANN, the California-based nonprofit body which oversees management and assignment of internet domains, approved Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates as the first non-Latin domain names. While not readily apparent to the Western eye, make no mistake, this is big news for the Middle East and represents serious opportunity particularly in the e-commerce and relevant hardware spaces. Overall, the ICANN approval has profound implications for the region given the comparatively fewer number of people connected to the internet. See clip of AP report below.

clipped from www.google.com

Domain names in Arabic for Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were added to the Internet’s master directories on Wednesday, following final approval last month by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN. It’s the first major change to the Internet domain name system since its creation in the 1980s.

“Introducing Arabic domain names is a milestone in Internet history,” Egyptian Communication and Information Technology Minister Tarek Kamel said in a statement. “This great step will open up new horizons for e-services in Egypt” as well as boosting the number of online users and enabling Internet service providers to enter new markets by “eliminating language barriers.”

ICANN, which cleared the way for non-Latin suffixes in October after years of debate, said the Mideast shows growth potential, with just a fifth of the populations online, on average.

Yahoo! recognizes opportunities in Middle East

admin — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 12:44:48 +0000

Although the value of the deal was not disclosed, it appears the acquisition of Maktoob is a timely one for Yahoo!, as it positions itself to grow its emerging markets segment fueled now by one of the world’s youngest, most dynamic, and highest-growth regions. A surge in internet usage in the Middle East is driving annual growth in on-line advertising of 25-50%, according to Yahoo’s Sr. VP of Emerging Markets.

clipped from online.wsj.com

Yahoo Buys Maktoob Arabic Portal

DUBAI (Zawya Dow Jones)–Yahoo Inc. (YHOO), said on Tuesday it agreed to buy Arabic online portal Maktoob.com as it seeks to add the Middle East to its expanding strategy for the fast-growing emerging markets.

Yahoo has 44 million users a month in the North Africa and Middle East region, Nilsson said. Maktoob.com has over 16 million users, according to the company.

Yahoo and rival Google, which already has Arabic internet services, are competing to tap the Arab World’s fast-growing population of over 320 million and high per capita gross domestic product, one of the highest in the world. “Saudi Arabia and Egypt offer tremendous size and growth opportunities that we will be looking at in addition to other countries in the Middle East,” Nilsson said.

SAP in the ME

RH — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 23:17:01 +0000

“They’ve got the money and they’re smart enough to know their oil won’t last forever,” says SAP CEO Henning Kagermann (6/19). ME local investing in tech and innovation spurred the SAP chief’s comments according to a recent BusinessWeek post. Kagermann and Co. see a particularly interesting play in ME universities. Focusing on local talent to help with software installations, Kagermann adds, “We’ll help produce skilled young people who can handle our software.”