I don’t have a comment to make on this story, but being about the use of technology to extend Arabic instruction to more schools in the Chicago system, it clearly touches on some of my key interests.
More Chicago public school students will have the opportunity to learn Arabic, thanks to a federal grant.
Two [...]

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This evening I was happy to learn that the NITLE Arab Culture and Civilization Online Resource is once again publicly available, generously hosted by the Middle East Policy Council, a nonprofit organization that seeks to enhance American understanding of the political, economic and cultural issues affecting U.S. policy in the Middle East. I was [...]

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“This represents one small step for ICANN, but one big step for half of mankind who use non-Latin scripts, such as those in Korea, China and the Arabic-speaking world, as well as across Asia, Africa and the rest of the world,” said ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom just before the vote, according to an Associated Press [...]

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Upon the death of his father, it looked as if Morocco might be on its way toward total freedom of expression.  This post is too short to go into much detail, but tentatively at first, then progressively with more and more confidence the media and the arts began to confront previously taboo subjects including corruption [...]

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just read a post on ArabCrunch about a Twitter Desktop app called Kzalek that displays Arabic correctly. This is big news.
I’m of the opinion that Twitter is really close to useless without an app or client, either on a portable device or on your desktop, to help sort through and manage [...]

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Here are two articles that touch on freedom of the press and gender in the Islamic world.
A journalist in Afghanistan who had a death sentence for blasphemy commuted to 20 years in prison has now been released, officials say.
Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh has been pardoned by President Hamid Karzai, the Afghan justice ministry confirmed.
Relatives of Mr [...]

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Did you know:
Morocco is one of the first countries to recognize the independence of the United States as the Sultan Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdullah issued a declaration in 1777 allowing American ships access to Moroccan ports. In 1787 a Treaty of peace and friendship was signed in Marrakech and ratified in 1836. It is still [...]

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EIGHT YEARS after 9/11, we’re used to changes in our routines. We show ID to get into office buildings, and take off our shoes at airports.
But should a college student flying back to school be handcuffed and held for five hours because he has Arabic flash cards in his backpack?
That’s the way Nick George, a [...]

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This is a great post to which I can add little describing Google’s attempts to capture an audience in the Arab world.  These are the first two paragraphs, but read on at ArabCrunch
Google has been serious about the Arab world since around a year, with Arabaizing many of its products or for example launching a [...]

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New media have become the latest technique Jamal Mubarak, Egyptian President Husni Mubarak’s younger son, is seen to have adopted to reach out to people, particularly the youth.
Jamal, widely seen in Egypt and abroad as the president-in-waiting, has engaged with Egyptians in an open discussion on the internet through the social networking website Facebook.
The young [...]

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