Selling my IT Recruitment Agency

Due to some health issues, I have decided to go for a farming project away from computers, mobile phones and the Cairo pollution. I have thus decided to sell my IT recruitment agency www.genie-jobs.com within the following two months.

Hosni Mubarak in Google Timeline View

Google currently has a cool experimental search feature which provides a timeline for search queries. All you have to do is write "view:timeline" before or after your search query in the Google search box. An interesting search query I've tried using timeline view was for Hosni Mubarak. The timeline clearly shows a rise in 1981 which as the year Hosni Mubarak became President of Egypt. The other even higher rise in the timeline is in 2005, that was the year when Mubarak was reelected as President of Egypt in a first ever multi-candidate election to be held in Egypt. This new experimental timeline feature in Google search is way cool.

Internet in the Desert

Vodafone Egypt now offers a bunch of 3G services including the 3G Light Box which allows you to connect a small group of computers to the Internet even if you are at a remote area in Egypt.

Let's say you are doing land reclamation in some part of the Egyptian desert and want to have Internet access in this future farm of yours. Forget about getting ADSL there, so the practical solution could be one of Vodafone's 3G solutions. As for pricing, a 300 LE monthly fee for 2 GB of data transfer is not bad at all, given you'll just be browsing of course and not doing the heavy downloads you are used to back at home with your ADSL connection.

More Children in Egypt go Online

In its Internet Shadows article, Al-Ahram Weekly examines the effect of the Internet on the increasing number of Egyptian children that are going online.

Software Testers in Egypt

India is the king in software testing. Large software testing projects are outsourced to India. India has many trained software testers and a large pool of companies specialized in software testing.

As for Egypt, software testing is considered a relatively new domain. Most fresh university graduates in Egypt specialized in computer science or IT are not interested at all in working as testers or are not even aware of the existence of such career. Due to increased demand on software testers in Egypt during the past two years, educational institutions such as the ITI as well as scholarships offered by the Egyptian government started to offer programs for software testing to cater for the growing market need for testers in Egypt. We still have a long way to go.

One of the main obstacles facing the software testing career in Egypt is the misconception in the minds of most IT professionals in Egypt about the software testing career. It is viewed as a lower category job lower than software development. That's why many fresh graduates do not like to work as testers. Yet that is only one part of the problem. The other part of the problem, which might actually helped in growing the misconception, is that there have been, and still are, software companies in Egypt whom hire some sort of data entry people and call them testers. Those 'testers' are not really testers, for they do not write any test scripts nor really know anything about the software testing or quality assurance process. All they do is just try to find bugs in the system in a haphazard way without any process. This practice has given a bad reputation for software testing among IT professionals in Egypt, specially that those type of data entry people get lower salaries than software developers.

As demand for software testers increases in Egypt and as more real software testers graduate from current educational programs designed for software testers, I believe the software tester career will start to get its due recognition in Egypt. This will have a positive impact not only on the testing field, but on the software industry as a whole in Egypt as it would mean increased quality of software developed and tested in Egypt.

Semiconductor Chips Designed in Egypt!

Newport Media, based in California, USA, has decided to have an R&D facility in Egypt for designing semiconductor chips! Get to know more about this exciting news from May's article at Business Today Egypt magazine.

It's interesting that their presence in Cairo is at Masaken El Sheraton.

Semi-Finalists in Egypt Business Plan Competition

The semi-finalists for the Business Plan Competition of 2007 held in Egypt have been announced.

Nile University in Egypt

Nile University was established last year in the Smart Village. It's "Unlike existing universities in Egypt, it is intended to be ... specialized in graduate education and research." Currently it offers three masters programs.

Nile University is "dedicated primarily to excellence in technology-related fields with focus on business development and applied research."

Google Egypt Hiring QA Engineer

I was excited to know about the Software QA Engineer vacancy at Google Egypt. I hope that Google Egypt would follow this one day soon with positions for Software Developers as well.

Genena Mall on Google Maps!

If you search Google Maps for Genena Mall you will be taken to the Genena Mall location.

How does Google achieve this? Easy. I have created a small map including Genena Mall, Fatma El Zahraa Mosque and a small garden not far from them called Al Ferdaws Garden. I then put this map over at Google Maps. You will find blue rectangles that I have drawn around each of these three places.

But how have I managed to do this? Well, Google has just announced the ability to create your own maps very easily over at Google Maps. This new interesting feature makes it so easy to creat your own map and put it at Google Maps for everyone to see. It even appears in the search results as mine appears when you search Google Maps for Genena Mall. Here is how to use Google's exciting new My Maps feature.

Vodafone Cash in Egypt

An ailing problem with ecommerce in Egypt is that credit cards are used by a tiny fraction of the population only. Even such small fraction mostly fear to use their credit card online. The bottom line is that it is usually not realistic to sell your stuff online in Egypt and expect to collect the money online via credit card. The alternative that seems to have worked till now in Egypt is cash on delivery of which Otlob has been the leader in.

Finally there is hope. Vodafine Egypt is introducing a new service in Egypt called Vodafone Cash. The service is basically a method for money transfer by which subscribers can transfer money, currently with an upper limit of 1000 LE, to one another. A subscriber can deposit money in his or her Vodafone Cash account and withdraw money from it via any 123 ATM machine. Depositing or withdrawing from one's account costs 2% of the amount.

With some money transfer services inside Cairo costing up to 7%, Vodafone Cash turns out to be an interesting and perhaps more convenient alternative. I believe such a move would dramatically nourish the budding ecommerce marketplace in Egypt.

UPDATE: Check out the Vodafone Cash FAQ at the bottom of the page.

Google and Microsoft Fight for Egypt Students

Egypt's Business Today magazine has an interesting article this months titled Bit-by-Bit in which it sheds light on how Google is following in the footsteps of Microsoft trying to grab a share in Egypt's huge education pie.

Egypt Business Plan Competition 2007

2 million LE in cash and services are the total prizes of the Business Plan Competition which is being held for its third consecutive year in 2007. The deadline for the online submission of executive summaries is April 1st 2007. So if you have a bright IT idea and the right business plan to back it, hurry up and apply.

Google Calendar Supports SMS Notification in Egypt

I was so excited when the sound of an SMS message arriving at my mobile phone jingled in my ears. The SMS was sent by Google to notify me of an event I had set in my Google Calendar. I have a Vodafone line in Egypt.

The reason behind my excitement was that Google Calendar did offer support for SMS notification before, yet I found they only supported US carriers at the beginning. I had failed to add my mobile number to recieve SMS notification from Google Calendar in the past. Today, as I tried again, it worked. I was amazed. If you are in Egypt, you can use Google Calendar to keep track of your appointments and get free SMS notification for each appointment sent directly to your mobile phone. Here is how to register your mobile phone with Google Calendar.

IT Seminars in Egypt

The idea just crossed my mind. Why not make some form of meetings where some of the IT enthusiasts in Egypt get together and watch a one-hour preselected Google TeckTalk then discuss it together after watching focusing in particular on how such technology can be used to improve our daily work in the software industry in Egypt. That could be a series of seminars in which we watch a different TeckTalk each time. Perhaps this can help fuel things up and encourage more software developers to act as a catalyst in technology transfer to Egypt.

Microsoft Egypt is Hiring

Microsoft is launching its new CMIC, Cairo Microsoft Innovation Center, in the Smart Village. They are recruiting bright Egyptian software engineers in their CMIC. If you got what it takes to work at Microsoft, apply for a job at the Microsoft Egypt.

Egyptian Students in Google Competition

I hope that starting from March, bright intelligent Egyptian computer science students would be joining Google Summer of Code 2007. It is an excellent opportunity to showcase our talent to the world and in the process be exposed to a lot of experience while entering such programming contests. I believe FCI, Cairo University and FCIS, Ain Shams University should look seriously at propelling their bright students through such an opportunity at Google Summer of Code 2007.

Cairo ICT 2007

The 2007 Cairo ICT exhibition will be held at the Cairo International Conference Center from February 2nd to February 4th, 2007. The exhibition will be accompanied by a forum.

The Cairo ICT 2006 report provides statistics on last years exhibition.

Satyam in Egypt's Smart Village

Satyam, the giant Indian IT company, is starting a 300-seat center in Egypt's Smart Village. Not only is Satyam aiming at capitalizing on the availability of a pool of software engineering talent in Egypt, but it is also eyeing the growing Egyptian IT market. Read more in the Satyam Expands into Egypt article.

Egypt vs. India in IT Exports

According to Business Today Egypt, Egypt's IT sector was worth $70 million in 2002. Egypt IT exports amounted to $105 million in 2005 while those of India reached $12.2 billion in 2004.

Currently, Egypt's IT industry is valued at $250 million while that of India is valued at $30.4 billion. By 2010, Egypt aims to reach $1.2 billion in IT exports, while India aims to reach $96.9 billion by that time.

I hope these numbers act as a wake up call for Egyptians working in the IT industry and make them realise the potential ahead of us.