egypt

Links from Wednesday's episode of Loaded:

The Department of Justice proposes a very vague Internet data retention plan

Verizon's unlimited data plan for the iPhone will cost $30 per month--for a limited time

Verizon's iPhone tethering option will cost an extra $20 per month

Amazon.com wants to deliver groceries to homes nationwide with Amazon Fresh

Facebook is developing a Groupon competitor called Buy With Friends

Twitter confirms it has been blocked in Egypt amid violent, anti-government protests

Fox Sports will not broadcast the Super Bowl in 3D

The new MLB 11 game from Sony will … Read more

Update at 5:05 p.m. PT: Twitter has confirmed that it has been blocked in Egypt. According to the @TwitterGlobalPR account: "We can confirm that Twitter was blocked in Egypt around 8am PT today. It is impacting both Twitter.com & applications." Also: "We believe that the open exchange of info & views benefits societies & helps governments better connect w/ their people."

As fierce anti-government protests in the Egyptian capital of Cairo began to escalate, word broke out this morning that government forces had blocked access to Twitter's Web site. Twitter users throughout … Read more

Reuters reports that a deal to sell Apple's iPhone 3G has been announced by Emirates Telecommunications Corp (ETC). ETC will reportedly bring the iPhone 3G to the United Arab Emirate and Saudi Arabia some time in February, but no additional details were disclosed. The deal will be Apple's first iPhone 3G agreement in these countries.

Etihad Etisalat, a subsidiary of ETC, will offer the iPhone 3G for sale to customers in Saudi Arabia.

A recent post to the http://www.hackint0sh.org/news/394>hackint0sh.org forum reveals that Apple has included GPS hardware in all iPhones shipped worldwide even in countries that don't allow GPS. We previously reported on missing GPS functionality in Egypt here. According to the Hackint0sh post:

"Hurray for everyone who lives in a country GPS is diabled on the 3G. Our user were able to unlock the GPS for crippled devices in Egypt an other countries. Other than stated by Apple, GPS is NOT left out at factory and can easily be enabled."

The … Read more

According to a story published in the New York Times, Apple was forced to eliminate the GPS features of the iPhone 3G in order to sell it in Egypt. You can see that GPS is not mentioned on the Egyptian iPhone web page; the site mentions Wi-Fi, 3G, internet, MS Exchange and even maps sans, unfortunately, GPS.

The reasons behind this: the Egyptian government's belief that the GPS features could be a military security risk and therefore should be limited only to the military in that country. However, an even more significant aspect of the exclusion involves the effect … Read more

In a kulturkampf between old and new, several hundred youthful Facebook activists are increasingly under pressure from Egyptian authorities.

Earlier in the year, a group of young Egyptians used Facebook to organize support for a strike by textile workers on April 6. To put it mildly, Egypt's authoritarian government did not welcome this extension of civil society into cyberspace.

They liked it even less when the so-called 6 April Youth Movement, as they call themselves, met for the first time in late June at a Cairo gathering where they were feted by the local journalists' syndicate.

First bouncy balls, then geysers, then bunnies, and now Egypt's pyramids--Sony's rainbow-colored Bravia television ads are just about as Craveable as they get. Now here's a new one, created for the company's Egyptian market, featuring colorful spools of thread unwinding their way down Pharaoh-commissioned ruins.

It's inherently not quite as cool as the San Francisco bouncy balls because the shots of zillions of spools of thread cascading down a side of the Great Pyramid were clearly computer-generated, but it's still pretty. And that's what counts, right?

$10 says Sony does a Bravia … Read more