Month: March 2004

Nasr TV

NASR TV, the first-ever private TV channel in Tunisia, will start broadcasting soon. In fact, I hear it should start broadcasting as soon as early summer this year.

The new TV station is going to be a general interest channel focusing mostly on entertainment programs and targeting a young audience according to Mr. Nasra, the channel’s Founder.
The channel will broadcast digitally on the Hotbird satellite around the clock, seven days a week.

Arabic will be the main language of the station, yet the use of foreign languages is considered for certain programs, such as tourism documentaries.

As a general interest channel, “Nasr TV” intends to provide viewers with a variety of programs: culture, entertainment, movies and series, game and children’s shows, women programs, sports, etc?

A total investment of 20 million dinars ($17 million) were injected to build state-of-the-art studio sets, located in La Soukra, a Tunis suburb.

Nasr TV’s business plan mainly depends on advertisement earnings/inflows, both local and foreign.

Part of the staff has been hired, and the rest (total of 150 employees) are being selected. Mr. Nasra made it a top priority to hire professionals from the Tunisian market, which I think is a great initiative.

Tucows Acquires BlogRolling.com

So Tucows have acquired BlogRolling.com

I don’t know why I have a bad feeling about this one.
I mean, when Google acquired Blogger, I thought: fantastic ! Blogger will go on to greater things.
But now, I’m not so sure about this one.
Maybe it’s just because I hate the Tucows download site, or because I don’t see any connection or reason why they should do this in the first place.

Well ok, it turns out Tucows have a service called Blogware, and that they bought BlogRolling to provide more value for that service.

Anyway, I don’t give a damn what they do with their Blogware and how they integrate BlogRolling into it. All I care about is that they don’t screw it up for the rest of us.

The full press release is here.

EU imposes sanctions on U.S.

The European Union launches sanctions on the United States for the first time Monday as a dispute over tax breaks for U.S. firms turns into a trade war that could cost American exporters $300 million this year.

[via CNN]

After having the US impose sanctions on several countries time and time again, breaking their economy and putting their people in misery, it’s sort of good for a change to see things turned around this time, although the results won’t be as bad.

Maybe this will show the US administration how bad sanctions are for the people and businesses, not for the leaders. And maybe it will make them reconsider applying sanctions on other countries.
Maybe. But I don’t think so.

Which reminds me of this term the US & UK created: Smart sanctions.
Smart Sanctions my ass !

Oscars 2004

Finally Lord Of The Rings got the awards it deserved. In fact, it nearly got all of them.
This year’s oscars were swept away by Lord Of The Rings, winning all 11 Oscars that it was nominated for. Now, that’s beautiful.
The movie really deserves every single oscar it got, and every single one it didn’t get too.
It’s the movie of the century.

Finding Nemo won for best animated feature film, and of course I agree.
Pixar rule.

Sean Penn who usually is a bad boy standing against the Oscars, went along this year and won the Best Actor Oscar.
Charlize Theron won Best Actress Oscar for her role in Monster.

Sofia Coppola won best screenplay for Lost In Translation. A movie i’m dying to see.

And well for the full list of winners, go here.