Author: Mohamed Marwen Meddah

Mohamed Marwen Meddah is a Tunisian-Canadian, web aficionado, software engineering leader, blogger, and amateur photographer.

French Parliament Legalizes P2P

The French parliament passed 2 amendments yesterday that legalize file exchanges on the internet via P2P (peer to peer) networks.

So from now on downloaded copies of songs or movies are legal in France as long as they are for non commercial use.

That basically means that everyone can download whatever they want from the net for free and that it would still be legal.

Anyway, according to Bader, even if the law passed at the parliament, it still has to go through the senate, then the President to be signed into effect.

[Source: Yahoo News (FR)]

Performancing for Firefox

I’m writing this post in a new tool called Performancing for Firefox, which is a full featured cross platform blog editor that sits right within Firefox.

It plugs into Firefox like any other extension, is configured easily to have access to your blogs and gets you going in a few seconds.
You push F8 and you get a frame inside the browser with the editor, your blog categories, your latest blog entries and your saved notes.
It seems like a very efficient and quick way to blog, that I’ll be playing around with further.

I think it’s cool that we’re seeing a whole range of applications that can be plugged into browsers to make user’s online experiences easier, more practical and efficient. It only makes sense after all that everything we do on the internet can be done through the same window.

Organizing Tunisian Blogger Meetup 9

So, a bit over a month has passed since our last Tunisian blogger meetup, and it’s time for us to have another one.

Marouen has launched the idea to have the meetup on Sunday, December 25th. That would be just in time to announce the results of the Tunisian Blog Awards. That’s one day before the official results date for you curious people 😉

So the details for the meetup are as follows:
Date: Sunday, December 25th 2005
Time: 4pm Tunis Time
Venue: Caf

Search Knowledge

Nowadays, and thanks to the internet, all sorts of information and knowledge, from different fields of expertise, has been published online, mostly freely available to whoever needs it. This, I think, changes a lot of things, among them how people learn, know and find things.

We’re more or less moving towards an era in which no one really needs to know much more than some core basics in a certain topic and how to search and find the information they need for the rest.

Many times in my everyday life, whether at work or out of it, I find myself answering people’s questions by telling them to go and google it. And I know a lot of people who go through the same thing daily.

But something I’ve noticed is that even though we all have access to the same tools, we’re not all able to get the same information we need out of them.
Which is why I guess some people get offended when I tell them to go google something or search for it online, because they’re not sure they’ll be able to find it and they think I’m holding back information from them.

I guess one of the main reasons here is the language barrier. It’s easier to find what you’re looking for if you search for it in english as it’s the language most used for online content up to now. And if you’re not so good at english then you’re limited in expressing what you need to find or you have to use another language, therby limiting the scope of results and making the possibility of you not finding what you need bigger.

Another reason is the bad choice of keywords. A search engine, no matter how much artitificial intelligence it has built into it, is just a machine at the end of the day, which takes your input and searches for the closest and most relative matches to it. So you have to be a bit smart about which keywords to give it, trying to find the ones that would most probably be used in an article talking about the subject you’re after.

Some people also tend to give up quickly, again forgetting that they’re talking to a machine, and that if they didn’t find anything, it’s most probably because their input wasn’t good enough. What they should do is rethink the keywords they’re searching with and try again.

So as to not let this become an endless ramble about search engines, I’ll just end this with one more point, which is that some people still don’t fully understand the strength of these search engines and the wealth of information and material available through them.
I personally use search engines for everything and anything I need to find or make sure of, and I’ve rarely been left without an answer.
I’ll post more later about all the different things I use search engines for.

Gad El Maleh: L’Autre C’est Moi

Last night, I finally got to watch Gad El Maleh’s latest one man show “L’Autre C’est Moi“, and man was it funny! I laughed my head off.

Gad is simply hilarious as usual, cracking you up with every joke, move or word he tells, does or says.

I love the way he takes on all these different things from our everyday lives, that we got used to, and just makes fun of them with his amazing sense of humour.

From school, to flying, to skiing, to ikea, to swimming, to music, … he makes fun of everything.

I totally recommend watching this show to everyone who understands even a bit of French, it’s really worth it and so funny.

My score would be: 8.5/10

Secret Smile – Nicci French

I just finished reading “Secret Smile” by Nicci French, which is a really good psychological thriller.

To not risk giving the story away, I’ll just give you what is written on the back of the book, that caught me and made me buy the book in the first place.

When Miranda Cotton returns from work to find her new boyfriend, Brendan, reading her diary, she ends the relationship and throws him out of her flat.

Getting Brendan out of her life, however, is not so easy. Two weeks later her sister, Kerry, phones her in ecstasy. She’s in love. She has a new boyfriend. He’s called Brendan…

So Brendan is back in Miranda’s life – with a vengeance. But why has he done this? And what does he want from her?

Soon, what began as an embarrassment becomes like an infestation – and then more terrifying than her worst nightmares.

The book sucks you into the story and throws you into the confusion and suspense the story creates.

I really enjoyed reading this book and think it’s totally movie material. Actually, the way it’s written, it reads out like a movie.
I’m quite sure a movie based on this story would do very well at the box office.

I recommend this book to everyone into thrillers and suspense.
My score for it is: 7.5/10