CNN: Saudi Arabia has promised a comprehensive review of all of its educational textbooks and to remove all language promoting intolerance.

My Jeddawi cousin Hamad in the farm prior to dinner.

Almost two weeks ago I wrote about Printaholics, which, according to their blog, would be launched in August this year. They seem to be targeting the market of UAE only, which could be a good thing for the startup and their customers too.

What I forgot to mention in that post is: there is a similar startup in Egypt that I found earlier this year. It is called Sortak, and it looks promising too. One of the interesting features they offer is a special level of privacy for hijabi women; an idea the guys at Printaholics might consider as it could prove popular in the more conservative soceity of the Gulf.

I am wondering what these two startups can learn from each other. They are providing (almost) the same service and apparently have the same business model, and because they are targeting two different local markets, I guess there is no fear of competition here. I am also wondering if there are any Saudi VCs (do they exist?) willing to invest in a similar idea.

(on a side note: what do you think of this a la TechCruch post? Should I do more of these? ;-)

From my personal experience, I can tell you that after using a DSL connection for some time, using a standard dial-up connection becomes unbearable. I usually use a monthly pre-paid subscription, and tend to change the ISP from time to time depending on the performance and speed of connection during the past month.

So after my last subscription with AwalNet ended, my brother suggested that we should change the ISP. I thought AwalNet was ok, but he said a change might be good. I did not mind, because to me there wasn’t this huge difference between ISP’s in the Kingdom. The whole internet infrastructure in the country is crappy after all.

I know that a 128 kbps speed is not exactly what true computer geek would hope for, but considering my bankruptcy, and that I’m not a geek, I think it is good enough for my usual internet usage. Plus, BitTorrent and other P2P tools have made even the slowest DSL connections more valuable.

We got a one-month subscription from Sahara. After about ten days of normal usage, interrupted by several hours of disconnection every 2 or 3 days, we were completely disconnected. My brother called the Sahara help line, and after a long waiting he finally spoke to a customer service person. “You are no longer connected because you have exceeded your download limit,” he told my brother, who was totally surprised with what he heard. “You have a 6 GB download limit and you have reached that limit, so your subscription is no longer working,” he added.

My brother told him there was nothing on the pre-paid card about a download limit. “That is correct: this piece of information is only available on our website,” the customer service guy said. My brother, shocked with this kind of policy, did not comment and simply hang up.

I don’t get it: so I have to go to their website to find out about their terms and conditions? But wait, to do that, I need to be connected to the internet, and that’s why I purchased the pre-paid subscription card in the first place, right? What if I read their terms and conditions and did not agree on them? Would they accept to take back their subscription and give me a refund for the service I purchased? I don’t think so.

Based on my experiences with other Saudi companies, and with this kind of policies by Sahara, I don’t think they would do that. Anyways, I got a new subscription from another ISP, with no download limit crap of any kind; otherwise I won’t be able to write this post ;-) and I guess I won’t be dealing with them anymore as that proved to be a total waste of money and time. Conclusion: Sahara DSL service is highly unrecommended, and if you had no other choice you better stick to your not-so-good ol’ dial-up connection.

This photo is from a recent visit to Dammam with my family. Two of my cousins, Mohammed and Zinab, and my brother Hadi, appear in the picture smiling, but a few seconds later Hadi was screaming like a maniac asking us to tell the operator to stop this thing because he was getting scared. The thing is, he is a big show off, so it was very funny watching him almost crying up there :-)

After more than 100 hours of blockage, this blog was finally back on Monday. I’m writing this now because I was out of town for the last couple of days. I had a brief visit to Dammam with my family that taught me some really valuable lessons, but more on that later. I want to thank everyone who supported me. Many thanks to OCSAB, especially Herbaz, for taking the time and effort to work on unblocking the blog. On a related note, Naif Abu-Said has published an article (Arabic) in Al Riyadh newspaper on ISU and their method of censorship. Our regular blogging will continue in the coming few hours, stay tuned.

I really appreciate the nice gesture by OCSAB to support me against ISU. Paying a visit to ISU is a highly regarded act, especially that I can’t do such thing because I’m not in Riyadh these days. I am thrilled by the reaction of bloggers to what happened, and I hope this blog would carry some good news soon.