intodimensions.com

The UAE won for the first time the Gulf Cup, after beating Oman.� Contragulations UAE!!!

Gulf News
The UAE rewrote the Gulf Cup history by winning the 18th edition of the premier regional tournament, after beating Oman through a solitary goal scored by Esmail Mattar.

The winner came in the 72nd minute at Zayed Sports City Stadium on Tuesday following a goalless first half.

The UAE were the better side for the most part of the match after both teams opted a cautious 4:5:1 formation to secure domination of the midfield.

As much as I like computers and the internet, this is sad:

The world’s oldest newspaper, Sweden’s Post och Inrikes Tidningar, has embraced the digital age, ending its run as a print publication and opting to be published exclusively on the Internet. Founded in 1645 by Queen Christina, the Post och Inrikes Tidningar (PoIT) - or Post and Domestic Newspapers - was a staple for readers in Sweden throughout the late 17th and 18th century. But its readership dwindled as rival newspapers appeared, confining PoIT primarily to the publication of announcements from publicly listed companies, and financial and legal institutions by the 1900s. While the paper has not covered news stories for more than 100 years, the World Association of Newspapers recognises PoIT as the world’s oldest still in publication. In its electronic format, launched on January 1, PoIT remains the official news organ of the government - a role enshrined in Swedish law - as it has been since the 17th century. “The change in format is of course a major departure, for some possibly a little sad, but it is also a natural step,” PoIT’s new editor-in-chief Roland Haegglund said. Haegglund said he believed the move to the internet would breathe new life into the paper.
“It will definitely widen our readership. Now anyone with internet access can read PoIT free of charge,” said Haegglund. “You couldn’t just chance upon the print version. Now everyone has the chance to be informed.” PoIT enjoyed a monopoly in news coverage until the emergence of competitors such as Aftonbladet in 1879, which remains one of Sweden’s leading daily tabloids. As the number of rival newspapers multiplied, PoIT reduced its news content and by the early 1900s it was no longer the paper of reference for Sweden’s news-reading public. In its final years in print, public company announcements were taking up between 20 and 30 pages - often more than half the paper. The remainder was devoted to material such as announcements of legal proceedings and the Swedish royal family’s official engagements. In 1978, the paper adopted the booklet format and the final print version of the paper – published on December 29, 2006 – had a circulation of around 1,500.

Gulf News reports that Dr Jeffrey Cole, from University of Southern California (it’s not “Souther Carolina” Gulf News!), and Dr Duy Linh Tu, from Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, was at Zayed University in both Dubai and Abu Dhabi blogging and the internet.

It’s all well and good to invite some people who are supposedly experts at the field and that have studied it, but the article doesn’t mention if there were any local bloggers at these events. Does anyone know whether any local talent was there to talk about blogging in the UAE? I know many prefer to stay anonymous for various reasons but surely they could have found someone willing to discuss this from a local/regional perspective. Or perhaps someone was there and the article just doesn’t say.

ZDNet:

Swedish bank Nordea has told ZDNet UK that it has been stung for between seven and eight million Swedish krona — up to £580,000 — in what security company McAfee is describing as the “biggest ever” online bank heist.

Over the last 15 months, Nordea customers have been targeted by emails containing a tailormade Trojan, said the bank.

Nordea believes that 250 customers have been affected by the fraud, after falling victim to phishing emails containing the Trojan. According to McAfee, Swedish police believe Russian organised criminals are behind the attacks. Currently, 121 people are suspected of being involved.

The attack started by a tailormade Trojan sent in the name of the bank to some of its clients, according to McAfee. The sender encouraged clients to download a “spam fighting” application. Users who downloaded the attached file, called raking.zip or raking.exe, were infected by the Trojan, which some security companies call haxdoor.ki.

Haxdoor typically installs keyloggers to record keystrokes, and hides itself using a rootkit. The payload of the .ki variant of the Trojan was activated when users attempted to log in to the Nordea online banking site. According to the bank, users were redirected to a false home page, where they entered important log-in information, including log-in numbers.

After the users entered the information an error message appeared, informed them that the site was experiencing technical difficulties. Criminals then used the harvested customer details on the real Nordea website to take money from customer accounts.

According to McAfee, Swedish police have established that the log-in information was sent to servers in the US, and then to Russia. Police believe the heist to be the work of organised criminals.

Nordea spokesman for Sweden, Boo Ehlin, said that most of the home users affected had not been running antivirus on their computers. The bank has borne the brunt of the attacks, and has refunded all the affected customers.

Ehlin blamed successful social engineering for the heist, rather than any deficiencies in Nordea security procedures.

“It is more of an information rather than a security problem,” said Ehlin. “Codes are a very important thing. Our customers have been cheated into giving out the keys to our security, which they gave in good faith.”

In an effort to combat fraud, most banks have a policy of monitoring the behaviour of people claiming to be their customers, so that unusual transaction behaviour can be investigated and halted if fraudulent.

Nordea was aware that some of the attempted transactions were false because of the large sums involved. However, over 15 months a large series of small transactions enabled the criminals to successfully transfer a huge sum overall.

“In some cases we saw the transactions were false, and in some cases we didn’t,” said Ehlin. “We can’t look at every transfer, and it looked like our customers had made the transfer. Most of the cases were small amounts that we thought were ordinary. We lost approximately seven to eight million krona.”

Nordea has two million internet banking customers in Sweden. The police investigation is underway, and the bank is currently reviewing its security procedures.

Apparently a tower is on fire in Dubai and it has even made the front page of Swedish newspapers. It’s been reported that at least one person is dead and many injured.

I thought this was funny and a good way to find information.� It seems like my local newspaper, Sun News, had to Google to figure out which business had a fire.� I would have probably called the Horry County Fire Department and asked, but they just googled it. LOL

Horry County Dispatch sent a number of firetrucks and emergency vehicles at 3:46 p.m. Wednesday from Horry County Fire Rescue and Conway Fire Department to a reported fire at an automotive shop at 7171 Adrian Highway, said a dispatch supervisor.

No people were thought to be inside the structure. It was unclear how big the fire was and what started it.

According to a Google search, Todd’s Restoration and Towing is located at the address of the fire.

In Emirates Today:

Intel has called on UAE telecom firms to reduce broadband prices to help increase the technology’s domestic penetration rate.

“The region needs to bring down the cost of broadband by a factor of 10 times,” said Adulrahman Jarrar, Intel’s regional manager for government affairs.

“As broadband prices drop, the usage will increase.Today, companies charge a lot for broadband. If prices were lowered they would make more money because they would be selling to more people.

According to a report by EFG-Hermes this month, the UAE has the greatest internet penetration in the Middle East at 34 per cent or 1.4 mil lion subscribers, but for broadband this figure is just eight per cent.

Jarrar said cost was the main factor limiting greater take up of broadband. “If we enable more operators to compete in providing connectivity solutions we will see prices come down,” Jarrah said.

He claimed the region was on the brink of an internet revolution, with the imminent introduction of WiMax serv ices in the UAE and Saudi Arabia after both countries agreed individual regulatory frameworks.

Intel is currently conducting two WiMax pilot schemes in Saudi Arabia, while similar experiments are being held by etisalat and du in the UAE.

Jarrah said: “The next inflection point for the industry is clearly broadband to go or carrying broadband with you.”

Cheaper broadband - Yeah!

WiMax - Yeah!

ABC News has a story about the tallest building being built here in Dubai. The Burj Dubai is finishing 1 floor every 3 days, and that is thanks to the help of 3,000 labors working on the project everyday.

You may ask yourself about the cost of building a building like this, but you also need to look at the real cost to the planet, to the desert, to the health of the people living here. This is a good little read.

The Burj Dubai skyscraper under construction here reached its 100th story on Tuesday, nearly two-thirds of the way in its relentless climb to become the world’s tallest building.

With 3,000 laborers adding a new floor nearly every three days, the $1 billion spire is days away from surpassing a neighboring skyscraper that is currently the tallest in the Middle East, Dubai-based developer Emaar Properties said.

“The tower is a symbol of the city’s pride and a statement of our arrival on the global scene as one of the world-class cities,” Emaar chairman Mohammed Ali Alabbar said.

When finished in two years, the silvery steel-and-glass building is expected to rise beyond 2,300 feet and more than 160 floors dozens of stories taller than the world’s current tallest building, the Taipei 101 tower in Taiwan, which measures 1,671 feet and 101 floors.

It will also top the world’s tallest freestanding structure, Toronto’s CN Tower, which stands 1,815 feet.

The tallest building in the United States, the Sears Tower in Chicago, comes in at 1,451 feet, while the Empire State Building measures 1,250 feet. Before they were destroyed in the Sept. 11 attacks, the World Trade Center towers both topped 1,360 feet. The Freedom Tower being planned for the site will measure 1,776 feet when it’s completed in 2011.

Emaar isn’t releasing its plans for the final height of the Burj Dubai so it can add more stories if a competing developer mounts a challenge. Predictions on skyscraper Web sites say the cylindrical Burj, which was designed by American architect Adrian Smith, will eventually loom over the city from a height of 2,600 feet or more.

Until the 1960s, the United Arab Emirates was an impoverished desert country whose residents survived through subsistence fishing, farming and small-time trade.

After it became rich from oil, Dubai began building skyscrapers to gain international prestige, not, like Hong Kong and New York, because of a shortage of land. But Dubai’s skyscraper binge has jacked up land prices so much that tall buildings are now the only feasible use of coveted building lots in the city’s central district.

Dubai has staked its fame on bold engineering, building attention-grabbing projects including manmade resort islands shaped like palm trees, a mall with indoor skiing, and a vast Disney World-style amusement complex that includes plans for an apartment building that rotates on its axis.

Exhibiting a flair for the luxurious that is typical of Dubai, one of the skyscraper’s high-profile tenants will be the Armani Hotel, developed in conjunction with Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani. The spire will also contain private apartments and offices.

Surrounding the dramatic concrete and steel tower is a $20 billion development project that includes several smaller towers set amid winding canals and a gargantuan shopping mall.

All of this development has angered many environmentalists, who say the Emirates is one of the biggest energy consumers and carbon dioxide emitters per capita on the planet. The World Wildlife Fund has asked the country to move toward renewable energy, especially solar power viable in one of the world’s sunniest climates.

Although the government says it is making improvements, construction hasn’t slowed on projects like the Burj Dubai. Motorists on the adjacent highway get dramatic daily views of the tower’s progress, with 10 cranes and the world’s fastest construction hoists zipping concrete slabs and giant bundles of steel rods to dizzying heights.

The construction division of South Korean conglomerate Samsung is building the tower, using a three-day-per-story construction technique pioneered on skyscrapers in South Korea.

“We’re not breaking any speed records, just the height record,” said Beejay Kim, Samsung’s Dubai-based business manager.

Only one building in the Middle East currently remains taller: the nearby Emirates Office Tower, a skyscraper resembling a razor blade that rises to 1,165 feet. The Burj Dubai is approaching that height now it stands at 1,140 feet and should surpass it within days.

Asked how long the Burj Dubai would hold the world record when it’s finished, Kim said he was unsure. “If anyone is looking for an even taller building, we are happy to build it,” he said.

The Middle East previously held the record of the earth’s tallest structure for about 43 centuries. Built around 2500 B.C., Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Giza dwarfed the competition at about 481 feet until 1889 when the Eiffel Tower was completed in Paris at a height of 1,023 feet, including the flag pole.

National Geographic has a nice feature on Dubai including a photo gallery.

GulfNews:

Abu Dhabi is the most expensive Middle Eastern city, according to a survey conducted by the Billion Plus Magazine.

Dubai came second and Beirut third. Sharjah came in as the eighth most expensive Arab city, according to the survey, which was based on the costs of living.

Mifleh Ayyash, Editor-In-Chief of the magazine, said: “We had to convert national currencies to the US dollar in order to make an accurate study.”

The study was conducted through a questionnaire comprising selective questions on the living expenses in Arab cities. The questionnaire contained six main groups, including housing, education, health, food, power telecommunications, clothes and transportation.

According to the global estimate on the costs of living, which takes from New York as a comparative city, Dubai ranked 25 on the list of the world’s most expensive cities, while Abu Dhabi came 30 and Beirut 32. Dubai, Beirut and Abu Dhabi are among the world’s 50 most expensive cities.

Ayyash said: ” Despite the high costs of living in Dubai, the study show that Abu Dhabi came first among the most expensive Arab cities due to the price difference in housing and education sectors.

Figures showed that health expenses in Occupied Jerusalem, Beirut and Amman are low compared to GCC cities, while expenses for clothes and transportation proved to be high in Arab cities compared to Gulf cities.