Q8Ba7th Official Blog

Popularity: 4% [?]

Aramex it seems are extending their Ardiya office working hours to more than 12 a day. At such time when everyone seems to be going away from Aramex for their prices, and slow delivery, I would think this is the last thing Aramex should be worried about.

What people really want I think is, first faster delivery, then cheaper prices, and better (much better) tracking.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Name: Our Kuwait

Site: ourkuw.com (Coming Soon)

Twitter URL: http://twitter.com/ourkuwait

Type: News

Brief: Our Kuwait is a new upcoming site, still unclear how the main site will be and what will be it’s nature, but it’s already got a Twitter account, and it’s primarily about latest on the stop Kuwait news in Arabic. I’m not really a fan of local news, but this one is quite good and could help me stay updated without much hassle, I highly recommend it. What’s so good about them is that they give you what they promise… News, rather than opinions which sparkle heated debates, and I hope they stay that way. Just to keep it right, turns out they do give their opinion along with the news.

Just follow them on Twitter, and get updated instantly.

Their website is still under construction, but I’m sure following their Twitter account would keep you updated once it launches.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Hi all,

Sorry so many people complained about the online version for two reasons:

1) It did not handle Arabic characters accordingly. I needed to change a bit in encoding
2) It was not importing back successfully. As expected, it’s something to do with line breaks. I was making line breaking, but no carriage return.

Both issues are now fixed hopefully, and you can start converting much faster, and really FREE. No hidden costs

You can go ahead and try it here.

Popularity: 27% [?]

You may have already heard about the Offline Java and Windows converter available. Some people are facing issues with either installing or running the program, especially the Windows version. Cross-platform compatibility also comes at a price. The Java version requires JRE 1.6, which has a considerable download time.

To provide a simplified and quick solution, we have also included an online converter version, where you simply upload your Contact Info CSV file, click convert and get the output converted file on the fly. There is a limit right now for 100 KB, which should be enough in most cases. My 16 KB file has over 300 records and numbers. If you have a larger file, you may want to consider the offline version.

You do not have to worry about your confidential information being stored anywhere. We do not store any information about you, or your file. The file is placed in temporary location for on the spot processing, and the output file is pushed immediately to the user.

If you are savvy enough with the online version, please just follow the steps below:

Important Notes

The service you are about to use processes CSV files blindly, and does not use country field to distinguish Kuwaiti from non-Kuwaiti numbers. Instead, it will process the file, and whenever a pattern of Kuwaiti number is found, it will convert it accordingly as a Kuwaiti number. Kuwait patterns are numbers like: 7 digits, 6 digits starting with 8, +965, 00965, and +00965. 3 digits numbers are still the same and will not be altered. If you have numbers of such patter in your list that are non-Kuwaiti numbers, especially the 6 and 7 digits, make sure you handle them separately later on, or take them out of the CSV file and recreate them manually. Your international dialing codes will be preserved in all cases. If you have +965 or any other prefix infront of your number, the converted number should still hold this prefix accordingly.

1. Synchronize your phone with your favourite PC address book software. This could be Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, or Mozilla Thunderbird for example.
2. Once done, export your contacts from your address book into a CSV (Comma Separated) file format, say contacts.csv. Make sure you remember the location of that file.
3. From the 8 Digits Converter Form below, Click on Browse and select your newly generated CSV contacts file, contacts.csv in our case, then click Open. (Max file size: 100 KB)
4. By default, all Kuwaiti phone numbers will be convertered. If you require only specific numbers to be converted, e.g. Wataniya numbers only, uncheck the unwanted prefixes, for example, MOC and Zain.
5. Click Convert. This process will take a while, depending on your file size.
6. If successful, you will be prompted to save the output CSV generated file. Save it to a new file name. Never delete your old file
7. Go back to your address book and delete all contacts.
8. Import the new contacts-8-digits.csv file back to your address book. This should create the same old contacts with the new numbering plan.

Terms Of Use:

8 Digits Online Converter is an online FREE service from Q8Ba7th.com that will help you update your phone contacts to the new 8 digits numbering plan coming to Kuwait October 2008. The web service is designed to overcome the problems of the offline versions, from compatibility, and download time, and instead, make the process a lot easier and faster. This ofcourse comes at the cost of uploading your contacts information to a public server.

Nevertheless, rest assure we do not store any information about the user, or keep the contacts information, or any part of it, onto our system. Once uploaded, your file is placed in temporary folder for processing, and the final output is pushed directly to the user.

The service is FREE to use, and is provided as is, use it at your own risk. Always keep a backup of your old contact information in case you need to get back to it. Conversion is done based on the officially announced new numbering plan in the newspaper, aided by further checkings with mobile operators. Should there be any mistake in the conversion, we encourage you to inform us about it.

The software is being provided absolutely FREE. Feel free to use it and share it, as you like. It was meant to help people do the transistion. We encourage people however to download the software directly from our site, to ensure they get the latest release with all the updates. Please note that you are not allowed however to do any modification on the code, part of it, change or add anything to it, or claim ownership of this product. You should not also try to use it for commercial purposes
like selling, rebranding or service providing.

While this software is FREE, and we believe will be important for many people to migrate to the new numbering plan, we are open for business owners who would like to discuss sponsoring this program, having their brand shown on the web page and software it self. If you like to sponsor this software, do send us an email at the address provided below.

Not Happy With Online Version?
We fully understand and respect the opinion of people who do not wish to send their contacts to a public place. In that case, you are welcome to try the offline versions. Our recommendation is to use the Java version.

Wataniya WBackup Converter

I believe all Wataniya customers got this SMS today about WBackup for FREE conversion of their numbers. It’s a pretty smart move from Wataniya to utilize the eight digits to promote and educate the public about their online backup solution, which I don’t think was selling pretty much before. I’m sure also Zain will come with their own solution pretty soon, but still late! If you want to give it a try, go ahead. Note however that WBackup is only FREE for 3 months, so you need to deactivate the service if you don’t wanna get charged.

While it might be a useful and quick way to convert, I have these points and concerns to preserve and think about before using it:

1. The service is about storing the contact information permanently on their system until you delete them.
2. I would double check if it converts all numbers or only Wataniya ones. Does it preserve the international dialing codes as they are?
3. Incompatibility: This is ofcourse an application based service you store on your mobile. A good large amount of handsets are supported, but still not all. iPhone for example is not in the list.
4. WAP Based: Does it mean I have to be subscribed and paying for WAP to use this service? This is double charging at the end.
5. Most Importantly: One thing I really hate about phone contacts is how each handسet uses it’s own contact fields. E.g, home number, work # 2, Home Fax. You go ahead and use those numbers, until you sync and move to a new phone, only to find out those numbers were not moved because they are not recognized by the address book or your new phone. Would WBackup be able to handle all kind of phone fields, or be missing some of them? When I designed the Eight Digits Converter, I wanted to avoid this problem, which is why the converter only looks for number, regardless of column name, you will still get it.

If you give it a shot, do let us know how it goes.

Popularity: 39% [?]

Sadly, Wataniya just sent a late notification for migrating their Wataniya numbers to the new plan starting today. The SMS is requesting all users to add a 6 to all their Wataniya stored contacts. I also heard Zain are doing the same as well. This is a very tedious job, and I didn’t have that in mind in the original Eight Digits Converter release.

We have worked on a quick solution to allow you to specify the operator you want to convert specifically. It’s pretty much the same. You basically just uncheck the operator you don’t want to convert to right now.

You can check all the latest updates and download the new release at the Eight Digits Converter page. Or if you like, you can download the software directly from here:

• Eight_Digits_Converter.jar (Version 0.2.0 Fix) – Java JAR File (All platforms) – Requires JRE 1.6
• EightDigitsConverter.zip (Version 0.2.0) – Windows Installer (Windows only)

For Java Version: Please make sure after installing JRE 1.6 that you set it as the first to use. For Mac, check the Java Application Runtime Settings. For Windows and Linux, check the path environment variables.

UPDATE: I got an SMS from Wataniya saying you can convert your numbers using WBackup. I did not find any relative information on the website, but you may wanna call and ask about the service. It’s an application you install on your phone that lets you do the conversion. According to the SMS, the service is FREE of charge. I think it’s FREE for first 3 months, and you will need to store your contact information on Wataniya servers.

Popularity: 28% [?]

To make it more live and news updated, we are testing automatic news importing from popular news sources. Yesterday we added local, economy, sport, , and worldwide news from Al-Jarida newspaper. We have are also adding the famous TechCrunch posts to the Technology section, so expect to find interesting things there. While the automatic news import might bring an overwhelming amount of unwanted news, all these news will be queued in the Upcoming News section. News that gets enough votes only will make it to the published popular section. What’s even better is, all those news are categorized accordingly. So if you have a taste for Sport, browse to the Sport section from the top navigational header and you will only get what you need.

We hope you like the new feature, and wish to hear your feedback on it.

Popularity: 24% [?]

Following the successful raid on spammers last night, we are happy to release the new design for Q8igg, which we hope you will find much more user friendly, and easier to navigate and utilize. The new design comes with the following advantages:

1- New Featured Gallery News
2- Easier navigation to different news and categories
3- 3 column view – you get more options at same page in one simple layout
4- RSS Feeds for your preferred category. For example, you can chose to subscribe to Kuwait Sites feed rather than News, or say Sports only.

The design has just been released, fresh out, so it may have bits of glitches here and there. Please bare with us, and do no hesitate to report any problems or suggestions you have.

Hopefully, we still have more cool things to come. So keep looking. Until then, start sharing and casting your vote to your favorite piece of news, article, or sites you find in Kuwait or worldwide.

Hope you like it.

Regards,
Bashar

Popularity: 24% [?]

Due to the high amount of spam attacks it got, the Q8igg project has been put a side for quite long time. However the project for me was everything but doomed. I was waiting for the right time and tool to fix this, and during that time, the site’s been literally unusable.

Last night was the diet and health gaining night. All new members are required to do email authentication now, and we are monitoring closely for spammers. Also, a counter-attack has been launched on all the happily living spammers over the course of previous months. As a result, the following actions has been executed:

1- Over 13,500 spammers have been deleted.
2- Over 8,500 spam posts were deleted
3- Over 7,500 spam votes removed
4- All spammer comments were deleted

I’m sure there are still bits and pieces of spammers here and there, but as far as news goes, the site is clean now, and we are back with a reasonable amount of users (47 as of now). I have also worked very hard to filter our legitimate users from spammers, I hope none was removed by mistake. If you have been positively contributing in the past, did not have your stories removed, or if you just keep silent but I know you from the blogs, it is very unlikely you have been deleted.

Still however, if your account has been deleted by mistake, I strongly apologize for this unintended action. With my apology again, you are kindly welcome to register again, and start using the site as before. It’s really difficult to filter out one individual amongst thousands of spammers, so I hope you understand.

Also, story submission time has been optimized as it was taking long time for spam filtering.

These are first steps of things we have in mind to bring the community back live again.

Popularity: 23% [?]

OK, so Al-Qabas is definitely not a new site, and I haven’t been there for a while, but I noticed only today their new design. The design is not really a breakthrough or anything, but compared to the old one, it’s much more compelling, easy to use and browse, helps you find what you are looking for. I can tell some thought has been put into the layout. The usability of the site as I see now is better than any other local news site. I liked the new dynamic tab browsing for subcategory. No page refresh needed. For example, you can click on Worldwide Sport under Sport category. Latest news will show up in that area without refreshing the current page.

The Bad:

1- RSS Feeds: First, RSS Feeds are not embedded in the headers. Something which could make it easier for browsers to identify and subscribe to the feed. Also, the feed titles are pointing to some urls like http://www.alqabas-kw.comarticle.aspx/?id=409408, which takes you to a 404 Page Not Found.

2- Cross Browser Support: At least on my Firefox @ Linux, which relatively often fails proper rendering to be honest, this site minorly fails with some text exceeding it’s box area, and top menu items are broken:

3- Continuous loading: For some reason, I see the page trying to load some content every few seconds. I doubt there is such instant news update on the site, so I wonder what’s that loading for. Sometimes its trying to load from Alqabas.com.kw, and others from doubleclick. So I’m assuming it’s some ad block trying to load.

Popularity: 23% [?]