Green & White – Techcrunch of Pakistan January 10, 2008
Posted by Atif Mumtaz in IT, Information Technology, Pakistan, reviews.Tags: bloggers, blogging, greenwhite, Information Technology, IT, Pakistan, reviews
3 comments
There are over 800 registered Information Technology companies with Pakistan Software Export Board. Quite a number of them have over 100 employees and revenues that exceed multi-million dollars. A conservative estimate by the government indicates that over 100,000 people are employed by the information technology related industry. From vendors, to call center staff, to software engineers. Despite these large numbers, it is quite unfortunate that the traditional media does not have any focused coverage plans for this vibrant and emerging industry within the country. Barring occasional press releases and a few PSEB or PASHA newsletters, one never gets to hear what is going on within the industry. In this vacuum, Greenwhite.org is like an oasis in the desert; filling the void with their wonderful, to the point, entertaining, and candid coverage of the whole industry.
I stumbled upon them when I was still at Stanford and they had independently tested/covered one of the companies that I had co-founded in Pakistan, called BrightSpyre in 2002. It was quite intriguing to read how they perceived the company and what the people were talking about. Ever since that time, I have been checking the blogsite quite regularly. They are always at the forefront covering events, reviewing companies or potentially good projects and even debating the future of IT industry in Pakistan. It makes for a great read and shows that the industry is alive with ideas and growing rapidly.
To me they are the techcrunch of Pakistan. Keep up the good work guys. It is really heartening to see that what the media does not consider important, they take it seriously and cover it thoroughly.
For more information visit: http://www.greenwhite.org
Allvoices.com – A refreshing approach to news and events December 29, 2007
Posted by Atif Mumtaz in Politics, reviews.Tags: aggregation, allvoices, blogging, events, news, reviews
1 comment so far
Each day, I visit dozens of websites including blogs, news sites, forums and even social networking platforms. The purpose is keeping tabs on various technologies, events, and of course to see what else is going on around me. Whether it is political, sports, IT or even finer side of life, I prefer to find it online. And sometimes, I even write about some of it (like right now) at some forum or on one of my blogs out there…
Allvoices.com is one such startup out of the valley that has caught my attention and has literally made some of my surfing easier. It not only organizes information professionally of everything that I want, but also gets my point of view out there faster.
The first thing that you see is not textual information, but a world map. As a user, you choose the region that interests you and it takes you to the news and events related to that region directly. Remarkable. For example, the story of sudden death of Benazir Bhutto spread around the world like wildfire. There was hardly any website, blog, newspaper, TV, radio that did not cover the event in detail within minutes of its happening. Even CNN listed found Benazir’s death as the most sought after event on its website. Within two days of its happening, it has probably achieved the notoriety of becoming the biggest news story for 2007. But allvoices.com seems to have found a way to filter and bring the best of these stories out for its readers.
http://www.allvoices.com/people/Benazir-Bhutto
I get to read what the other newspapers are talking about, view comments left by people and also add my own blogs/feeds/comments to this list. Wonderful!
As another example, I was watching some news story on TV and a name Miliband came up in UK. I clicked on the map of UK on allvoices.com and got complete details about him, including a link to Wikipedia of his entry.
I think this is the future of how we shall gather news, read, and comment. It is a mix of traditional (imported news items from major players including fox, cnn, bbc etc) with a blend of blogs and viewers comments. CNN is trying to do something similar with iReport, but so far allvoices.com seems a better effort. Good job guys.
