Cisco, Mcafee, Websense Decide Not to Help Pakistan, But Wait, Who Asked for Their Help?: ProPakistani

Cisco, Mcafee, Websense Decide Not to Help Pakistan, But Wait, Who Asked for Their Help?
Omar Manzur Moves to HR Department at Mobilink
New SIMs to be Posted to Postal Addresses: Rehman Malik
Nokia & djuice Conduct App Development Workshop

Cisco, Mcafee, Websense Decide Not to Help Pakistan, But Wait, Who Asked for Their Help?

Posted: 19 Mar 2012 11:25 PM PDT

Western Media has gone crazy with heroic news stories portraying superlative character of security companies, such as Cisco, Mcafee, Websense, Verizon and Sandvine – who have decided not to submit proposals for upcoming centralized URL filtering system of Pakistan.

A blog at New York times writes:

In less than a month, five of eight companies have said they will not respond to Pakistan's request for proposals, known as an RFP.

This was real funny, for those at least who had few minutes to read the RFP floated by ICT R&D Fund.

Here's why: Check below highlighted text taken from RFP for National URL Filtering System:

So the tip for the best technology journalists and bloggers of west: Please spare few minutes and read the RFP carefully. These humongous security companies were never invited for the task in the first place.

I guess it was simple to understand.

You can view RFP here, and FAQs here.

By the way Cisco, Websense and Mcafee voicing against web censorship is even more hilarious, especially when:

China's great firewall is managed by Cisco
Mcafee is offering URL filtering services in Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Iran, and Oman
Websense is offering URL filtering services in Yemen

Check below tweet to see when Mcafee was caught with pants down

Our Pakistani brothers and sisters, who tip western media, please don't mock your country and yourself too.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Omar Manzur Moves to HR Department at Mobilink

Posted: 19 Mar 2012 11:18 PM PDT

Read this post in Urdu

Omar Manzur 220x300 Omar Manzur Moves to HR Department at Mobilink Omar Manzur, the official spokesperson of Mobilink for last 8 years, has moved on to take up charge of a newly formed division at HR department in Mobilink, we have confirmed with sources and company itself.

According to details we have got, Hussain Ali Talib is going to replace Omar to become head of Public Relation and Social Responsibility. Though it is unclear at the moment if this headship given to Hussain is permanent or ad hoc in nature.

Omar Manzur had been head of PR at Mobilink for around 8 years, also known as pioneer department for PR in telcos. Mr. Omar is known for nurturing notable number of PR professionals in the industry earning him handsome repute.

His new assignment will include talent hunt for various departments at Mobilink along with promotions and replacements of executives within the company. He will also administer employees' trainings throughout the company.

We first heard of Omar thinking about moving out of PR few months ago, primarily for career growth and diversification in his portfolio. Omar believes that this move was necessary for moving up the ladder.

It merits mentioning here that head hunters had been in talks with Omar for Director PR slot at Telenor, which he declined over his newly assigned position.

New SIMs to be Posted to Postal Addresses: Rehman Malik

Posted: 19 Mar 2012 10:35 PM PDT

Read this post in Urdu

A new revelation has been made by Mr. Rehman Malik, the Minister Interior, also notorious for issuing useless and senseless statements, when he was yesterday found saying that PTA would be directed to dispatch every new SIM card to the subscriber's home/office addresses from May 1st (without clarifying the year, but we are supposing he meant 2012).

Mr. Malik disclosed this at a meeting with members of Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) in Karachi.

Telecom industry is clueless of the development, neither Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has received any orders regarding the issue.

Mr. Malik is largely known for issuing random statements about telecom industry every other month and then doing nothing about it. Here are few examples of Mr. Malik's statements which were never materialized:

It merits mentioning here that this is not the first time Mr. Rehman Malik has thought of asking PTA to send new SIMs at subscribers' postal addresses. It was July 2010, when he last issued exactly similar verdict – but again, it was never implemented.

Nokia & djuice Conduct App Development Workshop

Posted: 19 Mar 2012 08:25 PM PDT

With a vision to cater to the lower segment of the market, Nokia Pakistan and djuice have joined hands to start a series of Developer Workshops that aim to provide training focused on S40 devices.

The workshop was recently held at Telenor's Regional Head Office, Islamabad and included developers from SEECS, NUST University as well as some SMEs.

Faisal Iqbal, Mobile Specialist at Orison Technologies imparted training to the participants and shared the details of development tools available for game development with QML.

Talking about the partnership, Faisal Riaz, Applications & Devices Specialist, djuice said, "djuice partnered with Nokia to give a chance to amateur app developers to improve their skill set and perhaps do more with it than they can right now. During training, we received a great response from the developers and being one of the leading telecom service providers in Pakistan, we feel it is our responsibility to support initiatives that promise industry-wide growth. We hope to enter into new mutually beneficial partnerships in future with Nokia as well and contribute to better services for end consumers."

Expressing her views, Rabia Nizami, Business Development Manager EDX, Nokia Pakistan & Afghanistan said, "I appreciate the interest level of Islamabad's developer community to learn and excel in their chosen field. Nokia has been organizing these kinds of workshops for developers in Pakistan for the past 2 years. As part of Nokia partnership with djuice to build the local Ecosystem and provide new opportunities to the local developers, this time around Nokia offered a Training Workshop in Islamabad partnered with djuice and P@SHA for Game development with QML. The workshop was geared towards channelizing the strengths of local developers and providing them resources to develop more locally relevant mobile apps for Nokia Smart Devices in our country."

At the workshop's conclusion, certificates were distributed among all the participating developers. Events of this nature are pertinent to take the local IT/Telecom industry to the next level and enable better mobility experience for end consumers especially in countries like Pakistan where majority of people use S40 mobile phones.

world on your screen

Tuesday, March 20, 2012