President dotcoms

Its been a long time coming. The Prez of PK has a website and BBC reports he's thrown a little party to celebrate his dotcom day.

Designed by J Walter Thompson's web partner, its a cute PR excercise which offers an auto-bio, wallpapers [!], and the chance to see what emails he will respond to. Make the most of it, Prez! Think they've left something out? Hotline numbers anyone? ;-)

Provincial Ministers do it better?

A classic 'mission' at Spider was to argue against official blocking of pornographic websites. Responsibility lies with parents, teachers and end users--not goverments. So this news comes as no surprise:

"Pakistan's Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunications has said that it has accepted defeat in its "battle" against pornographic material available on the Internet."

The good Minister persists that it is now up to Provincial governments to prevent prongraphic content from reaching users in their territory. I advise all rational people to refrain from throwing their hands up in frustration and instead say a little prayer that those officials have their plates full with disaster management, environmental conservation, education+health, and any other constructive activity where our taxes are spent well!

Microsoft to Recall Xbox Cords Due to Electrical Issue

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software maker, said on Thursday it will recall 14.1 million power cords for its Xbox video game console after a defect gave some users minor singe burns and scorched carpets.

Robbie Bach, chief Xbox officer for Microsoft, told Reuters the recall covered all Xboxes made for continental Europe before Jan. 13, 2004, and units made for the rest of the world before Oct. 23, 2003. Read the article.

Monitoring Students

In a country where students bunking classes is considered 'something that cannot be dealt with' by Pakistani teachers, perhaps something like this is needed?

According to this source: "Security clearance has been given for the direct India-Pak fibre link between Amritsar and Lahore.

The Daily Times quoted the Pakistani Information Technology and Telecommunications minister Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari as saying that security clarance was needed for the formal approval of the project. He said that talks with India regarding the project is already going on and the link is likely to be set up soon.

Earlier, Pakistan Telecommunications Company Limited had been given the contract to prepare the feasibility report on the proposed fibre link. The project would be operational within six months and would cost between 150 million to 200 million rupees, to be shared equally by the two sides.

Experts believe that this proposed low-investment fibre link will strengthen the IT and telecom industry infrastructure and internet services in both India and Pakistan. (ANI) "

Google is now a domain registrar

Google is now an ICANN-accredited registrar of domain names, providing it with yet another potential line of expansion. The fast-growing search provider is approved to sell names in seven top-level domains (TLDs) including .com, .net, .org, .biz., info, .name and .pro.