Wadiblog

Posted by: Abdulrahman Rafiq on behalf of Faraz Shah (Photographer)

Sitting with several Calfriends, sipping cups cold coffee (Pakistani Style) at Mirchi Cafe in Fremont, California I was astounded to learn about Facebooks content copyright policy.

Believe it or not, any content, primarily photos and videos that a user posts to Facebook is solely own by Facebook.com.

Even if you delete the content from your profile, it will not be deleted from Facebooks database, and they reserve the right to use any content for marketing and publicity purposes.

See Facebook’s Terms of Use:

By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

To learn more about this visit http://PhotoAttorney.com

Moral of the story is: Before posting content to any Social Network  make sure you have read the Terms of Use statement. You may be in for a surprise.

(Posting from Blackberry)

Social networks are transforming the way brands and consumers interact. Leading brands and agencies are embracing their potential — are you?

SWAT Summit looks at how agencies and brands can harness the power of social networks. This conference is for anyone who wants to be a leader in the next generation of marketing and advertising — and for the publishers, developers, and ad networks who will work with them hand in hand.

When: Thursday, July, 17, 2008

Where: Westin St. Francis, San Francisco, Ca.

Sign-up today and get $100 off when using the wadiblog promotion code.

Wadiwallah is a proud sponsor of SWAT Summit.

If number of attendees and their active participation in a program is the litmus test of an event’s success then OPEN Forum 2008, Silicon Valley Chapter of Organization of Pakistani Entrepreneurs of North America’s annual event, held on June 14, 2008, was hugely successful.

Here you see evening keynote speaker Howard Dean, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, speaking on ‘Leadership and Empowerment.’

See more pictures and report on
http://karachiphotoblog.blogspot.com/

In these times when the war on terror is raging high and western analysts are looking for bright spots in the Muslim world, to pin their hopes onto, Musharraf Ali Farooqi’s recently published English translation of Dastane-e-Amir Hamza (translated as Adventures of Amir Hamza) has been received with gusto. This translation has given western scholars a thick body of work to analyze and answer many questions.

“Are these people really evil? Were they always savages like they presently are? Are their folklores full of jihad lessons, misogynic themes, triumphant beheadings of infidels, and of older men getting married to underage girls?

Commentators such as William Dalrymple are exuberant that that is not the case. Reviewing Musharraf Farooqi’s translation, Dalrymple writes:

“At this perilous moment in history, the Hamza epic, with its mixed Hindu and Muslim idiom, its tales of love and seduction, its anti-clericalism (mullahs are a running joke throughout the book), its stories of powerful and resourceful women, and its mocking of male misogyny, is a reminder of an Islamic world the West seems to have forgotten: one that is imaginative and heterodox — and as far as can be from the puritanical Wahhabi Islam that the Saudis have succeeded in spreading throughout much of the modern Middle East.”

Dalrymple’s sigh of relief aside, Dastan-e-Amir Hamza has (or had at one time) the ultimate merit of entertaining early readers. Ten volumes of Amir Hamza were what children of my age read as their first collection of books. Amir Hamza was our first hero; to be like Amir Hamza was our dream –we wanted to go to distant places and conquer new lands, pretty much like how Amir Hamza did. Dastan-e-Amir Hamza gave us a chance to imagine a different, mesmerizing world, and it cemented in our value system the virtues of bravery, loyalty to friends, truthfulness, and steadfastness.

Toronto based Musharraf Ali Farooqi has been touring cities of North America, promoting ‘Adventures of Amir Hamza’. His recent talk at the Stanford University was arranged by the Center for South Asia and other sponsors.

Silicon Valley, May 29: Yahoo! has announced it will outsource it’s Mobile Phone Instant Messaging business to JAJAH, who will help Yahoo! continue to provide a great communication experience to “our millions of Yahoo! Messenger users,” said Sabrina Ellis, vice president of Yahoo! Messenger. Yahoo! Messenger is one of the first communication tools consumers see and use when they turn on their computers, so it is critical that our partner mirror our commitment to our users, and JAJAH’s reliable VoIP network and proven customer and carrier-friendly experience make it an ideal solution.

Janitors strike in front of Cisco Systems’ North San Jose campus demanding higher pay and better health care packages. The janitors from SEIU work by contract for various high-tech and other companies in Silicon Valley. ( Lisa Fernandez/Mercury News )

At least 100 janitors are walking the picket lines this morning at some of Silicon Valley’s largest high-tech companies - including Cisco Systems and Apple - in protest of a contract offer they are calling “totally unacceptable.” Contract talks for more than 6,000 janitors in Silicon Valley ended Friday with a “take it or leave it offer,” said Mike Garcia, president of the 28,000-member janitors’ union. The offer fell short of agreements the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1877 had reached in other parts of the state, Garcia said, and his members voted Saturday to reject it and go on strike. [Continue Reading…]

Also read “Silicon Valley Silhouette…booming or busting” written roughly a year back by our staff contributor. The situation then is pretty much the same for the unskilled, low-income labor. Amidst the exponentially rising cost of living, triggered most recently by energy prices, life here in the Wadi, for the vast majority of unskilled labor is a tough bird to swallow.

May 2nd, 2008 marked the one year anniversary since the Silicon Valley Pakistani Semiconductor firm, Cavium Networks went public on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange [Read: Silicon Valley Pakistanis - NED to NASDAQ].

In commemoration, the Cavium Management Team has been honored with the opportunity of ringing the opening bell at the start of trading day on Monday, May 5th at 6:30 am (U.S. Eastern Standard Time).

The event will be telecasted live on major U.S. and International financial networks. To watch the live broadcast visit: http://nasdaq.com or http://cnbc.com.

Cross-posted to ScitechWire, Siliconstani, WadiBlog, OPEN SV

On Wednesday, March 5th OPEN Silicon Valley kick-started preparations for it’s 5th Annual, premier global OPEN Forum 2008 with the launch of the conference website. For the last four years, OPEN has successfully put up a compelling conference, attracting attendees and top-notch speakers from the business community, both from here in the Silicon Valley and abroad.

This years conference intends to do the same, in fact with a more aggressive mandate. The conference theme is in line with the theme of the year, not to mention the Democrat Presidential nominee Barack Obama’s campaign theme.

Cross-posting from The Siliconstani

March 13: Learn how to build your company on Facebook?

Come listen to entrepreneurs and VC’s from the social web space - men and women who have made a living upon Platforms such as Facebook, Yahoo!, Google OpenSocial. For information visit http://opensiliconvalley.org.

The Wadiwallah team will be present onsite, blogging and streaming the event - stay tuned to WadiLive…

I got this in email, thanks to a friend (A.H. Cemendtaur).

7:30pm

Tuesday, February 12th

Bishop Auditorium, Graduate School of Business

A Documentary Delving Into the Unseen:

Dinner with the President: A Nation’s Journey

Directed by Sabiha Sumar, Sachithanandam Sathananthan.

Nominated at the Sundance Film Festival, 2008.

“An impressive documentary focused on exploring what democracy might mean for Pakistan. The film has stunningly close access to President Musharraf and illustrates some striking contradictions to what we hear in the media.” – Sundance Film Festival Visitor

“From on-the-street interviews to audiences with religious leaders to dinner with the President of Pakistan, the film takes the temperature of a culture on issues from politics to women’s rights.” –IMDB

Sundance Link for the Movie.

Dinner with the President: A Nation`s Journey
World Documentary
Pakistan, 2007, 80 mins, Color

“Are dictatorship and democracy mutually exclusive? In a country with cultures as ancient and complex as Pakistan’s, the answer to what the future holds is not straightforward. Projected to be the world’s third-most-populous country by 2050, Pakistan has stood at the crossroads of East and West for centuries. Now in the “nuclear club” and an emerging secular democracy amidst neighboring Islamic theocracies, Pakistan plays a critical role in America’s war on terrorism. President Pervez Musharraf has long been seen as a key United States ally in the region–a reputation that does not always serve him well in Pakistan.

In Dinner with the President: A Nation’s Journey, Pakistani filmmakers Sabiha Sumar and Satha Sathananthan request a dinner with their country’s leader, and to their surprise, the request is granted. The family dinner with Musharraf and his mother forms the backdrop to a filmic journey through contemporary Pakistan as the filmmakers forego the headlines and search the country for deeper answers.”

More information: http://pas.stanford.edu

Sponsored by:

Members of the MBA Class of ’07, GSB

Stanford Film Society

Pakistanis at Stanford