^^It looks like the better guy in the team is the one "loo qayilay". That sort of explains Farmaajo's hasty press conference today. Farmaajo is now on his way to Kampala. Malaha waxbuu uriyey in labo shariif maleegayaan.. If this deal materializes, it would be an absolute travesty. These men need to leave the podium and join the election process like everyone else.

Interesting updates for iOS. Not sure about the iCloud hype. SOURCE: http://www.macworld.com/article/160322/2011/06/ios5.html Apple senior vice president Scott Forstall covered 10 new features out of the 200 planned for iOS 5. Notifications Perhaps no new iOS 5 feature will be more welcome than its overhauled notifications system. The days of the modal, one-at-a-time pop-up alert are ending, and Forstall’s declaration that iOS 5 includes an upgrade brought an uproarious cheer from the developers in attendance. iOS 5 introduces something Apple calls Notification Center, a single place that combines all of your notifications. You can access Notification Center at any time with a single swipe down from the menu at the top of your device—a gesture which, it must be said, achieves the same effect already on Android phones. Notification Center then folds down, including missed calls, voicemails, text messages, push notifications, and even stock and weather updates. You can dismiss Notification Center and get back to your app, or quickly switch to a notifying app instead. You clear notifications out by tapping a small X. The iOS lock screen now handles notifications better, too. You can swipe across notifications on the lock screen to go directly to the appropriate app. For example, Forstall swiped across a text message notification on his lock screen, which took him directly to that text in the Messages app. PC Free Forstall declared that folks want to buy iPhones and iPads without needing computers to tether them to. Starting with iOS 5, new iPhones will display a Welcome setup screen, allowing you to activate your device on the device itself. Software updates—as in, new iOS updates—are now over the air, too—no more iTunes syncing to get the latest incarnation of the operating system. You also no longer need to plug your iOS device into your computer to sync; with delta updates (which include only the minimal amount of changed code necessary) will make iOS app updates much smaller. Forstall said that, as part of cutting the PC cord, Apple looked to eliminate those situations where folks go back to their computers instead of using their iOS devices. Various tasks—like adding and deleting Calendars, creating and deleting mailboxes, and the already-covered photo editing tools—are all introduced in iOS 5 to help eliminate the PC as an iOS requirement. iMessage As rumored in the run-up to the WWDC keynote, iOS 5 includes a new messaging app called iMessage. It sends texts, photos, videos, contacts, and allows for group messaging too. But it introduces new features like delivery receipts, read receipts, and indications when your contacts are typing back to you. Messages are delivered to all your iOS devices, and they work over both 3G and Wi-Fi—and they’re all encrypted, to boot. It’s a new take on—and a replacement for—SMS, MMS, and even mobile instant messaging. Like the Blackberry Messenger service—which is limited to Blackberry users, iMessage will be limited to contacts using iOS devices. And, of course, iMessage uses the new notifications system. Safari Forstall said that Safari’s open-source Web engine powers 90 percent of mobile browsing. Among Safari’s new features is a feature called Reader. Like the similar functionality in the desktop version of Safari, Reader lets you get (and share) all the content of an article, removing navigation, ads, and other content—leaving only the text. Also new is Reading List, which is a simple and convenient way to save a story for later reading. Items in your Reading List are shared with your Mac or PC version of Safari, too. Tabbed Browsing makes its first appearance in the official Safari app in iOS 5, too. Tabs look much as you’d expect—that is, just like they do in Safari on the desktop. It appears that tabbed browsing is limited to the iPad at this time, likely due to space constraints on Apple’s smaller iOS devices. Newsstand Forstall said that “most of the major publishers of magazines and many newspapers” have signed up for App Store subscriptions already. Newsstand is a devoted app for accessing and downloading those periodicals. The app looks a lot like iBooks, only it focuses on magazines and newspapers instead. New issues that arrive overnight will download automatically. Twitter According to Forstall, people send more than 1 billion tweets per week. New in iOS 5 is single sign-on support for Twitter; you configure your login details in the Settings app. Theoretically, then, third-party Twitter clients should be able to access your login details without requiring separate sign-in within their apps. Several of Apple’s own apps, like Camera Photos, Safari, YouTube, and Maps will all support direct Twitter integration, so that you can quickly post data from those apps to your Twitter account. You can even use Twitter to automatically update your contacts’ photos and Twitter usernames. Reminders Though the App Store is rife with reminder apps—or, perhaps, because it’s rife with such apps—Apple is introducing a new Reminders app with iOS 5. The app supports multiple lists, and to-dos can be both date- and location-stamped. Those locations are particularly powerful—your device can remind you about a task when you reach a specific location, or depart from one. Reminders are also searchable, and will sync with iCal on the Mac and Outlook on Windows. Camera iPhone 4’s camera is the second-most popular camera on Flickr, and the most popular phone camera, Forstall said. iOS 5 makes it faster to take photos from the lock screen by reimplementing a shortcut that predates iOS 4: Double-tap the Home button from that lock screen to quickly launch theCamera app. And, in a shocking turnaround, you can now use the volume buttons on the phone to take photos, instead of the on-screen shutter button. (Apple previously rejected apps that implemented such feature.) The Camera app will also sport optional grid lines to better compose your photographs, and pinch to zoom (for digital zooming). Also built into the app are editing features like crop, rotate, red-eye reduction, and iPhoto’s one-click enhance. Mail Mail, Forstall said, is one of the most-used apps across iOS devices. In iOS 5, Mail gets rich text formatting (think bold, italics, underline), the ability to drag addresses between To and CC fields, support for flagging, and more. The biggest of that “more” is full-text searching, which Apple says will include messages not downloaded onto the device but present on the server. On the iPad, you can now swipe to bring up the inbox when in portrait mode. Exchange customers get some love, too, with iOS 5’s new support for S/MIME. A lock icon will appear in the To field to indicate when you’re sending encrypted messages. During his Mail demo, Forstall mentioned that the built-in dictionary from iBooks—where you tap and hold to see a word’s definition—is available system-wide in iOS 5. Another new system-wide feature Forstall mentioned was a new split keyboard variant. You’ll be able to tap and drag a keyboard button to move it, and your setting is respected across all apps. Game Center iOS is the most popular gaming platform on the planet, Forstall said. It’s now nine months old, with 50 million users. (Xbox Live is eight years old, and has 30 million users.) The Game Center app is getting more social, allowing you to share your own member photo, compare yourself against friends using achievement points, see friends of friends, recommended friends, and recommended games, too. And Game Center in iOS 5 offers support for turn-based games, built right into the OS. There’s more! According to Forstall, those are just ten of 200 new features in iOS 5. He showed a slide packed with several: AirPlay mirroring to your television wirelessly, Wi-Fi iTunes sync, new multitouch gestures to flick between apps, a new iPad Music app, personal dictionary support, hourly weather forecasts, typing shortcuts, alternate routes in maps, voiceover options, wireless sync for Exchange tasks, FaceTime mid-call invitation alerts, improved FaceTime video quality, mass configuration, real-time stock quotes, custom vibration patterns, accessible input for mobility, improved offline support in Mail, voiceover item chooser, an option to speak text, and finally, the long-awaited ability to set tones for voicemail, mail, and calendar alerts. Forstall said that iOS 5 will ship to customers this fall, and it will support all iPads, the iPhone 3GS and 4, and the third- and fourth-generation iPod touch. We’ll have more information on iOS 5 later on Monday. Updated at 11:40 a.m. PT with more information throughout the story.

Wiilo, good to see you again.

Garaad Baashi, welcome back Awoowe. I am glad you are back to North America after a long hiatus in the Arabian wilderness.

It is an absolute farce. A shameful hulu dance.

Nomads, we need to act like adults and stop the insults and other nonsense against one another. Let us not violate the rules of the website. Fadlan debate with civility and respect one another. "you are this and that" kind of personal attacks are the tools of the uncivilized. It is beneath you all. There is not need for personal attacks awooweyaal.

Let the game started.

Malika, that is very disturbing. May Allah give these parents the strength to overcome this tragedy. Illaahay ha u naxariisto labada marxuum. PS: I have my weird theories as to why our community is experiencing this surge of youth violence, but that is a conversation for another day.

Amazing stuff. Thanks for the pics ya Duke. Somalis know business very well.

lol@treason at local government. Now you sound like an old Siyadist. lol I would have been more satisfied if you said there are no unionists in Hargiesa. I am not comfortable with this whole "fear" thing ya NGONGE. JB is definitely going to spy on me when I visit Hargeisa next year.

Zack bro ciidamada tirada ay ka bateen thats why ay uu lugeeynaayaan Hahaha. That was a good one ya Oba.

Great progress indeed ya NGONGE. Don't be annoyed by the word "Somalia" however. It just means the "land of the Somals" in Sumerian/Latin. freedom of expression I agree with most of the improvement Siilaanyo pointed out, but freedom of expression is not one of them. Unionists are not allowed to voice their opinion in Somaliland. I can't imagine someone standing in Hargeisa advocating for unionist cause.

Horrible story indeed. May Allah help her overcome this trauma. The brother of the maid who former IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn allegedly tried to rape has been speaking out to the press last night and today, and as reports go live, a portrait is emerging of his sister as a hard-working, religious mother from West Africa, living legally in the United States, who was distraught after what she described as an "attack." The brother, a 43-year-old restaurant manager from Harlem who papers won't name to protect his and his sister's identity, spoke with at least two New York news outlets and the UK Daily Mail. He told the New York Daily News that his sister is "a wonderful, hardworking woman," originally from Senegal, who has a 9-year-old daughter. She is "very upset because she loves her job." The Daily Mail, on the other hand, reported that the victim was from neighboring Guinea. She was "crying all the time" while she told her brother of the alleged assault, the paper reported in the earliest story to cite him. She reportedly said: "Somebody has done something really bad to me. I've been attacked." Manhattan news site DNAinfo refrained from identifying the victim's native land, but did talk to her neighbors in the Bronx, who said she was a devout Muslim who was "very shy" and "very quiet." She practiced Islam and attended a nearby mosque, they said. The site also sought out co-workers at the hotel, one of whom said the atmosphere there was tense. "They're scared. You never know what's going on, who's going to be the next crazy person that comes here," said one. The cleaning staff at the hotel consists primarily of immigrants from West Africa and China, the site reported.

This is a great step in the right direction. Thanks for the pics.

Good to see nomads enjoying SL and the back home flavor. Didn't even know Ibti was in SL. Great stuff nomads. Enjoy and stay out of trouble.

lool. I thought this was hilarious. Obama thought he could get away with burying the guy at some unknown location. Radical Muslims rename the area 'Martyr's Sea' Radical Muslims are already calling the site of Osama bin Laden’s ocean burial the ‘Martyr’s Sea’, according to one of Britain’s leading Islamic scholars. The US said the decision to drop bin Laden’s body into the North Arabian Sea was taken to avoid creating a shrine for the slain Al Qaeda chief. But Abdal Hakim Murad, Muslim Chaplain at Cambridge University, claimed yesterday that the move could backfire on the Americans. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1383698/Osama-Bin-Laden-dead-Radical-Muslims-burial-location-Martyrs-Sea.html#ixzz1LXFIDeYP

Ilaahay ha u naxariisto.

Salaama Xiin. Since Kuwait didn't recognize Somaliland as an independent nation, one would logically expect Siilaanyo would be received as a citizen of Somalia.

^^Thanks Oba. It really doesn't matter what term is used as long as the locals are taking the initiative to govern themselves and build the institutions needed. Call it whatever you like Oba.

If I am not mistaken, Cowl is a Maamul Goboleed and Mareeg State is the Dowlad Goboleed. In other words Cowl is local region which is part of Mareeg Federal State (Another newly announced Dowlad Goboleed). Hala is habeeyo Soomaaliyeey. Let every community build its backyard. I am good friends with few individuals from the said region and it seem the community overall is mostly supportive of this grassroots initiative.

NGONGE is sort of a "jack of all trades, master of all" kind of Burcaawi

^^ Another update from paradise will be here soon Insha Allah

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2011/may/04/osama-bin-laden-compound#/?picture=374256182&index=8

Abdulahi pretty much repeated what he said before. The UN runs the show.