Fuat Kircaali

http://twitter.com/fuatkircaali In my October 2, 2008 blog entry, I shared the unfortunate news of Web 2.0's demise. This news is now hitting Silicon Valley and Silicon alleys around the world. Soon all Web 2.0 events will either be "cancelled," or their organizers will make a last-minute attempt to pull together a last show, but throw in the towel after that, IMHO. If they buck all business logic, and go ahead with their final scheduled Web 2.0 events, they'll lose millions of dollars and find out after their last show that Web 2.0 was DOA (as a software business model) anyway. Industry participation is a key indicator to determine the viability of technology trends. And what is better an indicator than the success or failure of an industry event on a particular subject matter. This week a WSJ blog entry (advertorial) written by Jeremy Liew entitled, "Will the Rece... (more)

How Passionate and Excited Are You?

New Media on Ulitzer Every staff meeting we hold, I open the meeting either with my "passion speech" or end it with the importance of passion and excitement toward one's job. The colleagues whom I've been working with for longer than 10 years must have listened to my 'broken record' speech hundreds of times. My heart goes out to them. When I was a student at Zurich University in Switzerland 25 years ago, I studied German that first year before I started taking my regular classes. During my first summer vacation in Switzerland, and partly because I did not speak the local langua... (more)

Syria's First Lady Gets My @SyrianPresident Parody Account Suspended

According to the story published by The Guardian, Twitter closed down a string of accounts purporting to be authored by the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and the first lady of Syria, emails revealed. A senior aide to Asma al-Assad, Fares Kallas, took issue with the site over 11 accounts. Half of the accounts used the first lady's name and all but one of those using the president's name were closed down, including my @SyrianPresident "parody account" with over 2,500 followers at the time Twitter suspended it in January 2012. The Next Web story regarding the suspension of my @S... (more)

Open Letter to the President of Syria Bashar al-Assad

Thursday, July 29, 2010 Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey   To the President of Syria, Mr. and Mrs. Bashar al-Assad Mr. and Mrs. President Bashar al-Assad: At the tender age of 17 months my severely ill daughter Sofia, an American citizen, was abducted by her mother on Monday, July 26, in Istanbul, Turkey, and taken to Syria. Fox News: ▸ video ▸ story I was informed yesterday by Sofia's mother that she will not be coming back to the United States nor will she allow Sofia to return home. Sofia has been diagnosed with a severe medical condition that requires immediate treatment in the Un... (more)

Sofia's Abduction to Syria: Interview with Diane Macedo of Fox News

Diane Macedo of Fox News worked on Sofia's story for more than a month, studying documents, interviewing more than a dozen people, and fact-checking before publishing her news story on Monday and airing our interview. Here is the link to the Fox News on-camera interview. This morning, on Monday, she also published a detailed article on Sofia: ▸ Fox News Story on Sofia's Abduction to Syria When Sofia returns safely home, she will pay her first visit to Diane at Fox News headquarters in New York City. ▸ US Leaves Its Youngest Citizen Behind Syria I already wrote two blog posts on So... (more)