"Golden Era" of Saudi Arabia

With the oil prices through the roof, and Saudi's massive investments in education and infrastructure, I think it's fare to call it the "Golden Era" of Saudi Arabia. And, I think this is Saudi's chance to secure their post-oil future.

Saudi Arabia in `Golden Era,' Credit Suisse Says

May 1 (Bloomberg) -- Credit Suisse Group recommended buying shares of Al Rajhi Bank, Saudi Arabia's biggest bank by market value, as well as Saudi Arabian Fertilizer Co. and said the country is in a ``golden era.''

The brokerage also initiated coverage on Riyad Bank and Almarai Co. with ``outperform'' ratings. Saudi Basic Industries Corp., the world's biggest chemicals maker by market value, received a ``neutral'' recommendation.

``Oil prices are at an all-time high; hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure investments are expected to drive growth,'' analysts including Mohamad Hawa wrote in a note. ``The government is continuing to diversify its hydrocarbon-based economy.''

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This boom is in the opposite direction of the US economy:

Gulf States May End Dollar Pegs, Kuwait Minister Says

Jordan fertility rate falling in half!

Jordan's fertility rate fell from 7.4 in 1976 to 3.2 in the most recent census, completed in 2004. This is expected to fall even further to 2 children per mother by 2020.

Very interesting article:
http://www.oxfordbusinessgroup.com/weekly01.asp?id=2768

Finally, a way to sync files easily

https://www.foldershare.com/

A friend of mine brought my attention to this product, which Microsoft has bought very recently (November 2006). This very nice website service will allow you sync folders between multiple computers over the internet seemlessly. It also allows a group of people to share documents easily.

Finally, a solution for the file-sync nightmare. Now if they can just make windows home networks easier to setup (without using a login server)!

Some Interesting new Technologies

Interesting news to share:

1- Solar Cells' efficiency is up to from 28% to 40% and the cost is lowered considerably (i.e. 40% of the light that falls onto the cell is turned into electrical energy)
http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196602149

2- A breakthrough in nano-tubes manipulation techniques. Nano-tubes are expected to become the main material of choice for making almost any product - from blood-cell-size robots to computers to finger-tip size cameras to car bodies.
http://www.physorg.com/news84116089.html

3- Pocket Projector: a laser technology that would allow embedding a whole projector inside a cell phone.
http://www.technologyreview.com/BizTech/17860/

4- A new record was set for Machine Translation Quality (using the BLEU test http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilingual_evaluation_understudy). This goes to Meaningful Machines, a score of .65. I have to admit that the advancements in this field will still take a while to materialize in realistic usable products.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.12/translate_pr.html