Rami Olwan

Dubai Information technology spending in the UAE is expected to witness a 9.1 per cent growth this year to $15.91 billion (Dh58.39 billion) compared to last year's $14.54 billion as focus shifts to broader IT services, said a top industry expert.

Next week ccAustralia and x|media|lab are co-hosting a lunchtime seminar in sydney as part of media 2010 on al jazeera's creative commons repository. Moeed ahmad, head of new media at al jazeera will be there, joined by professor brian fitzgerald, project lead of creative commons australia and rami olwan, project lead of creative commons jordan to discuss free and open models of content management in the digital media environment.

The past year witnessed some major achievements for Creative Commons in the Arab world. Highlights included Al Jazeera’s adoption of CC BY for the world’s first broadcast-quality online repository and CC Jordan’s substantial efforts on the first Arabic license port.

2010 promises more exciting developments for the rapidly-growing CC community in the Arab world. Today the legal team from CC Egypt, headed by Hala Essalmawi, produced the first BY-NC-SA license draft adapted to Egyptian law (.pdf).

The UAE leads the Middle East in terms of average broadband speed and penetration, according to Akamai Technologies' recently released 'The State of the Internet (Q3-2009)' report.