I had a great week reporting from Jordan, which has easily the best community of startup tech companies in the region. Comparisons to Sillicon Valley are extremely premature, but it was very cool to see some of the pieces fitting together.

One interesting thing that I haven't had the chance to write about in the newspaper yet was El Hassan Science City, which combines a good technical university with research centers, startup incubators and investors, all on a single campus in Amman. As an attempt to replicate that great Sillicon Valley combination of academic, business and investor, it is something I really hope policy makers here in the Gulf are keeping their eyes on.

In case you didn't catch them, here's the stories from the trip that have been published so far:

First the facts - Unless 99% of the world's tech journalists and analysts are completely wrong, we will all be greeted with a new iPhone device when Apple hosts its Worldwide Developers Conference tomorrow.

The device, rumoured to be called the iPhone "Pro" or "Video", is said to be an upgrade of sorts from the most current iPhone, the 3G. Aside from improved memory capacity (up to 32 gigabytes), processing speed, a new operating system which will allow user to do all sorts of nifty things, video recording, there'll be a much-speculated frontal camera that will likely usher in a new form of personal communication to the masses. Think something like Seesmic but better. 

Of course, the question that will be on OUR lips is when will the device reach the UAE? My thoughts after the jump.

After a busy week of reporting, I'm heading down to the coastal city of Aqaba this weekend, and was planning on flying there from Amman until a friend told me it would be almost as fast to drive.

This surprised me, and I wanted to get a feeling for the distance / time involved. And hence The Great Amman-Aqaba Search Engine Battle begins.

Mobile phone launches come and go, but with Nokia trying to elbow itself into the lucrative smartphone market with its flagship N97 device, every little bit of incentive helps.

At the press conference for the N97 here in Dubai, the Finnish handset giant's announced the "bil3arabi" competition to the Arabic mobile world. Nokia said it would award $100,000 to a software developer who creates the best Arabic-language mobile application for its Ovi Store. Second place gets $25,000 while a slew of also-rans will get special recognition by Nokia.

Even though the announcement is another positive sign for the regional tech community and will certainly help drive Nokia's growth in the region, it is tough to say whether or not it will sway enough movement among local developers to stop coding mobile apps for Apple or Research In Motion. More thoughts after the jump.

The most outspoken man in Middle Eastern telecoms has to be Saad al Barrak, chairman of Kuwait's Zain group. He is also the most successful. I can only hope that this prompts other industry leaders, who typically speak only in guarded comments if they speak at all, to get out there and shake things up a little more.

Until yesterday, my favourite Barrak moment was when he told reporters that "there will be peace with Israel before there is an independent telecom regulator in Kuwait."

He is certainly not afraid of running his mouth, and he was the highlight of a pretty lively morning at the Arab Advisors telecom conference here in Amman yeterday.

Choice pieces of Barrak wisdom from the morning, after the jump:

Microsoft's much-vaunted Bing search engine just went live today and the reviews are in: it's a hit.

The US software giant is making no qualms about the need to make headway into the search business, one which is dominated by Google. Indeed, Google's ability to capture the search market appears close to insurmountable, with anywhere from a 60 per cent to 80 per cent market share, depending on what data you use.

Its need to make a splash was slowed considerably by last year's efforts in purchasing Yahoo, another beleaguered Web company, whose prospects seem to have been improved followed the appointment of new CEO Carol Bartz.

But credit has to be given to Microsoft for its continued efforts at innovating within the space. Bing is a sleek, fast-powered search tool that upon first glance, yields more interesting results than its counterparts. It also has tapped into the Twitter search goldmine of real-time trend tracking with "popular searches" (You can also change your locale here to view local results in Arabian countries, although the service is not as robust as the US version)

More thoughts on Bing and what results it shows when searching for "Dubai" after the jump.