• Yes, computing history was made this past weekend as the much-hyped Wolfram Alpha search engine was launched to the public. The search engine uses yields results after users input such questions has "how far is San Francisco to Dubai" and "what is The National?". 360East calls Wolfram Alpha "a major milestone in computer and knowledge history," while others such as Techcrunch are "not super-impressed." Mark Evans Tech has a good blog post on how hard it is for new search engines - such as the odd-sounding Cuil and Flock - to square up against the looming presence of Google.
• Startup Arabia has some breaking news on new funding investments by Intel Capital for two Jordanian internet companies - Jeeran and ShooFeeTV.My colleague Tom has his own take on the announcement in a Beep Beep blog post.
  
• ArabCrunch travels to the World Economic Forum on the Middle East and posts a pair of Qik-powered interviews on the site with Matthias Lüfkens, the social media manager of World Economic Forum, and Yael Maguire, one of the forum's Young Global Leaders and the founder of ThingMagic, a US-based startup that specialises in RFID technology. Read some of The National's coverage on the WEF summit here and here.
• Orascom Telecom chief financial officer Aldo Mareuse tells The National's Tom Gara that the company will spend this year cutting costs while continuing to focus on its investments in Canada, North Korea and Africa.
  
• Arabian Business has published a series of articles following an interview with Etisalat chairman Mohammed Omran who said iPhone sales in the UAE have begun to increase after cutting the handset's price, legalising Skype would increase the cost of local fixed line calls, and the company's plans to invest in a mobile network in Iran may have been scuttled due to a disagreement with its local partner, Tamin Telecom.
  
• Kevin Kelleher over at GigaOm has an interesting read on how the tech IPO scene may be back, but its only padding the wallets of insider investors. 

Photo caption: Orascom Telecom CFO Aldo Mareuse speaks during an interview with The National in his office in Cairo. Victoria Hazou for The National.

Abu Dhabi Group-backed Warid Telecom is making a valiant push for more market share in Bangladesh but it may need Etisalat's help to make that happen.

Speaking on the sidelines of a press event this past week, Warid chief executive Muneer Farooqui told the Bangladeshi newspaper The Daily Star that he wanted to triple the company's subscriber base in the country - but admitted he needs a strong financial partner to make that goal a reality.

If you're like me and you take interest in what kind of advertising has managed to buck the global recession, you can't help but notice that ads for cellphones or telecoms are blasted at you at every turn.

Well, it turns out there was some merit to my nonscientific observations. According to an analysis piece by Magna MENA in the Gulf Marketing Review (story linked via Zawya), telecoms such as Etisalat and du have aggressively increased their ad spending in the first quarter of the year.

From the report:

Hot off the presses from WAM - Khalifa University students won the first and second prizes in the university's fourth annual Mobile Application Contest. Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research (KUSTAR) student Ahmed Echtebi won top honours for his tourism application titled Al Murshed while his colleague Ahmed al Tunaiji won second for his university organiser program. Teams from the American University of Sharjah and the UAE University came in third and the fourth, respectively.

According to the competition's guidelines, applications submitted to the contest must be original, culturally-focused and may be released to the public, if they're good enough, of course. Given that a number of Etisalat executives either judged or attended the competition, it's safe to say we might see Mr Echtebi's tourism program on the UAE iTunes App Store sooner than later.

As The National has previously written on the potential that mobile applications have for local entrepreneurs and developers, it's encouraging to see UAE university students get involved in mobile application development today and hopefully lay the groundwork for many more of these programs to come.

There was a noticeable buzz in the air following the conclusion of the inaugural BarCampUAE conference in Dubai Internet City yesterday.  Although the conference drew roughly two-dozen or so attendees, each must have left DIC's Building 3 satisfied that they got exactly what they were looking for.

And what exactly did some of the region's youthful technologists actually receive? Plenty of answers while raising even more questions.