I'm in Amman all this week, taking a closer look at the IT industry here, and particularly at what seems to be a quite promising little ecosystem of internet startups.

Jordan's national focus on technology has been a big deal for a decade or more, and like pretty much every government in the region, it has paid extensive lip-service to the importance of developing a knowledge economy backed by solid technical infrastructure and education.

It is tricky to measure exactly how effective these government directives and programs actually are, but there is no doubt that Amman is now home to some of the Arab world's best internet companies - from the big guys like Maktoob and Jeeran, to some fairly interesting startups like Watwet (an Arabic Twitter) and Talasim (online photos / social networking).

The government has thrown quite a lot of resources at the sector, but so has every government, and you don't see Amman-style web coolness in Cairo or Dubai. So what I want to know is, what are the other ingredients that have made this happen? Can they be replicated, or is it some kind of unique magical pixie dust that appears and disappears basically independent of public policy or corporate strategy?

Anyhow, I'll be speaking with as many venture capitalists, startups and talking heads as possible here over the next week - watch this space for what comes out of it. If anybody out there has any thoughts on this, I'd love to see them in the comments.  

(A Beep Beep guest post by Asa Fitch, the resident cheapskate personal finance reporter at The National, and editor of our finance blog, In The Black)

Yeah, I know, everyone loves his iPhone. Or his Blackberry. Or his Treo. Or whatever his thing-that-can-do-anything-except-print-money contraption might be called. But while there are plenty of upsides to plugging in with this übercool gadgetry, there are downsides, too. Yes, you can check stock prices wherever you go. You can set up meetings - or cancel them - on the fly. You can even tweak your portfolio or pay bills anytime. At the same time, there's a case to be made that you might find yourself a little saner (and perhaps even a little wealthier) if you eschew the newest tech-baubles and opt for a plain-vanilla mobile instead.

So here's why getting an iPhone may not be your best investment, presented as a listicle (because boy, do we love lists!). 

Gadget lovers are heading into sweepstakes season, with every major player in the smartphone market getting ready to launch their Next Big Thing in the next few months.

If you spend as much time as I do reading the gadget press then none of this will be new to you, but assuming you have a life, here's a wrap-up of what to expect over the summer:

Scott Schuey, chief reporter at Gulf News and all-round good guy, thinks Google isn't doing a good enough job in this part of the world:

I needed to get a new keyboard this week, and I wanted to find a shop near me that carried a specific brand. I went to Google and typed in "computer stores in Dubai". Not a single computer store appeared on the list.

I know this is silly. I can give you a list of about ten computer shops in Dubai from memory, so why can't Google? or Yahoo? or Live? Most, if not all, of the computer stores in Dubai have webpages, but not a single search engine was able to actually point me to one. I dug down ten pages into the Google results and wasn't able to find a single link.

Scott thinks that local companies need to do a better job with search engine optimisation (SEO), but I disagree - and I'll tell you why, after the jump.

Etisalat has upgraded its mobile broadband internet packages, and has actually come out with a fairly decent deal.

The highlight of the update is a price/download limit combo that is pretty close to the sweet spot - Dh295 for 5 gigabytes of downloads.

Five gigs is enough to browse constantly on an iPhone for a month, and even enough for a home connection if you stay away from the movie downloads and streaming TV. And the price isn't bad, by "UAE prices" at least. My thoughts on the whole situation, a full comparison of the new / old prices and the full Etisalat press release, after the jump:

A cheapskate personal finance reporter takes a budget shot at the iPhone, Etisalat's man in Nigeria is discovering he isn't in the Gulf anymore, what do Arab startups need, and chats with Levantine dotcom luminaries, all in your morning tech roundup, after the jump.

For some reason, internet security and antivirus companies are spending a ton of money on PR in the UAE. It feels like I get spammed (ahh, the irony) at least once each day with a random press release letting me know about how some terrible new virus is about to destroy the world, and that Mr Smith from ABC Antivirus Co. is ready to speak to me about it.

Because the market is so crowded, every release tries to jump on the bandwagon of a big issue of the day - internet security in the financial crisis, cybercrime and the Somali pirates, etc etc.

Anyhow, today's meta-Spam came from McAfee, who are highlighting the effect of spam on....drumroll please...the environment. Some good figures to rattle off at dinner parties, plus some snarkiness from me, after the jump:

Last week in Cairo, 33 startup technology companies from across the Arab world pitched their businesses to panels of the Middle East's most prominent venture capitalists - see stories from the event here, and here.

The panels evaluated each startup and gave them a score, rating them by their potential and readiness for investment. Then they chose a top ten.

With no further ado, see the ten most promising startups in the Arab world, and my take on the whole situation, after the jump:

The Nokia N97 will be released in the UAE on June 2, if a teaser sent yesterday by the company is anything to go by.

Here's to guessing a price - I'm going to roll with a Dh3200ish ($820) kind of number - and whether they have secured any kind of operator deal, a la Blackberry / iPhone, to help the poor huddled masses of the UAE put the internet in their pocket.

With all those sweet little internet-enabled widgets sitting on its home screen, woe betide the guy who buys an N97 without a decent data plan (off-plan / prepaid mobile data goes for something in the range of Dh20 [$5.50] per megabyte, remember.)

Teaser from Nokia and a few extra links, after the jump:

Two Jordanian internet companies, ShooFeeTV and Jeeran, have received venture funding from Intel Capital. Check out Startup Arabia for a bit more on the story, and watch this space - we'll have something on the deal in tomorrow's newspaper (and this evening's website...)

A couple of significant things about the deal: