Yeah you heard it right. Gmail got blocked in Iran (do I really need to make it clear by whom and why?!) in an attempt to force Iranian users to register for a governmental mail instead of their secure Gmail one. And it's not that much easy to register for this governmental mail either as you MUST fill in a form with all your details including name, address, ID card(s) numbers and so on and so forth in a case if you sent a blabla email (which is obviously monitored by [...]), then you could be easily traced and arrested. Then only God can help you if he could after all :-(

is the other website getting blocked in Iran in recent weeks.

@#$%^&

Today, 22 June 2009 / 1 Tir 1388, Megaupload.com got blocked in Iran too



So what's next???
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Although it is still in its alpha stage and is not perfect yet, it is indeed a Wowing news to see Google -forbidding Iranians to access some of its certain pages or downloading its products like Google Chrome and toolbar due to sanctions- is finally adding Persian to its translation tool too


more reading:
Google Translates Persian

Today is exactly one week from the Election Day when Iranians rushed to cast their votes in a hope of some changes and a better future but the outcome result was so shockingly surprising that resulted in some peaceful where-is-my-vote protest. But it was turned into a sad scene of violent bloodshed when savage hardliners attacked the defenseless protesters with knives, clubs, chains, pepper sprays and guns and started slaughtering people on the street, in the campus and even in their own houses.

Now after one week, the SMS system is still down and GPRS network has joined it too. Internet services were almost cut down too in the first 4-5 days after the election results came out. Lots and lots of news sites and social networks are blocked during the past few days including YouTube, twitter, facebook, friendfeed and flickr. Even it was impossible to access email services for the past 2 days (I still have problem accessing my GMail and sometimes just manage to load it in its basic mode only). Yahoo messenger is the all time favorite messenger in Iran (I'm not into instant messaging though and have no idea how it works!) and people using it have reported that it's also gone dead as its ports are blocked by the ICT.

OK, I've talked too much. Since the "Big Brother" is watching us restlessly, I hope that I survive long enough to at least see the next morning!

and that's when the stone-minded authorities of Iran suddenly decide to have the whole blogger images BLOCKED just because of one pic not being favored by them!!!

and below is the very ugly page you see when you click on an uploaded-to-blogger image like this one:



@#$%^&*

Edit: it is finally solved.

This photo is rather old (2006) but still interesting to look at and no it is not fake :



This photograph by Thomas P. Peschak is genuine and was taken from a September 2005 Africa Geographic article titled "Shark Detectives," about researchers studying Great White sharks off the coast of South Africa. As the article described the circumstances under which this picture was snapped:

This is Vanak st, usually a crowded one in weekdays but quite peaceful in this lazy Friday afternoon (I took this photo using my mom's camera, a Sony DSC-W150.) ^-^

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and we thus drift toward unparalled catastrophes.

Albert Einstein

My shots of our Norooz Grass Sprouts and an orange flower whose English name I've forgotten.

I took this photo last year of an apricot tree in our complex yard. It was really beautiful and eye catching with all those pink blossoms. But the people planting it seemingly didn't care for its beauty but only its fruit! It didn't bring any fruit at all and so was condemned to have all its branches cut off! This year it's standing there with only one extending-to-the right branch and no blossoms at all and I dare say it's no longer a beautiful tree but a sad one to look at, or at least I feel that way :(

Believe me or not, I really don't know what type of tree this is as I had planted some different fruit seeds including apple, peach, cherry, plum some years ago and have no faintest idea which on of them had germinated and grown to this little tree blossoming ^.^

And it was so hot in the late winter that all its buds bloomed once! and soon they all fell off and were replaced with new green leaves even before the Spring comes! And then Spring came and so did the cold weather and we suddenly had a snow storm and a dark cloudy sky ever after.

Wow! It's been quite a looooong time since my last post in here! Gosh, the time really hurries by!

And Happy Belated Norooz (meaning new day and is the Persian New Year starting from the very first day of the Spring) to all you people. Hope you had a great holiday and 13bedar too :))

Iranian artists have created the world's largest sand carpet from the colorful sand found on the country's southern island of Hormuz.



Some 25 visual artists used 70 types of colorful sand to create the 'Persian Gulf' sand carpet, which is on display from Dec. 9 to 17, 2008.



The 12000-square-meter carpet which is unique in magnitude, pattern and color is named after the beautiful "Persian Gulf". The other World's large sand carpet was a 900-square-meter one created on the Canary Islands in the North Atlantic Ocean.









Beautiful.

Images courtesy of Fars News Agency and ISNA.
News source: Payvad
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from the trees


to the street

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As he turned 80 on 18 Nov 2008 ^_^

80 years of Mickey Mouse Disney Dollars
دلارهای دیزنی‌لند به مناسبت ۸۰ سالگی میکی ماوس
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