New overlords, no big deal, and the Most Deserved Group Hug

- Convergence between telecom and media companies is always a buzzword. But how about this: The National's Keach Hagey reports that the telecommunications industry is now the largest advertiser in the Middle East, bankrolling the region's still-growing media industry. I, for one, would like to welcome our new telco overlords.

- Turns out the Vodufone thing was no big deal, just a reaffirmation of their partner agreement. Vodafone did say something about bringing some of their specially-commissioned handsets here, but I'm not sure how big a deal that is, given that those handsets are usually pretty average.

- The Financial Times has a group hug / pat on the back for Jordan and its excellent community of entrepreneurs. Worth noting - the opener to the piece says Yahoo paid in excess of $150 million for Maktoob, almost double the initial estimates. If you haven't seen it before, here's The National's take on why Jordan kicks all kinds of entrepreneurial backside.

- Dubai's ruler yesterday launched the Arab Knowledge Report, a look at how the Arab world is doing when it comes to education, research etc. The announcement says that "Emphasising the triadic relationship among development, freedom, and knowledge, the Report views the upgrading of Arab knowledge performance as a gateway to reform the Arab development situation. In addition to calling for optimal deployment of the Arab knowledge repertoire, the report also stresses the importance of productive intercommunication with the accumulated global knowledge." Not totally sure what that means, but you can download the report here.