les Marocains sont les plus optimistes parmi les Arabes.

Selon un sondage international publié récemment par le Pew Global Attitudes Project, un cercle de réflexion diplomatique basé à Washington, les Marocains sont de loin les plus optimistes parmi les Arabes. 67% des personnes interrogées au Maroc prédisaient en effet un avenir meilleur, contre seulement 13% qui s’attendaient à ce que leurs conditions empirent. Les Palestiniens demeurent pour leur part les plus pessimistes. 18% seulement d’entre eux croient que leur avenir sera meilleur.

Ainsi, et selon ce même sondage mené dans 47 pays et dont les résultats ont été diffusés récemment, l’opinion publique dans les pays les plus pauvres est significativement plus optimiste à propos de l’avenir de ses enfants, alors que l’opinion publique des pays plus développés paraît voir son avenir plutôt en gris.

Call My Email !?

Startup Yoomba Thursday launched its namesake service that lets e-mailers place VOIP calls and exchange instant messages.

The year-old company positions its free, consumer-targeted service as an alternative to big portals, such as AOL, Google, Yahoo, and MSN, that offer free communications services, such as instant messaging, but only to registered users and only with other registered users, says Elad Hemar, Yoomba CEO.

In contrast, Yoomba operates a peer-to-peer service that lets any e-mail-address owner place a VOIP call or begin an IM session with any other e-mail address, whether or not the recipient also is a Yoomba user, Hemar says. Yoomba offers other features, such as presence -- letting users know who on their contact list is online -- and popularity -- resorting contact lists so those most often contacted rise to the top.

Oracle 11g is here !

Oracle today introduced Oracle(r) Database 11g, the latest release of the world's most popular database. With more than 400 features, 15 million test hours, and 36,000 person-months of development, Oracle Database 11g is the most innovative and highest quality software product Oracle have ever announced.

"Oracle Database 11g, built on 30 years of design experience, delivers the next generation of enterprise information management," said Andy Mendelsohn, senior vice president of Database Server Technologies, Oracle. "More than ever, our customers are facing the challenges of, rapid data growth, increased data integration, and data connectivity IT cost pressures. Oracle Database 10g pioneered grid computing, and more than half of Oracle customers have moved to that release. Oracle Database 11g delivers the key features our customers have asked for to accelerate broad adoption and growth of Oracle grids; representing real innovation, that addresses real challenges, as told to us by real customers."

Oracle Database 11g can help organizations take control of their enterprise information, gain better business insight, and quickly and confidently adapt to an increasingly changing competitive environment. To do this, the new release extends Oracle's unique database clustering, data center automation, and workload management capabilities. With secure, highly available and scalable grids of low-cost servers and storage, Oracle customers can tackle the most demanding transaction processing, data warehousing, and content management applications.