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Al-Jazeera resorts to text messaging

Posted: 03/04/03 By: Elizabeth Croad

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Arabic news channel Al-Jazeera has been forced to resort to text messaging its news this week (1 April 2003) after hackers closed down its English-language and Arabic web site last week.

The site, which launched its English version last week (24 March 2003) has been reporting on the Iraq war from an Arab perspective. It has suffered problems due to enormous amounts of traffic as well as a distributed denial of service attack.

Although the site is no longer live, demand for its news reporting is still high and has prompted Al-Jazeera to send its news via SMS.

The new text alert service provides breaking news from Iraq in English and Arabic and is available to mobile phone users in more than 130 countries. Subscribers can pay monthly, by credit card or have the costs billed to their mobile phone.

Popularity of the news service is so great that last week "Al-Jazeera' beat 'sex' and 'war' as the top internet search terms, according to Lycos. Google also noticed a dramatic increase in searches.

Sources:
http://www.internet-magazine.com/news/view.asp?id=3303
http://www.canada.com/technology/story.html?id=052D8E5D-075A-402A-8B9B-27E94F5FD7C9
http://www.aljazeera.pervasiveedge.com/aljazeera_en/index.jsp

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