On October 1, Expo City Dubai will officially open its door to the public, not as the world’s greatest fair but as a thriving and futuristic city that will shape Dubai’s future. The world was given a preview last September with the early opening of the Mobility, Sustainability Pavilion, and Garden in the Sky. But that was just the first chapter of its grand journey. This month, the whole site will now be open to everyone. You can go and have a wander through as much of the public spaces of Expo City Dubai are free to everyone. You can choose to walk, while buggies, the Expo Explorer, e-scooters, and e-bikes are also available but paid. You can also bring your own if you want to explore the entirety of the site.
The following apology was published in the Observer's For the record column, Sunday March 16 2008
The article below said 'Psychodwarf' was Beppe Grillo's nickname for 'Mario Mastella, leader of the Popular-UDEUR centre-right party', but it's actually his nickname for Silvio Berlusconi. Mastella's first name is Clemente and Popular-UDEUR was part of Romano Prodi's centre-left coalition. And Peter Rojas, not Ryan Block, founded Engadget and co-founded Gizmodo. Apologies.
The history of political blogging might usefully be divided into the periods pre- and post-Huffington. Before the millionaire socialite Arianna Huffington decided to get in on the act, bloggers operated in a spirit of underdog solidarity. They hated the mainstream media - and the feeling was mutual.
Techcrunch began in 2005 as a blog about dotcom start-ups in Silicon Valley, but has quickly become one of the most influential news websites across the entire technology industry. Founder Michael Arrington had lived through the internet goldrush as a lawyer and entrepreneur before deciding that writing about new companies was more of an opportunity than starting them himself. His site is now ranked the third-most popular blog in the world by search engine Technorati, spawning a mini-empire of websites and conferences as a result. Business Week named Arrington one of the 25 most influential people on the web, and Techcrunch has even scored interviews with Barack Obama and John McCain.
With a horde of hungry geeks and big money investors online, Techcrunch is the largest of a wave of technology-focused blog publishers to tap into the market - GigaOm, PaidContent and Mashable among them - but often proves more contentious than its rivals, thanks to Arrington's aggressive relationships with traditional media and his conflicts of interest as an investor himself.
Least likely to post 'YouTube? It'll never catch on'
