Here's a little fact about Iran that really surprised me: Check:

http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord [1]

It is interesting to note that Iran had a huge number of Firefox 3 downloads in the 24hr-record attempt of Mozilla (more than many richer and/or bigger nations such as Canada, Russia, Italy, China, etc). Somehow Iran had significantly more downloads of Firefox 3 than the entire Middle East combined.

The closest countries (in geographical terms) that had more downloads than Iran were as far as Germany and France! Now you might say this is not really something important but I was thinking about what this number could possibly imply.

I'm still not exactly sure what this all means, but it might suggest that despite the restrictions, sanctions, economic problems and everything else that you know, Iran is still somehow a surprisingly well-connected and computer-savvy country with a large and curious on-line population that follows all sorts of things going on outside, including something as nerdy as this software release record.

Cheers,

Kaveh Hosseini