Category: Pafos

Ranking The Startup Ecosystems of 1,000 Cities and 100 Countries

CrunchBase links to the StartupBlink’s “Ranking The Startup Ecosystems of 1,000 Cities and 100 Countries“.

The top 3 countries are USA, UK, and Canada. Cyprus takes 68th places out of a 100, climbing 6 places from the 74th place it was at in 2017.

The top 3 cities are San Francisco, New York, and London. Three Cyprus cities made it into the ranking:

  • Nicosia takes place 239, dropping 23 places from 216 in 2017.
  • Paphos takes place 531, climbing 329 places from 860 in 2017.
  • Limassol takes place 613, climbing 234 places from 847 in 2017.

I can find ways to justify Nicosia being so much higher than Paphos and Limassol. But Limassol being below Paphos looks strange to me.

Cyprus National Internet Portal for Open Data

It is via this Cyprus Mail article that I’ve learned that not only Cyprus has an official Open Data portal, but that it’s also the best in Europe:

Cyprus is one of the top five European Union countries in the field of Open Data for 2018, while the new National Open Data Portal data.gov.cy scored highest among 31 open data portals in Europe, a special honour and recognition for the Open University of Cyprus (OUC) that developed and implemented the National Open Data Portal in collaboration with the public administration and personnel department of the finance ministry.

So far I’ve only had a quick look around, and I have to say that it’s quite impressive!  Even though most of it is in Greek, Google Chrome translation handles it nicely.  Here are a couple of interesting bits to get you started:

And there is so much more … Well done, Open University of Cyprus!

The Global Airport Database


Global Airport Database – Arash Partow

The Global Airport Database is a collection of data about all (???) airports in the world, big and small.  It covers a total of 9,300 airports worldwide.

That’s pretty interesting.  For example, how many airports do you think there are in Cyprus?  Obviously, there is the Larnaca International Airport and Paphos International Airport.  Then, there is one in Nicosia, which is not functioning since the island was divided.  And there is one in Acrotiri on the British military base.  Four, right?   Well, the Global Airport Database has a total of 7 (!!!) entries for the country of Cyprus:

LCCC:N/A:N/A:NICOSIA ACC/FIC:CYPRUS:000:000:000:U:000:000:000:U:00000:0.000:0.000
LCLK:LCA:LARNACA:LARNACA:CYPRUS:034:052:030:N:033:037:029:E:00003:34.875:33.625
LCNC:N/A:N/A:NICOSIA:CYPRUS:000:000:000:U:000:000:000:U:00000:0.000:0.000
LCPH:PFO:PAPHOS INTERNATIONAL:PAPHOS:CYPRUS:034:043:004:N:032:029:008:E:00013:34.718:32.486
LCRA:AKT:AKROTIRI:AKROTIRI:CYPRUS:034:035:025:N:032:059:016:E:00024:34.590:32.988
LCRO:N/A:N/A:EPISKOPI:CYPRUS:000:000:000:U:000:000:000:U:00000:0.000:0.000
LCRR:N/A:N/A:NICOSIA:CYPRUS:000:000:000:U:000:000:000:U:00000:0.000:0.000

Larnaca and Paphos are there. The Akrotiri one is there too. Then we have 3 records for Nicosia. And one more for Episkopi. Hmm …




Paphos court orders Facebook to remove offensive comments


facebook

Cyprus News reports that :

The Paphos District Court has issued an injunction against social media giant Facebook, ordering the company to remove a number of offensive comments posted on a local business profile, aimed at a local man.

The comments, posted on February 4, accuse the man of criminal activities. The original post was still on Facebook on Wednesday morning.  It has over 1,000 shares.

Charalambos Savvides of the Ch. P. Savvides & Associates LLC law firm, which handled the case, told the Cyprus Mail that Facebook was not only required to remove the comments but also take steps to ensure that future related comments were taken down immediately.

In-Cyprus has a few more details:

The case concerns comments on Facebook made against a bar owner from Paphos who became the target of a hate campaign which attracted thousands of users who shared and liked the page. The man in question was, according to those who had got the ball rolling on popular social media site, committing various crimes around the town and especially against competing bars.

He was also accused of being a police informant that was getting special protection in the town despite his ‘known illegal activities’.

The man has denied all the allegations against him.

It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.