Become a webby in two days

Can you become a web developer in two days? Anyone? Well, there’s a person who claims he/she will turn you into a “World Class Web Designer” in two days. And guess what, the tag is “by USA trained programmer”. You serious? Don’t be! This was an ad on a phone booth in Sharjah, Abushaghara area. You get the picture?

Okay, so this USA tag again. I don’t know how serious an ad. on a phone-booth ba taken for more than a sharing accomodation ad or babysitting, but for computer courses–a web designing course?

Until when this US tag is going to be hung everywhere? C’mon! Most of the US tags are false! If you really are a US trained or experienced techy then why don’t you get yourself a decent job avoiding this kind of hassle? p.s US trained does not mean you’re better in anyway.

A little funnier

There is a company(I wont mantion the name here) that is actually called “American ********”, and they have not seen US ’till now, speak two short minutes with them, the accent will tell you everything. Thing is, bluffing is the only marketing tool these falks have. If they had the skills, ideas, and were up to the mark they wouldn’t need all those stupid tricks.

I worked for a company three years ago that I actually wanted to work there after the interviewer claimed and said with authority that he and the other partners are all former IBM, KPMG and MS employees! Six months down the line, I’m shocked by the level of their technical views and understandings, should I have questioned that?

Really bitter, so misleading, specialy for the ones that die for everything tagged with a US in capital, bold and underlined style.

Tweet This Post

Etisalat, rebranding!

Etisalat, the biggest telecommnunication service provider in the Middle East changes identity and reforms the brand.

Identity transition to curved, mixed tones of colors, but still green. It goes well as a transition, in my opinion, it’s less than anything new after Du comming strong with their way of branding.

Along with the change of identity they revealed a new approach, vision and direction . That’s one of the good sides of competition with Du in the game they were more than pressured to take this big step and give their identity and public awareness another shot after Du entered the market with authority.

Agency? Who’s behind the new identity? We should get to know in the next version of campaingn magazine? If you know, do reveal.

Update:Promo Seven is the suspect we were looking for, yea, Fortune Promo Seven FP7 is the guilty one.

Update:The brand identity, mission and vision were developed by Rareform in London. Thanks Ian!

Tweet This Post

Old grumpy DMC

A lot younger than 20, yet old. Dubai Media City the media hub of the middle east gets to make a big mistake of being outdated online. Many businesses do that, but as they say, the higher you are, the further you fall. DMC Couldn’t you get a good AMC? Or why not go with an in house Web team?

I always loved how DMC’s site looked. Always new in concept, fresh in aestethics and ideas on their website. Speaking of the good design, the latest redesign is beautiful. I love the photography and the colors in it. What I’m thiking is, what happened this time? Spelling mistakes, broken links, and even an outdated ad. banner in the footer. That’s not the DMC I know about and heard about at least.

In the shadows

Despite the great look and the artistic/creative touch things go really wrong on the data/information side. While understanding the concept of using images for speaking out their mind(the designer’s), okay it’s a Media City, you know, what about copy? where should it go? A page under the visuals? For instance if you click on “Explore Dubai Media City” it will hide the menu instead of taking you to a section that teases you on the path or a mini-map of the Exploration section. No! That’s what the site tells you, it says, my way or the highway. You want to find some info, follow my lead but find it yourself, it says(in unread words).

Under the hood

After witnessing Dubai Internet City shifting to web-standards, I thought DMC would too, I actualy thought it already did. No! You check the source and god they used frames, now frames are way not for layout use, I can at least understand the tables, but frames?? That’s too 2000ish work.

Not trying to play the devil but I always liked DMC over DIC just like how I’d love a Mac over a PC and I’d love to startup over there (that’s why I was browsing the site).

What does all this mean?

A business or let’s say it how it’s said in the news; The Middle East Media Hub doesn’t care about it’s own version of online media? When you’re targeting international prospects your website is a central information bank for their apetite and for your own benefit and awareness. Where is DMC on that? The site has not been touched or even checked for months, the old IAA ad in the footer and the broken link in the Directory and the hawk pages show me how the online presence of DMC has been neglected. It’s DMC, I’m shocked.

All DMC and Dubai Holding outdoor advertising and the TV ads are very very effective. In a way I find it all translated into their websites but I guess the transition wasn’t as good as the original ideas and concepts.

Anyone knows why?

Update: Finally they’ve decided to give it some love. DMC wake up!

Tweet This Post

Microsite: Lexus LS series

How many times did you visit a website and you actualy felt home? You visit pages and you know whom the pages belong to without looking at the logo nor the address. Lexus website makes you feel the luxury while browsing the website, you hear me?

One of the toughest tasks to get done well while designing for web is keeping the brand together. You got navigation, interaction and a lot of information to lay out orderly and as a whole still make the user feel at home. Lexus has done it perfectly.

While our spot light is on the LS series microsite , I have to mention it once again, it’s made for people who wanna’ ride Lexus. Now back on the microsite, the LS series microsite is nothing of a flash extraordinary site, but sure is a Lexus kind of site. Very simple animations, very high quality images and video that gives you the feeling of the quality and luxury once again.

Anyone knows who designed it? The agency? Let me know if you do.

Tweet This Post

Microsite: Da Vinci Code

Sony Pictures does it again, another impact on web, another way of teasing you to fall for a movie. I wasn’t so interested in the movie: The Da Vinci Code , I wasn’t, even though I was curious to see the documentary; but this Microsite got me, I will wait for this movie to come, I am now!

The first impression

Speaking of graphics and how it is engaging, it starts with the buffering screen where the flash movie starts. The loading text is encoded using the Da Vinci Code which is the fliped letters. Starting with that you could understand what it really is about.

You could watch a trailer if you wanted, but nothing is like this beasty interactive microsite .

It’s got no theme, a theme got it

The music, the events on loading and interactive bits and peices of the animation, the words that tease you all the motion is an engaging experience. I think this is more effective than a trailer, it gives you the feel of it while you try to tease yourself instead. Look out for the nice little sayings that comes right in the right spot of the animation.

• The Da Vinci Code Microsite
• Quicktime Trailer

Tweet This Post

Mobile-Web are we there yet?

You’re on the road, all of the sudden you get a call from a client who needs some information that you received by e-mail. Imagine you didn’t sync your mobile with your outlook, that’s what happened to me today. You try to connect to your GPRS provider but to no avail. Finally you’re connected, now the connection starts to act funny.

How reliable is it, really?

I use a little nice Motorola PEBL U6 , which is a handy device and works for me. I use the built-in web-browser and use the Opera Mini as well.

Usualy the mail is accessed via the mini-pop-client that comes built-in. It’s the most reliable way of accessing e-mail if not synchronized with Outlook. Well most of the time one doesnt sync them so you end up using the pop-client and read or download the headers. Now, when your connection acts funny and just doesn’t give you what you want, you have no option but playing around the web-based mail client.

2006 was named the mobile-web year, the year many service and content providers move to mobile and the cell-phone market. It’s happening. But again how reliable is it, really? Having mobile vendors from a side, Web content providers and service providers from another side and the ISPs and Telecomm companies from the depth dimension. Not even one of these are set to go, or final, in my opinion and the way I see the hapenings around; it still has a long way to go to reach stability and proper mashup among the three dimensions.

It’s a three way junction

Mobile web & Internet are the results of the intersection between the three factors:

• Mobile Phone Manufacturers
• Mobile Software, Services, and Content providers
• Telecomm Companies and Internet Gateway providers for mobile

Knowing that mobile phones can be categoriezed down to the level of PDA-Phones, Smart Phones, and simply level three phones (just phones) you could imagine the variaty of applications and different ways of using devices and their hardware.

Now let’s get down to another level: Mobile phones OS and Software. Every vendor goes with a unique setup and a different approach in the soft level according to their hardware capability and the design they roll with. Operating systems vary from Windows Mobile & CE to Symbian and other Linux based mobile distros. Every setup comes with a set of defaults for accessing e-mail, SMS, MMS, cameras, etc… It’s already hard trying to keep the compatibility of files and devices on the system levels, however, the interoprability has improved dramaticaly lately as standards emerged. But what about the inter-web on mobile? Standards such as WAP helped before, now that mostly mobile browsers support XHTML markup and format, now that CSS could be optimized for handhelds, we should be in a better place! Why aren’t we?

ISPs and data-connectivity servie providers play the most important role in this game. Every service provider has its own limitations, infrastrucure and based on its region has a different outlook on the mobile market. Taking Etisalat (UAE’s ISP) as an example; 3G is way too expensive to play with, GPRS connection is really inefficient and not even reliable most of the time. WAP? forget it. So to sum up, it is a disaster yet not discussed the pricing and the speeds of accessing such services.

On the forth dimension, we got web developers

Designing for mobile is tricky since not so much work have been done as much as work done for the PC web. Standards for designing for mobile-web hasn’t really emerged nor practiced as such. Not forgetting the way too limited resources available for developer and content designers. Authoring tools are getting better, specialy Adobe Flash that is spreading very fast in mobiles and even other devices such as PSP.

So are we there yet?

Tweet This Post

A successful failure publicity

If you live in U.A.E then you might’ve heard of the U.A.E Internet Group aka UAE Group –which is fully in Arabic language and only UAE locals have been spotted in it. Are groups formed by ethnicity and language when it comes to technology? Specialy when it’s a group: a community?

Location, location, location

Where is it located? in the heart of Dubai, in the heart of Internet transactions in Dubai, a block away from the Dubai Internet City .

An Internet group in the heart of the Internet City and located in the Knowledge Village ! A ground with known race, language and religion diversity, all technologists surrounding the area complemented by Media specialists at the Dubai Media City . And yet,

Sama Dubai says:

A group of young guys in dubai with an ambitious plan form a group for Internet, to grow the awareness in the society.

Did they forget that the whole area surrounding the group location is filled with people from all around the world? Forget the location. The language! Arabic? You’re calling it Emirates Internet Group and yet it is only in Arabic and only for Arabs? I could read and speak Arabic but what about the professionals or contributors (DIC is a block away!) that could be of help to this community?

And hey, they want to improve the world!

Okay, so they know how to operate a forum web-application. How are they going to be competent? It’s not only about PR and the looks. It’s supposed to be a community and a group effort, not a CEO show, it’s a social-technology group!

Missions and Objectives. This is the funniest part. I’ll go one by one:

• To improve Internet Use and increase awareness about it.
• Improve Web developers in Design and Coding

How are you going to improve website designing and development if you don’t have a proper website yourself? How can you improve it really? by saying so and claiming? May be by creating another forum theme? In the boom of the Web2.0 you still do not have a news roller RSS for the least and instead of using a Wiki or a blog you’re using a forum, and for god sake even for user registration and membership you guys are using a forum. Where in planet earth such stuff are done?

At least try to be better than the rest when you want to claim that you’re about to have tech-group and that being even funded by the government.

Web is not Internet! although mostly it is, but it is not the same and they are not the same.

I could go on more and more, but I guess this should be enough for you to know that forming a group is not a thing done for publicity or for getting your time occupied. It’s serving the community to learn and share information and network/socialize with like minded people. Language shouldn’t be a barrier nor race or nationality even if it was a local group specialy when it comes to technology and most importantly the Internet and the Web.

Give them a visit: Emirates Internet Group

Tweet This Post

Rebooted, still coughin’

May 1^st got there before me, well anyways dot1ne’s rebooted, well nearly. While on the fall reboot I was among the first ones to reboot I guess I’m one of those very late ones this time. Anyways the site goes into a major change once again. Re-aligned, re-styled and reconstructed ground-up and added a new section as promissed: inloop.

The reboot enforced a fresh look and a challenging way of portraying dot1ne once again. Another style transition, well, back to my original style of designing, but still clear and clean unlike the dark/obscured typography of the old abstract styling that I had on Black Ray v.2.

A number of things are left to deal with: the footer, feeds, about page, and of course the portfolio that I haven’t updated yet since the last reboot. Oh man, that’s like the blue screen of death in windows more than a reboot, cough, cough.

Enjoy the reboot while it’s there, vote for everyone and don’t forget to comment on the redesign.

Note: You might find some portions undone or bugous, using a very messy stylesheet didn’t test it on Opera yet nor IE7, please let me know if you face anything funny.

Tweet This Post