Back to reality, Unblocked!

Missing some videos, photos, and communities? Well, you gott’em all back. Etisalat unblocked Youtube, MySpace, and Flickr. As part of fighting the “evil Etisalat” campaign ran by individuals and end-users. Etisalat finally gives some love back to all. So enjoy it.

Etisalat was very fast developing an image of a blocking monster that takes away all the joy on the internet. Some campaigns are still running against Etisalat with badges on photobucket. Many blogs use the badges to show their angre. With all the spendings on ads and the new Weyak portal Etisalat is buying its image back. Good for us end-users!

This could be either a startegic marketing action to face DU’s supportive face or a plain simple authorities freedom change. In all the cases, users win.

The impact on the interactive and online market

Being exposed to such social/2^nd life services engages internet users more and more with the new media which leads to developing web-savvy users– better users and more bandwidth consumtion. On the tech side of the story the region could use the advancements in their advertising market place with portals such as MySpace with billions of page impressions daily. The ME region would benefit more and more with the mashups and web services that could be hooked up with such services.

So, back to normal life. Reach.

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It’s 10 percent luck, 20 skill

I jus’ picked up this track, addictive stuff!

Fort Minor, Remember My Name
“This is ten percent luck, twenty percent skill
Fifteen percent concentrated power of will
Five percent pleasure, fifty percent pain
And a hundred percent reason to remember the name!

He doesn’t need his name up in lights
He just wants to be heard whether it’s the beat or the mic
He feels so unlike everybody else, alone
In spite of the fact that some people still think that they know him
But fuck em, he knows the code
It’s not about the salary
It’s all about reality and making some noise
Makin the story – makin sure his clique stays up
That means when he puts it down Tak’s pickin it up! let’s go!

Who the hell is he anyway?
He never really talks much
Never concerned with status but still leavin them star struck
Humbled through opportunities given to him despite the fact
That many misjudge him because he makes a livin from writin raps
Put it together himself, now the picture connects
Never askin for someone’s help, or to get some respect
He’s only focused on what he wrote, his will is beyond reach
And now when it all unfolds, the skill of an artist”

It’s Fort Minor, you’ll love it.

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target=”_tab”

Name a graphical browser that doesn’t support tabbed browsing. Must be an old fashion browser. While your at your browser, you could click on a link and the destination page will open according to the target set for the link clicked.

The current available targets are:

• _blank
• _self
• _top
• _parent

While specifying any frame name would open the link in the targeted frame. Okay, that’s all old info. Now, with all the tabs that we open on our browsers everyday, don’t we need a new target propery-value for the A tag? Don’t we need the _tab target?

Tabs have become a kind of standard feature in most of the browsers, so don’t we need JS triggers for tabs as well? that is something like tab(URL, toggleBackgroundForgroundOption) in JS as well? So what we basically need is 4 things. HTML update, JS update, Browsers update, and web-developers implementation.

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Communicate, but why?

Communicate Magazine is one of my favorite monthly magazines. I can’t miss an issue if I could reach it before it is off the shelves. After four months of being a loyal reader and supporter I felt like visiting their website at www.communicate.ae, it doesn’t communicate at all! As a matter of fact it’s a dead “thing”, not even a page or a site.

It’s one of a kind but in PRINT

I can’t describe the content of the Communicate magazine, so fresh, right to the point and always has something to make you scratch your head n’ say “wow, that’s mad”. Start form the “letter from the editor” section to the end of “the dish” it’s just perfect. You can’t buy an issue and not buy the next, that bad.

Online? It’s a dead “thing”

I’m not finding a title or a name to put on the Communicate website. After reading all the rants, gossip, and discussions about the online media and e-marketing on Communicate, I can’t say anything but how shocked I am to see their own website as dead as it could be. As a web-savvy I can tell that you have not invested a dime on your online presence, I actually demand you not to write about online advertising, web, new-media, bloging, and whatever related, you can’t maintain integrity nor credibility. I really lose a little love that I’m used to giving to the articles I read on Communicate, specially the one about the false PR in the last issue titled “It’s the ice that never melts”.

Communicate, how can we e-mail you?

You’ll be shocked that the beloved magazine has only one e-mail address that you could send to. It’s 2006, I don’t know how many hours that editor’s day has, to be answering e-mails. Only one– editor@communicate.vg (the e-mail is on another domain as well).

Update: Scott MacMillan replied back: Thanks for your constructive criticism, which I agree with almost entirely. All I can say is, we’re working on it! All of it!

I’m glad Communicate is actually working on it, all I can say is I can’t wait for it to change. Note: others didn’t even blink an eye to reply back, yea, I mean ITP.

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Mobile Web kicks off

We were promised to have the mobile web going faster and main stream in the begining of 2006. As we’re approaching the Q4 of the year we finally witness some real activities in the “mobile web” market. Goolge started testing AdWords on mobile in Japan, Digg introduced a mobile version of their portal. Along with that most of the mobile phones come with the push e-mail technology built-in and the 3G support gets wider and broader.

Content, content, content

CNN, BBC, ESPN, Google, Yahoo!, Digg, Technorati, and region’s AMEInfo are some of the content providers that have been mobile for a while. It’s simple math, simplified, shortened, and customized content to display on mobile screens. Very convenient. No biggie, but valuable. Along the same lines go the mobile RSS and syndication services, nothing hot. Content is being consumed, that’s the important part. Bandwidth is being exausted and leveraged, that’s the part that we care about.

Ads and Monetizing

The old fashion SMS marketing, which in my opinion is nothing but annoyance to carriers is finally to be replaced with cheaper ads, obviously mobile web ads are going to be a lot cheaper than sending bulk SMSs given the service charges on the content providers.

Google’s been playing with dialing ads instead of web-fashion clicking ads, that is; according to the content the Ad would give you an opportunity to have you call the advertiser, slick! It’s the nature of the beast, content for Ads, and it is going well given the freeloading culture of web-savvy people.

While Google is not the only player in the field, having Yahoo! playing with the same, it is a an indication for the growth that the mobile web is holding to. The numbers might not be clear at this time and might not even justify these lab products, however, shows at least the importance that it brings in and how the broadband mobile connections are going to be spread as we go further.

UAE and Middle East

Device-wise, we ain’t got no excuse. We have’em all. 3G support, email, browser, you name it. Connection-wise, we’re short. Our operators have us supporting WAP, GPRS, and 3G; but it ain’t cheap! It is still not a consumer level service where every person would be able to play with it or have it consuming bandwidth. It is still expensive, even though Saudi’s operator “Jawal” has a cool campaign spreading GPRS to consumers which is a good start to get down to another level of users.

Long story short, the future of mobile web in the middle east is in the hands of telecomm service providers and operators.

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Web Producer Vacancy

As I’m getting back to my Startup strongly I’m looking for an experienced Web Producer to join me with sleeves up to design/develop and produce, support, and maintain usable/accessible and award-winning ready websites and web-applications.

Highly challenging!

Since you’re going to be part of a start-up that will be the next best agency in the region you’ll have the joy of both working and being part of the next best thing. Starting as the first employee of an agency means working shoulder to shoulder with me and eventually becoming a partner rather than an employee.

The challenges you’ll face is having to spend more than standard 8 hours that you’d get to work elsewhere. And as you noticed the title is Web Producer and not designer or developer. Web Producer as it is self explanatory a person who produces web presences, and that is being involved in the whole process of production. Specifically:
* Project research and breifs
* Information Architecture
* Usability Analysis
* Search Engine Optimization
* Graphical Interface Design
* HTMLizing & CSS
* Server Side programming & CMS implementation
* Client Support & Site Maintanence

So basically looking for a superman. Can you handle it? Note that I’m not asking for certain languages or tools. Those can be discussed later as well as the agency start-up plans and projects.

Not your resume, that later

I’m not asking you for your resume, but I’m asking you for a URL of your portfolio instead. So send it in, email me at : m.saleh.eg at gmail dot com or call me on +971-50-4779817 to discuss further details.

Do that only if you’re serious about being part of an ambitious next best thing and give it all you have. It’s gonna’ be fun,big and exciting. I’m waiting for you.

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“Camry’s out” campaign

A 1024 pixels wide microsite. It’s huge. It’s wide. It’s clean. It’s clear. The long awaited Camry is out. And it’s out in the middle east.

This beast gets the message across clearly with clear typography and smart title and page divisions. However, it shows that it was designed by a non-Arabic speaker and the Arabization process was only translation. Although the type is clear it does not match the interface and it’s dynamism. This type of metallic platfrom works better with fonts that are curvier or straighter, and not the default/formal Arabic font.

A designer might be harsh on this microsite but a marketer would be happy with it. Indeed, it brings in results. Users can actually find information they seek. It’s usable! I love it.

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Flash’s Flashback

What is WWW’s interactivity without Adobe’s Flash? How would the web be without Flash? Simply, the web would be incomplete without Flash. What’s a microsite without Flash? How about a microsite made for Flash? “It’s the 10^th anniversary!”:http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/special/flashanniversary/ Flash’s Flashback.

I still remember designIsDead

It was those days when Flash was just a buzzword to look cool when talking about web. Usually refered to as Macromedia instead of Flash, how funny, oh man. I got to know Flash on it’s 3^rd version when I could finally get a pirated version on CD. Flash 4 came out and Flash was never the same again. The whole Macromedia Director crowd moved to Macromedia’s Flash. It was back then when Design Is Dead studio started their experiments on moving cinematic effects to the web. Soon after that it was Eric Jordan’s mini 2Advanced website, remember that? it was just a personal web-portfolio which now is one of the biggest online agencies in the world. Fantasy Interfaces Oh my.

It was Flash 5 when OO design came into live with SmartClips that could be taken as objects on the stage. Flash 5 came with a wholly new interface allowing for more flexibility. It was then when Macromedia started paying attention to the community that was building around Flash so gave us Macromedia Exchange.

Come Flash 6, the MX and the Component power with a strong Action Script 2.0 and a huge number of components and features built in the language. Flash was no more for animations and interactivity alone, it became an interface for app-builders.

And now with Flash 8, all the photoshop effects that you dreamed of having in Flash are all there for you. Remember cutting and transparenting images in Fireworks and Illustrator and then exporting to Flash? How painful that was. And now? Never again. Flash is acompanied with technologies like Flex and Action Script 3.0 to give you the power to do all the things you want. God bless Adobe. Happy Flashing.

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