On Digitalizing Magazines

ITWeekly announced the shift to online-only publishing sometime ago. My picture of the shift was having ITWeekly in a better web-based form; easier to read, bookmark, search, and most of the interactivity through user interaction with content not with the interface. The all new ITWeekly is a fully flashed up app with all interactive pages that could be turned and zoomed. Neat! But…

It is in the first versions, perhaps beta or testing versions, so we’re not gonna’ talk about glitches or any kind of shortcomings. I’m so concerned with their interface and the whole interactivity of the online magazine.

As their press release stated, they want to bring the paper magazine experience to digital form–fliping pages and having issues instead of categories/sections. They also stated that since most of the readers are IT-savvy readers, a unique digital experience was a must. While I’m diging the cool video player floating on a page and having fun using(not reading) the online magazine, I’m so turned off with the archive-suitable kind of view of the magazine.

It’s usable? Perhaps? But not readable

Some questions that poped up during fliping the pages are:

• How fast text inside the flashy pages are going to take to get indexed?
• Bandwidth usage?
• Text version at all?
• Mobile-Enabled?
• Feeds? (it’s gonna’ be emailed to users every week, no cool)
• Keyboard navigation and scrolling
• Linking to an article and URLs

After a long thought, I don’t see any improvement in ITWeekly’s publishing workflow, that is, the same print-layout and even the same sections and content style, but with a video instead of photos. As I looked at it closer, it became an interactive version of a PDF reader.

My take, I want the web-style back, I want to be able to scroll with my mouse wheel and select text, add links to my del.icio.us and have a lot of white space and not to have to drag pages.

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Announcing dots & lines

And the journey begins, we finally launched dots & lines on Jan 8^th ‘07, a new web-marketing-communications consultancy in Abu Dhabi, U.A.E. Starting simple, ready to take website design, mobile-web design, online advertising, and e-mail campaigns work.

We have much to say, but yet will keep it for our work to do the talk. We launched our website and are ready for business, check us out and wish us some luck, give up some love.

We’ve got a blog too, it ain’t really ready (we didn’t even put a feed subscription link yet), but it’s going to be a cool place to have industry talks on a business level.

We’re open for comments, give it up!

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Google Mobilizer and Skweezer blocked by Etisalat

And it happens again, this time it’s Mobilizing services, services that are intended for optimizing non-mobile-optimized webpages. Google Mobilizer & Skweezer are now blocked by Etisalat. They’re blocked on Mobiles & Desktops!

Two stories, first it could be because the mobilizing services process pages and give them back to your mobile web browser or even desktop browsers if used, so the blocked URLs cannot be screened by Etisalat so they blocked it. Second, it’s about monopolizing and forcing you to consume more bandwidth on your mobile internet plan. It’s most likely to be the first while it’s possible to be the latter.

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Rareform is a rare form

Times are few when you could find a branding/design agency talking humbly yet being effective in the industry and leading. Being in the design industry for years I’ve come to read mission statements, huge lists of team members with bios and info that most of us won’t read. Rareform is unique, there portfolio is one you could always envy them for, yet, they talk humbly about themselves and share how they started their agency with a laptop.

What first led me to Rareform’s hompage was Etisalat’s rebranding, from there I got to find out that they did branding work for Mobily as well. Doing branding work from London for the Middle East’s top telecom brands, that’s the real reach.

What makes me write about this is: I’m in the process of launching a web design & marketing consultancy which has been under the stealth mode for the past year and my thoughts on self identification and portray is a mix of what the market wants and what I could be for my clients. Rareform just gets it so right, with a strategy that is as simple as it gets, which is: Keep it real and be yourself, simply you!. Now they didn’t state those words explicitly, it’s my digestion of their portray.

Give them a visit and be inspired!

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