Review: Etisalat Mobile TV

Etisalat announced the launch of Mobile TV on Feb 24^th, as they title it “Double the fun at half the price with Etisalat Mobile TV Service”. For only AED 39 a month you get to view 11 channels. I subscribed for the service, and in short, It’s amazing.

As it was mentioned in their press release there are 11 channels including News, Entertainment, Sport, and a Business channel. Only two channels are in English: BBC World and AlJazeera Intl.

The service works on the RTSP streaming protocol and requires a media player that supports it. You need to have a 3G enabled mobile for you to enjoy the service. Video resolutions are great, and really suitable for view. Expanding and viewing landscape as full screen works well to, a little pixelated but still viewable.

I tried it on Sony Ericsson M600i, the built-in media player supported the RTSP protocol streaming and worked like a charm. The sound quality is amazing. Among all the channels, BBC World is slower than the rest and buffers a lot in the middle, I guess the viewers are more than the number Etisalat expected for that channel, so, I guess Etisalat has to increase or upgrade hardware/bandwidth for that channel.

While the service takes a lot of tricks to setup it’s worth your time and efforts. Finally your TV in you pocket. Take it with you to your smoke break, launch break, watch it when you’re just off the mood to work, while waiting for someone to show up, even when you’re waiting for nothing.

AED 39 a month, give it a shot, it’s worth it.

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The Five things thingie

Once again here I’m tagged, this time by Tololy from Toloy’s Box. This meme has been going around for a while, got tagged with the same before, but this one gets me going, two times is enough to be ready to answer a tag, so here is the five things that you wouldn’t know about me.

1. Never had a particular sleep/wakeup time in my life
2. I could stay awake for more than 48 hours and still be productive
3. When I was in School I dreamed of becoming an NBA player
4. Although I could be cool, I tend to stay conservative
5. I wrote two short poetry books in Farsi

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What is Smartphone?

Every Mobile Web meeting I have, this question pops up, what is a Smartphone? Is my mobile a Smartphone? How is it different than the normal Phones or even PDAs? It’s been a hard month answering different people with different backgrounds about how Mobiles are different.

The Catch

As mobile phones advance and get more processing power, memory and performance, the advancement of their Software and functionalities take a faster pace, so the meltdown of categories is becoming confusing to explain and even showcase.

A Smartphone would be a phone with Calendar, Organizer, Contact manager, e-Mail client, and what is most important for business users: does it Sync with my Outlook?

So which phone in the market now a days doesn’t support all that? Most of the phones do, which gets us back to the question, so what is a Smartphone? Is it mobiles packed with Microsot Windows Mobile Smartphone OS or is it one of those SP-branded phones (such as i-mate SP2,3, etc…)

At dots and lines where we offer our Mobile Web service, we try to explain to our clients about how different Mobiles are when it comes to web-browsing experience and capabilities, so we categorize mobiles in terms of ability to view normal web pages w/o optimization and the memory limits that some phones have. While promoting mobile web best practices and selling consultancy to clients we define mobiles capabilities and explain why a website has to be optimized to serve users while not hurting their pockets and saving them time and effort. So here is when we say phones come in different types such as PDA mobiles, Smartphones, and low-end consumer phones. Bam! questions pop up. What do you mean by PDA mobiles? How are they different from Smartphones? What is a Smartphone anyways?

While we care about web-browsing the most, the idea gets very broad to explain. Smartphones are phones with high processing power(300MHZ+), higher RAM and a good capacity for Storage(Disk). Usually, a QWERTY keyboard is associated with Smartphones capabilities along with Touch Screens, which are not a smartphone-only features. Advanced OSes, Web browsers, and E-mail clients along with ability to parse and save MS Office files and PDF are the basice features that are expected on Smartphones, and the newly supported RSS feeds go there too. So where did PDA phones go? Smartphones are the new PDA phones, so for future explainations, we’re slashing off the PDA phones and join them to Smartphones.

Very soon, we expect to get back to the normal term “Mobile Phone”, since mobiles get so advanced fast, I don’t think we’ll have a phone that is not smart enough to be called a Smartphone soon.

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Microsite: Audi A5 WebSpecial

For all the Audi lovers, A5′s microsite has made a big buzz lately, written about on Auto blogs and forums about its launch. We’re not talking cars here, simply the microsite. In a glance, after loading the microsite you’ll get to know that it’s barely a site, just a teaser to get you registered. Simply put, just a tempting/teasing/amusing/engaging five seconds of animation that gets you signed up and registered for the ultimate launch of the new Car and Microsite. Now that’s neat!

It takes a long time till the whole movie starts, which adds to the suspense created, with a single page, creatively engaging thought and desire to register. Now that’s a concept, it’s luxury so you wannit, you get it. The registration form is long though, it turned me off for a bit, but again it’s a complete reconstruction of an Audi, worth filling up the form and receiving the extra bit sooner than who doesn’t register. Worth it? Guess it is. A great microsite so far, let’s wait and see the launch microsite.

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It is time Etisalat blogs

It’s been a real long while since everybody started talking about Etisalat’s actions(not decisions) on blocking websites and services online. Every now and then one of us posts about blocking a service with frustration and misery. People are looking for answers everywhere since Etisalat has a minimal responsiveness with their tiny press releases that they publish only when everyone’s asked all the magazines and papers.

It is about time Etisalat starts bloging, it’s been so messy. This humble blog gets more than 100 search queries a day with keywords such as “Etisalat block flickr”, “Why Etisalat blocked [some site name]“, etc..

If Etisalat is really trying to be up to the mark, it is the right time to make a releif and answer questions publically. It is supposed to be a norm, it’s so obvious. Etisalat, please blog!

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