On Content Hijacking

Ever since we entered the syndication era we’ve been blessed by how content could go places. That being a cool feature, there’s a man-made syndication if you will, hijacking content. No copy, but real hijacking in the Middle East!

There are a number of sites, blogs and even publishing houses that I’d like to name over here, but really not worth the controversy and the drama. I see PR news copied, graphics and photos copied and even commentary hijacked and republished on different sites. And once published, shamelessly it says submitted by the “Editor” or “Some Name”.

If you ain’t no journalist or have no enough editors to write for you simply drop that, it ain’t your business! Hijacking News, PR, and Commentary ain’t good for anyone, specially for Media!

Violating copyrights, creative commons, and ethical codes of journalism, ain’t that what it’s about?

Can you relate? Or name?

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Still like Flash intros?

As you know long ago we had the Intro concepts and every business would ask you to animate an intro for their website first hand and then think about their website, that was long ago. Occasionally I find Intros here and there, some on Microsites and some on business websites. I’d understand a cool animation before launching microsites, but before opening a business website?

An extra click, obviously!

You dial a web address and get presented an animation with a “Skip Intro” button. Two scenarios, one: you have to wait for the movie to load and wait till it ends so that you can go to the website, two: you click on “Skip Intro”.

What is a business website? Isn’t it to introduce itself and its products/services? Now, with an intro you actually are trying to Intro Intro the site, no that wasn’t a typo! Introducing a business with a website that by itself is introduced by an intro at first. What a waste!

Intros in Microsites

Since microsites are actually interactive and mostly animated, there’s no need for intros, it’s a norm that you’re going to introduce a product/service or something so a Microsite is all about introducing and interacting, so is there a need to call for an intro or a skip intro button? IMHO, no!

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Online vs. Offline prductivity

At the end of the day we all want our work done so most of the time we would be on Auto Pilot mode and just keep doing what we do and don’t care about how we do it. Every one of us has his/her own way of handling tasks, writing, emailing, scheduling, archiving, or even chatting.

How much of online is good?

There are many cases where an individual or an organization could completely rely on online collaboration and productivity tools. In addition, there are more cases that organizations wouldn’t risk going online with important data.

Now when we say online we basically are talking about subscription bases services, services that would not require us to handle IT infrastructure or any web development work. Sign up and use.

Are you in your office or on your desk the whole day? If that’s the nature of your work you have the slightest need for an offline version of your work, most of the time. How contrary? Online tools for a desk locked up person?

Think about it once again, if you have to move out of your office and be on the road all the time then you actually need your files, data, and all the rest of stuff with you, whether on your mobile or laptop right? So basically you need everything with you off the air! The reason is that you won’t get Internet connection wherever you go!

I tried this for a while, got me hooked with Gcal and Google Docs for a bit. The more I moved down to Dubai and Sharjah the more I found the need to be online all the time which in some cases is hard to do. And those “some” cases are the times that you have a potential client to meet or have to present some data and documents. How good is to have everything online when you’re offline? Or should we wait till the cities get WiFied?

So if you’re a mobile person, you need offline files! Thus, offline productivity tools are good for you, which means you could still use the online tools but keep yourself in sync all the time, but then you have to go through a set of Syncing events everyday and if one sync case goes wrong you’re to bite yourself!

I hear ya! It’s expensive to go offline and still be collaborating, be it on the money side or even time wise. Thinking about Shareponts or your CRM software? I get ya! Sync sync syn, wasn’t Internet and Online based tools supposed to solve all that? Only if we were completly WiFied, man that would be kick ass!

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Yet another blocked site, Twitter

Now why exactly should Twitter be blocked? I no more have comments on these actions, I just wonder why! Any idea?

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Etisalat’s LBS Rocks!

You wanna’ know where I am so I send you an SMS with my location on a map, how cool is that? With Etisalat’s Location Based Services(LBS) this is possible and the maps are really good!

And here I am

And a little zoom in in full screen mode…

Now that’s neat! Isn’t it?

Just send “m” to 1333 on your Etisalat phone and you’ll get a link for the map to your inbox in which you’d access using your browser, if you’re minimal then you’d be happy with the text version of your location. I’m lovin’ this.

There’s another service that shows you where is the nearest something that you’re looking for. And the game begins.

Check it out for yourself or get some more info here.

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Interactive but still Usable

This is not about data sensitive sites. Gmail is not an example on this one. I’m speaking multimedia interactive, animation and graphical interactivity. Just how much of hover effects and stage animation could be still taken as usable?

We all love pretty pictures, the feel and the experience once engaged in a good microsite or an interactive website. I had a long discussion yesterday with a colleague of mine who was fighting for usablity over interactivity on a project in hand. To sum up we ended reviewing our most liked microsites, and to our amazement, the new microsites are the ones with clear typography and HTML style interface designs that touched with Flashy work on top. We ended up settling on the fact that creativity does not mean messed up interfaces or hard to get or even hard to use.

Three points stood out to us:

1. It ain’t about how new the interaction model is, it’s about how it makes you feel when you use the site
2. If it’s not visible or hard to find, the link won’t be clicked, have you noticed nice big buttons on microsites lately?
3. How branded is a microsite? That speaks out loud since the whole experience at site speaks out for the brand, not only the visuals but the experience too

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In search for a RAD

With the deadlines due, forward thinking and getting myself clean on the coding side becomes a must. Over the last week I’ve been trying to search for a better way for coding backends and a better approach than the normal ad-hoc modulizing code. I wasn’t looking for a coding framework, was rather looking for a Rapid Application Development framework.

I was this close to switch from PHP to Ruby

Ruby, as you know has a comprehensive framework. It’s been proven how reliable it is but something keeps on telling me do not swith anything over PHP. I’ve been coding in PHP since version 3 and been using Zend IDE since version 2. The frustration of not having a proper RAD framework got me to a point of thinking to even swtich after trying out Symfony which makes life harder if not livable at all. Prado and ZF, Mojavi, and the rest are all coding frameworks or better put, libraries to get you going on. No Scaffolding, automation, nor code generation, nothing but libraries of classes.

After my frustration, I was all about to consider ASP.Net with its beautiful visual editing and the almighty Visual Studio. Once again I looked back and even tried if I could implement Flex and Flash instead.

My last options got me to CakePHP and CodeIgniter. Both of which have very close structure and qualities. In addition, CakePHP has a code generator called Bake, that bought my mind and raised my liking towards it. Both of the frameworks are flexible and do not limit the programmer to use the style of framework coding, just MVC and really neat configs, you could still use your own libraries of code and even modify whatever you want, that’s a feature to me.

I’m going to test CakePHP for real tonight and will be trying to see if that’s the one.

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Apollo finally lands

Adobe finally announced Apollo. The much anticipated framework to deliver web development tools and RIAs back to desktop. Where is the value? Using web development tools such as Flash and technologies such as Flex now you’re able to build installable desktop applications. While the requirements are the Runtime and your apps, the Runtime library is 5+ MB. Doesn’t this remind you of Java apps back in the day?

Update: I just installed it and tried some of the showcased applications.

I’m not sure if I’d do it justice by telling how it felt right away, I’m going to write a little app on it to see how it works and share it back here again.

Starters, I’m not liking the fact that it depends on the Oses windowing system, I would’ve loved it more if it had it’s own set MDI windows and modal views. But still using the OS api’s using your daily used technologies and programing languages is something! I’ll play a little more with it and write another post on it later.

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Dubai One TV’s new look

Well, not so new. One TV as it was called before rebranded and renamed to Dubai One is one of the best free to air channels in the Middle East. Great programming and nice shows. Ever since they changed their style from 2d and vector based branding and animation its whole identity has changed from a creative and friendly feel to a production wannabe kindda’ style and in my opinion it does not do the channel any justice.

Start me up, ????? ???

Most of the friends liked the new branding creative, but I still don’t find it matching One’s style of programming and the way they approached us the viewers. The creative 2d style was a blast, the new 3d works and cinematic effects in the middle just do not match with the previous idea. No melting point? Or better yet no transition? Most of One’s promos remind me of Despered House Wives promos. The red apples?

Check out some of the videos here:

and this one…

On the other hand MBC’s channel 2 keeps on going on with their way of approaching viewers. Their new ads and cinematic breaks goes so well with their programming including the Action element in their new MBC Action channel.

I might only be titled to my own opinion, but I still think the old branding was more creative and friendlier.

Wael from Sha3tely had a good coverage on it earlier, you might wanna’ check it out.

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56Kbps and 9.6Kbps

I often have to go online on my Mobile to use a service or two on the web. I sometimes need to view a complete page on my laptop’s screen while on the move, so I’d connect to Mobile using the Bluetooth link and go online on 9.6Kbps dial-up connection. Yesterday got the torture of using 56Kbps on a desktop PC at home. How could we do it 5,6 years ago?

While it’s a pleasure to use 3G speed browsing or have your e-mail checked while driving 120 Km/h, you’re actually locked up with 56Kbps and 9.6Kbps connections every now and then. I do a set of drills when I’m on such speeds, here’s what I got to share with you in order to use these connections.

• Disable viewing images/flash/java/quicktime and the hungry objects
• Use a text-based browser
• Use desktop clients for e-mail or other Internet-dependent services instead of your web browser
• Use only one IM software while on those speeds
• Restrict your firewall or enable a profile that restricts bandwidth only to a select number of software
• If you happen to use a web browser then make sure you have only one tab at the time requesting for a URI.

You got more? Share!

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