Posted: April 28th, 2007 | Author:dotblack | Filed under:Business, Tech | Comments Off
A few days ago, ComScore one of the top digital measuring firms published their results for Mobile TV consumption in American’s society. Out of 2000 surveyed users, 2/3 were male and nearly half of the users are aged below 35.
comScore also questioned consumers about their top considerations in selecting a Mobile TV service. Not surprisingly, approximately 71 percent of the respondents said that “cost of service” was a top consideration. However, 67 percent of respondents who are interested in subscribing to Mobile TV also said that they would be willing to watch sponsored advertisements in return for free subscriptions, while 64 percent also favored a test period before committing to a subscription.
As part of the study, comScore asked consumers about their awareness of various Mobile TV services. Verizon V-Cast generated the highest overall awareness, with 22 percent of respondents indicating they were familiar with the service. In comparison, 9 percent were aware of MobiTV and 3 percent were aware of Modeo. Among those who currently subscribe to Mobile TV, awareness was substantially higher for Verizon V-Cast (43 percent), MobiTV (34 percent), and Modeo (15 percent).
What’s interesting in this stat is the fact that the winning operator is the one with better awareness among users, which in this case is Verizon’s V-Cast. Talk about Emirates, Etisalat’s MobileTV. Even though Du’s got better content, better channels, the price is double. Etisalat offers 11 channels for AED 39, while Du offers five channels for AED 80. Do the math, better awareness, more content, Etisalat is currently winning.
This stat release should be an eye opener for Du, and yet another proof about how firm Etisalat is in the business.
Let’s wait for the next issue of Madar research publishing for the stats, I won’t be surprised to see Etisalat winning it.
A complete mismatch, a disaster. With Etisalat and Du dominating the hall spaces, not forgetting the entrances that were scattered with du’s flags and Etisalat’s huge posters and gift bags. What was the exhibition about? Who was it for? All that is given by the exhibition organizers, but yet, Mecom was just another Etisalat vs. du show down.
There were exhibitors who were there promoting their VoIP and satellite solutions, the funny part was they’d show you a map of places that their services work, and guess what? No Middle East! So what were they doing there? They were so disappointed and didn’t know why they were there!
Etisalat, du, and TRA had most of the spaces occupied. The only other major comm solution provider was Cisco, and followed by Chinese network brands. I went on the 24th and 25th–the last two days of the show. I can confidently say it was a mismatched exhibition, wrong audience, wrong exhibitors, or just a wrong timing.
We were to go for the show exhibiting our Mobile Web services at dots & lines but luckily we were behind the schedule, lucky we were this time.
Speaking about absolute thinking, and false promises. There is no 100% secure transaction what so ever on the Internet and that’s a fact.
There are really creative secure ways of doing business online, Souq might be one of those, but using a “100%” tag is really an over-talk, over-show, and the worst of all, a false promise.
Here’s a snapshot of the 100% secure promise:
While we’re on it, just a paragraph after the promise there’s this note:
Weren’t they so sure a while a go? 100%? If it’s an absolute thing, why is there measures and levels of security labeled by locks and secure icons? It’s like saying something and then saying hey, I was wrong, but still saying it again.
I’m an occasional Souq user and I like the service, but that doesn’t mean that I’d love how they’re trying to reach out.
I just don’t like their approach of Marketing nor their Advertising. Remember the false Shakira Google Ads? And now this. But I still use it, it’s the only service available.
I’ve received nine e-mails asking me how to configure Etisalat’s Mobile TV on Sony Ericsson smart phones namely P990 and M600. The problem lies in the tricky way of operating the Mobile TV from Etisalat’s side. So here I’ll explain how to make it work on your SE P990 and M600.
Requirements
As you were informed by Etisalat you need a 3G enabled mobile which P990 and M600 are, and a Wap Internet connection.
The confusion starts here. You need a 3G enabled mobile to view the Mobile TV channels while you still need a Wap connection which Etisalat calls Ewap.
Why do you need an Ewap connection? The irony is in the fact that Etisalat’s Weyak portal works only while browsing it through using the Ewap profile. A 3G Internet connection is different and Weyak’s Mobile Portal identifies only Ewap users. One more thing, you need to be subscribed to Weyak as well. Okay to get it straight we need these to start:
Ewap subscription/settings
Weyak subscription
Mobile TV subscription/settings
If you want a shortcut, skiping the Ewap subscription/settings and Weyak subscriptions and avoiding all the hassle skip to the third step to save yourself sometime and some subscription charges.
Ewap subscription/settings
Ewap subscription is Free, but it usually takes up to 24 hours until it gets activated. In case you did not want to subscribe to Ewap, I’ll be showing you a way of accessing the channels list without the need to neither of subscriptions to Weyak or even Ewap.
To subscribe to Etisalat’s Ewap dial **122#* follow the instructions and subscribe. Once you’re confirmed after 24 hours, you’ll be receiving the connection settings as SMS which you have to accept and install the settings.
So now you have the Ewap connection and you can browse the internet with it.
Weyak subscription
To subscribe to Weyak, send “a weyak” to “1010″ and you’re set.
Mobile Web Subscription/Settings
To subscribe to Mobile Web, send “s mtv” to “1010″, wait for a confirmation SMS, and then another SMS that holds your configurations.
At this point you’ll be having a connection by the name “live.ae” in your connection list. This is the connection that has to be used by your media player once trying to view the channels.
Connection Groups setup
This is the step that we’ll make everything work.
Go to: Main Menu>Tools>Control Panel>Connections>Internet Accounts. Under the “Account” tab, you’ll have all the setup connections and the built-in connections that come with the phone.
The trick is here, you have to be able to choose an Internet connection every time you use an application such as the Browser, E-Mail Client and the Media Player. Luckily the E-Mail client has an option to choose a group account to use for E-Mail access.
As for the Browser and the Media Player, we’ll have to work around it by taking the next two steps.
Enable “Show Connection Dialog”
Setup Connection groups to work with each type of application
To enable showing the connection dialog every time you access the Internet go to: Connections>Internet Accounts>More>Options and check the option “Show Connection Dialog”. So now whenever you open your Media Player to open an internet location it will ask you to choose a connection group which we will setup in the next step.
Setting up groups is really easy. Go to: Connections>Internet Accounts>More>New Account>Group Account. Create two groups:
Mobile TV
Data
Now go to the “Groups” tab. Choose “Mobile TV” and click on “Add new account”, you’ll be given the list of existing connections. Choose “live.ae” connection and save.
Do the same thing with the “Data” group and choose “Ewap” and save.
You should be set now.
Open your Media Player, it’s called “Online” in M600i, I can’t remember the name in P990i, but you could see the icon has a globe with a film strip around it. After you opened the Media Player, go to: More>New Link and enter the followings.
URL: rtsp://10.99.121.200/channel06.sdp
Name: BBC World
Do this for a test, if it worked then you’re set and working.
To have the whole list of channels in your media player for later reference. Here’s the list:
rtsp://10.99.121.200/channel01.sdp
rtsp://10.99.121.200/channel02.sdp
rtsp://10.99.121.200/channel03.sdp
rtsp://10.99.121.200/channel04.sdp
rtsp://10.99.121.200/channel05.sdp
rtsp://10.99.121.200/channel06.sdp
rtsp://10.99.121.200/channel07.sdp
rtsp://10.99.121.200/channel08.sdp
rtsp://10.99.121.200/channel09.sdp
rtsp://10.99.121.200/channel10.sdp
rtsp://10.99.121.200/channel11.sdp
And you’re done. Try the above and let me know how it works with you.
Hi, My name is “abc” from “xyz” company and we are interested in your Web services. “Can you please tell me how much you charge for one, two, and three?”, the fake prospect says. So you say that every project is different and we have to check out your needs deeply and see what we can do for you first, and then we’ll get down to the figures. So you go and spend so much of your time preparing a good proposal preceded by a questioner, you spend time on it. The next day you hear the same name, but wait, this time he is the Business Development Manager of another Web agency.
On the twist
It’s really unethical to do that so. We at dots & lines take such incidents very seriously. We’ve been having fake prospect for exactly six times since the time of launching. So, six web agencies have tried to exploit our open end communication channels. First through e-mail, then telephone, and yet the worst, I even arranged a meeting and met one of them.
Is that a way of researching a market? Cuz it definitely is a dirty one. Among the six incident of Fake Prospects we gave up really valuable information to two of them, information such as what we could do for their projects and what exactly it takes to make it happen, be it Financially or Timely. We gave up our time, energy, and thoughts, not forgetting that being a start-up Time is really expensive.
Exploiting the Good
So you try to make it easy for the real clients to get in touch as quick as possible, as easiest as possible, but these Jerks have to come down and try to waste your time.
You might recall when I showed a little disturbing after I first watched 300. Ever since then I’ve been trying to dig my way into the truth behind it, after all it really offends you if you were Persian. So I’ve come across some really documented and well written essays on the matter, written by knowledgeable people.
If you’re still interested check some of the results in Technorati search on 300 Truth
If you watched the movie, which you likely have, please talk about it, tell what you thought of Persians after watching the movie, or did you buy the whole story at all?
A real simple reality yet amusing, hearing what you wanna’ hear. Why is it “Full Cream” and not “Full Fat”? And why is it “Low Fat” and not “Low Cream”? Rings the bells? Recall the last time you bought milk?
On the way to Abu Dhabi I took Shk Zayed Road, in the middle of the jam I saw a little van with Milk ads trying to zigzag, first it was scary to see the van doing that, right until it was really packed and I ended behind it. Saw the milk packs, “Full Cream” & “Low Fat” options.
Hearing what you want to hear
Interestingly I found it odd but still really makes so much of sense. If you’re healthy and want full milk, you get yourself the “Full Cream”, if not you’ll try the ones with lower fat, yes, hold it right here, why is it “Cream” when it’s a positive thing, and “Fat” when it’s negative?
Just think it, it’s amusing, when you’re concerned about your health and diet you would be thinking it in all “Health” terms, thus your mind works that way too, it calls it “Fat”. Ironically when you think about the taste and quality, your thinking pleasure and perfection, which points you to “Cream”, and not “Fat”.
Now that’s smart branding and naming. I know it’s a traditional thing, but still, it’s something.
Or could I just be completely wrong and the case is that Cream is not Fat nor the other way around?
Posted: April 11th, 2007 | Author:dotblack | Filed under:Business, UAE | Comments Off
A JPG file is not a formal CV. Among my remarks on Web/Graphic design job application this one point was forgotten. Luckily I received a couple of JPG CVs in the last two weeks. So here is why you shouldn’t make your CV in JPG or any other Image formats.
Image files are not search able
While it’s easy to access and view image files, having all your detials on a one page JPG file is a waste of your time. If you could design a CV to export in an image format you could possibly convert it to PDF instead, PDF text is search able and is easy to navigate.
Multi page CVs get either too long or too wide
While concluding your CV into a one pager is nice if possible, you’re most likely to get it into more than one page. A flat image file would be a disaster when made with many pages. Don’t do that!
Image CVs show that you are limited
Lack of ways to proof your skills and your credibility is as important as your data/experience.
If you can design your CV, then why not just make it into a PDF or a webpage, or better yet just have a website?
Unfortunately these Jpeg CVs were sent as attachments to an e-mail message and did not include any message body nor had a good e-mail subject. Employers wont get excited about this kind of messages!
