Mobile Web, not just for ringtones

And my 2^nd article goes live at AMEInfo Digital Marketing column, this time it’s about the Mobile Web and how it’s been used and marketed in the Middle East so far.

A new channel in digital marketing was born when the term ‘mobile web’ was coined. With Google, Yahoo and other players testing advertising on mobile phones, the idea of using the mobile web as an alternative channel for publishing and info sharing has been on the rise.

Great editorial credit is due to AMEInfo’s editors, gear up, read it here.

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Wikipedia’s Message to IP

I was just looking out a term in Wikipedia till I saw a yellow box saying “new message”, as I clicked on the link I was taken to a page that showed a list of unapproved articles, unapproved saves and even a call for stopping vandalizm. They’ve guessed it before, it’s a shared IP.

If this is a shared IP address, and you didn’t make any unconstructive edits, please ignore this warning

A huge list of unapproved stuff, a lot of spam from the same IP, I’m ashamed to share this IP, refresh.

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Microsite: Jeep Compass

Car microsites are usually the best microsites but when it comes to Jeep, it’s always been the opposite. Jeep Compass, once again gets it wrong with their online strategy. First on MSN ads, and now on their microsite. In short, poor creative that is completely based on TVCs and has no online interactivity.

Here’s the TVC, It’s neat, new and fresh.

I still don’t understand why they keep on getting it wrong online!

It’s in Flash but yet has nothing to do with Flash’s capabilities

As if they didn’t employ Flash at all. Zero level of interactivity and engagement. Poor typography, really poor! And the mascot, it’s displayed as if it was an executive’s request to be there or just a pure poor creative decision.

The shortest version of the story is this: Jeep Compass’s microsite is an after after thought work, “hey we need a microsite, here are some pics and the print creative CD is here, get it online by midnight”, that’d be a matching story board.

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300 truth bends

I still can’t believe there are people who think Persians are Arabs or Arabs are Persians. Neither of the races are barbarian! Nor savage! Nor gay!

Now I know the movie 300 is based on a novel, but this is offending, getting one of the biggest heroes and one of the greatest ancient politicians of the Persia to look gay, weak, and hopeless is really offending, at least to me!

Costumes were really bad, to me it looked more like Arabic costumes, it looked exactly like how I’ve seen Arabic ancient war serials such as Al-Kawaser.

Cowards? ah c’mon, since when Persians were cowards? And now, GAY?

I know, it’s just a movie, but this is offending and so lowering a civilization of more than 3000 years. A matter of pride.

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Apple TV’s new uses

It’s been making a huge buzz for a couple of days, Apple TV’s hacks and mods have been announced by hackers online.

According to Wired:

Just two weeks after Apple released its streaming media box to the public, hackers successfully installed OS X, Apple’s desktop operating system, on the $300 device, making it the cheapest PC Cupertino has ever sold.

Cheaper than the MacMini that is. Hackers have added all the features they needed, even Web Servers, I’m trying to think over here, is this going to be good for the product or bad?

In a way I find it marketable, people want more with less, that should direct Apple to a cheaper MacMini? Maybe?

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Abu Dhabi Public Libraries, Any Idea?

I’ve been living in Abu Dhabi for about four months now, just now thought of finding a place to read, a place that is not my office, and is definitely not home, a public library that is. I googled public library abu dhabi and found some links here and there. Where do you read in Abu Dhabi?

Wikipedia got me this.

Now I’m trying to change a habit, I’ve been reading online and e-books for so long that I don’t remember when was the last time I held a book in my hands. And yet trying to get off the usual places that I’d be at–home and office. I’m not looking for books, just the place, you know a good place, or a good library?

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It ain’t spam cuz we say so!

Now we all know how frustrating is to receive spam all the time. Today I received a so-called Newsletter that was sent by Dubai City Guide with an amazing footer, so spam, check it out.

The footer says the following:

This message cannot be considered as spam as long as we include the way to be removed.

What guts? Lemme’ add some more.

Subscribe your friend for this newsletter

Say what?

Interestingly the content wasn’t bad at all! Really bad copy but still interesting topics. But still, I haven’t registered for it, I shouldn’t get it! So it’s SPAM!

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Scattergun PR

Now this is scary, 40% of Arabic language journalists would publish/edit a press release if it was accompanied by a gift!

Here’s the qoute from AMEInfo:

Eighty percent of English-language journalists in the Middle East admit to deleting emails from PR agencies without actually reading them, according to a survey of 139 journalists by Insight. It found that public relations agencies need to be more targeted in their approach, rather than using a “scattergun” approach. Forty percent of Arabic-language journalists said they would be more likely to use a press release if it was accompanied by a gift

And here’s the link

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Review: The Marine

A marine gets fired. Takes a security job. Gets fired. Misses his Marine days. Wife plans a cheer up trip. She gets kidnaped. He tries to save her. Explosion, he survives. Explosion again, he survives, and again Explosion, and still he survives, saves his drowned wife, guess what? She’s alive!

Now what was that? I’m a John Cena fan when it comes to WWE, so I thought I’d have fun watchin’ him in a movie. So to company my WWE passion I called my nephew to watch it with me, believe it or not a 14 year old kid still hated the movie, he was like, isn’t this cheezy? Gas exploding every other scene and he still survives?

I’ll let the rest up to you.

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Webkit’s April Fool

Now this is interesting, Safari’s blog posted about changing their rendering engine to Windows Explorer’s rendering engine-”Trident”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trident_(layout_engine). How ironic ey?

You may wonder how we can use Trident in Mac OS X browsers like Safari. Fortunately, on Intel-based Macs, there is a solution: running IE under Parallels, and using Mozilla’s XPCOM to bridge the gap. This means we will discontinue the WebKit Objective-C API in favor of a COM API.

Running paralel to load IE and then using Mozilla’s XPCOM to bridge, now that’s slick!

Would you believe that?

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