Present using your mobile

If you’re going to present a work progress to your client and ain’t got a MacBook you’re possibly sticking near to your Laptop to press the space bar. Today I tried a new trick, I controlled my slides using my mobile, with a Bluetooth connection, I could sit near the people and do the drill. Totally cool, pressing “6″ for the next slide, “4″ for the previous.

All I had to do was turning my Laptop on and sit back with my people. I launched Powerpoint, went through my slides, then turned the Bluetooth RC into mouse controller mode and maximized Firefox and navigated through the site we’ve made. That was impressive for everyone.

Everybody was like, wow, we didn’t know this phone could do that, and it kindda’ stole the thunder from our work too!

It ain’t the phone, it’s a little software called Bluetooth RC and it costs as little as $12.95. It does magic.

Drawbacks! I received an SMS while presenting, well, Flightmode disables the Bluetooth radios as well so no chance but having it on(I just found a way to disable GSM network while phone is on). Another is the fact that I had to convert my Flash presentation into Powerpoint.

Note: Do not count on the trial version, it’s limited to only 6 clicks and it’ll stop after that.

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Flickr was blocked, so our work

The worst feeling you could get while working with people abroad is when you get embarrassed because of irrational decisions at your residing country. We were sent a dozen of Flickr links to photo shoots taken by our partner Ad Agency in UK, but we could not access the previews due to the blockage of Flickr by our ISP. Unbelievable!

Just wondering, until when this nonsense is going to continue?

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Communicate from the heart

It’s a fact, many brands and tag lines get word-by-word translations. Imagine having Nike’s “Just do it” translated into Arabic? Now think about what that would mean, it’d turn into such an offensive tag line instead of being a catch phrase. And otherwise is true too. Some phrases exist in both English and Arabic languages. Interestingly Mobinil a telecomm operator in Egypt has got it right with their tag using two equivalent phrases as their catch lines.

In English: Communicate form the heart

In Arabic: ????? ?? ?????

The two are so different in meaning even though they are nearly word-by-word translations.

In English: It’s about Sincerity and Passion.

In Arabic: It’s an S-lang phrase, used when spending on something accessible and easy to purchase in a way it could be taken for granted. Turned into text and formal, it is talking sincerely and freely all the way from deep down.

Although I feel there has been a mix up somewhere, I could still give it a plus. But still, the identity has a different taste in English, deeper in Arabic.

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Creative, the noun

A word we all hear dozens of times a day if not more. This very adjective is a real pain when it comes to dealing with clients who’ve worked with traditional Advertising agencies. They refer to whatever visual as the “Creative”. Been around that for longer than five years, every agency I worked at followed that too. Semantics can really become annoying when they make communication stickier than it is.

I’m not sure if this is the case worldwide, whenever a User Interface is done and shown to a client, the feedback comes back in the form of “Creative” was right to the point, go with it, or an e-mail with the subject “Re Creative”, “we need some changes”.

I believe it’s been years and years now, web business is not equal to Advertising business. The process ain’t the same, the aesthetics’s of a website is not the only creative part.

So what I’ve got from the noun “Creative” from clients’ marketing departments is whatever you show them that is visual. So a snapshot of an interface is a “Creative”. Any visual be it an interface or even a photo they’d call it “Creative”. The same old “Creative” I used to hear when I worked as a Graphic Designer for Print. It’s for Web and it ain’t only the pretty pictures, it’s annoying.

Creative is copy, graphics and aesthetics, interaction, web branding, and definitely every effort put into the creative process of achieving a website’s purpose.

According to Wiktionary:

1-a person directly involved in a creative marketing process: He is a visionary creative. 2. the product of a designer directly involved in a creative marketing process: Have you finished the creative for next week’s email campaign?

And the plural form of creative:

A series of products or the collective products of a designer or designers directly involved in a creative marketing process: The design team has completed the creative for next month’s multi-part ad campaign; I’ve included in my portfolio all the creative I’ve completed in my five year design career.

So Creative is Graphic Design, man!

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The Cloud

You’ve heard it hundreds of times, read it thousands of times, that banking system in “The Cloud”, this music store in “The Cloud”. That’s how generally the geek-cool guys call Web Services, I agree, it’s so obvious, but if you’re a Web Enthusiast and work in the field, cloud looks like a stupid idea, think about it, what is intangible for most geek-cool guys on podcasts and interviews is your daily bread and butter, you touch it everyday, so it is tangible to you, cloud?

Yet another name, “In the air”. Like it? I don’t find it cool at all. It’s not like web developers would call OS clients and apps as “On the ground” apps or “Underground” or some.

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On Salesmanship

One of the roles I ignored and thought will never be my job at any point is Sales, I always assumed and imagined myself a bad sales person, non-communicating in a business sense, thought I could only make it into technology and design talk. During the time we launched dots and lines ’till the day, many of those fears disappeared, my tech-talk got translated into business talk more often until I’ve reached to the point where I’m doing more of Account Servicing than Technical & Actual Web Work. A complete transition.

Working in a web-startup or better called a small-sized Web agency gets you doing more than just design/development. More of business development and more of phone calls than e-mails. More of face-to-face meetings than a hidden e-mail shot and an online instant-messaging session. More of traveling. More of moving and dynamism, less time in front of code, more in front of Word and Outlook. Less design blogs reading, more News and industry following.

The hot seat is no more your station seat, it’s the presentation seat that gets you sweating. Music is distracting when you’re thinking of a way to craft the proposal that sells, the same music could be inspiring while designing, you stop staying awake ’till late browsing new stuff and doing geeky work cuz you’re gonna’ have to meet a client at 9AM sharp!

And the most painful: You gotta’ shave everyday, you never know when a client’s gonna’ call for a meeting. Compare to time when you’re just a designer at your seat, disconnected from the rest of the first life. It’s really amusing thinking about such stuff, so not melting.

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Sticky Communications pt1

“Information has a sticky nature”, one of the few statements I remember from my final year “Technology Management” subject at college. It’s brighter and brighter everyday that goes by and it keeps getting clear to me how right that statement was.

Another touchy and tangible aspect of communications and information delivery is “Credibility”. Sticky nature of Information added to Credibility measures makes a combination of skewed and distorted messages. Leading to what I call “Sticky Communications”.

Deals could be sealed by Credibility, Proposals get accepted and signed based on the right information, yet the Sticky Communications keep businesses moving forward.

One of the toughest issues to face while running a startup is maintaining credibility, telling your story right, showing your edges, but the questions that pop into minds are: Why should I believe you? Is this another new sales person on the block? Well, everybody’s outsourcing, are you another services sales shop? But, who are you?

So we keep on talk-shop. And talk is cheap. So the time comes to prove what you’ve been claiming by showing current/past work. No matter how good the work is, the image is “New”, your portraying a “Freshy”, a “Junior” in the business block. Which in special cases is a plus. When it comes to Account servicing and heavy clients, that means you are not credible, nor capable of keeping up. Not forgetting sustainability and reliability.

You’re great, I love your ideas, your people sound so fine, but how can I assure that you’re going to exist next year?

Passing the Credibility trap can be tricky, hard to beat and tiring. Time, Achievements, Testimonials & Salesmanship gets it closer to happening until it happens. So you’re the hot guy with hot services out there, how can you Inform? It’s sticky! Hard to transmit new services, new models of servicing and new solutions.

It’s obvious, obvious and ordinary needs are justified and understood. Thus, not that sticky. When it comes to complicated solutions and new services that are being injected to a market or a need has been calling for, that’s the time when stickiness of Information stands out and shows how big of an obstacle it is.

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Two third of Mobile TV subscribers are Men

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.

According to ComScore :

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.

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Mecom exhibition, an Etisalat vs. du show down

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 24^th and 25^th–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.

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100% Secure Trading on Souq

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.

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