When it’s off, it’s jus’ off

You know it when you can’t get the best out of yourself, you know it when you keep on designing and never get satisfied with it. You know that you need a little change to get out of the daily routine and come out like fireworks. A muse? Something/someone/somewhere to inspire you? Someway to refresh that is.

It often happens when you’ve streamlined your processes, got your mind on reaching deadlines before time does, you lose some, and you win most of the time. Then you look back and see everything’s been going in an arranged circle, find out further, your social life goes the same way!

A lot has been written about how to keep yourself creative, motivated, and fresh all the time. But do you really need to read something about it? You know it when it happens to you, and you know exactly what is missing. All one needs is the first step in doing it and that’s the catch, one often gets tangled and caught up within his/her own traps, work, commitments, and different goals.

To me, it’s been about breaking free from all that, so hard to do. Now add a start-up-live to that and you’ll get a workaholic person.

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Windows to Mac migration, not so cool

Being a designer gets you facing a Mac everyday, but that’s only when you’re squeezing your right brain. Come left brain work and I always jumped on my Thinkpads. Finally made a reasonable decision of shifting my Workspace & daily uses including personal computing to my tiny MacBook. Never thought it wouldn’t be smooth, believe it, it’s not cool at all.

While I’m very well versed with Mac computing, I could get around doing anything and everything, but data migration between my Outlook to Entourage was not cool at all, syncing with my Mobile wasn’t pleasant as well.

Missing the red cursor on my Thinkpad

While having a bluetooth mighty-mouse on the MacBook is nice, not having the nipple mouse pointing is a huge drawback–You can’t use the mouse w/o leaving the keyboard! Not so cool!

A piece of software that I still miss is my old Winamp. Itunes sounds bulky to my taste, its got everything, but not all that I need in my face.

Word isn’t so cool as it is in Windows, briefs, proposals and other documents have to go around and be accessible by PC users, a huge problem to address, and nah, PDF doesn’t solve the problem, online solutions are cool, but still, they ain’t Word.

I’ve used everything else in Macs for a long time, but never used a Mac as a personal assistant and as my productivity machine, it’s been challenging so far, facing many compatibility issues, and expecting more, did I take a practical decision or just because clients like to see a nice piece of hardware while presenting? I’ll find that out as I go, hoping for it to work out, I still miss the nipple pointer and not having to leave the keyboard to move the mouse pointer.

Beauty comes first?

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Back, and to hell with not blogging

Whatever the reasons were behind stopping, well, what matters to me is that I’ll blog, but firmly standing behind this baby. Back in town n’ time to make up for the long time of slow posting and petit posts. Holla at me!

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The “O” factor in Online

The “e” era has long gone away, the era where every tom, dick, and harry came up with an electronic solution. The “e” became a suffix to every company that opened to do IT and come up with solutions. But only one name made it out of the “e” mirage, yup, the “e-mail”. Now the “O” factor or better yet put the “Online” era, well, that’s so old to talk about, but the x-point-”O” ,even that’s so old to talk about, but apparently in the M.E and specially in the UAE where we reside, the x-point-o’h and the family is yet to grow.

Using & Abusing the Uninformed

Remember the Over the hype post when I busted an outdated and a misleading article by ACN? It was back then when we fought over the acronyms and semantics. A year after that, we’re actually taking another step behind where actual/formal business announcements include the same scenario.

Well, I promised not to point fingers, so won’t go further on this, but as I said before, “Buzzwords and Acronyms won’t lead the Online industry anywhere but to the Dictionary“!

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A short silence until mid-august

As you’ve noticed I haven’t been posting regularly for the past month. I’ll continue a complete silence until mid-august when I’ll come back for more posts due to heavy work load and getting busier at dots and lines and the expansion that is in process.

When we come back, we’ll be talking a little about my first presentation to a group of VCs in Abu Dhabi for my first ever web project in a big scale. A lot more stuff related to SonyEricsson P1 and the unofficial website that we’ve built for it. All in the making.

Until then.

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It’s the holly 767

Not so big on such superstitious stuff, but today is 07/06/07, a year a go on 06/06/06 everyone went crazy for the 666 day, not forgetting the movie “The Omen”. Next month on the same day it’s going to be 777. Yea you could take it as a lucky day if you believe in 7 as a magical number. So many people are getting married on that day.

To me, after long debates with self and lots of research, I’ve come to a decision on starting a book on Mobile Web Design/Advertising/Marketing. I know many have been written already, it keeps on getting hotter as an industry n’ I believe I’ve got things to add. I’m going for it, what do you think?

Got a tiny outline ready to show publishers, think you can help or have ideas? Please do tell, I’d love to hear’em.

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4AM at Office

This quite reminds me of a sample trance song that used to come with Fruity Loops — Tranced @4AM. Seems like the first time I ever stay at office till this late. Feels really quite as all the neighbors have been gone 10 hours ago. Can’t think of anything but a worm bed with a soft pillow. A hot shower would do too.

Whether in college days or during freelancing staying up all night was a mastered habit, now, feels like a disease. A habit loved to have is now a disease and abnormality.

The plus side, you aint got no phone calls to attend to, nor emails that need your priority intention. Just you and the work. No distractions.

And you’d look zombie.

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Your fav search engine is a Currency Convertor too!

As odd as it gets, while randomly got linked to a Google help page I came to this interesting find out, you can type 1 USD in AED in any Google search input and you can get the currency converted, better yet, you can even use it as a calculator, new to me, amazing stuff. I feel so old not knowing this earlier. Check it out here if you haven’t before.

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No more M$, it’s MS

Microsoft has always been marked as “Micro$oft” and usually as “M$” instead of “MS” in the blogosphere and most of the communities and non-formal press and articles. It used to make sense some years ago. But does it hold anymore?

Microsoft has started speaking “people”, cares a little more than average about user experience and its monopoly has kind of ended. It’s what you choose now a days, you ain’t got to be locked up with MS products, it’s open and up to you. Better OS, better Office pack, and a lot better products, yes that’s what they’ve been giving us recently.

So was it the licensing bit? Or just the fact that it used to be No.1 that all the haters bashed?

I don’t find it fair tagging Microsoft with $ anymore, it doesn’t hold anymore. You pay for what you get, and get what you pay for, these are the basis for your electronic life and work.

Thing is, the choice is yours. You don’t like Windows, use OSX or Linux, don’t like IE, go for Firefox. Hate Outlook?(I would doubt that anyone would hate outlook) get yourself scattered with a number of other apps. MSProject ain’t your style, get yourself something else. Pen & Paper are your limits, if you couldn’t find digital solutions, back to your notebooks and pencils.

Silverlight? Deepfish? All the new hot projects at live.com. C’mon that ain’t fair anymore!

It’s annoying to see MS written as M$ now a days. I believe it’s not fair to do that anymore.

Update: Okay so who’s eveil now? Check this.

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Traffic-Talk is always on

Old News that is, Dubai & traffic rush. Better yet, an older talk, the heat. “Oh man, crazy traffic, Good Morning!”, “Freakin’ hot, man, wassup?”. The usual ice-breakers. Everyday greetings. Share a cup of coffee or a smoke and you’re up for another Traffic talk.

More of the same, go for a meeting, you ain’t feeling good and not comfortable with the people around, well, throw in the Traffic talk, tension’s gone. You’re late for a social appointment, well, Traffic’s there for you. It just works!

Not in Abu Dhabi But wait, no parkings available! So when you reach that 8th or 12th floor and shake hands saying the usual ice breakers, don’t forget to throw in the Parking talk. It’s so much fun observing and using it. Evil.

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