Pro is softer than the down-to-earth MacBook

Spilt coffee on my little white MacBook and had to turn it to the service center for a checkup, it wouldn’t power on. Me need a machine to work on, so I ran to Jumbo and got me a MacBookPro and thought I’d spare the white little thing for another use. Shocked by how delicate the Pro is. I’d throw my MacBook in my car, carry it with a little portfolio and a notebook for meetings, the Pro is not made to be used that way, I thought it’d be tougher and had to take less care of it, it just ain’t.

Sure I get to have better performance, specially when connected to an external display, one other thing I missed on when purchasing the Pro is that screen is Liquid looking and not Glossy like my little white beauty, it’s heavy, okay it’s got the multi-touch trackpad, but really, not so satisfied so far. I sold my MacBookAir a week after getting it, think I might do the same with this Pro Heavy and Bulky, I just don’t feel mobile with it or maybe I’d get used to it?

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CRM Hunt

As a team grows the needs for organized reporting & documenting rises higher than ever before, adding more work and less time in hand it’s a great deal of challenge to find a solution that works in a team environment. Now adding multi-platform workplace with mixture of PCs and Macs, the ad-hoc workflow becomes a disaster.

At dots & lines we’ve been looking for a suiting CRM for about a month now.

Our requirements:

• Contacts Management with E-mail client integration
• Calendars & Event Notes(calls, meetings, etc…)
• Leads, Prospects, and Opportunities Management
• Tasks & Project Handling & Reporting
• File repository

Being a Web Consultancy firm, first thing comes in one’s mind is, well, it has to be online, you know, the religion. But that was to an aim. No IT work, no Storage problems to be handled at our end, and best of all accessible through a Browser, no brainer out there. But we still evaluated that choice. The downsides of online apps are:

• unnecessary traffic & Imagine sharing a file in the same office would require a round trip to a server in the cloud and back
• the limitations in Filesize in uploads(it’s really a headache using another app for file handling and uploads)

But then again, it’s online, so it’s fun and natural to us.

Evaluating our choices, note that we’re looking for a subcription based service where we do not need to install any application nor in office or on our online servers.

So the obvious HighRise came first, since it is in the same circle of our interests, but then it has to be working side by side with BaseCamp for it to form a minimal CRM. It’s 37Signals thingy that made us first think of it, the developer mind.

But then thinking about the users who will be using these apps, not so geeky and not so all jazzed up with whatever the Blogosphere knows, Sales people who want to sell. So we tried out SalesForce, being it the dominant subsription based CRM (Credibility in the Enterprise world). We tested the app for about a month with the demo versions, not so bad, with a few tweaks it could become something that we could customize. Neat! We had options, unlike BaseCamp & Highrise.

While we’re still on the looks, I just remembered Microsoft’s Dynamics; Hosted Solutions, and they’ve got their CRM ported there too, now that’s an important one to check, waiting for the trial version to be enabled to us. Since I looked at the Enterprise Market(don’t get me wrong, these solutions are for SMBs too but by the Enterprise leaders), even SAP has an on-demand CRM service, getting interesting. We’re still in the looks, had a good experience with a CRM of choice?

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Classic/Traditional/Oldschool Marketers Revisited

The latest article at AMEInfo Digital Marketing column sheds light on Online Advertising once again. Mohd Itani points five key reasons why marketers do not go online, while this is the second time I see this, as I’ve seen it before with the same tone and kindda’ close points here(couldn’t find Duri AlAjrami’s article on Arabian Business), I still think it’s a matter of Educating clients with possibilities as Agencies usually really exaggerate on facts and results achieved before launching campaigns, obviously future attempts to go online with campaigns is going to be very debating.

My take, while I’ve written about it before in Arabian Business Portal/CampaignME, it’s about time marketers find out about Web Consultancies and Online Ad Consultancy before heading to Media Buying/Planning agencies. Doesn’t this happen in every other area of business? So should it happen to the Online side of the 360 sphere.

Problem is, Online has always looked cheap, not important, and the last piece of the whole jigsaw in the marketing elements/channels. Why has it become cheap, you ask? Previous industry first-entrants who rushed in the online boom went down and took the whole industry down with’em. That’s why. While all the agencies are trying to raise the quality, awareness, and effectiveness of everything online, radical thinking and bitching about the whole thing will never work again, once again, it’s about Educating and getting the name off the ground all over from the start.

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Microsite: Honda Legend

Microsites featured here are usually the hot ones, the ones that make you like the cars for it, but Honda gets it really wrong with a lower than average microsite for Honda Legend ‘07.

2008 is going be the year Honda Legend hits back in the UAE market after being discontinued for more than five years. So it is going to be an important year for the Legend, such a car.

As for the website, nothing new at all in terms of interaction or anything creative at all. Seems like it’s been a while most of the car microsites come in black and shades of gray and implement the same navigation actions and presentation styles. Boring.

No Music? Unpleasant hover sounds. Intro video is really low-res. Lower than average work.

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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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300, the truth

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.

Here’s one of my favorites, Spenta Productions | THE TRUTH BEHIND 300 by Cyrus Kar

On another note 7days has an interesting survey on the matter too.

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?

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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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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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e4all e-government magazine

Despite the “e” part in the name, e4all is “The official magazine of Dubai eGovernment”, it’s a monthly magazine highlighting the happenings in UAE’s e-government. I stumbled upon the magazine at an Enoc gas station on the way to Abu Dhabi, interestingly it was given to me for free, don’t get fooled by it being free, it’s an interesting read magazine.

It’s not a new one, it’s been there since 2003 and published 63 issues. Very informative! Get to know the new electronic services(I hate words that start with “e-”, except for e-mail) that UAE government offers.

In this month’s issue they uncovered several site redesigns and new websites featuring AbuDhabi.ae that is an ultimate gate to everything Abu Dhabi in terms of interaction with government. What is more interesting to me is how usable the website and its content are, neat!

Check e4all out for yourself, it comes in two languages: Arabic and English. A short one.

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ImageShare?

ImageShare ads are everywhere in Dubai starting with Dubai Transport taxis to Billboards. They were there in Gitex too. I didn’t care about it much until my late visits to Dubai, It’s still there. That’s a lot to spend on ads for an online service offline. So for the first time I visit ImageShare website to know what exactly this is about. They mention 1GB storage and a personal website on their ads. And all I thought was that they do that for free!

Ads kept on emphasising on “don’t just take photos…. share photos!” but I don’t see any shared photos!

Now I didn’t dig deep in the service’s website and their business model, logged in as an end user who just saw an ad and logged on their website while thinking of Flickr, PhotoBucket, and the rest. Makes sense?

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