For Whom The Toll Bills

So Dubai's Roads & Transport Authority is introducing the much-awaited and suspiciously regarded Salik toll system next month. The system is based on RFID technology and will charge 4Dhs (a tad over a dollar) each time you cross the popular Garhoud Bridge or pass Mall of the Emirates on the Sheikh Zayed Road. Your Salik tag is stuck to the windscreen and automatically deducted when you pass the charge point and can be recharged by credit card, at ATMs, over the Web and so on. The application form's finally available online, by the way!

All pretty advanced stuff. And by no means a bad thing if it reduces congestion and accidents - although according to media reports, Dubai Police have reservations about the system and its implementation.

It took a wife to pose, with the irrefutable power of female logic, the question I hadn't thought of at all: "How will you know what your balance is?"

How indeed. If you let your tag run out and pass a charge point, it'll cost you Dhs50 - so you really don't want to let that tag lag. The good news is that you get an SMS when your account's running low, according to the RTA, and you can also query your balance with an SMS. And if you recharge within 48 hours of the offence, you'll get let off.

All of which is reassuring. But there's a lot of technology going on in there, from the RFID scanners to the core IT system to the financial management software to the SMS gateway that will manage tens of thousands of messages a day. Add in a couple of million of those messy, organic carbon-based life forms that appear to exist purely to get around, muck about with or otherwise frustrate grand schemes like this and I think that we might all be in for some fun here.

Summer surprises indeed!!!

The Tide of Evil

The summer is upon us and the relentless tide of infinite-eyed, grinning evil is around the corner.

Meanwhile, the Modhesh Friends' Club has been announced: up to 300 lucky children between the ages of 3 and 12 will be able to, for a fee of just Dhs 1,000, take part in summer activities and 'edutainment' thanks to the team at the Dubai Shopping Festival. From June 24 to August 24, kids will be looked after from 10am to 4pm. Parents can register children by supplying two photographs and a passport copy. Passport copy? Are they for REAL?

Yes! They are! The passport copy, says the DSF press release, is required for age verification purposes. They're obviously worrying that people like me will sneak in by wearing short trousers. Or perhaps that the under threes will creep in and bully the older kids.

Whatever. Let's not be mean-minded. I'm certainly looking forward to seeing a lot more of our plucky little yellow friend over the summer to come. It's filling my heart with stuff already.

Pirates Waive the Rules

I've always loved that headline: it was above the first piece I ever filed in a publication, a column in Arabian Computer News - back in 1986, would you believe it.

Showtime TV has called for content piracy to be eradicated in the Middle East according to Arabianbusiness.com, that most wonderful of Middle East business focused websites. With Showtime and Orbit having a massive vested interest in the cessation of the widespread satellite TV piracy in the region, you'd have thought they'd have made a damn sight more fuss about it years ago: we were working on (successful, natch) campaigns, for the BSA, to change the region's intellectual property (IP) laws so that the ICT industry in the region could survive. I can't say that Showtime et al have been anything like as active or inventive - and calling on regional governments to do something that's in your unilateral interest is something we learned (many, many years ago) simply won't work.

What fascinates me, he who is to be moderating a session on broadband adoption at next week's Media and Telecoms Convergence Forum in Amman, is that the TV companies have absolutely nothing to sell the telcos. The telcos desperately want ready made streams of content to make their DSL offerings relevant and to build 'value for money' bundles for subscribers. The TV companies want to sell content to subscribers. But in the Middle East, the TV companies have got no reason to trust telcos to become their delivery platform and the telco's can't sell subscribers something they're already getting for free. It just ain't happenin'...

Sure, content piracy in the region has got to end. What I think might be interesting is if it ends because nobody wants the pirate content as a conseqence of our already finding something much more interesting, relevant and vibrant - the content we create for ourselves.

Will Web 2.0 rule? Or will we all troop obediently back to Desperate Housewives and game shows at $20 a month?

Youth Has its Fling

I spent half my weekend moderating a one-day seminar on entrepeneurship held by the Dubai branch of AIESEC, which is an international student body (well, ‘The international platform for young people to discover and develop their potential’). Because one does these things occasionally.

The aim of the seminar was to bring together students from across the UAE, give them some pointers, guidance and ideas on entrepreneurialism and then get them to work together in teams to present an entrepreneurial idea that mapped to one of a number of available themes. The teams were then to give a two minute elevator pitch and a panel of judges drawn from both academia and the real world would then award one group. These would qualify for the ‘Company’ training course held by INJAZ, an NGO that’s part of Junior Achievement Worldwide.

The INJAZ course is really cool: in 15 weeks, students work with mentors from the private sector to set up their own company, from honing the initial idea through building the business plan to incorporating and running it. At the end of the process they can liquidate it (if, of course, it gets that far!!) or keep it running. 20% of students that take this course go on to become entrepreneurs (compared to 3 or 4% of students on average) and 60% go on to take upper management positions in their careers. So it would appear to be working and even worthwhile.

I was amazed at the standard of work done by the AIESEC team running the event. It was evident that a lot of really strong team-work had gone into it and the way in which they worked together was truly exceptional. At their age I was still playing with girls and synthesisers, inserting anything rumoured to screw you up into my body and generally sticking two fingers up at anyone that I thought would be shocked. These guys were 10 relative years older than me. I found myself wondering how they’d have reacted to meeting young snotty, the 19 year old Alexander. I rather think they’d have tutted pityingy and offered me some money for a coffee before walking on to their meeting with a group of interested VC funds.

And then the student groups attending the event not only listened politely to the presentations and the panel session, but asked the panellists questions that reflected evident interest in the whole thing before they went off and worked together, never having met each other before, coming out of the two-hour workshop having worked effectively as teams to produce presentations that had ideas behind them and that were presented creatively. I’ve worked with teams of PR people that have had 3-5 years of practical work experience that couldn’t do that.

A heartening, great and (nobody that knows me will believe this) humbling day. If I missed the air of rebellion and the whiff of the tear gas being used to break up the groups behind the barricades, at least I tried my best not to show it.

New Lows - No. 462 in a Series

Today's New Low comes from the Yahoo.com front page, which slops up 'Grilling Without Fear' as its newest question-led invitation to interact with the click monitors. Yes! Yahoo! can show you how to light, maintain and manage a barbecue as well as cook food on it without causing any kind of major nuclear accident, destroying any major cities or, God forbid, undercooking some chicken and wiping out your family.

It's gone too far. Whatever will they think of next? Safe flossing? Coping with that Martini (a guide to drinking a Martini without killing yourself on the cocktail stick)? Walking to the bathroom?

We've got to get over this spate of dumb and redundant questions intended to make us click from curiosity. Does it work? Who knows? Do you?

Fi Masafi?

Masafi has done it again: another brave marketing move that simply provokes admiration: it's rebranded and brilliantly, too. Cleaner, fresher logo colours, smarter packaging, lighter and 'bluer' boxes and bottletops.

Sadly, the website at the time of writing still carried the old brand, so I can't simply share the digital delights of the new Masafi - undoubtedly the leading bottled water brand in the Emirates where bottled water is consumed in vast quantities and at incredible prices - a 1.5 litre bottle of Masafi still costs less than 20 cents.

What's impressive about the Masafi rebrand is that the company had no need to rebrand at all: there was no new challenger brand, no major change in the market. Its series of fruit juices had just been launched, a run of flavoured water products just rolled out: the core brand was as safe as houses. Brilliant, really.

During my brief time joining the evil Tim Burrowes on Dubai Eye Radio's weekly media chucklefest The Editors, we talked to Masafi marketing man Tarek Megahead. Tim chatted away to him, pronouncing his name 'MegaHead' as in MegaTop or MegaByte.

During a break, the poor man implored Tim: 'It's pronounced Me Garhed, not MegaHead!'

Bucket, bouquet. Whatever. One of Dubai's few deserved MegaHeads!

School bus leaves girl home alone

A school bus yesterday dropped off a child at her home, but her mother wasn't in so the girl knocked on neighbours' doors until the watchman took her in and called her mother. The mother hadn't known the child would be back early because it is exam week here in the Emirates.

This was Emirates Today's front page splash today. Honest. See for yourself here.

Control of the media in the 'Internet age'

I thought this was interesting enough to depart from the normal 'amused' intent of this simple little blog for a few moments and commend Sheldon Rampton's thought provoking update of Chomsky et al's work on media manipulation to you. Sheldon outlines the parlous state of media today and wonders if Web 2.0 will help. You'd hope so, wouldn't you?

In 1928, my old mate Edward Bernays wrote: "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."

Bernays also wrote: "There are invisible rulers who control the destinies of millions. It is not generally realized to what extent the words and actions of our most influential public men are dictated by shrewd persons operating behind the scenes.”

Given that they've had 80 years to get it right since Eddie Bernays first penned those increasingly famous words, you would be forgiven for wondering if the age of social networks, citizen journalism and all else that is Web 2.0 can survive the ministrations of the evil manipulators intact... the evidence is already starting to build that they're at the gates.

The PR Watch article is here if you would like to read it: http://www.prwatch.org/node/6068

Flipped off

7Days reported yesterday on the Brit who was pulled over by Dubai's Finest and given a dressing down. As the boys in green left him he flipped 'em the digit, an action which has resulted in his getting a month in jail to be followed by summary deportation.

I do not believe he wanted to do that.

We have, all of us, had moments out here when the desire to display a number of fingers has overwhelmed us. To be honest, it's a miracle there haven't been more chainsaw massacres, especially for anyone that deals with HSBC, SEWA, the bloke that goes round the back to collect the parcels at the Post Office, the gang of murderous-looking Bashi Bazouks that work for the satellite company we use and the large number of other functionaries, officials and dignitaries that exist to frustrate us in myriad new and wonderful ways as part of our progress through each new and sunny day.

Of course, everything comes in batches. So you can guarantee that the Saturday round of chores that starts with a truck driver trying to kill you then moves on to a lost parcel at the post office, segues into having to resubmit your tenancy contract six times until the sulky, greasy-haired dwarf from hell behind the counter finally nods wordlessley and condescends to take your money, moves on to a good punch-up with the security guard at the supermarket who wants to staple your bags and then tape up your pockets in case you turn out to be part of a gang of international Snickers bar thieves and finally results in being pulled over by a couple of coppers who seem to have an itch to scratch.

When this happens, as inevitably it will, then I can only give one piece of advice. Keep your hands in your pockets. That way, the worst rap you'll get is for playing with yourself.

Murder Mile

People used to call it 'Murder Mile' because of the accident rate, but of recent years it's become too much of a car park for there to be any serious accidents. And now they powers that be have shut the road between Dubai and Sharjah and installed a couple of sneaky and highly disruptive diversions as work starts on a new six-lane underpass to replace the infamous bottleneck that is the Galadari Roundabout/Al Mulla Plaza underpass/overpass system.

Every road out of Dubai was blocked tonight. Every possible snicket and witty little short cut was jam packed with advantage-seeking optimists. The new Business Bay Bridge had become the Business Bay Tailback. Even my beloved two minute dune drive was littered with people who'd never taken their 4WDs in dunes before and so who were bogged down to the bonnets in the lovely soft, creamy sand that the recent hot weather has brought us. And no, I didn't stop and tow them out. I usually would. But by the time I got to them tonight, I was only fit to call down a plague upon all their houses.

I can only hope that the traffic dynamic adapts to the new system and settles down quickly. I never thought I'd actually come to appreciate Murder Mile!!!

Save the Fish

I wonder if I was the only person struck by the sheer incongruity of the Emirates Today Saturday Splash this week. 'Save the Wadi fish' certainly falls into line with the paper's hard-hitting campaigning style, but you would be forgiven for wondering if it's really front page headline news - particularly as the story, by two senior reporters, lacks much detail on the problem that requires a call for the salvation of our fishy friends.

The wadi tracks, including now the famous and much-beloved Hatta track, are being turned into black-top. Few of the 'great' tracks remain. This has resulted in a new level of access to wadis by the public and, as can be seen in Wadi Warrayah, this has meant the devastating pollution of the few wadis that haven't been pumped dry by farmers. That pumping has also resulted in the widespread proliferation of filthy, oily pumps leaching hydrocarbons into the wadi beds. Most of the wadi pools that I know of are now dried out.

The entire nature of the magical ecosystem that has built up around the unique wadi watersystems of the UAE has been changed fundamentally by unplanned and unregulated human activity and that devastating change continues unchecked. Unstudied, uncelebrated and unloved, the wadis are dying by the day.

And they're worrying about the fishies...

The Deal

Giving a talk to a group of American MBA students last week (because I get myself involved in odd things occasionally, that's why) and a lively Q&A was had by all. One question really hit me, though, and has had me thinking since. It was about The Deal.

You see, The Deal used to be nice and simple for people coming to the Gulf. You sign up for a couple of years, come out here and set up home and then you either go back with a little money saved or you stick around for a while longer. You're effectively transient and on the hog's back financially, so a lot of things that might matter if you considered yourself here for keeps are not really germane to you. You know, civil liberties, your status as a resident as set against being a citizen, whether the law applies to you or is applied fairly to you. All those questions that really don't come up if you're just keeping your head down and making a few sovs in the time you've got. Some people have a plan, others just keep going for as long as it seems to make sense. But we all know we're going to go home or move on at some stage.

But now there's a new generation of people coming out here that appear to have signed up for a New Deal. For a start, there's a lot of folks that seem to think they're moving out to Brentford-in-the-sun (and so, in so many ways, they are!). Which is all very well, except this may look like Milton Keynes and it might have all the facilities of Cleethorpes and more - but it is, underneath the sparkly veneer, a very, very foreign country indeed.

The mass of incoming people ('newbies' if you want to be a jerk about it) who have little idea of the mores, culture or social setup here is considerable - certainly enough to outnumber any longer term residents, traditionally the people that comprised the informal suport network for new residents that helped to show them the ropes and mentored them for those important first few weeks. So now an increasing number of people are arguably finding out about basic stuff the hard way - something that is, incidentally, avoidable. Alongside all the breathless promotion there could be at least an attempt to build a little cultural awareness. An informational film played to incoming passengers may be an idea instead of a mindless flick about The Mad Maggot, for instance. Or a leaflet at immigration. Cost - little. Impact - large.

And then there's the other part of The New Deal. If you have bought a house or apartment here and you're set up for life - if your only property is here and not back home, if you've put down your roots here, so to speak; then what is the deal? You're raising your children here, you're committing for the longer term.

What then happens in terms of the relationship between the UAE's people and you, the new property owning resident. Where are we going with the relative status of people and addressing the different expectations of people regarding systems of governance and the place of the individual within that system?

That was the question I was asked and for which I have no answer. You have to admit, it's an interesting one!

Ghulam's Surprise

Mr Ghulam is our 'regular' taxi driver, we've got his mobile and book him direct, an arrangement which has all sorts of advantages to it - including not having to deal with call centres and an ever-changing stream of oddballs who've been here for two weeks and don't know where anything is. Ghulam's been living here for something like 30 years and remembers back to legendary times such as when people living in Dubai used to go out to paint the town red in Sharjah (believe it or not, that's true).

Incidentally, a digression here, but taking a taxi if you're going out and having even a couple of drinks is vital in a place with a zero tolerance of drink driving. Quite apart from your own attitude to the consequences of your irresponsiblity should someone get hurt by you, if you have an accident of any sort and have alcohol in your blood, your insurance is invalid - and that includes paying the Dhs 150,000 ($US 41,000) diya, or blood money, if someone's killed - regardless of whose fault it was.

Mr. G has just come back from a long leave in Pakistan this week, so my trip into town was a chance to catch up on the things he's missed while he's been away, like the new law that will see him having his car impounded for speeding over 60km/h above the limit. He'd also missed the opening of the Business Bay Bridge (which appears to have been renamed 'Business Bay Bridge' at the last moment because all of the original signposts said 'Ras Al Khor Crossing') and so I took him over it, a slightly long way around but I thought he'd be pleased at having another route in. I have to confess I enjoyed his wide-eyed surprise at the massive, 6-lane crossing and huge, and growing, road networks around it.

But what really blew him away, and had him cackling delightedly for the rest of the trip, was that in the time he'd been on leave, Dubai had built a new bridge and a road network.

The Times they are a changin'

The Times is to be published in the Middle East with an edition printed in Dubai and circulated around the region, reports Rob Corder on arabianbusiness.com. The ads will be local, the editorial will come from London. One can only assume that the content will be the same as the London edition.

Which does rather leave me wondering why you'd bother...

IVR Telephone Phrase Translations

IVR, interactive voice response, is the first stage of today's call management system. You have to do the IVR before you get to a human being. You know, the 'Press one for a tape of how much we love you, press two for a tape of how much we value you," and all that stuff.

How much IVR you have to do depends on many things. I have a personal theory, that IVRs are like cats - they know people who hate them and so jump on their laps and knead their tummies with their claws.

You might find some of the phrases used hard to understand, so I have compiled the following guide to some oft-used IVR system and call centre phrases. I do hope you find them useful.

"Your call is important to us"
We couldn't give a tinker's cuss about your call. You're a statistic and, frankly, until you're resolved you're an inconvenience to us. Resolve quickly and we look good. Stay on hold and you'll lengthen the stats to resolution. Now we're going to play you Celine Dion music so you get out of our system fast and go back under whatever little rock you came out from.

"We are busy helping other customers..."
The two operators who are on duty are actually talking about who was the best Bond right now so they're letting the IVR and hold sytems take the flack. Najla thinks it was Sean Connery but Ahmad thinks it is Daniel Craig. Personally I'd go with Connery but Craig's an interesting contender, although I'm not supposed to know what they're talking about. Incidentally, Najla and Ahmad are getting on really well and have applied for night duty because then they can be truly alone and, well, who knows what might happen while you're being put on hold then. By the way, the 'busy helping others' line is meant to make you feel guilty about having your own needs so that you're happier to put other people first. That's OK, isn't it?

"Is there anything else I can do to help you?"
I've failed to do anything for you, really. I can't access the screen I need to because the system's down, but I'm trained to end all calls this way and I do so slavishly just so that it ends our call together by putting some marzipan pink pixies on the icing of the cake of your impotent rage and frustration.

"This is Adix"
We've got an old voice mail system which nobody's ever even tried to customise.

"This call may be recorded and used for training purposes"
If you honestly think we're going to expose new staff to the kind of abuse, irritation and bellowing rage that our customers constantly are driven to by our incompetence, then you've got another thing coming. Cripes, we'd never get the call centre staffed if they actually knew what a bitch-slapping they'll be getting once they've been through training. Imagine! We'd have to outsource to India or something. Sheesh! Training purposes my ass!

"Due to an unprecendented level of calls there may be a short delay answering your call"
Weeeel that's not strictly true. Because we understaff the centre (those seats cost money, bub) and depend on the IVR to take on 80% of the numbnuts incoming, we're going to leave you in the-mobile's-burning-my-ear limbo for about 45 minutes. The really, really cool part is what you don't know yet: at the end of the wait we're going to play you an engaged tone then drop the line. Because we've got calling line identification we'll know to route your next call down to dumb Zaki, the new kid with spots and the speech impediment who we're trying to get sacked because he tried it on with Amna from loans.

"The person at extension f.o.u.r zero eight is not available. Please leave a message"
Honestly, we don't like to make too much fuss about this, but 408 is actually a phone in the canteen which we took the ringer out of. We took the speaker out of it, too, so nobody ever listens to the messages, we just clear the voice mail system every time the red light comes on.

"The voice mailbox for extension f.o.u.r zero eight is full. Please call later"
We forgot to clear that red light last time we went for a smoke.

Golly - it's de little people!

Croikey! We have been tipped off by The Tipperary Voice, which reports on the multi-million visitor website irelandseye.com, which has set up a secret Leprechaun spotting webcam in a field overlooking a fairy ring in the Glen of Cloongallon near Thurles in the County Tipperary. Connected through a mobile 'phone, the hidden camera has driven traffic to the point where, last St. Patrick's Day, the site's server manfully tried to cope with over a million page views then crashed. The culprits, apparently, were de Yanks: according to irelandseye.com's John Murphy (quoted, you understand, by de Voice), Americans "have a distorted view of what leprechauns are and think that shamrocks have four leaves."

The Internet is a wonderful place.

Wasps in a jam jar

I was speaking at the Cards Middle East event yesterday, telling a small audience of bankers why it's not a smart idea to shake up your customers like wasps in a jam jar every time you talk to them or deal with them. How ironic, then, to get home and find that our Visa card hadn't been debited for the airline tickets that will transport us magically to the UK this summer. Well, at least we couldn't see it on the statement. But then two of our statements are missing and the bank has been failing to send us a fax of them for the past two weeks. So it might be in one of those. Or in the new one that hasn't come yet. Or somewhere.

So I call the call centre and get the usual buffoon. This time he starts the call by asking me security questions. I answer three of them, but by the fourth question it's all become too much for me.

"Hang on, pally. I've just entered my unique and hardly memorable ten digit personal banking number and my six digit personal banking security PIN code number identifier to get through here, so why are you asking me security questions?"
"What is your card limit sir?"
"I've told you my PO Box number, my date of birth and the name of the company that I work for. So why don't you answer my question?"
"What is your card limit sir?"
"I don't know. I don't care. Why are you asking me?"
"What is your card limit sir?"
"Are you seriously telling me you're going to deny me service if I don't answer you?"
"What is your card limit sir?"

I swear it's true.

We eventually get beyond this to the point where I get to ask about the missing transaction. Give him the date and value. Nope, he says. Absolutely not. Not there. No such transaction. Nothing for Emirates, nothing for that amount, nothing for that date.

Puzzled, I call Emirates who are, as usual, great. The woman explains (patiently, given that she's obviously talking to a twit) that you can't issue an e-ticket without the Visa transaction being validated and that yes, I hold two valid tickets to fly. I understand that, it's just that the bank swears the money hasn't come out. She's patient but insistent. Perhaps I might like to talk to my bank again?

Perhaps I might. I call them back. A long conversation. I point out that I hold the tickets so the transaction must have gone through. Besides, Sarah's reconciled the Visa card by now. The money must have been debited, although it's hard to be precise as there are so many missing transactions because of the statements we haven't got.

We're about an hour into the investigation by now and I'm reasonably wound up, teetering on the verge of an act of physical violence. The new drooling idiot in the call centre is still insisting that there is no transaction. I make him go over it time after time and then: "There's nothing there for that amount, Sir. Just two transactions on that day with Emirates each of which is for half the amount you have mentioned."
A pause, then I clearly hear him say, in a quiet voice, "Oh."

There's a long, murderous silence which I eventually broke. I shall spare you the rest, but it went something like this...

I've got a new idea for an advertisement for my bank to use. It's a picture of a customer, a picture of a call centre operator, a picture of a call centre operator and a picture of a customer, all side by side. Across them are the words 'Annoyed, Annoying, Annoying, Annoyed'.

I thought of some others, too, but they all use rude words. I'd be happy to share them if someone from the bank would like to give me a ring.

Eat this, sucker!

One of a number of interesting changes to take place hereabouts is the new Consumer Protection Law. A major move for the UAE, which has always cried 'laissez faire' when anything that could be considered bad for business has been suggested, the law insists on things like labels that tell consumers what's in a product and where it comes from. This is, one would conjecture, Not A Bad Thing.

A smart retailer, presented with the fact of the matter, would perhaps roll with the punch - welcome the regulation and even promise to exceed the regulatory requirement in the interests of consumers.

Not so local expat supermarket Spinneys, whose CEO (Mr. Johanned Hotlzhausen) reacted to Gulf News with the begrudging comment: "It's going to cost me money."

Poor darling. Really. But at least he's got consumers' best interests at heart, as his final quote in the Gulf News report demonstrates: "...if it's a law then we will have to adhere to that."

So it's no surprise to find, this weekend, a packet of Lebanese Sausages being labelled in a more fulsome way than ever before. What's surprising is that a) it happened so quietly and b) what's in them.

Lebanese, or sujuk, sausages are traditionally made from beef, with garlic, pepper and spice, including sumak, which gives them a deep purple-red colour and spicy taste. Chili is sometimes added to make 'hot sausage'.

Not when you buy them from a certain supermarket... Ingredients, as per the new super-duper labelling scheme, below:

Fresh beef, vinegar, seasoning, food colour (sodium chloride, sunset yellow E110, Carmosine E122).

Carmosine is a literal - it's carmoisine. And like sunset yellow (E110), it's bloody evil stuff.

E110, Sunset Yellow, is a synthetic dye derived from coal tar (creosote to you and me) and typically used in heated processed foods. It has a horrific list of potential side effects, particularly for children and is, in fact, not recommended for consumption by children in the UK.

E122, Carmoisine, is also a deeply suspect coal tar colour - and also known to cause adverse reactions in up to 25% of all toddlers.

In the 1980s, in the UK, a huge fuss centered around the publication of a book called E for Additives which listed these types of processed food additive chemicals, their origins (Cochineal, a popular red food dye, is made from beetle wings - Brown FK, used to dye electrically smoked kippers, is also derived from creosote - and there's plenty more where they came from - like E110 and E122) and their potential side effects. The reaction of revolted consumers and concerned parents created a new sense of responsibility among food companies and saw natual colours, preservatives and flavourings being used instead.

Insidiously, these chemicals are creeping back into our diets. At least the new law obliges retailers to tell people what they're eating. If you want to keep an eye out for more of this kind of thing, a good reference site is here.

No No Nokia!

This is all getting out of hand. Three colleagues have now rushed down to the shops and shelled out something like $900 for the new Nokia N95. One has had his first total system crash, one is barely able to make phone calls as she struggles to come to terms with her new and highly complex uber-gadget and one is evangelising it big time. No prizes for guessing who...

Yes, the insanely intrepid early adopter that is Pleon geek in chief Gianni Catalfamo, is already raving like a raving thing about the new multi-access, multi-capable platform that communicates in broadband, locates you like a cruise missile, speaks in tongues and not only makes toast but butters it, slathers it in jam and then eats it for you.

You've got to admire early adopters. There's something admirable about the way they fling themselves over the cliff edge first just to see what happens...

Meanwhile, those with high speed data connections (3G, I would suggest) and superior S60 platforms such as the svelte Nokia N73 might like to try playing around with Google Maps - Google Earth for the mobile! Point your mobile at: www.google.co.uk/gmm and enjoy!

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

I was going to let it go, honestly. I told myself I was a mean spirited old swine and that I had no right to laugh at the debate on fiction publishing in the UAE that takes up two glorious tabloid pages in today's Emirates Today. But then they went and quoted a fellow mean-spirited old swine and I gave in.

Nancy Collisson, proposed by the newspaper to debate against the motion 'The UAE is likely to develop a significant fiction publishing industry', is the author of the popular Mr Buffy series of colouring books which, we are told, 'tell the tale of an ex-pat cat making friends and a new home in Dubai'. One can only assume that John Le Carré wasn't available.

While generally supporting our Nancy's stand against the evils of censorship (set against the chap from Motivate, for the motion, who apparently thinks that 'censorship makes for great art' - the less said about that the better, I think), I was struck by her use of a quote from Juvenal (attributed by our Nance to Decimus which, although it is Mr. J's proper first name, is generally not a name wot he is usually called): "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?".

Nancy translates that as: "Who among us has the authority to decide what is to be read?", a slice of piffle that could not be further from the meaning or intention of the original - which has got absolutely nothing to do with reading, let alone the assignation of authority. Even someone who spent two years of Latin classes reading thrillers disguised as Latin text books by covering them in brown paper (I did, too) could tell that.

Juvenal was, in fact, asking "Who will guard against the guardians?", a completely different question that aims to question, even provoke, answerability in the leaders of a city state. Incidentally, a city state that Bad Boy Juvenal satirised mercilessly because he hated it with a passion. "Who could endure this monstrous city, however callous at heart, and swallow his wrath?" Juve baby asks us, in one of his kinder moments.

Pithy stuff, then, for the inhabitants of a city state to be reading over their coffees, but not quite what I think Nancy intended...

I am nowhere near so cynical, incidentally, as to propose an alternative motion: that the UAE has already developed a significant fiction publishing industry...

How to embarrass your telco

The Road and Transport Authority of Dubai, which is responsible for much of the development of the city's multi-modal transport system, has today announced a new SMS-based taxi ordering system.

Hurrah!

The new service will consist of numbered location boards around the city, under which the taxi-needy can stand, texting 4777 and the location board number. The taxi will then be dispatched to the given location.

This strange and Heath-Robinsonesque workaround would, of course, be rendered totally unnecessary by the availability of any location-based service from the telcos that are meant to be providing mobile services in the UAE. Location based services allow information to be provided contextually using the GSM cell location as a cue and are implemented in other world markets, where they enable systems such as automatic location checking for taxis or other delivery based services, location-specific information services and all sorts of wonderful things.

It's a step forward from calling up and telling them where you are. But only just. The RTA's got the right idea here and obviously isn't going to wait 25 years for the telcos to bridge the growing advanced services gap.

RTA 1 Telcos 0.

Does Du do it for you?

What, indeed, to Du?

Go to www.du.com. It's a reasonably cool and very fast (the world's fastest, apparently) WHOIS lookup site (A WHOIS lets you find out who owns which Internet website, so you type in the name of the site and the WHOIS returns who the owner and operator of the site are).

Or try searching for du in Yahoo! and you'll get, among other strange things, Ducks Unlimited, the North American waterfowl conservation site. This is a neat link as if you look up du in Wikipedia, you'll find that one of the many things it stands for is the name in New Caledonia for Sylviornis neocaledoniae - an extinct galliform bird.

Wikipedia also tells us that DU, du or Du also stands for:

• Data unit
• Delhi University
• Delta Upsilon
• Democratic Underground
• Depleted uranium
• Desktop underwriter
• Dhaka University
• Dial-up access
• Disney University
• Dobson unit
• Doctor of the University
• Doshisha University
• Drexel University
• Ducks Unlimited
• Duisburg (city code plate prefix)
• Duke University
• Duquesne University
• Durham University
• Hemus Air (IATA airline designator)
• University of Denver
• December Underground ( AFI's 7th studio album)

Which, honestly, all says more about the telephone company than I wanted to say in the first place. I'm still with etisalat, despite having had every intention of switching.

As the late, great Ian Dury tells us: what a waste.

Marmite

Marmite has produced a limited edition of 300,000 jars made using Guinness yeast. It tastes very nice indeed. Mildly curious as to how they make the stuff, after a lifetime eating it, I wandered onto the website. Because that's what the Internet is for.

Rarely has a site impressed me so much initially and then driven me so surely to rage. It's BLOODY annoying. There's no information there. Nothing. You can learn more about Marmite from Wikipedia. Which is a worry in itself.

The idea's smart. You either love Marmite or hate it, is the thinking - hence the whole themed campaign that Unilever (what, did you think it was home made or something?) has undertaken around the love it/hate it theme. So you have a site that's divided into love heaven and hate hell. Cool. Except that the concept is taken to its idiot extreme by a group of pony-tailed tossers who write 'copy for the kids' like this:

"Eat Marmite? You don't just want to eat it, you want to bathe in it, wallow in it like a hippo in mud, slather yourself from head to toe and wrap yourself in bread and butter... And you know what? That's fine. Just fine. Completely normal in fact..."

That's just a small taste. The site is unremittingly pointless. Here. You decide for yourself. Does going there just prove that it's a great idea? No, because it simply exposes more people to a negative and frustrating experience linked to the brand. Sure, use 'rich content' technologies to make your marketing point and even have a goof around with it to show that your brand is really hip - if you really must. But people want information from company websites before they want funky fun experiences - and if that informaton is simply not available, you're just going to tee them off...

Marmite website? Hate it.

Fair Game?

The Arabian Travel Market show has been thrilling visitors all week. Oh yes. However, few things have been more thrilling (no, not even the world's first Emirati space tourist) than seeing that weekly tabloid Xpress has run a piece, with no sense of irony whatsoever, on Zimbabwe's new tourist-grabbing scheme. Tourism there presumably needing a boost after all that farm burning stuff which the Western media made so much unnecessary fuss over.

"For the avid hunter there is no better feeling than taking down a lion in the wilderness of an African savannah," the Travel Round-Up piece gushes. Taking down? Taking down? It's got that lovely ring of yo mofo Tarantino to it, doesn't it?

It gets better. The piece quotes Gladys Dongo, Zimbabwe Tourism Authority marketing manager: "Few places in Africa can show you the big five (lion, elephant, water buffalo, rhinoceros and leopard) and even fewer will let you hunt them."

She obviously meant 'take them down in a murderous hail of hot lead and snuff them like the furry scum they are,' but was presumably being polite.

If the piece had you gasping in the face of its willingness to roll out a message that sharply smacks the arse of political correctness and sends it home without tea, the last paragraph will surely make your day. "Non-lethal hunts can also be arranged, where the captured live game can also be transported back to your country."

Very nice work. Should certainly get some good reader feedback...

UNESCO World Press Freedom Day

Today's Gulf News reports Egyptian journalist Howaida Taha was found guilty of 'harming the country's interests' by an Egyptian court and sentenced, in absentia, to six months imprisonment. Taha, who works for the Qatari Al Jazeera, is currently in Doha and can be expected to be staying there for some time to come.

Today is UNESCO World Press Freedom Day.

The timing. The irony.

Meanwhile, UNESCO interviews Ghassan Tueni: one of a number of features on its site today.

RIP Pandora

There are many wonderful things that the Internet brings us, but surely one of the most wonderful over the past year or so must have been Pandora. The idea was a brilliant one: select a band you like and, using an analysis based on a number of musical attributes, Pandora will play a stream of records from your band and similar types of music. Like Amazon's filters, you can select which tracks you like and don't like and Pandora will refine your stream until you get music that's pretty much bang on.

I found it a great way to listen to new music and found, and bought, quite a lot of music I wouldn't otherwise have been exposed to.

As of today, Pandora has been forced to suspend its service to anyone outside the USA, doing so by using your URL to determine you're not from the land of the free and the home of the brave. According to founder Tim Westergren, "We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that we must begin proactively preventing access to Pandora's streaming service for most countries outside of the U.S. It is difficult to convey just how disappointing this is for us."

Not to mention the rest of us. But the real losers in the long term are going to be the short-sighted yo-yo toting cretins behind the whole idiocy: the record companies. And I, for one, won't be sparing them many tears...

Worse? How can it get much worse?

The following is reproduced from the Arab Times in Kuwait via blogger Moocherx but I can't give you a direct link to the Arab Times piece as it has mysteriously disappeared from their online edition.

When things are bad, reflect that they could, indeed, be much worse...

‘Organless’ Indian tries suicide: The Asian man who cut his organ three weeks ago following a dispute with his wife who had allegedly informed him that she planned to divorce him and get married to another man tried to end his life by jumping from the third floor of the Adan Hospital, reports Al-Qabas daily. The man wanted to end his life after doctors informed him that they had failed to stitch his genitals back in place. The man who survived the fall is recuperating in the intensive care unit of the hospital. A case of attempted suicide has been registered against him.

The Fear Returns

Like the commercial frenzy that is the Christmas season, Dubai's summer season seems to get earlier every year. It's only the second of May and already the infinite-eyed yellow menace has popped up, specifically in today's Arabic language Al Ittihad newspaper. Worse, one's been spotted on Trade Center Roundabout. And that means we'll soon be seeing a great deal more of the little sucker.

Yes, it's Modhesh, the yellow jack in the box crossed with a mutant maggot. And you can bet your bottom dollar that he'll be popping into our lives with his unique blend of relentless, manic zeal for the next five months. Modhesh grinning satanically at us from every roundabout and pavement, filling the business sections of our newspapers, playing in bouncy kiddy-castle style videos every time we fly or take a taxi, leering out at us from a million handbills, advertisements and photofeatures.

It's not fair. It's not even officially summer. As everyone knows, it's only truly summer when Gulf News publishes a photo of a pigeon drinking from a tap...

Café Passé

She's done it again: Arab News' remarkable first lady of technology, Molouk Ba Issa, has once again filed a piece that is remarkably frank - particularly given the media environment in which she operates.

Sadly, this week she's documenting the parlous state of Internet Cafés in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province. As someone who has been following the Saudi Arabian ICT market on and off for something like 20 years (admittedly more off than on in recent years), I find it depressing reading. The Internet is a resource that many of us have come to see as critical and which we use extensively and thoughtlessley. Yet it is a resource that is apparently being effectively denied to people for no apparent technical or financial reason.

This next bit will delight colleagues used to my "I can remember when we had 8 inch floppy disks!" outbursts. Not.

During the first rush to the 'net, slightly late in the Middle East and taking place around the late 1990's, I found myself working with companies like Microsoft, Cisco and Intel to effectively 'evangelise' the new technology to an often very suspicious Middle East media.

I can't count the number of times we had the argument back then about the potential and likely benefits of Internet technologies compared to the possible downsides for the Arab World. The arguments were long, emotional and sometimes frustrating, a push and pull affair where the respect for tradition and strong moral values were sometimes visibly in conflict with the desire to succeed and move ahead.

Do try and take a look at Molouk's piece. Is this truly what happens when that argument is lost?