Of ArabNet

I just thought I'd post a quick update about ArabNet - many others have posted a great deal more about the event than I could and probably made more sense, at that...

I went to the event with high expectations and they were, in the main, met, matched and knocked out of the field. This is now established as a crucial regional event and one of two or three that are truly not to be missed if you care about the online, digital, mobile and innovation businesses. I didn't attend the first day of the event, the Developer Day, because I stopped being an 'under the bonnet' kind of guy back in the 1980s - instead we lolloped up into the mountains for some tourism before lounging around Beirut taking in the sights.

The first day of the two-day ArabNet Shift Summit started off with a keynote session from Ministers and the like. This, I avoided. I attended it last year and may attend it next. But once every two years is enough. I'm told that someone Ministerial promised Lebanon 20 MegaWatt broadband, which sort of explains a lot of things including, perhaps, why there was no Internet access in the hall for much of day one. The irony of this is obviously exquisite, but hard to appreciate when you've got documents to send and video footage to upload, let alone a Twitter account to feed. One daft omission was there were no power cables to the classroom style seating in the room, which meant those of us old-fashioned enough to be using a laptop were pretty well banjaxed quite early on. This was something ArabNet had got right last year, you can only assume it fell victim to the vastly extended scope of the event as a whole. Both the Internet and power plug issues were fixed for the afternoon sessions - a lovely example of how an event management team that's aware of what Twitter's saying can react fast and put stuff right.

The Ideathon pitches (a new idea pitched in two minutes to the crowd) were immeasurably stronger than last year, with a number of viable and exciting ideas being put across really well. One presenter (let's not forget these guys were mostly first-time presenters) stumbled only to be clapped on by the crowd. It was a real feel-good moment.

The event ran very late indeed, to the point where the Startup Demos, meant to be in the morning session, had to be put back to the afternoon. This also meant that the whole process of splitting the hall into two for the afternoon breakout sessions would have to take place after lunch, too. The Startup Demos are pitches for early finance from businesses that have already commenced operations and are given five minutes each. In the event, many got way more than this (at least, that's how it felt) but again the quality of stuff we were hearing about was way in advance of last year - some really, really cool ideas came across and I'd find it hard to single out any one Startup Demo as unworthy of funding.

My favourite Startup Demo was undoubtedly Jordanian online bookstore Jamalon, which is building a viable regional book publishing, delivery and fulfillment business that is mindful not only of the challenges of 'e' for publishers, but actually represents a viable and well-conceived solution to this and also to the issue of fostering content creation and a stronger reading habit in the region. This one, I felt, could be important. Some old pals took to the stage, too - the ishopaholic team were there, sharing the app that had seemed so engaging when we played around with it on the Dubai Today show a few weeks back.

I moderated two sessions after lunch, one on mobile and one on group buying. I had a lot of fun myself and so far there have been no written complaints or lawsuits, so let's assume they went well enough. The panelists, like the speakers we had heard in the morning session, were people with authority, background and something to contribute - a real treat in these days of commercially-led conferences filled with sales pitches and corporate rhetoric trotted out by sales execs trying to sound like they would know an innovation if it smacked them on the back of the head. No, these speakers were quality - although if TechCrunch's Mike Butcher had told us how very busy and important he was once more, I was ready to storm the stage.

I was running out of time, fast, however. That morning, I'd got a call from a distraught Sarah - the new waterproofing on our villa roof had been done so well that even the drain had been waterproofed. Nothing like men taking pride in their work, is there? She'd noticed this when next door's water tank overflowed and dropped some 200 gallons of water directly into our house. Clothes in storage, furnishings and all were soaked, much of the house's contents had to be moved to safety and Sarah was joined by life-saving pal Derek in witnessing water pouring down the walls of the back bedrooms, guest bathroom, kitchen and study. I felt the only thing a chap could do from Beirut was fly back early to join the happy clean-up operation and so I missed day two of ArabNet.

However, I didn't miss the dinner/party which was fun (although I did find chatting to pals and contacts to a background of full-on rappers was 'interesting') and inevitably led to our favourite hang-out in Gemmayze, Beirut's Temple Bar. It was fun. Messy, but fun.

The long and the short of it is that ArabNet was once again brilliantly organised, with a few minor hiccups creeping in because of the vastly ambitious scope of this year's event, and is a must for anybody - and any company - interested in the Middle East's fast-growing digital economy. A caveat - Spot On was involved in supporting ArabNet's PR efforts, so I could be accused of bias in these views.

There's a very real sense that innovation-driven businesses are starting all over the region, at least partly influenced by the new sense of responsibility and opportunity being felt in the light of the events taking place all around us today.

That new sense of aspiration and ambition were in the air at ArabNet and it's a heady scent...

Dropping the WWW

Image by Max Braun via FlickrI heard a radio ad this morning that rather stopped me in my tracks, for no particularly good reason other than the fact it was promoting a website and went to the trouble of saying it out loud including the dubbleyewdubbleyewdubbleyew.

I found myself wondering whether we don't all just take that for granted these days? I'd just say 'go to alexandermcnabb dot com' rather than give the WWW. I mean, why not go the whole hog and say 'Aitch tee tee pee colon  forwardslash forwardslash dubbleyewdubbleyewdubbleyew'?

Perhaps interestingly, Tim Berners-Lee (the man that put the hole in the toilet seat that was the Internet by inventing the world wide web) recently apologised for the forwardslash forwardslash, which was a programming convention at the time but by no means necessary - if you can only imagine the tonnes of paper, the zillions of wasted electrons, the megagallons of printer ink that this little quirk has caused...

In fact, the reason it gave me pause was that it sounded somehow charmingly naive. Here they are struggling to breathlessley get all of their 'dare to dream' and 'an apostolic momentum of carborundum epistles for you!' in, and they're wasting a precious slice of their 30 seconds giving me a redundant dubbleyewdubbleyewdubbleyew.

(Another ad I heard the other day gave the name of the thing they were promoting and exhorted the listener to 'Google us!'. When you do, the website name is simple and based on the name of the thing. It would have been easier all round if they'd just said 'go to nameofthething dot com'.)

It's time to drop the WWW, methinks. We all know it's on the web, surely?

Etisalat Plans - Mickey Mouse?

Image via WikipediaThe HTC Desire is a cool device, I have to tell you. It does many things brilliantly, some very well and even manages to be a mildly functional telephone. Based on Google's Android operating system, it's almost scarily integrated into Google services, but it does a lot of cool stuff and is pretty intuitive.

I've spent a week or so now getting used to it - after over 20 years of loyalty to Nokia, I finally snapped and followed Symbian Guru by throwing my N86 against the wall. There have been inevitable frustrations in the transition process, but they're mostly harmless. Google's habit of defaulting everything to Arabic for anyone located in the Arab World can be a bit of a shock - and I really do not need an uninstallable azan reminder. But all in all, I'm glad I made the change. Well, I was until Etisalat sent me a message telling me they have blocked my mobile Internet access as I had exceeded the upper limit on my plan.

My plan? What plan? I just have mobile Internet. It was called 'Mubashir' because nobody knew what 3G was ("I don't understand what 3G is!" "No problem, take this! It's called Mubashir!" "What is it?" "3G"). Nobody ever told me they'd introduced things called plans.

Mine apparently gives me 10 Meg of downloads for a fixed monthly fee. And then it charges me. A wicked amount. Enough for me to have racked up Dhs1,200 worth of phone bill in 2-3 days of using an Android phone. Because if you're using your wireless network to download apps and you walk out of the wireless zone, it defaults to Etisalat and their Mickey Mouse packages. And, unlike my creaky old Symbian handset,  this mobile is always online, checking, updating and RSSing like a little Googledemon.

You'd have thought Etisalat would send you a text when you got to the 10Mb mark, wouldn't you? But that would be far too sensible. They'd rather bill their unsuspecting, arguably duped, customers for the lesson.

So don't do what I did, people. When you throw that Symbian mobile against the wall and storm off to get a funky Android phone, change your mobile data plan. You can get a 1Gb package for Dhs145 per month or 5GB for 295 per month. They also offer "unlimited" data for a whopping Dhs395 per month. Unlimited is sort of like freehold, by the way: by unlimited, Etisalat actually means a 'fair usage' 10Gb maximum. Out of plan extras cost 50 fils per meg, which is a bit less than the Dhs15 per meg they charge on the default 10Mb package. Yes, you heard right. Dhs15 (a tad over $4) per megabit.

Plans from 10Mb - 1Gb are categorised as 'mobile Internet' by Etisalat, while 1GB-10GB are 'mobile broadband' and come with a USB modem. Because nobody would want to use a mobile for downloading lots of data, would they? Positively archaic thinking from the telco that likes to say 'ugh'...

Hmm. I wonder what the view from Du is like these days?


PS: Happy New Year, folks!

Why The UAE Skype Block Is Pointless

Image via WikipediaThe next move in the transformation of the telecommunications industry would appear to be afoot - Skype's off to the cloud (see this piece from TechCrunch). As eny fule no, Skype is currently blocked by the UAE's telcos as it doesn't hold an operating license in the country.

It's already starting to seem a little quaint and old fashioned, this idea of issuing operating licenses to offer telephony services. It reminds me a tad of the good old days when I first arrived in the UAE to start a new business publishing magazines. I quickly fell foul of the Ministry of Information and during the rather painful interview with the Man From The Ministry, it became clear that he was a tad confused about where my 'publishing house' was. It was in the boot of my car, in the shape of a PC. Having been an 'early adopter' of desktop publishing in the UK, I didn't need compositors, Linotronics, make-up artists, illustrators, designers, photo-editors and teams of writers.

Similarly, you don't need massive buildings housing ranks of switches to sustain pay-per-minute circuit-switched telephony any more. The cost of the infrastructure required to support communication has plummeted and operators are springing up using low-cost wireless technologies rather than all that expensive last-mile copper and fibre. At the same time, IP telephony means that we can use the robust and high speed infrastructure of the Internet to support both voice and video calling. Increasingly number-independent with our online social identities, we can access each other freely now without having to pay dollars per minute for that access - or possibly without even having to know who's providing us with that access. Apple, for instance, has been investigating the rather marvellous idea of the 'simless mobile', which would make Apple your telco, not the telco whose network you're roaming on. Not surprisingly, Europe's telcos have reacted with alarm at that one.

With Google and Microsoft both offering video calling integrated into their core platforms, as I've pointed out before, it's pretty hard to actually block these sites the way Etisalat and Du both block Skype. But if Skype moves onto the cloud, it'll be integrating with other platforms - TechCrunch, for instance, mentions LinkedIn but FaceBook has to be a top contender for Skypegration. However things develop, it rather looks as if blocking Skype will soon be No Longer An Option, because it'll be like grains of sand flowing around a jar of marbles.

The question is how much longer the UAE's operators will be snugly nestled in the cosy protectionism currently afforded them by the TRA. Because that protectionism is staving off the inevitable - and the inevitable, when it comes, may well do so with astounding speed.

Ye can't block innovation.

Privacy and the Law

Image via WikipediaGulf News reports today on a Russian pilot who posted a piece of video shot from his phone of a traffic accident up on YouTube and whose month in jail and deportation sentence has been reduced on appeal to a fine.

A month in jail and deportation for filming an actual incident and posting it online may appear madly draconian, but the UAE (and the Gulf in general, actually) has always had a fraught relationship with photography and video when it comes to personal privacy - professional photographers have long been used to having to obtain release forms and there have been many, many cases over the years where people have objected to having their pictures published - particularly GCC nationals, who value their privacy highly. The issue becomes highly charged when it comes to local women, whose modesty is assiduously preserved in public.

Many years ago I was with a friend taking photos of the enormous puddles that had resulted from heavy rain in Sharjah. A magnificently bearded policeman decided to take exception to my actions and ran me into the station for 'photographing women'. His pals at the copshop obviously thought he was being as batty as I did and much barely disguised hilarity at his expense ensued at my proposed solution - he could develop my film at the twenty minute shop and if there was one woman in it he could bang me up with my blessing but if it turned out to be as woman free as I claimed, he could pay for the processing. The eventual compromise was to force me to sign a 'chit' promising never to photograph in that place again.

The fact that the accident the chap filmed actually occurred (and that the video was therefore, presumably, an accurate representation of the event) arguably plays no part in the judgement - although it would perhaps seem perfectly logical that a video of an actual event would be permissable - it is the right of an individual to privacy that takes primacy. If you filmed someone in the course of a criminal act, for instance stealing or committing an egregious traffic violation, you would be expected to hand that film over to the authorities rather than make it public - particularly if there are identifiable individuals in the footage.

What at first appears (at best) strange is actually something rather laudable - total respect for the rights of the individual and the role of the law, rather than the mob, in ensuring justice is done. Thinking about it, it's sort of odd that we find this stance odd!

Mind you, I can't wait for the Google Street View team to land here. They'll be eating biryani three times a day within seconds flat...

Wedding Night

Sabina England, or Deaf Brown Trash Punk as some will know her, is a colourful character at the best of times. I first met her on authonomy where her entrance, characteristically led by a greeting laced with the 'C' word, caused outrage amongst the serried ranks of tank-top wearing literary aspirants. Her book, 'Brown Trash' was a stunning read - fresh, challenging and with so much voice you'd want to cover your ears to block out its strident call. If you did, you'd get a taste of Sabina World, because she is (as you may have worked out from the above sobriquet) profoundly deaf.

Sabina's silent movies have been popping up on YouTube for a while now and have earned her a growing following. Her stageplays, never less than provocative, have been produced both in the US and UK and now she's gone and written, direct and produced a bigger budget film, 'The Wedding Night' - a much slicker piece that has so far been funded by donations raised by supporters. She's not quite there yet, the film's in the can (well, on the hard disk) but she needs more money to pay for the final edit. Take a look at the trailer:

 

I wanted to bring Sabina onto the radio show I co-host with Jessica Swann every Tuesday on Dubai Eye Radio, Dubai Today, but there's a slight glitch - being deaf is a slight impediment to doing phone interviews on the radio. So we did it by text instead:

What inspired the idea of ‘The Wedding Night’?
I was inspired to write "Wedding Night," which was originally a stage play. It is a very minimalist piece with just 2 actors in a hotel room. And I thought to myself, I can turn this into a film with a very low budget. It is heavy on drama, but very light on the budget. I wrote "Wedding Night" because it is a feminist response to the hypocrisy of sex and women's bodies in Indian-Pakistani culture and amongst Muslims. It is widely accepted for males to have had sexual experience and to have many female partners, yet if a woman dares to explore her sexuality and have sex with just 1 man, she is shunned and shamed by society. Also, I was inspired and disgusted by countless real-life stories I have heard about forced arranged marriages and the tragic consequences that come out of it.

Who are the actors? Are they trained?
The actors are Alpa Banker (actress) and Sanjiv Bajaj (actor). Alpa is a professional actress who lives in Los Angeles. She does theatre, commercials, modeling, and film. Sanjiv Bajaj is a doctor who graduated from Princeton University and founded an independent South Asian theatre company. They were both amazing in their roles.

What was the greatest challenge in conceiving, filming and directing this?
The greatest challenge to make the film happen was getting started in the first place. I didn't know who I was going to hire to shoot the film. I didn't have any money. I didn't have a goddamned clue how to go make this happen. But after consulting many Facebook friends who have worked in the film industry, I got some very good ideas and began raising funds through IndieGoGo. I also posted ads online seeking crew and actors. And soon, all these people were coming up to me and they wanted to work with me.

What’s your hope for it?
I don't have any hope for "Wedding Night." I just made the film because I've always wanted to be a filmmaker, it was always a dream of mine to write, direct and produce my own film and call my own shots. Well, I did it, and I'm glad.

Conflict runs through your work; you hit issues head on all the time and relish holding their little corpses up to show us. What was your one BIG target here, among all the little targets you’re hitting?
My big target in Wedding Night? It's just a big fuck you message to all these narrow-minded male chauvinists in our society. Misogynists, chauvinists, old-fashioned, sexist males and even sexist females, who believe that sex is a bad thing, these people who look down at women for even daring to speak out about sex and for having the courage to explore their sexualities. Sexual liberty is one of the most important rights for human beings, yet most people won't acknowledge that. "Wedding Night" is also a film that proudly shoves female aggression in your face. It's a film that says "hey, women have rights, too and we're not going to let you push us down."

It’s very slick, the trailer. How much did it cost and how did you raise it/convince people to take part in it?
The trailer didn't cost me any money. I just salvaged the film footage from the storage drive and then I created it on my laptop. But the real money will be pouring into post-production. It will cost me $4,000. Post Production includes: editing, colorization, sound synching, music, credits, and so on. When I first began to raise money for the film shoot, I used IndieGoGo and convinced a lot of people to donate to my film project. I raised over $1,000. I said that if you wanted to support a Deaf South Asian Muslim female filmmaker, this is your chance to help me. Hollywood is notoriously racist, sexist, and misogynistic. There are plenty of successful female filmmakers, yet they are ignored and shunned by the Hollywood studio system. Men are always favored over women. And then white men are always favored over non-white men and people of color. And then of course, most people cannot name a successful Deaf person working in Hollywood. So I said, if you're tired of the Hollywood studio system and you want to help someone make a film on her own, this is it. And that's how I got a lot of donations from the public.

Why would anyone in their right minds fund a revolutionary film-maker who’s made a habit of confronting taboos and prejudice so violently and graphically?
I have a little bit over $1,500 in donations for my Film Finishing Fund now, but I need more. If you can donate as little as $10 or $100, that would be great. If you're wondering why you should help me out, all I can say is this: if you go to the cinema and you complain about how mediocre, stupid and pathetic the female lead is, or if you read an article about Hollywood or Bollywood and you complain about the lack of successful female filmmakers being ignored, or if you complain about how film awards are always being handed out to men instead of women, then do something about it. Take out your wallet and give money to an aspiring female filmmaker. Encourage a Deaf person to become a filmmaker, artist, or writer and make their voices be heard. Encourage more filmmakers to make strong, interesting films about strong female leads instead of always creating bimbo, weak, pathetic female characters. Encourage young Muslims and South Asians to go out there and create a film, novel, play, or music that's not typical or cliched. Give me your money and I'll make more films with even better storylines that'll smash the mirror and shove it in people's faces.

The Internet has given you a voice and audience you otherwise wouldn't have, hasn't it?
I think in the Digital Age, in the age of youtube and Vimeo, in the age when crowd-sourced funding is becoming so common, we will face an even bigger change coming onto the filmmaking field. Today, you can create a webseries and put all the episodes online and people will watch. You can put your film online and people will watch. You can even get press attention from it, too. It's nice. More people are discovering that they don't need to get an agent or approach a film producer to get their scripts produced. You don't need to move to Los Angeles to be a filmmaker!! Who cares about Hollywood or Bollywood? Who cares about these irrelevant, pointless networking parties? You don't need an agent. You don't need famous friends. Write a script, set up an online fundraiser, ask people to donate money. I made a film on my own, and so can you. Hollywood is a place that needs to be destroyed. Hollywood keeps churning out pointless remakes and sequels. Hollywood keeps churning out the same, tired, sexist, racist, homophobic stereotypes. Hollywood is a white boys club where women and people of color are struggling to get into. Well, guess what? The studio system is rigid and it's time for Hollywood to collapse and crumble down.

Sabina's website is linked here or you can find her on Twitter: @jihadpunk77.

Die Telco! Die!

Image via Wikipedia
Facebook has tossed its hat into the mobile handset ring according to TechCrunch today. The move is fascinating and adds a dimension to the whole new world emerging from the competition between companies who, five years ago, you would have never have thought of associating with the phone business - principally Apple and Google.

The idea of a phone that cuts out the old number dialling thing entirely and creates connections across a social media platform is a short leap ahead from the Google Voice stuff I was waffling about a few days ago, but it's a logical one. With the ability to make 'analogue' calls as well as Facebook to Facebook calls, the phone would logically use the same VoIP based technologies as MSN and Google are using to connect people directly today. The mobile Internet is about to get very hot indeed as 'telephones' transform into IP based devices that will support, potentially, voice and a huge range of other functionalities.

In that instance, you don't actually need a telco or its tottering infrastructure of switching exchanges - and you won't be paying circuit switched pricings anymore, just your flat rate monthly Internet access fee to your ISP.  Today's traditional telco is not a sustainable business model: telcos will have to downscale and slim up to a tremendous degree or will have to find a massive new, services based, business model to add to the diminishing revenues that their decreasing importance in an Internet-driven communications model will yield.

Or they could just keep blocking everything. That's another option, I guess...

But block or not, it is inevitable that telcos that don't transform fast will die.

Heffalump

Image via Wikipedia
With all this talk last week of Google Voice and its blocking by the laughing gnomes at the UAE's Telecoms Regulatory Authority (TRA), I was reminded last night of quite how big is the heffalump in the Internet telephony room as we chatted happily over a video link to Ireland.

Both Microsoft Messenger and Google Chat support voice and video calling - both effectively forms of the dreaded VoIP that the TRA's gangs of Amish are so keen to protect us from. The video stuff isn't bad quality really, although you'd expect a great deal better with a 1 Meg DSL connection (cripes, we used to do video over a 128kbps ISDN link!) - particularly one that's quite as expensive as Etisalat's.

Back in the day, the road between Abu Dhabi and Dubai  used to be decorated with futuristic pictures of video telephones from Fujitsu, although I can never remember seeing one in reality (despite my former life as a telecoms journalist) - video calling never really seemed to take off. It was one of the applications that vendors used to waffle on about when they were selling the impossibly huge bandwidth of ISDN - in fact, it was also one of the applications that vendors waffled about when they were trying to sell us the impossibly huge bandwidth of 3G. There you go - if you've got way too much bandwidth, talk up the video angle!

Video calling got sort of tagged into messenger applications, but it's proving to be more and more popular - to the point now where Microsoft's Messenger actually looks for a cam when you're chatting and lets you know that the person you're talking to has a cam and offers to hook you up. It costs nothing, it's fun and it's usable - three critical factors in the fast adoption of a technology.

Messenger ships by default with pretty much every single computer out there and Google Chat is, of course, tied in quite nicely to Gmail. You start trying to block these babies, you're going to do even more damage to the technological capabilities and competitiveness of the nation - and there's already enough damage being done to the adoption, uptake and usage of a number of technologies and networks by the existing blocking policies. And just you wait until Google starts to tie this stuff into Earth, Translate et al.

Where Google Voice is interesting is that it supports PC to phone and vice versa, effectively turning Google into a telco, like Skype but with infinitely more reach. There's no reason why video calling over that connection shouldn't turn into an everyday occurence. There's also every reason to suppose that the world isn't going to leave this space to Google to play in alone - we are going to see more and more applications and services that offer this type of functionality and that integrate it into other functionalities.

This is an inflection point in technology, a tectonic shift. Continuing to protect moribund telcos working on circuit switched revenue models will not address the core problem - that they are being rendered increasingly uncompetitive by advances in technology that they are not encompassing - and that in today's networked world, an uncompetitive telecomms sector will increasingly create an uncompetitive nation.

Blocking VoIP services is short-term protectionism - other telcos in the region and wider world (for instance, take a look at the region's most competitive telco market, Jordan) have been able to transition to leaner, meaner entities and compete in a level playing field by leveraging VoIP technologies in their own operations - the consequent benefit to the consumer and, indeed, the economy is substantial.

It won't be long now before a voice call has no more value than an email. Sooner, rather than later, we are going to have to accept the fact that the UAE's telecoms sector, in its current model, is growing increasingly uncompetitive and unsustainable in the face of the advances taking place in the world around us.

Pissy

 

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Technology/Pix/pictures/2008/02/01/SeaCableHi.jpg

It’s been like spending a week trying to pogo in molasses – the Internet is just not terribly well. And I have to confess, after a week of pages not loading, Twitter not updating and email taking an age, I’m feeling somewhat frustrated and generally pissy.

The statement from Etisalat (back on the 20th) that its services were unaffected as it had rushed to route bandwidth through other means was piffle, as usual. Du made the same statement, but I don’t use their services so can’t comment. Etisalat’s network quality most certainly has been significantly affected by the outage, but why let the facts stop you lying to you customers and treating them like morons? It never stopped ‘em before, anyway. I’ve also had a few dodgy voice circuits, which might be a result of the telco that likes to say ‘ugh’ cutting some of its voice traffic over to IP from its beloved yoghurt pots.

To be fair, it’s not their fault that some Captain Pugwash type decided to drag SEAMEWE4 on the end of his anchor ‘till it snapped (or whatever mad series of events led to the break). But I do wish they’d just tell the truth.

SEAMEWE (anoraks will know it stands for South East Asia Middle East Western Europe) and FLAG (Fibre-optic Link Around the Globe) are the two main cable systems upon which the bulk (if not all) of the UAE’s Internet traffic depends. There are four SEAMEWEs – the last time we had problems, it was a cut in SEAMEWE4, the latest most sparkly terabit capacity cable. SEAMEWE3 is also operational, but SEAMEWE1 and 2 have been phased out.

Although it is feasible to use satellite, and there are satellite circuits available, this is an expensive and limited option that most telcos will only use as a last resort – the great undersea cables are where it’s at.
There are other circuits apart from SEAMEWE 3 and 4 and FLAG, for instance (as you’ll see from the map above) there’s a circuit that goes around Africa. But the Red Sea and Suez are the most vulnerable points in the network of sub-sea cables that underpins our ability to do important stuff like play Chatroulette and listen to the Moon Song.

Until there is better diversity, we’ll continue to be highly vulnerable to breaks – and will continue to see limited bandwidth sold to us at premium prices compared to other world markets. It constantly rankles when I think that the Japanese are paying $0.27 per megabit month, with the average subscriber taking a 60 Gig line. Yes, 60Gig. In fact, much of the world gets plenty more bandwidth (with less latency) for less money than we do. A hell of a lot less money.

Hey, ho. It’s not as if Internet connectivity were critical to the development of the Middle East region and the largest single factor in its ability to be competitive moving forward, is it?

Mum, What's An ArabNet?

ArabNet founder Omar Christidis together with Samer Karam, Sana Tawileh and with the others on their team, pulled off a major coup – the first event in the Middle East that aims to foster web-enabled businesses and put start-ups together with investors and the other ecosystem participants they need to thrive and flourish. Alongside this, the conference aimed to investigate the issues, opportunities and future of doing business in an increasingly Internet-dominated Arab World.

The ArabNet conference in Beirut takes place yesterday and today. I attended the first day and so I can only comment on that – but I’ll be watching the Twitter feed (The tag is #ArabNetME) with great interest.

I’m by no means overdoing it when I describe ArabNet as a triumph. It’s actually a number of triumphs rolled into one. First and foremost, it’s a minor miracle that this event was put together so brilliantly and in Beirut, to boot. Sorry, chaps, but Beirut has not exactly carved its name recently as the place for important regional conference events and yet ArabNet has clearly shown that Beirut is not just a viable but a brilliant venue for them.

The event was impeccably organised. Having headed up teams doing stuff on this scale, I am only too aware of what a huge and difficult job it is. The technical setup, the exhibition area and the management of the entire staging and flow of the event were world class  – and so was the event itself. Great speakers included Aramex supremo Fadi Ghandour who was nothing less than inspirational in a mashed-up Anglo-Arabic after-lunch ‘graveyard slot’ address that had the audience standing, sitting, laughing and clapping – when they should by rights have been sleepily digesting. Some people had been whingeing on Twitter in the morning sessions that they thought the conference should have been held in Arabic – Fadi’s solution was to speak in both, with sentences that flew from East to West with brio and wit that must have had the poor old translator's head spinning.

Showing incredible wisdom for such a young team, the ArabNet guys masked the Twitter-feed displays to either side of the stage during the keynote session when a succession of important gentlemen spoke. The Lebanese Minister of Comms was indeed so incredibly important that he could only spare an audience of 1,000 highly online entrepreneurs and web-professionals from around the Middle East two minutes (and I do not exaggerate) out of his, we were told pointedly, busy schedule. He lost as many hearts and minds as Ghandour had previously won, his brief speech nestled cosily in a keynote session that, for me at least, resonated perfectly with a similar address I had heard given by Michel Murr at Termium over ten years ago - with nothing added and nothing taken away.

Twitter was not kind, and rightly so. ‘The Internet is important,’ was one of the many aphorisms that instructed us all. The howl of outrage was neatly masked by the ArabNet logo displays, but we could all see the feed on our screens. Which showed how totally disconnected the terrible old men up there were.

Lebanon has just about managed to cobble together one meg ADSL access – a somewhat pathetic achievement that was echoed in the conference room as more and more people snapped open their clamshells and tried to get online. Internet access slowed to a snail’s pace and yes, despite this, ArabNet trended Twitter globally for over an hour. Having said that (and being pleased for all concerned), I am increasingly worried at this new version of the Middle East’s old obsession with The Guiness Book of Records. People, it doesn’t have to trend to be important or relevant.

The day flew by – one session, the IdeaThon, had five new startup schemes sold to the audience by their progenitors in two minute pitches, while the afternoon Startup Demos session pitched ten up and running business schemes in need of investors (‘angel’ or otherwise). These pitch sessions provided great entertainment, were an inspiring display of innovation and gave a very clear indication that this region is now emerging, perhaps blinking a little, into an age of Web-enabled business.

The only part of the day that dented my enthusiasm and optimism more than the keynote session (note to Omar and team – you can ditch the suits next year and we’d none of us mind one jot) was the ecommerce panel. Badly led and therefore lacking inspiration or challenge to meet, it was as frustrating as watching someone wall-hanging yoghurt. Twitter was, once again, not kind and the general feeling in the room was up there for all to see – “please make this stop”.

And so on, via the Beirut-Amman joint Twestival, to the gala dinner – which was splendid. Tragically, the day having been incredibly long, I suspect a few hundred chocolate desserts (the end of a five-course menu) got trashed.

ArabNet was everything we had hoped for and more. Like the iPad, it’s not the end of the road but a first glimpse at where the future is headed. In well over 20 years of being involved with this region’s technology industry as a commentator and communicator, I can honestly tell you I have never seen such energy and hope for the future as I saw at ArabNet.

All they have to do now is brush aside the terrible old men and get the cost of broadband down, access speeds up and improve the availability and reliability of connectivity in the region. If anyone came away from ArabNet without the clear impression that this one single investment in infrastructure is vital to the future of the region as a viable economic force, then they were either daft as a brush or a Minister who was too important to be engaging with young entrpeneurs and innovators. Or both.

More fool them.

(A million thanks to ArabNet Conference Cartoonist Maya Zankoul, whose first pic of the day was an illustration for this post! Her cartoon above is licensed under a Creative Commons license. Another cool thing about ArabNet has been the assiduous support of a number of  bloggers, Twitterers, a cartoonist and a smart live feed too!)

ArabNet: Dot Com Boom Anyone?

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ArabNet is taking place in Beirut on the 25th March. A two day conference, ArabNet aims to provide a regional platform for Web startups that will foster innovation and entrepeneurialism in the Arab world and consists of a load of 'how to' conference sessions featuring high profile international speakers as well as a range of pitching and demoing opportunities such as the Ideathon, which awards cash prizes for the development of the best 3 ideas pitched at the event.

With the strap line 'Trends and Opportunities in Arab Web Business', the event is one of a number of symptoms of a resurgent regional technology sector - Jordan's ICT Forum looks set to take place once again this year after a couple of years off - that's being driven by the web and, yes, the social web.

A series of workshops has been taking place around the region prior to the event in Beirut, aimed at helping young entrepeneurs hone the business cases they're taking along to ArabNet.

Where I find ArabNet interesting is its potential to be more than just a talking shop - with venture capital and investors, the backing of existing regional big names such as Zawya, Maktoob and Aramex as well as important web media properties such as ArabCrunch, the event has every chance of developing as an important part of fostering the fast growth of Web-enabled businesses in the region. We never really had a dot com boom in the region. It'd be interesting to see us having one now - better late than never!

Lobby Lounge Rant

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So I'm in the hotel lobby lounge having a meeting. As usual, I am accompanied (as is increasingly the case) by my notebook and I need Internet access. As usual, access is blocked until I pay the hotel for a password and go through a browser based validation. It's Dhs30 an hour (or a tad over $8). Most hotels sell guests 24 hours for Dhs 100 ($27), but at this rate 8 hours' access alone would cost Dhs 240 ($66). Let us not forget that the Japanese pay $0.27 per megabit per month.

As usual, the lobby lounge waiter tells me that the cards are sold by the business centre. I have taken to pointing out to lobby lounge waiters (or meeting room assistants or rooftop bar cocktail waiters) that I am not sitting in the business centre - I am in the lobby lounge where wireless is provided and therefore it would seem to make some sort of sense that the lobby lounge staff would be able to fulfil a request for that service just as they would a cup of tea or an indifferent club sandwich. It's not a business service any more, people - it's critical to most businesspeople.

I know, I know - I'm just being grumpy. But Internet access is not only important to many of us these days, it is increasingly something we will use on our mobiles as well as our notebook computers. It is increasingly as unthinkable for a service provider such as a hotel to charge for Internet access as it would be to charge for water or light - not only in the rooms but in the public spaces where meetings are constantly taking place between increasingly connected people.

If I can't have free Internet access in the lobby, then at least consider getting me online for a reasonable cost and without forcing a pointless rigmarole involving the business centre and the many permutations of cash payments, seperate invoices and stumbling waiters that invariably accompany the (frustrated) expectation of someone living in the Internet age...

Blockheads

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"The regulations over Internet have a dynamic structure and necessary legal changes are made when problems are detected in implementation."

The above, rather marvellous sentence, was blurted out by a Turkish official when he was responding to the OSCE's strongly worded call for Turkey to reform its Internet legislation a couple of days ago. The call came as the OSCE published its report on media freedom and Internet censorship in Turkey.

If you thought we had it bad in the UAE, spare a thought for the poor old Turks, who have been at various times forbidden to access YouTube, a number of Google sites including Blogger and others, including sites like MySpace and Last.fm. A number of Turkish language news sites are also blocked, particularly, notes the report, those dealing with South-Eastern Turkey. The Turkish government has also blocked Farmville, which is probably no bad thing.

Hitting the old nail on the head, the OSCE's Representative on Freedom of the Media, Miklos Haratzi, said: "Even as some of the content that is deemed 'bad', such as child pornography, must be sanctioned, the law is unfit to achieve this. Instead, by blocking access to entire websites from Turkey, it paralyzes access to numerous modern file sharing or social networks."

The issue is not, let us be clear, pornography. There are a number of provisions for blocking access under Turkish law (stuff like child pornography, incitement to suicide and illegal gaming, for instance), including crimes against Kemal Ataturk. It was, in fact, the existence of a number of videos on YouTube defaming Ataturk that led to the ongoing block of the website.

Along with a worrying rise in the number of sites being blocked overall, the OSCE report also notes a rise in the number of sites being blocked outside of the scope of the Internet law, identifying some 197 sites that have been blocked outside the law in the past year. Blocks were instituted against a number of gay sites, sites like Indymedia Istanbul and a number of news sites as well as advocacy sites for socialist, muslim and Kurdish organisations.

It's a worrying time for the poor old Internet. The increasing ubiquity of the medium and the many ways in which people are finding to use it (including, and I want to be quite clear here that I disapprove, Farmville) appear to be spooking a number of governments. It's not just a Middle Eastern thing, although the recent news from Jordan is a worrying indicator of a tide of thought and opinion among more traditionally minded legislators in our region - the Australians have been going on about instituting wide-ranging blocking powers. And we all know what's been happening in China.

It's all very well slapping freedoms in a constitution. But when people start taking 'freedom' too literally, it appears they need a little help from the law... or even outside the law, in Turkey's case...

UAE Sets Up Cyber Crimes Unit. Uh Oh.

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The UAE government is to set up a new department to combat cyber crimes such as financial scams, hacking, fraud, fake companies , extortion and pornography, according to today's sizzling Gulf News.

This is a good thing. The new department will be recognised by the Federal Courts and likely will be set up in Sharjah and, says GN, will be charged with drafting laws and regulations for the online world, as well as with the job of co-ordinating with law enforcement bodies. This is also, potentially, a good thing. The UAE's judiciary does not the benefit of a legal framework that recognises the online world and currently could fairly be said to rely heavily on court appointed experts when it comes to cases that have online aspects to them.

Quoted in a call-out box in GN's story that discusses 'e-police patrols', however, a major in the Abu Dhabi police says, "When there is a malicious rumour doing its rounds, or when there is a major security issue, the police can perform undercover operations online, just as in reality."

Now, when there is a 'malicious rumour' in print, its a matter for the National Media Council to regulate and is governed by media law - as far as I know, the police aren't patrolling Gulf News.

Can we consider a 'malicious rumour' online to be a different kettle of fish , then? There's certainly a grey area here - is online commentary to be regulated as media or public order?

Gormenghast and the Future of Publishing

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Longer-suffering readers of this silly little blog will know about Harper Collins’ authonomy website and my opinion of it. For those that weren’t around, this post pretty much explains things. The post was something of a bombshell in its time, BTW.

Authonomy was Harper Collins’ attempt to harness the process of change that the Internet is undoubtedly going to bring to publishing in a similar fashion to the change it is bringing the music industry. Although the company scrupulously avoided outlining any strategy, it is my opinion that the overall gameplan was to create a website that would attract authors and encourage them to put their books online (Authonomy), a website for readers (Book Army) and then allow the authors to ‘self publish’ for the readers by using a POD (print on demand) supplier. Today’s POD systems can create high quality single books at near-market prices.

The Authonomy deal was this: if you made it to the top five books each month on Authonomy, a Harper Collins editor would read and critique your manuscript, or MS. Getting an MS in front of a Harper Collins editor is a bit like getting ten minutes with Warren Buffet to chat about your new business proposal – and just as difficult. So it’s no wonder that the site soon attracted something in the region of 6,000 writers. You’d be surprised how many carvers there are living around Castle Gormenghast.

My ‘generation’ on Authonomy (before anyone starts squealing ‘sour grapes’, I made it to the top five and got a ‘gold star’ as well as a crit from an HC editor. You’ll have to read the ‘backstory’ linked above to see what I thought of it) was pretty much the first ‘wave’ of writers to discover the site and consisted of a heck of a lot of really talented people. With all the energy of a group of kids in a huge playground, we invested a huge amount of time and effort on the site, vying to get to the top and using fair means and foul to do so. At the core of it, though, was a sincere belief in quality – the majority of users adhered to a principle that they’d only ‘back’ books that they would genuinely buy in a bookshop. Although there was a huge element of popularity and ‘plugging’ of books, we reasoned that if you could market yourself on Authonomy, it just proved you could market yourself in the real world too, so was fair game as part of the mix that makes a book.

It looked very much as if HC had created a site that was intended to do what the Internet does best – improve access and disintermediate the gatekeepers, in this case the agenting system that means that only books with obvious mass market commercial potential get through to publishers. Now it looked as if readers could actually vote for the type of book they’d like to see in bookshops – and if HC was to add authonomy winners to its lists, there’d be a new and wonderful outbreak of crowdsourced work to choose from. I can honestly say, BTW, that I read more work that I would buy on Authonomy than I have seen in bookshops all year. Really.

Of course, it was not to be. The POD plan lurked and I ‘outed’ HC when they sent a private email to some of us offering us beta list status. I accused the company of being insincere, in offering a clear ‘get published’ carrot when in fact it only ever intended to create a POD site to hedge against the tide of innovation. It is still my humble opinion that this was the case.

But something else has happened as a result of authonomy, something rather wonderful. In fact several things.

One thing is that I have stayed in touch with a relatively close-knit group of writers I admire and respect, and we’re just as much in touch a year after we all wandered away from Authonomy muttering darkly (A huge number of people have left the site, disaffected with the whole game and the way HC has chosen to play it).

A much more important thing is that the disaffection and annoyance at the ‘traditional’ publishing industry and the way it treats writers has resulted in two groups of writers from authonomy creating real, truly important (IMHO) initiatives that I believe are much more about the true future of publishing than Authonomy.

Year Zero Writers

Dan Holloway is a lecturer by day and maverick by night. Actually, he’s probably pretty maverick by day, too, but we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

The author of the evocative and hauntingly beautiful Songs From the Other Side of the Wall, Dan founded the Year Zero Writers group as a collective designed to pool resources and talent in a way that would enable writers to reach out to audiences with their books. You can find out more about Year Zero here. Dan’s Year Zero projects include Free-e-day (see the BookBuzzr link below) and (to my knowledge) the first ‘FaceBook book’ (The Man Who Stole Agnieszka’s Shoes was written in weekly instalments on a FaceBook group, taking the input of readers to mould the plot). has seen Year Zero growing in popularity, attracting readers and participants and spawning a vibrant writers’ blog that is attracting readers in a most satisfactory manner.

Four books have been ‘published’ by Year Zero and more are planned - one compilation of short stories (Brief Objects of Beauty and Despair) and three novels. You can go to the Year Zero site, interact with the authors, find out more about their work (it is excellent) and then either download a PDF (free - in other formats here) or order a printed copy (paid for) of those books (the links are to Dan's 'Songs'). Although not the most active member of Year Zero, I am deeply proud to be associated with it.

Dragon International Independent Arts

Diiarts is a small independent imprint founded by writer Sarah Jane Heckscher-Marquis, which on November 14th will ‘conventionally’ publish four books that were hugely popular on authonomy and that represent, along with the three books that Year Zero has announced, some of the first books to have been published as a result of the authonomy project.
SJ has taken the highly unusual step of getting so frustrated at seeing great fiction (and I would personally, having read large amounts of all of them, commend them most highly to you, particularly Paul House’s stunning work, Harbour) mouldering on the slushpile and being overlooked by the Groans that she has put up her own money to publish some of her favourite work from the site. With the avowed intent of creating and maintaining her own small list of high quality fiction, she has had the pick of the best stuff on authonomy and has, I believe, chosen wisely.

As SJ says in the diiarts.com launch press release, “We believe there is a great deal of high quality, distinctive writing out there, which the larger publishers are just not picking up. Not only are readers missing out, but we’re losing something of the richness and diversity of the English language. We’re in danger of losing the spirit of innovation and thoughtfulness that’s been the hallmark of the English novel since we invented it. What we’ve seen is that more and more authors are expected to compromise on their vision, their voice and their artistic values, to cut their work down at whatever cost to fit supermarket display racks. We believe—passionately—that our authors should be in control of their own work. When they are, great books are the result.”

What has me chuckling evilly is the fact that both of these initiatives came about as a result of Authonomy. And, of course, I believe they both represent different facets of the change that will eventually lead to the flooding of Gormenghast - 'e-books' and small, independent publishers who are passionate about books, not shareholders, together will forge what I believe to be the future of publishing.

The New Media Nightmare

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This is a guest post contributed by online pal and fellow writer of books Robb Grindstaff.

Robb and I originally encountered each other on Harper Collins' authonomy peer-review writer's site thingy and we've been, along with a group of like-minded peeps, keeping in touch and bouncing stuff around ever since. By day, Robb's a newspaper editor in the US and, as he mentions in the post, we've been talking a lot about the future of writing, both in terms of fiction and daily news media. This is his take:

A conversation started recently among a group of writer friends with this article, which discusses the new distribution methods for music and books and the effects on the content producers (musicians and writers). The conversation then segued into this article about the Associated Press and News Corp telling Google and Yahoo! it’s time to pay up for the news content they aggregate and distribute.

From the news media perspective, particularly the newspapers where I’ve worked for my entire career, online distribution has become the death knell for newspapers when it should have been the saving grace that eliminated the high costs of 'traditional' printing and distribution.

In the olden days (say, the 1700s up to 1989), journalists held the power. Newspaper publishers were the kings of the hill in their cities, making or breaking politicians and business/industry tycoons with the power of the pen. They sold the newspaper for a nickel, or a quarter or a dollar, everyone read it, most cities had two or three major competing newspapers and many people read more than one newspaper. The newspaper owned/controlled the content and content producers (journalists), the publishing (printing presses), and distribution (paper boys and newsstands). To this great mass market of readers, advertisers flocked and paid lots of money to get their ads in these newspapers that were delivered and read each day by virtually everyone.

There are books that could be written (and have been written) on the in-between parts, how we got from then to now, but today it’s looking like this:

• Journalists are unemployed in the thousands.

• Aggregators of news, such as Google and Yahoo, are the new distributors.

• Aggregators don't employ or pay a single journalist. They take content from everyone else. They have virtually no overhead in comparison to media. Their overhead is primarily computers servers which reach hundreds of millions for cents. They don't have to print and deliver a newspaper to every doorstep every day, pay reporters or camera crews or videographers or producers.

• Readers are wired and the Internet provides instant news rather than waiting for tomorrow morning's newspaper. Readers can find newspaper depth to stories (as opposed to the typically thinner reporting prominent on TV), but delivered instantly 24 hrs a day (the advantage of TV). Even better as it's delivered on demand. You don't even have to make sure you turn on the TV at a certain time to catch a certain newscast or news story.

• As readers have moved online, so advertisers have migrated to Google/Yahoo/etc., because that’s where the eyeballs are also aggregated.

• In the meantime, newspapers are going broke, bankrupt, closing, and laying off thousands of journalists as they've lost advertisers to online. Even though newspapers also operate their own Websites, they are by definition mostly local (other than the New York Times and a small handful of others), and the Internet is global. Readers don't feel a need to make sure they get their news from their local newspaper or local TV news. World and national news has become a commodity, and readers expect it for free, at their fingertips.

This worldwide access to information should be a boon to freedom and democracy.

But what will the aggregators aggregate, what will the distributors distribute, and what will consumers consume when all the journalists are gone? And when the level of competent journalism has declined to a certain point, who will be the watchdog over the government and major institutions on behalf of citizens and taxpayers?

That’s the thought keeps me up at night as the new world of media figures out a business model.

The Arab Media Awards Changes

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Changes have been announced to The Arab Media Awards, a move that at least partly explains the stream of decidedly odd tweets emanating from the Dubai Press Club Twitter handle yesterday.

According to reports today, the awards are going to change to take more account of online media and young professionals. The inclusion of young journalists has been accomplished by adding a new award for, wait for it, 'Young Arab Journalist'.

As for online, the new focus for the awards, recognising the tectonic shifts that are shaking the world of print media around the world, has been accomplished by removing the word 'print' from the name of the awards.

If the story is complete, then there's no new award or category of awards for online journalism. Just the removal of the word 'print'...

So that's it. That's the evidence that these awards now recognise online journalism and which justifies Gulf News' headline, "Revamped award to cover all aspects of journalism".

Fail

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One of my favourite ever legal precedents is something of a media joke. If you want to tell someone to eff off without actually saying it, it is common to refer them to Arkell vs Pressdram. Pressdram is the publishing company responsible for the British satirical magazine Private Eye (not welcome, sadly, in the Emirates where it remains 'not on sale').

Arkell threatened the Eye with legal action in the correspondence, which has been reported as going something like this:

Arkell v. Pressdram (1971) [unreported]

Solicitor (Goodman Derrick & Co.):
We act for Mr Arkell who is Retail Credit Manager of Granada TV Rental Ltd. His attention has been drawn to an article appearing in the issue of Private Eye dated 9th April 1971 on page 4. The statements made about Mr Arkell are entirely untrue and clearly highly defamatory. We are therefore instructed to require from you immediately your proposals for dealing with the matter. Mr Arkell's first concern is that there should be a full retraction at the earliest possible date in Private Eye and he will also want his costs paid. His attitude to damages will be governed by the nature of your reply.

Private Eye:
We acknowledge your letter of 29th April referring to Mr J. Arkell. We note that Mr Arkell's attitude to damages will be governed by the nature of our reply and would therefore be grateful if you would inform us what his attitude to damages would be, were he to learn that the nature of our reply is as follows: fuck off.

That was the end of the correspondence but the start of a timeless reputation for Mr. Arkell, who remains, over 30 years later, a joke.

Anyway, I thought I’d just share this rather marvellous example of what happens when organisations do choose to ‘do an Arkell’ with online communities and commentators. Guinness fired off a ‘cease and desist’ at the chucklesome (and classic, you’ll thank me if you didn’t already have this one in your reader) Fail Blog.

Guinness was asking for a logo to be removed from a screen grab used on the Fail Blog - it qualified for a 'fail' entry for having a Guinness Book of Records record for 'most people killed in a terrorist attack'.

The blog modified the offending material and then posted up its opinion of Guinness and its pompous letter for its significant readership to enjoy. It also posts a link which it says is its full legal response to Guinness.

The link is a ‘Rick Roll’ – the modern Arkell vs Pressdram?

A Beautiful Failure

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My post earlier this week about the days of makeup and SprayMount drew a couple of starry-eyed comments from fellow ancients who could remember the smell of galley being pasted down onto board, which was lovely. But a link I got from Nieman Labs yesterday night really made me stop and think about these things. Bear with me, this might just be relevant somehow, in some way.

Digital design agency Information Architects took part in a pitch to redesign Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger and lost the pitch in what they describe, rightly IMHO, as a ‘beautiful failure’. They had applied ‘new world’ design thinking to a newspaper. And golly, what an interesting set of ideas they presented. Their piece on it is linked here and I do recommend a read.

Newspaper design has long been predicated on the need to control the readers’ eyes, big bold headlines scream important story, type is arranged to give the reader a progression through the page, elements are balanced so that readers’ eyes find information in a logical, flowing way. Typography is used to denote importance – a bold cap in white space draws attention, an italic caption under a picture is an element we recognise and expect. In fact, if the text floating immediately under a picture weren’t a caption, we’d be wrong-footed by the discontinuity.

But Information Architects did a brilliant thing. They designed their newspaper as a paper for a digital age reader, recognising the fact that our habits, our expectations of the format of content, have changed.

The first thing that really got me going was that they had put important text keywords in blue. I thought that was amazing. Although, obviously, paper doesn’t hyperlink, we now know what blue means – it means a keyword. Together with their decision to go for a big body text with big leading, this meant their proposed body copy didn’t look like a newspaper. But IA had already realised that: they took the conscious decision to throw out ‘conventional’ newspaper design – the idea that a newspaper should somehow follow rules that made it look like a newspaper.

They did a lot of other cool stuff, too – mixing column formats and using infographics, big pictures and left to right, top to bottom prioritisation of stories, much of which was informed by using a ‘web-centric’ approach to design. But it’s the blue keywords that would have been a ‘beautiful’ revolution.

While you obviously can’t click on the blue words in the paper, IA’s idea was that by scanning these keywords, you should be able to read the basic, core, news on the page in 10 seconds. The paper’s website would mirror these keywords with a link to a series of sub-links arranged chronologically. That’s a huge decision, meaning that the journalist, or in this unfair world the sub-editor, would have to pick out the keywords for the reader – a new skill in itself. And then the web team would have to work with those words to provide depth and context behind them (something you could see a technology like Zemanta taking a role in). It’s an exhilarating idea that links print to web and challenges the way that information is presented, managed and prioritised by the ‘traditional’ medium because it recognises the way we have changed in the way we browse, consume and identify information.

(Zemanta is a cool plug-in I use to provide me with contextual information related to blog posts - it selects copyright-free images for me to use and provides 'autolinks' for posts. I don't usually use the links but I did in this post both to 'blueify' it and also to show how a technology like Zemanta could be used to help automate the production of links for a project like Information Architects' newspaper. Okay, okay I'll be a good boy and get back to the snarky, goofy stuff next week, promise.)

Disintermediation Rules

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Phil was a typesetter and he used to typeset the books I edited and published. I’d send him my copy, marked up by hand (point size, leading, a wiggly line for italics, underline for bold) and he’d send me back galleys, long strips of single columns of type which the graphic artist would then ‘lay out’ onto boards, creating pages of book and magazine out of strips of type glued down with ‘SprayMount’, a highly egregious sprayable glue.

We’d size pictures manually, then attach them to the artwork (a box was drawn to give the printers a ‘keyline’ to place the image in) ready for sending to film.

Then along came Digital Research’s GUI, or graphical user interface, GEM and with it Ventura Publisher, a black and white piece of software that let you ‘lay out’ pages onscreen. I had a chat to Phil about the new software and how he had to invest in it so that he could run my pages.

‘Rubbish! That’ll never take off! You can’t match the quality of compositors’ work, proper typesetting, with that amateur junk!’ said Phil. 'My Linotronics cost £30,000 a piece - nobody can compete with stuff like that!'

Within the year he had gone bust and I had taken all my business to David, who I didn’t really like very much but who would ‘run out’ my pages from Ventura as one single layout, all ready for the printers once I’d just taped the pictures to copies of the proofs. I didn’t need a graphic artist anymore, either - I did my own layouts onscreen. They might not always have followed the rules of typography as they existed in Caxton’s day, but then we were redefining what you could do with type anyway – for a few halcyon years, drop caps and huge lettering ruled magazine layouts all over the UK.

Ever since then, I have heard people talking about quality as the reason why technology, the Internet in particular, won’t disintermediate them. But the amazing fact is that we don’t actually care about quality. Some of the most popular videos on YouTube are some of the crappiest pieces of filming. I play my music in my car, ripped from my ultra-high quality CDs and converted to lo-fi MP3s, using an iTrip radio transmitter thingy. The quality of what I am listening to is probably less than that of a Chrome cassette.

When technology improves access, quality becomes secondary. And quality is the last refuge of the about-to-be-disintermediated.