Amman

I'd just like to say how very lovely it is in Amman this time of the year.

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.