Momentary Lapse of Awe

My first HDR image. Catalin 'Momentary Awe' Marin's to blame. I have discovered the joys of HDR imaging and am now to be seen wandering around wildernesses lugging my red hot (and damn heavy) Manfrotto tripod.

I'm not saying the end result's any good, but it's amazing fun. If you want to see cool and frankly inspirational HDR imaging, take a look at Catalin's piccies here.

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. It's a photo enhancemnt technique that uses three exposures (or more!) of the same shot - typically on neutral, one two stops down and one two stops up. The three images are then stitched together with a range of controls and filters that help you to create a range of effects from slightly jazzed up pictures to strange, ethereal images that go way beyond traditional photography.

It's a little like Marmite to photographers - you either love it or hate it. The hate it camp, as usual, is vocal. Me, I love it.

This image of a crashed car was, incidentally, taken in the mountains of Ras Al Khaimah, near Ajman and five minutes' drive from Sharjah. It's also two minutes out of Oman and a stone's throw from Dubai. Any guesses where, peeps?

The Gurkhas Have Won

Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

The following was sent out by email from Joanna Lumley to everyone who'd signed up for the campaign to support the right of Gurkhas who had served in the British military to reside in the UK at the end of their service:

At midday today, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith made the announcement to the House of Commons that the Gurkha Justice Campaign have been fighting for for years. All ex-Gurkhas who have served more than 4 years in the British Army will have the right to settle in the UK if they wish.

After such a long fight, with huge ups and downs, this is a superb announcement.

We simply would not have won this fight without the massive, overwhelming support of all those who have supported our campaign. To the hundreds of thousands of people who have signed Gurkha Justice petitions, lobbied their MP, campaigned, attended rallies and marches - thank you so much to you all. This is your victory. It would not have happened without you.

The Government has now responded to that campaign after court cases, votes in Parliament, a huge media campaign and, most importantly, massive public support. I am delighted, and humbled, at what has been achieved by our remarkable team.

The whole campaign has been based on the belief that those who have fought and been prepared to die for our country should have the the right to live in our country. We owe them a debt of honour - a debt that will now be paid.

With warmest good wishes,

Joanna
www.gurkhajustice.org.uk

Independent Article Blocked by Du?

This screengrab by pal Catalin (who normally captures images of a much more artistic nature) shows what the UAE's Twitterers have been confirming today - that UAE telco Du does, indeed, appear to have instituted a block of Johann Hari's skewed Dubai-bashing article in The Independent.

Hari's piece, considered by a great number of the people that live and work here as unbalanced and even egregious, was hilariously taken off by blogger and Sun person Chris Saul.

It angered many people, certainly had an impact and was arguably the zenith of the Dubai bashing pieces that have broken out in international media over the past few months like a rash of irritating little surface lesions. Many of these pieces were awful examples of 'Drive-by journalism', but Hari's certainly appeared to have been well researched, even if many of us disagreed with its hysterically outraged tone, wilful lack of balance and insistence on portraying Dubai in the worst possible light.

But we all had views on it, expressed widely and with vim and wit. The vast majority of people I know who live and work here disagreed with Hari's piece and did so from a standpoint of great experience of Dubai and the wider Middle East - the context in which Dubai demands to be placed by anyone genuinely wishing to provide service to their readers.

We were able to have that discussion because we could see what we were discussing. Chris was able to lampoon it so brilliantly because he had the chance to read what he was lampooning. Public voice provided a balance to Hari's article and also provided many of the balancing comments that disagreed with it on The Independent's website. Because we could see the piece, make our minds up and provide our counterpoint to Hari's rant.

Now Du has apparently blocked the article (see the grab above), at least in part (some Du users say they can still access it, although the majority appear not to be able to). If so, we can only urge the telco to reconsider this unilateral decision (Etisalat customers can still access it, so presumably this means the block is not a TRA decision) and reverse it.

I can only assume that it was a decision taken in error by some jobsworth and does not truly reflect a policy of blocking all material that reflects an opinion or tone that does not meet some hidden 'standard' of what's acceptable. Or that it is a technical 'glitch' that can be remedied.

But if it is a block based on the content of the piece, that's really bad news. It would deny people the right to an opinion. It would deny the practice of journalism. And it would have the potential to create yet more negative sentiment on Dubai - negative sentiment that I, for one, really and truly do not want to see being so needlessly created.

Anyone from Du able to confirm that this is not a block by policy?

Update

The National's Tom Gara reports, via Twitter, that the du block is to be removed and seems possibly to have been the subject of a little confusion between du and the TRA.

Good news, then, at the end of the day.

Tree Hugger

Three things caught my eye yesterday and today and I thought I'd share them. Do bear in mind they come from someone that doesn't wear organic cotton, eat lentils or hug trees.

The evaporation of the Aral sea.
This image from NASA shows the evaporation of the Aral Sea. Not really a sea at all, but the fourth biggest lake in the world, the draining of the waters from the two rivers that lead to the Aral Sea in the 1960s has had a devastating and exponential effect on the surrounding environment, destroying the local fishing industry and rendering agriculture around the sea virtually impossible. Attempts to save the least polluted northern lake appear to have had some effect - this image appears to actually show a slight improvement on the situation a couple of years ago - but the damage has been done. Clouds of toxic dust from pesticides, biochemical research and industrial activity are swept throughout the barren area, the local population are being eaten away by poverty and sickness, including lung disease and cancers.

The declining polar cap
This time series of images from NASA shows the patterns of ice on the polar ice caps in September and March each year from 2000-2009. It will make you crap yourself.

The Story of Stuff
Someone (sorry, forgot who!) Tweeted a link to this impactful little video yesterday and I watched it. Getting the two links above from NASA the next morning did rather pull me up with a bump. I do highly recommend investing 20 minutes in taking a look at the video - you'll be the six million and somethingth to do so. It's entertaining, amusing and sobering. Not a bad mixture to manage!

It's been a tad controversial - one commentator called it 'Community college Marxism with a pony tail' - activist Annie Leonard certainly doesn't pull any punches. But you'll perhaps be pleased to know that Fox News, that famous left wing think tank and Voice of Reason, has quibbled with the facts presented in the video.

The list of quibbles with the film that Right Wing America trots out was the final, most scary thing of all. Because they don't question the substance of the presentation - just nitpick over facts such as whether the world's top 5 (Leonard) or 37 (Fox) economies are corporations. Wikipedia cites the sources for Leonard's figures, but I honestly don't care. 51 is a shocking number. 37 is a shocking number. And these are probably the least shocking numbers in the film.

Have a nice day!

The Du Fail

Image by Fenchurch! via Flickr

A wee while ago I posted a grumpy response to the campaign being run by the UAE’s second favourite telco, Du, which targeted ‘smart people’ using social media tools, including Twitter and Facebook.

As I said at the time, and yes I do know that quoting myself is dangerously close to bloganism, “The first problem with this whole thing is that you need to be UPFRONT if you're a company using Twitter and other social media. There's no point in being coy - and you're just going to annoy people if you hide your identity and purpose.”

There was quite a lot of negative comment generally about the campaign, particularly on Twitter.

The campaign didn’t actually last very long. In fact, it looked like this:

Smartpeople follower stats

31 March - FB 46 members (13 admins), Twitter 81 followers (following 192)

6 April FB 116 members (13 admins), Twitter 127 followers (following 226)

13 April FB 184 (15 admins), Twitter 138 (226)

14 May - Twitter 152 Facebook 250

18 May - Twitter 152 Facebook 252

Last Tweet from @smartpeople was 19 April

Last post on Facebook page by 'Albert Edison' was 12 April


One can only assume that at some stage, someone smart pulled the plug. But then if there were actually smart people at Du, you’d have thought they wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

You’d be wrong.

Du’s new campaign, Be Heard, is similar to the last effort in that its ‘social media’ platforms are being heavily supported by traditional advertising spend. The drive to get you along to the beheard.ae website included emailers as well as muppies (the street advertising thingies).

When you get to beheard.ae you get asked to answer a load of questions of the ‘empowering’ nature: you know, ‘Do you want better value?’ ‘Do you want to save your time?’ ‘Do you want fries with that?’

The website is basically a ‘bait and switch’ advertising-led concept, getting you to visit a website ostensibly to ‘be heard’ when the objective is actually to position Du as cool and ‘with the kids’, to collect email addies and ‘profiles’ of people.

The site tells you how many people voted yes or no to each of the questions. With an attempt to build a Twitter following and an add to Facebook button, the whole thing could be termed an attempt at building ‘social media’ in that it fakes the egalitarianism of asking people’s opinions and letting them share the feedback.

You get the option of adding your own question for people to answer. Someone I know added ‘Don’t you think this whole dumb campaign is a waste of time?’ but I haven’t seen that one displayed on the site yet. So much for the democratisation of being heard.

The feeling of mildly frustrated emptiness that is the end result of going through this process is a little like going out for evening drinks with friends except you have to mime drinking instead of having real drinks and you have to bray like donkeys instead of actually talking.

There’s an ‘about’ button on the site. Once again, as with the failed Smartpeople campaign, that button doesn’t actually say that the campaign’s being run by Du.

The conversation about this campaign on Twitter has either been breathless endorsement (by the people behind it) or irritated commentary. Few managed to voice their irritation as well as advertising website AdNation:

“This one actually manages to be worse than Smart People – at least that had some kind of gimmick. Beheard.ae seems to just be a rather fatuous series of questions, which offer no real insight into anything.”

So again, we have an anonymous site that pretends to be social media and simply isn’t – it’s a company behaving dishonestly and completely misreading the sentiment of the target audience it’s addressing. It’s a company trying to use ‘social media’ but from an old school advertising standpoint, informed by the belief that the job of an advertiser is to shout slogans at people and the role of the consumer is to be the helpless victim of the sloganeering.

The site asks a range of questions, but that’s as far as it goes. They’re not discussed, they’re not part of a serious feedback scheme or the basis for a conversation. I can’t wait for the press release which I am sure, with a crushing sense of inevitability, will be sent out with the ‘results of the survey’.

The result of all this money and effort is that consumers (particularly the Twittering ones) have been actively sniping at the campaign, mildly irritated by it or simply untouched by it.

I believe passionately that we should all make mistakes. Like some geezer said, ‘If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not innovating’. But repeating dumb mistakes, particularly when people actually explained the mistake and why it was a mistake, is a worry.

These two campaigns have arguably done more damage than good to the Du brand.

What's next? Will it be strike three?

Be honest with consumers.

Talk with people, not at them.

Stop shouting and start listening.

Get the message, Du?

(Thanks to CJ for obsessive monitoring & input)

My City. My Metro. My !!!

Your humble correspondent was somewhat disconcerted yesterday to pass a number of advertisements along Dubai's Sheikh Zayed Road, multiply proclaiming 'My City. My Metro.'.

I can only assume this is 'awareness building'. In fact, according to the RTA's own press release, chucklesomely headlined 'RTA Embarks on Massive Metro Marketing Camapaign:

"This marketing campaign runs for one year and comprises three phases to cover the project comprehensively. Phase I focuses on the project introduction in terms of launch timing, shape design and message selection i.e. (My Metro). Phase II is the basic stage comprising all information related to the metro operation, fare, public services, station services, multi-modal integration, and security & safety means. Phase III is the preparatory phase that sets the stage for the launch day on 09/09/2009; also incorporating a supplement to Phase II."

Now don't for a second think that I'm being snarky about this, but the World's Largest Rollercoaster(TM) runs all the way along the Sheikh Zayed Road, occluding much of one's view to the left of said road when travelling in a Southerly direction and the view to the right when travelling in a Northerly direction. *

For well over a year now, we've been watching those pillars supporting massive yellow machines that have been slotting the whole massive Lego kit together, we've seen the armadillo stations take shape and exclaimed with childish delight and wonder when we've all seen our first train moving. We've been talking about it, we've been living with it - including the diversions and traffic jams that have inevitably accompanied a project of such scale.

WE KNOW THERE'S A BLOODY METRO THERE!

Now that we've established that, can we all please save some of the money that's being wasted and get down to the job of actually communicating information of value to people so that we can all start to make our minds up about the most crucial question that is begged by this stunning piece of engineering: will any of us actually want to use it?

*Forgive me, but I have been Irish since my health test.

Technofear

“Inventions reached their limit long ago, and I see no hope for further development.”
Julius Frontinus
Engineer
C1st A.D.

“That any general system on conveying passengers would go at a velocity exceeding ten miles an hour is extremely improbable”
Thomas Tredgold
Civil engineer & writer
1835

“This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.”
Western Union, internal memo
1876

"I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning or of the expectation of good results from any of the trials we hear of ... I would not care to be a member of the Aeronautical Society."
Lord Kelvin
President, Royal Society
1895

“Everything that can be invented has been invented.”
Charles H. Duell
Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents
1899

“Aeroplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.”
Marechal Ferdinand Foch
Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre
1911

“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”
H. M. Warner, Founder, Warner Brothers
1927


“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
Thomas Watson
Chairman of IBM
1943

“With over 50 foreign cars already on sale here, the Japanese auto industry isn't likely to carve out a big slice of the U.S. market.”
Business Week
1968

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.”
Ken Olson
Founder, Digital Equipment Corp.,
1977

“If our language, our programs, our creations are not strongly present in the new media, the young generation of our country will be economically and culturally marginalized.”
Jacques Chirac

UAE Health Test

Image via Wikipedia

I did my health test. It’s got to be my top ‘most dehumanising expat experience’, shuffling around trying to find out what to do next in the warm, fuggy semi-portakabin rooms of the laughingly named Satwa Health Clinic, clasping my piece of paperwork and my passport and waiting for the inevitable grunting electric-chair-arm-strap experience to be followed by a nasty little blue-purple spreading bruise.

When I first did a health test here, they actually tested my health. Now it’s just a blood test for HIV antigens. It even says so on the label of the sample bottle they give you to clutch as you hop from warm seat to warm seat in the great Waiting Caterpillar Game. Just before you do the clutch cotton wool to your inner elbow by giving the international ‘Wooargh, wouldn’t you like to give ‘er one, eh?’ thing.

The nice security chap at the health centre, responding to my confused “What do I do?” question as there’s, as usual, no signage, information or any other hint as to what is expected of one, sent me to the typing centre where for a mere 20Dhs a chap in a hat typed my application for me. Then I went back to the health centre and paid my 260Dhs for the test. You can pay more these days if you want a fast result, including a 1-hour 'VIP' service.

I was amazed at how analogue the whole process still was until, waiting for my name to be called out by a Bangladeshi robot tannoy announcer, I noticed a line on the form, “Thank you for using DOHMS online medical fitness request service”.

I checked online when I got back to the office and, sure enough, the cheeky sods in the typing centre had charged me 20Dhs for the pleasure of typing an online form for me!

It’s simple, peeps – you got to www.dohms.gov.ae and register for a ‘temporary health card number’ and then use that to fill out the health test form and print it out – you can also pay online for the service fees.

The site’s basic and could be more flexible (for instance, no option to edit your profile information once it’s entered) but it seems to work just fine. Why the staff at the health centre don’t tell you it’s online, I don’t know.

The actual, on the day experience is still awful, of course. But now you know. I paid 20Dhs so you won’t have to...

The Journalist and the Machine

Image by bunky's pickle via Flickr

Nigel is a journalist on a weekly magazine. He’s good at his job, which means filing two or three incisive and highly readable features a week plus a good handful of news stories. For these, he relies on a mixture of good contacts, a lot of Google alerts, the local papers and a quick scan of each days’ inbox full of press releases, most of which are dross but some of which can be followed up. On a bad week he might even use one or two with no follow-up, purely because time has a habit of running out now and then.

The features take up most of his time, often requiring a number of interviews and meetings for background as well as more for opinions and quotes. He’ll crack some of these features off quite quickly, others can be on the boil for a few weeks.

Bob is a busy executive with a major US security company and he’s visiting the Middle East to review the company’s 60-strong and growing operation. Security systems for corporates are a big and growing business in the region and Bob’s company has taken the region seriously enough to send him in: he’s global VP of a $3 billion company. The Middle East reports through London and the local GM and marketing manager have already had several conference calls with the slightly panicky communications team in London. They have never had Bob in the EMEA region before and they want to make sure nothing goes wrong. And the corporate team have already let London know that this is a big one for them. The team in Dubai, as a consequence, have really been feeling the heat about Bob’s visit.

Nigel takes a call from a local PR company offering an interview with a real hot-shot executive who’s visiting called Bob Bobbus. Apparently he’s a player in the security market and is here to talk about opening regional operations for a really big security company. Nigel agrees to take the interview with Bob as it sounds interesting. The PR guy is slightly more annoying than usual, asking him about his background and intended story angle.

The symptoms of big executive fear are always the same: it’s the fifth time this particular PR company has asked him for his background and, what’s more, Nigel does feel the request for his story angle in the same call as the interview’s being sold on is hardly reasonable. A subsequent call, three days before the interview is due to happen, confirms that Bob can only meet Nigel at 7pm in Jebel Ali. Nigel lives in Mirdif and won’t be home to see his young son until way past 9pm. Dinner will be in the dog. Again. Nigel considers canning the whole thing, but he’s got an issue to put to press and nothing else in the bag right now.

The PR company is asking about his story angle again: the exec actually asks him for a copy of his questions. Nigel is polite, but firm: that’s not happening.

The PR company hasn’t actually had any meaningful dialogue with Nigel before, let alone about Bob, his company or its market and so has no idea of what Nigel’s views, interests or approach are likely to be. This is now turning into a problem as London is insisting on full information about the journalist, the publication and a market briefing for Bob.

The Dubai office gives the PR company a hard time and they finally deliver the documents the day before Bob Bobbus flies in. They’re sketchy and London is concerned as a result: they insist that the Dubai GM and his marketing manager sit in on the interview.

The day of Bob’s visit dawns and everything goes pretty well: a customer event in the morning, a number of customer meetings following and a visit to a major site in the afternoon. The major site, a very sensitive customer, is a significant account to Bob’s company and the customer is really interested in some of the new things that the company is bringing out and so Bob and the group are delayed.

Nigel, who arrived a little early, waits at the hotel they’ve arranged to meet at – he’s joined by the PR guy, who arrived a little late. The PR guy tries to be friendly, but Nigel’s irritated and concerned about getting home now and just stares into his coffee.

Bob arrives 35 minutes late. He’s got his GM and marketing manager in tow and they all file into a meeting room together with the PR. Nigel waits outside, checking his skin for signs of leprosy.

After another ten minutes, Nigel is called in to the room for his audience with Bob. He’s sat at a boardroom table facing four people in suits. A normally relatively mild-mannered man, Nigel is really quite irritated by now, but is professional enough to put this to one side and get on with the interview. It quickly becomes obvious that Bob knows nothing about the Middle East and precious little about the world outside the continental USA. He is evasive regarding any financial information, future plans or disclosing details of any large deals or customers.

Nigel knows a little bit about Bob’s company and asks about the big customer that Bob visited that afternoon. Bob denies the meeting. Nigel’s wife works for the company and so he continues to probe regarding the relationship between Bob and his customer.

The local GM interrupts Nigel to tell him that it would probably be better to drop this line of questioning. Nigel points out that he’s perfectly entitled to pursue the line of questioning. The PR guy steps in and suggests a change of topic.

Nigel disagrees. He wants to know why Bob is lying about the customer site visit. The atmosphere is by now quite electric. And then Nigel asks about the Saudi bank that’s filing a case against Bob’s company in London. It’s common knowledge in the regional market and has even popped up on a couple of websites. However, it’s news to Bob and all hell quietly breaks loose. Bob handles the question badly, his GM steps in and makes it worse and the marketing manager jumps in, too, and refers to the Saudi incident as merely one of a number of issues that security companies have to deal with in a difficult region like the Middle East. Nigel, who is taping the interview, is told that this comment was off the record when he asks follow up questions.

Nigel’s wife calls to ask where he is. In the circumstances, he takes the call, leaving the room briefly. He returns and finishes the interview as quickly as possible. It hasn’t been an enjoyable experience.

The next day, Nigel has the tape transcribed. It contains Bob and his team complaining about Nigel as he was out of the room and also the whispered briefing that Bob was given by his team on the four lawsuits that had been filed by unhappy customers in the region, totalling millions of dollars.

Does he use the material in his subsequent feature?

(I'd completely forgotten about this feature wot I wrote for ArabianBusiness.com until Shufflegazine's Magnus commented on it, which lead to me re-reading it. Having done so, I thought I'd post it here, because I think, in hindsight, it's actually an interesting question!)

Sentiment on the The Arab Tweet

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I didn’t attend the ‘New Media’ session of The Arab Media Forum yesterday ( I served my time in the morning, alright?), but then I didn’t need to. Several people I respect were in the audience and were Tweeting highlights throughout the session. One of them was a colleague, one was another PR person I chat to and two were media people I know well.

I can wait for further analysis of the session, I can take my time. I got the high points, the headlines, as they happened – and from several different sources and viewpoints at that.

The people whose commentary on the proceedings was influencing hundreds, in fact going into the thousands, of people were not the ones on the stage talking at the Forum, they were in the audience. Between them, the Tweeters were talking to an audience of more people than the guys onstage with the microphones. Sure, the BBC will broadcast the session in a while – but we’ve already discussed it, deliberated it, shared it ‘on the record’ with the entire Internet and moved on.

And if that doesn’t give you pause for thought, I give up.

Incidentally, the Twitter users were likely the only people in the room full of hundreds of media people that knew, as they sat down to the session, that Roxanne Saberi had been released from the terrible, feared Evin prison in Tehran – that her father was actually on the way to pick her up at that very moment. The breaking news was flying around Twitter as the conference session started. Oh! And also the news that not only had the Pope called for a two-state solution in Palestine but that the Palestinian Authority press centre had been forced to shut down by the Israelis.

And it doesn’t take a newsroom of hundreds to do that. Or a ‘publishing house’. Or a ‘printing press’. Or an ‘editor in chief’.

Oddly, our little band of Twitterers probably represented the few people in the room that actually, genuinely cared about news like Roxanne Saberi and the PA media centre. Freedom is an Internet thing – the ‘old world’ is more reconciled to its lack.

So what did happen in the ‘new media’ session?

The 'traditional' media, debated their credibility and asked The Lone Blogger why he blogged ("Did you always want to be a journalist?"), comforting themselves with the fact that 'citizen journalism' wasn't as reliable as a 'real journalist'.

They, and Seymour Hersh, appear to have missed the point. The world is changing - it's not about bloggers wanting to be journalists. It's much, much bigger than that and it's time that many of our media woke up to the smell of coffee.

BTW, a Gulf News (600g) survey today, commissioned from IPSOS of some 2,000 people, showed that 76.2 of respondents strongly agreed with the statement 'The Internet helps me to keep up to date with the latest news'. GN's headline for the piece?

"Gulf News Stays Ahead of the Pack"

Which is fine, as long as your pack's not heading for the edge of a cliff...