Tim Horton's Coffee. Yum. Not.

Image via WikipediaCanadian coffee chain Tim Horton's has opened up in Dubai to much applause. It was thus that I found a colleague tucking into a cup of 'Tim Horton’s French Vanilla Cappuccino'. It is, according to the tin, "Rich and delicious". It smelt vile - sickly and unreal. Curious, I flipped the tin to read the ingredients label and this is what I found:

Sugar, coffee whitener [corn syrup solids, partially hydrogenated coconut oil, sodium caseinate (a milk derivative), dipotassium phosphate (E340i stabiliser), sodium tripolyphosphate (E451i), mono and diglycerides (vegetable), diacetyl tartaric esters of mono and diglycerides (E472e), sodium silicoaluminate (E554), artificial flavour], nonfat dry milk, instant coffee, artificial vanilla flavour [dextrose, maltodextrin, artificial flavour, tricalcium phosphate (E341iii)], artificial vanilla flavour [maltodextrin, artificial flavour, silicon dioxide (E551)], silicon dioxide (E551 anticaking agent), cocoa (processed with alkali), salt, carboxymethyl cellulose gum (E468 stabiliser).

The headlines are as follows. One cup of this product contains ONE FIFTH of your recommended daily intake of saturated fats, something like four teaspoons of sugar - the ENTIRE recommended daily intake of added sugar for a woman according to the American Heart Association and contains not one vanilla seed. It's also got no French in it. It does pack a neat punch of trans-fats, corn syrup and artifical flavourings and preservatives.

Let's take a look at that rich and delicious mixture in a little more detail... The ingredients in caps are the main ingredients, the ones just bolded are sub-ingredients of the main ingredient above.

SUGAR
The largest ingredient by weight in this product is not coffee, it's sugar. A lot of sugar. In fact, over half the content of that tin is sugar - 20g for each 35g serving. The tin's nutrition label cleverly dumps the sugar content together with fibre (0%, how could you expect to find fibre in something this processed?) under 'carbohydrates' which means it's only 8% of your recommended daily intake. Quite apart from the fact that almost a tenth of your recommended carbohydtate intake is provided by one cup of hot drink, this prestidigitation with labelling avoids telling you that this drink contains 100% of a woman's recommended daily intake of added sugar and 50% of a man's recommended intake (the recommendation comes from the American Heart Association). Not bad for one cup of gloop, is it?

COFFEE WHITENER
This contains: corn syrup solids, partially hydrogenated coconut oil, sodium caseinate (a milk derivative), dipotassium phosphate (E340i stabiliser), sodium tripolyphosphate (E451i), mono and diglycerides (vegetable), diacetyl tartaric esters of mono and diglycerides (E472e), sodium silicoaluminate (E554), artificial flavour

Deelicious! A brief examination of those yummy looking ingredients!

Corn Syrup Solids
So the largest ingredient in the whitener is, you guessed it, more sugar. Corn syrup solids are made by removing the water from corn syrup. As you'll know from previous posts, the majority of corn in the US is genetically modified and corn syrup (high fructose or otherwise) is ubiquitous in American processed foods.

Partially Hydrogenated Coconut Oil
Also known as a trans fat. Oddly, the tin's label proclaims 0% trans fats, but they're definitely in there - coconut oil is a saturated fat to start with, but when treated with hydrogen bubbles to thicken it, ('hydrogenation') it becomes a trans-fat, a man-made fat that suppresses your body's use of 'good cholestrol' and adds to its stock of 'bad' cholestrol.

Sodium Caseinate (a milk derivative)
This is an odd ingredient, as it is permitted by the US FDA to be an ingredient in 'non dairy' creamers, and yet is, as it says on the tin, a 'milk derivative'. Casein is a protein found in milk and this ingredient, which is a thickener and adds a 'dairy taste' to products, is obtained from fresh and/or pasteurized skimmed milk by acid coagulation of the casein. The mix is then neutralised using sodium hydroxide and powdered.

Dipotassium Phosphate and Sodium Tripolyphosphate
The first is a stabiliser, the second a preservative and moisture retainer.

Mono and diglycerides (vegetable),  (E472e), diacetyl tartaric esters of mono and diglycerides (E472e)
Mono and diglycerides are fats, used to extend shelf life, add a creamy flavour and help to bind other ingredients together. There's a lot of debate about them as they have appeared on food labels in place of hydrogenated oils, although they're a sort of new name for an old friend as they are, themselves, hydrogenated in the production process. The latter ingredient is sometimes referred to by the more friendly acronym DATEM.

Sodium Silicoaluminate and artifical flavour
The first is an anti-caking agent, the second is artificial.

NONFAT DAIRY MILK
Funny in a highly processed product packed with fats that they'd choose to use 'nonfat' powdered milk. Just out of interest, powdered milk contains higher levels of oxysterols, cholestrol derivatives that have been associated with the depositing of fatty materials on artery walls.

INSTANT COFFEE
What it says on the tin.

ARTIFICIAL VANILLA FLAVOUR
There are actually TWO artificial vanilla flavours in this product. Both contain processed sugars (dextrose and maltodextrin), tricalcium phosphate (also charmingly known as 'bone ash') or silicon dioxide, which are both anti-caking agents. And both contain 'artificial flavour'. This is a product that has never seen a vanilla pod and probably wouldn't recognise it if it did.

COCOA
Don't worry about the (processed with alkali), it's a process used in many cocoa drinks and just balances the natural acidity of the cocoa.

SALT
Quite a lot of it - 6% of your recommended daily intake (10% if you're over 51 or black).


CARBOXYMETHYL CELLULOSE GUM
A thickener.

So there we have it, a delicious drink in which no single ingredient has not undergone processing, which packs together artificial flavours with various ingredients designed to artificially trick you into thinking you're drinking something lovely when in fact what you're drinking is a cocktail of dubious fats, artificial flavouring agents and thickeners - and so much sugar you're likely drinking a whole day's recommended intake in one cup.

Enjoy!

Phished or Hacked?

Image via WikipediaIt's yet another very odd story coming out of Dubai Courts and I'm not sure whether that's because Dubai Courts are an odd place or because the journalism itself is odd. Gulf News reports today on a woman whose account was "hacked by a phishing syndicate". The story's here.

It's a very confusing story indeed - her account is variously described as having been hacked into and she as having been victimised by a phishing syndicate. Well, being hacked is one thing, being phished is quite another - and the core of the story, surely, is whether one or the other situation applies. If she was phished, she willingly gave away her account details which then would have been used by a criminal to access her account - no hacking involved. If she was hacked, someone illegally accessed her account by manipulating the bank's security systems.

And where did a 'syndicate' come from?

The story also makes mention of a mobile notification service which didn't kick in until four days after the transactions, but not why the service didn't kick in. Are we saying that all banks now have to notify all clients of all transactions or face liability for any fraud howsoever caused?

The court brought in an expert, a banker. I wonder why it didn't bring an expert on security in to clear things up a little? The whole report left me with a great deal more questions than answers - and that's not what journalism is supposed to do, is it? It's supposed to give us 'context and analysis'...

Ministry

Image via WikipediaBack in the distant mists of time, I published magazines as a day job. It's what originally brought me out to the UAE in 1993 - I set up a publishing operation based out of pals' offices (and under their trade license) in Ajman.

I produced a computer magazine which was something of a pioneer - it was a reviews magazine, something the region didn't have at the time. We brought PCs, software and other IT equipment in from international and local companies alike and speed tested them, prodded them and otherwise evaluated them for the elucidation of a grateful readership.

We used desktop publishing to produce the magazine. This meant that I brought a PC with me out from the UK and was able to write, do all the make-up and prepress work then just spin the whole lot out to camera-ready pages of 'bromide' at a bureau. Even 'bleeding edge' DTP users (and I was one: I can tell you I spilt a great deal of blood)  hadn't got the hang of colour scanning back then, so the printers still had to scan the images into the ready-made areas defined on the pages.

This meant that I had, quite literally, a publishing house on my desktop. This was to cause a great deal of consternation when the Ministry of Information shut us down.

We arrived at the office one morning to find it sealed with official tape. We'd been closed down by the Ministry! We high-tailed it down to the Ajman MoI offices (which at the time were near where the Kempinski is now) only to find it wasn't on their account - it was a request from Dubai. So off to Qusais to the Ministry of Information building there to try and find out what it was we'd done to deserve getting closed down.

We'd reviewed a computer. Not any old computer, a really bad local OEM job. It was an unserviceable unit when it arrived with us and we had (with charming naiveté) said so in the magazine. Trouble was, the bloke that owned the computer company had a relative who was a Big Bug at the (you guessed it) Ministry of Information. We were in very, very big trouble indeed.

I remember the meeting I had with the first of a succession of Men With Very Big Desks, my nose pressed against the edge of a glass-topped expanse the size of an aircraft carrier as I was served gallons of zaatar and fruit teas in custard glasses. He wanted to know where was the editor and I told him it was me. And where was the publisher? It was me. Where did we publish? From the office. But what about staff? Erm. Me. And my ad sales guy. What about graphic artists and journalists and editors and men to do layouting and typesetters? Me. He was fascinated. Publishing without a publishing house was something he just couldn't get his head around.

I realised, with growing glee, that the bookshelves lining his office were stacked with Forbidden Fruit. Jackie Collins featured in the collection in a big way, Erica Jong and Molly Parkin tucked up alongside her.

We worked from home as the problem was thrashed out, our sponsor being relatively floppy about the whole thing until someone from the other side insulted him personally. He suddenly turned into a whirlwind of epic proportions, a Tasmanian Devil on crack with a revenge fixation that made Charles Bronson look like the tooth fairy. The whole thing was sorted in seconds flat after that.

I found myself in Qusais again yesterday and today, entering the same building as I had all those years ago to have sentence pronounced on me and my publishing company on a desktop. This time around it's a great deal more pleasant in there, lighter and more airy, the people smiling and helpful. It's called the National Media Council now.

The lady I talked to yesterday looked with mild horror at the memory stick I held up when she asked for my book. Mildly incredulous and laughing embarrassedly, she pointed out that they needed two sets of printouts on paper.

A book on a memory stick! I mean, whatever next? A publishing company on a desktop?

I delivered tottering stacks of manuscript this morning, a step necessary for those seeking 'permission to print' a book in the UAE. Let's see what happens now.

Court Confusion Continues

Image by s_falkow via FlickrI'd hate to be the presiding judge over this one. Gulf News reports on the ongoing 'Facebook slur' court case currently being heard at the Dubai Court of First Instance. The funny thing is it doesn't really involve, well, Facebook...

It's a real 'he said, she said' case, defendant NF is accused of sending a threatening text message to Emirati AM, threatening to 'humiliate and dishonour him and his family' by uploading his and his family's photos to Facebook. None of the coverage of the case states that these photos are in any way lewd or compromising - and without that angle, we're really talking about the crime of doing what over 800 million people do pretty much every day.


NF's lawyers say that AM, having lost 11 cases to NF regarding the conduct of their business relationship, had maliciously bought a mobile SIM card and sent the messages to himself. He had allegedly used an old copy of NF's passport to do this.

So there was actually no 'Facebook slur' at all - GN's sub-editors once again using a Möbius strip to distort reality to make a better headline. There was the threat of uploading images to Facebook, which doesn't really count as a slur, does it?

This case is actually more about texting - did the accused send these texts and is their content actionable under UAE law or did the accuser apply for a mobile using a woman's passport? We're told AM is Emirati and must assume NF is not - so it's interesting to think that Etisalat would sell a SIM card to an Emirati man using a foreign woman's passport who is no relation to him, but presumably the court can get to the bottom of that one quite quickly.

The case would actually have been a great deal more worrying to contemplate had it involved a 'Facebook stur' - it's harder for a court to judge what went on here as content can be uploaded and deleted quite quickly. Facebook is a closed shop, so you can't use Google caches, for instance, to look at archived content (unless it has been posted using Facebook's 'public' setting). You could take screen grabs of the offending material, but screen grabs can be faked relatively easily. And you'd have to depend on specialists to weigh in on that type of issue. Facebook itself can be pretty obtuse when it comes to responding to user complaints - the abuse button isn't a sure-fire way of issuing a take-down notice and much of the 'policing' of Facebook is automated, so the interwebs are littered with the voices of frustrated users who have issues with fake pages and the like.

As it is, this is only one of two fascinating stories regarding texting in today's press. The other one has an Indian man sending a text to a major in Dubai police threatening to bomb the Burj Khalifa and attempting to extort $1mn, released after four months in jail after his 'friend' boasted to a barman that he'd set the whole thing up. The 'friend' is now in court himself. You have to wonder what on earth was going on in his head.

You're also left wondering what would happen if a truly complex case of Internet fraud or identity theft did come up...

Shiny Satisfaction Survey

Image by Tracy Hunter via Flickr"Hello. I'm calling you from Dubai Ltd. We're conducting a satisfaction survey. As you likely know, 82% of customers are happy with Dubai.ae according to Khaleej Times and we just wanted to know if you're satisfied with your Shiny too."

"Well, as you mention it..."

"That's great, well thanks for your feedback, we'll just add you to the 'totally delighted' column and then we won't need to bother you again."

"But I didn't say I was delighted with my Shiny."

"But you are now, aren't you?"

"Well, actually-"

"See? I mean, who could want for more, eh? Sun, sea, sand. The cooler weather and dusting off the barbecue, the woman of your dreams at your side and an iconic lifestyle where you can dare to dream and come back for more."

"Well, yes, but-"

"Secure and safe, well paid, fat and coddled in a nice warm cocoon of feelgood. So well off you'd almost feel guilty about whingeing about the downsides..."

"True, but..."

"Look, I tell you what. I'll put you down as "pretty delighted".

"What are the other categories?"

"Umm, fairly delighted and delighted."

"And what about rising visa costs, greedy developers sucking me dry with insane maintenance charges, negative equity and an electricity bill that defies quantum physics?"

"We've got Modhesh. Brand equity like that doesn't come cheap, me bucko. Come on now, time is money."

"Sigh. Put me down as delighted then."

"Nice to talk to you. 'Till the next survey, then."

"Bye."

Nostradamus

Image via Wikipedia"A Facebook group on the conflict between the army and Fatah Al Islam in Lebanon grew a membership of 8,000 in a single week: an average of two new members every minute. The movement of people, of opinions and debate in the new social networks can take place with incredible rapidity. This debate is taking place in a region where public debate, assembly and the mass publication of opinion have traditionally been discouraged. There is a new egalitarianism in the air and it’s a heady scent for many.

A flash survey of 100 Middle East based Facebook users tells us that 93% of them are using broadband connections. And 89% of them have laptop computers. 73% of those Facebook users are between 25 and 35 years of age. The survey took less than 1 hour to conduct.

There is a strong and growing Arab community using broadband technologies to move video content across the Internet, often as part of participation in social networks. The video featuring King Abdulla II of Jordan produced by the One Voice organisation, calling for peace and understanding between Palestinians and Israelis, has drawn over 279,000 views in Youtube. Video clips on Lebanon have consistently drawn above 150,000 views, while other topics and productions from the Arab world have consistently driven between 60,000 and 1 million views. Few FTA channels in the region could claim such viewership.

Social networks, the core aspect of the thinking that has been characterised as Web 2.0, are driving the adoption of broadband services in the Middle East. Perhaps interestingly this is not a technical audience of technology early adopters. That the growth in adoption has not been stronger is almost undoubtedly a product of prohibitive pricing strategies among the region’s operators."

That was all written early in 2007. Not bad, huh? I recently had reason to revisit a white paper I'd written together with Spot On bright spark Mai Abaza to support my presentation at the Arab Advisors Convergence Conference in Amman. The above text is part of the argument we were making that regional telcos needed to bring down the price of broadband and stop considering it a service for shifting big files and start looking at it as a way for many people to shift many files quickly.

I recall asking the conference how many had heard of the phrase Web 2.0 or social media and getting a show of eleven hands from an audience of hundreds of operators. That's telcos for you.

Re-reading this reminded me there's a line that connects Nahr El Bared with Occupy Wall Street - those Facebook groups that sprang up contained debate and discourse we had never before seen in the region - passionate and sometimes violently abusive, the adoption rate of these groups and the way they brought people together were stunning to watch. Of course, Mai and I were so busy examining the implications for the broadband market we missed the wider implications that here was a new platform for discourse and organisation that would grow to have the ability to bring down governments.

Those groups showed people in the Middle East, for the first time, that they could not only talk to each other, but broadcast opinion to tens of thousands. It took four years' growth in adoption, but the seeds sown as the Lebanese army blasted the Nahr El Bared camp using helicopters carrying bombs in home-made cradles would lead to something a great deal bigger...

IBAN Numbers For The UAE. Be Scared...

Image by ~Aphrodite via FlickrThe news made me shudder. The UAE is introducing IBAN codes for all bank accounts.  By rights, this should cheer me up no end as the IBAN number has long been a mainstay of electronic payments to my real bank in the UK. But it doesn't. It makes me very, very afraid.

My fear is unreasonable, I know. HSBC has a nice, reassuring letter on its website, It even has a 'generate your IBAN' application that lets me key in my twelve digit account number and see what my IBAN number would be.

Let us for a moment skip over the wisdom of an application that asks me to input sensitive personal information without any attempt at security or validation. I am sure any reasonable, competent bank wouldn't encourage its customers to give away account numbers and so on in a way that could lead them to give such information away on, say, a phishing website.

The IBAN number is actually nice and easy. It consists of a two letter country code (AE), a two digit checksum and a three digit bank identification number (HSBC's is 020). Then you have a 16-digit number which consists, in HSBC's case, of four leading zeroes and your 12 digit HSBC account number.

It's nice to see HSBC so keen to use IBAN numbers. This is the bank that didn't have a field on its web-based transfer screen to enter IBAN numbers into - and then charged the currency losses resulting from  the rejected transaction back to the customer.

So why do I think they're going to screw this up? Well, in part because over the 18-odd years I've banked with them there has been no aspect of banking that they haven't at one stage screwed up for me, so I don't see why this should be any different. And in part because I bank with an institution stupid enough to get its customers keying their bank account numbers over open connections with no security or validation. But also because we're all going to need this new system working like clockwork come the end of November.

Why? Because the deadline for implementation of this new numbering system is the 19th November - and any electronic payment made into a UAE bank account without a valid IBAN number after that date will potentially bounce back and incur addtiional charges. And that includes the payment of your salary - the UAE's wages protection system (WPS) will require employers to use IBAN numbers to make salary transfers. If that causes any problems, we'll be rightly banjaxed as most people are paid at the month's end - and the end of November (the first test of the new system) segues neatly into the UAE's National Day holiday. This year the UAE celebrates its 40th year as a nation - it's going to be a biggie.

Maybe it will all go wonderfully. Maybe I'll be proved wrong to be so suspicious and cynical. We'll see...

The Emirates Identity Card: A Fresh Fandango

Image by P Shanks via FlickrIt was with infinite weariness I started this post. I've resisted commenting on the various announcements made by the Emirates Identity Authority for some time now, having just taken it as read that whatever they say will be corrected or clarified at some stage in the future, then recanted or re-clarified, changed or just turned on its head. I've been following the whole sorry saga since November 2008 and it's not been pretty, I can tell you. For a convenient glance at the whole backstory, you can follow this here link.


In this rather grumpy post, I called the whole thing a fiasco. And I do think I was justified in that.

As a communications case study it's quite without parallel - a remarkable track record of unclear and frequently unsustainable announcements that our media has done very little to clear up. The newest moves, reported in today's Gulf News (the other lads seem to have missed the story), are as impenetrable as the fog sitting on the ground during this morning's drive to work. Gulf News has two stories today, this one on its front page tells us that you now need to be fingerprinted at an Emirates ID Centre while undergoing medical tests to renew your visa. This flies in the face of the recent announcements that those renewing would not have to be fingerprinted. Asked why by the fearless bastions of the fourth estate over at GN, a spokesperson responded: "It is for security purposes."

Apparently preventative medicine centres (PMCs - you know, the places where we're herded around in shuffling lines to be dehumanised and then stabbed in the forearm by a licensed butcher, leaving a nasty bruise for days that never happens when a hospital takes a blood sample) are now being linked to the EIDA system. Quite why this means we have to be fingerprinted again is anyone's guess. This process was originally announced to be completed by 2010.

Reporting inside the paper, Gulf News tells us there is now an absolute deadline for expatriates to register for their Emirates ID cards of March 31st 2012.

The original deadline for the ID card was, as those with long memories will recall, January 2009. This deadline was extended in an announcement that said the deadline was not being extended, which I posted on here. It was subsequently extended to the end of 2010. Interestingly, the original deadline for UAE nationals was 31st March 2009, although as of today there doesn't appear to be a deadline for nationals at all.

So, three years later, we have a real deadline ("We're serious this time, we're telling you!") with a fine to be imposed upon those not complying, of Dhs20 per day up to a maximum of Dhs1,000. The real deadline is December 1st 2011 in Fujairah, Ras Al Khaimah, Umm Al Quwain an Ajman, February 1st 2012 in Sharjah and March 31st in Abu Dhabi. Dubai gets until June 1st 2012.


Quite who is going to administer the application and collection of these fines in each municipality with different deadlines applicable is a question GN doesn't address. One suspects this is because the whole fine thing is just another pronouncement of negligible substance from a source that has given us so many.

I just can't wait for the inevitable story that the EIDA folks have been awarded for bringing the project in on time, under budget and to quality...

Ancient Geek Reprised

Image via WikipediaI had reason today to look back over the series of 'Ancient Geek' posts I put up a couple of years back and I quite enjoyed them. In the unlikely event that you would feel similarly, here they, arranged in chronological order for your viewing pleasure.

Ancient Geek
Encounters with punch cards and HP mainframes.

Ancient Geek V.2.0 (Beta)
How to crash IBM's MAPICS software running on a System 3X minicomputer


Ancient Geek V. 2.11 (Service Pack 2)
Making sweet music using the Apple IIe.

Ancient Geek V.3.0 Professional Edition
How I ended up working for Tandy/Radio Shack and getting sent to Saudi Arabia...

Computers certainly have a lot to answer for...

ENOC: It's About Time

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeThe Emirates National Oil Company, or ENOC as it's popularly known, has issued a statement to local media that claims it will lose Dhs 2.7 billion this year because of the cost its is having to bear to sell fuel at the subsidised oil prices currently mandated in the UAE.

You may recall, this is the petrol company that stopped supplying petrol, a slightly ironic situation given it is located in one of the world's richest oil producing nations. I posted about it all at some length, particularly with the PR mismanagement case study aspects of the story in mind: ENOC's spokesperson chose to be mildly mendacious regarding the reason why its stations had stopped pumping fuel and the company then clammed up like Sammy the Slamshut Clam in response to a constant slew of media and widespread public inconvenience.

ENOC is also, just in case you're interested, the proud owner of a deeply woeful website - including a media news section last updated in 2006, which gives you an idea of just how important the company considers its media relations to be.

The newspapers have slavishly covered yesterday's statement, despite the fact it contains no element of news whatsoever. Even the figure of a Dhs 2.7 billion projected loss isn't news, it was contained in the company's statement following its board meeting in May of this year. 

It's also oddly timed. The National ran a story three weeks ago quoting a top ENOC official in which the Dhs 2.7 billion figure and the tale of woe about subsidies was highlighted - in fact, the National's story actually contains a great deal more information than the statement GN and KT have so obligingly covered today. Even enfant terrible 7Days ran with the statement. Quite why the company has broken its silence now remains to be explained, but one is left with the strong feeling that there's something behind the timing of it. I suppose we could ask ENOC, couldn't we?

Or perhaps not. Gulf News' piece contains the amusing snippet: "A spokesman for Enoc declined to elaborate on the company statement when reached by Gulf News."