Windows 8. Regrets, I've Had A Few...

I have to report, the road  to Windows 8 has not been a smooth journey. There's much to like about Microsoft's new OS but the whole experience has left me feeling rather as if I'm the only person in this place to have actually upgraded to it.

First there was the great Firefox debacle - the badly documented fact that Firefox doesn't support Windows 8 (and, by the way, Chrome doesn't support Windows RT) only came to light after I had gone on a long journey to find out why Skype had stopped working. It's stopped working again but this time around I simply can't be bothered. I'm using the iPad for that instead.

Now Explorer, by no means my browser of choice, has also stopped working and I don't know what to do. There's no obvious option to repair or reinstall it. You can almost hear Barney's whiny Midwestern sing-song, 'Heyy, li'l guy! That's under the bonnet! You don't wanna go snoopin' around under the bonnet!' The support forums for Windows 8 have each got four or five topics on them, as if there are only about a hundred people in the world using this software. Microsoft support is so hard to find (particularly with a half-broken browser), I've just given up and installed Chrome.

The great selling point for Windows 8 is that it's touch enabled. If you've found yourself habitually reaching out to swipe a laptop screen, you'll appreciate the fact that you can now do it and have something happen. All of the great versions of Windows have had a 'raison d'etre' - Windows 3.0 sealed Microsoft's outright leadership not only of the OS market but of the application market, by breaking the DOS 640k barrier and simultaneously leading competitors to develop for OS/2. Windows NT didn't break. And Windows 7 wasn't  Vista.

With that in mind, Windows 8's great USP is touch, but it hedges its bets with a desktop. So you have, effectively, two interfaces - the 'Metro' swipey interface and a desktop interface that isn't quite so touch friendly. So don't go putting that mouse on Dubizzle quite yet.

There are some parts of Windows 8 that really work. It's more intuitive and things are generally where you'd expect to find 'em. There's very little 'getting started' help - I had to Google how to close an app (a much clunkier gesture than Apple's) because there was nobody from MS telling you. Likewise, the relationship between the Metro interface and Desktop is something you're left to find out for yourself. Microsoft's Mail app is cool, but won't let you use the Search features within Gmail. It all feels a bit 'give a little, take a little' to tell you the truth.

And this is why I fear for Microsoft and Windows 8. If there were a major, mass-market interface competitor (if Google were hardcore about Chrome OS), this would be a very dangerous time indeed for Microsoft.

Windows 8 is an inflection point - and inflection points in technology are always terribly dangerous times. We're locked into technology by familiarity, and the greater our investment in an interface, the greater our 'stickiness' as users is. When you ask me to relearn that interface, you're asking me to go through the same pain barrier as deserting you and going with another provider.

The trouble with Windows 8 is it's a halfway house. The next version of Windows will have to complete the move to touch and finally junk the desktop, because Windows needs to do something huge, not something whimpery and tentative. That means applications written for touch - and there are very few of those out there right now outside games and the like. At this rate of adoption, developers won't be leaping to embrace Windows 8, either.

Having moved to Windows 8, I would probably counsel anyone thinking about it to stick with Windows 7. The pain of the move has been infinitely greater than any benefits I have gained. If that's the feedback from other users, the already reportedly slow adoption of Windows 8 is not going to speed up anytime soon.

I never thought I'd see the day, but Microsoft looks extremely vulnerable right now. 

The Burj Khalifa Pinnacle Panorama

Gerald Donovan's stunning 360 degree interactive panorama of Dubai taken from the top of the Burj Khalifa. I'm doing something I rarely/never do in mixing business with pleasure, as we worked together on the campaign to release this image to a select number of major international media outlets.

I do recommend a visit (it's linked here) - and particularly if you're able to go there from a tablet or smartphone. The fun of ducking, weaving and bobbing around a room like a lunatic as you fly through the sky 828 metres above Dubai is inestimable.

The image is being hosted by HIPA - His Highness Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashid's International Photography Award. Promoters of all things photographic, they have been highly supportive throughout the whole process, from conception to sharing.

Being 'on the inside' of this one was almost unbearable. Mr D and I are both children at heart and so keeping a lid on this was totally alien to the geek in both of us which just wanted to share the fun. More so for Gerald - he's the one wot climbed the last 200 metres above the upper limit of the Burj's 10 metre per second lifts (the 160th floor) and then stood in the small 1.5 metre circular pit at the pinnacle of the world's tallest tower and snapped tens of shots to be stitched painstakingly together into this amazing interactive/experiential image/thing.

He earnestly assures me the whole experience brought no sense of vertigo whatsoever. I still don't believe him.

A Very Literary Fellow

I'm going to be infesting The Emirates Airline Festival of Literature again this year. For the first time, I'm on the main programme, so I'll have the smoking jacket, cravat and a Sobranie in an ebonite holder.

On Thursday 7th March at 5.30pm, I'm moderating The Blogging Panel and will be joined onstage by some pretty heavyweight blogging types: social commentator, writer and journalist Shobhaa De, Russian crime fiction writer and social activist Boris Akunin, CNN journalist Caroline Faraj and locally-based newly-published author Kathy Shalhoub. For your Dhs60, you'll get an hour of insight into why these people bother with blogs, heated debate about the nature and changing role of media and, if I have anything to do with it, some troublemaking. I have the distinct feeling there'll be drinks afterwards...

On Friday 8th March from 3-4pm, I'll be onstage with Egyptian author of Come With Me From Jerusalem Kamal Abdel-Malek, talking about our Tales of Two Cities (I'll be blethering about Beirut - An Explosive Thriller, of course). We're both chatty, engaging types with plenty to say, so this session promises to be lively, interesting and impossibly random, which will be just lovely! Again,
you'll be relieved of Dhs 60 for the privilege!

And then on Saturday the 9th, from 1.30-2.30, I'll be in the delightful position of taking to the stage to chat with chef, cookery school owner and writer Anissa Helou in a session titled Life as a Modern Mezze! As any of you who remember The Blog Formerly Known As The Fat Expat will attest, I am far too interested in food for my own good, so I'm really looking forward to this session. A formidable intellect with many hats, Anissa will undoubtedly provide an hour's thought provoking and entertaining dialogue as well as a few tips for getting that mujadarah just right! :) Once again, the pleasure will cost you a mere Dhs 60.

And before you ask, no, none of the proceeds end up in my pocket! See you there!
 

Life In The Sharjah Lane

The above is a little present for any of you in the UK right now, thawing out from last week's cold snap, surrounded by drizzle and grey lumps of hardened snow. It's the view up from my sun lounger at the poolside of the Radisson Sharjah this weekend. No, no, don't thank me. It's fine. All part of the service. You're welcome.

Sarah's working in Dubai at the moment which means we're doing the hop across the border to work - border rats both. We had a quick chat over the weekend (while lying on those sun loungers, natch) about whether we want to move to live in Dubai and the answer remains an emphatic no.

Sharjah's not as 'sophisticated' as Dubai. We don't have organic markets and our smattering of smaller shopping malls lack the glitz and glamour of the World's Greatest Malls. There aren't world class restaurants around every corner or phalanxes of five star hotels lining every street. But that's okay.

There are souks and backstreet stores, little haberdashery shops and stalls selling mad plastic stuff alongside bolts of cloth and hairclips. There are poor stores that sell dried loomi, loofahs and sacks of spices and herbal remedies. There's the cloth souk with its dazzling shop windows interspersed with rickety little tailors' shops, a tiny area of goldsmiths nestled in its core. And, of course, the Blue Souk (or Souk Al Markazi to give its proper name), perfume souk, vegetable souk, animal souk and fish market. These remain distinctively organic places, alive and human rather than planned and polished. There are museums and art galleries.

They're excavating the car park behind the fort in 'Bourj', where you can see the traceries and lines of coral buildings. It looks like the already extensive heritage area is about to get even bigger. It's a lovely area to walk in this time of year. Now they've moved the dhow wharfage to the other side of the creek, I think the 'Irani souk', one of the last surviving (every Emirate had an 'Irani souk' where the dhows would hove to from Iran and sell their wares - the souks became solidified, rather in the way 'speedbump communities' like the Masafi Friday Market do) will dissipate.

We went wandering in the hardware souk. Madness. Most entertaining. It's been a while since we last did that.

Sharjah suits us just fine, thanks...


 

Sharjah Bus Tour Fun

P London bus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sharjah's Investment and Development Authority, Shurooq, has introduced 'Big Bus' style bus tours to the Emirate, the City Sightseeing Sharjah buess.

Which is sort of cool.

Now I can see you snarky Dubai types quipping, "What, one stop, is it?" and you should be ashamed of yourselves. Three double-decker London buses will duly ply their route, stopping at such landmarks (according to Gulf News today) as Al Majaz, Buheira, Al Qasba, the aquarium, the fish market, the restoration area and, bizarrely, Mega Mall.

I first came across Big Bus tours in London, where twenty quid gave you an, all-day, all-sights experience, with plenty buses zooming around so you never really had to wait long for one to come along and whisk you to the next destination. Similarly Paris, where we did the same thing. It's a brilliant way to get around a city. I've never been quite sad enough to take the Big Bus tour of Dubai - nothing against the tour, but I can drive, thanks. Germaine Greer did and used the deep experience and insight it brought her to pen a 1200-word slagging piece in the Guardian about how horrible it all is.

Sharjah's tour buses are priced at Dhs85 for adults and 45 for kids, which is a wee bit hefty, if you don't mind me saying so. And, if Gulf News is to be believed, the buses miss some key destinations, too - what about the archaeological and science museum, book roundabout (and its cultural centre) or the classic car museum, the discovery centre and the children's museum? Let alone the stunning Sharjah desert park, which is home to the natural history museum, the botanical museum and, of course, the desert wildlife park itself, which is an absolute must visit for any tourist or expat living here. Then there's the Mahatta Museum, the site of the old Imperial Airways landing strip in central Sharjah restored to its former glory - and, like many of the restoration areas in Sharjah, beautifully done.

There's actually loads to see and do in Sharjah, folks - for those of you that have never travelled North to The Wastelands. The Sharjah museums website has some great ideas for a family day out and it's linked here.  Take a City Sightseeing bus one Friday while the weather's still nice!

I think it's a great idea.

Sharjah's Speed Radar Shooting Spree

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sharjah police have an unusual case on their hands at the moment - someone's going around shooting out the traffic radars that the UAE's traffic cops are all so inordinately fond of.

While there is much debate about the efficacy of fixed radars in other parts of the world, for instance in the UK, the UAE has festooned its roads with a remarkable number of these snappy little devices, Dubai alone aiming, apparently, at a radar every two kilometres. That's quite a lot of radar and they can be expensive for those not used to cruise control. A colleague of mine with a particularly heavy right foot has paid out fines totalling Dhs 23,000 (About $6,300 to you) in the past, although thankfully she's now got that habit down to a more manageable Dhs 2,000.

There's been a 9% drop in the year on year fatality rate on Dubai's roads, although the accident rate has actually increased by 7% - something the anti-radar lobby would doubtless seize upon like ravening wolves - or Wordpress users finding your Blogger blog has been deleted.

But one chap has come up with his own argument, and it's a compelling one. It's getting expensive for Sharjah's finest, too - so far a total of fourteen radars have been shot along the Mileiha/Madam highway according to a story in Gulf News over the weekend, the latest such incident being last Wednesday. The story carries a pithy quote from Sharjah police:

“We are collecting evidence from the spot and will soon nab the person who committed the crime. We will find out what motivated him to commit such a crime.” He goes on to add, “The person responsible for shooting the radar will be arrested soon. “He will be punished according to the UAE law.”

This has been going on for some time, in fact. The first  11 of the Dhs 250,000 ($68,500) devices were shot out early in November, with Gulf News reporting on the incident on the 12th of that month. That story carried a particularly pithy quote from Sharjah police, who said:

“We are collecting evidence from the spot and will soon nab the person who committed the crime. We will find out what motivated him to commit such a crime.” He goes on to add, “The person responsible for shooting the radar will be arrested soon. “He will be punished according to the UAE law.”

As if not satisfied with his very expensive shooting spree (he's knocked up quite a tab by now), the vandal struck again in December, taking out a further two radars on the same stretch of road. Sharjah police commented pithily to Gulf News at the time, saying:

“We are collecting evidence from the spot and will soon nab the person who committed the crime. We will find out what motivated him to commit such a crime.” He goes on to add, “The person responsible for shooting the radar will be arrested soon. “He will be punished according to the UAE law.”

More cut and paste journalism, then - merely recycling the same old quote every time. At least it's not copied from a blog or another paper this time. But it's still reprehensible and shoddy not least because it misrepresents Sharjah police's reaction to the updated story.

Golly, but it's beginning to feel like Private Eye around here...

Sea Blue - All Washed Up

Meet the good ship Sea Blue, a pretty little boat - or general cargo vessel to cogniscenti. Last week we had high winds and choppy seas which seems these days to lead to the inevitable beached boat. She's laid up on the beach on Ajman Corniche, beached as beached can be. Perhaps luckily, she seems to have missed the rocky groyne just up from her beaching site.

She's something of a mongrel - built in 1974 in a Danish shipyard, sailing under a Korean flag with her home port recorded as Wontan but owned by a Sharjah company - Al Sadiq Ship Management, she was originally called the Arnarfell. I think Sea Blue is perhaps a tad more poetic sounding, no?

More about her here.
 

We're Back, Baby!

delete (Photo credit: M i x y)

You can only begin to imagine the look on my face when I pootled over to the blog yesterday to put up a post for the day (I was going to whinge about the new Salik gates, for what it's worth) and found the cheery words from Google (in Arabic, of course, because they insist on showing Arabic content to someone whose account preferences specify English) that my blog had been deleted. To give Google some credit, it was thanks to Google Translate I was able to find out what the hell the note the Space On The Internet Formally Known As My Blog (SPOTIFKAMB to IT people) meant.

Deleted. Gone. All of it.

It took a while to sink in. This blog has become a part of my life in ways I would never have thought possible. I've been feeding it words like a remorseless Tamagochi since I started it (as a frustrated writer who missed journalism) in April 2007, when I posted about the Arab Media Forum (This here post, in fact) to a readership of approximately three. I've been posting more or less regularly ever since - a body of work that stretches back, I realised as I made my way to the Blogger Forum to try and get some help, six years now. In all, over a thousand posts from rants about mendacious food companies through half-baked observations on the state of our media to book plugging now populate this dusty corner of the Web and I have become quite fond of it.

Every day a few hundred or so people pop by to hang out and most of them use the ashtrays and everything. Some posts have attracted thousands and thousands of readers - the ones where I expose the crap people put in their food and drink are posts I am particularly proud have attracted such attention, because I think it's important more people are made aware that Subway bread contains gunk, Aquafina is tap water and other great truths.

Why did Google do it? They never do tell you, but an educated guess (fuelled by some panicky reading yesterday) would be some sort of spammer/hacker exploit that meant a number of blogs (the UAE Community Blog and SeaBee's 'Life In Dubai' were also affected and a number of other blogs were complaining of unfair deletion about the same time I was) got trashed.

A number of people kindly suggested on Twitter that I migrate to Wordpress. Thanks for the suggestions, but it did feel a little like when you tweet about a PC problem and all the iZombies come crawling out to intone 'Buy a Mac' in their little, dead zombie voices. I like that blogger is the Barney of the blogging world, a sort of Little Tikes easy to use thing in nice, primary colours. Wordpress is far too complicated for me and I have neither the time nor inclination to build my own templates and other stuff. I gave up playing around under the bonnet of technology years ago and have no hankering to go back.

I did come away from the experience with the definite feeling that Google's fighting a 24x7 bot-war against the hackers, spammers and other manifestations of absolute evil. Occasionally that results in a few carbon based life forms getting squished. The only thing I can say is they unsquished me pretty quickly - so thanks to Nitecruzer, the entity that seems to do most of the management of anguished bloggers at the Blogger Forum. He could perhaps be politer, but this is a man tested with a constant dialogue with pissed off bloggers, so you can see how he might be occasionally inclined to testiness.

Anyway, drama over. Back to the usual hooning around and complaining about stuff... Move on, people, there's nothing to see here. Come along, now. Let's be having yer. And take those shinies with you...

Beirut - Explosive Thrills At TwitBookClub

Dubai's Twitter Book Club - or @TwitBookClub as it's fondly known - is a regular gathering of book reading types enabled by that most real time of fun technologies, Twitter.

They normally meet at Wild Peeta (the famously social shawarma joint) at Dubai World Trade Centre, but that's temporarily out of order so this Saturday will see them meeting at Café Nero DWTC instead (at 11am, as you asked). The TwitBookClub website is linked here.

This'll be the first book club outing for Beirut, and should be interesting. It was certainly an eye opener talking to book clubs about Olives last year, readers' perspectives are a wonderful thing indeed to encounter. You find people question motives, examine reactions and generally go about prodding and tweaking your work in ways you simply wouldn't have thought possible. Beirut, being quite a badly behaved book, will probably respond to a tweak with a hefty kick in the groin, but let's see...

I have generally gone much easier on promoting Beirut than I did with Olives (if you're a regular, you will no doubt have noticed and possibly even been appreciative), which has had the direct  impact of a lower uptake - noise begets noise, so a softly softly approach has really meant little conversation around the book, fewer reviews and so on. This, one suspects, might be about to change.

In the meantime, do feel free to buy and speedread Beirut - An Explosive Thriller in time for this Saturday's meeting (it's in all good UAE bookshops as well as available from Amazon, iBooks et al) or, if you've read the book and you'd like to complain or apply for a refund, I'll be at Café Nero on Saturday facing a branch loaded with Tweeters!!!

Gulf News: Cut And Paste Journalism

English: Close-up image of TN panel display, Dell Mini 9, Magnification - 300 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Back in October last year, I asked if journalism had perhaps jumped the shark, with a post that compared a Gulf News story on Google's Nexus 7 announcement with some well-known online sources, showing clearly that key elements of the GN story, under a local byline, were cut and paste from web-based sources.

This is not a good thing. The P word, plagiarism, is whispered in decent news rooms because it is considered, quite rightly, to be one of the most egregious forms of deceit in journalism. It's lazy, it misleads readers and it speaks to a lack of professionalism that would, anywhere else in the world, be profoundly unacceptable.

Gulf News' response to the charge was to quietly rewrite the online version of the story to remove the more obvious cut and paste segments and give credit for the quotes the story filched from the New York Times.

This time around, in an article carrying the same byline, they have an even more elegant solution. Don't post the piece ("TVs for every room and budget" - a collection of 'buyer's guide' hints and tips for TV buyers that appears on page E4 of the newspaper's technology supplement) online at all.

It's a compelling lesson on how to write a product buyer's guide feature in the Internet age. Google the topic, pick a few sites that already post buyers' guides, summarise and/or just rephrase what they have to say and there you have it, Robert's your father's brother, one buyers' guide.

Just for good measure, barely even bother rewording some of the more technical stuff. Just slap it into the CMS, bish bash bosh. It's not going online anyway and nobody's going to bother checking to see if you just blagged the copy, are they?


Gulf News
"Since plasma pixels can be almost completely turned off on screen, they are capable of producing really dark blacks which helps improve picture quality."

Digital Trends' TV Buyers' Guide
"Since plasma pixels can be almost completely turned off during dark scenes or portions of the image, they are capable of deeper black levels compared to LCD TVs."

Gulf News
"In passive screens, two images are displayed simultaneously; like in a movie theatre, while polarised glasses filter the correct image to each eye to produce a 3D effect."

Digital Trends TV Buyers' Guide
"...passive 3D is very similar to what you would experience in a movie theater: Two images are displayed simultaneously on the screen, while polarized glasses properly filter the correct image to each eye, producing a 3D effect. "

Gulf News
"In active displays, the glasses use battery-powered LCD lenses to alternately block each eye in sync with the television, alternately showing right- and left-eye images, to create the 3D effect."

Digital Trends' TV Buyers' Guide
"Active 3D glasses use battery-powered LCD lenses to alternately block each eye in sync with a TV alternately showing right- and left-eye images, creating a 3D effect."

Gulf News
"Plasmas use an emissive display technology (self lighting pixels) which means there's no motion lag or lighting inconsistencies and this results in smoother, more accurate motion and better picture detail."

Digital Trends' TV Buyers' Guide
"Plasmas use an emissive display technology (i.e. self-lighting pixels) and color phosphors, which means there’s no motion lag or lighting inconsistencies, unlike their LCD counterparts. The results are smoother, more accurate motion; deeper, more consistent black levels; and better picture detail.