Mobile Madness - The Middle East's Smartphone Spring

(Photo credit: Kalense Kid)

Got a lovely ring to it, hasn't it? Smartphone spring. If you wanted it to sound really cool, chuck an 'i' on it - Smartphone iSpring. Ah, what the hell, let's go for broke - The Arab Smartphone iSpring 2.0!

All the UAE's English papers have stories today on BlackBerry's Z10 and the high demand (and low supply) of the Handset That Could Save The Company. Tuesday is technology supplement day for Gulf News, so its coverage of the relative merits of the various handset choices is more in-depth - laced with original editorial and locally sourced comment, which is great to see. Retailer Axiom got a couple of smart media hits by sending out pictures of customers at its outlets.

Compared to Nokia's relatively low-key entry with the Lumia, BlackBerry has certainly managed to create some headlines, although not everyone's drinking the Kool-Aid. There are major unanswered questions over quite what services will be supported in the UAE - and users are going to have to pay more for data packages and  effectively lose the free roaming benefits the 'old' BlackBerry BIS brought - as I point out in this here post the other day. Quite why you'd queue up to buy a mobile without knowing what services it'll support is a mystery to me.

Mind you, it's funny how media-friendly the smartphone story has become. While other areas of technology are considered most definitely un-sexy, anything to do with mobiles or tablets is a sure-fire winner. One is left wondering how long this love affair will last and when the media will simply tire of trotting out new smartphone features and speculation about who's going to launch what when.

The mobile handset has undoubtedly been transformed - and done more than its fair share of disintermediating on the way. The first thing to go was the radio pager, killed off by SMS - the world's most accidental killer app (SMS was originally only intended as an engineering tool). But how many people have bedside alarm clocks these days? The 'point and shoot' camera has been rendered virtually redundant, mobiles are now music players, video players, personal trainers and all sorts of other things. How many payphones are out there these days? When you start adding payment capabilities, you've got a transactional network access device that will be a wallet, ID card and a window to information and content of quite stunning capability - so mobiles will continue to play an ever-increasingly important role in our lives.

Behind the handset, though, there are important ecosystem choices to be made - and each of those ecosystems is working hard to lock you in. If you buy your content and apps from Apple, you'll effectively lose it all by going Android - a situation you'll experience with any ecosystem hopping you do unless you go Kindle, in which case you can install reader apps on any of the devices. There's a Kindle app for the old BlackBerry, I'm not sure whether there's one for the BB10 yet. That's one problem with the new BB - it's a new operating system so its ecosystem is effectively being bootstrapped from scratch. And BlackBerry has little of the sheer grunt of Microsoft, Apple or Google when it comes to developers. Those third party innovations are key to making today's mobiles work.

It's one reason why Amazon has perhaps stayed clear of the handset market while being so happy to dive into the tablet wars with its fists flailing - the Kindle app lets Amazon support any of the players and effectively place a cuckoo in each ecosystem's devices.

How long that will continue to be Amazon's sole interest in mobile remains to be seen - it's the only major ecosystem player without a mobile handset. My money says it won't be able to stay away. The rewards are irresistible and Amazon has an enormous vested interest in putting content in your hands...

Strange Searches

Strange (Photo credit: KellBailey)

It's been a while since I last did this. Every now and then I amuse myself by taking a look at some of the search phrases that have brought people to this dusty corner of the interwebs. Along with the usual round of sensible landings there are always some oddities.

This harmless activity is made possible by a little doohickey called SiteMeter, which gives deeper metrics than Google Analytics. If anyone thought they were truly anonymous on the Internet, a few minutes with SiteMeter usually puts them right - I know your IP, your landing page, your leaving page, where you came from to get here, your OS and lots of other stuff.

So behave and wipe your feet next time.

Anyway. Strange searches.

Nude men wearing plastic macs 
This was a strong start. Quite why they landed here I don't know. But I can only imagine their disappointment must have been a joy to see. Equally, I can't tell how someone landed here from Bing having searched, worryingly, for "watertank sensory deprivation experiment"!!!

Fake droopy nuts 
Quite a lot of 'fake' searches lead here, but this one could hardly have expected a blog post about brainstorming a coated nut brand. The party must have been a hoot when Lou finally got his hands on that little speciality joke item.

Lick an ax murderer from crawley 
The post was a howl of rage at HSBC's famously woeful call centre, but you can only hope that someone wanted to find the article again and found that phrase more memorable than the blog's name. Because if that wasn't the case, there's someone out there who wants to lick axe murderers from Crawley. And that's pretty strange, if you ask me.

Download alexander mcnabb 
Most people I know go to considerable effort to avoid me, which can be difficult at times, I agree. As for downloading me, I haven't uploaded yet, so you'll have to wait...

Why people go mad in UAE during the national day 
Why, indeed? I have frequently commented that this is the only place in the Middle East in the last three years where the people have taken to the streets - in support of the government and nation.

Literary agents of Dubai 
elf publishing in emirates 
Both of these searches are doomed to failure - because there are as many literary agents in Dubai as there are elves in the UAE publishing industry.

louisbouiton fake shoes dubai souks 
There's nothing like someone who can't spell the brand they're looking for knock-off copies of, is there? In this case, a search for hooky Louboutins gets you this here post.

i hate pr 
You wouldn't believe how much empathy I feel for this searcher in his/her moment of Googly angst.

make fake nol card 
This is one of a number of searches that land on the blog with clearly criminal intent in mind. One is shocked, shocked I tell you. Another recent search was 'discreet bars in Dubai'!!!

Cow's aorta
I am pleased to be able to tell you that I rank numero uno for this search phrase. It's a funny world, people...

PS
Dirigible Repair Specialist
As Mr Goat points out in the comments, a search for "Digible Repair Specialist" gets you to this post. I have to report, sadly, I am not aware of any search for this string actually landing someone on the blog. One day I might land a slightly puzzled steampunk author, you never know...

UAE BlackBerry 10s Need A Data Plan

BlackBerry Employees Count Down to BlackBerry 10 (Photo credit: Official BlackBerry Images)

There has been quite a lot of confusion globally about the new BlackBerry 10 smartphone and how you access BlackBerry services. In the good old days, your BB worked seamlessly and gave you access to roaming data and messaging - a key reason for its wild popularity in the Gulf. The new BB Z10 will NOT do that. You're going to need to join the riff-raff and subscribe to a data plan. If you try and use that puppy when you're roaming, heaven alone knows what the consequences will be, but standard roaming data rates with both Etisalat and Du are a whopping Dhs 1 per 30 kilobytes of data.

To put that in perspective - a Gigabyte is a thousand Megabytes and a Megabyte is a thousand Kilobytes. So 1 Gig of data at that rate would be around Dhs 33,000. Bargain, huh?

A smartphone will happily gorge its way through thirty kilobytes of data in about the time it takes a fly to hit a windscreen (What's the last thing to go through a fly's mind when it hits the windscreen? Its bum). I've got a 1 GB data plan and manage to keep a lid on it, but I'm by no means a heavy user. And I frequently find myself bobbing up towards the limit by the end of the month. Smartphones are constantly online, downloading this, checking that, updating the other. When you hit YouTube with a vengeance or start using them as a tethered wireless hotspot, the old byteometer starts whizzing around. It's why having a mobile that defaults automatically to WiFi is a godsend - particularly when all your apps decide they need to be updated at once, which happens every other day as far as I can see.

So to be clear, if you've bought the BB10, you're not covered by BIS any more - you need to get a data plan.

Luckily, both of the UAE's operators have BB10 ready plans, although Etisalat seems more ready than its rival - it offers four BB packages ranging from Dhs 49 to Dhs 299. The Dhs 49 package doesn't work with the Z10, so you'll need to start with the 'BlackBerry Complete' plan at Dhs 79. If you want roaming, the most expensive plan, the Dhs 299 'BlackBerry global' will give you 20 MB of roaming data. With roaming data speeds on offer of 2 Mbps, you're looking at using that abundant allowance of data in a little over a minute's access.

Du's plans seem a great deal more sketchy - at least the way they're presented online makes it look that way. And Du's roaming data is via its roaming data daily bundle - a one-time charge of Dhs50 which is valid for 24 hours and buys between 3 and 8 MB of data, depending where you are. Which is even less than Etisalat and a pretty useless amount of data.

At least Etisalat has started sending warning messages out when you hit your data plan limit, but the chances are we can look forward to puzzled UAE BlackBerry users wondering why their lovely new BB Z10 smartphone is suddenly gobbling credits like a PacMan on crack. There's an argument the operators should be louder and clearer on the new arrangement, communicating it effectively to consumers before they make the decision to buy the new handset.

But that would be far too sensible, wouldn't it?

(This post is thanks to Gerald Donovan, who originally brought this issue to light)

Book Post - Which Beirut Is Beirut Set In?

Cafés in downtown Beirut (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It's an interesting conundrum. I thought I had written a novel set, at least in the parts of the book that aren't racing across Europe, in modern Beirut.

In fact, Beirut - An Explosive Thriller celebrates a city I have huge time for, even as it recognises that very city is by far from being a perfect place. Beirut, as so much in life, is like a rotten mackerel in the moonlight - it both shines and stinks.

I happen to agree with Lebanese blogger Jad Aoun and his spirited campaign to award a 'looks like Beirut' certificate to people who persist on using that amazingly outdated and lazy simile. His Lebanon - Under Rug Swept blog is linked here - pop over and take a look, it's a hoot. The civil war is long past us and Lebanon is not a country at war. And yet neither is it a stable place right now, with the awful conflict in Syria on its very borders and its own tensions only barely kept at bay.

Gouraud’s bars, as ever, welcomed those who wanted to party and forget the woes of a world where violence and conflict were a distant memory but a constant worry. Orphaned by Belfast’s troubles, Lynch appreciated Beirut’s fragile peace and sectarian divides, the hot embers under the white ash on the surface of a fire that looked, to the casual observer, as if it had gone out. Lynch scowled as he passed a poster carrying Michel Freij’s smiling face, encircled in strong black script: ‘One Leader. One Lebanon.’
From Beirut - An Explosive Thriller

I wrote over on the Beirut The Book website about how annoying I found it when one of London's Fine Editors rejected Beirut with a comment about the book being set in a war torn country. I wanted my Beirut to reflect the city I enjoy so much, as I said over on the website, "Beirut today is a complex city, sexy and shabby, filled with promise and hopeless, vibrant and drab, it rarely fails to entertain and challenge. Plagued by power cuts, creaking infrastructure and endemic corruption, Beirut is full of life, creativity and celebration – even if that celebration sometimes takes on a brittle, desperate air."

So I was slightly taken aback when the book attracted a review on Amazon.com that said, "Olives did a great job of putting you in the middle of Palestinian/Israeli conflict with all its nuances, and Beirut continues the tradition by putting you in the middle of the current sectarian conflict in Lebanon...except it doesn't. As someone familiar with the Lebanese culture, I would argue that the conflicts in the book were far more accurate in the 80s as opposed to the current day. It was a fun read (thus the four stars), but it didn't quite match the Beirut I know."

Yet on Goodreads, one Lebanese reviewer says, "Insightful understanding of the Middle East and Beirut in particular, with details of everyday life only someone very familiar with the country can highlight."

Magda Abu-Fadil (a highly respected Lebanese journalist) reviewed the book in the Huffington Post with this to say, "The author has an uncanny understanding of the country's dynamics and power plays between the belligerent factions, post-civil war of 1975-1990.... Beirut is a gripping, fast-paced exciting book that may well jar Lebanese and others familiar with the city and its heavy legacy. But it's a must read."

Is Beirut - An Explosive Thriller reflective of modern Beirut? I had thought so, particularly in light of my hangup about the city being portrayed as still in the grip of that awful civil war. But it appears to be a subject of debate - which Beirut is portrayed in Beirut?

You never know. If this develops into a ding-dong, I might even sell a couple of books! Beirut has remained controversy-free so far, unlike Libro Non Grata novel Olives. And as Albawaba pointed out in this here article, there's nothing like the sniff of a whiff of controversy!

BY THE WAY if you'd like to get a FREE copy of Olives - A Violent Romance as an ebook, just sign up to the emailer on the top right of this page and get inside track articles, giveaways, event info, updates and other occasional bits and bobs from scandalous me...

DysonGate - Are PRs and Journalists Tom And Jerry?

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The DysonGate scandal threatens to drive a massive wedge in our local media community. Heads will roll. Words will be written. You heard it here first.

There's nowt so close as love and hate. Public relations people and journalists have a constant, bickering Tom and Jerry relationship that often gives me much gentle amusement. PR people annoy journalists by being incompetent, lazy and slavish to their unreasonable clients. Journalists annoy PR people by being lazy, incompetent and slavish to their unreasonable masters.

Rarely do both sit down and commiserate, although you'd have thought the above was grounds for considerable empathy. Veteran journalist Frank Kane of The National took a pop at hapless PRs sending him awful stories in his column yesterday. It's not unamusing. You could argue he was shooting fish in a barrel - the volume of dire press releases that goes out in the UAE every day is remarkable not only for its volume but its persistence. When you consider the vast majority of these announcements have no hope of achieving any coverage whatsoever, you do wonder why the relentless tide of mindless mush continues.

Kane picks a couple of examples from the bin, the Dyson airblade release being surely the result of an almost manic optimism "No, really, it WILL get coverage. National newspapers LOVE to hear about hand dryer installations. TRUST me on this one, Phil!" He could have gone on at much greater length and easily been a great deal unkinder. I do wonder if Dyson's agency will claim credit for the clip with the client... Or, indeed, tell them a local blogger's nicknamed it DysonGate.

"See? Major media AND blogs! I TOLD you we'd get traction on this one, Phil!"

In a previous life I used to edit a magazine called BBC GulfWide - it was a sort of wrapper of local features around the BBC Middle East listings and I quite enjoyed producing it. Every month I dedicated a double page spread to lampooning the efforts of the local PRs. I was younger, then, and more unkind. Reading back over some of these spots now does make me laugh. But the same releases were going out then, the same idiotic appeals to 'depute a photographer' from my 'esteemed publication' (a phrase Kane picked up on). The same ridiculous releases about something nobody in their right minds other than the people working in that company would care about mixed in with inappropriately targeted product releases. Why did agencies think the BBC listings magazine, a features only title, would cover news releases? Or that we were interested in hair care products?

And why, more to the point, do they still persist in sending out these awful releases today, almost two decades later. Have we really not moved on one iota?

That's a complicated question, actually. It's a mixture of agencies pandering to clients without giving them good advice, clients who believe agencies are there to do what they're told, not consult on the most effective course and media that actually will run this sort of tripe. Because if the standard of local PR can hit Dead Sea  level lows, the standard of journalism can match it metre for metre. I'd probably go for a dig in the ribs and bring the Mariana Trench into it.

I'm going to echo Kane's admirable example and not name names. But the newspaper - the national daily newspaper - that ran a story today about how traffic is slowing down around the new junction in Ajman is only one microscopic example from a rejoinder that could run for thousands of words. Kane, himself brought up in the days of pencil-licking notebook journalism, would recognise the classic 'six questions' structure in the first paragraph of the news piece:

Ajman: Cars approached the newly opened Al Hamidiya interchange with caution on Wednesday morning, slowing down to read the signboards, trying to figure out which way will take them to their desired destination, changing lanes carefully to get on their way.

Or perhaps not. That was the first para of a page lead story, by the way, not a News In Brief. When you add that to the copy/paste hacking, the plagiarism, the fawning to authority and toadying to influence and then throw in a good measure of lack of depth, research, investigative or searching journalism and sprinkle a masala of news wire copy, laziness and verbatim press release you start to comprehend the true worth of the media environment.

Am I tarring all journalists with that brush? Of course not, just as Kane is careful not to tar all PRs with his. But we both know that we're both right and there's too much of what we've both pointed out going on.

Sadly, the truth of the matter is journalists get the PRs they deserve. At least they've stopped complaining that PRs make them lazy, which used to be the case in days of yore...

Disable The Samsung Series 5 Ultra Touchpad

Chuck Norris EX2 01 (Photo credit: (vhmh))

You CAN disable the touchpad on a Samsung Series 5 Ultra notebook computer.

One of the least endearing aspects of my recent technology shift from a dead Lenovo T61 and Windows 7 to a sleek Samsung Series 5 Ultrabook and Windows 8 has been the lack of documentation. Remember documentation? When things came with user manuals?

Ah, no. These days we have the Internet and so we don't need those nasty, papery manual things. You just go to our Internet-based resource centre and we'll answer any questions you might have.

What if it's something I don't know? I can't ask about what I don't know can I? And you're not actually telling me. You're just expecting me to sift through a wodge of data, rather than structure and present useful information to me.

That's okay, you can go to our user forums and see the answers our socially enabled peer group conversation community present to you. They're really committed and useful guys.

And what if I just want someone from Samsung to tell me how to do something? You know, someone who actually knows something about the product?

Simple! Talk to one of our trained customer support executives using email or our online chat facility!

Great. That's precisely what I did, because the otherwise very lovely Samsung Series 5 Ultra comes with the world's biggest touchpad and it doesn't have an off switch or appear to have a driver with that functionality. Which is mad, right? All laptops have drivers for their touchpads that allow them to be disabled, surely. And, yes, in the main they do. Except for this machine, with its aircraft-carrier sized, guaranteed to be touched at all times, touchpad. It's huge. I've found flies playing cricket on it. This, let us be abundantly clear, is the Chuck Norris of touchpads. You don't touch it - it touches you.

Samsung's support operative came back in response to my email, confirming my worst fears. "You can't disable the touchpad on a Samsung Series 5 Ultra."

Which had me consigned to typing tweets six times as each attempt saw a feather-touch of the ball of my thumb select all and then my next key press replace the text. Cursors would appear in random places around the screen, replacing and deleting lumps of text and objects before I realised it'd gone again. My language, never particularly temperate, has become decidedly nautical.

I evolved an insane typing technique, like a digital tai-chi movement, The Crane Over The Keyboard. Repetitive Strain Injury loomed on the horizon as I picked my way over the huge expanse of the Monster Touchpad From Hell. Sure enough, every couple of minutes, a brush on that vast, hyper-sensitive surface would bring on-screen mayhem.

It's so unfair. This machine is the dog's, seriously. It's sleek and titanium-shelled, as light as a feather and slimmer than a supermodel with amoebic dysentery. It is in every way perfect. Apart from Chuck The Touchpad.

I took to tweeting at @SamsungGulf, but that was about as much use as nailing cats to a hovercraft. They're too busy using Twitter on relentless promotional broadcast mode to actually talk to anyone who isn't giving them some sycophantic, pandering guff they can retweet. (This, to Samsung, is presumably 'engagement')

It's one of the worst Twitter accounts I've seen in a long while. Absolutely zero back from them. Just a constant tide of 'Tell us your favorite way of inserting a Galaxy SIII'...

And then a conversation with Sheheryar at @LaptopsinUAE about something completely different turned to the S5. I'd decided to break the warranty and have him crack the case and neuter Chuck by yanking the connector. And he came up with the idea of hitting Fn F5. Because that is how you disable the touchpad on a Samsung Series 5 Ultrabook.

So here's a big, fat THANK YOU to Sheheryar, for doing what Samsung's support droid and their useless Twitter account should have done. For knowing his way around laptops and being able to help someone who just wants to get on with using a functional tool. I didn't have to retype a single word of this post and that feels oh, so good.

Chuck is dead.

Will ENOC/EPPCO Stations Reopen In The Northern Emirates?

(Photo credit: Gerry Balding)

The news broke a few days ago. with news outlets all reporting ENOC was seeking 'alternative sources' for condensate to feed its 120,000 barrel-a-day refinery in Jebel Ali. Yesterday, late in the afternoon (too late, for instance, to give pesky local reporters a chance to ask questions) it issued a press release announcing it had closed a deal with Qatar's Tasweeq to secure a supply of 20,000 barrels per day of condensate.

This, according to ENOC, avoids having to import Iranian condensate. To quote the release:

ENOC diligently adheres to all prevailing laws and regulations to ensure that its business is conducted in line with applicable sanctions, and has been continually studying the sourcing of alternative economically viable condensate feedstocks for its refinery in Jebel Ali.  

As a result of various steps implemented by the management, ENOC has imported 20% less Iranian condensate in the second half of 2012 compared with the first six months of the year. One of the challenges in managing the crude imports was the availability of alternate grades in required volumes and prices. 

By exploring partnerships with new suppliers, ENOC is highlighting its commitment to continually optimise its refinery operations, adherence to the highest ethical standards in all operational aspects and creation of long-term value.

Some commentators have inferred this may lead to the shuttered ENOC/EPPCO petrol pumps in the Northern Emirates re-opening, but there's no evidence in here at all of that. ENOC's under pressure to reduce its loss-making refining operations - hence buying crude from Iran in the first place - but has now come under pressure to find alternative sources.

That's not about to make things any better 'oop North' and mean they can start selling profitable petrol from their forecourts. It's more likely to be a 'like for like' pricing deal - and it would have been interested to be a fly on the wall of some of those meetings to see quite who was pulling the strings around here.

Perhaps an answer to that comes in the shape of those recent ENOC comments about alternative sources of supply, which coincided with a visit to the U.A.E. from David Cohen, the U.S. Treasury Department's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence...

Anyway, it doesn't really matter that much. Everyone's got used to there being no EPPCO stations and although the ADNOC stations are busy, the long and ironic queues from the original 'petrol shortage in oil producing country' glee are a thing of the past.

You Got Mail

E-mail (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One way and another, I do quite a bit of talking and presenting about writing, as well as book club meetings and other stuff like giveaways all in the name of promoting things literate in general and my books in specific.

So it seemed sensible to start a mailing list to let anyone who might be interested in such things stay in touch with the occasional update (We're not talking daily or anything as hectic as that, believe me!), as well as give me an easy way to share files, presentations and other stuff about writing, reading and books.

For instance, there's an upcoming 48 hours of FREE Space on Kindle. I mean, would you want to miss that?

You can signup on the right here. I'll even throw in a 50% off the ebook of Olives - A Violent Romance to give you an unmissable incentive to give me your soul.

The Umbrella Series At The Archive

The Umbrella Series - four workshops on the creation and distribution of words - takes place at The Archive on Wednesdays throughout February. They're being held by The Archive in conjunction with The Emirates Literary Group, with the intention of providing information and guidance for budding writers on the process of collating words into complete works, how to create books out of them (either through the 'traditional' process or self publishing) and how to sell and distribute them. With that in mind, the four workshops feature a known idiot, a poet and the head of a book distribution and sales company.

The idea is that attendees will walk away from these with a reasonable basic understanding of the whole process that will stand them in good stead as they undertake their own journey to publication. It's the workshop I wish I'd had being held in a funky work/art-space around the corner from me as I started out myself.

By the way, in doing these I'm not claiming I'm Stephen King or that I am anything other than a marginal, self-published writer selling handfuls of books. I'm just sharing some of the lessons I learned the hard way, so you don't have to.

Each workshop session will last a couple of hours and take place from 6-pm. Attendance is free, but The Archive would appreciate if you register to guarantee a place.

How to write a book 
Alexander McNabb
February 6th
I'll be looking at the miraculous process of arranging 26 letters variously into 100,000 words and how you go about doing that without wasting time, effort and money. We'll look at things like plotting, dialogue, structure and editing.

How to write poetry 
Frank Dullaghan
February 13th
Published and widely respected poet Frank Dullaghan will be guiding attendees through the world of poetry - looking at different poetic forms and styles and how to use language to create evocation, to bring rhythm and metre together on the page so the words create an emotional experience for the reader. He'll also be looking at finding outlets for your poetry.

Routes to publication (How to find an agent or self publish your book) 
Alexander McNabb
February 20th
Luigi Bonomi gave an excellent - and popular - workshop at the Emirates LitFest last year and will be repeating it this year. He is a top London literary agent and a very nice chap indeed and his excellent advice is well worth heeding. So do book for that session, but feel free to come along to this one as well. I'll be giving an author's-eye view of the agenting and publishing process, from how to format your manuscript through creating a stellar synopsis, blistering blurb and killer query. I'll also be looking at how you can chuck all that up and do it yourself, from picking platforms through to getting reviews and promoting your work.

Book distribution and sales in the UAE 
Narain Jashanmal
February 27th
If you want to understand how publishing 'ticks', who better to talk to than an industry 'insider'? It's amazing how many of us set out to put 100,000 words on paper without ever thinking about what's actually going to happen to them at the end of the process. Narain Jashanmal is GM of Jashanmal Books and will take you on a roller coaster ride through the worlds of distribution, sales and retail. What do the public want? How do they get it? What makes people buy (and not buy!) books? What can you do to maximise your chances of success and give his sales team a nice, easy job when it comes to actually getting your books out there into peoples' hands? And where is publishing going - and where should we as writers be going as a result?

So there you have it - a series of what promise to be enjoyable evenings for anyone interested in writing and publishing as we embark on the run-up to the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature - the link will take you to my sessions at the LitFest. :)

For the Umbrella Series Workshops, please let Librarian Sarah Malki know which sessions you'd like to attend. You can drop her a mail at sarah@thearchive.ae or phone The Archive on 04 349 4033. If you want its location, pop over to www.thearchive.ae or this post if you want to find out more about The Archive.

Viral and Virality

virus (Photo credit: twenty_questions)

It has been quite a week for things viral around here - I posted the other day about Gerald Donovan's amazing interactive 360 degree Burj Khalifa panorama of Dubai and my professional involvement with the campaign to get it 'out there'.

Like many of my colleagues, I have always had contempt for ad agency people who announce they are setting out to create 'viral content' because they are almost certainly doomed to failure. The harder you try to create something with that quality, the more likely you are to find yourself naked in a crowded square holding something dead in your hand with small children jeering at you. In a cold wind.

There are also some burning questions inherent in the use of the term. How many/how fast is 'viral'? What makes viral things viral? What is the 'quality' of viral? The answer to the latter is 'Nobody knows' - a cat falling off a desk, Justin Beiber, Gerald's pano - these are all different types of viral. You can set out to create a piece of content that people will really, really want to share and watch it die the death of the neglected, while at the same time a puppy being scared by a hoover being switched on spreads across the Internet like nightshade falling across the earth in a one minute motion-capture. It's almost unguessable.

One man who knows more than most about how to create great, engaging content is Matthew Inman. He's the chap behind that most humorous of websites, The Oatmeal. His presentation on going viral, given at South by Southwest two years ago makes impressive watching. It contains learnings and is very, very funny. Which is as good as you can get, really. The whole thing's an hour, but you can drop the Q&A and not miss much, to be honest. It's linked here for your viewing pleasure.

You'll perhaps note that The Oatmeal doesn't really set out to be 'viral' as such, but Inman does create a constant flow of solid, amusing and shareable content. He has a wide (millions) viewership and enormous followings on Twitter and Facebook, both platforms he uses to extend the reach of The Oatmeal and draw readers to the content he's posting on The Oatmeal itself. Although he doesn't use, or need, the likes of Reddit anymore, he used them heavily to establish the site, participating in those communities to seed content among aggressive sharers by being one of them.

But his stuff wouldn't have got anywhere if it hadn't been distinctive, unusual and highly entertaining - shareable and willingly adopted (at least initially) by those communities of sharers.

If you have amazing content and a strong, well-implemented strategy you can improve your chances, but it's still pretty hit and miss. Even I, as stunning as I find Mr. D's work (and I have watched his images 'go viral' in the past - he does seem to have a 'nose' for it), had a wobble or two early this week.

If you're building a property online (A website, a campaign or a brand), there's no substitute for building audiences and communities organically. And that means not one flash in the pan event, but a constant flow of high quality, relevant, engaging content. It's a long road - but there's no panacea. Whatever the guy with the ponytail from the agency claims he can do with 'a viral'...