Overhead At The Radio Station

Big Shiny Tunes 2 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

"Hello, didn't expect to see you here!"
"Well, you know, like to pop in and say hi now and then. How's tricks?"
"Fine, thanks, bumping along quite nicely, actually."
"How's the Shiny?"
"Oh, you know, can't really complain. Because every time I do your secretary drops the line."
"Oh, gosh. Sorry to hear that. I'll have a word with her. Anyway, I didn't come here to talk about Shinies."
"Oh, right?"
"No. I came to talk to you about Ferris wheels."
"Ferris wheels? You mean like big wheels? The London Eye and all that? Why are you wincing?"
"If we could avoid talking about The Competition, that'd be great."
"Competition? For what?"
"The Dubai Eye of course. The world's largest Ferris wheel. It's going ahead. 210 metres of rotating circular wonderfulness with a ginormous LCD screen displaying premium advertising. It's a beezer scheme. We reckon it's worth a good three million tourists a year. What a marvel, eh?"
"Well, yes, I suppose so."
"Only there's a problem."
"Really? I'm not sure how I can help with that sort of thing. I do radio, not Ferris wheels."
"Well, that's the point, actually. It's your radio station. We can't have two Dubai Eyes, you see? And I'm afraid 103.8 is going to have to, well, you know, rebrand."
"Rebrand? But we're Dubai Eye Radio! The UAE's first and only talk radio station! We're news! Talk! Sport! We've been called Dubai Eye for simply ages! We were here first!"
"Yes, yes, all very interesting. But we've called the big wheel Dubai Eye and you're going to have to change. You can't have two Dubai Eyes when people Google us, let alone look us up on Google maps. We want 'em to be offshore from JBR, not hooning around out by Arabian Ranches."
"Call it something else. Weren't you going to call it the Great Dubai Wheel? Call it that again!"
"Look, that's a project that got cancelled. We don't go raking up Projects That Got Cancelled, right? It might remind people of the Shinies that didn't get finished. You're just going to have change your radio station's name and that's that. In fact, we want to help, so we've picked a name for you. You don't have to thank me, it's all part of the service. They're putting up the new signs outside now, actually."
"This is all rather out of the blue, I must say. Change our name to what?"
"Dubai Ear."
"Are you mad? Dubai Ear? That's the worst thing I've heard since the last ad break!"
"Well you are a radio station. Never quite saw eye to eye with the whole Dubai Eye thing myself. Dubai Ear is much more appropriate for a radio station. The listeners will be all ears! Hahaha! Geddit? "
"What if we hate the idea?"
"Oh come, come. Here are your new business cards. You'll get used to it. We've had a production company in London do you all new sweepers and stuff. 'Dubai Ear. You'll love what you hear!' Great isn't it?"
"You're barmy, you are. Completely barmy."
"Calm down, now. You'd hate to find your Shiny's been painted pink again because of a new Mandatory Pinking Order. Have a nice day. And give my best to the team at Dubai Ear, will you?"

(Part of an occasional series of Shiny dialogues. What's a Shiny? You'll have to read these to find out! :)

Eye eye! The Bluewaters Dubai Eye Ferris Wheel

The first Ferris wheel from the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Funny thing to name a giant Ferris wheel after, a radio station, but there's no telling what folk will get up to these days.

National news agency WAM carries the news Dubai Ltd has announced another megaproject, the latest in a clearly signalled campaign of 'We're back' announcements. Braggadocio or bravado? You tell me. The Bluewaters plan will see a £1 billion island development off the beach by 'live the lifestyle' Jumeirah Beach Residence. On said island, developers Meeras are plonking an hotel (five star, natch), residences, a souq, an entertainment zone and the world's largest Ferris wheel.

Of course it couldn't just be a big Ferris wheel. It has to be a jaw-dropping, eye-popping 210 meter billion Dirham Ferris wheel. Ideally, scattered with hundreds and thousands and topped with glacé cherries.

It's all based on market studies that indicate the project can expect three million tourists a year to flock to its candy-floss stores and queue up to get a ride

Ferris wheel watchers will likely think this baby will be pipping the London Eye to the biggest Ferris wheel in the world post, but they'd be wrong. It's already been pipped twice - at a mere 135 metres, the London Eye is the mini-me of Ferris wheels (named after their inventor, a Mr. George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr) and was outstripped just six years after its opening by The Star Of Nanchang, a 160 metre behemoth. Just two years later, Singapore ripped the rug from under Nanchang's feet with the Singapore Flyer, which sneaked past the Star to take the Guinness Book entry with a mere five metres' lead.

The Flyer cost Dhs 876 million to build, so it looks like Meeras is getting a bargain from Hyundai Contracting, which will build the Dubai Eye wheel. If the Dubai Eye takes after the Star and the Flyer, it'll rotate once every 30 minutes, be in constant motion (no stopping to get on and off) and have gondolas with a capacity of 28 people.

Those with the memory span of a Higgs Boson will recall The Great Dubai Wheel, which was to have been built in DubaiLand by the Great Wheel Corporation. The project gained planning permission in 2006 and was officially announced as kaputski in 2012 after GWC had gone belly-up with a trail of failed Ferris wheel projects behind it. The Great Dubai Wheel was to have been a 185 metre wheel.

The fate of the Great Wheel Corporation is a fascinating one. It reeled from merger to acquisition to bankruptcy to collapse, through a number of iterations right up until 2012, when it finally folded. By then it was called Great City Attractions Global. GCAG's assets were acquired by Dubai-based Freij Entertainment International which operates GCAG's UK assets through its UK subsidiary Wheels Entertainments Ltd - including the controversial 53-metre York big wheel.

Freij bills itself as 'The world's biggest operator of Amusement Rides' although taking a look at www.freij.com you could also call it the world's biggest operator of a totally rubbish web presence.

Freij operates Dubai's Global Village, the site of the recent fatality when a part fell off the 60 metre Ferris wheel there - it was subsequently revealed this travelling wheel had been linked to the deaths of five people under previous ownership.

And in fact it was Freij CEO Freij Al Zein who first talked to media in April last year about a billion Dirham giant Ferris wheel to be called the Dubai Eye. Slated at the time to be a 170 metre wheel as part of a major 93,000 metre indoor amusement park complex, the project would appear to have finally come to fruition.

Quite whether Freij is still involved is pure speculation - developer Meeras hasn't updated a press release on its website since 2011, so any reliable information on the Bluewaters project beyond the WAM story is scant right now.

But it's interesting, isn't it, the way in which the Great Dubai Wheel dream never really went away but became a baton to be passed from hand to hand?

I wonder when the undersea hotel scheme will bob up to surface again...

PS - It seems to be a coincidence, as the WAM story doesn't mention it, but the story broke on George Ferris' birthday, as celebrated by today's Google doodle! Eerie!

What Have You Had In Your Mouth Lately?

A butcher shop specializing in horse meat in Pezenas (languedoc, France) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The horsemeat scandal gripping the UK and Ireland has been a fascinating story to watch unfolding - samples of processed meats in Ireland  tested positive for traces of horse DNA, with Dunnes Stores as well as cut price chains Lidl and Aldi stocking contaminated products.

The story spread quickly, with Tesco's 'Everyday Value' burgers found to contain 29% of everyday horsemeat and 'Everyday Value' spaghetti bolognese some 60% geegee. Findus was doubtless horrified  to find itself dragged into the controversy as tests found its beef lasagne contained from 60 to 100% horsemeat.

This is an investigative journalist's dream. The UK's press fell on the story, baying with glee at the chance to uncover more horsing around with our food - and they've come up trumps. At the heart of early investigations was Irish meat processor Silvercrest and French food processor Comigel.

Silvercrest's now-shuttered meat processing plant in Monaghan produced 3.7 million burgers a day - 9 out of 13 tested contained horse meat. Comigel is a huge supplier of 'white label' frozen ready meals  and the company that supplied the products to Findus and Tesco - as well as Aldi whose 'Today's Special' lasagne and spag bog were also found to contain 'Newmarket steak' instead of beef.

In fact Comigel produces some 30,000 tonnes of white label frozen ready meals a year, which it sells to companies across Europe. It's the Nike of nosh - and the companies that glibly bought low-cost products from Comigel  appear to have sacrificed consumers' interests for competitive advantage and profitability. Hands up if you're surprised. The company's customers included French chains and these have recalled products - the recalls include removals from the shelves of Carrefour, probably the biggest supermarket retailer in the UAE.

British authorities have raided an abbatoir and a meat production company over concerns at horsemeat finding its way into meat for 'burgers and kebabs' - Peter Boddy Licensed Slaughterhouse in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, and Farmbox Meats Ltd are both facing the high jump. Sorry.

Now the latest twist in the tale is that high-end UK supermarket brand Waitrose has been found to be selling meatballs contaminated with pork - in fact up to 30% of the company's 'Essentials' meatballs are pork meat. Waitrose buys the meat from, wait for it, Silvercrest.

Gulf News ran a piece today on the ongoing scandal, reporting on the news coverage that has rolled and rolled throughout the past couple of weeks in the UK and Ireland. Gulf News' attempt to get comment from the Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority confirmed they were carrying out checks, but weren't going to 'comment at this time'.

Which is a shame as there is certainly some room for consumer concern here in the UAE. British and European supermarkets and brands are a dominant force in retail - and those levels of concern are hardly likely to get any lower as investigations unearth more and more consequences of supermarkets and brands abandoning traceability for profit. This is one story that's certainly not going away any time soon.

Can the UAE's supermarkets and food processors assure their customers of full traceability and that the foods they are selling are not contaminated by this scandal? Who's asking them? It's at a time like this you'd really want to be well served by your media. And no comment is not really what we need to hear.

Update: This excellent report on The National website today talks to retailers, processors and authorities alike to answer the very question I ask above - at least regarding locally processed meat if not imported ready meals. You can be the judge of the differential standards of journalism represented by the two newspapers' treatment of the same story.

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.