Bing-a-Ling

Found a funny one on SiteMeter today.

If you search Bing for "fujairah car accident", as some poor searcher did today, you get referred to this image (among others), linking to this:


You also get a page of strange things including a picture of the crucifixion. Honestly, take a look here.

Google? You're safe, boys. You've nothing to worry about for a while yet... Yahoo? You got bilked, boys. Bilked!

BTW, this picture of a fake plastic chicken is a popular landing site on this blog as the marvels of SEO seem to indicate this is a particularly highly ranked fake plastic chicken picture. It was taken by pal CJ to demonstrate why he's a PR and not a photographer...

The Inshallah Bus

Image via Wikipedia

Sarah's christened it 'The Inshallah Bus' because it will come when it comes. There's no actual timetable as such. It just comes, Inshallah.

Sharjah's infamous No. 14 bus service (there is no 13, there is no 15) leaves from near McNabb Mansions on its meandering progress through Sharjah to the airport. On the plus side, it costs just Dhs3 to get to the airport. On the minus side, it takes over an hour to make its stately and undocumented way. You just find a bus stop that says 14 on it and wait for a bus to turn up. They leave the portakabin on the sand terminus on the Ajman border every 15 minutes from 05.30 or so, but when they actually get (or turn up) anywhere is pure guesswork.

I asked the nice man at the terminus for a timetable and he laughed delightedly. There is no timetable. I suppose at least you can't say the buses in Sharjah don't run on time.

It's an ill wind for the cabbies, though. Our regular cabbie, the lugubrious Mr. G., blames the Inshallah Bus for at least part of the recent alarming drop-off in customers. He's more and more dependent on his regulars to help him meet his harsh target of over Dhs250 per day in revenue now that many people take the bus instead. An express service that goes from the airport to Rolla Square and the Vegetable Market costs just Dhs5.

Having just come back from leave and injudiciously managed to misplace his mobile (and, therefore, a number of those regulars he needs so badly), Mr G. is having a tough time right now. He's our regular precisely because we trust him, like him and have his mobile number. I tip him a bit every trip and so we have a taxi on call. We'd use the call centre but of course there isn't one - there's no booking service at all for taxis in Sharjah.

Buses with no timetables and cabs with no booking system. Thank God at least some of the old, quixotic, unregulated pottiness of life in the Emirates remains.

No Dogs Please at Dubai Animal Beauty Pageant

Image via Wikipedia

Bloggers Seabee and Mai focus on the serious news on today's Gulf News front page, asserting (with no more detail than this) that expatriates returning to the UAE will have to produce a medical certificate certifying that they are free of H1N1 virus,both sending out a well deserved "Whaat?" In the direction of the story and, in Seabee's case, the sloppy reporting. The front page GN story was later debunked by The National's reporters and by WAM.

However, I was rather more taken with a lovely little nugget nestling snugly further in my 460grammes of papery daily fun and frolics.

The search is on for an AVA - an Ambassador with a Voice for Animals. Acronyms are so this year. We had Paris combing Dubai for a BFF - although I have to say, the search for an AVA actually left me more with a WTF?

Organisers are promising to seek women who have a genuine passion for animals and their welfare. The winner will get the chance to spend time at K Friends and Feline Friends (one can only assume it'll be the chance to muck out the kennels) and be expected to educate the public and spread awareness about how a pet needs to be looked after, according to GN.

This is all laudable enough, but rather had me wondering why the whole thing was illustrated by a bunch of birds on a stairway, decked out in high heels and LBDs. And then we get to the good bit. The competition will include a 'pageant'. Not, you can be sure, a 'Beauty Pageant' - because those are naughty and banned.

Oh no. Not that. This is a 'pageant'. The girls who have convinced judges that they are passionate about pooches and crazy about kitties will take part in the 'pageant' that will 'feature all the contestants parading first in t-shirts and shorts and then in an evening dress'.

Because, let's face it, having nice long legs and being righteously stacked are what animal welfare's all about, eh, girls? Let's have a nice smile for the cameras! Hands on hips and say Poneeee!

Muslim women, we can only assume, need not apply. Unless they're willing to dance around half-naked in public grinning at a panel of drooling 'judges' who'll be marking them on their 'presentation' and 'poise'...

Rather fittingly, the story goes on to confirm that one of the judges is also a leading judge at the world's leading dog show Crufts.

AVA? WTF?

Little Gem

Image via Wikipedia

You might have seen that a company is to turn a lock of Michael Jackson's burned hair, scooped up after the infamous Pepsi commercial accident, into a diamond.

If not, you can read the whole scoop here.

The website of LifeGem, the company proposing to undertake the transformation of a dead pop star's burned hair into a collection of valuable, limited edition diamonds (an undertaking that is, I am sure you will agree, in no way sick or macabre), is well worth a visit. It had me in helpless heaves for oxygen, blinded with tears and snivelling as if someone had tased me then hit me with a powerful dose of mace.

The homepage kicks off well:

The LifeGem^® is a certified, high-quality diamond created from the carbon of your loved one as a memorial to their unique life.

I was already giggling like an idiot at that. The carbon of your loved one. Nice. But it got better. A lot better. The FAQ had me hooting (instructions on how much of your loved one to send are included. In case you're interested, one cup of loved one should do it), particularly when they take great care instructing potential clients not to send all of their loved ones.

But LifeGem's Precious Pets service, here finished me off. I was down for the count, helpless and moaning in pain by this point.

Please go there. It will make your day and you will all love me more for having shared.

NufNuf

Image by S and C via Flickr

I was driving over the highlands north of Braemar. It was the first week in January and bitterly cold and wet, the biting rain whipping over the exposed bleakness just turning to freezing. I stopped for the two despondent-looking hitch-hikers huddled together on the side of the twisting highland road. They were rosy-faced with the cold and grateful for the lift as they bustled wetly into the car.

“Where are you going?” They asked me.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I’m just following the computer.”

There was a sudden silence. I handed them the printout. They both held it, open-mouthed, alternately reading the list of instructions and looking up at me in case I had a knife or something.

“B-Braemar will be fine, if that’s okay?” The braver of the two said. But their expressions were clear – I might as well have announced I could see bats swooping out of the sky as I admired the shapes of their skulls with a twisted anthropologist’s drug-pumped intensity.

In 1988, you didn’t drive around the country cluelessly following a computer printout. Nobody had even heard of Autoroute, let alone Tom-Toms and SatNav. These are the perils of the early adopter. People think you’re a nutter all the time. I’ve learned my lessons the hard way – these days I let other mugs wrestle with the unusable geek-fodder at the bleeding edge of technology.

Last weekend, 21 years after Autoroute 1.0 (no printed maps back then – you got a screen map and a printout of directions) and Braemar, my mobile phone took us to Al Ain. Having just got a new N86 (following two perfectly happy years pooh-poohing early adoption freaks such as Gianni and CJ), I finally got a phone that does 3D mapping, SatNav and locational services thingies. It also does in-car FM music transmitting, Twittering, Facebooking and all the other things that we are told telephones should do nowadays. These things all being over and above the actual speaking to other humans stuff that appears to be going out of common practice with increasing rapidity.

The first thing that amazed me was the process of paying for the mapping application license. I bought a month’s trial, just for the hell of it (I’m like that, I can splurge Dhs32 with abandon – I’m such a mad, impetuous thing!) and the card transaction over the mobile was smooth and problem-free. In fact, I’d actually finished it before I realised this was the first time I’d actually paid real card-money for something over a mobile.

We set off for a happy afternoon’s following the directions of the slightly arch-sounding female voice emanating from my phone on the 180Km-odd hack to Al Ain from Northern Sharjah.

We christened her NufNuf. It’s a long story, but if the Brits have a Tom-Tom, we reckoned the Irish could have a Mick-Mick and therefore the UAE could have a NufNuf. NufNuf was the name of the West Highland terrier that Sheikha sent by private jet from London to distraught International School of Choueifat Sharjah Headmistress Dorothy 'Dotters' Miles after canine predecessor Kirsty was dimensionally transmogrified by a car driven by a careless parent. It’s been a long stint here in the UAE, I know...

NufNuf pin-pointed Jebel Hafeet on the map easily enough – so can I, by the way, but we wanted to see if she had a better route – and so we set off. On the way, we slipped in a sneaky detour to Sharjah post office, which rather led to a minor huff from NufNuf. “Recalculating Route”, she sniffed at us several times as we consistently ignored her advice to turn back in a number of increasingly desperate and highly ingenious ways.

Once out on the open highway and going in the prescribed direction, she calmed down a bit. It was clear that the maps she was using were good, but a little out of date. This shouldn’t be a major problem and you can appreciate that updating maps of Dubai would be enough to turn Magellan insane, but if people are going to go around selling maps of somewhere like the UAE, they need to take the hit and keep ‘em up to the minute.

The other surprise was that NufNuf was au fait with the applicable speed limits. This led to me getting told to ‘Observe the speed limit’, much to Sarah’s smug glee.

The acid test was Al Ain, though. Would NufNuf negotiate that confusing grid of tree-lined roads with their mad roundabouts and flowery decorations? I’ve always made my way around Al Ain with a rich mixture of luck and judgement in an 80/20 proportion – the similarity of many boulevards to each other, the frequent roundabouts and confusing signage make negotiating the charming desert oasis city of Al Ain, as a place you don’t visit often, a real nightmare.

NufNuf breezed it. A tendency to repeat the same instruction three times and more was forgiven when life got hectic and she picked a better route than the one I’ve always used (don’t ask me what my ‘traditional route’ is, it’s sort of 'pass Hili Fun City and continue down the roads that feel right'). She can be a bit literal – she wanted to take us on a road that wasn’t the one that leads up Jebel Hafeet, but that’s OK – she was headed for the mountain itself because I hadn’t bothered searching for the Mercure Hotel that’s actually up Jebel Hafeet. If you search for it, it's there.

I’d have liked the option to pick a location on the map rather than search for hotels and things, but maybe I just haven’t found it. What I did find was that my mobile acts as a perfectly serviceable and useful SatNav, that it doesn’t cost much to keep the maps up to date and that I’d use it for getting around relatively infrequently visited places like Al Ain and Abu Dhabi in future. I’ll be using it in the UK and Ireland this summer, too, you can bet your sweet bottom.

I also found out that the four-hour drive to Al Ain and back with NufNuf assisting (With a long phone call and some compulsive Tweeting, I admit!) will do for a battery: an in-car charger cable is a most desirable accessory.

Mind you, she did talk a lot, did NufNuf. Particularly about that speed limit business...

Shortest

This might be my shortest blog post ever.

Here. Read this. It's Etisalat giving its side of the BlackBerry story.

See if it makes you angry...

GeekFest

Those nice people at Uber-funky Dubai hangout The Shelter are hosting GeekFest on Wednesday the 29th July. It should be interesting - billed as an offline social for online socialisers, the get together is resolutely un-organised, has absolutely no objectives whatsoever and features no sponsors, PowerPoint presentations, speeches or other form of corporatised torture.

The gathering will start at 5pm, although if anyone's early it will start earlier. If everyone's late, it'll start later. If nobody turns up, it won't start at all. But then it won't end, either.

The Shelter has a nice More cafe for refreshments and funky music.

The event was born out of a meeting that took place some time ago between The Shelter's Saadia Zahid, Simone 'DiscoBallBreaker' Sebastian and yours truly. We've taken ages to get around to not organising it.

If you don't know how to get to The Shelter, this Google Map Link should help.

You can follow @geekfestdubai on Twitter if you like. If this one is fun, we'll do more of them.

RIM Enables Etisalat Update Removal

Image via CrunchBase

"Recently an update may have been provided to you by Etisalat for your BlackBerry Handheld via a WAP push. The Etisalat update is not a RIM-authorized update and was not developed by RIM. Independent sources have concluded that the Etisalat update is not designed to improve performance of your BlackBerry Handheld, but rather to send received messages back to a central server. RIM has developed this software (“Software”) that will enable you to remove the Etisalat update."

Not my words, but the official words of the company that makes and enables BlackBerry handheld devices , RIM, on its own forum.

Particularly chilling are these words: "Independent sources have concluded that the Etisalat update is not designed to improve performance of your BlackBerry Handheld, but rather to send received messages back to a central server."

This directly contradicts the words of telco Etisalat, which made a formal statement to media last week, "These upgrades were required for service enhancements particularly for issues identified related to the handover between 2G to 3G network coverage areas."

But RIM goes a lot, lot further in its formal statement on the whole affair. In fact, the company says:

"RIM confirms that this software is not a patch and it is not a RIM authorized upgrade. RIM did not develop this software application and RIM was not involved in any way in the testing, promotion or distribution of this software application.

RIM further confirms, in general terms, that a third party patch cannot provide any enhancements to network services as there is no capability for third parties to develop or modify the low level radio communications protocols that would be involved in making such improvements to the communications between a BlackBerry smartphone and a carrier’s network.

In addition, RIM is not aware of any technical network concerns with the performance of BlackBerry smartphones on Etisalat’s network in the UAE."

So someone's been telling porkie pies, haven't they?

The link to BlackBerry's site is HERE and if you have a BlackBerry and implemented the update, you'll be relieved to know it contains a removal tool provided by RIM for its customers to use in getting rid of the performance-sapping software.

RIM has done the right thing - in contrast to security company SS8, the organisation presumed to have actually coded the software behind this awful little mess and which has maintained a total silence in the face of media requests. Similarly, etisalat's reaction (ignore it all and hope it goes away) has hardly been customer focused - people are still helping each other with 'broken' BlackBerries and Twitter is still ringing with plaintive Tweets for help from grounded BB users.

Do get the word out to friends and family that an 'official' fix is now available to roll back the update and, belatedly, ameliorate the impact on users of this muckle-headed catastrophe.

Etisalat still has 145,000 people to answer to, BTW... And, one rather suspects, a media that will be baying for its blood...

Link to the RIM statement, hosted on the Chirashi Security blog, HERE. Enjoy!

Giving a Hoot

Image via Wikipedia

So what are your brand values, then?
Loyalty, Quality, Customer Service, Care, Innovation

Did you ever stop to think that everyone picks those?
Well, no, not really. We did a flip chart thing in a hotel with our ad agency. They said we were a dominating tiger but that we really cared about our customers and that’s why customers admire us more than our competitor. We agreed with that. It was a pretty insightful analysis, actually.

Do you really live those values?
Of course! We put them on posters and everything! We even made a T-shirt after the workshop!

What, with Loyalty, Quality, Customer Service, Care, Innovation on it?
Yes! We took our hand paintings from that day out and used them along with our logos and our values. It's cool.

Do you wear that T-shirt?
Are you quite mad? I’d look like a delivery guy or something!

Do you see the problem here? This is not realistic. You don’t really live these values, they’re just lip-service. You’re not loyal, you just let staff go. You don’t really care about quality, you shaved product specs to save cashflow. You don’t care about your customers, your call centre sucks royally, has an average 25 minute wait time and is staffed by minimum wage students that hate you as much as your customers hate them. You only care about your shareholders and investors. And you don’t innovate at all, your whole structure is about a strategy of safety and sucking up to management.
Sorry, are you the PR guy or McKinsey? Because if you’re McKinsey, I don’t recall paying you $100k for this. And if you’re my PR guy, I’m not about to pay you to tell me something obvious, right?

Look, I’m the PR guy alright and I’m just about to tell you that you are in no way ready to take on social media.
Oh, what crap! We’re going to do some really cool social media campaigns. We’re going to show people just how damn cool we are and let them win some great prizes for jumping around and pulling faces every time we Tweet BIGCORP! You’ll see!

But we, as consumers, don’t want to do that. We don't want to jump around for you. We want to understand more about how you operate, engage with your people - even help to shape the products and services you offer us.
What? Stuff that! Mind your own business! How we operate is our affair, not yours!

Well, if you want me to engage with your brand, how you operate is important.
What the hell is wrong with you? What kind of pinko sicko ARE you? Buy the product because we care about you, right? Don’t worry about the stuff under the bonnet. You’re not qualified to look under the bonnet. We love you. Now shut the heck up, guy. Really. Before you really piss us off. You don’t want to piss us off.

But I am qualified. I’m a customer!
Shut up, right? Shut up. If you don’t shut up, I’ll shut you up. You understand me, you jumped up little punk?

Okay, it’s okay. I’ve calmed down just fine. Right. Why don’t you just go see Lisa who’s got some press releases about our staff development programme we want featured in the New York Times, the British press and all the Middle East papers. And PETRA. My kid says PETRA is important.

Umm, PETRA is the Jordanian national news agency. Maybe your kid meant PETA?
What, you can’t deliver or something? You don’t get what the kids get? If you don't have strong relationships withe media and make them run our releases, you can't be doing the job right.

But that's just pushing out one way messages! What about dialogue? Whatever happened to “Loyalty, Quality, Customer Service, Care, Innovation”?
You’re way off track here, pal. You’re a trouble maker. I’ve got nothing more to say to you. Lalalalala. Speak to my PR agency.

I am your PR agency.
Right. We’re pitching the account. We need an agency that understands us; believes in us. We need that empathy before we can move forwards...

Incompetence or arrogance?

Image by Loutron Glouton via Flickr

Respected security analysts and consultancies have now confirmed what many industry watchers, pundits and commentators suspected last week - that the 'upgrade' pushed to tens of thousands of BlackBerry mobile devices in the UAE by telco Etisalat was, in fact, not what it seemed to be, an 'upgrade for Blackberry service. Please download to ensure continous service quality.'

Interestingly, this rather flies in the face of the somewhat belated statement made by the telco itself, which I reproduced in full here at the end of last week. That statement rather annoyed a number of BlackBerry users who found it facile and lacking the one element that tens of thousands of frustrated customers whose mobile devices were affected wanted to see - an apology. Many of those users say their BlackBerrys were rendered inoperable or suffered significantly downgraded performance. A number reportedly bought new batteries for their BlackBerrys, believing the battery was at fault when, in fact, it was the software update they had accepted from the operator.

A press release was issued on the 15th July by security company SMobile Systems. The company, which positions itself as 'the leading provider of security solutions for mobile phones and maker of the only antivirus and antispyware applications in the world for BlackBerry devices, has released a solution for the (in their words) 'recent spyware-laden update sent out to BlackBerry users on the Etisalat network'. That press release in full can be found here.

The company's release claims, 'The BlackBerry Spyware, which intercepts email and drains battery life quickly, was pushed as an update to BlackBerry's on the Etisalat network. Sent to users as a wide-area protocol (WAP) message, the Java file intercepts data and sends a copy to a server without the user's knowledge.'

That is an extraordinary claim to make regarding a piece of software that Etisalat's official statement says was software 'required for service enhancements particularly for issues identified related to the handover between 2G to 3G network coverage areas.'

It is perhaps worth noting that the Chairman of SMobile Systems, quoted in the release, is a former White House Deputy Chief of Staff and so, we must reluctantly admit, carries some weight.

SMobile is not the only expert testimony that claims the notorious update is other than it seems. Besides the many people who believe that the Etisalat network is 100% 3G now and therefore does not present 2G to 3G cell handover problems, there are also a number who point out the fact that BlackBerrys haven't experienced cell handover issues for some time now - in fact, the only online references I can find to the handover issue date back to 2006.

Added to this, you have those who have examined the code - Qatar based programmer Nigel Gourlay was quoted widely in the initial coverage of the issue, but his assertions that the network update was in fact an attempt to install monitoring software have been backed up by respected security blog Chirashi Security - a white paper analysing the code in some detail, written by Sheran Gunarsekera, is linked here.

That white paper asserts that the code is a monitoring application. It also points out that the application was not properly implemented, pointing out that the application developers had not used any form of source code obfuscation - in other words, it shouldn't have been as simple to trace, upload and analyse the code as it in fact was. The code, according to the White Paper, is set up to hide itself from the user, attach itself to network events and report these to the service-provider's server and look out for control messages that enable interception of user messages. If enabled, the application will forward a copy of emails sent by the subscriber to the service provider's servers.

Damningly, the White Paper asserts that the code 'was not mature enough to be deployed. This is especially relevant if Etisalat planned to conduct full-scale legal interception on BlackBerry users.'

The Chirashi White Paper is scrupulous to point out that the application only forwards outgoing emails and not other message types and then only when the application has been enabled to do so - it does not report on emails by default. But it does make the point that the version of the interceptor software it analysed should not have been deployed - particularly not as part of a legal interception.

The White Paper also strays out of geekland into my domain when it asserts, in the context of requiring legal interception software to meet two criteria, to do no harm and to be thoroughly tested: 'A service provider should always be prepared for the worst. In case things do not work out as planned, there needs to be a dedicated PR team who is ready to step up and deal with the public. Users should not be lied to or ignored, they will accept it better if they know the provider is well within legal rights to perform such interception.' (The italics are mine, BTW)

Security company Veracode also analysed the upgrade last week, asking whether the fact that the implemented update contained both .jar and .cod versions was down to 'arrogance or incompetence?'. That's an area explored by a journalist from the region's leading telecommunications magazine, Comms MEA, here. Again, Veracode's Chris Eng reports that the clear purpose of the update, in his expert view, is to install a piece of software that, when activated, will forward user data to a third party server, presumably owned by the service provider.

All of this leaves me wondering quite what on earth Etisalat thought it was doing. And quite how our media is standing by and allowing Etisalat to simply claim that the great big elephant in the cupboard is in fact a pair of shoes.

Nobody I know has a problem with legal interception. I think most of us would recognise that it is highly desirable that the security agencies employed by our governments have access to the information they need in order to protect society in general. Those agencies are constantly monitoring network traffic, legally and within the charters and frameworks that govern their activity. We need them to be competent and we desperately need to believe in their competence and efficacy.

Similarly, we need to trust our telcos. As a commercial entity operating in a regulated and competitive free market environment, even the biggest telco has a duty towards its subscribers and a duty to tell the truth - not only to earn the trust of its customers, but to underpin the level of trust required by investors and multinational companies who wish to trade in that environment. Mendacity and silence are not good enough - people are still facing problems with their terminals even now because there has been no clear attempt to reach out to customers and fix this issue - let alone roll back the update. There are critical issues related to privacy and security that the operator has refused to address - and questions are now being asked by a wider community about the long-term implications for BlackBerry security in general as a result of this whole farago.

Finally, there is the issue of responsibility. Someone was responsible for this Keystone Cops attempt to police BlackBerrys and the subsequent lack of timely and appropriate response that turned a customer service problem into a full-blown case study in how fumbled issues management rapidly evolves nto crisis management and how ignoring a crisis simply, in today's commercial environment, won't do.