Ready for the Summer!
I’ve doing a lot of different things online as usual, I have loads of plans for this summer and I am determined to accomplish as many of them as I can:
-We are starting a new small competition sponsored by Apple tomorrow over at Oman3D. This one is going to be exclusive to people from Oman, less than 1% of our traffic comes from Oman, so it should be pretty easy for people to win. I will make another post when we start this competition. I had plans to arrange for a set of competitions for the whole summer, but Gonu messed things up. I’ll try searching for sponsors, making proposal and calling up people up soon to start new competitions.
-I am going to try a new marketing method for Oman3D, we’re starting a proper newsletter, we tried sending some from our vBulletin admin panel, but you can’t send HTML letters that way and you can’t track. I’m going to use ConstactContact, it is a paid service that provides a great tracking services, scheduling, and easy subscription AND unsubscription features. Our first letter should be sent this week. If anybody is interested in giving us feedback then please subscribe to our newsletter as soon as possible to not miss out on the first issue. (subscription form found on the bottom of our homepage.)
-I am making a mobile phone game! I’m almost done with it, I finished coding and the game works, just need to work on the graphics and add additional features (score board, etc). It’s going to run on the Flash Lite Player available on all recent Nokia symbian phones, UQI Sony Ericsson phones, and walkman SonyEricsson phones. It is a pretty basic arcade style game, I’ll make it available for download here when it’s ready!
-I started posting for Global Voices earlier this month, it is an amazing project, I gladly accepted the offer to volunteer and will try to post more on their blog in the future.
-I am going to start two new websites/blogs this summer, one of them is not very serious, I will be just doing it because I think that I have the time and it would fill a certain gap, but the other one should be much more interesting and would be a proper website – probably bilingual. I already started the less interesting one, I am supposed to start working on the bigger project this month, I do not think that I will publicly launch it before September. I am going to work on it with a new group. I find it very helpful to work with different people each time I start a new project because it is easier to stay motivated that way somehow.
-I’m having so much fun writing for the Omani Cuisine, I will try to publish one new post a week, I already have in the pipeline reviews for Santino’s, Chilli’s, and Cinnzeo, and a recipe for a shrimp pasta dish – I have the pics and everything, just need to post them. I would like to have recipes for Omani food and I will try to persuade my mother to help me write some of these posts, the problem is that her face expression said ‘This.Is.So.Gay’, when I told her that I, a guy, had a website about cooking and restaurant reviews, ouch. I only go back home for a weekend once every two weeks, so I do not really have loads of time to do it, but I will try.
-Within the month of July, I am also planning on reading a book on contract drafting (Adam’s manual on contract style – started it, an amazing book), a novel (all families are psychotic – douglas coupland), and I will try to finish the web redesign project management book I started reading sometime ago. I am planning on purchasing the new Essential ActionScript 3.0 by Colin Moock, the book got released a couple of days ago.
-I am also getting involved with the Omani community blog, I do not know how it will go, but everybody seems to be in, so why not join!
