Blue Chi’s

The Tender Board made a press release today (Arabic Text) in which it announced the values of all the tenders that were recently approved for upcoming government projects: One worth 5 milion Omani Rials was approved for doing additional works for the expansion of the Internet broadband coverage to provide the services for a 100,000 users.

Here is the actual text in Arabic:

الاعمال الاضافية على المناقصة رقم 1172006 توسعة شبكة النطاق العريض لتوصيل خدمة الانترنت لعدد 100 الف مشترك بمبلغ وقدره 000ر000ر5 ر.ع.

These 5 million rials are for additional works for this tender, which presumably has started years ago (for another separate sum). It is unclear if these “additional works” are to expand the broadband network to a greater number of users (So this 100K could be an additional to the existing number from the previous tender) or to do something else completely (e.g. unforeseen changes required for the infrastructure, 100K users are those that had access to it from before and the access wil not expand to new users).

I do not know if this project is managed by the Ministry of Transport and Communications (MOTC) or the Telecom Regulation Authority (TRA).

Here are some photos of Southampton, it is a port city as some of you might already know. 

Some more pics after the jump.

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Well, that did not take too long. I am finally settled in Southampton in my room at university accommodation. The city centre is so awesome in Southampton (compared to that of Cardiff), there are several ‘real malls’ in this town like those we have in the Gulf, one with about a 100 shops. They’ve got everything from HMV, Zavvi, and Waterstone, to Forbidden Planet (Love this shop, will tell you about it in a future post), Bella Italia, and Krispy Kreme!

Unfortunately, my accommodation and the university is not in the city centre (unlike Cardiff Uni which was literally steps away from the city centre). I have to take the bus to go to town here, will take a time to get use to and it is probably better as I won’t waste time in town a lot this way.

My hall is not too bad, the furniture is a bit old, but ALL ROOMS HAVE PLUG-AND-PLAY HI-SPEED INTERNET, and when these people mean Hi-Speed internet THEY MEAN IT. My room is on the ground floor and that is not cool, because it is probably going to get noisy when school starts AND you need to close the curtains if you want to have any sort of privacy at all. Bad-Good thing about it is that I’m on one the last blocks in the back of the halls area, this is bad because it is far in the back, but it is good because it won’t be as noisy as the ones near the entrance.

It was very hard to drag my luggage around while fasting, but I did it. Today was worse that yesterday and I barely could drag myself around at iftaar time. Didn’t have the most glamorous meal for breakfast – in fact just had McDonald’s. 

Will show you some pics of Southampton tomorrow.

I’m traveling to the UK tonight for my masters. I am almost packed and everything. Just need to print out a copy of my acceptance letter just in case they ask for it at immigration. 

Goodbye everyone, I will see you on the other side.

Origin Oman is a campaign run by PEIE that is meant to promote local Omani products and services and to creative awareness of the quality of these local products and services. It is the new version of the old “The Omani Product is Our First Choice” – ( المنتج العماني -اختيارنا الأول ) campaign. PEIE made a student competition to design the logo and Haitham Al Busafi won.

His logo concept was of the word “Omani” in Arabic written as a spiral. His draft was selected by PEIE as the winning logo and then he was taken to Dubai to work with international branding agency Landor to guide him on how to transform his concept into the logo you see above. The logo is an outward growing spiral that tells is meant to resemeble the growth and expansion of Omani products and services. It is nice, simple, and smartly drawn.

The video below was shown at the launch event of the logo earlier this week.

The Origin Oman logo will be used in all qualifying Omani products and services just like the Omani Product logo we see on locally made products.

I think that the best thing about the Origin Oman logo is that it was made by someone Omani.

If you are reading this message through your RSS reader this means that you are subscribed to my feedburner and you can continue to follow my updates without making any changes! 

The address of my blog is http://www.blue-chi.com/, my previous address at blogspot will remain for several months and then I will delete it. 

I moved to WordPress because Blogger is extremely buggy, very slow, and never ever shows the most updated version of my homepage. WordPress has many more features, is fully customizable and much faster to use. 

I ported my previous theme to WordPress but it is still a bit rough of the edges, I’ll try to fix it bit by bit with time.

Times of Oman and Shabiba are running a press release about the Sultan ordering the establishment of a Drama and Theatre Committee to set a plan for the development of this sector in Oman. Read the press release here.

1. A new department in the TRA called .OM Domain Administration (omDA – We can call it 3umdah in Arabic I guess!) will be created and will be responsible for .OM domain names.
2. 3umda will grant a license for companies to become Domain Name Registrars so that any company can offer domain name registration services and not just OmanTel. (They call it accreditation instead of license).
3. Only companies with a working capital of more than RO 50,000 (sorry this was a typo) RO 20,000 can apply to become a registrar. The company (or some of its staff) must have at least six month experience in the domain name business before it can apply for accreditation. The application fee is RO 500, there are no annual fees. 3umda can terminate the service of non-performing registrars.
4. 3umda will not specify retail prices and will give all companies the same wholesale price. Companies can set their own retail price. If only one company ends getting accredited then 3umda will have to agree to the retail prices with it.
5. Companies will have to buy domain names from Registrars, not from 3umda directly.
6. Individuals CANNOT buy domain names. Nobody can buy a domain name for personal use.
7. Omani Tribe names are reserved names, you cannot register a domain name that is also a tribe name.
8. Domain names cannot be sold. The policy says that people who register domain names do not own it, they merely have the right to use it and they cannot sell that right. If a registrar or 3umda learns of a sale transaction of a domain name the domain name will be suspended and neither the buyer or the seller will have it.
9. 3umda  will suspend your domain name if a government authority or the police request that.
10. You cannot buy a domain name that contains a trademark, a word close to it or a misspelled version of it.

The TRA announced two days ago the opening of a public consultation paper (Direct link to PDF) on the registration and usage of the .OM top level domain. In this public consultation paper the TRA shows us the regulations they are proposing and welcome any feedback from anyone in the public. They have no obligation to listen to what we say, but they might consider it. If you have any problems with the way domain names are registers this is your opportunity to speak up and tell them how you think it should be done.