Blue Chi’s

(Photo Credits: anjan58)

Oman had signed bilateral investment treaties (BITs) with many countries from all around the world, the latest was ratified today with the Netherlands.

Not a lot of people know what these are. In fact, many governments sign them without knowing what they mean, some think of their signature is just part of a celebratory event that takes place when a minister from a foreign state visits the country and just think of them as a meaningless MOU that has no legal implications.

A Bilateral Investment Treaty is a treaty by which a government promises another government to protect the investment of national of the second country in the first country in return of reciprocal treatment. The text of these treaties is usually quite short and it’s usually less than ten pages long, but the main principles of it are national treatment, free transfer of funds, full protection and security, and protection against expropriation.

While many of these principles might already be existent in national laws of countries (for example, Oman provides protection for foreign investment in its Foreign Capital Investment Law 104/94), the protection of BITs differs in that it could exceed the national level of protection, it could even exceed the protection granted for local investors (e.g. in the case of ‘full protection and security’ which is not usually granted by countries for any investor local or foreign), and the most significant impact of it is that it gives a foreign investor the right to take an action against the host government for a breach of the treaty in International Arbitration. This right will exist regardless of whether there was any contractual arrangement between that government and the investor, and it will surely not be available for local investors. 

Such right is risky for governments, as they can be inadvertently in breach, for example, of expropriation indirectly, and then could be sued for millions of dollars at an international arbitration center (horror stories happened to the governments of Pakistan and Turkey).

There are no known records of any investor taking an action against the Omani government, however, last year, a Omani investor successfully was awarded damages of USD $24 million against Yemen by relying on the Bilateral Investment Treaty between Oman and Yemen.

BIT are scary agreements and there is no proof at all that they contribute to the attraction of foreign investment to a country. Many free trade agreements (such as Oman-US FTA) also include a chapter on investment with very similar provisions.

In Oman, the Ministry of National Economy coordinates the negotiation process of bilateral investment treaties with other countries. The Ministry of Legal is responsible for reviewing them prior to signature to ensure their compliance with national laws.

I didn’t play a lot of games last year, and Castlevania is the first game I play in 2009. I’m a die hard fan of 2D Castlevania games, I played all the three games that were released on the DS and the Dracula X remake on the PSP. I adore classic 2D platform gameplay.

Luckily, Castlevania Order of Ecclesia does not revolutionize the Castelvania series, it has the same old Dracula plot with a huge map to explore and spells & items to discover. Gameplay differs a bit as the game has a new combo Glyph battle system that requires you to use MP in every single strike you make. Moving between levels is now done through a world map which I thought was cool and much easier than previous games that required you to move around slowly and use teleportation rooms to move around. The game also has a lot of small quests that are accessed by interacting with town villagers – a bit reminiscent of the old NES Castlevania II.

I really enjoyed the game, but I thought that it was a bit too easy as I almost relied exclusively on a single magical spell which I found half way through the game. I was also disappointed by the fact the game does not make any use of the DS touch screen capabilities  - not even to mark the maps as was the case in Portrait of Ruin. If Konami had no intention of the using the stylus and really didn’t have to use the upper screen either, then why the hell didn’t they release this game on the PSP? It would’ve looked a thousand times better in widescreen and they would have been able to improve the graphics as the PSP is more powerful than the DS.

Anyway, still, a very enjoyable game, especially for those who need to have short gaming bursts which you can put down quickly. Found it helpful in breaks between long reading sessions in the library! Highly recommended for fans of 2D platform games and Action RPGs.

4/5

It’s been four months since I read my last Douglas Coupland novel. I finished Miss Wyoming a couple of days ago, this is a quirky love novel about an beauty pageant who survives an airplane crash and a film director who decides to decides to become a vagrant upon seeing a vision.  The storytelling runs back and forth as it starts by the meeting of the two main characters and then swings back and forth in parallel to tell the background story of each character and what happens next at the same time.  It was fun to read and had amazing characters. I was not crazy about the ending as much as I was about other Douglas Coupland novels. 

I am not sure if I should start reading my next Douglas Coupland novel Generation X. This is the first book he has ever written and will by reading it I would have read every single novel he has written in English (he has one written in Japanese, but I can’t read that). I’m afraid of what I would do in my life after completing all Douglas Coupland books .

I discovered recently that Coupland is going to publish a new book in August 2009! The book is called “Generation A”, it obviously has a link with his first book, but I’m praying that it’s not an indication that he’s gone full circle and would stop writing afterwards. That will not be cool at all!!

I almost visit the website of the Times of Oman on daily basis, as a Omani person currently living outside the country, I depend on websites such as this one to know what is happening in Oman. While globally all newspapers know that the present is on the web and most people read everything online, newspapers in Oman live in the stone age as they make their profits from mass government and business subscriptions to stay alive. They can print out white paper and they will still sell because of stupid government and business subscriptions. I am not sure whether these people who run these newspapers are oblivious to what is happening around the world or maybe they just do not care.

Anyway, the Times of Oman website is the ONLY English newspaper website that I visit it – because they have an RSS feed, and it is broke and annoying, but I don’t have a choice about it. I have no idea when the website of the Times of Oman was launched or designed, but I can bet that it did not change one bit since it was launched. The website is cluttered like hell, hard to navigate, uncomfortable to read, and is unbelievable wasting advertising slots from which they can be making money. Here are my suggestions on how to make the Times of Oman a bearable website:

Remove The Clutter

If you look at the homepage of Times of Oman you instantly notice that it is a total mess. There are three horizontal rows on top and five coloumns in the body of the page. Those who designed this website have obviously not read “Don’t Make Me Thing“. People do not read the text of every link and heading on a webpage, they simply click on the first thing they see with a visual cue on what they are looking for. A cluttered page such as this one simply frustrates users and makes them decide to leave your website quickly.

The page has so many unnecessary things, why does the header of every single page on top have stuff like  ”advertise”, “e-paper”, and “make us your homepage”? The majority of people visit a website are those who came through a search engine and will NOT land on your homepage, but on a content page and their priority would obviously not be to make your their homepage or advertise with you. In fact, a regular visitor is most probably not an advertiser.

Why does the side menu have all these stupid links to e-greetings, HOROSCOPE, and flight schedule?! Do people REALLY REALLY check the website of Times of Oman to see what their horoscope says? I bet that NOBODY EVER CHECKS THESE. I mean, who the hell will use the Times of Oman e-greeting service?! 

The first thing that Times of Oman needs to do is install Google Analytics and track which sections are actually visited and which sections are never used. If nobody is checking this section just remove it. Using an analytics software will also tell you how people visit your website, what they click on once they land, when do they exit your website, etc. It is crazy that Times of Oman does not use any special analytics script (I checked their source code).

Times of Oman must remove all unnecessary things from its header and front page section. We do need to do what the editors’ picks are or what the latest technology thing at the bottom of the page, you do not need 5 coloumns, you do not need all these thumbnails.

Create Logical Navigation Structure

There is a fundamental problem with this website, they seem to not misunderstand the point of a headline. This is a visual cue that is supposed to tell you that a new section starts here. It is supposed to be bigger than the body text or the text below it. All heading texts on this website are SMALLER than the text below them?! They are barely clickable, and on the million coloumns on the front page there is no consistent style or colour to guide you. Some upper headings (Local Flavour and Features) are not even aligned horizontally on the same level.

Other lacking visual cues are weird red arrow indicators below story summaries on the front page. The text of these lists is in the same size and colour as the text above them. You might be lucky to know that these are links if you hover your mouse over them. There are also silly small thumbnails on the side that are not clickable, they look like they are thumbs about the story, so they should link to it, but you cannot click them?! Even the main image on the image is just a one line story, you cannot click on it or on any text below it. I do not know if there is anywhere else on the website to learn more about that. Is it just a random one-line story from India with no more details?!

There is something crazy about the structure of the navigation menu. There are links on top, but these are not navigation links, they just link to weird unnecessary things. There is an LONG list on the side that mixes up real content with silly services that nobody uses. Your main navigation should be distinct from your unimportant content, people will not click it just because it stuck next to important stuff, people are more likely to exit your website if they are frustrated. Main navigation should always be up, and it should ONLY have links to real sections with important info. Not horoscope of e-greetings. 

You don’t need to be creative at all, you do not need to reinvent a wheel to design a simple to use newspaper website. I sketched the layout map below in less than 60 seconds:

Structure is not the only problem as I said, it is visual cues, you need to use distinct colours for links and use conventional colours for icons such as RSS. You do not need a drop down menu for your search field. If people wanted to search the Internet they know where to find Google. They just want to search your website. Make sure that the search field is BIG and make it at the top of every single page on your website.

Remove all stuff which are not important to a regular user, but might be of interest to a more advanced user to the footer. For example, a privacy policy (which they do not have) and the advertisers info page.

Make Your Website More Readable

 Can’t you up the font size a bit? It’s not like you’re wasting ink on it. Content would be more readable by using visual cues and applying different colours for heading and links. I don’t think that I can list all the problems with the actual article pages.  Clutter issues and layout modifications must be made to the actual content pages as well.

Stop Wasting Advertising Space

For how long had Times of Oman had that stupid “advertise on our website” banner? Why can’t they just use Google AdSense and start making money NOW?! Remove all the stupid blank advertisements for the movies and horoscope sections. You are making the website more cluttered and you are not generating money or even making you users stay longer on your website. 

It is possible to make money from regular blocks, text links, feed advertisements, and Google search advertisements, and these people are not using ANY of these. I don’t know, do they just not know that you can put ads on your website and on your feed, or what? Having contextual advertising doesn’t mean you can’t get direct advertising deals because you can stop them at any time.

Of course we can talk forever about how they can enhance their SEO or how they can optimize their website using CSS, but I think that there are way more basic problems with the website to start caring about other things.

I dont’ think that making a new website is expensive, you don’t need to develop a super custom made website from scratch, you can use a free open source system that is better than anything any developer in Oman can ever make you. There are loads of things from Joomla, Drupal, or even WordPress is customized properly.

I don’t know if this is going to be helpful to anyone, but I had to share my frustration with the rest of the world. Can you believe that the Times of Oman won an award at the Oman Web Awards?