Blue Chi’s

I have to admit that I am very excited about the recently announced Apple iPad, and just like the majority of people I am not sure if I really need one, but I just want it! I think that it is the best couch/bedside computer, it is just a device you keep at home to check your email while laying in bed or on a coach, maybe carry along when chilling at Caribou while having a cold drink…. damn that sounds cool!

I can’t say that I’m super upset about multitasking, I’ve been using the iPod Touch and iPhone for a while now and I am really not bothered about it all that much. I think that not running Flash in the browser is a drawback, but not a deal breaker for me because I don’t play web Flash games, and because YouTube has its own application.

Strangely my most favourite feature of the iPad is the new calendar, it looks really awesome and makes me think the iPad could be used as a serious office organizer, especially if you sync Google Calendar using Exchange the same way I do using the iPhone.

All of that said, I am going buy one the second it comes out, I am looking forward to read the reviews and see what the developers do with it.. and then I will seriously have to think about whether or not spending money on a coach computer is really a good idea!

I’m currently in New Delhi attending a training program on legislative drafting at the Indian parliament. The best advice I got was from SangitaSri who told me to make sure to keep my expectations low to be able to enjoy it, and boy I’m just amazed by everything I’m seeing. First of all my hotel is really nice, even though the place is under renovation, but the rooms are really fancy (IMO nicer than hotel rooms I recently stayed at in Abu Dhabi and Vienna) and there is even free wifi in the hotel. (I told you I’m keeping my expectations really low! ) But seriously, the hotel is super clean and that’s the most important thing!

The roads of the city are pretty dirt, there are beggars everywhere, and the driving is INSANE. The littler restaurants and places where they sell food on the road are also super dirty, but there are loads of nice places to go eat at. Yesterday my Indian friend took me a really nice restaurant at Khan Market, and today we went to Select Citywalk, which is like a massive proper shopping mall just like the stuff we have in the Gulf. I event went to check the Apple Store (yes they have one unlike Oman), but unluckily they did not have the Magic Mouse – which I’ve been trying to buy for a while.

I’m going to stay here for a whole month, so I’m hoping I’ll be seeing a lot more of India. We also have a trip within our program to go visit Taj Mahal – I can’t wait to go there!

We all know that Wikipedia is not really a scientific authority – any person who visits a page on Wikipedia can click on the edit button to change what is written on that page without even having to register. Yet even though there is a great opportunity for abuse, the majority of the users of the web seem to, whether consciously or subconsciously, take information written Wikipedia seriously and blindly rely on it without ever checking if the page has a list of references. Wikipedia should never be taken as an authority by itself for the obvious fact that any person can edit it, but I think that Wikipedia is a clear indication of the opinion of the majority of people on any given topic, because a fact that is not commonly believed to be true would be edited by someone else.

One of the main reasons Wikipedia has become such an authority is the fact that it is highly ranked by Google, meaning that it is very likely that any search made on Google for a topic on Wikipedia would most likely have a Wikipedia page as the first result on Google, this makes it very likely for Wikipedia to be visited by the person making the search.

Unsurprisingly, this had led all those who care about their “image” on the internet to check and update the Wikipedia entry that covers them, this includes governments, companies, celebrities, etc. There is no doubt that Wikipedia can be used to further promote a product as well as inform the public with all the facts about it because it is one of the most visited websites on the internet. However, the majority of people in Oman seem to be oblivious of the power of Wikipedia and there is barely anything written about Oman on it besides the main page on Oman and Muscat. As a country that considers tourism as one of its primarily economic pillars, it is totally unacceptable that many of the major cities and landmarks are nowhere to be seen on Wikipedia. The biggest contributors to Wikipedia worldwide are scholars and university students, but in Oman many universities and colleges do not even have a Wikipedia page on them!

I do not think updating Wikipedia should be a task assigned to a specific person – at the end Wikipedia is an open encyclopedia that is expected to be edited and updated by everyone. I was upset to see that Sohar‘s page, my hometown, had an ugly picture of a factory and mentioned nothing about the city other than the fact that it has a booming industrial sector. I decided to upload a picture I took of Sohar Fort and wrote a little bit about hotels, parks, schools, and shopping centers in Sohar. Now whenever someone makes a search on Google for “Sohar” the content I wrote myself appears on the top of more than 400 thousands other links.

If every person wrote a tiny bit about their hometown, their school, or their favourite park in the country we would contribute in spreading the word about our country to the world even further. You cannot seriously consider yourself to be existing in today’s world if you are not present online, making sure that you are present on Wikipedia (if you satisfy their notability requirements) and that your page is accurate

The recent release of the Google Nexus One, the new Android phone, got me a little bit worried about my attachment to the iPhone. I am very interested in the Nexus One, it is a really great phone, but no matter how good any other phone seems now, it is very difficult for me to consider leaving the iPhone platform because I have integrated a number of iPhone specific applications into my lifestyle and I do know if anybody ever will make equivalent applications for any other device (iFitness, iXpense, Nike+, etc).

No matter how pretentious it might sound, but the iPhone has really changed my life, the way I use a mobile phone, and the way I interact with the web on the go, and this layer that the applications bring to the mix make it extremely hard to move to another platform, no matter how appealing that device seems. The only option I can consider now for getting another mobile phone would be to have it as a secondary phone – which I really never had even though I badly think I should get another number for work… but seriously, would someone who has an iPhone buy an Android phone as a secondary mobile phone? I can’t possibly pay for two mobile data plans, that’s just not right.

iPhones and other smart phones users, do you feel attached to your platform or can you easily switch regardless of the applications?

I have been writing a bi-monthly column called Cyberia for Muscat Daily since the newspaper was launched in October last year. For some reason Muscat Daily still doesn’t have a website, so people could only read my column if they bought the physical copy of the paper. I decided to post all of my previous columns online as well on my blog from now after they get published on Muscat Daily. I have scheduled it so that a new post will appear each week on my myITLawyer, so posts might appear on this blog also. My latest columns will still come out every other Sunday in Muscat Daily.