Blue Chi’s

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

A number of Omani bloggers have started a competition recently for creating an awareness poster for the Swine Flu. Not sure why the rules are so long and complex when there are no prizes for this other than bragging rights… but you should still check it out if you are a design person in Oman. You can learn more about this competition here.

UPDATE: Competition winner will now get a nice Wacom Bamboo. Check out the details here.

The Arabic Omani blogosphere has gone mad in the last two weeks over a post written by Muawiyah Al Rawahi that suggested that the government should loosen its alcohol regulations to allow local Omanis to also have an alcohol purchase permit, just like expats. For those who don’t know, except for the month of Ramadan, alcohol can be served at licensed restaurants and hotels in Oman legally for all Omani and expat customers. However, licensed liquor stores in Oman can only sell alcohol to “permit” holders. Muawiyah suggested in his blog post that the fact that locals are not allowed to have an alcohol purchase permit pushes them to seek the alcohol black market which is obviously not regulated and can have health and safety issues in addition to the monopolistic activities practiced in such markets.

The Arabic community was outraged by Muawiyah’s public discussion of a social and religious taboo: drinking alcohol. Though previously celebrated in forums and other blogs for his commentary and criticism of public figures and government practices, Muawiyah has been criticised and personally insulted on a number of online discussion boards for his “unislamic and immoral opinions”.  ِA single thread dedicated to criticise and attack Muawiyah on Omania2.net had more than 12 pages of comments AFTER deleting all the ones which were regarded by the staff members as ones that violate the rules of the forum. A Omani member of over a 1000 posts who claims to be currently in Australia asked the administration to ban Muawiyah completely from the forum because of his suggestions to disobey religion.

The outrage in the Arabic community is bizarre to some extent, mainly because the sale of alcohol is legal in Oman. Yet it remains socially unacceptable for most people, and it is of course prohibited by religion. The majority of commentators in Arabic forums cannot seem digest the idea that alcohol has always been legal in Oman. This reminds me of how I always tried to explain to my classmates earlier this year about different social norms in Oman, and how things could be legal, yet socially and religiously unacceptable (e.g. drinking alcohol), or legal and religiously permitted, yet socially no longer acceptable (e.g. having four wives).

It is interesting to see how ‘freedom of expression’ became a really popular proposition in the online Omani community with all the expose´campaigns and criticism of the government earlier this year, yet the community is not willing to allow a blogger to have an “opinion” on a legal topic that is not socially acceptable. However, just the same way the authority can no longer control what people want to say, the people themselves will not be able to control what anybody wants to say either.

I apologize in advance to those subscribed to my blog and who do not understand Arabic. I am very frustrated by what I read on Arabic blogs and I owe the community a post in Arabic. This post is basically about the running case against a moderator of the Omania2.net. I have written about this here and Muscati wrote about it as well.

انا في شدة الاستغراب من المدونين العمانيين وتوقعهم بأن الانترنت هو عالم من الفوضى يحرم فرض الرقابة عليه. انه من الطبيعي ان يتحمل اصحاب المواقع مسؤولية ما ينشر فيها وهذه النظرية لم يتم اختراعها في دول العالم الثالث. في المملكة المتحدة لا تنحصر المسؤولية فقط على صاحب الموقع أو المشرف عليه، بل يمكن تحميل المسؤولية لشركة الاستضافة ومزود الخدمة حتى ولو لم يكونوا هم من قام بكتابة المقال المخالف.

معظم مواقع الأنترنت تدار لاهداف ربحية: سبلة عمان تنشر اعلانات جوجل وقد قامت في السابق بنشر اعلانات بنك مسقط مقابل مبلغ مادي، من الطبيعي ان يتحمل صاحب الموقع مسؤولية ما ينشر في موقعه، فهو يمتلك سيطرة مباشرة على كل موضوع أو رد ينشر، نظام المنتديات المستخدم من قبل المواقع العمانية يحتوي على العديد من خصائص المراقبة ومن الممكن لفريق المشرفين ان يتوثقوا من جميع الردود اذا كانت العملية منظمة، وذلك ما يحصل في الواقع، فمن الصعب على شخص ان ينشر ردا يحتوي على كلمات بذيئة من دون ان يتم حذف رده في خلال ساعات معدودة، إما من خلال اكتشاف المشرف لذلك الرد مباشرة أو من خلال بلاغ قام بارساله احد الأعضاء. الخلاصة أنه من الممكن للمشرفين مراقبة كل موضوع ورد في المنتدى، اذا لم يستطع عمل ذلك فعليه تعيين المزيد من المشرفين.

وجود قانون يحاسب اصحاب المواقع يحمي كل افراد المجتمع وليس فقط كبار المسؤولين في الشركات. تخيل انك فتاة تم التقاط صورتها من دون علمها وتم نشر تلك الصورة في احد المواقع. طبعا من الصعب معرفة الشخص الذي قام بنشر الصورة، وبدلا من ان يحذف المشرف الموضوع فور علمه به يقوم بالتعليق عليه طالبا من باقي الأعضاء “المساعدة” في معرفة شخصية الفتاة. هل هنالك اي شخص لا يعتقد أن صاحب الموقع يجب أن يتحمل المسؤولية في هذا الموقف؟

في رأيي قضية علي الزويدي مطابقة لتلك القصة، كان من الواضح ان الرد المنشور اتهم الوهيبي بالكثير من دون اية ادلة، الزويدي رأى الموضوع وبدلا من ان يحذف ما كان من الواضح اقوال قذف وتشهير، طلب من باقي الأعضاء المساعدة في ترجمة المقالة إلى العربية ليتمكن المزيد من الأعضاء من قراءة الموضوع. الزويدي ايجابياً وافق على نشر الموضوع بعد علمه بمحتواه وفي رأيي يجب ان يتحمل مسؤولية محتوى ذلك الموضوع.

أنا لا أعتقد أن القانون العماني خالي من العيوب، وأعتقد أن قانون الإتصالات سيكون أكثر عدالة إذا وفر لأصحاب المواقع طرقاً لتجنب المسؤولية، إما عن طريق فرض ارسال اخطار من المشتكي لصاحب الموقع لإزالة المحتوى المخالف، كما هو الحال في القانون الأمريكي في مجال مسئولية المخالفات المتعلقة بالحقوق الفكرية، أو من خلال تمكين أصحاب المواقع بإخلاء مسؤليتهم عن طريق اتخاذتهم لخطوات معقولة لتحقق من عدم وجود اية مخالفات – كما هو الحال في قانون التشهير البريطاني.

ولكن في جميع الأحوال من الطبيعي والمفروض ان يتحمل أصحاب المواقع مسؤولية ما ينشر في مواقعهم لحمايتنا نحن كأفراد، فلا يوجد قانون في العالم يسمح لحرية التعبير بأن تتجاوز حقوق وحريات باقي افراد المجتمع.

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?

Got this from Amjad, a professor in Sohar College of Applied Sciences is doing a research on blogging and is collecting some info on bloggers. If have the time please fill the survey and email it to her (the email is included in the file). It did not take me 2 minutes to complete. You can download the file from here.

I’ve been experimenting with Disqus for a couple of weeks now and I’m so in love with. This is a free blog comments service that helps in connecting posts by a single commentator through a stream so that you can follow what a person is saying across a number of posts or even blogs as long as they all use Disqus.

For example, because I now have Disqus installed on my blog, whenever someone hovers over a username, he can see the list of comments that person made on my blog for other posts, and because I have Disqus installed on my other blogs as well (Omani Cuisine and myITLawyer), it is possible to track the comments of a user across other blogs as well. In the example below, if you hover over the username of Kishor, you will see that he posted 5 days ago on a post on myITLawyer.com, as well as on two other posts on this blog!

It is still possible to click on the username of the person to go to his website if he has specified it. You should also note that Kishor did not actually have to register on this website or even provide any sort of identification for himself, Disqus links usernames with the emails attached to them and figures out who is who.

Now imagine how awesome if all of our blogs were connected this way? If a blogger has this installed Disqus on his blog then comments he makes on his blog would also be visible to those who check his “profile” from any other blog that has Disqus as well.

Disqus is available for WordPress, Blogger and Typepad. 

It is totally free, syncs your comments on your blog database as well as the Disqus server, has tight spam filters, provides the feature to respond to a comment by email! and also provides you with a centralized panel to manage all your blogs and participations.

I advice ALL bloggers to install Disqus so that we can all enjoy the blogging ‘community’. It is TOTALLY FREE, so why don’t you just try it?

(I forgot to mention that Disqus now also offers Facebook connect functionality, so people can comment using their facebook username and password, this currently only links the comments that individual, but soon it will also have the feature to make wall notifications whenever a user chooses to comment using Facebook Connect. DISQUS IS THE COOLEST!)

I was checking Business Today online after reading a post about it on Muscati’s, they seem to be having a special issue on branding. An aricle on online advertising in Oman grabbed my attention.

The article summarizes the problem by saying:

“the lack of quality local websites, reliable content and low penetration of the Internet. “

The article also says that Bank Muscat is currently undertaking a study of the local online market and has been profiling the average web users.

Yet all in all, I thought that the article was rubbish.

..

OK, that was not the nicest way of saying it, but talk about people who have no idea about what’s happening.

Why do companies think that they have to advertise on local websites to reach local users online?

Haven’t they heard of Google Adwords, Microsoft AdCenter, or even Yahoo Publisher.

Using any of these services you can advertise for people in specific countries on any of the partners of the advertising networks without the need to deal with anyone of the websites specifically.

This advertisement could be  contextual, so that it appears depending on the content of the page. For example, if I am checking my hotmail account from Oman, and a friend of mine asked me about the latest phone he bought, the service will automatically detect which country I am accessing the internet from and it will check if there are any advertisements relevant to major keywords in my message, example: mobile phone. If Oman Mobile selected “mobile phone” as a keyword to target then the Oman Mobile advertisement will show up.

The networks mentioned earlier are one of the most popular worldwide and it will impossible for you to browse an internet for one day without seeing an advertisement from one of these companies on a page.

The fact that Omani companies are not making use of these websites has nothing to do with “local websites or reliable content”, Omani companies are just stupid.

We all know that online advertising is the most efficient way of advertising as it provides endless tracking opportunities. You know exactly how many people viewed your website, at what time of the day, which of your advertisements were clicked and which were not, how many clicks converted into a sale, how many clicks were instant rebounds, how many seconds did the visitor stay on your page, and the list goes on.

I have seen advertisements by Oman Air and Nawras on the internet which were served through Yahoo Publisher and AdCenter I think. The article mentions that Nawras might be advertising on YouTube (Google AdWords). So as you can see some Omani companies know the right way for going about with this, which is a good sign I guess.

(Photo credits: Miskan)

I would like to start by saying that I really hate the Omani Internet, I cannot think of a single website to visit when I’m bored and just feel like browsing something weird, funny, or entertaining. If it weren’t for blogs there would be no such thing as Omani internet… well, you can still argue that it does not exist, but that’s beside the point.

I usually look down all Arabic literature because it is irrelevant and out of the touch with the rest of the world. We do not have a literature industry similar to that found in the English speaking world, people generally do not read anything other than newspapers and magazines, and 90% of the books found in the horrible annual book exhibition are religious books.

Recently I discovered a number of Omani Arabic blogs which changed my opinion in Omani Arabic literature, they made me fall in love with Arabic all over again. The content of these blogs is topical and local, yet it is written in awesomely classy Arabic full of figures of speech. I just love their style and how they write in formal Arabic yet integrate local Omani dialect terms to explain a ‘cultural’ concept the same way you would use a French term in an English piece to describe something sophisiticated.

I would like to highlight this article by Blogger Muawiyah describing Omani stereotypes. This post is not comical or even really critical, but merely descriptive of the of the aspirations and beliefs of Omani people. It is a relatively long post, but I really enjoyed it.

Another nice Omani Arabic blog is written by Hamed Al Ghaithi, I loved his post on “Daily Visions” in which he describes several unconnected scenes he was in recently. Most of them are completely random, but yet very personal and vulnerable. It was amazing how the post ended in a new paragraph simply saying “regardless of all the let downs and the failures, life is still fun and delicious” [my emphasis].

I’m so in love with Arabic blogs, I’ve been wanting to start blogging in Arabic for a while. I hate the fact that I am not confident in my Arabic anymore for the lack of practice, it is shameful and stupid. ARABIC IS MY FREAKING FIRST LANGUAGE. Maybe I should start blogging in Arabic to regain my confidence.

Nawras Shababiah! You can visit it here.

I have no idea what happened to Nawras. They usually work with professional branding agencies, but this website about their latest new ‘thing’ is atrocious! I do not know if this was made internally in Nawras or by a cheap computer shop in Ruwi. The last month of the year 2008 starts tomorrow, but this website has every single design and usuability flaw seen in websites made in the year 1998.

For God’s sake, point me to a single decent website made in 2008 that has a Flash intro (WITH FREAKING SOUND TRACK) that plays automatically when you open the wbsite? The website looks ugly, defies all the logical rules for proper navigation, does not have a logo or a title at the top of the page, and does not even have a title tag. The Arabic version of the website has grammatical errors in the first line of the first text page and does not have a freaking full stop at the end of the first paragraph.

This is a service made by a mobile network operator and yet there is no mobile version of the page! How smart is that?

For some reason, I still think that if this website entered the Oman Web Awards it will come in the top three if not at number 1. Now how wack is that?