Blue Chi’s

The Ministry of Civil Service has recently launched an iPhone app for applicants to be able to track their status and provide them with tips on how to go about with the job application process. I am not sure if the target audience of this application matches the actual market demographic of those who own iPhones and are savvy enough to use the app store, but it is still quite nice to see a ministry in Oman launch an iPhone app.

It is worth noting that the Ministry of Civil Service is not the first Omani government body to launch an iPhone app, the Municipality of Muscat has had its iPhone app for a while now which allows you to do a few things like paying for your parking spot.

A few Omani business also have iPhone apps such as Omantel, Nawras, Times of Oman, and Shabiba. Most of these application seem to be able to get the job done (i.e. check your bill or read the news), but some of them also have weird gimmicks that don’t make much sense (e.g. the annoying Omantel launch swipe geture).

What would be really nice is for the banks to start having iPhone applications, I’m a customer of BankMuscat and their online banking is the worst thing ever made, iPhone applications at this moment seem to have some sort of expectations on how they look and feel and the majority of the assets used in creating them are standard assets that make it hard to make a disastrous iPhone app (but it is still possible).

Nonetheless, it is nice to see some Omani apps on the iPhone!

The TRA has published a public consultation paper on the use of VoIP in Oman and it is now that everyone comes out and sends something to the TRA to tell them why exactly Skype has to be unblocked. The deadline for submitting your comments is the 10th of September. You can download the public consultation paper here.

iPhone users in Oman should know that Oman did not previously have an iTunes app store and everyone who wanted to download applications for their iPhones from the app store had to register a UAE iTunes account and use their credit with a made up address or register a USA iTunes account and use gift cards to purchase applications over there, but recently Apple launched its iTunes app store to a number of countries including Oman, but it seems that everyone has already bought an iPhone here and been using the UAE or the USA store, it is pretty easy to register a new account using a new email address, but the problem is that applications you previously downloaded can only be updated using the store from which the app was downloaded only, this means that you have to keep on switching in and out of your iTunes account when you do updates and that can be pretty annoying, especially if you have purchased apps because otherwise you can just delete your free applications and download them again from the new store.

I think jumped too deep into this discussion, I had to go through the app switching drama before when I moved from the UK store to the USA store cause the collection of other content like music and movies are different on the US store, but I’m not sure why anyone would switch to the Omani iTunes store, which is a bit of a shame cuz it would have provided Apple with statistics on the number of iPhone users in the country and it can in theory have customized feature app banners for apps targeted at this market – but besides that, there isn’t really a reason to switch.

I got into this whole issue after I created the Omani Cuisine iPhone app and my statistics show that the biggest markets for the app are the USA and UAE app stores, and I think only person downloaded it from the actual Omani app store – which is kinda funny because I’m sure that the majority people who downloaded the app are based in Oman.

Ramadan is going to start sometime next week and I cannot say that I’m very thrilled about it because the temperature is still hot and the fasting hours are pretty long in this time of the year. For some reason I don’t ever feel ready for Ramadan before it comes and I panic that it will catch me off guard somehow (maybe cause I’m worried I’ll lose weight), but this time I now decided to just let it happen and not think too much about it, I’m looking forward to the short working hours (9am to 2pm) and getting some quality quite time during the rest of the day.

I recently made an iPhone App and an Android App for my other blog – the Omani Cuisine. I built the application using Flash Builder and the Flex Framework which can be used to create cross platform applications, it was a bit challenges because I have never used the Flex Framework before and had to teach myself enough of it to be able to develop this application. The Omani Cuisine application is a simple directory of restaurants in Muscat, it can be used to check out pictures of restaurants and find the telephone number and map location of these restaurants.

You can download the iPhone version of the app from this link:

The Android version of the app can be found here:

During the early day of my recovery from the eye operation I couldn’t read or use the computer, so I thought I’ll take that time as an opportunity to try out listening to audio books, I started out with a couple of books: Nick Hornby’s “How To Be Good” and Chuck Palahniuk’s “Fight Club” (I haven’t watched the movie). I really enjoyed listening to the books and ended up buying 3 more audio books: Hornby’s “Slam” and “Not a Star” and Palahniuk’s “Tell All”. What I liked about listening to an audio book instead of reading it is that you it can be a relaxing passive experience that is different from watching a movie or reading a book because you have to visualize the story, but the accent, tone, and emotion is communicated through the narrator. It sort of feels like a very long radio play that is all acted by a single person, but at the same time I thought listening to the audio book took a bit away from the experience cause you can’t really stop and reflect about what you just heard the same way you do when you read a book and somehow when you hear the narrator speak you are just convinced that this is the actual character speaking. I was also surprised at how short audio books are, they seem to range between 5 to 7 hours for proper novels and they can be as short as 3 hours for an abridged version of the book, but I somehow preferred to listen to unabridged ones because I am worried something the author intended to have in the novel would be dropped out.

I am not sure if I will be able to listen to audio books now that I can go back and read my books again cause an audio book can be too long or maybe cause I’m just not sure I’ll be able to focus on what’s happening in the story while driving or jogging or whatever the same way you can listen to a podcast while you do something else.

I am really amazed at how technology has advanced, even though my eyesight still not perfect after the operation as it takes a bit of time for the eyesight to stabilize and for the side effects to subside, but it is amazing what a seconds worth of staring into a bright green light in the operation room could do. I was in and out of the operation room in about ten minutes or so, but before that the had to prepare me for the operation by cleaning my eyes and applying a few different eye drops to my eye. I was a bit nervous in the operation room as the operation can be a bit uncomfortable when they stick your eye lids using some sort of sticker, but besides that there isn’t really any pain at all.

My eyes were itchy for three or four hours after the operation, but after that I had no itchiness at all. I had the z-lasik operation which didn’t involve the use of a blade and supposedly requires a shorter recovery time. The next day I had to go to the center again so that they remove the goggles are removed, I was asked to come for another appointment after a month.

I can already now drive and ready properly, but there is a little of blurriness with my right eye and I get very irritated by bright lights and computer screens – it is difficult for me to drive at night at this point because of all the headlights of other cars. I heard that this is a natural thing to happen about the operation and it should go away with time.

Popular Omani tweetp @muscati experimented with connecting his Macbook to an external display to view HD content and it turns contrary to what I posted in my previous post that you can in fact watch HD content on an external display through your Macbook if you connect it to a screen that supports HDCP through a supported connection (HDMI or DVI). I connect my PS3 to my external monitor so I really can’t be bothered to try to get a mini-display port to DVI adaptor that connects to an HDMI adaptor that connects to an HDMI switch to get this work, but I checked my monitor’s manual and it seems that it supports HDCP through DVI, too! So all I need to do is get a mini-display port to DVI adaptor to watch HD content I buy from iTunes on this screen.

I tried looking for the adaptor I need at the new Apple reseller store in QCC, but they don’t seem to have it, might have to hunt around a little bit to get this to eventually work.

So I might not be able to properly complete my 30 days blogging challenge because I plan on doing a laser operation to fix my eyesight before the end of the week and I think that I will use this long weekend we’re gonna have to get away from the computer screen to recover from the operation.

My eyesight prescription is really bad (almost -10 for both eyes), but the doctor said that I can still use the operation to correct it. I will be doing this at Muscat Eye Laser Center where they are offering a blade-free operation called Z Lasik or something like that. I’m kinda nervous now as I post this but I think that it’ll be alright!

(PS. I didn’t make an update yesterday because I did the preliminary examination and I had this eye drop that made my vision blurred)