Step in Refresh.  I was pleasantly surprised that Qatar has a growing open community of experts in web designing, development, e-marketing, content and a group of entrepreneurs, who work to refresh the creative, technical and professional culture of the internet.  Even more so that they come in all different shapes, sizes, cultures and ages. Refresh provides an opportunity for like-minded people to meet-up, discuss issues relating to business, design, development, online marketing, technology and increase the ICT networking community in Qatar all for free.

On 19 November, this group brought together four speakers to discuss reshaping the web with Multidisciplinary Design, Blogging & Social Networking, Starting a website and Global innovation within the local culture.  With the web having undergone a variety of transformations over the last few years, so has the front-end design, which has been influenced by a variety of design trends, the advancement of mobile devices and improvements to the scripting language used.  Trends which anyone in the business of designing, developing, marketing or owning an online business should be keeping abreast with.

Michael Hersrud kicked the presenter session off by discussing the influences of new creative trends and how they are responsible for visually reshaping the future of the web. He concentrated on the impact that new design has on how content can be presented in diverse visual styles, with twists in the tails of fonts and cleverly varied videos. His discussion on grid designing showed how creating a visual impact is key to attracting users, but how keeping them on the site with an easy accessible interface and solid content can make or break it. Taking the talk locally, he spoke about the potential of the Arabic font which can be created as a story in itself and one that has endless possibilities in the Middle East Arabic media environment. Interesting creatively grid and font designed sites mentioned include; Spacecollective.org Gallery, Leids Film Festival, Effect Games Demos, and The Wilderness Downtown.

Ammar Mohammed discussed how blogging and social media content can improve the visibility of a person, company or organization. It was interesting to note how many individuals and companies in Qatar have taken to Social Networking.  Individual’s social media usage has increased since 2008 due to the now familiar use of the medium to share experiences, open dialogue, and freedom of speech within the MENA region.  Some companies have developed a solid Marketing Strategy for their social media allowing them to make head way in ensuring continuous status updates with solid valuable information. Some companies however, have joined networks but have not updated their status’ once, this has a negative effect on their business, showing a lack of interest in their client’s requirements. ictQATAR’s Digital Media Landscape Report can give you more detailed statistics on Media Usage within Qatar.

Abraham Kararck brought me back to the basics of concrete web design start up requirements, to create a web presence that is sustainable. His basic presentation on design with a white screen and black text for the design impaired was original and amusing.  He emphasized how critical having a solid Design Strategy can be, from learning design lingo, setting up a storyboard and having a solid SEO strategy. Web design can make or break a new start-up and many make mistakes in the initial set up that can be detrimental to the success of the online business. His presentation concentrated on some main processes; creating a Storyboard, the initial Wireframe (buttons, fields, content, look and feel, etc), Design should initially be clean and simple before going elaborate and expensive, the Development (choosing a developer and language for the site to be written in) and finally Managing the site. It is important to make the correct decisions and use the correct tools to ensure a successful web business. He gave insightful short-cut cheats and processes to designing a site with great reference sites to use; Smashing Magazine, Elance, 99designs, Visual Mess, Capturely.com, Balsamiq, Icon Finder, Istockphoto, Aviary and don’t forget Google Analytics.

Olivier Auroy closed the workshop by discussing online businesses surviving in a globally branded village and how brands in Qatar and the Gulf can contribute to improving our daily lives. The audience was blown away by the brilliant bq sunglass concept developed from the Burqa and taking this idea into a more modern day conceptual design to cover the female face.  The design was inspirational and I could quite easily see Western women buying the product.

Overall nothing ground breaking in the concepts presented, but if you are a start up company or student it was insightful to be made aware of good business practices. For someone that has a website, it was a way to recap on lessons once learned and forgotten along the way, to take a moment to pause, step back and have a look at where we are as a site and repurpose where necessary.

The goal of your advertising campaign should be to drive as many fans as possible at the lowest available cost. Even though there are two ways to manage your ad spend: Cost Per Click (CPC), or Cost Per Impression. Most of the times CPC will work out better as your marketing objective is likely to be tied to the number of “likes” your acquire, not just an increased brand recognition.

Create Ads That Pop
Marketplace ads require an image not greater than 110 pixels wide by 80 pixels tall and it should have an aspect ratio of 4:3 or 16:9. The system will automatically upload your page’s image unless you supply something else. Whatever your image is, it should be less than 5 megabytes. In my experience, design savvy, yet not very complicated images work best and they have to be scalable as the ad real estate is limited. Here is one of the design explorations by our own very talented graphic designer, Samar Semaan.

When writing your ad copy, keep in mind that there are limitations of 25 characters for the title and 135 characters for the body. If this is an ad to promote specifically your page, the title will appear as your Page Name. We found that an ad copy in Arabic is about 3 times more effective than the same in English, even though the same users are capable of reading both. Combination of the two languages work well too, but it limits what you can say. Ideally, give the user the reason to like your page, “By liking us, you will hear about the latest in technology before everyone else.”

One of the many helpful features of the Facebook advertising platform is the ability to target your advertising to specific segments. On Facebook, it’s possible to target by location, age, keywords and many other criteria. What’s great about Facebook advertising is that it is incredibly inexpensive to run tests. Through testing we found that an ad targeting women with a feminine touch performed better than an ad targeting both genders.

Optimize Your Resources
Posting relevant and engaging content while you are running your brand advertising campaign is an important part of your strategy and will give you the maximum return on the investment. Post regularly – at least once a day, ask questions, make controversial statements and above all, remember that social media is not a monologue, it’s a community discussion. Some strategies that work for us include posting when the audience is available and that often means on weekends and after 3 PM and keeping posts brief and using photos when possible. In fact, photos generate the highest level of interactions, and we attribute it to the fact that they are easy to relate to. Many of our posts end with questions, people like sharing their opinions and that typically drives higher engagement.

As with any marketing campaign, the key to success lies within testing and measurement. Monitoring daily traffic, impressions, and click-through rates is only half the battle. To actually make timely tweaks is what will get you the most out of your online advertising dollar.

What are your online advertising tactics? How do you boost interaction with your fans?

Guy Kawasaki at QITCOM

In her address at the opening of QITCOM 2011 ictQATAR’s inaugural Conference and Exhibition, Dr. Hessa Al-Jaber described Guy Kawasaki as “one of the true visionaries of our industry” and said that he is “a clear thinker and an innovator, and I am sure we can all learn from him.” Kawasaki, keynote speaker at QITCOM, went on to enthrall the audience in the  conference hall with insights from his many years of experience in the ICT industry.

His keynote was  a crash course for wannabe entrepreneurs and innovators. If I was asked to sum it all up in one sentence his message was – no matter what, just don’t be discouraged and keep on moving forward. That is also the essence of innovation, the theme for the first day of QITCOM.  Kawasaki shared ten (eleven in fact if you count the “bonus” tip he shared at the end of his keynote) insights that could make or break any innovation. I will talk about a few that I thought really struck a chord.

“Make meaning” – Kawasaki’s first tip – is really a most practical and basic thing when you start something new. If your innovation or idea doesn’t provide a meaningful outcome you can try your best to sell it but no one would notice. The other thing that impressed me was about “jumping to the next curve”.  It is not always about what the idea is about now, but it’s definitely about what it can potentially provide. How can your now be the next big thing? “Don’t be content with doing things 10 or 15 % better,” Kawasaki said, “Think about doing thing 10 times better.”  And when you do the thing 10 times better, do it with a panache, “roll the dice” and have depth in your innovation which equates to having many functionalities; and products “that are smart, complete and elegant”.

He also advised that if you are new to this game of making things, do not wait for the moment when your product is absolutely perfection. Of course that doesn’t mean you start dumping junk products in the market but once you have on hand a product that has some great elements, just ship it out. Once you ship your product out you might face another dilemma – all the marketing research and strategy that you based your target market on might fail.  The people the product is designed for may not buy. They may not use it for what you thought they would. In such a situation, let the market decide what the innovative product can do or what it will be used for. Kawasaki’s advice: take your best shot at making an innovative product, market it the best you can and then just wait and see how people and markets embrace it.

Create a niche for yourself by creating an innovation that provides the highest value to the consumer and has the highest uniqueness. I was wondering what he meant by the “highest uniqueness” when Kawasaki elaborated. Your product is unique if it addresses something missing in the market…something that only you can do and something that the market and the end users find remarkable.

Kawasaki concluded his keynote with this simple tip that he says is really effective is presenting your ideas or products in a really effective manner. This was the 10-20-30 rule for PowerPoint presentations –

• 10: the maximum and most effective number of slides you should have in your presentation
• 20: the maximum and optimum amount of time you should spend in explaining these 10 slides
• 30: the optimum font size for emphasis

And it was his concluding tip that I like very much, especially the “20 minutes” part despite the fact that Kawasaki’s last slide was numbered 61! You can access Kawasaki’s presentation here or watch it below.

Odosketch is a flash-based online drawing application, first launched in August 2006 by Odopod, a digital agency in San Francisco. It’s a great (and free) tool intended for anyone to create amazing sketches online, using a mouse or a digital pen and tablet. According to its creators, “Odosketch seeks to recreate the decidedly non-digital experience of working with a sketchbook. Its papery textures, variety of brushes and intentional imperfections make you forget you’re working on a screen.”

Odosketch has a very artistic look and a call-to-action “create a sketch” button that makes you want to try it out. I did, and I was very impressed. You are presented with a blank moleskin-textured canvas with an artists’ toolbar that includes different brushes of various colors and thicknesses. Given the simple and user-friendly interface, it only takes an initial scribbling on the canvas to figure out the brushes and strokes. While you don’t need a user account to create or view replays of sketches, you do need one to save your sketches. Play around, get comfortable and create amazing art work, and if you manage to impress the staff at Odosketch, they will feature it on their homepage under “Featured Sketches”.

What I personally love about Odosketch is the replay feature that allows you to click on any sketch and watch the amazing transformation of canvas into art. It allows you to follow every deliberate and accidental stroke of the brush (at a very high speed) and serves as a great learning tool for amateurs. One of the original features of Odosketch allowed users to “clone” sketches by other users. That’s right – users were able to build on the works of others, while retaining credits to the original creator of the work, thereby promoting a very open and Creative Commons style of content-sharing. However, after a few cases of people passing off others’ works as their own without adding to or modifying it, Odosketch has temporarily suspended the cloning feature. At this point, you can only clone your own sketches. According to the Facebook page of Odosketch, the team is figuring out innovative ways to manage collaboration and cloning in the future. I, along with their fan base on Flickr and Facebook, look forward to it.

Today, there are around 260,000 sketches on Odopod. You can embed and share these works while retaining credits to the artist, which allows me to share some really impressive sketches below:

(and here’s a small attempt by me)

Aspiring artists, I would encourage you to play around with Odosketch, without the messy paints and expensive canvas; watch and learn from the community of experts and amateurs alike, emulate and pick up new techniques, and hone your skills. I’m curious to see if the techniques picked up on Odosketch will transfer back to paper-sketchbooks. In any case, practice your skills over and over without the guilt of wasting paper and have fun. For the past week that I’ve discovered Odosketch, I have had tons of fun playing around with it and I am sure you will too.

Disco Security. Shot by Julie Starr

Do you like cyber-music? If your answer is in the affirmative, could you please explain the difference between music and cyber-music? Fret not if you can’t. Instead, ask Marcus J. Ranum, credited for many innovations in the firewall technology, the same question and he will retort: “Does putting ‘cyber’ in front of something automatically mean it’s new, different or, more interesting?” And then he answers his own question to emphasize the anomaly, “No, it doesn’t. Music is music, cyber or otherwise.”

Ranum, in Qatar recently as a speaker at the Information Security Conference “New Trends in the Energy Sector” organized by QCERT, says he’s really irked when people get carried away by the use of the word “cyber”.  Music is just one of the simpler analogies he uses. But you can easily apply it to other more definitive concepts like cyber-war, cyber-criminal, cyber-spy, cyber-terrorist, and so on.  Considering he’s been in the information security sector for more than 20 years, he would know.

WikiLeaks

Cyber-criminals and cyber-terrorists, for instance, are poles apart. A cyber-criminal is like bacteria – you take antibiotics to get rid of bacteria and it works initially…but if you keep taking antibiotics again and again, bacteria becomes immune to the mechanism. Once cyber-criminals understand your tactics used as defense against them, they improvise, and find new and creative ways to infiltrate your firewall.  Cyber-criminals are secretive, profit-driven and operate on a hit & run modus operandi. Once a scam they perpetrate in a region is publically known, they move on to a new place. They rapidly shift to where the money is and commonsense isn’t.

Cyber-terrorists, on the other hand, are interested in letting everyone know what they have done. Their tactic is also hit & run, but they operate to create fear and believe in high-visibility for their acts. “WikiLeaks,” says Ranum, “is a perfect example of cyber-terror.” Wikileaks could have been an act of cyber-crime, if for instance, rather than making all the “leaks” public, they had started blackmailing governments.

Whether it is music, war, crime, war or terrorism, once you add “cyber” it doesn’t mean anything different from the original word. Cyber-war would need as much attention to detail, planning, strategy, manpower (maybe a tad less), money and logistics as the real, physical war would. So what’s the big deal? According to Ranum, “nothing.”  So if war and cyber-war are not much different wouldn’t weapons and cyber-weapons be almost the same?  The author of “The Myth of Homeland Security” (he’s the man who set up the White House email and whitehouse.gov), replies with a confidence hardly found in us lesser techie mortals, “One of the most valuable tools in such a situation would be counter-intelligence.”

Counter-intelligence has been used in warfare for times immemorial. And that truly can be a cyber-weapon worth fighting any cyber-war or cyber-crime or cyber-terror or cyber-espionage, etc.  So if you are prone to a cyber-attack, stay vigilant and keep trying to find out more and more about the attack. If they can break into your code, so can you. And this is the only effective way to counter any cyber attacks.

Watch the video below for Ranum’s candid comments and useful insights about relevance of firewall, antivirus, future of security, open source products, cloud computing security and of course, cyber-war. We interviewed Ranum at the Information Security Conference.

Editor’s note: Marcus J. Ranum, Chief Security Officer of Tenable Security, Inc., is a world-renowned expert on security system design and implementation.  At Tenable he is responsible for research in open source logging tools, and product training. He is more recognized as an early innovator in firewall technology, and the implementer of the first commercial firewall product.

Clockwise from top: Aaron, the back-end engineer; Kellian, the museum-geek; Mechanical Mastermind SCVNGRBot; and Debra, the unicyclist

Aaron Graves is 8-years-old and a back-end engineer at SCVNGR. His interests include dogs, Legos, Ruby on Rails, and throwing things at girls. Attempts to determine his favorite Sponge Bob character were rebuffed as “plebeian” and… “contributing to the commercialization of childhood,” whatever that means. This is how one of the team members of SCVNGR,  a game about going places, doing challenges and earning points is described by Seth Priebatsch Chief Ninja of SCVNGR.  Fearing human-rights violation, I Googled Aaron’s name only to find that on Twitter he’s a Boston University graduate with many years work experience.

SCVNGR has enticed comparisons with similar but perhaps comparatively less commercial-focused Foursquare and Gowalla.  In his recent SXSW 2011 keynote, Priebatsch talked about LevelUp, a  new project that offers local businesses a tiered loyalty scheme for customers that incentivizes them to keep coming back to get better discount deals.  

“Facebook is all about connections…,” Priebatsch said unabashedly during a previous presentation at TEDx, “ it is so last decade,” and SCVNGR , he beamed with confidence, the game layer, “is all about influence…influencing behavior is so next decade.”  That is some smug confidence from SCVNGR’s Chief Ninja, almost always attired in orange with orange-framed-sunglasses- perched-tightly over his head. 

SCVNGR is currently a meeting darling and one of the most talked about platforms at SXSW, but for me, the team behind it is almost as interesting as the product. Like Priebatsch, the SCVNGR team is young, quirky and yes, cool – no cronies here!  His own title of Chief Ninja seems lame for the Princeton dropout, when you meet Chief Rockstar aka COO Michael J. Hagan responsible for generating “lethal levels of cash-flow”.   

Pixel Czar Will Smith (not to be confused by the singer-actor) is actually Design Architect experimenting dangerously with lens flares, gamma rays, and a blue screen of death. Kellian Adams, Museum Education Technologist, and self proclaimed “museum geek and ed-tech extraordinaire” who is on the go to reach museums, educators and students, and showing them how to use technology to connect with art, history and the Humanities in a totally new way. And of course she is always suggesting to the world, and in no particular order, to: “Learn to swing dance / Play a Scvngr / Go to the Iris Apfel exhibit.” 

Thanks. The swing dancing is a bit of a stretch though. One of SCVNGR rockstars is actually a unicyclist. Pray, then what is Debra Swersky, the unicyclist, doing for SCVNGR? She is the Event Engineer, busy executing a super large-scale promotion. Fabian Perez, titled King of Bling, is the designer. Kate Reynolds is Clue Shredder (in real life she just designs games). SCVNGR is also proud employer to 4’10″ Melody Tran who works as Marketing Director, having given up her dream of headlining tours to rock SCVNGR marketing. Shell Riehl, The Infotainer, works her magic preventing cracks in the office infrastructure and keeps the diverse employees of SCVNGR happy and overdosed on culture, events and fun. But the best teammate, rockstar, staff SCVNGR can boast of is really Mechanical Mastermind SCVNGRBot, who is always happy. He is the tireless mechanical mastermind who ensures SCVNGR always works.   

Priebatsch often says that he wants to build a game layer on top of the world…with the team of rockstars he has collected, we are sure, he’ll succeed.  One of my colleagues predicts that Seth Priebatsch will be the next Mark Zuckerberg soon. Right now, I am too engrossed in Facebook to disagree!

Eric Schimdt, Google Chairman and CEO

It’s indeed out in the open. Speaking at the World Mobile Congress 2011, Eric Schmidt, Google‘s Chairman and Chief Executive, mentioned Microsoft as Google’s top competitor. In his words, “No question, our strongest competitor is Microsoft. They have a strong advertising model. They have the cash, the scale, the brand, and the reach to do good and amazing things.”

However his response, when questioned about Facebook-Google rumors, was not very straight-forward. “Facebook, on the other hand,” Schmidt said, “is not a problem at present. Facebook appears to be additive. Facebook users use Google more. There’s no evidence they’re hurting our ad business. At this point we think Facebook is zero to net positive.”

Schmidt hinted at the possibility of his company teaming up with Nokia – Microsoft’s newest partner – to work in the Android realm. “We would have loved it if they’d chosen Android,” he said as an afterthought.

Tablet app - Movie Studio - launched at Mobile World Congress 2011

Schmidt, looking ever the philosopher holding his notes in hand, also unveiled Movie Studio, a new Android tablet application set to debut later this year with Motorola‘s Xoom tablet. Movie Studio lets people edit videos.  It allows users to combine still images to create customized videos that can be shared online instantly. Functionalities include adding musical soundtrack, fade to black at the end of the video, and other effects.

At the beginning of the keynote, packed with Mobile World Congress participants, Schmidt said that the mobile phone is the new PC. “Smartphones surpassed PC sales last week,” he said, and added lightheartedly, “By the way, PCs are not catching up. Smartphones are the future of games, productivity, apps, everything we think about. You have the phone, the new PC, if you will.”

He said phone has fulfilled Bill Gates’ prophecy that eventually people would have access to all of the world’s information in their hand. Android is now seeing 300,000 activations a day and over 100 phones and tablets models are now available running Android OS, he said.  Google plans to deliver new versions of Android every six months for mobile phones and tablets, and that Chrome OS will be focused on netbooks and PCs.

A recording of Schmidt’s keynote is available here.

The packed Android booth at the Mobile World Congress 2011

The Android booth at the Mobile World Congress Exhibition Hall was thronged by people. It was indeed a miniature world of Androids complete with an Android-shaped slide visitors could try, possibly to experience the thrill Android brings to the mobile world.

Android Guru – sections of the booth with companies using Android – showcased innovations in Android applications making life more interesting through gaming, health, multimedia, at work, navigation etc.

I tried the Android slide and even though the results were not particularly flattering in the photo taken by the Android guys, the thrill of being taken over by Android was there, definitely.

Peter Chou, CEO of HTC

Earlier in the day in his keynote address, Peter Chou, Chief Executive Officer of HTC (which uses Android on most of its phones), said that the company’s focus is towards integrating the best products and services with its other hardware and software solutions, in order to deliver a more rounded solution for customers. He also talked about the Facebook integration in new HTC devices, specifically Salsa, 3.4-inch, 480 x 320 touchscreen device, which comes with a dedicated button just to enable easier content sharing. Instead of launching the Facebook app, the button provides access to Facebook functionality integrated with other apps, like sharing photos, music sending messages through Facebook.

Click below to start a slideshow with visual highlights from the Mobile World Congress 2011 Exhibition.  The slideshow includes photos of the Qtel booth and Qtel Chairman, HE Sheikh Abdullah Bin Mohammed Bin Saud Al Thani.

Watch this space for more highlights from the Mobile World Congress 2011, currently on in Barcelona, Spain.

Loebner Prize Gold Medal (solid 18 carat)

Are you wondering why we are sharing a private chat transcript so publically with the rest of the netizens? We suggest you go back and read the transcript once more. It’s a transcript between me and the cleverest chatbot in the world – Suzette.  Created by Bruce Wilcox, a “Go theorist” who has written a number of go-playing programs, books and computer based learning programs, Suzette won the Loebner prize this year in a contest organized on October 23, 2010 at California State University, Los Angeles, by fooling one of the judges into believing that it was human.

The Loebner prize has been attracting “thinking” computers since 1991. The annual competition in artificial intelligence awards prizes to the chatbot considered by the judges to be the most human-like. Year after year a host of chatbots and computer programs take part in the contest for a panel of judges to determine whether or not a computer program acts as if it is “thinking”. So when asked questions about stuff that it doesn’t have sufficient information about, Suzette manages to steer the conversation to talk about subjects that it is more knowledgeable about. Here’s video interview with Hugh Loebner, the founder of the Loebner Prize, explaining what it is all about.

And you thought, only we humans could change topics to avoid looking silly when we haven’t a clue about the subject? Just like NewScientist, when we tried the question “Are you surprised that you fooled a human?” Suzette answered confidently: “No, I am not surprised.” You can chat with her here. Just be patient if you don’t get a response imeediately, Suzette is very, very popular right now!

There were actually two meetings with Creative Commons yesterday. The first focused on Creative Commons and Qatar, while the second was the Arab region meeting of Creative Commons. Both had a ton of interesting conversation and debate, and both had amazing energy. So what did I take from the meetings?

First, there is no reason Creative Commons licenses and principles cannot be adopted in Qatar right now. Even though the licenses are not ported to Qatari law, this is really not an essential step to usage. The licenses are clearly more about the culture around them – a culture of sharing openly, and also of respecting the rights of the content creator – whether they are an artist, musician, software developer or scientist. The unported licenses are available for worldwide use now and respected by jurisdictions worldwide.  And while lawyers seem to like to focus on if they are enforceable in court (in some cases yes, in others no), use of these licenses are meant to stop needless court cases and encourage people to give up some rights in the name of openness and collaboration.

Second, for Creative Commons to succeed it is going to take a lot more than just the support of ictQATAR. I think a government agency can play an important role in adoption by leading the license porting process and building relationships with institutions such as the Qatar Museum Authority, Qatar Science and Technology Park and media organizations, but for this to truly succeed there needs to be a much more grassroots approach – and it should be led by the creative people that would benefit from Creative Commons. This is exactly what is happening in other countries in the region. I was excited to see so many young people at the Digitally Open Forum and the meeting with Creative Commons. These are the people that will build an energized community around Creative Commons in Qatar, not a government institution – but I do think ictQATAR can play a role in helping them connect in the early stages.

The agreed upon Arabic for the license names!

And finally, talking about Creative Commons in Arabic is hard! A good portion of the regional meeting was spent in often loud debate over what the Arabic equivalent for the Creative Commons licenses – Attribution, ShareAlike, Non-Commercial, Non-Derivative – should be. There were different views from all the countries taking part in the meeting (Qatar, Lebanon, Jordan, UAE, Egypt and Syria), but all agreed it would be best to have a universal naming that all Arabic speaking countries could use. The debate centered around whether the name should be clear legally, or more clear to the end users – content creators. I sided with the content creators. Finally, all the countries agreed – but it took almost 3 hours. Nonetheless, important progress for the Arab World and Creative Commons.

So what are the next steps? Well hopefully ictQATAR can identify a team internally to work on this project, addressing the legal, institutional and grassroots components. From there, it will be essential to identifying and empowering the community to really promote Creative Commons in Qatar and let them grow the movement by building a network of advocates and volunteers. Let me know if you want to be a part of this – I know I am volunteering to work on this from the ictQATAR side!