America falls out of love with Apple and Google

Read and learn why America falls out of love with its own brands Apple and Google which turned to global. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10175670/America-falls-out-of-love-with-Apple-and-Google.html

Flavours of life

Today for the first time I came across new Masafi food product ' Masafi Gourment ', sweet chilli flavoured chips, I never knew that Masafi the UAE most known for meniral and flavoured water.

During Ramadhan, I have been hunting for 'Rawabi Up', salted laban made of fresh cow's milk, a product of Al Rawabi brand, also UAE made product, which was out of stock as allot of people were consuming it during that I thought it was no longer produced or not sold in Oman, but managed to get it today.

Suddnly AMP, an energy drink was out of stock in near by my place. I thought it also been stopped, but managed to get a hold of one near by my work place, which was my last option, I hope Pepsi - Oman doesn't stop getting it from Jordan.

Since last ten of Holy month of Ramadhan I have been addicted to two things, Coconut drink and Ferrero Rocher, I can't stop my self from having it everyday.

Yes, I have been talking about food and drinks, I will miss them for a while. Oh I will forgot to mention the junk foods.

Coca Cola Vs Diat Cola

Vote for Abaya logo

Kindly vote for Hejab Rehab's Abaya logo competition finalists for branding purpose.

Clean up day

Monday, was a day for me to clear up my inbox (email) from all the junk mails & forwarding from friends and co-workers.

I managed to delete nearly 1000 mails, which weren't relevant to work and some of them I sent it to my personal email in order to post it at my beloved journal to share it with you.

At some point I wanted to keep some of the religious mails but I felt its been there for over a year and I won't read it.


I attended an advanced related course from Tuesday to Thursday, which was good for me, had brainstorm of some ideas related to work.


Friday, as a day I went to have lunch at my Auntie's place and had a good time with my cousins, I joined them later in the evening for coffee at the The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in Al Bahja mall, the first outlet in Oman.

Most of the people used to go to Al Bahja mall because of the movie cinema and kids play section, but since last year when Costa Coffee opened it's outlet, more people started going. Now many people are expected to go, they need more proper restaurants, i mean beside fast food franchises.


After coming back from the mall, the movie 'Freedom Writers' on DVD. It's a good movie, which inspired me too, they fought their battle and changed their lives by writing and how a teacher helped them to get it over with it and supporting them to reach their dreams.

Their dreams became reality via 'The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them' , and I will go and look for the book if it's available in the local bookstore or in the neighborhood country or I'll order it online.

The movie has inspired me to read and write. I'm trying to write more positive way.


Few months ago, I came across wonderful online journal known as Hegab Rehab, which the author mostly post about the styles of Hegabs /Hejabs and accessories for Muslims women wear it and known part of Muslim woman dress code. Another journal 'Chasing Jannah', which is written by a Muslim woman.


The Omani community has been promised for the past few months that one of the most popular fast food franchise, known as Burger King will be back to operate in Oman. Up to now, the reserved space is empty and no signs of it's going to exists. Read more about it here were trying to figure out why it was closed at the first place.


The 'dark side of Dubai' brought you by UAE community blog.

Oman Air gets silky with Technology

The year 2009, Oman Air is giving a multiple gifts to its loyal and prospective clients, as soon Oman Air makes travel hassle-free via web check-in and mobile check-in.

Its clients now will able to check-in via four ways:

• using mobile phone,
• using Internet,
• using airport kiosks, and
• at the airport where customer service agents are equipped with mobile check-in technology.

The facility will start later this month January 2009. The four new and innovative check-in options at will be at Muscat and other key airports.

Above all, Oman Air will first in the Middle East region to offer such multi-facility.

Bits and Bytes

• Today, January 5, Royal Oman Police (ROP) celebrates Police Day.
• Oman3D started the year by changing it's name to “Republic of Code”, and started a 'Republic of Code Logo Competition'.
• Dr. Mohammed Bin Abdulaziz the new CEO of Bank Sohar.
• I have heard rumours that hundreds of expatriates in Oman been laid off in major local companies and more soon to follow, is it true?

Overcoming unemployment barrier

Young graduate Egyptians started to overcome the unemployment barrier by taking care of elderly people as a new career in Egypt. I found this gesture, is good for them as persons and sociality too. It makes them more aware of human rights and family bonds.

Bits and Bytes

• Sharjah launches project to provide every Emirati family with a library.
• Tunisian Doctor says 'The Eastern Dancing is a meditation for depression for Arab women.'
• Oman Mobile signs pacts with Renna (branding name of Majan Telecom), FRiENDi two mobile resellers in ME.

• Dubai International Film Festival 2008 will be held December 11-18, 2008.
• Techie’s holiday plan.

Yahoo's message and Obama won

Yahoo! the well known search engine and mail services beside other services is now recommending its visitors and loyal members to use 'Firefox 3' FREE web browser from Mozilla Firefox.

Is it a clear message to Microsoft, 'I don't want to deal with you!!?' or in another word 'Back off'.

Best Wishes for both of them.

Barack Obama has won the 2008 presidential election and now offically known as '44th President of the United States'.

• His father is Muslim from Kenya.
• Mother is Christian from USA.
• Step Father is Muslim from Indonesian.
• Wife is christian African American.

The question is:

• Will he support Africans?
• Will he support Muslims?
• Will he support Asians?
• Will he support Israel?

We'll see the next four years of his career as a President of the United States.

Read other bloggers from Middle East voice about it:

• 'Obama to the White House' in Arabic
• Obama Wins!
• Sen. Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States of America
• We love Barack Obama

From Omani forums:

• Obama elected 44th President of the United States
• Obama has won the election

And more to come.

Are you Lipton Chai Latte fan?

I have received a forwarding mail about Lipton Chai Latte containing trace of melamine.

The whole fear because of the milk scandal in China which contained melamine that coursed death and sickness for babies.

The question, is Lipton Chai Latte milk powder, which are sold in Oman & AGCC made in China?

Read More
Dangerous Melamine Might Have Entered Croatia
Switzerland pulls Sri Lanka Lemon Puff over melamine scare
Melamine contamination has worldwide effect

Oman Nightlife from Facebook to Global

Who ever joined Facebook and wanted a snap shot of the nightlife in Oman, he/she would have joinned 'Oman Nightlife' group to get the latest all kind of events and activities that take place in town.

Now Oman Nightlife is going to offer for the rest of the world its services by lunching it's website via http://www.omannightlife.com/. At the moment the Oman Nightlife team working on making it work smoothly. The offical launch has not been set yet, but keep your eyes open.

Bits and Bytes
Two Omani youths jailed for rash driving.

Oman Idol

Who ever watched American Idol, an American reality-competition show that is aimed in for Search for a Superstar, Sultanate of Oman is finally ready to join Part of the Idol franchise as the first Arab country joins as a national Idol franchise, is now ready to lunch it's own Superstars in few months time.


The Omani name of Idol franchise will be Oman Idol. This show will be carried out at Studios of Radio Sultanate of Oman & Al Sawadi Beach Resort.

The first Idol show started in UK as Pop Idol on October 5, 2001. There are national and regional Idol franchises. The Arabian version of Pop Idol is known as Super Star, and its part of the regional Idol franchises. The contestants from multiple Arab countries and the winners of 5 seasons are mainly from Jordan, Libya, KSA, Tunisia & Lebanon.

Oman Ministry of Tourism is trying to boost Oman tourism by lunching this show.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish

An article that worth reading. Enjoy it.

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.


I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: 'We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?' They said: 'Of course.' My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him.

So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: 'If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right.' It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?' And whenever the answer has been 'No' for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: 'Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.' It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.

Knol the new Google jewel

Google the world leading search engine has removed its velvet veil and flashed us with it’s latest collection of diamond known as Knol.


You may ask what is ‘Knol’? what is she talking about flashy jewels and Google? She’s out of her mind, she isn’t making any commonsense. Yes I am making sense, ‘Knol’ is the newest jewel of Google, its an free online encyclopaedia, it’s name is short of Knowledge. It may be the opponent or competitor of Wikipedia, the leading online encyclopaedia which soon be printed in paper and published by German publisher.


I believe one of the giant search engines such as Yahoo or MSN should buyout Wikipedia to enable to have a fair competition with Google.

At the moment Google lunched the BETA version of Knol, so make it live by browsing knol and sharing your knowledge at ‘a unit of knowledge.’

Launch of the new Intevents website

Intevents LLC, the leading corporate, entertainment and sports events management in Oman would like to announce the launch of its all new website!

The site gone live on the 4 August 2008 at 9am and we would like to invite you to be the first to see the new website!

All you need to do is log on to www.intevents.com and all will be revealed.

We will also be launched our new branding at the same time, so be sure to check it out.

On the site you will be able to review our events, learn more about the company; sign up for the newsletter, see amazing pictures and even send us any enquiries you may have. We look forward to welcoming you to the new world of Intevents.

Intevents LLC also has two professional event sites Rally Oman and Sinbad Classic.

Spread our wings

Be proud of your self been a Muslim & spread the word about your religion, by purchasing Sytleislam product.

Sytleislam is not just a name or a brand of a product, it's a symbol of your your identitiy, it's a message and reminder for your slelf and everyone that I\ You\ He\ She\ They\ Them\ We are Muslims, Islam Is Our Religion and Mohammed is our Massenger from God (Allah).

You can read about, blog and shop around at Sytleislam, and don't forget to spread the word arround.

Visit other blog.

Perfect Pringles flavors

I have two fav Pringles, Spicy Guacamole & Barbecue. Spicy Guacamole is only sold in Sultan Center and currently out of stock and they won't order it until God knows when. Spicy Guacamole is very addictive.

Spicy Guacamole

Holy guacamole! This is no ordinary avocado. Spice up your next fiesta with the feisty flavor sensation of Pringles Spicy Guacamole.

Barbecue

Need an extra boost in your cowboy boots? Break out the bold flavor of Pringles Barbecue. So savory and sweet, the tangy taste is just the thing to get you back in the saddle.


Note: All images from pringles.com

Cuil

Cuil is the latest web search engine in the world of WWW. I has been founded by EX-Google employees.

It claims:

Cuil searches more pages on the Web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft.

 Is it true, test it your self.

Management

• Tom Costello, CEO and Founder
• Anna Patterson, President and Founder
• Russell Power, VP of Engineering and Founder
• Louis Monier, VP of Products
• Vince Sollitto, VP of Communications
• Pete Szymanski, General Counsel
• Bruce Baumgart, Head of Operations

Investors and Board Members

• Greg Penner, Madrone Capital Partners
• Dave Strohm, Greylock Partners
• Dave Whorton, Tugboat Ventures

Support Oman Air

Yesterday, I was talking to my sister regarding 2008 holiday arrangement, she started talking about Oman Air, the Omani national airways, and while she was talking to her co-worker advised her to use the Omani national aircraft instead of the foreign airways as the revenue comes in the country not outside.

I agree with the above point as the airways can expand and more national manpower can be employed locally and internationally.