Extempore

Health Warning - Gasoline

If you read it, you’ll notice that 15 degrees Fahrenheit is 6 degrees Celcius or 60 degrees Celcius. In reality, 15 degrees Fahrenheit is -9 degrees Celcius. I guess this memo wasn’t really talking about Abu Dhabi’s sunshine.

Let’s assume that you don’t want to open the windows for a while when driving in -9 degrees. And that the gasoline fumes you get while filling up at a petrol station are bit more dangerous (or more fun?) then your average plastic seat covers.

Yesterday evening, it was the Dubai Chapter of the Twestival. Twestival is a festival, organized by the Twitter community worldwide. Over 165 cities worldwide participated on this event to support the Charity Water foundation.

The Dubai chapter was held yesterday in Barasti, Mina Seyahi.

It was an amazing event, and had a great turnout. It’s very handy to put a person behind a “twitter username”, and met many new twitterers.

Thanks for the awesome team who organized it,
m1ke

2 days ago, there was the 4th episode of Democamp Dubai. This event brings an opportunity for internet startups to present their product to the public – and it’s an amazing chance to do some networking and getting to know the people.

I know I blog about this event a bit late, just like I arrived too late, but hey. Better late than never

I am looking forward for the following episode, I silently promised the spinbits guys to have a demo ready for that.

Thanks,
Michael

This post is not necessarily about the current credit crunch, and how Dubai is affected. Although it leans onto it.

I just had a coffee with a good friend of mine, and we were speaking about the status of Dubai, and the entire region actually and it’s corporate profiles. And what is lacking is transparency. Ironically enough, a new body is being setup to provide transparency, accountability and governance.

Anyhow, I refer to corporate transparency, what’s happening in the companies itself. I refer to blogging.

Current modern copanies, such as Sun microsystems, Facebook, Google, etc all have corporate blogs, where employees; both executive management as any other layer, talk about their strategies, challenges and outcomes.

In Dubai, very few companies do this, and especially none of the top 20 companies.

In times such as the ones we are in now, many people are unsure about what is going to happen. I don’t expect any of the Dubai top companies’ CEO’s, or other key people, to have a crystal ball and foresee the future, yet any news insights would be welcome. Rather directly instead of usual channels such as news papers.

Even prior to these less than perfect times, from an economical point of view. I am not sure about any UAE based top exec, giving in their own words how he/she is going to move the company forward, or just voice an opinion about global events.

I don’t expect that to happen anytime soon, but it’s sad, nevertheless. We’re 2009 already (ok, almost), we should follow the global trends and get away from communication means and marketing techniques that are so 90’s.

Dubai Police arrested a gang of Arab men, who stole over 200 million dirhams using credit cards doing online shopping, Gulf News said.

They were tipped off in August about the guys, and caught most of them now (one out of four is out of the country).

Multiple banks issues SMS messages and emails for UAE customers to change their PIN codes. Some banks even disabled international ATM cash withdrawal (which would suck if you’re on a holiday and need cash).

So, if you are living in the UAE; it never hurts to change your pin. Which is something you should do on a regular basis anyways.

An Egyptian secretary guessed the password of a yahoo account of an Emirati UN employee, and was sentenced to three months in jail and deportation.

The “hacker” emailed the victim that he broke into her email account, and was going to release pictures and “other secrets” of her, according to GulfNews.

Not the cybercrime caliber of russian extremist webmasters being “accidentially” executed, but still.