mohamed hamad

A discussion on the Darfur conflict

// July 21st, 2010 // View Comments // General // General

My family is from Sudan, but I’ve never lived there and pretty much estranged from it, but I’ve been interested in the whole Darfur conflict since it began because, from all the things that have been happening in Sudan, from the North/South war, nothing has had as much western coverage as this conflict. I found this discussion on youtube that was very interesting, helping clarify the history as well as the current situation, and ideas on how to move forward in bringing peace to a country with the longest war in African history.

The games come to a close with a new champion

// July 12th, 2010 // View Comments // General, sports // General, sports

And so the games come to a close, seeing a new champion, Spain, ranking among the best in the world in Fifa World Cup arena, joining only 7 nations before them.

They played a tough game against the rough and tumble Dutch, who broke records in their foul play, but they managed to persevere against their impeccable defences, through a full game and 30min of extra time. They kept ball possession and pushed as hard as they could until Iniesta siezed the chance and scored an amazing winning goal in the final moments.

I have to say though, it was the longest and most boring game of this tournament. The fouls in their brutishness kept us entertained as my friends and I watched while having a late breakfast at my place. Cheering for Spain had its ups and downs, with worried faces looking on, as close calls had Robben masterfully passing the Spanish defences but not following through. Both teams had ample opportunity many a time, but no follow through left us screaming in frustration.

Spain’s game play wasn’t the most stellar through the tournament, and teams with better score such as Germany (4-0 against Argentina and England) were favoured. I think they scored the least goals with the most victories. In the end it was a well deserved effort, that yielded them the championship.  It’s good to see the cup in the hands of a new flag.

A little tid-bit. If Spain had lost, New Zealand would have been the only undefeated team in this World Cup!

A week with an iPad

// July 12th, 2010 // View Comments // General, Review // General, Review

So I recently got an iPad temporarily for 1 week. I installed all the apps I can’t live without on my iPod Touch, with their respective iPad friendly version. My initial feelings about the iPad were quite positive, and the experience was a lot of fun. But as the week went on, I felt like the iPad was a little more than a toy or luxury item than a tool and necessity.

My 1st annoyance was the keyboard. Its a great keyboard but I found that if you didn’t have the Apple case/kick-stand, it was really hard to type on it. When  holding it in portrait mode, it was awkward to type long messages with both my thumbs as I held it in my hands, and landscape mode just was a pain as it challenged my thumbs reach.

It was very pleasant to sit on the balcony in the mornings and go through all my news in Google Reader. The touch navigation was a dream and it really made reading the news an immersive experience. Viewing and sharing pictures was also very immersive. Navigating photos and showing them to friends was definitely a more enjoyable experience than showcasing them on a laptop, as I could pass it around and they can interact with it, as if a real set of photos.

Prolonged use of the iPad, though, was a bit of a mixed bag. Trying to hold it for long periods of time, while watching a movie or tv show put a lot of strain on the hands and arms. Laying in bed and kicking back to watch a 1hour TV show proved a lil frustrating as leaning it on my thighs left it at an awkward viewing angle, and holding it was just not fun. Again, this out have been a different experience if I had the $40 Apple iPad case. I think that the case should have come standard with the iPad as it would have solved a lot of physical usability issues, but I guess Apple knew this and decided to sell it separately because of its necessity.

I was quite disappointed that a lot of the apps I used on a regular basis from large companies was not updated for the iPad (Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, MobileMe Gallery, Skype) and a few required me to buy a whole new version of the app at full price (Things). I understand that if they did develop an iPad app, it would have an updated UI and a very different experience, but a lot of apps have been ported over very easily and quickly by other developers and they’ve done a great job at iPad specific versions (Evernote, Dropbox,WordPress). I guess the wait is for the iPad version of iOS4.

I had the wifi only version, and only being able to use it at home or the office, I thought that its usefulness is tied to a data connection. Most apps are tied to the net and if you dont have connectivity, the iPad really isn’t much use.

All in all, the iPad is a great device. Its performance was impressive, the UI was solid and the feel and sturdiness of the device was great. At the moment though, until a few of my favourite apps are ported over, and iOS4 comes out giving it multi-tasking and a few other features, it feels more like a fun toy and not something I will use on a regular basis. I found my self reverting to my Macbook Pro to do a lot of tasks, as I am a heaving multi-tasker. iOS4′s new features are going to be a welcome upgrade and I will look in to it as soon as it comes out, probably a 3G version.

Do you have an iPad, and how long did it take you to get used to it? Do you have the Apple Case? How does the keyboard feel for you?

CISCO Intern is gonna hit da viral web big!!

// June 28th, 2010 // View Comments // General, social media // General, social media

This video was soo good it had me in tears! He must of been very bored or very happy to be working at cisco.

Either way, one hell of a fun way to pass your time at work, instead of surfing Facebook like I did when I found this clip.

And the Football fever continues!!

// June 27th, 2010 // View Comments // General, sports // General, sports

FIFA World Cup 2010 South Africa

This has been one hell of an intense FIFA World Cup so far, with all the big dogs out, and the scrappy underdogs gnashing out for survival.

My team, the NZ All Whites, though doing an amazing job not loosing any games, it just wasn’t enough to get through without winning. But they did make it on top of the defending champions Italy, and that makes it one hell of a year for NZ, whose football presence is negligible.

The first game in the round of 16, Ghana vs USA, was one hell of an intense match. I was in a Portuguese restaurant watching the game, rooting for Ghana, with everyone else chanting for the USA. The owner had put some money on the US, and lost it as it tied 1-1 going on to extra time. But Ghana came back strong with a stellar goal that destroyed all hopes for the US to get to the next round.

I’m not a big Germany fan, and not a big England fan either. Out of the two though, it was clear that Germany was the better team, which was proven by 4-1 lead. I guess the German psychic octopus is psychic after all. Now the Germans are poised to go against the winner of Mexico vs Argentina.

I’m rooting for Argentina on this game, coz I want to see the Maradona coached Argentina face Germany and redeem themselves from last world cups loss. I was in a pub in downtown Auckland 4 years ago cheering for Argentina in an overwhelmingly German crowd at 4am. Lets just say there was a lot of yelling, and I called in sick the next day, only to be blackmailed by a work mate coz I ended up on the 6 O’Clock news running around wrapped in the Argentinian flag.

Now that my NZ is out, I’m cheering on a case by case basis, with no clear favourite to win the cup. Ghana is Africa’s last hope on pushing through to a historic quarter finals if they beat Uruguay. I would love to see Argentina win, and wondering if Maradona will hold his promise to streak in the nude if they won.

Whose your favourite team, and who do you think will win?

Update: Looks like it is Argentina vs Germany! Go Argentina!

Go All Whites

// June 15th, 2010 // View Comments // General // General

Now I’m extremely surprised that NZ made it to the world cup, but we slid in only because Australia moved to the Asian division, leaving us with free pass really.

This mornings game was very emotional. I missed the 1st half because I slept in, and seeing us down by 1 to Slovakia was disheartening. But I didn’t feel so bad considering that we usually get beat 2+ to nothing, and Australia got nailed 4-0 by Germany.

I was getting ready for work, and was about to close the lid of my Macbook Pro, when I felt the excitement on the commentators voice, and quickly pulled the lid back to see a beautiful cross connecting with Winston Reid’s head, and BOOOM

GOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL!!!!!

I found myself screaming in excitement, something I haven’t done yet during this World Cup. I was so happy that, even though I didn’t have an All Whites T-Shirt, wore the NZ All Blacks colours.

I don’t know how well we will do on Sunday against Italy, but I’m happy that we scored a goal and didn’t loose 1st game in.

GO ALL WHITES!!! MAKE US PROUD!!

Weekday Vegetarian?

// June 9th, 2010 // View Comments // General // General

So I realised lately that I eat a lot of meat, and that its not good for me. I have a lot of vegetarian and vegan friends, and I like the foods they make.

I saw Graham Hill talk on TED.com about his switch to becoming a “Weekday Vegetarian”, and thought it might be a good idea to eat meat only in the weekends. At least it won’t interfere in my summer weekend bbqs.

You can help me out by sending me some good recipes, suggestions and tips on how to go about this.

Communication with the non-connected

// June 8th, 2010 // View Comments // General, communication, social media // General, communication, social media

The number of ways to contact and communicate with people these days is ridiculous. Personal blogs, social networks such as Twitter and facebook, work and personal email, phones, text messaging and instant messaging!

I’m one of those people who is pretty much accessible on most of the available channels, to the point where some friends panic when I don’t answer the phone after a few attempts, or get frumpy when I don’t email or instant message back promptly.

I have to say, it’s becoming quite the chore to manage all of these channels, but you find a way to filter the noise, keep things sane with good tools and habits.

What happens though, when you encounter someone who isn’t as connected? Those who find cell phones intrusive and can’t stand text messaging. They don’t get the point of Twitter ( I sometimes don’t really), and Facebook is just too open and scary with too much information for their taste. How do you communicate with those who aren’t connected?

How do you handle people who are hard to reach? I just try and try again!!!

Words from a dear friend

// June 4th, 2010 // View Comments // General // General

It takes a lot of courage
to release the familiar
and seemingly secure,
to embrace the new.

But there is no real security
in what is no longer meaningful.

There is more security
in the adventurous and exciting,
for in movement there is life,
and in change
there is power.

- Alan Cohen

Thanks Louisa

International Condmentation, Resolutions and then what!

// June 1st, 2010 // View Comments // General // General

I´m not going to talk much about the Israeli attacks on the Gaza flotilla as there is enough coverage and commentary out there. But as we see the international condemnation by world leaders, and calls for investigations and the media coverage, I feel very jaded as to the final outcome of all it.

I seems like time and time again, the Israelis use disproportionate force claiming their right to defend themselves. Disregarding UN resolutions and being beligerent in their actions to other soveriegn countries and allies.

When will the global community say enough is enough, and that there are consequences to such actions. I hope this is the time!!

Developing API based social media applications

// January 22nd, 2010 // View Comments // Development, social media // Development, social media

When it comes to social media applications, the Facebook platform is king, and many developers have to face the decision of developing within the Facebook platform, or outside using Facebook Connect. With rise of social media sites and open API’s eg: Twitter, LinkedId, Myspace, which is the best way to take your latest and greatest social idea?

Well first off, it all depends on what the purpose of the application is, and who is the intended audience. You might be developing a game that is based on a user’s friends for engagement, or you just need to delegate the authentication system to ease registration. There are many reasons to develop within, or break out of the box, so lets look at the pros and cons, and some of the reasons you might do it either way.

Within Facebook: iFrame/FBML

Facebook has over 300 million users. It is a great source of users, who visit more than once a day and spend good amount of their internet surfing time on the social network. Most applications built within Facebook look to take a slice of that time, by further enhancing the social experience. Multiplayer games, sharing and collaborative applications are great examples.These applications tend to be short attention span applications, with very simple interfaces and involve quick actions a user can do in between browsing their friend shared lives.

Facebook also gives you direct access to its user base, through many of the hooks it has created in its platform. This is great for viral growth through notifications, status updates, news feed posts and invitations. Its very easy to get the word out to the rest of your users friends from within.

When it comes to FBML/FBJS (Facebook’s own markup language and javascript) or developing in an iFrame, I definitely prefer iFrames. Facebooks development language, though it makes for more of an immersive user experience, is slow and very limited. iFrames give you the flexibility to use any javascript framework you desire, and the speed of your code optimized on your server.

Breaking outside the box: Using Facebook Connect

Sometimes, the Facebook user base isn’t what your looking for. If you have  a very feature rich application, then it may be best to be a standalone application. Your users will be away from the distractions of Facebook notifications, email and chat, and can take the time to soak in your app. With Facebook Connect, you can allow your users to register easily with their Facebook credentials, and import all the contacts and information, but without the Facebook chrome and distractions.

Other than Facebook connect, there are many API based social networks and authentications systems available these days, each with its own niche features and following. Sometimes you want to be able to appeal to the broadest set of users, by making your social application integrated to more than one. Facebook for its social connections, Twitter for its status updates, LinkedIn for its professional contacts, and maybe Four Square for location based services. In this case, it would be best if your social application was outside of the eco-system and free to explore all avenues it needs.

Personal experience

In my personal experience, I tend to see Facebook as a place to develop small , fun and easy to user, viral applications that will grow like wild fire, but will have a short life span. When I set out to try and build a feature rich application, with unique niche features that need many integration points to other web API services, I try and build outside of Facebook but still leveraging it with Facebook Connect. Giving my users the flexibility with multiple authentications systems, and multiple social sharing avenues.

How do you set out to develop your next social based web application? Any suggestions on how to leverage the millions of users on all the social networks with API’s?

Reading in to the iPad

// January 29th, 2010 // View Comments // General, Review // General, Review

So the iPad is finally out, and the reviews are mixed. For the most part, it was a disappointment since our imaginations ran wild with crazy speculations on what this device would do, its user interface and capabilities.

I’m actually quite impressed with the product, and think its a great piece of technology. It seems to me that this device is not a netbook, and it’s not a laptop, and it’s not a smartphone, and it’s not a full fledged tablet PC. It’s a tablet device for the consumption, and light content creation, a portable media player (PMP) that has a platform for developers.

There is controversy over the lack of multi-tasking, and I agree, a device of this size and capabilities should by all means be able to do more than one thing at a time, but when the purpose of the device is to focus on the current media at hand eg: reading a book, watching a movie, or surfing the web, then it seems to me a valid point. If you were to want to do more than that, you would use a laptop or a desktop with a larger screen, more comfortable keyboard and specialized apps.

I am not impressed with the fact that it doesn’t have a front facing camera, and that for some reason, Apple seems to have forgotten about iChat recently. It used to be touted as one of its flagship software products, available on all macs, but sorely missed in its portable products. The iPad would have a good place for it, what with the capable cpu and larger screen, but really, when it comes down to it, it would be a pain to hold that thing up while you go for a 20 min video chat session with someone.

Then there is the lack of Flash, and though its a deal breaker for most, I’m not really fussed with it. Sure, it would be nice to watch all the videos on websites that stream in flash. But then there are sites that use Silverlight, and then all the other plugins. I hope with the advancement of HTML 5 and its adoption now by the biggest video content deliverer, Youtube, followed by Vimeo, soon, we will not need Flash for something as ubiquitous as video. And for those websites that are developed in Flash, for a “Enhanced User Experience”, I never liked you. You annoy me! Big time!!

So thats my two cents. The iPad wasn’t a totally jaw dropping announcement, with a few missing features, but a very promising future I believe.

What do you think?

Engage, Communicate, Learn

// February 9th, 2010 // View Comments // Design, Development, General, social media // Design, Development, General, social media

Creating a successful web and social applications is quite the multifaceted adventure. There are great ideas, great design, great technologies, and great implementations. But the ones that become popular have a lot in common. And the ones that win do those things well. They engage and communicate with, and most importantly learn from their users.

Engagement

Creating an environment that attracts users and keeps them is one hell of a task, and continuously engaging your users is not small feat. You have to create a culture of sharing, collaboration, and reciprocation that makes the user want to participate in what you developed, and pull in others in to the fun.

Social engagement needs to involve actions that builds on a users social connections, and something that will appeal to a circle of friends. The hook is the quick and easy action that is viral and has high visibility to social graph. The line is the engaging actions that bring in your social connections and continues to connect them. And the sinker is community that brings more people together one way or another.

Communicate

Communication, communication, communication is to social media what location, location, location is to business. Communication with your users is one of the most important aspects of social media. What do I mean by communication? Meaningful dialog with your users through blog post commentary, forums and discussion boards, Twitter and support channels.

Communication has to be a two way street, where you can personally talk to your users. Now you might be tempted to talk about your product, how people use it, and give them tips and tricks on how to utilize it better. Thats a great start, but the key is to find out what your users want to talk about and not what you want to talk about. This is where you have to get more personal with your users and learn from them. And here is the segway to the next point …

Learn

Learning from your users is the only way to iteratively develop and enhance your product and user experience. Users can be very vocal about what they want and what they like, but you need to build a dialog of trust that brings out the constructive criticism to you. It’s important to be able to track feedback, themes in constructive criticism and be able to prioritize and respond appropriately.

What you will learn is that they way your application is used, can be very different from what you intended it to be. Learning and understanding how your users are thinking differently about what you’ve built will get you farther in finding news was to engage than any other way.

How do you continually engage with your users, and what tools do you utilize to learn form your users?

Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story

// February 25th, 2010 // View Comments // General // General

A very inspiring talk  from TED!

Being social sans the network

// May 27th, 2010 // View Comments // General, Uncategorized, social media // General, Uncategorized, social media

It’s become a very normal thing to get several invites via LinkedIn or Facebook to become someones contact a day or two after you meet them. More often than not, you wont see that person again, or not for a long time, but you will see their lives unravel before your eyes as long as they are in your social sphere. The question is though, how much do you know these people really? Even when you know every mood they’ve had, every picture they are in, and every event they are going to!

I recently decided to take a different approach to meeting people by not adding them as friends on Facebook until I feel like I’m really friends with them. Sounds simple, right?

It was hard to resist the urge of finding out more about a person when their lives are not served to you on a silver platter. You find yourself googling them, checking if they are on twitter and what not, and then just surrendering to just giving them a call and going out for a coffee or beer.

From then on, something happens. You actually start to make a real connection that is not overpowered by assumptions of who that person is based on their shared media. You are actually getting to know them. Sharing stories and experiences with each other, in your own words and expressions, not a slideshow of pictures with no narrative, or a series of status updates that have no context.

The only drawback is not being able to share things online with those non-network friends. Inviting them to events reverts back to email, text messages and phone calls. Sharing interesting or funny video clips needs you to enter their email address, etc. All the things that were time consuming about the web that social media made quick and easy, are gone.

I’m going to stick with it, but I do know that at some point, i’m going to have to bring them in to the fold,. But by holding back, at least I know that I can really call them a friend.

When do you add a friend on Facebook? Do you wait a while before you add them, or do you do it immediately?

When toys start to look like tools

// May 29th, 2010 // View Comments // General, travel // General, travel

So I had my final day at babyTEL on Friday where I worked as the senior web developer for the social voip application on facebook called Telephone for almost 3 years. I had an amazing time there and met some of the most talented and amazing people.

My departure meant I had to return the trusty MacBook that’s chugged along with my for about 2 years, leaving me with no portable companion. It left me with questions on how to fill this void and would I dare to venture for something new.

That same day was the Friday where the iPad made it’s debut in Montreal. I was very tempted to queue up with the masses for one, but thought I would hold out for a minute and think it through.

But right now I’m travelling to Mexico city and all I got to hold me through is my iPod touch. Meanwhile every airport terminal I land in, on my awefully long 2 connection flight, I see people happily enjoying their iPad.

I always saw the iPad as toy I would get to satiate my need for new technology. But my conversations with some around the airport leads me to believe that it’s very practical for travelling, and a very useful tool!

The question is, can I buy an iPad as my main mode of computing, or will I have to get me a new MacBook pro? Or am I gonna get both. Hmmmm!

For you out there, do you have an iPad and how do you feel about it’s utility? Can you use it as your main device?