The history of email

Believe it or not email has been around for 40 years as the first electronic message was sent in 1971.

ARPANET (the world's first operational packet switching network and the core network of a set that came to compose the global Internet) made a large contribution to the development of email however Ray Tomlinson is generally credited as having sent the first email across a network, initiating the use of the "@" sign to separate the names of the user and the user's machine in 1971, when he sent a message from one Digital Equipment Corporation DEC-10 computer to another DEC-10. The two machines were placed next to each other.

Since then, there have been countless innovations, upgrades, and technological advancements in email. Here is a detailed infographic from ReachMail with all major milestones. 

Top 10 Omani talents on Facebook

Here is a Top 10 of Omani individuals, artists, sportsmen, singers, etc. Plenty of surprises! Only one footballer in the top 10 and some big names like Arab’s Got Talent star Shaima Al Mughairi are out! It only takes into account pages in English, here it follows:

DanZak - 13,019 fans. At the top spot we find the well known DanZak, an Omani RnB/pop artist who has over 40 records of high hit potential. His music has a unique sound of an afro-arab blend with modern pop that is rare to find and he is currently based in Muscat.

Ali Al-Habsi - 8,758 fans. The legendary goalkeeper Ali Al-Habsi is in second position. Currently playing in the English Premier League at Wigan.

SalimPhoto.com - 4,814 fans. Salim is an Omani photographer who loves taking pictures ranging from Macro, studio, fine art, wild life or landscape…you name it! Loved by his fans.

SaMi aL-ZaDJaLi - 2,996 fans. The Omani super model is on fourth spot. Probably very gorgeous and attractive.

SG - 1,792 fans. On fifth position we find Salim Ghalib. SG started off in the late 90’s by recording instrumentals of other artists' music and then developed in early 2004 with hip-hop/R&B group known as Dramakillaz (D.K). SG has a smash hit single called "Pony".

TRIPLE-B - 1,710 fans. Rapper, Song Writer, Producer. He's been writing songs for the past seven years and has had a production experience in Malaysia.

DJ BANG - 1,612 fans. Well known as the King of House Music (not bad is he??)! Also plays RnB, Hiphop, Dance, Reggae, Dancehall and more... Known for platinum remixes in all music genres!

Joey Jo - 1,505 fans. Also known as “The natural born singer”. JJ is a singer, producer, composer and lyricist into the RnB, Soul, HipHop, Pop and Reggeaton genres. JJ is at number eight.

Raya Arts - 1,446 fans. The only female in the top 10, Raya does paintings, sketches and digital art in a modern way with the support of Photoshop and Illustrator.

Ahmad Al Harthy - 1,112. Ahmad is the professional racing driver currently in the Porsche Carrera Cup Great Britain championship. Used to finish in the top spots in his races this time he finishes on the tenth spot.

So a few surprises there and all pretty much dominated by hip hop / rap singers; music and Facebook a match made in heaven? Well done to them for using Facebook so smartly for keeping in touch with their loyal fans. 
Lastly, I'd like to thank my good friend, and really talented, Fatima from Mild & Wild for passing me some useful insights.

PS: if I have forgotten someone please let me know and I'll add him/her to the list.

New domain names now available

ICANN, the regulatory body that oversees Internet domain names, just announced that hundreds of new website suffixes should begin appearing by late next year after the organization voted to greatly expand domain names. 

There are currently 22 suffixes (or gTLDs – generic top level domains) such as ‘.com’, ‘.gov’ or ‘.net’, but also about 250 country-level domains such as ‘.uk’ and ‘.om’, etc.

The new domains will be categorized by subjects including industry, geography and ethnicity and include Arabic, Chinese and other scripts; ICANN will start accepting applications for domains with new suffixes from Jan. 12 next year. 

Experts say corporations and cities should be among the first applicants to register for new generic top-level domain names, resulting in domain names ending in brands like .toyota, .omantel, or place names like .muscat.

ICANN president and CEO Rod Beckstrom said in a statement; “We hope this allows the domain name system to better serve all of mankind.”

Are you thinking of getting your own name too? Start saving from now as it’ll cost you only $185,000….”to better serve all of mankind!”

60 seconds on the web

Not sure how accurate this is but...

Infographic by- Shanghai Web Designers

• Search engine Google serves more than 694,445 queries 
• 6,600+ pictures are uploaded on Flickr 
• 600 videos are uploaded on YouTube videos, amounting to 25+ hours of content 
• 695,000 status updates, 79,364 wall posts and 510,040 comments are published on Facebook 
• 70 New domains are registered 
• 168,000,000+ emails are sent 
• 320 new accounts and 98,000 tweets are generated on Twitter 
• iPhone applications are downloaded more than13,000 times 
• 20,000 new posts are published on tumbler 
• FireFox is downloaded more than 1700 times 
• Wordpress is downloaded more than 50 times 
• WordPress Plugins are downloaded more than 125 times 
• 100 accounts are created on professional networking site LinkedIn 
• 40 new Questions are asked on YahooAnswers.com 
• 100+ questions are asked on Answers.com 
• 1 new article is published on Associated Content, the world’s largest source of community-created content 
• 1 new definition is added on UrbanDictionary.com 
• 1,200+ new ads are created on Craigslist 
• 370,000+ minutes of voice calls done by Skype users 
• 13,000+ hours of music streaming is done by personalized Internet radio provider Pandora 
• 1,600+ reads are made on Scribd, the largest social reading publishing company

Running a Facebook Promotion

I have noticed that not many people are aware of the Facebook Promotions Guidelines and most companies in Oman doing contests, promotions, prize draws, etc. on FB are not following the rules. Guys watch out please.

You should familiarise with the rules; while until some time ago promotions could be run on walls or photo albums now the new rules require all promotions to be administered only from within an App with either a separate tab on your page or on an canvas page. Basically you cannot use any FB features as an automatic entry or registration to contests; for instance, using the ‘Like’ button as a voting mechanism for promotions is against the rules.

In simple words you cannot:

• Run a contest on the wall 
• Have fans to enter a contest by uploading photos directly to FB 
• Select a fan randomly to win a prize 
• Contact or announce winners on the wall, or through an FB message, or through FB chat.

Facebook surely does not monitor every page in the world so the risk of being caught ‘cheating’ is very low however there’s still a tiny chance to have your page shut down; is it worth the risk? Not in my opinion as you could lose all your loyal fans, photos, videos, etc.

So how do you run a promotion on Facebook? You need to rely on a third party. There are several apps you can use; the most popular is Wildfire but there’s quite a few around like Fanappz, Vitrue, BuddyMedia, Votigo, ContextOptional, BulbStorm, NorthSocial just to mention a few. Alternatively if you have programming skills you can do it yourself. Another alternative is to get in touch with me...:)

So next time you run a promotion it is important to review the Facebook Promotional Guidelines or, if you like, just drop me a mail.

Blogger tricks - add a favicon to your blog

Just a quick tip if you want to personalize even further your blog (on Blogger). If you look at my url you will see the OCI logo which replaced the Blogger logo:

To do that is very simple:

Create a favicon which is a 16x16 pixels icon (it needs to have the .ico extension). To make it 16x16 I used Microsoft Office Picture Manager but I’m sure any other program would do. Once your image is the correct size then go to “Favicon from Pics“, upload your image, click on “generate favicon” and you should get the following page:

 

Click on “Download Favicon Package”, you’ll get a WinZip which once open will contain three files; .ico, .gif and .txt. Save the .ico file anywhere on your drive and then go back to your draftblogger.

From here it'll be very simple, just upload your image, preview it, save it and you'll have your own favicon!


And click here if you want to add your own stylish signature to each blog post.

Small note: just been told, thanks to @O3mer and @randomuser46, that if you use Chrome you'll see a globe instead...:(

BankMuscat - the Social Media pioneers in Oman!

Reading an article today I found out that BankMuscat are the pioneers in Oman when it comes to social media! Wow, didn’t know that.

The article says: "BankMuscat has generated buzz, becoming the first corporate in Oman to tap social media to attract tech-savvy customers to the bank’s innovative products and services". 

Apparently BM is using social media for their latest campaign about online trading…"The campaign is building up on all leading social media channels, including Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Wikipedia, YouTube, Flickr and tech blog discussion forums”. The article also mentions that: "…to interact with existing and potential customers and make them feel that their opinion and suggestions on the bank products and services are not only heard but highly valued as well".

Fantastic, so I went on all social media channels used to find out the following: 

Twitter: two accounts, BankMuscat Oman (number of Tweets: 39) and BMBrokerage (number of Tweets: 4). 

Facebook: this is their official page (17 fans). 

YouTube: there are several videos from BM however this is the official channel (total number of videos: 2, total number of views: 12).

Flickr: could not find anything.

Wikipedia: small piece of info on BM quite outdated too. 

Blogs and forums: could not be bothered to look into them all.

So the conclusion is…why? Why sending this info out to the public or did i miss something? Surely, as they are so into social media, they will find this blog post and let me know how their customers' opinions and suggestions are not only heard but highly valued as well as helping me finding this huge buzz i can't seem to find.

A few people are already talking about it on Twitter as I write this post, so this might require an update later. 

You can read the full article here.

(PS: welcome to social media; good luck and thanks for replying to my tweets).