Useful Facebook pages in Oman

Following the 'useful Twitter sites in Oman' post here come some useful Facebook pages:

With Discover Oman you’ll find historical places and the natural beauties in Oman while with Razan Travel you’ll be able to organize tailor-made tours around the country.

Once you have your trip planned you might want to stay up to date with the weather conditions; then ‘like’ Oman Meteorology.

If you’re looking for a job or a change in career there are two pages to like: Muscat Expat jobs and Jobs In Oman.

Alatoolmuscat and Cobone Muscat will bring you news on the best and the coolest deals in town, from shopping to brunches, cinemas to adventure sports and much more.

A very nice and noble initiative is brought to you by I-Care initiative, where you can help giving away cold water to construction workers while facing the unbearable heat of Muscat.

Another good initiative, this time for the environment, is Muscat Waste Paper Collection-ARGP. If you don’t know what to do with old newspapers, magazines and books just call these guys and they will come and collect it to then recycle them.

For anything you want to buy or sell then check Muscat Buy or Sell, Muscat Buy or Sell Cars and Dubizzle Oman.

Hungry and lazy? Then like and order takeaway or home delivery online from ClickForMeal.com.

If you need custom designed, corporate or personal, gifts then like Nabeel Gift Shop and Crea Oman.

For upcoming events in Muscat such as charity fairs, motor shows, festivals, exhibitions, parties, etc. then pay a visit to What's On in Muscat?

If you love cars I recommend Oman Cars Club.

And whether we love cars or not we should all be more careful while driving so I suggest you take a look at this page, Traffic-safety-oman which is trying to spread awareness on road safety.

A page for talented people, for all nationalities, trying to get to the next stage is Talented Youth Society of Oman.

And if you have not yet liked Oman Collective Intelligence on Facebook please do so...;)

A billion check-ins...by foursquare

QR codes, what are they really?

Following my post on sexy QR codes I invited a friend of mine to tell us more about this interactive communication tool.

Roopesh Bhatnagar, details on the left, is the co-founder of weee-network a boutique brand communications entity founded in 2011 born out of the need and void in Oman to bridge the gap between traditional and new media communications.

I asked Roopesh a few questions which helped me understanding more about QR codes and that I'd like to share with you.

What exactly are QR codes?

“Quick Response Codes are much like bar codes but a highly evolved version as they can hold thousands of alphanumeric data in comparison to just 20 digits. But the best part is you do not need any special device to read one but can do it by downloading a QR code reader app on your smart phone. There are plenty available in the free online app market places. The popular ones are QR Droid, i-nigma, Beetagg, Kaywa.”

Why should companies/people use them more?

“After TVs and desktops/laptops our smartphones are becoming the third, but most important screen in our lives… three must things to carry on you today are your wallet, car keys and mobile phones.

Mobile Tagging, the process of engaging with QR Codes, has numerous possibilities such as browsing or bookmarking websites, making phone calls, sending e-mails, creating maps, initiating chats and much more.

Companies can use QR codes as shortcuts to their consumers to many connections and experiences while people do not need to memorise, copy or write but can be one scan away from another level of information and engagement especially audio/video content.”

What is the potential in Oman?

“A good 30% of new phones being sold in Oman are smartphones and these numbers are increasing month on month. Oman has close to 4 million mobile subscriptions and out of these 1.2 million are broadband enabled… that’s a lot of phones and a lot of eyeballs on phones out there”.

Tell us a bit more about weee-network and how you implemented a QR code campaign…

“Our focus is digital media consulting and development, providing expertise, knowledge and services for web, mobile, and convergence media with a focus on innovation and technology for 360-degree contact.

Our first integrated use of QR codes was at the TEDxMuscat event we organized in May this year. We used QR on attendee badges so that they could just scan respective codes and the contact details would get stored in their address book. Codes were also on T-shirts, giving access to Flickr and YouTube feeds, and also on giveaways like mugs linking guests to the main TED site.

A few other campaigns are in development and will be seen shortly in the future. These will help create better awareness of both applications and the use of QR.”

Well, thanks Roopesh and good luck to weee-network, we all look forward to some creative campaigns!

Useful Twitter sites in Oman

In Oman the best places to find all sort of genuine info, as well as exchanging opinions and feedback, have always been the online forums such as Oman Forum and English Sabla.

As newer social media sites were created and developed we now have more sources of information. Here follow a few Twitter sites which can be interesting or useful:

Muscat Traffic will keep you updated with traffic happenings around Muscat.

Plenty of choices if you’re looking for local news with OneOman, Oman Bulletin, newsbriefsoman, Oman News and Oman Wire all keeping their followers up to date.

For tourism related news you’ll want to follow Oman Tourism and My Destination Oman.

If you’re into sports and want to follow what the two Omani legends are up to check AlHarthyRacing and Ali Al-Habsi.

Want to go out for a meal? Then don't miss Omani Cuisine for the best reviews on all restaurants and cafes in Muscat. You can also ‘like’ it on Facebook.

Addicted to mobile phones? Muscat Mobiles will help you get best deals for handsets in Muscat.

BankMuscat Direct will keep you posted daily on the latest financial trends and stock market updates. Also on Facebook.

Whatever you’re looking for, selling or buying, OmanClassifieds might be the right place to follow.

Have I missed anyone? And if you'd like to know why people in Oman use Twitter just click here.

In the next day or two I will post some useful Facebook pages.

UPDATE: our good friend @SangitaSri reminded me about arabadventurer, the first Arab to walk to the magnetic North Pole and to row an ocean. Also on Facebook.

How YouTube has changed

A light post before the weekend.

Primeval is a British science fiction television program first broadcasted in the UK in 2007. 

I never watched it but what they did lately with their YT channel is something unique. The channel gets attacked by monsters, dinosaurs, etc, and it quickly becomes a playable videogame.

Great example of gamification. Very cool, worth a go.

If you liked it you will also like one of my favourite vids ever, click here to see.

Addicted to social media?

Who loves Facebook the most? Who uses YouTube the most? Let see some curious stats.

When it comes to Facebook America is the top market with 154,573,340 users. Surprisingly, or not, N.2, N.3 and N.4 spots are taken by Indonesia, India and Turkey respectively with approximately 40, 35 and 30 million users.

What population tweets the most? Again plenty of surprises here. The Dutch are leading since 22.3% of the population uses Twitter. In second position we find Brazil at 21.8, third position Venezuela at 21.1 and in fourth we have Japan with 20%.

And in Japan are also the most blog addicted as the average blog visitor spends 62.2 minutes reading a blog, follow South Korea with 49.6 minutes, Poland with 47.7 minutes and Indonesia with 33.1 minutes.

And lastly YouTube. An amazing statistic itself is that 71% of internet users visit YouTube each month. The Germans watch just over 19 hours of online video each month, closely followed by Turkey, Spain and USA with 18, 17 and 16 hours each.

The top two internet addicted countries however are Canada with 2,500 minutes online a month, totaling almost 42 hours, and Israel with an average of around 2,300 minutes.

Want to find out the most unfriendly country online?

Sources: socialbakers.com, comscore.com

QR codes go sexy

Recently Victoria’s Secret and the Miami Ad School came up with an eye catchy campaign which attracted curiosity at first and then triggered call to action.

Before going into details let me say a bit about QR codes; according to Wikipedia a Quick Response code is a type of matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code) designed to be read by smartphones.

This is how it usually looks, I’m sure you’ve seen a few. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded may be text, a URL, or other data. In my next post I’ll invite someone to tell us more about them as I’m not an expert myself.

Going back to the ‘Sexier than Skin’ campaign by Victoria’s Secret now; some large ads, placed around New York’s busy high streets, bus and train stations, etc., showed three beautiful models with key parts covered by a QR Code. Passers-by, both men and women, could not help but want to see what hides behind the QR Code.

After scanning with a smartphone the full picture of the model would be uncovered and revealed gorgeous underwear. The campaign’s tagline, Sexier than Skin, could not be more appropriate.