Close Encounters With the Founders

With this April publication of Shuffle, the EmiratesMac User Group (EMUG) in the UAE is celebrating our 1st Anniversary. EMUG’s first meeting was held in August 2006 and interest is already high with over 10-15 members attending regular meetings. The EMUG site, with its online forum, has grown to over 2200 registered members at the time of this writing. The EMUG meetings are held monthly and are informal gatherings. There is usually time for members to chat and discuss about anything and everything related to Macs, and about any other Apple gear. Presentations are also given on topics suggested by members. There’s also time for user tips and raffles during these meetings. EMUG has become what it is today mainly due to the lovely couple Magnus & Crystal, the co-founders of the User Group, and to their second-to-none passion, commitment and dedication in running & managing the User Group. In this anniversary issue, we are delighted to have been able to talk to Magnus and Crystal to give us a few insights.

by Sumudu Gunaratne

Sumudu: Give us a brief background of yourselves, and of how you came to be in the UAE ?
Crystal: Magnus is from Sweden and I’m from the United States. On the personal side, we met when Magnus was living in Scotland and after living there for a few years we returned to the U.S., where we worked for a couple of years before finally moving to the Emirates in 2005. It was Magnus’ work that brought us here, and we wanted to try something different - and it sure has been different.

Sumudu: When did you first get into using Macs and what has been your experience thus far?
Magnus: My first experience was around 1986-1987 with a Mac Plus, sitting in a corner of the office where I worked in summer. I started playing with it and was instantly hooked. Especially clear in my mind is the first time I played with MacPaint, MacWrite, and the ImageWriter printer they had there. It was amazingly easy to create nice graphics and things like that, something that was unheard of on the PC side at the time. Later I started programming Macs and doing support and reviews of software for MacWorld in Sweden. The first Mac I bought was an IIcx. Since then, I’ve owned or used pretty much every Mac model made.
Crystal: For me the first time I used a Mac was in high school. It was one of the small compact ones, but I’m not sure which model. We used to do the student newspaper, banners and posters for events - that sort of thing. Then, like so many others, I drifted away from Mac and it wasn’t until I met Magnus that I started using Macs again.

Sumudu: What inspired you both to set up Emiratesmac.com and the User Group in the UAE?
Magnus: EmiratesMac.com started as my personal blog about Mac stuff in the UAE. It was started following our frustration with buying a Mac mini after moving here in 2005. It was hard to find out where to buy one, and doing a price comparison between stores was hard because pricing information was hardly available. So I started it at http://emiratesmac.wordpress.com, and it was a few months before Crystal even knew that site was there. In March 2006 we registered the EmiratesMac.com domain and started what has grown into the site you see today. The User Group idea we had in early 2006, and in May 2006 we submitted the application to Apple. After many inquiries to Apple we were suddenly accepted in August of 2006, and we had our first real meeting in Abu Dhabi with four participants (the two of us included!).
Crystal: It’s important to remember that we’re still the only registered Apple User Group in the Emirates, and one of very few in the Middle East. There are other Apple User Groups but they don’t seem to have gone through the trouble of registering with Apple, but we felt that was important to gain some legitimacy for our activities.

Sumudu: Tell us something about how you manage and run the Emiratesmac.com website and the User Group, in spite of your busy work schedules?
Crystal: It’s tough sometimes. Magnus gets up really early every morning and does some work before he leaves for his job. During the night he goes through messages posted, and through his RSS feeds to find out general developments within the Apple world. I do the same, but in the morning - and both of us try to check the site throughout the day as often as we can. It’s always fun to check the site and see new messages.
Magnus: Something that takes up a lot of time for us is meeting with people and companies to discuss various things like Shuffle, sponsorships, etc. It’s probably not something that most users and members think about - but things that may appear simple to accomplish, can actually require a lot of time spent meeting and negotiating before they’re official. So that takes up a lot of time. Another thing is that we check all new users on the site and all posts made. Some spam posts we manage to capture through filters, but some always slips through. Overall, it’s a matter of finding time when you can; and making the most of it. For example, I continuously make little notes about ideas for articles or blog posts and when I need to write an article, for example, I come back to this list.
Crystal: Then of course there’s Shuffle. Writing articles and doing the layout every month is like a full-time job in itself, and I’m amazed that we’ve been able to sustain it for one year now. But we love it, so all the effort that goes into producing each issue is not something we think about too much. Don’t get us wrong, we’re not complaining. Shuffle is a ‘labor of love’, so it’s okay.

Sumudu: What tools and software and stuff do you use to run the EMUG site?
Magnus: Most of my work is done with a Mac Pro, but I also have a MacBook Pro on which I write a lot of Shuffle articles because it’s mobile. In terms of software I use the same as most other users; Microsoft Office for Mac, iWork, iLife, Safari and Apple Mail. For administration and development of the site, I use BBEdit and Coda for coding, Transmit for FTP, Photoshop for graphics and Flash for some ads and other things. For some administration things I’ve developed our own systems and applications in PHP and MySQL; like the membership register, training scheduling, and more.
Crystal: I do most of the administrative work for the group and the site, and I also use most of the same software as Magnus, except on my MacBook Air. I manage the user group membership register with a web application that Magnus developed, and I also use some specialized applications for things like invoicing.
Magnus: Let me add that what has made a big difference for us in running the site and the group is our Blackberry devices. We’d love to use iPhones but with the volume of emails and browsing we do ‘on the go’ the unlimited Blackberry plans are unbeatable right now. With my Blackberry I can check the status of the site and even do some simple administration of it, if needed.

Sumudu: What challenges do you face in managing a community website like Emiratesmac.com and the User Group, particularly in the UAE where users come from wide range of cultural backgrounds?
Crystal: The main challenge is to try to get people to understand the idea of a user group. In Europe and North America it’s an established concept; a group of people gathered around a common interest, who help each other out in various ways. But here it doesn’t seem very popular or common as a way of organizing people, so that’s a challenge. We often say EMUG is a non-profit, voluntary-based organization, or a sort of club. Following on that challenge is the difficulties with trying to get people to pitch in to help run the site, Shuffle, etc. And we don’t mean money necessarily. I think a lot of that stems from the misunderstandings around what EMUG is. And this concept of ‘pitching in’ refers to individual users who might consider becoming members - as well as to companies that could contribute in other ways, such as advertising in Shuffle. We often have to explain what we’re doing, and the first question we usually get is “So, how do you make money on this?” Then we have to explain that we’re not doing this to make money, we’re doing this for the community. But we believe that the approach of supporting the community and doing things to help our members is what’s going to prevail in the long run.

Sumudu: What does the future hold for EmiratesMac User Group and Shuffle?
Magnus: We hope we can continue to provide a friendly and helpful platform, offline as well as online, for anyone who is interested in Apple stuff to come together to get help, to share their experience and help others, and to have a good time. We think we’ve managed to do that so far, and we hope we can continue. This is definitely a ‘labor of love’ and, as Crystal already said, few people ever understand what this is all about. It’s true that we require more income to be able to grow and even continue doing what we do, but we’ll keep doing this as long as we’re able to - because it’s an important service and we think it serves an important need.
Crystal: We want to make more interesting and useful things at meetings so that we can get more members to come to them. This may mean more extensive presentations or demos at meetings, or something completely different. We also want to keep producing a high-quality Shuffle and the next major change for Shuffle, I think, is to increase the number of pages in Arabic. But that will require more people to write in Arabic for Shuffle.

Sumudu: What is your message to the Mac community and the User Group in this anniversary issue of Shuffle?
Magnus: This is just the beginning. We often have to remind ourselves that it has been only one year that Shuffle has been printed and only about two years since the EmiratesMac.com site was first set up. In that time we’ve reached over 2200 registered users and a circulation of Shuffle of 9000 copies to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE. That’s amazing, and credit goes out to all those that have helped out in various ways. But we can do so much more and we have many ideas. With more users on the site, more members, more writers for Shuffle, more advertisers, etc. we can become so much more than what we already are. There is no limit to what this can become and we can accomplish much more if we work together. Thank you all from both of us for making this into such an amazing journey, and let’s hope that together we can make it even more amazing in the future.

Emirati Racing Team Completes 24hr Race

The Emirates Racing Team (http://uae24hrs.com) completed the 24hr endurance race at the Dubai Autodrome on January 11-12, 2008. The drivers were Mohammad Al-Abdooli, Khaled Al-Muttawaa, Mohammad Al-Falasi, and Omran Al-Owais. Omran (http://www.alowaismotorsport.com), a member of the EmiratesMac Apple User Group, said about his experience, “This was amazing. A group of us coming together like this to represent our country, and actually making it through all twenty four hours.” The team finished the 24hr race, completing 375 laps, and ending up in position 55 out of 84 finishing teams. That’s an improvement of around 30 positions compared to where they started on the grid.

The plan was to get EmiratesMac logo stickers onto the car, but unfortunately the team ran out of time and had technical difficulties which did not allow this to happen. But I’m sure EmiratesMac members were with Omran in spirit to cheer him on. If the team decides to do this again next year, and we hope they will, preparations will start earlier and hopefully it will make the team more competitive. It was a great first experience and the team did better than I think anyone expected. Congratulations to the team!

by Magnus Nystedt

Reflections from the Hayah Film Competition

Instead of a diary I decided to publish the two speeches given by Omran and myself at the press conference announcing the Hayah Film Competition (www.hayahfilm.com) winners.

Magnus
I would like to take this opportunity to give you some background information regarding the Hayah Film Competition and the EmiratesMac Apple User Group. This competition came up in discussions within our user group about activities that we could do that would support our members and the wider community. Since we are an Apple User Group, it seemed natural to focus on films in a small format, especially made for the iPod form factor. We have members ranging from professionals in advertising and media, to teachers, architects, photographers, and more. All of them have in common the elements of creativity and originality, which are also key elements for success in this competition.
EmiratesMac was started as a web site in 2005 and is the only registered Apple User Group in the United Arab Emirates. EmiratesMac arranges monthly meetings for its members, where we get together to share experience and knowledge.

Creating films for iPod presents a number of challenges. The most obvious one is the small screen. Filmmakers have to consider that small details will not show very well. Color and contrast are also important to emphasize shapes and movement on the small screen. The length of the film matters since people will probably not want to look at very long movies on the small screen. These types of films, especially when put on an iPod, are more likely to be viewed in locations other than a family’s living room, or a movie theater, which presents further challenges when writing the script, shooting, and when editing films for this format. Finally, it’s important to consider sound; the viewer may not have headphones while watching, so it is important that the film’s story can be carried through regardless of sound. All these challenges, taken together, make for an interesting mix in terms of creating films for the iPod format.

We partnered up with Abu Dhabi Women’s College because their Center of Excellence in Applied Media made them a natural choice. Also, the Higher Colleges of Technology system is the largest provider of higher education in the United Arab Emirates, potentially opening up this film competition to participation by many young talented students. When we heard about the Middle East International Film Festival we got in touch with them and gradually things developed into what we’ve experienced this week.

We have been very excited about the response to the Hayah Film Competition. With entries from across the Middle East and in all categories, we’ve seen the abundant creativity that exists in this region. We have also experienced a wide range of subject matter. From the religious and profound, to the funny and lighthearted, each entry has made us think, made us laugh, or even moved us close to tears. This new format presents new challenges and opportunities for filmmakers. No longer have aspiring filmmakers to go through the traditional studio system. They can make technically advanced films with relatively modest equipment and distribute them for even less through web sites like YouTube, FaceBook, and others. Even setting up their own film studio-like business is conceivable with the latest technology and a strong vision. We hope that the Hayah Film Competition has contributed in some small measure to encourage budding filmmakers to start their career or to spur on those already in the industry.

Omran
When I first heard of this idea from Magnus I was a bit skeptic. Why would anyone want to watch a film on a small iPod screen, and why would anyone want to make a film for that format? After seeing this project progress, I was surprised to find myself becoming more and more intrigued. As a member of the EmiratesMac Apple User Group I started to see opportunities for our members and others to try out something new and exciting in combination with the latest in technology.

My professional experience as an architect means I have a strong interest in design. I apply this every day in my work, and I have even made short films before, so when I was asked by EmiratesMac to be their judge in the Hayah Film Competition, it was something I accepted with honor. On behalf of the judges I would like to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone that submitted a film to the Hayah Film Competition. The variety, quality, creativity, and dedication astounded all of us. We would also like to say congratulations to the finalists. In our mind you are all winners. It was very hard seeking out the finalists in general, and the winners in particular. From a very strong field of competitors you managed to stand out in various ways and you all deserve to win.

What we as judges were looking for were four main things: creativity, originality, technical proficiency, and suitability for the small format. And indeed all the finalists in various ways display aspects of life at the size of an iPod screen, as the tag line for the Hayah Film Competition says.

If you allow me, I would like to add that I am very proud that so many entries came from Emirati filmmakers. Even though I didn’t know it at the time of screening and judging, it was very moving for me to find out that many films I had watched and enjoyed, were made by people from my country. The film industry in this region is booming and more and more Emiratis are making their mark on the world stage. Hopefully, by participating in the Hayah Film Competition, these filmmakers can start a successful career in their chosen field.

It is also very moving to see so many students taking part in the competition. While I was a student I would have loved to be a part of something like this, so it’s comforting to see today’s students making the most of the opportunities afforded to them. We felt this was a perfect fit for students to display as well as develop their skills and knowledge.

Winners of the Hayah Film Competition
In the Student Category, the winner is Fatima Al Shamsi with “Ramadan”. In the Amateur Category, the winner is Kamil Roxas with “Celebrate Life”. And in the Professional Category, the winner is Ziad Oakes with “For No One”. The People’s Choice Award was won by Lolouwa Al Mehairbi with “Tourist”. You can watch all the finalists in the Hayah Film Competition at www.hayahfilm.com. Congratulations to all the winners!

by Magnus Nystedt

Shuffle: One Year Old

In some ways it feels like yesterday that we put the first issue of Shuffle online a year ago. Back then, and strangely enough still today, Shuffle is a dream. It was a dream back then to try to publish regularly something as a PDF. If you had asked me back then if I thought we’d ever print Shuffle, I would have said, “You’re crazy”. It’s still a dream because often I find it hard to believe that we’ve managed to produce and print a monthly issue on time for that many months. If you remember, for the first five issues Shuffle was only a PDF and it wasn’t until April we started printing the newsletter. Actually, the first printed issue came out on March 29, just in time for our Apple TV Event in Dubai. In that brief time Shuffle has gone through changes and we continually strive to create a good newsletter that our members can be proud of calling their own. And even though at the core of Shuffle there have been only a few people, many members have contributed and in most issues we’ve had articles from a new member who has not written for Shuffle before. That’s a great accomplishment and we hope the involvement of members increase as we now embark on the second year.

Shuffle expanded
Over the summer we faced a decision about Shuffle of which we still don’t know the full effect. We felt the time was right to discuss expansion of the newsletter, specifically to include Arabic and print more copies. So after a few months’ hard work, in September we printed the first Shuffle with a dedicated Arabic section and in 5000 copies. That was a monumental undertaking and one we still have to wait a while to evaluate fully. The Arabic is something our readers seem to really appreciate and I’m glad. I don’t speak or write Arabic but since I’m not a native-English speaker myself I understand fairly well the value of localization, which in a way Arabic in Shuffle represents. The main problem with Arabic has been to find content. We’ve ended up translating many of our own articles from English. Eventually we want to get to a point where most, if not all, Arabic content can be written originally in Arabic. That way we could even start looking at translating some Arabic articles into English. Concerning finances, we break even on most issues through sponsorship and ads. But going to 5000 copies has put a serious strain on finances, so we still need your help with finding ads. If you know someone who might consider buying an ad, we’d certainly appreciate you telling him or her about us. With your help we can contemplate a bit on the past in order to improve the future.

Going international
From the October issue we should also see regular distribution of Shuffle in countries other than the UAE. So far we’re sending Shuffle to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Qatar. We’ve had some early discussions with people in Kuwait and Oman about getting Shuffle to them, and we’re hopeful that we can set up distribution to those countries and more. You can see where we distribute Shuffle on our web site (www.emiratesmac.com/index.php?page=newsletter). If you are anywhere in the Middle East and you want to get some copies of Shuffle to your business or organization, let us know. All that we ask in return is that you pay to have Shuffle shipped to you and that you help us get ads. If you want a considerable quantity of Shuffle we may also ask you to pay some of the printing cost. We know that Shuffle has made it as far as California, USA, where we heard rumors that some Apple employees regularly download and read Shuffle. We want to make Shuffle a truly Middle Eastern concern, with articles from all over the region and distribution as wide as possible as well.

Digital edition
In August we added functionality for keeping track of how many times the PDF version of Shuffle has been downloaded. To date, the statistics are encouraging (see Figure 1). In total, over 1500 copies of Shuffle have been downloaded. But note that this is only from August, and PDFs have been available since November last year. We’re very excited that so many people around the world want to download Shuffle, not just in the Middle East. And it has indeed been people from all over the world that have downloaded Shuffle. From memory I can remember US, Canada, UK, France, Australia, Japan, and Argentina as examples of countries where it’s been downloaded. Obviously we think it’s the printed version of Shuffle that has garnered the most interest, so we hope to be able to bring that to you in the necessary volume. But right now the plan is to continue offering Shuffle as a download from our site. We also want to integrate Shuffle with the EmiratesMac.com web site more than we have so far.

Looking back
In preparation for this issue in general, and for this article in particular, I looked back at the issues we’ve published. I can look at some of our earlier issues and smile at how they were designed and smirk at what we wrote about. But the fact remains, I think, that Shuffle has been a pretty darn good publication from the start. In the very first issue I wrote, “As this is our first newsletter we’re still feeling our way through the whole process of producing something like this. We certainly appreciate your feedback, but please keep in mind that we’re new at this.” That still goes, I think. We are still new at this, and we do appreciate any feedback you have. In the second issue (December 2006) I wrote that we had passed 500 registered users on the site and that we were at almost 6000 posts. As I write this we’re just passing 1500 users and 16000 posts. In December we also had an interview with Ghassan Bendali at Apple IMC ME about gray market imports. Little did we realize the issues we would have almost a year later with iPhones. In January, February, and March we followed MJ’s trip to the Apple Inc. campus in California. Also in February 2007 we focused on MacWorld Expo and the announcement about the iPhone and the introduction of the AppleTV. March saw a bit of a deviation from the normal course, with coverage of Windows Vista and a Windows versus Mac debate. For the geekier among us, March also included the first part of our MySQL on Mac article-series. In April we celebrated the one-year anniversary of our site, EmiratesMac.com. July saw Shuffle focus on podcasting in our first attempt to focus each issue on some topic of interest. For August the topic was going back to school with all the preparations that involves. And let’s not forget that in every issue from the start, we’ve had the privilege to enjoy a Photoshop tutorial by Zaid. Also with us from the start in every issue is a delicious Apple-based recipe, which I’m sure we all look forward to every time. We’ve also enjoyed a couple of articles in Arabic by Abdullah Al Sulaiti. Something we’ve managed to keep fairly consistent is the design of Shuffle. I dare say we will not win any design awards but it seems our readers like the look and simplicity of Shuffle. Our covers have been very different. From March we’ve kept the cover clean and simple, with one major picture for each month’s cover. It is a struggle trying to keep the cover simple while at the same time making it striking and attention grabbing. We try to consider how it would look next to magazines on a supermarket shelf, and try to design it so people would want to grab it to read. From September’s issue we relabeled Shuffle a bit. We took EmiratesMac off the cover and invited members of other user groups to send us articles. The attempt was made to see if Shuffle could be a newsletter for all groups in the Middle East. We’re still waiting to see how that goes.

Looking forward
Looking forward, the three main challenges we face are financing, content, and distribution. If we start with the last item, distribution, we have to make sure that we get Shuffle out to more people in the UAE as well as around the region. This means we have to find partners that can pay for shipping boxes to different countries. Concerning financing, we need to find advertisers and sponsors that can give us the necessary finances to carry the printing cost as well as the other things we need to produce Shuffle. All the work with Shuffle is voluntary, non-paid work, but there are considerable costs involved beyond that. Finally, when it comes to content we need authors to keep producing high-quality articles for Shuffle. This would include both Arabic and English articles on various topics of interest to our readers. If you’re considering writing for Shuffle, we’re open to pretty much any topic that may be of interest to readers. This may be tutorials, feature articles, news, interviews, reviews, and more. Articles can be of different lengths, from really short tidbits to longer features. We’ve got a long way to go to where I want us to be, and I’m sure many of you have dreams and hopes for Shuffle as well. Let’s hope that over the coming years we can achieve some of those dreams and hopes. Together I think we can make Shuffle even better and keep spreading some Apple-love around our region.

EmiratesMac.com tips and tricks

Gallery
We have a nice gallery on the site, with users uploading their photos and artwork. When you upload a picture to the gallery, keep in mind that you shouldn’t upload a huge file. Even if you took something with your digital camera, make sure the picture you upload is no more than around 1200 pixels high or wide. That’s plenty of pixels for anyone to look at it on a computer screen. There’s an option when you upload called “Upload as set”. If you select this option it means that the pictures you upload will belong to a set, which makes it easier for users to view these pictures on the site. So if you upload a group of pictures that are related, photos taken at the same event, for example, put them in a set. When you are looking at a picture in the Gallery, please take some time to rate it and perhaps even leave a comment. You can rate each picture from one to five stars, and you can leave a comment for each picture. I’d encourage you to upload as many photos as you can, and also leave comments and rate other photos. It’s the community aspect of the site that makes it a joy to visit, which is also true for the Gallery.

Search the site with Google
Did you know you can use Google to search through EmiratesMac.com? You can of course go to the Search page on the site. You can also type in whatever you want to search for, followed by “site:emiratesmac.com” in a Google search box. The results you get will then be restricted to our site. On a daily basis our site submits the content on the site to Google so that the search engine will cover the pages as comprehensively as possible.

New hosting
This isn’t exactly a tip or a trick but I thought it fits in here anyway. Since the last issue of shuffle, we’ve moved our site, EmiratesMac.com to a new host. We made the move for different reasons, but the main one is that we were starting to have different problems, some at least related to the hosting plan we were at. So we moved the site to a new hosting provider, with more resources available for the site and the systems we run. The actual move took only a few hours, and although we experienced some problems, overall it was a smooth move. Since the move it seems the site works better, without any problems. It should be added that some of the problems we experienced before the move, regular users of the site didn’t see them, only administrators. But they were, taken together, enough of a reason to make the move, even though we pay a lot more for the new hosting. If you experience any problems with the site, send us an email (contact@emiratesmac.com).

Emiratesmac.com Tips and Tricks

We continue our series of tips and tricks for how to do certain things at Emiratesmac.com. The intent is to tell our users about some of the perhaps less well known features and functions on the site in order to make their experience with the site a bit better.

Since the previous issue of shuffle we have installed some new software on the site. It should help us get better exposure in search engines, among other things. It also means some changes for users of the site. Most noticeable probably is three little icons that now appear in each post. Since I’ve received some questions about these icons I thought I’d spend some time trying to explain what they’re for. Basically by clicking on each icon you can share that particular post with other users via one or more web sites. It can help you remember links to posts for the future, and it can also help the site get more visitors from around the world.

From left to right the icons are:

Digg.com (www.digg.com)
Digg.com is a community-driven news site, whereby registered users can submit stories that others can “digg” or not. Also see “The day that the community took over” in this issue of shuffle). Click on the icon and you can submit a new story to Digg.com that others can “digg” and comment on.

Del.icio.us (del.icio.us)
If you set up an account with Del.icio.us you can bookmark sites in much the same way you do now in your web browser. The difference is those bookmarks are store online and you can access them from anywhere. You can also attach “tags” to each bookmark, classifying it so you can remember it later. And you can also see how many others have boomarked a page and what tags they attached.

Technorati.com (www.technorati.com)
Technorati is a blog search engine. It indexes blogs from all over the world, and new posts made in those blogs are continuously listed on the site. You can set up your own searches and get automatic notifications of new posts from other blogs. By clicking on the Technorati icon you can add that post to your favorites in Technorati.

Furl.net (www.furl.net)
Furl is a kind of a combination of the other sites. You can save URLs for later retrieval, you can tag them with keywords, and you can organize them in different ways. One unique functionality Furl has is that you can archive copies of web sites so you can visit them later even the actual site is not working.

by Magnus Nystedt

Special Report From Apple TV Event

EmiratesMac User Group arranged our first major event on March 29 2007. A Senior Engineer at Apple Inc. talked about and demonstrated the Apple TV. User Group members got a chance to try out the Apple TV and ask questions of the Engineer.

1. The event took place in the Auditorium at Knowledge Village Dubai.

2. A Senior Engineer at Apple Inc. demonstrated the Apple TV.

3. The attendees were treated to a live demo of the Apple TV from one of the engineers at Apple who designed it.

4. The presentation took the audience through what it’s like working at Apple, what the culture is like, and some of the things that the employees do at Apple to have fun.

5. Magnus Nystedt, President and Ambassador of EmiratesMac User Group gave a brief introduction to the user group and its activities.

About the photographer
Mickeymouse is a creative brewery of sorts. Armed with an arsenal of color swatches and a penchant for harmonizing fonts and images, he has built an extensive portfolio of works in broadcast and print design. He also seeks to collaborate with creative individuals, groups and clients on various communication and design projects. He contributes photos to the Emirates Mac Users Group, and will soon contribute design, illustration and other strange creations as well. Mickeymouse is pretending he didn’t write this. You can reach him at kamil@fluxnewmedia.com.

by Magnus Nystedt

Emiratesmac.com tips and tricks

We continue our series of tips and tricks for how to do certain things at Emiratesmac.com. The intent is to tell our users about some of the perhaps less well known features and functions on the site in order to make their experience with the site a bit better.

Searching the site
If you have a question or a problem, chances are it’s been discussed or even answered before. That’s when the search comes in. And you have several options for how to search the site. The easiest thing to do is click on Search and type in what you’re searching for. If you want more options go to the Search page. There you can decide to search only certain sections of the site, posts between certain dates, posts by a certain user, etc. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at what is actually already available on the site, if you do a little search. Something else to remember is you can always use Google to search EmiratesMac.com. Just type in what you want to search for at Google’s site, followed by “site:emiratesmac.com”. That way you search through Google’s index of the site. If you frequently do the same type of searches you can save your settings by clicking “Go” next to “Save Search Preferences” at the bottom of the search page.

Low-bandwidth version
If you access the site with a PDA or mobile phone, or some other type of device with a slow connection and perhaps a small screen, the main version of the site is going to be slow and the format unsuitable. The solution is to try the archive version of the site (www.emiratesmac.com/forums/archive). The archive is really a text-only version of the site and you can browse the forums and read the posts without any graphics, which speeds it up considerably.

Order of posts
When you view a thread, the default is to show the first post first. Makes sense, right? Most of the time you really want to see the most recent post first. Go to your User CP and click Edit Options. Find the section that says Thread Display Mode and change it to Linear - Newest First.

by Magnus Nystedt

EmiratesMac.com’s One Year Anniversary

On this the one year anniversary of EmiratesMac.com, we celebrate by having an Apple TV Special Event as well as our first issue of shuffle in print. It’s an exciting time in our brief history and we thought we’d look back to be able to gaze into the future.

Started as a blog
EmiratesMac started as my personal blog in October 2005 when we had just moved to the UAE. We wanted to buy a Mac mini and it was hard to find information online and elsewhere about where to buy one, what the prices where, etc. In frustration with that I started a blog which still lives on today (emiratesmac.wordpress.com) although it’s not updated for about a year now. Over time some people started visiting the site again and again and a small community formed around the blog. In early 2006 I thought we should do more with EmiratesMac so we bought the domain and web hosting and then the site you know today was born. You can see what the first version of the site looked like in the picture.

First big hits
We went through some serious growing pains over the first few months, and we installed various systems to manage our site. Eventually we settled on what we’re currently running and things were in many ways easier after that. During the first few months the site had some terrific spikes in traffic when we reported on the upcoming opening of a MacStore in Abu Dhabi, and when we covered the actual opening of the store. This established us after just a few months in search engines and got us some much needed traffic from the UAE, the Middle East, and beyond. Summer started to set in and some of us thought about establishing an Apple User Group. We actually submitted all the paperwork to Apple in May, but it took a lot longer than we thought to get any response from them.

Starting the User Group
It was actually not until August 2006 that we heard back from Apple and got registered as an Apple User Group. We’re still the only Apple User Group in the UAE, registered or not, and one of very few registered groups in the Middle East. Our first meeting was August 8th 2006 in Abu Dhabi and a total of four people attended. Around the same time we published a preview of Arabic Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, which again got the site a lot of interest from all over the world. That post is still the most read post on the site, and probably will remain so for a long time.

End of 2006 and 2007 so far
The rest of 2006 and early 2007 saw a steady climb in the interest for the site. We had a few smaller spikes in interest, for example when we published the timeline for the Arabic localization of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. We’re hoping that with the new things we’ve announced and some things we’re still working on, that more people want to sign up on the site, become user group members, and join our community.

Congratulations
Congratulations are in order for everyone who has worked hard on EmiratesMac.com and everyone who has visited us since we started. We’re nothing without your help and support, and we’re looking forward to a successful future.
by Magnus Nystedt

Emiratesmac.com tips and tricks

We continue our series of tips and tricks for how to do certain things at Emiratesmac.com. The intent is to tell our users about some of the perhaps less well known features and functions on the site in order to make their experience with the site a bit better.

Quick links
One way to find your way around the site fast is by the Quick Links menu. You find Quick Links in every navigation bar present in the Forums section of the site. You get one-click access to the posts that have been made during the day, you can edit your signature, profile, and options, you can check your private messages as well as subscribed threads.

Link to latest post
I’m sure you know that the ten most recent posts are shown on the site’s home page in the “Recent Threads” box. You can click on the thread title to go the thread. Did you know you can go straight to the latest post in that thread? You do that by clicking on the little blue icon with a right-pointing arrow on it. That takes you straight to the last post made in that thread.

Avatars
An avatar on the internet is simply a little picture that is a user’s representation of himself or herself. It’s a common feature on forums and blogs, where you after you set up an account can choose a picture that shows up as a small thumbnail usually besides the posts you make. In addition to your signature the avatar is possibly the best way to let your personality come out in your activities on the site. This feature is also available on EmiratesMac.com. You change your avatar from the User CP > Edit Avatar. Recently we uploaded a number of ready made avatars that you can just choose from. There is as before the option as well where you can upload your own picture. As of now you can choose from hundreds of avatars in the categories of iPod, Newton, Mac, and original Mac icons.

by Magnus Nystedt

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