Batelco: When able to attack you must seem unable

By Sun Tzu from the Art of War

When able to attack you must seem unable

When you are in the battlefield it is wise to make the enemy feel you are not able to attack to let him gain confidence and go arrogant while you hide your winning cards for a counter attack. That's what the giant telecommunication in Bahrain (Batelco) did.

When menatelecom launched their 8Mbs speed Internet service in Nov 2008, at that time Batelco had only a 4Mbs.

Some of Batelco's customers churn defected to mena. Batelco enabled mena to enjoy this quick small victory and go arrogant.

Batelco waited few more months before it launched a 10 Mbs package even cheaper than mena's 8 Mbs and much more reliable.

Later we learned that this 10 Mbs package was already implemented by Batelco and was under testing when mena came to the market.

Now mena is struggling with the growing numbers of their customers and their service is getting worse everyday. Flip-Flop Customers are going back to Batelco.

Great strategy and a direct hit

P.S. I am not a fan of either side, I just admired Batelco's approach.

Twikemon Launch (Pokemon on Twitter)

Back in June, I decided to write a small pokemon game on top of Twitter. I didn't know that it will require a lot of development work and time and testing.

So I decided to release the first draft version of the game today 7-9-2009. Click Here for the Game

1. Login to Twitter and Pick your Pokemon
When you login with your Twitter account, you will be prompted to select 1 one out of 3 bird pokemons by default yours is Level 5 and you fight your way with the Computer on top of Google Maps.



2. Pick a Pokemon to fight
You click on any pokemon ball it will popup open showing the pokemon in it. Clicking fight will start the fight.



3. Defeat them and increase your level
When you click Fight it! A new window will be opened for the fight to start. You have a text area where you can write and tweet any message you want.





As you fight more Pokemons and defeat them, you're level increases, and as your level increases you will have more attacks. The Default attack for Spearow is "Pick"; With time it will evolve to Fearow so does the rest of the pokemons.

This is more like an alpha version just to test the game, only 7 Pokemons are there. All pokemon pictures are taken from pokemonelite2000


You will also see the top 5 Pokemons Twitters



Enjoy, and let me see if there are any bugs or enhancements

I had fun programming it but it is so difficult!! That's why this maybe the last time I design a web game, I need more tools and time.

10 Posts you might not have seen [June-Sep]

I thought I'll pick my favorite 10 since June 09 and list them here. For my faithful readers might have missed some.

1. How to remove computer viruses with no AntiVirus

2. Earth the Pain

3. It's-not-my-job

4. Free Prize Marketing - My Story with Nissan

5. If Newton is still alive

6. Where do ghosts live?

7. Google Maps VS Bing Maps

8. 1/10 of your Twitter Followers will click your link according to Google Analytics

9. Programming: 7 Advices to a Cleaner User-Friendly Form

10. The 6 (Why?)s

A letter from My Sister

A letter to my brother Hussien.

know I never tell you this but..

Thank you for being the most wonderful brother in the whole wide world. I love you so much and I admire you and I look up to you. You were always loving and caring of me and everybody else.

You inspired me to be the person who I am today. I love the way you’re never afraid of a tough challenge. Every time you achieve something in your professional life whether it’s graduating or moving up in your career. I admire you, you have so many potential you keep accomplishing one great challenge after another.

You are a person in charge of his own life who is capable of doing whatever he set his mind to.

I’ve always been so proud to be your sister and still am.

You are whatever you want to be, you are YOU, you choose who you are, you choose your future, you choose your life, and I love YOU.

You are my brother.

Am honored to be pointed at and called Hussein’s sister. I see my self in you. And I work hard everyday just to make you proud. You’re a great brother and you never hurt my feelings and you never say NO to me, you always motivate me and make me believe in myself, you’ve treated me with nothing but love and respect. All my friends have brother’s that are complete jerks and complete a**holes but you’re just a gem.

Thank you for being so great.

I Love You
Your sis Huda

Randy's 11 Time Management Tips

In his book the Last Lecture, Dr Randy Pausch has listed a great time management tips that I love to share with you guys.

1. On your desk have only one task in front of you
With this you will have no distractions, and you can learn to focus.

2. Get a speaker phone
Now you can be productive when on hold

3. Telephone - Keep calls short
Keeping the calls short will save you more time. Stand during call

4. Telephone - Start by announcing goals for the call
If you set goals to the goal you will simply try to accomplish them by the end of the call and hence finish the call quickly.

5. Telephone - Don’t put your feet up
This is the comfort mode, aka more time.

6. Telephone - Have something in view to do next
So you can rush the call and do it.

7. Telephone - Have an excuse ready to get off the phone.
If the call dragged so long, slam that excuse.

8. Telephone - Prepare something fun to do after the call
So you are motivated to finish quickly.

9. Best time for Group calls
11:30am (before lunch) and 4:30pm (before quitting time) so people will not stay on the phone long.

10. Write hand written thank you notes
Its always faster


11. Make your office comfortable for youand optionally comfortable for Scheduling Yourself

You don’t find time for important things, you make it
Everything you do is an opportunity cost Learn to say “No”