Two more Salik toll gates will be installed in Dubai - one each on Al Maktoum Bridge and between the First and the Second Interchanges on Shaikh Zayed Road. This was announced by the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority (RTA).

“The installation of the new toll gates comes as part of the second phase of the Salik system to regulate traffic on Dubai Roads,” said Mattar Al Tayer, Chairman of the Board and Executive Director of the RTA. The new toll gates will start working from September 9.

Recently Dubai RTA opened the new Al Garhoud Bridge with 14 lanes 7 on each side of the road. Al Garhoud Bridge will have a capacity for 16,000 vehicles per hour. This is such a great bridge. But the sad thing was no one was using it as it was having a salik gate in front of it. Everyone was using Al Maktoum Bridge. There is big traffic congestion on this side. Once the if the put this Salik gate if people wants to goto Shaikh Zayed Road they have to pay Salik.

Lot of discussion is happening everywhere that Dubai is taxing the people. I strongly believe that they are trying to make lot of people life’s better. This toll system is there in lot of major cities in the world where they want to control the traffic flow. Dubai is not the first in this. We should be happy that they are not up to the biggest toll gate or most no of toll gates in the world is in Dubai

I have a strong feeling that Google knows me better than what I know about myself. I am saying strongly because I live my life on Internet. I use internet a lot and I have been using lot of service what is offered by Google. All of the service is so interlinked and they record every thing what I do. These are the following service I am using.

1. Google Email - I have been using Google Gmail from the day it was rolled out to public user by invitation. This is my personal email and I have all my friends family mailing me here. From this they know what emails and what kind of emails I get from everyone.

2. Google search - I am sure 90% of internet users from small kid to grown up is using Google search. I Google a lot in fact I Google to correct my spelling which I am really bad at. Now they have integrated with Gmail and they track every search what I am doing online. In fact they have even started to personalize the search based on the what kind of Search I have been doing in past years. From this tracking they what I am searching for and from that they can find out what kind person I am and what kind of work I do and what I am looking or what are my interest in life.

3. Orkut - Here in middle east facebook is mostly used. But back in India more than facebook orkut is being used for social networking. From this service they know who are my friends and what kind of friend I have and what are interest in social life.

4. Google Talk - I am using Gtalk to chat with my friends. Using this service they know who are the friends I am close with. What I am chat or what I exchange with my friends.

5. Google reader - I read RSS more than newspaper. I have subscribed to more that 30 or 40 feeds from which I get my daily updates from other website I read a lot. Google can easily find out my interest and area of expertise from the RSS I read, bookmark, and share with my friends.

6. Google analytic - I have my own personal blog. I track all my visitors using analytic and Google knows what kind of visitor I get.

7. Google adsense - I have place adsense and I get my payout check and I deposit in my account. So they know what bank I use.

8. Youtube - They know what kind of video I search on youtube and I watch

9. Google checkout - I use paypal and Google checkout to shop online. From this they know my online shopping trends and my credit card details.

10. Google adwords - Everyone clicks on ads placed on other websites

Wow that is big huge list. Above is the most used service from Google. If you see they track and save information of what I do everyday on internet. Can you realize how much data Google has about me. It is all part of pieces of data about me and what I do everyday. Now I can summarize somewhat what Google know about me

• Kind of person
• My profession
• My hobbies
• My favorite TV show
• My favorite food
• My favorite recipes
• My Friends
• My Social life
• My traveling interest
• My favorite products
• List of software I use, etc etc

Soon I will forget what I like and Google will know better and they will introduce a new service. Where I can get suggestion or recommendation what is best for me. To an extend they are already doing this in search and product search. My only question is Can I trust Google? Anyways I am taking my chances as I don’t have any other better service which can compete Google

It has been really long time since I worked on my blog to improve the look and feel. I keep doing this once in while since I usually get annoyed at look at the blog with same template. This time I was fascinated with the template from YG Desire. I downloaded the theme and made the customization what I had done in my old theme. Once I have completed I decided to drop my old light box code and I moved to jquery light box.

One thing I hated the most in light box is to edit each link for the image and update with class and rel code. Based on the new theme I wrote a small snippet which will insert the needed class and other attributes for the light box to work.

$(document).ready(function(){
$('div.entry img').each(function(){
if($(this).parent().is('a')){
$(this).parent().attr('rel',$(this).parents('div.entry').attr('id'));
$(this).parent().attr('class','jqueryLightbox');
}
});
});

Demo :

The above code will search for all images in my post div and if the parent is a link it will add the needed attributes to the link. Well it is working fine if the link is an image. Have to add a check and lazy to do it

My sidebar is always big and I am greedy to show lot of links like archives, tags, pages etc. The template I selected looked well for accordion style listing. So I made the sidebar into an accordion panel.

I removed old  highlight plugin and I changed the same with syntax highlight wordpress plugin. Well my blog looks very cool with new code hightlight feature. Here after sharing code snippet will not be a problem.

Phew that is a lot of work I have done the whole day. I started simple and got involved and worked the whole day on this. Now my blog looks great with new features

Today I was going through by blog and suddenly I noticed something is wrong with my Google Adsense Text Links unit. This is the first time I noticed in adsense.

The change I was seeing there was a search box in the place of links. I tried again and I was not able to reproduce the same result. I am not sure if this is already there and I never notice or Google is trying something new

I have been always a very big fan on Fedora Linux distribution. In recent times I have moved very much into Ubuntu. Three days back Fedora team had released the new version 9 named sulphur. I really wanted to test it how well it is working with VMware. So the hunt began.

Downloaded the i686 DVD version and started the installation. In VMware OS list there was no fedora so I had to select red hat Linux as option. The installation went very smooth and no issues or error. I felt the installater was little heavy when compared to Ubuntu installation.

Fedora booted up well and detected most of the hardware of VMware. But It was not as smooth as Ubuntu was on VMware.

I heard there is lot of improvement and enhancements. But Ubuntu is very far ahead when it comes to Desktop Linux. I prefer sticking with Ubuntu than Fedora sulphur

Flip Holding Ltd is delighted to announce the promotion of Yousef Tuqan Tuqan and Mohammad Itani as CEOs for Flip Media and Neo Digital.

Yousef Tuqan Tuqan has been promoted to CEO of Flip Media, with overall responsibility for the development and growth of the largest interactive agency in the Middle East. An industry veteran with over 11 years of regional experience, Yousef has served as Account Director at Flip Media since 2005, and has been responsible for business development and client servicing for the agency.

“Yousef has been one of our most vocal ambassadors, and has played a leading role in growing our agency into a global network of 150 dedicated Internet professionals. His passion and experience have been invaluable in maintaining our leadership position, and this promotion is a vote of confidence in his ability to lead Flip Media into its next phase of growth,” said Managing Partner Dinesh Lalvani, Flip’s cofounder.

Mohammad Itani has been promoted to CEO of Neo Digital, Flip’s sister agency and the first dedicated online media agency in the Middle East. Mohammad has served as Head of Media since 2005, and has been instrumental in the growth of the agency and its reach beyond Dubai. He has also been involved in the development of Neo Digital’s Search Engine Marketing team, which boasts 4 full-time specialists and one of the largest booking volumes in the region.

According to Flip Holdings’ Group CEO Martin Diessner, “Mohammad has shown great leadership in times of ongoing change in the industry, and has earned the respect and admiration of his clients, his team and his partners across the online media landscape. I am confident that Neo Digital can continue to maintain its position as the fastest-growing and most innovative independent online media agency in the region.”

Managing Partners Dinesh Lalvani and Martin Diessner will continue their daily involvement in the group’s operation from Dubai, with a greater focus on the development of Brand Central, the most powerful enterprise-class advertising management and serving solution in the Middle East; and Chameleon, Flip Media’s complete website content management solution.

According to Dinesh “these key promotions represent a vote of confidence in Yousef and Mohammad to continue to lead their agencies into their next stage of development. Both have been the faces of Flip Media and Neo Digital since their appointment in 2005, and we are proud to work alongside them as we continue to offer the best and most comprehensive digital marketing solutions in the region.”