Today, two random posts about two totally unrelated subjects and both, I suspect, totally unnecessary.
I have always been a sucker for smart, high tech visual experiences, especially those that sell a lifestyle I cannot afford. I have just chanced upon this one about a new campaign called ‘The Center of Now Downtown Dubai’. The campaign is obviously aimed at marketing Dubai, again, as, for want of a better line, the center of now. I think it has my vote. It does make me want to catch the next flight to what looks like the downtown of the world.
However, it not so much what the campaign invites you to as the way it does. As innovatively interactive uses of the Web goes, I think this campaign works its charms well. The campaign has been designed for Emaar Properties, described as one of the world’s leading property developers which is responsible for a lot of what Dubai looks like today.
There is a time slider in the center of the main page of the site that revolves around Dubai’s signature monument, the Burj Khalifa. As you turn the dial the video window on the left changes its content to tell you what the possibilities are at that particular time. Quite fortuitously, I slid the time slider to a time when a pretty model goes to the spa at The Palace Hotel where the following happens.
And when this, top, happens, this, below, follows soon after.
In short it is a deeply relaxing and calming experience (not the exact feeling I had in mind while watching it but this is a family blog) that adds to the overall downtown Dubai experience.
The website is flash-heavy and if you are still in the dinosaur age of the Net using slow speed connectivity, then I suggest you avoid it altogether. Come to think of it, if you are still using slow speed Internet, you are probably not the right demographic for this campaign.
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Unexpressed thoughts are like undigested food for me. Both cause a great deal of bile. For the latter I take various forms of ranitidine tablets and for the former I write this blog.
I woke up at 3 in the morning today with President Ronald Reagan’s favorite catchphrase ‘Trust but verify.’ It had stayed with me from last evening’s news conference by President Barack Obama who used it in the context of the Senate’s approval of a new arms control treaty with Russia.
‘Trust but verify’ has become the guiding principle of US foreign policy ever since Reagan used it while dealing with the Soviet Union. It is an inherently contradictory phrase because trust and verify are mutually exclusive. One precludes the other. And yet politicians in the US, including presidents, use it as if it was divinely revealed. They do not use it conscious of its inherent contradiction. They use it as if it is possible to do both.
I think it is time to retire it because it makes no sense, even though it sounds as if it does.
So…so like that.