Flip’s first iPhone app is now available in the iTunes application store. Simply search for “Mumbai” and then download the free Mumbaikar iPhone app.

The application compliments the mumbaikar.com website dedicated to everything Mumbai at your finger tips. A one-stop shop for anything and everything Mumbai, with interactive maps, localization, geo-tagged Mumbai business directories, event listings, blogs and breaking news on incidents in your neighbourhood.

A must to check out – and thanks to Imthi for making that happen!

Mumbaikar.com iPhone app

Martin Web Stuff

Sitting at vida cafe in camps bay reading The Times
Funny ad next to BA strike article which will ground the whole airline over Xmas stranding a million passenger.

Martin Advertising

The shakeup has begun.  Sheikh Mohammed has dismissed a number of high profile individuals, and replaced them with members of his family and his inner circle.

On Friday, the Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, Ruler of Dubai and Prime Minister of the UAE, fired Omar bin Sulaiman from his position as governor of the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) and replaced him with Ahmed Humaid al-Tayer.

On Thursday, Sheikh Mohammed removed Mohammed al-Gergawi, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem and Mohammed Ali Alabbar from the board of the emirate’s main holding company, the Investment Corporation of Dubai (ICD). The board will be chaired by the Sheikh Mohammed, with his son, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammad bin Rashid al-Maktoum, Dubai Crown Prince, as deputy chairman.

From Kipp Report: “It’s a family affair, for now”

The people that were replaced are three important figures in Dubai:

• Sulaiman is chairman of Dubai World which is state owned and globally known for the Palm development by Nakheel, plus many other international investments. In South Africa, Dubai World bought the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town, Shamwari Game reserve in the Eastern Cape and the Pearl Valley Golf course close to Paarl. Flip Media designed and developed most of Nakheel’s websites.
• Alabbar is the head of Emaar Properties – which also includes many other Emaar related companies such as Emaar industries, Mall & Retail and other international investments such as the Hamptons Properties (UK based property development company). Emaar has been a big key account for Flip Media which developed more than 300 projects for this client.
• Gergawi is equally powerful as big boss of Dubai Holding, and I do remember the times when he was working at Emirates Towers at Sheik Mohammad’s office where I used to start up in Dubai with Impact Proximity, and at quiet a few occasions we would sit next to them during lunch at the Noodle bar . Today, Flip Media’s office is located in Al Soufah Tower which is owned by Gergawi.

So big changes in Dubai – and I hope they will be for the better for the city. All 3 ex board members in my opinion did contribute to the growth of Dubai a lot, and will most likely keep on playing a significant role within their respective companies. However, being pushed off the “Dubai Inc” inner circle means less access to support and one wonders if projects like the Palm Jebel Ali, Palm Deira and the World will be completed one day.

At the same time, a lot of work during this consolidation period within Sheikh Mohammad’s government and one hopes that now with tighter family control, the results will show rather sooner than later.

Martin Dubai

For the first time the almost ready new football stadium switches on its lights…so happy and proud to be living in the mother of all cities – well done CAPE TOWN !!!

Martin Cape Town

Although her birthday is  just coming up, we wish you already a great day with your family!

Happy Birthday, Ash!

Martin Web Stuff

More than 100 surfers broke the Guinness World Record for the “Most surfers riding the same wave” in Cape Town on Sunday. The record was made at the Earthwave beach festival.

We went to the Muizenberg beach on Sunday and had an awesome day by the beach – sunny and despite ice cold water Robs and Cammie made it into the waves for 2 hours – freezing cold!

Here are some pics:

Martin Cape Town

The Dubai Metro project has been talked up for some many reasons…. the first automated rail transport in the Middle East, the world’s longest and of course a  memorable launch date….9/9/09! But surprisingly in Dubai, even just weeks before the launch, few people, actually knew much about the Metro. Flip Media decided to take action and do what we do best…. launch a dynamic interactive website.

Today they unveil mydubaimetro.com, a non-profit portal developed as a service to residents and visitors of Dubai. It’s packed with great features like detailed station information, connecting buses data, downloadable pocket maps, a detailed FAQ, and journey planner and fare calculator.

Flip’s design team created a really fresh look and feel with a vibrant palette and simple bold icons to help users find helpful information quickly. Keeping in mind the fact that it’s a community portal, they have devoted plenty of space to user generated content like blogs for people to share their views and experiences and media sections for metro photo sharing.

The site is scalable, so there will be plenty more features to come. In time, mydubaimetro.com will not only serve as a one stop shop for information, but also create long lasting connections.

My Dubai Metro

Martin Web Stuff

A 404 error page is shown by a web server when users enter a page on a domain that does not exist. It is good practice to customize this page template so that users get shown a properly written and styled web page, instead of the default server 404 page which otherwise only returns this technical nonsense:

Not Found

The requested URL /234234234 was not found on this server.

---

Apache/2.2.3 (Debian) PHP/5.2.0-8+etch13 mod_ssl/2.2.3 OpenSSL/0.9.8c Server

One of the best ‘not found’ pages I have seen can be found on the South African safari and travel portals www.go2africa.com which is really cute, screen shot below:

Cue 404 page

Well done!

Martin Web Stuff 404, Coding

Which way is the bus below traveling?

To the left or to the right?

Can’t make up your mind?

Look carefully at the picture again.

Still don’t know?

Pre-schoolers all over the  SOUTH AFRICA were shown this picture asked the same question.

90% of the pre-schooler’s gave this answer.

“The bus is traveling to the right.”

When asked,

“Why do you think the bus is traveling to the right?”

They answered:

“Because you can’t see the door to get on the bus.”

How do you feel now???

I know, me too.

Martin Cape Town

This is my 5th trans alp crossing on a mountain bike, and the second after the 2007 trip that I did with Kai and Thomas.

This time, I bought a Garmin Oregon 300 navigator and downloaded maps and mountain bike tour data from www.gps-bike.com so that we can maximize our cycle time on single tracks and avoid as much asphalt as possible.

Garmin Oregon 300

The track data from gps-bike.com was not as good as I hoped, and on one occasion we even had to cycle 25km tar road instead of the promised single track. The data is not as easily combined as they describe on their website, and the protected rich track data that they use a pain in the a** to load into Google Earth or modify on your GPS.

Also, Garmin charges quiet a bit for their maps, however I managed to extract plenty of Open Street Maps and used the Garmin software to load those downloaded maps onto the Garmin device.

Overall, we had a great trip from Tegernsee in Germany via Pfitscher Joch, Limojoch, Valparola and Falzarego Pass, then heading up to the Rifugio Averau and Rifugio Passo Pordoi. From there we went via Porta Vescovo and Rifugio Bec de Roces to Baita Huette and Groedner Joch and via St. Ulrich / Seissner Alm down to Waidbruck and to Bozen.

Overall about 400km with 10,000 height meters and awesome weather. The height profile can be found below, and the whole photo stream is shared on Facebook and Flickr.

Height Profile of Mountain Bike Trans Alp Trip

Because of our dissatisfaction with the tour data, I decided to publish the GPS raw data (free of charge) for anyone to download from this blog – feel free to use it on your trip and to share any feedback with me via my Google Profile contact page.

• Full Trans Alp Garmin GPS route, track and way point data
• DAY 1 – GPX Data | DAY 1 – KMZ Data
• DAY 2 – GPX Data | DAY 2 – KMZ Data
• DAY 3 – GPX Data | DAY 3 – KMZ Data
• DAY 4 – GPX Data
• DAY 5 – GPX Data
• DAY 6 – GPX Data
• DAY 7 – GPX Data
• DAY 8 – GPX Data

Some of my favorite pictures:

Martin Sports