Arun Rajagopal

Xerox Viral Video: Extreme Offices April 18, 2007

Check out this interesting viral video from Xerox called ‘Extreme Offices’. It is about an office that is overly productive thanks to the boss’ adding something extra to the watercooler. Xerox agencies WPP Group’s Y&R and sibling VML created the work.

The Most Viewed Video on YouTube March 12, 2007

nAnd the honour goes ‘Evolution of Dance’ by Judson Laipply, a motivational speaker and comedian from Cleveland. Check it out – it’s incredibly funny and an authentic portrayal of dance throughout the 20th and 21st century. ‘Evolution of Dance’ has got over 43 million views to date!

UMSi creams Oman Web Awards 2006 & takes off to the moon! February 17, 2007

UMS Interactive, Muscat (the web solutions company I work for) made a clean sweep at the Oman Web Awards 2006 yesterday. By bagging a whopping 10 awards (5 Gold, 3 Silver and 2 Bronze awards), UMSi totally dominated the proceedings in a glittering award function held at Crowne Plaza Hotel that had the who’s who of Corporate Oman in attendance.

The icing on the cake was Nawras (http://www.nawras.om/) winning the much coveted top honour – the ‘Best website in Oman’ as well as ‘Best ICT website’. Nawras’ victory is particularly thrilling for me as I work on its the content management, web strategy and client servicing fronts. IMTAC’s win is also gratifying – as a Project Lead, I worked with a team that designed and developed this mammoth website in just five days!!!

Some of the other websites I have worked on that won awards include:

Best Website in Oman 2006:
Nawras

Gold:
Nawras – ICT
Toyota Yaris – Automotive
National Hospitality Institute – Hospitality
A’Safwah Dairy – Industry

Silver:
Oman Cables Industry – Industry
IMTAC – ICT

Bronze:
Khimji Ramdas – Corporate

Oman Web Awards is the most prestigious honour in the Sultanate’s webscape. Under the auspices of Oman’s chief IT body – Information Technology Authority, OWA is a prestigious industry platform that recognises creativity, innovation and excellence in online media.The nine award-winning websites will now be participating in a bigger competition – Pan Arab Web Awards 2007. Keeping our fingers crossed for that!

The fact that our team has won these awards – all our entries except one made the cut – comes as a great motivation to the team at UMSi. May be I really need to get a T-shirt with ‘Award-winning coffeemaker’ emblazoned on the front and ‘Award-winning copywriter’ on the behind!!!

Oman still has quite a way to go when it comes to having a modern digital society and e-culture. I also strongly feel that there’s a lot of room for improvement in our interactive work offering. But what’s important is that we are on the road to getting there.

We will continue developing user-friendly, creative and dynamic-technology driven sites that are in best-in-class for our clients. The new goal is getting ready for the future – Web 2.0 and its inherent opportunities and challenges.