Features

SAN FRANCISCO — Google took on rivals Apple, Samsung and Amazon in a new push into hardware Tuesday, launching premium-priced Pixel smartphones and a slew of other devices showcasing artificial intelligence prowess.

The unveiling of Google’s in-house designed phone came as part of an expanded hardware move by the US company, which also revealed details about its new “home assistant” virtual reality headset and Wi-Fi router system.

The San Francisco event marked a shift in strategy for Google, which is undertaking a major drive to make Google Assistant artificial intelligence a futuristic force spanning all kinds of Internet-linked devices.

“We are evolving from a mobile-first world to an AI-first world,” Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said.

“Our goal is to build a personal Google for each and every user.”

Rick Osterloh, the head of a new hardware division at the California-based Internet giant, added, “we believe that the next big innovation is going to take place at the intersection of hardware and software, with AI at the centre.”

Pixel will be available with a 5- or 5.5-inch display, starting at $649 for US customers, similar to the latest iPhone models. Pre-orders began Tuesday in Australia, Canada, Germany, Britain and the United States.

Made by Google

By using its own name on handsets, Google is aiming for a bigger slice of the competitive smartphone market, dominated by Samsung and Apple.

Until now, Google’s flagship devices had used the Nexus brand with hardware partners that have included China’s Huawei and South Korea’s LG. The California group also sought to expand in the smartphone market by purchasing Motorola in 2011, but sold the unit less than three years later.

Unlike past smartphone alliances, Google stressed that it had complete control of Pixel from start to finish, contracting with Taiwan-based HTC to manufacture handsets.

“Google today demonstrated that it’s finally serious about hardware,” said Jan Dawson at Jackdaw Research. “The Pixel phones are clearly being positioned as peers to the iPhone.”

The new Pixel phone is “the first phone made by Google inside and out”, said Sabrina Ellis of the Pixel product management team.

By producing both the hardware and Android software, Google is making a more direct assault on Apple and its tightly controlled ecosystem.

Besides being the first smartphone to ship with Google Assistant, it will come with unlimited storage for photos and videos and be compatible with the company’s new Daydream virtual reality platform.

Pixel has a “smart” camera for sublime photos, and a programme to make it easy for users to switch operating systems, a move aimed at encouraging iPhone users to convert to Android.

However, Google may find it challenging to gain market share, analyst Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy said.

“Aside from the camera, the new Google Pixels are pretty undifferentiated compared to Samsung and iPhone 7th generation phones,” he said. “They don’t exactly swing anyone around the room.”

Apple’s world

Gartner analyst Brian Blau said “the most exciting part” of Tuesday’s announcement was the assistant, which showcases Google’s strength in artificial intelligence.

“It’s a different tactic from Google, taking the stance that they want to have that direct relationship with their customers,” he said.

“It is clearly a step into Apple’s world” of controlling hardware and software and services, he added.

Google also showed off a new Daydream View headset into which compatible smartphones can be slipped to serve as screens for virtual reality experiences.

View headsets are made of soft cloth, purportedly inspired by casual clothes. Daydream View bundled with a controller device will be available in November.

Google added to the coming hardware line-up with a modular Wi-Fi system that lets a set of interconnected mini-modems be spread around homes to make signals strong in all spots.

“Unlike a single, central router, multiple Google Wi-Fi points do a better job of delivering connectivity to all parts of the home,” Google executive Mario Queiroz said.

The Internet giant also introduced its Google Home virtual assistant, which will be a direct challenge to popular Amazon Echo devices.

Google described Home as a voice-activated assistant that enables users to tap into the company’s online capabilities to answer questions, manage tasks, control devices in homes, stream videos and more.

“Much like Amazon Echo, Google Home is less a story about a wireless speaker and more about a point of access to a virtual assistant,” IHS Markit senior analyst Paul Erickson said.

“Ultimately, it will be the virtual assistants that are the trump card, and Google Assistant is expected to only grow in superiority to Alexa when it comes to personalisation and everyday usefulness for mainstream users,” he added of Amazon Echo’s voice-activated programme.

Google Home was also synced to work with the freshly unveiled Chromecast Ultra device for streaming high-resolution online video to television screens.

I came to a sobering realisation recently. Quick calculations revealed that by the end of this week, I would have lived with the same man for thirty continuous years. Three decades of going through the ten thousand, nine hundred and fifty shades of life! Together! Now, isn’t that something? 

In fact, on paper it seems much more exciting than it actually is, this living- together-in- marital-bliss kind of balderdash. The term itself is an oxymoron, which means that it is a figure of speech that juxtaposes elements that appear to be contradictory, but contain a concealed point. And the point here is that there is no bliss in matrimony, for the first twenty odd years at least. There are a lot of other things: like laughing, fighting, sulking, appeasing, placating, bickering, joking, crying, arguing, exercising, eating, drinking, reading and so on. But is it all blissful and euphoric? Not by any stretch of the imagination. 

But let me tell all the diehard romantics not to lose heart because after the initial training years, which can stretch from fifteen to twenty, depending on each couple, things become easier. A whole lot easier let me add. And that is because by then we all age gracefully into a state of semi deafness and semi blindness and with this natural decline, we don’t see or hear each other’s faults as clearly as we once did. The result is that we no longer have the compulsive urge to point them out. So if there are no mistakes, there is nothing to correct, and therefore, there is less friction. 

It is precisely at stage that long married couples start resembling each other. Believe me, it’s true. If two people who are living together are amicable all the time — eat the same food, watch the same television serials, listen to the same music, laugh at the same Pammi Aunty jokes — it is but natural that they think alike and begin to look alike too. 

I used to get very perturbed when people in the Gulf countries asked me if my husband and I had a “cousin marriage”. In our culture, marrying your cousin is considered a sacrilege, completely and indisputably. I would get horrified but after replying in the negative I tried to look for physical similarities between my spouse and me. There were none. Outwardly, we were as different as chalk and cheese. 

But of late I started noticing what the strangers must have detected earlier on, that is, our mannerisms have become, sort of, identical. My husband scrunches up his eyes the same way as I do when I don’t understand something. His bout of coughing always culminates in a giant sneeze, like, well, mine. He puts a hand in front of his mouth whenever he is about to utter a white lie, like I do, and he compliments the chef, if he has cooked a good meal, in the exact same fashion, as me. 

“Some people renew their vows on their silver wedding anniversary,” I informed my husband. 

“That is the twenty fifth year,” my spouse stated. 

“We forgot,” I complained. 

“Seven rounds of the holy fire in the Vedic tradition? ” he questioned. 

“Seven rounds of the holy fire,” I repeated. 

“That can be easily remedied,” he said 

“How?” I asked, checking if his hand was in front of his mouth. 

“By making fourteen rounds of the holy fire,” he deadpanned. 

“Seven clockwise and the rest anticlockwise,” I agreed.

AMMAN — “Thirty-Six Interpretations” — the current exhibition which opened at Wadi Finan Art Gallery hosting Jordanian artist Omar Najjar’s first solo exhibition in the Kingdom — runs through October 17. 

Najjar’s latest exhibition is named so since each painting was “treated as an individual work, hence the 36 interpretations in the gallery” whereby the artist’s works mark a new milestone in his career.

His latest exhibit portrays scenes from nature, including “Sunflowers”, “The Beautiful Sea”, “Wet Clothing” as well as the “Wedding Audience”. Najjar’s paintings this time employ a wide variety of delightfully warm colours: strong shades of red, orange, and yellow all mix powerfully to denote a sense of warmth in early Fall. There is no underlying theme. Each painting is different. “I never try to impose any theme. They are personal views of life and vignettes that intrigue me,” Najjar explains, noting that each scene and each experience in life is different. “The way I personally experience each scene gives it a different result.”

In an interview with The Jordan Times, Najjar talks of his evolving work and emphasises that this latest exhibition could be his new self. 

“Each painting is new. I do not try to force a certain style. I explain the scenes I envision. We all experience the same things in a different way, so I try to express how scenes speak to me. I try to isolate each painting and treat it separately,” he said.

“Each time it takes different ways to reflect the core or essence, in terms of colours, shapes, proportion, scaling, mixing, pallet, texture… in other words, I harness whatever skills and emotional energies it takes to reach something we can all relate to.”

The artist says his art employs an expressionist method while trying to reach an objective result. 

“I try to find things of interest that we can all relate to in terms of subjects. Things we experience. I try to find meaning to experiences people live, and I feel people need to feel and understand my work,” Najjar said.

“You will end up with a different result each time: when each painting is treated individually, each has its own soul, and you justify your brushstrokes in following the meaning. The end result is open; it is brought on by the subject matter itself,” he added.

Born in Nablus in 1992, Najjar graduated from Jordan University’s Fine Arts Department. He has been developing his approach for the past few years and specialises in oil painting. He participated in several exhibitions locally and abroad, including Qatar, Lebanon and the UAE. Last year, together with his sister Marwa, they held their first exhibition together under the name “Najjars”.

He explains that what pleased him most about last year’s nearly sold out exhibition was that everyone expressed the same warm feelings. “It gave me pleasure that everyone understood me and the meaning of my artworks. I never impose objectivity on people because my paintings are alive and have lives of their own. Therefore, they will touch each person at a different level in a different way.” 

“Contemporary Expressionism” is the term often used to describe the work of Najjar. Broad brushstrokes hint at a story without giving the details fully. “I do not like to put a label on paintings nor the idea of imposing a technique. I always wondered how one can paint different experiences in the same technique!”

He continues, “I do not reach an objective result. I try to be objective in my subjectivity. It’s always a personal view in trying to reach an objective result. You can never reach an ultimate truth or explanation of a scene, but we try to get closer to it.”

Najjar stressed again that there is no one definition of anything. “I do not agree with trying to give meaning from one aspect only through theme or technique. The end result should not be pre- determined.”

Hence, art enthusiasts have the chance to reflect upon common experiences through his work in “Thirty-Six Interpretations” which continues until October 17 and perhaps add 37 or more interpretations of their own!

WASHINGTON — Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio and US President Barack Obama joined forces on Monday night on the White House lawn, calling for a strong and rapid mobilisation to curb rising worldwide temperatures.

“We are really in a race against time,” said the US president, who has made the fight against global warming a priority of his two-term administration.

Obama’s appearance with DiCaprio, who visited the White House to screen a new documentary, occurred as the Paris agreement on climate change is soon to come into force.

Nearly a decade after his first environmental documentary “The 11th Hour” hit screens, the actor and producer, who won an Oscar earlier this year for his role in “The Revenant”, screened his new climate change flick “Before the Flood”, which includes cameos by Obama and Pope Francis.

The meeting between Obama and DiCaprio took place as part of a festival on the White House lawn, titled South by South Lawn, which is meant to celebrate creativity and innovation and is modelled after the tech, movie and music conference South by Southwest, which is held every year in Austin, Texas.

“Urgent action must be taken,” said DiCaprio, a vocal Democrat, before turning his sights on the US presidential election on November 8.

“If you do not believe in climate change, you do not believe in facts or in science... and, therefore, in my humble opinion you should not be allowed to be in public office,” he said.

The reference was a thinly veiled allusion to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has openly questioned the existence of global warming and the impact human activities have on it.

Obama has long insisted that world leaders take bold steps against global warming, acting against inertia or recalcitrance.

“Climate change is almost perversely designed to be very hard to solve politically,” Obama said.

“The natural inclination of political systems is to put that stuff off as long as possible,” he added.

Obama did, however, warn against a too austere approach, acknowledging that some people had legitimate concerns on the impact of an environmental transition, such as those who can’t afford to buy a low-emission Prius or Tesla.

He also urged against the temptation to wait for revolutionary technological advances before adopting change, noting that an energy transition, by definition, would come bit by bit.

“If we just had the energy efficiency of Japan, we could reduce our energy consumption by 20 per cent,” he said.

The main component of Obama’s “Clean Power Plan”, which requires US power plants to undergo drastic reductions in CO₂ emissions, has been placed on hold as it works its way through the US court system.

Critics of the plan say the restrictions it imposes are too costly, both in terms of implementation and job losses, for regions that live off the production of fossil fuels.

The Paris Agreement on Climate Change — in which Obama was a key player by sealing an agreement with the world’s other biggest polluter, China — is on the verge of entering into force. 

India, the world’s third-largest producer of greenhouse gas, ratified the agreement on Sunday, making it the latest big polluter to formally sign on.

The accord, sealed last December in Paris, needs ratification from 55 countries that account for at least 55 per cent of the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change.

With India’s move, a total of 62 countries accounting for almost 52 per cent of emissions have now ratified the agreement to commit to take action to stem the planet’s rising temperatures.

“I anticipate that this agreement will actually go into force in the next few weeks... much faster than many of us anticipated,” Obama said Monday evening.

The Paris agreement requires all countries to devise plans to achieve the goal of keeping the rise of temperatures within 2^oC  above pre-industrial levels and strive for 1.5^oC  if possible.

Long-expected and first hinted at with the 2003 Kubang concept, Maserati’s first production SUV stormed onto global markets arrived earlier this year and very soon after debuted in Jordan. Named Levante after the notable wind — as is tradition at Maserati — the Italian brand’s SUV certainly has the power and moody charisma to be compared to a force of nature, especially in range-topping Levante S guise as featured here.

Anticipated to significantly expand the Modenese carmaker’s sales and broaden its client base and appeal, it was crucial that Maserati gets it right in terms of character. Given a heritage steeped as much in racing lore as it is a luxury product the Levante succeeds in treading a fine line between a sense of exoticism on the one hand, and real-world accessibility, practicality and ability, on the other.

Dramatic disposition

Dramatic and with a strong sense of occasion about it, the car’s theatrically assertive fascia is strongly inspired by 2014 hungry and menacing Maserati Alfieri coupe concept. Likewise, the Levante is also based on Italian Maserati architecture rather than a Jeep Grand Cherokee platform borrowed from its parent Fiat Chrysler Automobiles group American portfolio, as some erroneously expected after the second Kubang concept was unveiled in 2011. 

Brutally fast and distinctly sporty on-road but unexpectedly capable off-road, the Levante S is built on a shared platform with Ghibli and Quattroporte luxury sports saloon sisters, and features a modified version of the same sophisticated and rear-biased Q4 four-wheel drive system. Predatory and shark-like in appearance, the Levante’s design is focused on a vast, aggressive and dramatic hexagonal grille with prominent trident badge.

Flanked by heavily browed slim headlights with inwardly tilted LED running lights, the Levante’s grille features widely spaced vertical slats, behind which automatically closing radiator slats — that help achieve class-leading CD0.31 aerodynamics — are clearly visible. Featuring a luxuriously long bonnet with sculpted surfacing, prominent wheel arches and rakish roofline, the car’s road-hugging stance and sense of urgency, is complemented with a large tailgate spoiler and quad big bore tailpipes.

Brutal and brisk

A taller and more aggressively proportioned aesthetic relation to the Alfieri concept, both current Levante variants are powered by a Ferrari-built 3-litre direct injection twin-turbo V6 engine. With a significant 79BHP advantage over the entry-level model, the more powerful Levante S develops 424BHP at 5750rpm. Underwriting its urgent power accumulation, the veritable and tsunami of torque of the Levante S peaks at 369lb/ft throughout a broad and flexible 1,750-5,000rpm mid-range plateau.

With broad grippy tyres, tenacious four-wheel  drive, aggressive lower gears and quick-spooling twin-turbos, the Levante S launches off-the-line with brutal vigour. Disdainful of its 2109kg heft, the Levante S rockets through the 0-100km/h sprint in just 5.2 seconds and is capable of a 264km/h top speed, compared to the standard Levante’s 6-second acceleration and 251km/h maximum. Meanwhile, a smooth and responsive 8-speed automatic gearbox allows for relatively modest 10.9l/100km combined fuel efficiency.

Rasping, crackling and growling, the Levante S’ mightier output lends it a peakier and more hard-edged character than the standard model. Driving the 345BHP entry-level Levante, one seems to rely more on its ample mid-range torque. Just as muscular and effortless in mid-range versatility, the car’s more urgent, visceral and volcanic power build-up, however, seems to more noticeably entice one to more aggressively reach for towards it top end.

Tidy composure

Stable, planted and buttoned down on rebound, the Levante S is a natural high-speed cruiser. Aiding its handling precision, ride comfort and cabin refinement is a 20 per cent stiffer structure than the Maserati Ghibli saloon, which also lends its more rugged rigidity to cope with demanding off-road driving. With sophisticated double wishbone front and five-link rear adaptive air suspension, it well-absorbs road imperfections and automatically lowers to a 175mm ride height at speed.

Featuring firmer damper and front anti-roll bar rates than the standard model, the Levante S drives with stiffer and more hard-edged control through switchbacks. Sure-footed with sharper responses and lateral control, it turns in tidily and intently with quick accurate steering. Flatter through corners, the Levante S heroically well-contains its 2.1-tonne weight, with little body role for its segment, and benefits from ideal weight distribution and a low centre of gravity.

Tidy into corner with rear-drive like balance, its sophisticated adaptive Q4 four-wheel drive system sends 100 per cent power in default conditions for agility. Meanwhile, huge 265/45R20 front and 295/40R20 tyres developing huge levels of reassuring roadholding, aided by its Q4 system, which can reapportion up to 50 per cent power frontwards to maintain traction and pullout of corner. Additionally, a mechanical limited-slip rear-differential re-distributes power along the rear axle as needed.

Class and capability

Further aiding cornering agility is an automatic torque vectoring system selectively braking inside wheels through corners. Additional driver assistance systems include stop/go adaptive cruise control, parking assistance, rear and surround view cameras, hill descent control and blind spot, lane departure and forward collision warnings. With hunkered down yet ergonomic driving position, and long high bonnet, a low-set front-facing camera usefully provides enhanced visibility for steep inclines and low speed manoeuvring in tight confines.

Re-distribute power to maintain traction over loose surfaces and steep inclines, the Levante S proved capable on dirt and gravel trails during test drive in Italy. With two air suspension off-road ride height ground clearance rises from 210mm, default, to 247mm to easily traverse deep ruts and rocks, and increase wheel travel and ground contact, while improves approach, departure and ramp angles. Pre-set off-road modes also re-calibrate drive-line and electronic stability systems for off-road driving.

A large luxurious sports SUV, the Levante is refined in both ambiance and quality luxury materials, with classy yet sporty design, intuitive and user-friendly layouts and instrumentation, and extensive personalisation possibilities. Driving position is well-adjustable, supportive and comfortably focused, while rear seat access and head and legroom proved particularly good, even compared to taller more traditional SUVs. Generous equipment levels including heated/ventilated seats, panoramic sunroof, high resolution 8.4-inch touchscreen and Harmon Kardon and Bowers & Wilkins sound systems.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 3-litre, in-line, twin-turbocharged V6 cylinders

Bore x stroke: 86.5 x 84.5mm

Compression: 9.7:1

Valve-train: Chain-driven 24-valve DOHC, direct injection, variable valve timing

Gearbox: 8-speed, automatic, four-wheel drive, self-locking rear-differential

Gear ratios: 1st 4.71; 2nd 3.14; 3rd 2.11; 4th 1.67; 5th 1.28; 6th 1.0; 7th 0.84; 8th 0.67

Reverse/final drive: 3.3/2.8

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 424 (430) [316] @5,750rpm

Specific power: 142.3BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 201BHP/tonne

Torque lb/ft (Nm): 427.8 (580) @1,750-5,000rpm

Specific torque: 194.7Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 275Nm/tonne

Redline: 6,500rpm

0-100km/h: 5.2 seconds

Top speed: 264km/h

Fuel consumption, urban/extra-urban/combined: 15-/8.5-/10.9 litres/100km

CO2 emissions, combined: 253g/km

Length: 5,003mm

Track, F/R: 1,624/1,676mm

Kerb weight: 2,109kg

Suspension, F/R: Double wishbone/multi-link, adjustable air springs

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated, perforated discs, 380 x 34mm/330 x 22mm

Brake callipers, F/R: 6-/1-piston

Tyres, F/R: 265/45R20/295/40R20 (as tested)

NEW YORK — Almost 80 years old, the deodorant Old Spice is learning new tricks for finding customers in the era of smartphones and social media.

The Procter & Gamble product, having spoofed itself for years with advice on how to become more “mantastic”, posts to its 2.6 million Facebook followers a steady stream of video games, prize entries and advertisements as short as two seconds. 

Creating “thumb-stopping” content is the goal, and marketers are doing everything they can to achieve it. That includes using neuroscience to study which visual and audio cues offer the best bet to grabbing and keeping an impatient smartphone user’s attention.

Estimates show that the average person looks at his or her smartphone as much as 150 times a day. The attention is there, but it’s just not long-lived.

“You get the three-second audition,” said Frank Amorese, media director at Heineken USA. “If you are relying on the 14th or 15th second to do the heavy lifting of the ad, it’s not going to work.”

Ever-changing mobile landscape

Advertisers are in a dizzying race to connect with customers as new mobile-borne social media platforms emerge and evolve.

“The landscape changes every six months,” Amorese said. “It’s changing at an increasingly fast rate.”

Digital ad spending is projected to reach $72.1 billion in 2016, growing at a rate of 21 per cent and now comprising almost 37 per cent of the overall market, according to eMarketer. Social media accounts for $15.4 billion of this. 

Heineken has doubled its spending on digital ads to 30 per cent over the last five years.

The dominance of smaller mobile devices has heightened the challenge of capturing the attention of potential shoppers.

Ads must be tailored depending on whether they are being seen on a widescreen television, a tablet or a smartphone and must not demand too much time if a consumer is merely glancing at a feed and not planning on a lengthy stay.

“We have to really identify how do consumers engage with every single platform and then what is the creative experience we need to give them,” said P&G chief brand officer Marc Pritchard at the four-day Advertising Week conference in New York this week.

“But it also has to look like one brand because people have 5,000 ads coming at them every day and that’s 10 times what it was just 10 years ago.”

Measuring ‘sharing velocity’

Anna Fieler, chief marketing officer at PopSugar, a women’s shopping and content site, said marketers are devising benchmarks like “sharing velocity” to monitor resonance.

“Shareability is the gold standard of how engaged people are,” she said. “People like it so much that they want to share it with someone else.”

Not all Ads place the brand front and centre. Frito-Lay, which spends about 40 per cent of its advertising budget on digital media, offers tips on its Facebook feed on professional mentoring and networking, in addition to the usual fare of ads that aim to excite and amuse.

“People are using social media to build their [personal] brand,” said Jeff Klein, vice president of brands and portfolio marketing. Sometimes Frito-Lay just “takes a little bit of a back seat”.

‘Upload videos like crazy’

Much of the buzz at the Advertising Week conference was the wildfire growth of video streaming and broadcast of live events. 

Facebook Vice President Will Platt-Higgins predicted video could comprise 80 per cent of all smartphone content by 2020.

“You’ve got the perfect marriage of basically a supercomputer, which is in your pocket, plus super powerful Wi-Fi, plus a video composer and a high-definition camera,” he said. 

“All of that together creates the perfect storm for all of us to upload videos like crazy and that’s what’s happening.”

The growth of video also opens up new opportunity for rivals like Twitter, which has lagged Facebook in terms of building profits from ads. 

Twitter posted 18 per cent growth in advertising revenue last quarter spurred by video. It is betting that marketers will see more upside in plans for live events in pro football and other sports.

Video “is the number one ad format for us now and it barely existed a year ago”, said Matt Derella, vice president of global revenue and operations at Twitter. “It’s risen extremely fast and it’s driven by consumer behaviour.”

The Shaykh of Shaykhs: Mithqal Al Fayiz and Tribal Leadership in Modern Jordan
Yoav Alon
California: Stanford University Press, 2016
Pp. 224

Mithqal Al Fayiz (1880-1967) is a legend, occupying an important place in Jordan’s early history. He is also a bit of an enigma, and many of his actions seem paradoxical. Though he remained loyal to the Ottomans and didn’t join the Great Arab Revolt led by the Hashemites, he was one of the first tribal leaders to ally himself with Sharif Abdullah Bin Hussein who would become Jordan’s first King. “This alliance formed in the early 1920s was crucial to the process that would lead to the creation of modern Jordan.” (p. 50) 

Also in the 1920s, he initiated contacts with the Zionist movement, but then supported the 1936-39 Palestinian Revolt and enjoyed good relations with Hajj Amin Al Husseini. There are many other examples of his shifting alliances and manoeuvres to play one party out against the other. (Perhaps the only constant was his opposition to British control of the territory he called home, and he repeatedly outsmarted British colonial officers.)

It might seem difficult to make sense of Mithqal’s contradictory stances in order to weave a coherent narrative of his life, but in this biography, Yoav Alon does so elegantly and logically, based on a nuanced view of history and detailed knowledge of Jordan’s history in particular. To Alon, Mithqal was quite rational and principled if one views him through the lens of what was expected of a tribal leader in his times. Serving from 1921 until his 1967 death as the paramount shaykh of the Bani Sakhr, the strong tribal confederation which once moved between southern Syria, central Jordan and Wadi Sirhan, Mithqal was responsible for the welfare and status of a very large community, and he took this quite seriously. His actions were guided by the imperatives of ensuring his and his followers’ prosperity and autonomy, which could be difficult when drought, taxes and the decline of raiding and camels’ value threatened the tribes with poverty. 

Mithqal was not alone in soliciting support from diverse quarters in the pre-state days of shifting authorities and competing versions of nationalism. “The shaykhs’ simultaneous dealings with rival forces earned them a reputation as shameless mercenaries and unscrupulous opportunists… What was erroneously condemned as greediness provides a poor explanation for the behaviour of Mithqal and the other shaykhs. In fact, the shaykhs conformed to the structure and dynamics of tribal society and politics and were busy accumulating economic resources to sustain their leadership… [Their] main ideology remained their loyalty to their families, tribes, and confederacies.” (p. 40-1) 

Other seemingly contradictory aspects of Mithqal’s life simply echo Jordan’s evolution from a predominantly rural, nomadic society to an increasingly modern, urbanised one, governed by a centralised state. While living his early life in a mobile desert encampment, by 1922 Mithqal was the biggest landowner in Jordan. Whereas the Bani Sakhr originally scorned farming, much of his land was cultivated, especially at his Umm Al ‘Amad farm. After marrying into a prominent Amman family, the Khayrs, he maintained a residence in the city for his wife, in order to attend to the governmental affairs in which he was increasingly involved. 

Mithqal first rose to prominence due to his exceptional skills at leading raids, but was later a chief enforcer of Emir Abdullah’s successful campaign to end raiding. In the course of his life, he fulfilled many other functions required of a sheikh in changing times: generous host, mediator, judge, intermediary between the tribes and the government, Legislative Council member, etc. Throughout, Alon highlights his great adaptability, especially notable in a man who remained illiterate. Other qualities, often the same ones that had made him a successful raid leader, were more crucial: courage, charisma, honour, planning, shrewd calculations and creating consensus rather than giving orders. He was a force to be reckoned with, living up to his name: “Mithqal in Arabic means weight or gravitas — and he was indeed a heavyweight!” (p. 6)

Alon is senior lecturer in Middle East History at Tel Aviv University, and this is his second book on Jordan, following “The Making of Jordan: Tribes, Colonialism, and the Modern State” (2009). He acknowledges the help of many people in his research and writing. Perhaps most interesting to Jordanians is his thanks to Al Fayiz family for their full cooperation and “for not trying to influence the way I wrote about their founder… The best part of the research was always in Jordan.” (pp. x-xi)

In telling Mithqal’s story, Alon strikes a delicate balance between empathy and objectivity. His account is entertaining, full of anecdotes and fascinating personal, political and sociological details. Particularly intriguing is the chapter on Mithqal’s home life — how guests were received in tent or diwan, how multiple wives coexisted or didn’t, how his Amman house differed from his Umm Al ‘Amad headquarters, etc. Though backed up by extensive scholarly sources (English, Arabic and Israeli), at times Alon’s telling of Mithqal’s life reads like a legend or romantic adventure — a Jordanian version of King Arthur and his knights with a dash of Robin Hood mixed in.

HONG KONG — Want to improve your performance at work, or solve relationship problems? Li Chau-jing has the solution — plucking your eyebrows to help achieve those life goals.

A trained face reader, Li has taken the ancient Chinese tradition one step further, making slight changes to her client’s brows to bring them better luck.

Stalls practising the face-reading discipline, which dates back more than 2,000 years, are still found in market streets and near temples in modern-day Hong Kong. 

Practitioners believe they can determine a client’s fate by interpreting their features — a strong brow translates to the person’s ability to plan ahead, high cheekbones can point to power.

The face can be read like a book, they say, a showcase of a person’s wealth, health and family.

But Li claims she can help alter the path of destiny with a few flicks of her tweezers. 

“It’s an instant change and you can change it for everyone,” she told AFP, describing her clientele as ranging from just a few years old to in their 70s.

“I can help a person in the shortest amount of time, by bringing them energy and happiness and the goal they want to reach,” Li said.

Wearing a long white dress with a ruffled high collar and purple polka-dots, the former make-up artist says she has studied the art of face reading with a mentor. 

She has been running her shop in the working-class neighbourhood of Sham Shui Po for six years and its walls are covered with photos of her clients’ eyes and brows.

Women tend to come to her to solve emotional or relationship problems, men for better luck at work, she says.

Li, who refused to give her age but said she has worked for 43 years, believes straight brows will bring more luck and happiness than curved.

“If the brows are very straight, then those people will not have to suffer through many hardships,” she says. 

Customer Edward Lam, a 35-year-year old technician for a television station, said he felt more energetic after having his brows modified.

“The biggest goal I have for fixing my eyebrows is to find jobs and to have better networking, and that my career will improve,” Lam told AFP.

“I believe that the impression I gave was better,” he said of job interviews since having his brows worked on by Li.

Traditional Hong Kong face reader Chow Hon-ming says the art is a scientific discipline that ties in with some of the tenets of traditional Chinese medicine. 

Face reading has been practised in China for thousands of years but became a popular practise in the 10th century because the social upheaval in the dying days of the Tang Dynasty prompted many to worry more about their fate, Chow said.

“There are turning points in a person’s life, and when you can’t make a decision at those points, you might want to seek a [face reading] master,” Chow said.

A face reader starts with the left ear, which tells the story of the first seven years of a person’s life. The right ear reflects the next seven years, followed by the nose, eyes and chin, which are used to predict later life.

Different parts of the face also represent different topics.

A jutting chin and a squarish jaw mean a person will have power as they get older, while large exposed nostrils mean they are bad at saving money.

“The nose represents wealth, just look at [actor] Jackie Chan’s nose, it is very big,” says Chow, who also predicted Hillary Clinton to win the US presidential election as her chin is “stronger” than rival Donald Trump’s. 

Chow said tweaking features like eyebrows could give fortunes a short-term boost — but warned against making drastic changes, describing plastic surgery as potentially doing more harm than good.

While some may prefer eyebrow-plucking Li’s proactive approach, others are happy to stick to tradition. 

Dozens of packed stalls next to Hong Kong’s popular Wong Tai Sin Temple offer face reading to thousands of worshippers and tourists visiting the religious hot spot.

SAN FRANCISCO — BlackBerry has joined Yahoo, Nokia and other technology industry stars felled by an Internet age in which companies are forced to evolve quickly or perish.

Canadian-based BlackBerry announced Wednesday it would halt in-house production of smartphones, marking the end of an era for the once-dominant handset producer.

Originally known as Research in Motion, the company earned a dedicated following of "CrackBerry" addicts and introduced millions to the smartphone.

But, its luster faded with the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 and the large number of low-costs Android handsets that followed. 

BlackBerry travelled a road well-worn. 

Finland's Nokia, once the world's largest mobile phone maker, has seen its smartphone business go up in smoke as well.

Internet pioneer Yahoo recently inked a deal to sell its core business to US telecommunications firm Verizon after years of struggling in vain to revive growth in an online search market usurped by Google.

"What they have in common is that they haven't reacted well to rapid change from their original positions," said Endpoint Technologies Associates analyst Roger Kay. "Tech has high velocity."

The tech sector is young and fast-moving in an Internet culture that praises "disruption" and "revolution" of industries and lifestyles.

Among mottos found on the walls of leading social network Facebook is "Move fast and break things."

Smartphones themselves have become seemingly indispensible, with people typically replacing handsets every year or two in order to have the newest features or capabilities.

Resting on laurels 

Changing to capitalise on a new trend can be daunting for companies comfortable with products that keep revenue flowing for the moment.

"It reminds me of all those old singers going to Las Vegas to do whatever it is they do when they should really have just stopped," Kay said of tech companies sticking with what early hits.

"Everybody wants to do an encore and get paid again."

When Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, some critiques questioned why the California company was "cannibalising" its successful line of iPods.

The iPhone became a global sensation, and a main driver of stellar profit for Apple.

Kay noted that when Yahoo ruled Internet search it became clear their model was under attack by a newcomer called Google.

Yahoo may not have seen the threat, or may have blinded itself to the need for change because its old business model continued to pump revenue, according to Kay.

And while there are individual specifics underlying the downfall of incumbent mobile phone titans, they all faced the sudden and simultaneous rise of two powerhouses.

Apple disrupted smartphones and lifestyles with its iPhone, and Google fired back with an Android mobile operating system that any consumer electronics maker was free to use.

The Google and Apple one-two punch was enough to essentially "pivot" a smartphone market that incumbents thought was too stable to rattle, according to independent Silicon Valley analyst Rob Enderle.

"None of the big firms were prepared to deal with it," Enderle said of two companies new to the smartphone scene fuelling a revolution.

Unlike the birth of search engine Google on a young and growing Internet, mobile phones were an existing market that incumbents felt they knew well and were "completely taken aback by the combination of Apple and Google", according to Enderle.

Reinvention 

Veteran technology firms being overtaken by newcomers is not necessarily inevitable, if established companies have the wit and courage to re-invent themselves, adapting to survive.

Analyst Kay noted IBM, a century-old technology company that has embraced transformation time and again, even shedding products along the way.

Computer chip giant Intel shifted its focus to microprocessors for mobile devices to adapt to how Internet-connected devices were evolving.

Apple itself was a computer company on the brink of bankruptcy when it staked its future on iPods and iPhones in a winning move that made it one of the most profitable companies on the planet.

The future is a question mark for Microsoft, once the world's largest company, which has fallen behind Apple and Google as the PC industry declines and which is refocusing on enterprise services.

But reinvention is not a cure-all, and needs ongoing commitment to change along with vision of where markets are heading.

IBM now seems tangled in endless restructuring, with revenue declining for more than four years; Intel continues to struggle to find the kind of success it had with big computer chips.

Analysts have taken to wondering whether Apple itself has become too dependent on the iPhone, and is taking too long to come up with "the next big thing".

Each trade, each specialty has its own jargon, but Information Technology (IT) is particularly good at introducing new terms all the time, challenging you to keep learning relentlessly, at the risk of being quickly outpaced if you don’t. Words that apparently are ordinary vocabulary suddenly have new meaning.

Most everybody now knows that in the world of IT the word cloud is not “a visible mass of condensed water vapour floating in the atmosphere” but refers to the Web or the Internet. Big data, on the other hand, is a relatively new inception in the field, has a very specific meaning, and is not just a vague word about the size of the information stored digitally.

Big data refers to the huge amounts of data that, because precisely of the quantity, make it possible, thanks to their analysis, to extract and obtain conclusions, decisions, patterns and results that would be meaningless or impossible to obtain or reach with smaller amounts of data.

Big data examples are the entire population of a country, the army of a superpower, the clients base of a multinational bank or corporation. It could be the huge database of subscribers to a social network such as Facebook, LinkedIn and the like, or the patrons of Amazon giant online shop, or the subscribers to Google’s gigantic Gmail service. On the other hand the database of your local country club members does not exactly qualify as big data, understandably. It really has to be tens of millions or even billions to qualify.

Analysing big data, typically with advanced mathematics, lets researchers and scientists develop methods and reach decisions that can lead to concrete action. The scope of applications is extremely wide and we have only seen the tip of the iceberg so far.

It could be for straightforward commercial purpose; for example to better understand customer trends, taste, needs, purchasing patterns and behaviour, so as to come up with more efficient advertising and in the end to achieve higher sales and profit.

When medical big data is shared between a large number of hospitals and laboratories across several countries — an increasingly common process these days — is analysed, it could lead to finding cures and medicine for diseases. The “bigger” the data and the higher the probability to reach concrete, tangible results.

Only modern networks and fast server computer structures make the collection of big data possible, which is why it was not such a hot subject 10 or 15 years ago. And yes, the cloud is a major contributor to the global big data effort; it is an integral part of the process.

Data mining, another typical IT expression, is one aspect of using big data. It consists of analysing big data but with a very specific purpose in mind, not a general one. It could be, for instance, searching for the occurrence of the text “audio CD” in e-mails, studying the frequency of occurrence, the country of the senders, their age, their gender, and so forth, for marketing purposes. In other instances it could help the authorities fight crime and terrorism, by analysing emails or messages exchanged over social networks and searching for specific, meaningful keywords.

The more the world is connected, the bigger big data will become and the more significant the results of their analyses.

Some will see in this the dreaded aspect of the Big Brother notion, whereas others will see better business, more efficient scientific research, improved healthcare and human communication. It all depends on what you do with it and who is doing it. One thing is certain, collecting, using and analysing big data make it a very powerful tool.