In psychology, Stockholm Syndrome is a term used to describe a real paradoxical phenomenon wherein hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors; sometimes to the point of defending them. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors as an act of kindness. – (Wikipedia)

I believe that regime supporters are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. What’s worse is that Yemenis do receive abuse from the regime, yet they continue supporting its sweet torment.

EXHIBIT 1:

The supposedly uncoordinated spontaneous ‘celebration’ of the survival of Yemen’s benevolent dictator after suffering serious injuries in an assassination attempt on June 3rd.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1BoR8Y6Jps

The outrageous display of jubilation by Saleh supporters resulted in scores of injuries and deaths across the city as the multi-caliber offerings of gratitude were rejected by the heavens and bullets of joy rained on regime supporters and protesters alike. With near complete absence of law enforcement and a functioning justice system, victims of the celebration have no recourse for the damages they’ve suffered enjoyed.

EXHIBIT 2:

A barefooted child laborer (likely homeless) selling lemons at traffic stops in the capitol city of Sana’a while wearing a clip-on that translates into “Joyous be a people who have you as their leader”. In proper English, the sign says “We’re lucky to have you, Mr. President.”

It’s probably relevant to note that Yemen is near the bottom of almost every category of the United Nations Human Development Index. Nearly 50% of the population lives on less than $2 a day, with over a Million children who have to work to stay alive. 43% of children under 5 are malnourished and 52% of the population live without access to proper water sources. (UNDP 2010 Yemen Report)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKOGIcXjKyg

After 33 years of Saleh’s rule, it’s understandable why some people feel a sense of panic and impending loss as the revolution rages on and Saleh’s ouster is all but certain. Much like a kidnap victim raised in captivity, Yemenis have grown accustomed to the tuna sandwiches that Saleh gave them as they raised his rape-children in the locked basement of his kind benevolence.

Yemenis can’t imagine life without Saleh because their long years in captivity to his regime have taught them that the only reason they’re alive, and eating tuna, is because he lets them live.

Your World Today has been following the development of Masdar City since the project’s announcement in 2007 (See Post 1 and Post 2 for background). Below is an animated video that explains the vision. Many are likening the Masdar initiative to The Venus Project.

Next week, I will be joining meetings between Masdar officials and Nova Scotia’s Department of Environment. Mirroring the aspirations of Abu Dhabi, Nova Scotia is already a North American leader in sustainable waste management, with composting rates at 200% the Canadian average, and near 100% of residents having access to curbside collection of paper, food, and recyclable waste. Nova Scotia’s Waste management experts, together with stakeholders from academia, government, and industry, are working to create an international Waste Resource Management Institute right here in Nova Scotia. The institute’s mandate will be to share the province’s expertise with the world to promote sustainable, community-driven environmental initiatives.

Similarly, Phase 1 of Masdar City included plans for a world-class institute of science and technology with a focus on graduate-level research in clean energy and green technologies. So where are those plans now? I’m happy to report that the institute was the first building to be completed in Masdar City, and the first cohort of 88 students (selected from a pool of 1200 applicants from 22 Countries) commenced their studies in the Fall of 2009 as the first residents of Masdar City! The Masdar Institute is operated in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Masdar Institute

Another plan for Phase 1 of Masdar City was to power the construction phase using renewable energy sources. In June of 2009, a $50M Solar power plant came online to power the construction of Masdar City. The 10 Megawatt plant occupies 55 acres and is the largest photovoltaic system in the MENA region. The plant was designed and built by Enviromena: a young UAE-based company whose four founding members are all Canadian!

And before I conclude this update, I will leave you with a video demonstration of the driver-less, track-less electric cars that will be the main mode of transportation in Masdar City’s ULTra – PRT system (Urban Light Transit – Personal Rapid Transit). The system is developed and implemented by 2getthere, a company based in the Netherlands.

Engadget reports that the company behind this innovative solution, Shenzen Hashi Future Car-Parking Equipment Co. Ltd., will commence building its first 186 km of track in Beijing’s Mentougou District. Below is a demo video presented by Hashi’s Chairman Song Youzhou.

Translation is below the video, provided courtesy of China Hush.

Translation:

What you can see from the video is traffic jams, what you can hear is noise, and there is also invisible air pollution. At present, there are mainly 4 types of public transits in China: subway, light-rail train, BRT, and normal bus. They have advantages and disadvantages, for example, subway costs a lot and takes long time to build; BRT takes up road spaces and produces noises as well as pollution to the air. How to develop environmental-friendly public transportation? Straddling bus provides a solution. Let’s watch a demonstration.

The straddling bus combines the advantages of BRT, it is also a substitution for BRT and subway in the future. As you all know, the majority vehicle on the road is car, the shortest vehicle is also car. Normally our overpass is 4.5-5.5 m high. The highlight innovation of straddling bus is that it runs above car and under overpass. Its biggest strength is saving road spaces, efficient and high in capacity. It can reduce up to 25-30% traffic jams on main routes. Running at an average 40 km/h, it can take 1200 people at a time, which means 300 passengers per cart.

Another strength of straddling bus is its short construction life cycle: only 1 year to build 40 km. Whereas building 40-km subway will take 3 years at best. Also the straddling bus will not need the large parking lot that normal buses demand. It can park at its own stop without affecting the passage of cars. This is what the interior looks like: it has huge skylight that will eliminate passengers’ sense of depression when enter.

There are two parts in building the straddling bus. One is remodeling the road, the other is building station platforms. Two ways to remodel the road: we can go with laying rails on both sides of car lane, which save 30% energy; or we can paint two white lines on both sides and use auto-pilot technology in the bus, which will follow the lines and run stable.

There are also two ways in dealing with station platform. One is to load/unload through the sides; the other is using the built-in ladder so that passengers can go up and to the overpass through the ceiling door.

Straddling bus is completely powered by municipal electricity and solar energy system. In terms of electricity, the setting is called relay direct current electrification. The bus itself is electrical conductor, two rails built on top to allow the charging post to run along with the bus, the next charging post will be on the rails before the earlier one leaves, that is why we call it relay charging. It is new invention, not available yet in other places.

The set here is super capacitor, a device that can charge, discharge and store electricity quickly. The power it stores during the stop can support the bus till the next stop where another round of charging takes place, achieving zero toxic gas throughout the process.

About the ultrasonic waves put forth from the end of the bus, that is to keep those high cars or trucks away from entering the tunnel. Using laser ray to scan, cars get too close to the passage will activate the alarm on the bus end. Inside the bus, there are turning lights that indicate a the bus is intending to make a turn to warn the cars inside. Also radar scanning system is embedded on the walls to warn cars from getting too close to the bus wheels.

Nowadays many big cities have remodeled their traffic signaling system, to prioritize public buses, that is to say when a bus reaches a crossing, red light on the other side of the fork will turn on automatically to give buses the right of way. Our straddling bus can learn from this BRT method. The car can make the turn with the bus if that is the direction it wants to go too; if not, the red light will be on to stop the cars beneath while the bus take the turn.

The bus is 6 m in width and 4-4.5 m high. How will people get off the bus if an accident happens to such a huge bus? Here I introduce the most advanced escaping system in the world. In the case of fire or other emergencies, the escaping door will open automatically. I believe many of you have been on a plane. Planes are equipped with inflated ladder so people can slide down on it in emergency. I put the escaping concept into the straddling bus. It is the fastest way to escape.

The bus can save up to 860 ton of fuel per year, reducing 2,640 ton of carbon emission. Presently we have passed the first stage demonstration and will get through all of the technical invalidation by the end of August. Beijing’s Mentougou District is carrying out a eco-community project, it has already planned out 186 km for our straddling bus. Construction will begin at year end.

Thank you.

On April 8, Apple revealed version 4.0 of the iPhone’s operating system, marking their latest major upgrade to the revolutionary device that redefined the smart-phone competitive landscape.

An iPhone app displaying an HTC banner ad using the traditional ad delivery model we see on all current smart phones.

The new upgrade brings a number of features (over 100) that iPhone and iPad users and application developers have been yearning for. New features include multitasking, having a choice between individual email inboxes or a unified inbox, and the ability to organize your home screen apps into folders. OS 4 will be available to users in the summer of 2010.

For users of VoIP apps like Skype, new multitasking will allow VoIP apps to work in the background while you use your iPhone for other things, and even when your phone is off! This means that your VoIP call will ring through like a regular telephone call.

For Skype users who make international calls using free calling over WIFI (like me!), this feature finally provides true phone cloning and removes the issue of not being able to make or receive on-demand calls to/from your Skype contacts because their application is not turned on.

To people in the online/mobile ad business, a more exciting and trend-setting feature is Apple’s new mobile advertising platform: iAd. Below is Apple’s description of the iAd platform:

iAd, Apple’s new mobile advertising platform, combines the emotion of TV ads with the interactivity of web ads. Today, when users click on mobile ads they are almost always taken out of their app to a web browser, which loads the advertiser’s webpage. Users must then navigate back to their app, and it is often difficult or impossible to return to exactly where they left. iAd solves this problem by displaying full-screen video and interactive ad content without ever leaving the app, and letting users return to their app anytime they choose. iPhone OS 4 lets developers easily embed iAd opportunities within their apps, and the ads are dynamically and wirelessly delivered to the device. Apple will sell and serve the ads, and developers will receive an industry-standard 60 percent of iAd revenue.

With iAd, Apple once again proves their dominance in the area of providing game-changing innovations to the market place. This new way of delivering ads within mobile applications is poised to improve click-through rates for advertisers, and will become the new standard that other mobile platforms (Blackberry, Android, Symbian, etc.) have to measure up against when delivering ad content through their applications. No longer will it be acceptable to kick the user out of the app they’re using whenever they click on an ad!

The iAd also provides Apple with a new revenue stream, marking the company’s entry into ad serving. Together with iTunes and the new iBooks store, iAd is yet another bold step in Apple’s strategy of vertical integration.

Additional information on the OS 4 can be found in Apple’s press release. In the video below, Steve Jobs demonstrates some of the features mentioned of the new operating system.

Every day at 3 p.m. there will be a So You Think You Can Dance competition. And at 5 p.m. is a Fastest Feet Competition, to see who can generate the most energy by moving their feet. On Friday and Saturday nights at 8 p.m. local b-girls and b-boys will spark one-on-one break-dance battles on the energy-generating floor. Throughout the Games, Club Energy will be measuring which country is able to generate the most power by dancing in the BC Power Smart Dance Challenge.

The Toyota TVC below features an animated showcase of the technology.

Your World Today reported on SDC’s invention in early 2008. The world’s first sustainable dance floor was installed at Club ‘WATT’ in Rotterdam – Holland. Through successful collaboration with the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands, WATT sports the world’s first ‘Piezo-electricity’ dance floor. The dance floor harvests energy from the vibrations created by dancing clubbers and uses it to power the club’s own LED lighting.

The dance floor is not the only sustainable aspect of Club WATT. Dutch architect Henk Döll is the visionary behind the club’s design, and has creatively integrated the latest innovations in sustainability to reduce the use of energy and water and decrease waste production. He is a founding partner of project SDC (Sustainable Dance Club) along with ENVIU. The project aims to ‘green dance clubs worldwide’.

Old Spice (Procter & Gamble) is continuing to reposition their brand, aiming straight at the Axe (Unilever) target market. What’s clever is that it uses the ‘Old’ from its previous image to inspire its new image by implying that it is ‘more real’.

Unlike Axe commercials, which target men with fantasies of sexual conquest, this Old Spice commercial targets women… with fantasies of the man they wish they had.

The commercial was created by the Portland Office of Wieden & Kennedy. I say they hit a home run with this one!

[Spotted at ViralBlog.com]

Below is the report that was issued by the initiative to carry the voices of Yemeni youth to participants of the international summit on Yemen that was held in London, UK, on January 27.The report is titled “Combating Terrorism in Yemen — A Youth Perspective”. You can download an English or Arabic version of the report by clicking the appropriate image.

Midman International supported the initiative through consultations on campaigning, social media, and PR activities. A Facebook group was established and (within 10 days) became the largest Yemen-related group on the popular social networking site. Press releases were issued in English and Arabic, and were published on 7 news websites and three print newspapers.

An organized youth campaign beat the Yemeni government and was first to receive an official and comprehensive statement (in video!) from the British Secretary of State, Ivan Lewis, regarding Britain’s intent from the summit on Yemen called for by UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkOk-gX7LrM

With increased attention on Yemen (following the failed 2009 Christmas Day bombing attempt of a US plane over Detroit), organizers of the initiative believe that discussions about combating terrorism in Yemen are missing a key partner. Since 70% of Yemen’s population are under the age of 25, there is a good argument that involving youth representatives is more than just good politics.

“When was the last time you heard of a 50-year old suicide bomber?” said Rafat Al-Akhali, the Canadian-based founder of the initiative. “Any serious discussions about tackling terrorism should always involve youth representatives from the problem regions.”

90 per cent of the September 11 hijackers were under the age of 30. The shoe bomber was 28 when apprehended, and the Christmas bomber is 23. The data overwhelmingly points to youth being the key target demographic for terrorist/jihad recruiters.

The report was delivered to The Yemen Forum at Chatham House, a center for international studies in London, the US Embassy in Yemen, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, as well as a number of local and international NGO’s and journalists/researchers interested in Yemen. The report was also sent to officials in the Yemeni government who showed their interest and support for this initiative.

An interview about the initiative was published by the Yemen Times and can be viewed here.

Utilizing YouTube tags and annotations, the company did not only succeed in engaging its website visitors in a very unique way, but it was also able to gain tremendous viral reach as the new site/video propelled it to being one of the top five viral videos on the internet for the week of June 12-19 (Viral Blog rankings).

Check out the video below, or go to BooneOakley.com to see it.

Questions about tourism security in Yemen are misinformed at best. Brazil and Colombia have the highest rates of kidnappings in the world, yet that’s not the first  picture that pops to mind when thinking about an exotic vacation to Rio.

2008 Carnival in Rio de Janeiro (Attrib: Photo by sfmission.com provided on flickr under CC attribution license)

Research by the London-based ‘Control Risks Group‘ shows that between 1992 to 2000, only 52 people were reported as ‘kidnapped’ in Yemen. That’s about 6 people a year during the height of the kidnapping era in Yemen back in the 90′s.*

During the same 8 years, Colombia reported 5300 kidnappings, and Brazil reported 521. That’s an average of 2 people EVERY DAY in Colombia, and 65 people kidnapped annually in Brazil. The USA had 155 reported kidnappings, nearly 3 times the number of people kidnapped in Yemen during the same period.*

What’s worse is that since the year 2000, Yemen’s rate of kidnapping has steadily declined, while Brazil and Colombia went up. In  2003, Colombia averaged 10* kidnappings per day!

Yemen is the Biblical land of the Queen of Sheba, and purported ‘Cradle of Humanity’.  Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t want to check out scantly clad Brazilians in fantastic costumes parading the streets of Rio to hot Latin music during carnival. But please don’t raise your eye brow when you (or someone you know) are considering a visit to Yemen.

Just remember that on any given day, you are a thousand times more likely to be the victim of violence in Rio than you would be in Sana’a, the capitol city of Yemen.

(Concert infront of the old city in Sana'a, Yemen)

Here is a video from a tourist’s recent visit to Yemen. I found this on YouTube and it is the only video I have seen so far that captures the ‘essence’ of Sana’a like no doctored tourism video has ever been able to: the people, the noise, the architecture, the dust, the customs, the smell, and the utter simplicity wrapped in cultural complexity.

(* Source: “Meeting the Challenges of Global Terrorism” – Dilip K. Das, Peter C. Kratcoski, 2003.)

Daniel McCann (Photo Credit: Saskatchewan Business Journal)

Daniel McCann wants to revolutionize the current online payment process used by millions of online shoppers when conducting online credit card transactions. During a telephone interview from his office in Regina, Saskatchewan, the 29 years-old inventor and entrepreneur told Your World Today that his new device has the potential of making the role of third-party security verification (Payment Gateways) obsolete.

And he should know what he is talking about. He was 26 when he first came up with the idea of a personal credit card reader; a fresh graduate of the University of Regina with a Bachelor degree in Computer Science. He entered his idea in a business plan competition sponsored by the Regina municipal government (called Progress2Capital) and placed in the top 10. He tried again the following year and won the first place prize of $10,000 in cash plus $5,000 in legal services. This was all the start-up capital he had to convert his idea from dream to reality.

A short three years later, and at age 29, Daniel is the President of a new technology company that employs 15 full-time employees. His invention is a patented reality, and is being sold online and through retail stores in Regina. He plans to offer the device in stores across Canada by mid to late summer of 2009.

I ask Daniel about his ‘big idea’, hoping that he would share his long-term vision of re-inventing the processing of online credit card transactions, and how the new process will cut the middleman out of the equation (Payment Gateways). He obliges.

‘Payment Gateways’ are companies that are used by online shops to process online purchases made by credit cards. The extra encryption and transaction verification (that Payment Gateways provide) is required by banks and credit card companies to accept transactions from online shops because the credit card information is entered by consumers on a website by hand, which makes the transaction less secure than if the credit card was ‘swiped’ at a point of sale (POS) terminal (e.g. : a retail store or restaurant transaction). When you pay for your bill with a credit card at a restaurant, the conventional store’s credit card reader retrieves the card’s information directly from the magnetic strip on the card and transmits it electronically to the merchant’s bank.

If Payment Gateways can be avoided, merchants and customers can save on transaction costs for shopping online by eliminating the percentage that the middlemen (gateways) charge on each sale to allow the use of credit cards on a website. This can translate into lower product prices for consumers, or higher margins for online merchants.

That vision will have to wait until enough people adopt the new portable device that he has invented in order to justify to merchants why they should go through the trouble of offering it as a payment option. If the technology becomes main stream, that will also convince banks and credit card processors to accept transaction info coming directly from a SmartSwipe device.

If that vision becomes reality, the impact on personal online shopping will be monumental. With the savings on transaction fees that online merchants can achieve by skipping the Payment Gateways, SmartSwipe can position itself as the next PayPal of the world.

For now, however, using the device allows online shoppers to automatically and securely fill the credit card fields in any existing online shopping transaction page. It is marketed as a safer alternative to entering credit card information manually on websites while shopping online.

The SmartSwipe website  gives a good list of potential risks to watch for when shopping online. This personal/portable credit card reader allows the online shopper to avoid entering credit card information manually by swiping the card using the USB-connected SmartSwipe device. The information is then encrypted using the same encryption technology required by banks, and transferred directly into the appropriate credit card fields on the website where the shopper is conducting the transaction.

Daniel was kind enough to send Your World Today a demo unit. I tested the SmartSwipe with a couple of online credit card purchases and  everything worked as advertised. The software didn’t activate automatically when testing a credit card transaction on Firefox (version 3.0.8), but worked without glitches in Internet Explorer (version 7.0.6).

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this article, where Daniel McCann shares with YWT readers the journey of his invention from idea to reality, and provides valuable advice to similar entrepreneurs about patenting, raising capital, product design, and how online social networking played a crucial part in the invention process.