Emirates ID Schedule

Update 12 Jan 2012: -

The application of late fee for expatriates (above 15 years) will be implemented in four phases:

Phase 1: From December 1, 2011

Includes all expatriates in the Northern Emirates: Fujairah, Ras Al Khaimah, Umm Al Quwain and Ajman, in addition to all employees in the federal and local public sectors and semi-government organisations and their families

Phase 2: Ffrom february 1, 2012

Includes all expatriates in the Emirate of Sharjah

Phase 3: From April 1, 2012

Includes all expatriates in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi

Penalties

•The Ministerial Decision No. 25 of 2011 stipulates a penalty of Dh20 per day up to a maximum of Dh1,000 for the following offences:

•Delay in registration or issuance of identity cards, for all categories and age groups

•Delay in renewing ID cards, for all categories and ages (effective 30 days from expiry of the card)

•Delay in reporting any change or modification in the cardholder's personal data or incidents, for all categories and age groups (after 30 days from the date of the change)

•October 31, 2011 will be the deadline for renewing all identity cards expiring up to that date. Any cardholder across the UAE, with the exception of children under 15 years, has 30 days to renew the card from the date of expiry.

Phase 4: From June 1, 2012

Includes all expatriates in the Emirate of Dubai

The board also directed to collect the late fee from anyone across the UAE over the age of 15, applying for a residence.

The following is the schedule issued by Emirates ID Authority for the UAE citizens to register for the ID by end of 2008.

Emirates ID for Group 1

Registration Period - 1 January 2009 – 28 February 2009

Categories - Residents working for Government Sector (Federal and Local Government) and their family members.

Professional residents working for the Private Sector and their family members, including, Holders of Diploma Degree and Higher

Workers in the following fields: - Consultancy, Medical, pharmaceutical, Nursing, Engineering, Media, Marketing, journalism, PRO, IT and Computers, Teaching and Training, Accounting and Auditing, Investments, Law, Sales, and trade license owners.

Emirates ID for Group 2Registration Period - 1 March 2009 – 18 June 2009 –
Categories - Administrative and Craft working residents in the Private Sector and their families, including workers in the following field:

All Crafts according to Ministry of Labour categorizations, Oil, Gas, Industrial, Banks, Insurance, Tourism, Hotel and restaurant industries, shipping, typing, translation and secretaries, storekeepers, receptionists, athletes and students.

Emirates ID for Group 3
Registration Period - 20 June 2009 – 30 September 2009
Categories - Unskilled working Residents, in the Private Sector and their families, including:
Housemaid/Servants, cleaners, Farmers, Fishermen, Private and Public transport drivers, security guards, watchmen, and all other unannounced working fields

Emirates ID for Group 4
Registration Period - 1 October 2009 – 30 December 2010
Categories - Construction Workers in Private Field.

Ensure you book your online appointment now for Emirates ID

Only 11 Cars Abandoned

As per the Lieutenant-General Dhahi Khalfan Tamim, Chief of Dubai Police, a total of only 11 cars have been abandoned at the Dubai International Airport. He has denied that many people are abandoning their cars at the Airport amid the economic crises and fleeing the country. The news became popular post an article published in The Times Online, stating that, there were 3000 cars abandoned at the Dubai International Airport.
The article in The Times only has the confirmation of the abandoning of cars from an unofficial source. As per article published in The Times, the following has been quoted, “Every day we find more and more cars,” said one senior airport security official, who did not want to be named.”

The UK based newspaper article has been criticized by the General, saying that, “reporter contributed to spreading a rumour that many people are greedy, envious and resentful about the economic growth of Dubai”.

Dubai New Year Parties Cancelled

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has ordered cancellation of all the New Year Celebrations in Dubai. This decision has been taken due to latest fight at the Gaza strip between Palestine and Israel. Check out this news posted on the official website of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum declaring the cancellation of the celebrations.

Social Media Measurement Bubble

Further to the previous post on Social Media Measurement, the six steps can be combined into the following model:- 1. Attention/Analytics: Standard web metrics as mentioned in the previous post, are applicable to websites as well.
2. Participation/Reaction: This indicates the extent to which users’ engage themselves with the content on a particular platform. The engagement can be in the form of comments, scraps, posts, rating etc.
3. Authority/Connection: Fetching inbound links, trackbacks, pings to a blog or sites.
4. Influence: Viral, word of mouth, spread, user base, followers, subscribers
5. Emotions/Sentiments/Relationship:user loyalty, attachment, enthusiasm etc

The five factors sum up the metrics of measuring social media. But this is not one-size-fits-all sorts of model, it varies depending on the type of company/organisation, its SM goals, budget, objective and intention. It depends on the factors that go behind the social media campaign and the weightage assigned to each of the bubble changes. In total it should sum up to 100%.

There are a few who are not concerned about "attention" i.e. page views that a site/blog generates. They would typically be focused on ensuring subscription of their RSS feeds, or any other application on the website.

Hence, marketers should carefully set out their objectives and then select appropriate metrics to ROI.

This entry is posted by - Isha Shah (S.P.Jain Global MBA - Marketing alumni and an avid Social Media Marketer). She can be reached through mail at: ishashah86@gmail.com

Measuring Social Media Marketing

Social media is a conversation powered by various Web 2.0 platforms. It is a conversation that takes place between Customers, Marketers, Employees, and Investors and web surfers. Social Media as a conversation is not organized, controlled or in a form of an advertisement. It is dynamic, vibrant, emergent, compelling, insightful and of course full of fun! One needs to engage in the conversation by being listening, contributing, and participation. Hence, Social Media Marketing (SMM) is not just a medium of communication but a place for marketers to understand its target audience.

There are majorly six steps to measuring social media marketing for any brand, personality or individuals and that is:

1)Setting the objectives: The SMM goals will be different for every business or organization, SMM can - create brand awareness or build idea, increase visibility, leverage existing social media sites to the company’s advantage, help in Creating a multi-pronged marketing strategy
attract & Motivate through Potential Customer Experience etc.

Make is measurable, set appropriate deadlines, set the kind of changes in attitude and behavior that is expected, output & outcomes. One thing that many digital marketers face difficulty is in measurement and the first step to measure is to set RIGHT objectives. The objectives should be in the interest of the organisation and community.

2) Determining metrics of measurements

Relationships: Quality, mutual trust, conversation index, power of influence, etc
Analytics Outcomes: Benefits, costs and risks.

3) Defining Stakeholders

4) Benchmarking against competition

5) Selection of measurement tool : Various free and paid tools are readily available in the market such as Omniture, Google Analytics, Radian 6, SEER, Jeremiah’ list, Buzz Logic, The CGM Dashboard, Alexa, Del.icio.us, Veoh, Feedburner, Quantcast, Yahoo pipes etc. They measure the following statistics but the list is endless:
>Number of unique users, participation & engagement, returning v/s new readers, referring traffic, Google page rank, links from other sites, page views etc

6) Analysis and Re-strategize
Using the tools a SM marketer can analyse the position of the campaigns and then decide if it’s worth the money. The ROI calculation becomes very important in this case nevertheless, social media definitely has long term returns. ROI can be calculated keeping account of expenses such as Cost of campaigns+ media expenses + no. of responses

This entry is posted by - Isha Shah (S.P.Jain Global MBA - Marketing alumni and an avid Social Media Marketer). She can be reached through mail at: ishashah86@gmail.com

Sharjah Taxi Chaos..

You must be aware that passengers need to pay an additional fare of AED 20 to travel from Sharjah to Dubai in a Sharjah Taxi from Dec 1. This is an effort to compensate the taxi drivers (and empty wallets of the public) for their time lost in the traffic jams. Not surprisingly some of the taxi meters are yet to be updated with the new charges. Today I had taken a taxi from Sharjah to Al Qusais and when I asked the driver about the new rule; to my surprise he was not aware of this. Luckily, I did not have to pay the extra charges as the taxi meter was yet to be updated, but this shows the lack of communication between the taxi drives and the authorities, which is frustrating for the public. I fail to understand who will be getting the additional bucks – the drivers or the transport authority? Does AED 20 justify for the time lost traffic jams and for the people who commute regularly in a taxi?