SOME folks have already left the Kingdom for summer vacation and next week when the Saudi schools close for a four month holiday, Saudi Arabia’s cities will quickly appear to be ghost towns – at least by day. Summer in Saudi Arabia is unpleasant weather wise, but there is one wonderful aspect of life in the Kingdom in June, July and August. So many people are away or sleeping, that the Kingdom’s network is remarkably agile. The amount of Internet bandwidth available, especially in the morning hours, increases dramatically.
With that in mind, it’s hard to think of a reason not to take advantage of all that delightfully available corporate bandwidth which is just going to waste. Few Saudi companies have policies against personal use of corporate bandwidth and if you do work for a company that does have such a policy, check and see if it’s actually enforced. If you’re lucky, the network administrator will go on leave and then there’s nothing to fear.
It can be lonely at work in the summer, so reach out to people in other offices. This can be done in the obvious ways through mass e-mailing of jokes for instance. Facebook.com and numerous social networking sites are also great ways to share your workday with others. Unfortunately, some companies block networking sites and may check e-mail, so get creative. Sign up for a free account at Acrobat.com. This is a suite of hosted services in public beta from Adobe which put communication, productivity and collaboration tools within a web browser. Acrobat.com has a true business purpose in enabling the publishing of high-quality electronic documents allowing individuals to work collaboratively. It’s also an amazing way to show off the projects you’ve been working on all year to all your friends – even if they don’t work at your office.
Once you and your friends have Acrobat.com accounts turn on Adobe ConnectNow, which is personal web conferencing that provides desktop sharing, video and voice conferencing and integrated chat. Last week I convinced a friend who works as a graphic designer to give this a try. Within ten minutes we had the service up and running, and once she agreed online to “share” her screen with me I was able to view a new slideshow featuring her baby daughter, which she had loaded into her workstation as a screensaver. Of course if she had been less ethical she could have also let me see a client profile or account database without the hassle of sending the information by e-mail or saving it to a memory stick. Online services are evolving rapidly and Saudi companies aren’t keeping up with potential risks.
THE next bandwidth experiment to try is streaming audio. Streaming video through sites such as YouTube.com is fine when you’re not supposed to be working, but since you’ll probably need your monitor screen for job related tasks, buy a cheap pair of earbuds, plug them in to your workstation’s earphone jack and you can amuse yourself with music and podcasts all day at the office. There are podcasts on topics from sex to personal finances, so you can use your time at work to improve your personal life. Apple iTunes (www.apple.com/itunes/overview) is the most well-known Net location for free podcasts but there are plenty more not listed there and these can be found through directories such as www.podcastdirectory.com. If your company has a good amount of bandwidth available for your use, then just listen to the podcast stream directly from the website – minimize the browser window so you appear to be hard at work. If however it’s not convenient to do that, then you can save the podcast to the computer for later playback – perhaps at lunchtime.
For music, I use Jango, (www.jango.com). Jango is a free social music service that lets you create your own custom radio stations and share them with friends and others who like what you like. You don’t need to download anything to make it work, so it’s perfect to use with an office network. Some free online music services and Internet radio stations block users from outside the US and most of the bigger Internet radio services severely limit access or have a ridiculous amount of advertising for non-premium users. So if you do find yourself listening to Internet radio a lot, you might consider paying for a subscription to get a better experience. A new trend is for businesses to include streamed audio as part of their website offerings. Chili’s restaurants through the resources of PlayNetwork now stream their custom in-restaurant music over their website. Accessible via the “Fun” section of the Chili’s website (www.chilis.com), the Chili’s Radio Network features new artists, well-known hits and contemporary music. No registration is required.
If all else fails, and the workday is really dragging, take a break and caption a photo at “I Can Has Cheezburger? (ICHC)” — www.icanhascheezburger.com. This site offers everyone the opportunity to create Lolcats. These are images combining a photograph, most frequently a cat, with a funny caption, usually written in broken English. The site uses a special “Engrish” dialect known as “Kitty Pidgin” or “lolspeak.” A quick look through some of the Lolcats at the site will quickly help you understand the concept. You can use your own cat photo for captioning or one of the many available at the site. Then share your creativity with all your workmates. They can re-caption the photo and send it back or agree that you’re brilliant and pass it on – hopefully not to your boss!
— Do you have a suggestion for the creative use of corporate bandwidth this summer? Share it with me: [email protected]