ALKHOBAR, 4 November 2005 — At this holiday time it’s easy to see how digital technology has changed our lives. For the past 48 hours, mobile telephones across the Kingdom were beeping non-stop as friends, relatives and business acquaintances sent out their best regards for Eid Al-Fitr.
E-mail accounts have been inundated as well, with e-cards replacing the paper greeting cards that used to flood post boxes for weeks — often after the holidays had passed.
The messages coming in to mobile phones range from the simplest “Happy Eid!” to extravagantly designed illustrated messages received by those users of handsets enabled with MMS. Sending an MMS or Arabic message to a phone that cannot decipher such incoming missives leaves the user viewing nothing more than a series of unintelligible pixel blocks.
For those sending Eid greetings to a wide range of acquaintances, a continuing trend is Romanized Arabic messages. For example, “Kul am wa antum bi khair. Eid Mubarak.” Which in more standard English means, “Wishing you well being every year. Blessed Eid.”
“I am sure I’ve now received more than a hundred SMS Eid greetings,” said salesman Eliyas Mathia.
“They started coming in on the 29th of Ramadan and it’s never ending. At first I was trying to keep track of them but eventually I gave up because the task was overwhelming. One problem I have is that people don’t include their names on the messages and I really don’t know who sent some of the greetings.”
Returning all those greetings can be a chore too, but users of smart phones have that aspect all worked out.
“My Nokia allows me to save and track all the Eid messages I receive,” said Adil Naim, a Lebanese company executive. “I wait until someone sends me a really nice message and then I send that one around to everyone else in answer to their greetings. It impresses all my contacts and is very little work for me.”
Another easy and much less expensive way to handle the SMS message avalanche is to answer Eid greetings by using various online services that allow SMS messages to be sent from websites. Saudi Telecom allows registered users to send 10 free messages weekly from its website.
Other online services have reduced rates for sending SMS. The drawback to these services is that they generally require registration, which involves giving up personal information and perhaps a credit card number. Messages sent from online services often don’t include the sender’s telephone number or name so it is important to remember to add these to the body of the message.
Many business people sent e-cards instead of SMS, because by using their Microsoft Outlook e-mail program they could easily send greetings to groups of contacts with one click. Some extremely considerate companies sent out very short text only messages. Most others tried to keep the attached e-greeting images under 50K. This year companies such as Emirates that wanted to deliver a fancier greeting, similar to a printed card, but didn’t want to clog in-boxes, sent out an e-mail with a link to their electronic Eid card. It’s certain that thousands of trees appreciated the gesture.
