Many of the tech corporate identities we see everyday were not born that way and had evolved over time, one like Adobe’s logo might have not changed drastically much since it was made, but did you know that Apple’s first logo had a drawing of Isaac Newton under an apple tree or that Nokia’s original logo had a fish? Neatorama posted a nice article on how the logos of several of the biggest names in technology evolved over time. Check it out here.

[via TechCrunch]

Oman3D had the honour of interviewing the young Omani artist Her Highness Sayyidah Latifa Al Said of the Omani Royal Family. Latifah held her first exhibition for her painting artwork in December last year and had appeared in various Omani publications. We interviewed her to learn more about her artwork and her experience as an Omani artist. Read the interview here.

The Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar (VCUQ) announced the winners of the first phase of the design competition for high school students for the year 2007. Three winners were selected from each of the participating countries in the competition and the Omani winners were Anesah Hamad, Nehal Ahmad Musa and Hasna bint Jaber, who have come first, second, and third respectively. The winners will receive cash prizes of $1400 for first place, $800 for second place and $600 for third place and will now move to the second phase of the competition in which two full scholarships to study at VCUQ will be rewarded to the top two finalists. Learn more about this competition from this link.

In 8 pages, the magazine navigates through the work of Khalid Al Muharraqi revealing his skills, artwork, and experience. The interview goes through Khalid’s history as well as his current and upcoming projects.

IT’S ART Magazien Interview – Click Here

Knowledge Oasis Muscat held its annual gaming conference eGames on the 10th and 11th of December with a focus this year on mobile gaming and serious gaming (gaming for training and educational purposes). The sessions of the conference were delivered by expert speakers from Sun Microsystems, Ericsson, Yahoo!, and various international game development firms, British educational institutes and Omani mobile operators.

The eGames conference is a business conference and not a gaming exhibition, it is not meant to discuss the latest releases for the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360, or the Wii (though those consoles were mentioned at certain sessions), and instead focuses on the subject of tapping into the business venture of making and selling videogames, especially mobile games and gaming for training purposes.

The first day of the conference covered mobile gaming as sessions were spent on the mobile gaming ecosystem and the importance of the roles of the game developer, the content aggregator, the mobile operator, and their interaction with the end user. Another session covered the development process of a mobile video game, the existing and upcoming technologies involved with this industry and the possible extension of online games into the mobile medium.

Another session covered the marketing and retail of mobile games, the impact of convergence on this industry, and the emergence of new business models in videogame finance, marketing and retail. Several business challenges were addressed such as the fragmentation of devices, languages and service providers.

The second day at the conference covered using games for serious purposes. The first session explored the culture of serious gaming and the benefits of learning through play in comparison to traditional learning methods. Video demos of various implementations of videogames for training purposes in the oil industry, the army, medical and general educational institutions were displayed. Another session was presented by three staff members of De Montfort University on the development process of a learning based game and the skills required and costs to be incurred in the making of a serious game. The conference ended with a session on virtual reality marketing through the world of Second Life and another one on competitive computer gaming and eSports.

The eGames 2006 conference was very informative in its exploration of the technical aspects and business issues relating to the making of mobile games. There was a lot of repetition in the sessions of first day of the conference, but luckily the majority of the speakers were aware of this and managed to skim through the points that had been raised earlier. The event provided a great opportunity for networking with people involved in various sectors and at different levels in the industry. eGames 2006 was a pleasant experience and we will surely be looking forward to it next year.

You can learn more about the eGames conference at its official blog.

Oman Mobile launched its second mobile game on the 10th of December at a special launch event held at the Crowne Plaza Muscat. The authentic Omani game titled “Shaking Funjan” was developed in Holland upon a game concept selected through a competition organised by Oman Mobile and the Sultan Qaboos University for high education students in Oman. The quality of the game was ensured by hiring Mobile2win, a random Indian company that makes trademark-infringing silly mobile games such as Lord of the Drinks, Toilet Trainer, and Spinny Alley.

Nobody knows how Shaking Funjan really plays like, the game was not demoed at the event and the official website does not mention anything about its gameplay. There is no online demo, there is no offline demo. You have to actually purchase the game to learn about how it plays. To download the game, you will have to first pay 1 Rial Omani and then pay 3 Baizas for each kb (and just in case you didn’t know, that’s a bit, not a byte) you download, there is no actual or approximate size mentioned on the website, it could be 10 kilobytes, 100 kilobytes, or just about anything.

You can learn more on how to waste 1 Rial (plus download charges) on the game with the most ridiculous main character name via this link.

The Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar (VCUQ) announced recently, in Muscat, the launch of the Fifth Annual Design Competition at which senior high school from Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Turkey and Pakistan are allowed to compete in making a design with the most imaginative idea for improving our living environment. Two entrants will win full four-year Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned (wife of  the Sheikh of Qatar) Scholarships for Creativity at VCUQ and the top three high school students from each of the 12 countries will receive cash prizes of $1,400 for first place, $800 for second place and $600 for third place. The deadline for submitting the designs is the 15th of January 2007.

The competition press release mentions that Siham Abduallah Al Zadjali from Oman won the previous competition, interested Omani students and other qualifying countries need to check the following link for more details.

A recent update at eGames states that the conference will feature a workshop on promoting virtual reality as a marketing opportunity by taking Second Life as an example. The workshop will be delivered by the Director of the Serious Games Institute at Coventry University and Gavin Dudeney of The Consultants-E. You can learn more details about this upcoming workshop from this link.

Luxology, the company behind modo – the 3D modeling, painting, and rendering software, recently interviewed Muharraqi-Studios (Khalid Al Muharraqi). The interview talks about the studio’s experience with modo and the creative process of the studio in general. You can view the interview via this link.

The gulf’s annual gaming conference will be held this year at the Crown Plaza in Muscat on the 10th and 11th of December 2006. The event hosted by the Knowledge Oasis Muscat is directed towards Middle East-based companies and professionals involved in producing interactive entertainment software and hardware for video game consoles, handheld devices, personal computers and the Internet. The conference will be preceded by a free whole-day gaming workshop that will cover storyboarding, character design and development, animation, narrative storytelling and visual effects. The workshop will be limited to a 100 attendees that will have to reserve their seats by emailing mulkie@kom.om. You can learn more about the upcoming eGames conference by visiting their blog.