#tunaeffect is a Maldivian twitter directory and a platform for Maldivian twitter users to come together as a community. Aimed at becoming the trend creator in the local twitters sphere.

A project by semicolon with a lot of dedication by our developers @reallynattu and @ajaaibu

#tunaeffect is Built on Twitter API for seamless integration and is compiling a  comprehensive directory of all Maldivian Twitter Users, Grouping them in categories and professions for easy browsing. Most of all Users can identify current local trends and engage in community discussion while following the Maldives timeline.

The web-service which was launched on 20:10 20.10.2010  is still scheduled for a lot of new feature upgrades. By looking at the Maldives twitter timeline we can fairly say that the project #tunaeffect is a success as we understand that lots of users have been anticipating such a service and likes the current version.

Visit and get your self listed in #tunaeffect now www.tunaeffect.com

May the auspicious occasion of Eid , bless you with peace and bring joy to your heart and home.

Hope Love & Laughter, warmth & wishes joy and a Bouquet of Eid Wishes, jublications become a part of your eid and your life….!
EID MUBARAK

In this post I am going to have a look at Wataniya’s new website (www.wataniya.mv) which was released few weeks back. I like the idea, but feels poorly implemented. Here are my opinions about the website.

General Website Layout.

• Website seems to be more single paged. Because it wont let you navigate to any other page on the website. Single-page design works if you don’t have much content.
• The orb on the top with the clouds looks beautiful on my screen (1920 x 1080px) . Because the orb is complete from both sides. But if you try it on a 1024px resolution, it look odd, because of the incomplete orb.
• No grid layout and components on the website poorly placed.

Navigation

• Basically it has four navigation bars. Makes very confusing to the visitors of the website about where to find what. For eq: There is Services link and there is BroadBand /3G + and IDD / Roaming which is a service. Would be easier if they are grouped and used as drop down menu’s.
• The navigation links on the first line which is related to the member actions should be separated from the website main navigational links. Wataniya International has a good navigational structure with a rich footer which includes grouped links to other pages.
• Its a bad idea to use ajax based modal boxes to view all the contents on a website like this. A website which has lots of information and individual pages which needs to be shared or linked from other blogs/articles/social media. In this case its almost impossible to share on such platform.
• Website links are NOT search engine friendly. Eg: http://wataniya.mv/prepaid.php <– NOT Search Engine Friendly while http://wataniya.mv/services/prepaid is friendly and is easier to read too.
• The modal windows carries the same header including the logo on the main page repeating the same stuffs all over again. And the use of text “please click outside the window to close it” is almost the first time i have ever seen such a wording to close just a modal window. Instead use “Close” would be enough. I am sure the visitors will understand, as they are very familiar with modal windows like light-boxes. And it looks very odd if you lands on an individual page like this http://wataniya.mv/enterprise.php and you see the text on the right top and you have no idea what it means. Problems like this could have been avoided with better planning on UX.

Splash

• This area is normally where the focal point of the website is. Almost all the similar websites use this area to promote their services and products or may be events on a more visual way to grab visitors attention. Remember the WOW feeling you get when you see human face with a nice concept well designed. The printed posters and billboards on roads, this is where they live on the website. The orb cover-flow idea is old, and useless in my opinion. It just confuses the visitors more.

The Map

• The Idea of showing the map on the first page is a good idea, if you want your visitors to find out about your community. And how they can involved .
• If the map is used to show geo-tagged photos of Maldives, then it needs show the satellite view and show complete maldives or at least the half. Not a map view of Male’. With the current tagged photos, it seems like the locations are misplaced. Because i see some photos of resorts tagged to Male’.
• Having action button all around confuses the users about what actions or features they can actually interact with. Traveling FAQ’s, IDD rates and Visiting the Maldives links needs to be used on main navigational areas. Not in the community area.
• Using the map to show coverage and retail shops will be very visual and more user friendly way. For eg: using heat maps on coverages or pin drops to show retail shops.
• Map options on the left, “Maldives Map“, “World Map” is a useless shortcut if you dont plan to open the whole community to the world. Allow photos to be posted abroad.
• On bottom of the map, the options to view photos and videos needs to be placed next to each other with minimal text like “Show Photos” and “Show Videos“. Or may be no text at all. But the icons needs to be more connected to the map area. With the current icon it feels more like the icons on the left of the map which has nothing to do with interacting with the map. And by clicking on it, will scroll to the top of the page and its hard to tell if there was any change to the map, or its where we need to check on, as the other links on the website opens on a model window and we expect for it this time too. But nothing happens.
• “Share Your World” icon gives another modal window with the registration. But this time it has very hard to read text (“Register or login and start sharing your photos and videos“) outside the box.
• I want to write more about the user experience on member area’s later. But for now, lets say we are using this modal window to upload a photo, and while the upload is in progress and we click outside the box mistakenly and the model closes. Wonders what will happen to the photo which was being uploaded.

Photos & Videos.

• Its hard to say if the photos and video thumbnails are related to the map above it or not. I like the way the photo uploads are arranged but the video uploads has a different style. With likes and views. Photos comes with same features wonders why they are styled differently.
• Clicking any photo takes you to a gallery. Instead there can be a link “View gallery” or “View all photos” to view the gallery. Leave the individual photos enlarged when clicked on them. In my opinion this is the only place where we can use a light-box or a modal window on this website. Click on the thumbnails enlarges with all the information about the selected photo. Same goes for videos as well.

Social Feeds

• Twitter and facebook feeds are nicely implemented. But if feel like its a bit over. Twitter feed doesn’t get updated frequently while facebook has a little activity. But basically we see the same thing. I would not have a second look at that.
• Twitter user is only used to spread news. There is NO SINGLE reply to any of the queries sent to “wataniya_mv” on twitter.
• The implementation of comment box feels more like its only there to fill the gap. There is no way we can see the previous comments. There was lots of buzz on twitter about the comments not being published or being removed after publishing. Same happened to my comment which was published and removed after. Spacings and padding’s need to be applied to the comment form. Eg: Padding from the left near the box border.

Others notables.

• No Meta information. Only a tag.
• W3C HTML validation shows 89 Errors, 3 warning(s) while W3C CSS is validated with 8 errors.

These are just my personal opinions and my differ from person to person. But it depends on how much you know a bout your visitors/members. There is no straight line. It needs to be improved from the feedback you get from the REAL visitors/members. I also want to share some of the telecom website trends which i find inspirational and well implemented.

Inspirations

- Wataniya International (http://10.wataniya.com/Default_en_gb.aspx)

- Dialog Sri Lanka (http://www.dialog.lk/)

- Orange (http://www.orange.com/en_EN/)

- Airtel (Seychelles) (http://www.airtel.sc/)

- Reliance Communications (India) (http://www.rcom.co.in/Rcom/personal/home/index.html)

- Axis (Indonesia) (http://www.axisworld.co.id/?lang=en)

- Abonentiem - Tele2 (Latvia) (http://www.tele2.lv/)

- Digi (Malaysia) (http://www.digi.com.my/)

- ZONG (Pakistan) (http://www.zong.com.pk/)

With the advancement of Technology, today the front desk of any company has become the homepage of their website. Most customer services, press communications and service inquiry is now provided online. Thus the creation of a complete web solution with attractive functionalities has become mandatory in taking the lead and shine bright in this competitive market. With the recent re-branding of the Airline Division of Island Aviation Service as Maldivian, need for an advance web solution arises. The IAS Management opens a bid in search of a potential web development candidate.

Semicolon yet an infant as a company, expressed interest into the project and our small but experienced team started research on what we could provide. We explored dozens of other airline websites. Focusing on whats common, keeping an eye on what was uncommon we took an interest on what was unique and started work on a mock (the very beginning of the product maldivian.aero). We consulted with the re-branding team of the Maldivian to get an insight in to their concept. Created half a dozen user interface explored and fixed what they lack resulted an output of two very fine user interface designs.

In the meantime we were also working to build Semicolon’s first Proposal for web Development. Our aim was to provide IAS with a proposal to develop a solution beyond their vision but as realistic and practical. A solution not only with an eye catching user interface but with functions, components and modules to provide a resourceful online services. A solution that will embark Maldivian into a journey towards the new generation of Web. A solution that will be enable easy interaction with customers, agents and staffs. We succeeded in impressing the bid evaluation team, and was awarded the contract on 13th August 2009.

We met with team Maldivian.aero very frequently first was to give indepth explanation of the product as described in the proposal and to gather detailed software requirement later was to give development updates. We built a software requirement specifications which was agreed by both parties kick starting the Development Project of Maldivian.aero. Then followed continuous phases of development and sleepless nights to meet delivery deadlines powered by lots and lots of REDbull (disclaimer: Too many redbull is not good). We had two delivery schedules one with dates defined as in the agreement. Another Delivery schedule of our own with couple of days ahead of the agreed date. Our aim was to meet all deadlines before it reaches and deliver the product on schedule.

Maldivian.aero is developed with PHP and JavaScript programing language, CSS to tailor the interface design and utilized MYSQL as a database. We focused on simple graphics and pleasant color schemes with the looks and feels of Maldivian as an airline career. We also provided functionalities to enable content management with ease and user friendliness and easily manage static pages and articles. Site also includes functions to manage splash images and offers, integration into Maldivian Internet Booking Engine, Routemap with Destination info, fleet configurations, customized newletter system and Content for Maldives section and destinations.

We had a great collaborative assistance from team Maldivian but stumbled upon some unexpected hurdles which delayed product finalization. Collaboratively we conducted an extensive testing phase. The website was launched to public on a small event held at IAS head-office by Managing Director of Maldives Airports Company, Mr. Mohamed Ibrahim on 20th December 2009.

At the end of this post we would like to thank the team Maldivian for the collaborative assistance provided. Our team is grateful to work with IAS and look forward for working together in a near future.

Environmental issues and climate change has long been a hot and a scary topic for all Maldivians. Our vulnerable environment has been the most treasured gift of Nature. The white sandy beaches, the crystal clear blue lagoons, the beautiful reef gardens and colorful sea life is the only natural resource we have got.

Around 100 luxurious resorts in Maldives are today serving our visitors a leisures vacation getaway, romantic honey moon spot and a calm and peaceful environment. But what about tomorrow ? The human actions has been threatening our environment and we now fear begin submerged due to side effects of global warming and climatic change. A prompt action is immediately needed to save our nation and other low lying islands from submerging .

The climate change not only threatens us to the extinction but other social and much larger problems exists with climatic change. Such as scarcity of Food and irrigation, flooding, and like all Maldives millions of other people could end up as environmental refugees. In short there could be a huge impact in the lives of mankind.

As this is an urgent issue today we are raising our voice to leaders of the world to help save our nation. But we believe change doesn’t come from actions of one man. So semicolon team will unite with thousand of other bloggers around the globe to raise our voice on Blog Action Day 2009. As Maldivians we who are on the front-line to be impacted in this war we are stepping in to the front-line to call out for the CHANGE.

Ps : If you are a blogger please join the BLOG ACTION DAY 2009 http://blogactionday.org/ and raise your voice against climate change on 15^th October 2009

Heads up! The sole reason that I write about this small area of the tourism industry is because I care! I care about you, your company, your business and the Maldives Tourism industry overall. I also worry how much of a potential business is lost due to some essential, but misunderstood concept in the field of electronic marketing of your business, especially on the World Wide Web.

Ask yourself this question. Is your business maximizing the potential of the Internet?

Online Marketing leads the way, and the marketing dollars don’t lie! The internet, as a marketing medium, now ranks ahead of TV, Radio and Print as the preferred marketing method for businesses, brands and organisations in most generating regions such as EU and far east.

Online Marketing has proven to be a targeted approach to reaching both new and existing customers. As the competition takes advantage of a rapidly increasing market, isn’t it time you did the same?

Here is a simple analysis on some 20 randomly selected Travel Agency websites in the Maldives! View this as a positive and free consultation. Besides, it’s all available on the public domain. Please do not take this as negative criticism. Be positive

In this analysis, I have looked into the very basic elements that are required for a good website. Here are the elements and why I chose these.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator also called URI – uniform resource Identifier)

Of course this is what I used to find more about the website. This is how the World Wide Web recognizes the specific website. An easier and easier to remember URLs are believed to be doing better.

WCMS

A web-content-management system (WCMS or Web CMS) is a content management system (WCMS) software, usually implemented as a Web application, for creating and managing HTML content. It is used to manage and control a large, dynamic collection of Web material (HTML documents and their associated images).

WCMS shows little commitment to the content management as a Travel agency. I have noticed that many Travel Agencies utilised Joomla as a CMS. Joomla is good and flexible open source CMS. Building websites with Joomla for content can be easy. However, for special websites which require custom attention,it may not be the best. You could also see that from the first few websites analysed, they even have copied contents and resort module. As I mentioned on the notables below, sites built on Joomla required, visitors to select the resorts from the booking form, even if they clicked “Book Now” button from the resorts details page. It’s not because the Joomla is not capable, but it requires customs solutions. GO chase your webmasters!

META

META tag is still used in the website identification and information processing from the page contents. Why do we need proper optimisation for the websites at basic META level?

1. Some search engines still give weight to META tags – Search Engines such as Yahoo and MSN still use META tags as part of the determining factors for ranking a site. Although the amount of importance may be small, when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO) every little bit helps.
2. It can help increase traffic to your site – Often search engines will use your title tags as the linked text for your site with either the whole or part of the description underneath it on the results page. A well written title tag and description can entice someone to click on your link. How many times have you searched for something and clicked on a result based on the linked text of description.
3. Help optimize individual pages – Each page of your website should have different keywords and descriptions that reflect the content on those pages. This can help when trying to optimize different sections of your site for different keyword phrases. Search engines may then display that exact page in the results directing visitor to that specific section rather than just the home page.

META Health

META Health is the point at which I gave a little hint on the extracted META from the websites. I noticed, some websites just logged everything at META level. As mentioned before, META is not magic, but it helps, and it forms part of unified optimisation process. If your webmaster is not a marketing guy, just have a specialist look into it. Majority of the sites I analysed has chronic META listing issues. This can be fixed!

URL friendliness

I looked into the URL friendliness of the sites and found that most of the sites need attention.  Its very simple, experts agree that keyword-rich URLs matter. For example, here is a link to Hudhuranfuhi Resorts details on two different websites analysed:

http://holidaysmaldives.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15&Itemid=26

Here is a friendly URL for the same property on another website.
http://www.letsgomaldives.com/resorts/budget-holiday/adaaran-select-hudhuranfushi.html
Now you decide which is better!

Analytics/ Tracking

As defined on Wikipedia, Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage.

On the websites I used for this analysis, I looked for Google Analytics tracking code, a free web analytics service with very comprehensive information about the site usage. Even though i could not locate tracking codes on some websites, they maybe using other methods for site usage statistics.

I noticed that only few sites used this feature. The sites that do not have tracking facilities, I believe, are less serious about the business online and it’s potential. You can see the difference when used for the serious businesses, some listed below and their Search Engine Results Page (SERP). If you are serious and you want to see what is going on the website you might as well have this feature installed.

GUI – Graphic User Interface

I also looked into the GUI of the sites. Some really promising and some seriously run down. Some sites still use the old CGC wireframe models and manual updating and poor graphics.

GUI is extremely important as it helps to communicate the quality of the services offered, builds trust, increase revisits, possibility of getting bookmarked, re-tweets and many other optional free marketing drives online. If your site does not perform well, look into the possible causes, design could very well be one!

Number of Resorts Listed

I looked into this variable to fathom the seriousness of the website and presentation. You may list all the resorts in the Maldives but may no pay attention to all. “More” resorts does not necessarily mean more business. I commend Atoll Paradise, as they are doing a great job! My advice is list what you can sell and try to focus on them.

Social Media Integration

Again here Wikipedia simplifying my day! Social media are media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media supports the human need for social interaction, using Internet- and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many).

I always highlighted the importance of social media to my friends. It’s a place to build confidence and promotes your site or business through social media channels and it is a powerful strategy that will get you links, attention and massive amounts of traffic. Like they say, more visitors to the shop more sales!

Read my previous article on twittering in the Maldives Tourism Industry.

Notables

Here I tried, to briefly point on some of the issues that needs immediate attention.

What Lacked on the most websites analysed:

I will be brief here!

• No target marketing detectable on the website. If target marketing is done, visitor will not turn away thinking that this is a wholesale site, or catering to another market
• Very weak graphics and content. Lot of visitors would love some picture galleries of the destination. Weak presentation means, visitors will switch to better agencies
• Multilingual content. Here is why!

• Proper web optimization
• Alternative ways for user interaction
• Some websites need serious attention to its designs and standards
• Online booking facilities. BML now offers cheaper merchant accounts
• Sorting of the holidays destination based on user preferences
• Marketing drive on the web, internal marketing and up selling

Websites I Analysed

The order of presentation in this section is totally random and does not represent positions on any basis.

———————

WHAT ALL THESE MEANS

I ran a small search query with the following keywords on Google.com, Google.mv, Yahoo and Live

maldives travel
maldives holidays
maldives islands
maldives resorts
maldives hotels

Here is the Result!

In Conclusion

There are issues with the travel agencies’ websites. Good news is we can help!
Semicolon Online Marketing services offer a range of benefits for your business including:

• Being found in search results
• Gaining an advantage over your competitors
• Attaining the highest rate of traffic to your website
• Taking your position as your industry’s leader
• Attracting more quality sales leads
• Increasing business revenue
• Enhancing business profitability
• Improving business sustainability

How do we do it?
Semicolon offers a range of digital services and can design a customised solution to suit any business.

• Website Design
• Web Development
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Google AdWords
• Online Video
• Web Copywriting
• Email Marketing
• eCommerce
• Social Network Marketing
• Web 2.0
• Mobile Media Applications

Contact Us to arrange a consultation with one of our Online Marketing professionals.

Maldives on Twitter

I always wondered about how many companies are twittering in the Maldives, especially from the Travel and Tourism industry.

Twitter’s mild beginning was during 2006 and caught the hype during 2007 in a festival. So much for the twitter history! You can look it up on Wikipedia.  Let’s get right into twittering!

Twittering, also known as micro blogging is important for the industry that we rely on. Few reasons that your company must have a corporate twitter account and start twitting are:

1. The traffic and the crowed we are looking for are there,  connected, via a follower or twitter search
2. Gain exposure for company, websites
3. Build a reasonable network with transparency and trust
4. Market the products, services, events etc.
5. Answer questions about your products and services
6. Learn new things from other industry professionals
7. Share travel tips, trends & resources
8. Meet and talk with others in the same business
9. Stay connected wherever the clients/readers are
10. Seek out industry colleagues for assistance with special projects
11. Better understand social media
12. To keep thorough with industry updates from the Maldives and abroad, of course all the big travel companies that you may be interested in have twitter. Sorry but not in the Maldives.
13. Find out what others say about you in real-time and act on it, mind you most of these are real stuff coming from good and bad minds, so be prepared!

I believe these are of absolute importance where your market is almost 100% on social media.

Recently I had a chat with some of the prominent members of the Maldives travel sector, particularly, travel agents and I found out that either they have no clue what twittering is or how it can be utilized for business. Some even told me “why do we need it? We have our agents from around the world”. No need to blame the blokes, as this is relatively new as a medium for marketing.

Just to ease my curiosity on the Maldives Tourism sector on Twitter, I ran a small search and found a very seriously poor representation of the industry on Twitter.

Here are some of the travel and tourism companies currently on twitter.

@bandosmaldives
@innermaldives
@letsgomaldives
@capitaltravel
@villahotels
@crowntours
@intourmaldives
@maldivessoffers
@yourmaldives
@holidayinnmale
@atolltrip

Ok, this is the deal; we have 280 Travel Agencies, 95 Resorts, 13 Hotels, 24 Guesthouses, 344 Safari Vessels including dive boats and 77 Dive Schools registered and running (not all) in the Maldives. All I could get is the above twitters? That is less than 1% of the industry. A bit shameful, isn’t it? Even if other companies and establishments exist on twitter, I could not locate them for the following reasons:

1. Have accounts but not twitting enough,
2. Don’t have accounts and don’t bother or don’t know about twitter.

Again, trying killing my curiosity, I searched the twitter with the term “Maldives”, and I found no tweets from any of the travel industry establishments in the last 24hours. But, I found many tweets by agents from abroad trying to promote “Maldives holiday products” from the respective companies. However, on the edge was @innermaldives, sending their last update little over 24 hours back. Keep it up guys!

My advice is, if you are not in the hype yet, get into it and here is how!

Getting Started

• Lookup a Twitter name that matches your company name or alternatively a name that includes your company name such as @companyteam
• Build up a level of tweets so other users will see you as credible and relevant – the minimum number of tweets that you should accumulate before you start promoting your account is somewhere in the 50 to 100 range  (most users will ignore you if you have few tweets or haven’t been tweeting for very long)
• Fill out your profile completely including a URL as most people will not follow anyone with an incomplete profile
• Create a customized Twitter homepage (that matches your corporate brand as much as possible) to provide additional information about your company and products

Getting your message out

• Try to tweet 5 to 8 times per day, and you should space them out throughout the day if possible
• Only 20% or so of your tweets should be related to your company or include a marketing or ‘advertising’ message – the others should be tweets about related topics that provide value to your followers or show a more human side of your company; people will stop paying attention to you if you use Twitter exclusively for self-promotion
• Most of your tweets should contain a link to a website, blog post, article, etc. – these  are the types of tweets will establish your Twitter account as being a source of great content and worthy of being followed back
• Use HootSuite’s to schedule your tweets and to track your tweet clickthrus and their Hootlet app to easily tweet the URLs of content at the source – Hootsuite also lets you include multiple users on the same account which can help to spread out the Twitter workload
• Don’t over-tweet. It’s annoying. Seriously!
• Add a Twitter widget to your website for easy access to your tweets and to gain new twits!
• Provide resources or items of value.
• Be creative and have fun with it!

Following people

• Use one or more of the Twitter directories (WeFollow or Twellow) to locate potential users to follow based on their interests and geography
• Follow anyone who mentions your company or keywords that important for your business
• Follow the twits that follow you…unless they are spammers.
• Periodically do a Twitter search on your company name or click on @yourname from right panel to see who is re-tweeting you or mentioning your name
• @reply people to thank people or to just reach out to them
• RT or re-tweet posts that you think are worthy – generally these people will notice and start following you
• You don’t want to grow your Twitter following too quickly – steady growth is better and a goal of growing 100 to 200 per month is a good start for most businesses

And finally for Corporate Twittering, you should:

• Be honest
• Be responsive and human
• Be nice

I got some of the above stuff from @tomhumbarger

Don’t you think that we can do much more to promote the destination on social media better if we really try and work hard?

Go tweet guys!

Follow us on and more stories on Semicolon  – the right click for profit! @semicolonmv

More commonly known as Maldives or Maldive Islands, the Republic of Maldives is an island country made up of 26 atolls covering a territory with 1,192 islets scattered across the equator in the Indian Ocean. Only 198 islands are inhabited by its 300,000 population. With an average ground level of 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in) above sea level, it is the lowest lying country in the world. It is also the country with the lowest highest point, at 2 m (7ft), situated in an unnamed spot in the Addu Atoll of Villingili Island.

Here are handpicked 30 awesome aerial shots of Maldives from different sources.

1 . Alidhoo… by muha…

2 . pearls of the sea.. by m o d e

3 . No I do not work for the National Geographic… by Ahmed Zahid

4 . floating whitesand & bluelagoon omelette… by muha…

5 . Vote for Maldives as a new world wonder!… by nattu

6 . Tsunami 2004 (Remembering the Victims)… by alsay

7 . The pond island… by sharaff

8 . Truly Maldives… by sammmmmu

9. Maldives, a place you want to be… by nattu

10. The Floating Island… by © Ahmed Amir

11. Sandbank 2008… by maapu

12. Report from Souls Island. Part 3/4… by Ahmed Zahid

13. Hulhumalé… by sharaff

14. Turquoise Paradise… by panALsonic

15. An inhabited Island- Maldives… by S U J A

16. .. by Sh@mpoo

17. Insel im Nordatoll.. by Axel_

18. Flying away.. by Nöé

19. Island.. by shinax

20. 7th.. by maapu

21. flying over blues.. by muha…

22. Loneliness.. by Dhonfuthu

23. a bit from a natural puzzle.. by Sh@mpoo

24. Rainbow.. by shazwan

25. .. by mayooomy

26. Loafaru – Heart Island.. by thaakko

27. Maldives from Space .. Maldives image by NASA/ GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./ Japan ASTER Science Team

28. Photograph by James L. Stanfield, NGS Image Collection

29. An aerial photo of Male’, the capital of the Republic of Maldives… by Shahee Ilyas

30. One of 1190 Islands… by Mohamed Waheed

Stack holders has only one requirement. That is: the project should be delivered timely and worth the money spent. Most local clients do not require developers to strictly follow the best practice and set standards of software project management. Documents and other tasks strictly related to project maangement are not in most cases considered as deliverables. As we believe the success of any of our project depends on the skillful project management, we tend to practice these set standards. Our project management style is in most cases adaptable to the client’s requirement.  Our projects are well documented and scheduled; these documents will always be at the disposal of the client.

The software project management process makes us responsive to the inevitable change of any software project. We are sensitive to deadlines and flexible with schedules so that our milestones align with clients priorities. Our project management approach stresses the following:

• Self managed and cross functional team members
• Set guidlines and document templates to easily complete project management tasks
• Complete project lifecycle in iterations, i.e. planning, design, coding, testing, documentation, and demonstration
• Transparency through daily reporting of progress and quality

A disciplined process is key to providing predictability and reliability while reducing project risks for our customers. After each phase of our project work, we conduct a disciplined After Action Review (using the principles of Appreciative Inquiry) in which we ask ourselves the simple question, “What did we do exceptionally well, and how do we expand those things into other areas of our work?”. These reviews enable us to continuously improve our project process and customer relationship skills.

Semicolon Pvt Ltd (C-461/2009) is a technology consultancy firm registered in the Republic of Maldives. Services we provide are web application / site design, development and maintenance. As an emerging company we consult leading local firms on web marketing and technology adaptation. Before coming in to existence as semicolon our team consists of members who have provided services to the big names in Maldives. Our team members previously as individuals has catered Dhiraagu, Haveeru, Villa, Bandos and other such clients.

Our team has a special blend of creativity, experience, friendly service, and an attitude of a personal involvement and excitement in what we do. This is evident in the quality of our finished projects. We like to look well after our clients and always aim to improve our service standards!

We have an integrated team of young and inspiring web consultants, creative designers, content writers, programmers, online strategists and Project Directors that know how to get desired results.

Semicolon is just “The Right Click for Profit”