Journey through UAE now just a click away

Media organs and other institutions worldwide can now journey through the UAE without having to move out of their offices and waste their time and effort in arduous travelling.

One click on their computers will take them into a labyrinth of tens of thousands of pictures about the emirates, and the photographs are of such high quality that they look freshly-shot and clearly suitable for any publication.

The Ministry of Information and Culture said it has just installed a new website providing photographs about the environment, development, infrastructure, agriculture, industry, and other fields, covering all stages in the UAE's past and present.

Ibrahim Al Abed, Director of the External Information Department at the ministry, told Gulf News: "The site comprises tens of thousands of pictures about every detail in the UAE, environment, scenery, development and many other fields.

"They will be available to journalists and other institutions and individuals inside the UAE and worldwide. It will make it much easier for those who seek information about the UAE."

Available through the ministry's official website www.uaeinteract.com , the Photo Database can upload pictures for people to get high resolution scans.

The Ministry said in a statement: "This is now fully operational and the requested pictures for the August 6 Accession Day are available on this part of the web site.

"The ministry's printed and electronic publications have earned a high reputation for the quality of their photographs and this has resulted in numerous requests from overseas publishers and individuals for the use of similar pictures in stories featuring the Emirates. The UAE Interact is now helping to serve these needs through an electronic database of pictures that are instantly available to approved publishers."

It said the new site is intended to build a "major electronic database of captioned photographs on the UAE that will be available at short notice to picture editors of newspapers, magazines, and books that cover the Emirates."

The statement said the site, which includes a 'Speak to the Minister' facility, has been expanded to give more access to readers. Three new sites have been added and clicking on any of them takes users direct to the official site. They are: www.uaeinformation.com , www.uaeinformation.net , www.uaeinformation.org .

Another new facility introduced in these sites is the Online Reservation, which allows people seeking to visit the Emirates to book in the UAE hotels.

Al Abed said: "This is a new, fully functional part of the UAE Interact that enables people to select a city, obtain a list of hotels offering online reservations and then to make actual room reservations for UAE hotels on the internet. We hope that this facility will prove useful to the growing number of users that turn to the UAE Interact while seeking information on the UAE."