StartUpArabia

Chkobba Popular Tunisian Card Game Online

Mohamed Marwen Meddah | May 11, 2008 – 7:59 pm | No Comments

Chkobba is one of the most popular card games in Tunisia, mainly played by men at coffee shops around the country, but also played at home by men and women alike.

Tunisian web agency Web Carré have successfully captured the Chkobba coffee shop experience and brought it online through Chkobba.net; the game, which is implemented in Flash, gives you a full coffee shop setting, with the small square tables, the coffee cups, cigarettes, hookah (Shisha), in addition to the ambient noises of a coffee shop, all its hustle and bustle, and the songs playing on an old radio in the corner somewhere.

You can also chat with other users while you’re playing, just as you would be doing if you were sitting with them playing in some coffee shop.

You can play solo against the computer, with the ability to choose your competitor’s level, or invite your friends and play with them in a multi-player game. In both solo and multi-player mode you can choose to play in an online championship and win prizes.

The game is in its second version, even though still in beta and might have some little quirks here and there, but it is very well implemented and really nice to play.

An interesting feature they’re adding is the possibility to find users to play with who are from your same neighborhood or near you by displaying their avatars on a map.

There are a number of other little flash games available on the website, but none as well designed or well implemented as the chkobba card game.

# Chkobba.net

  No Comments | » Startups, Tunisia

DemoCamp Dubai 2 - Radisson SAS, Dubai Media City (May 27th)

Mohamed Marwen Meddah | May 11, 2008 – 12:24 pm | No Comments

The second DemoCamp Dubai; the Dubai-based launch event for new products, technologies and companies; will be taking place at the Radisson SAS in Dubai Media City on May 27th at 7:30PM.

It comes only a couple of months after the first DemoCamp in Dubai, but this time around a bigger room was reserved so as to make the event open to everyone, so if you’re interested in attending, you’re more than welcome.

There are already two confirmed demos scheduled for the event, but there are still openings for a couple more; So, if you’re going to be in Dubai around that date, and you are working on an interesting new web application that you would like to present, then just send an email to: contact@spinbits.com or leave a comment on the blog post announcing the event.

Startups and web applications presented at DemoCamp Dubai will also be reviewed here on StartUpArabia.

  No Comments | » Events, United Arab Emirates

Places.ae Release Places Answering Machine (PAM)

Mohamed Marwen Meddah | May 10, 2008 – 3:54 pm | 3 Comments

Places.ae, the cool Dubai location based directory, previously reviewed here, have released a new interesting feature called “Places Answering Machine (PAM)”, which acts as an interface for Places.ae with other communication channels on the internet, thereby enabling users to ask Places.ae for places directly through these channels without having to visit the website.

They’ve currently launched with Google Talk and Twitter support, and more channels should be added soon.

For Google Talk users, all you have to do is add places.ae@gmail.com in your contact list then ask PAM to find you something by sending a message in the following format:
find me <something> in <area> (e.g. find me pizza in jumeirah).
You can also use a search term without an area, using find me <something>.

If you’re using Twitter, you’ll have to start following the user places_ae, and once it starts following you back, you can send it a direct message to search for a place:
d places_ae <something> in <area> (e.g. d places_ae pizza in jumeirah).

PAM is still in the beta stage, and more work is currently being put into it’s communication skills and the layout of the sent answers. But it’s still a really nice feature, worth checking out and using for quick searches.

# Places.ae

  3 Comments | » Directory, Startup News, United Arab Emirates

SouqElArab, Online Social Shopping Portal

Mohamed Marwen Meddah | May 10, 2008 – 11:55 am | No Comments

SouqElArab is a growing Arab online social marketplace; It offers its visitors a social shopping experience whereby they can network with like minded people and do some shopping at the same time.

Their shopping experience is based on users’ recommendations and feedback; Visitors can rate and review products and come together to form a community based on their hobbies and interests.

SouqElArab provides a platform for vendors to bring their product catalogs online and easily start selling their products without the fuss of having to create their own web presences. Suppliers from over 15 countries are currently working with SouqElArab.

Through these different suppliers, SouqElArab offers a large variety of products from Books, Magazines, Music, Movies, e-Downloads and Software, to Food and delicacies, Health Care and Beauty products, Kids’ Toys and Electronics, to Hookahs, Shisha, Clothing, Antiquities, Art, and other Middle Eastern cultural products.

The website is available in both English and Arabic; with French, Persian and Afrikaans coming soon, aiming to expand both the user and supplier base.

SouqElArab Inc., founded by Fadi F. Dababneh, is the company that runs the website; with offices in USA, Jordan and Lebanon.

# SouqElArab

  No Comments | » Jordan, Lebanon, Portals, Startups, e-commerce

Paul Graham’s Six Principles For Making New Things

Mohamed Marwen Meddah | May 9, 2008 – 5:41 pm | 1 Comment

  1 Comment | » Tips & Advice

CarDaleel, Online Arab Auto Trading Service

Mohamed Marwen Meddah | May 9, 2008 – 12:37 pm | No Comments

CarDaleel, is a newly launched service based in Jordan, that aims to be an online auto trading hub for people all around the Arab world.

Users can list their cars for sale, including all necessary technical details about them, as well as their state and age, to make them easier to search for and find; photos of the cars can also be included.
On the other hand, users looking to buy a car can go through the cars listed on the website, by country, by make and model, or use the advanced search to find cars based on different criteria of their choice; once they find a car they’re interested in, they can directly contact the seller through the site.

Auto-dealers can also use the service to list their available cars for sale directly on the site, therefore adding a new sales channel to their business.

The interface is in Arabic only for the time being, but an English version is planned soon. The service is completely free for all users, both individuals and auto-dealers.

CarDaleel was founded and launched in Jordan by Khaled Salah, Khamis Siksek and Hamzeh Abu Zakham.

# CarDaleel

  No Comments | » Jordan, Portals, Startups, e-commerce

Wikimania 2008 - Alexandria, Egypt (July 17-19)

Mohamed Marwen Meddah | May 8, 2008 – 4:09 pm | No Comments

Alexandria, Egypt, will be hosting Wikimania 2008 this Summer in the prestigious newly reconstructed library of Alexandria, Bibliotheca Alexandrina.

Wikimania is a regular conference for all Wikimedians that contribute to one of the many Wikimedia Foundation projects. Past conferences have been held in popular cities around the world, such as Frankfurt, Boston and Taipei, but this is the first time the event is being held in an Arab country.

As in previous years, Wikimania 2008 will include unconferences, seminars, and workshops. The Wikimania 2008 committee, comprised primarily of volunteers, will be organizing the event, and has already begun lining up sponsors. The program is still being planned, you can follow the planning here.

Registration for the event is open now, and details on how to register and attend can be found here: Registration.

# Wikimania 2008 Alexandria, Arabic Wikipedia

  No Comments | » Egypt, Events

Wasfati: Recipes, Nutrition And Health Portal

Mohamed Marwen Meddah | May 8, 2008 – 12:41 pm | 1 Comment

Wasfati, which stands for ‘My Recipes’ in English, is a new service that was recently launched to cover the needs of Arab food and cooking aficionados, as well as those interested in nutrition and health tips and articles, by providing a place where users can centralize and save their favorite recipes and articles; those they post themselves or others they find and like by other users.

The service aims to replace those bits and pieces of paper and ripped out magazine pages that people have around their kitchens with little recipes or articles here and there, by taking them online, enabling people to share their recipes, tips and articles with others.
The website users can rate and comment on each others recipes and articles, save them in their list of favorites for future reference, forward them to a friend or submit them to a number of social bookmarking sites.

The site which is entirely in Arabic, is very well designed and very simple to surf around. You can find your way by category (Recipes or Articles) and their subcategories, by viewing submissions from specific users, by checking out certain tags, by viewing the most recent recipes or selected recipes and articles, or by using the search engine to find what you’re looking for.

Wasfati is based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and was developed with Olive Interactive.

# Wasfati

  1 Comment | » Content, Startups

Yamli Enable Advertising In Their Language Tool

Mohamed Marwen Meddah | May 7, 2008 – 12:58 pm | 2 Comments

More news from Yamli, the cool web-based tool that solves the problem of Arab users who don’t have an Arabic keyboard or who aren’t as comfortable typing in Arabic; They have come up with an interesting way to start generating revenue with their tool: they enabled advertising on their Yamli editor menus.

The ads are in the form of small 120×30 banners, simply and neatly placed at the bottom of the word suggestion and option selection menus.

A number of advertisers have already started buying these ad spots with Yamli, and users of the Yamli editor tool on the Yamli website, facebook, or elsewhere should start noticing them now.

No details about the pricing of these units are available on the website, but advertisers can contact Yamli to place their ads through the following contact form.

Very good move from Yamli, who just released an API to use their tool recently, and who should be seeing an increase in their tool’s usage over the following weeks as more Arabic websites integrate their tool. SouqElArab just announced integration of the tool from their side yesterday.

It will be interesting to see how well these ads will perform, and how successful they’ll be for advertisers as a new advertising channel and for Yamli as a revenue model.

  2 Comments | » Advertising, Lebanon, Startup News, Tools

SouqElArab Partners With Yamli For Better User Experience

Mohamed Marwen Meddah | May 6, 2008 – 9:03 pm | 1 Comment

Press Release: SouqElArab.com partners with Yamli.com to offer a unique user experience for Arabs
Amman, May 6, 2008

The Arab social Web shopping portal, SouqElArab.com has partnered with Yamli.com, which offers tools that allows easy access and expand the Arabic Web, to offer Arabs the facility that allows Arabic speakers to write Arabic using English alphabet.

Embedded within the SouqElArab.com Web site is Yamli’s API technology that allows the user to easily access the vast product lines without the need of an Arabic keyboard. The technology has been implemented in the search engine, as well as the use of User Names for the Networking facility offered, and for placing reviews, messages and text fields. The technology is simply “Write in Arabic - Type it the way you say it” as Yamli creators put it.

“I am really excited for this partnership and looking forward for more collaboration with SouqElArab.com. Our mission at Yamli is to empower the Arabic language on the Web and we firmly believe that in unity and collaboration we can and will achieve our goal” says Yamli.com Co-Founder, Habib Haddad.

Further to this facility, numerous co-operations and partnerships are in process of implementation to better serve both companies in terms of exposure, accessibility and branding.

Fadi F. Dababneh, Founder & CEO of SouqElArab Inc. added: “This new technology has started to revolutionise the Arabic language’s use on the Internet. More and more Web services are offering this technology from Yamli.com to better serve and understand the needs of its user-base. I believe nothing like this has come along since the first Arabic e-mail service was offered in the late 1990’s.”

Language Analytics LLC, which created and operates Yamli.com is an Internet startup based in Cambridge, MA, (USA) specializes in smart transliteration technologies for Arabic and other languages.

SouqElArab.com, operated by SouqElArab Inc., is a growing Arab on-line marketplace in the making. It offers visitors a social shopping experience whereby they can network with like-minded people and shop at the same time. The shopping experience is based on members’ recommendations and feedback, where visitors rate and review products and come together to form a community based on their hobbies, interests and traits.

# SouqElArab, Yamli

  1 Comment | » Press Releases