Archive for the ‘Jordan’ Category
Ikbis Arab Video & Photo Sharing Site Launches New Design
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | May 12, 2008 – 9:55 am |
2 Comments
Ikbis, the popular Arab video and photo sharing website, launched a new design last night. The new design feels a lot neater and more organized, which is great and isn’t that easy to achieve for a media content site.
A new ‘Contests’ tab has been added, so it’s clear Ikbis are going to be launching more and more contests to encourage users to post more high quality content.
A ‘Coming soon’ banner, showing two primitives and a mosquito, promises a new surprise soon; I’m guessing it’ll be a cool cartoon series by the talented Ikbis designers.
According to Ikbis, this new edition starts to reflect their evolved thinking and some of the new strategies they’ll be rolling out in the upcoming months.
# Ikbis
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.
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.
EatLime, Fast Video And File Sharing
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | May 6, 2008 – 10:34 am | No Comments
EatLime, is an online sharing service that attempts to make the hosting and sharing of video and other file formats simpler and faster.
As with other services of this kind, the idea is quite straight-forward; you upload your file, and then share it with the world, by providing a link to your uploaded file.
But EatLime does it with a bit of a twist; Unlike other services, EatLime lets your friends start downloading your shared files as soon as you start uploading them, by providing a link that you can share with them, making the entire sharing process quite faster; All links to files you’ve uploaded to the system are saved to your account so that you can go back to them whenever you need; and you can import all your contacts from Gmail, Hotmail, AOL and Yahoo in order to send out links and share your uploaded files easily and quickly.
When it comes to video, you can upload videos of different formats, choose the player style you want for them, and then either automatically post to a number of services like myspace, facebook, bebo, orkut, hi5 to share with your friends, or have a link emailed to your friends so that they can watch it on EatLime.
The service is free and offers unlimted uploads up to 1GB for registered users. The interface is in English only, it’s very nicely designed, and registration is pretty simple and quick.
EatLime was founded by Mohamed from Jordan and Adil from Pakistan.
# EatLime
Watwet, Social Networking And Mini-Blogging Platform
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | April 18, 2008 – 11:30 am | 4 Comments
Watwet is a new Arab social networking and mini-blogging platform, quite similar to Twitter, that was launched in December 2007 by the TootCorp team, who brought us services like the photo and video sharing site Ikbis and blog aggregator Toot in the past.
The concept is very simple: Using watwet you can post short messages (watwets) updating your status, through which you can stay in touch with your friends. These watwets can be posted from the web or by sending SMS to Watwet. These updates are then shown to your friends on the Watwet website, as well as sent to them by email and SMS.
You can also send your friend direct private messages too or whispers (Washwishes) as they call them.
Watwet doesn’t stop at short text messages though, it goes even further supporting photos, that can also be uploaded through the web interface or sent by MMS.
The website is well designed, pretty straight-forward and easy to use, and work is currently underway on an AIR based desktop client. The only two points I found a bit inconvenient are that users’ timelines, their lists of updates, are only accessible to registered users even if they choose for them to be public in their privacy settings; and the public timeline (updates from all users) can only be seen if you logout.
The service is available in both English and Arabic, and is open to users from all over the world, although the SMS service is only available in Jordan for Zain subscribers now. Not sure when they’ll be expanding to other operators around the Arab world.
Something I think Watwet should do though is open up their system a bit, either through an API or through modules they develop themselves to enable users both to pull information from Watwet onto their own blogs/websites/services and push updates from other services to Watwet automatically.
For more on how to use Watwet, you can take the Watwet tour.
# Watwet
Akhtaboot, Online Career Network
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | April 11, 2008 – 3:01 pm | 2 Comments
Many Arab startups have given online job search/recruiting a go over the past years, with different levels of success. The latest addition to these job sites is Akhtaboot, which sells itself as a career network, and not just another simple job site.
Launched in public beta last year, Akhtaboot (Arabic for Octopus) describe themselves as an “online career network that is committed to providing a user-friendly way of linking the right person to the right career opportunity.”
They were initially set up to serve the Jordanian market, but now plan to serve as a career network for the whole Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
So basically, Akhtaboot takes a more networked approach to career building, giving job seekers the possibility to build their online CVs and profiles, including even a video; look for and apply to available jobs on the website; take the Myers-Briggs© MBTI personality test; as well as build their professional network of business contacts. On the other hand, employers can post their job openings and target specific communities to get more relevant applicants.
Akhtaboot also offers a number of training courses, in Jordan only for the time being, through what it calls a ‘Career Center’; the training courses cover several topics, including HR, Project Management, Marketing and Internal Audit courses.
The design is pretty nice, and the interface is quite straight-forward, although the many different steps you have to go through to setup your account details leaves you feeling it could be a bit better organized to become even more usable.
Overall, a really good effort, with a number of interesting features, worth checking out.
# Akhtaboot
Questler, Online Learning And Knowledge Sharing Network
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | April 10, 2008 – 9:34 am | 1 Comment
Questler is a new online service that was launched into public beta a few months ago and which has an interesting social networking approach to acquiring and sharing knowledge online.
The idea of the website stems from the belief that everyone is a learner, seeking to know more about certain topics of interest to them, and that a free-space interactive approach between different individuals is the best way to learn, share knowledge and collaboratively create ideas.
So in other words, the goal is to try to tap into the collective knowledge of the crowd to acquire and share knowledge.
Questler users can put together a learning network by inviting and constructing a list of their contacts, as well as finding other individuals who share their same interests on the site.
Together they can use the service to start conversations about those topics and engage in knowledge sharing through posting their quests and discoveries on different subjects.
The interface is really simple and clear; well designed; well organized and straight to the point. I really like their simple logo and visual identity too.
It’s in English only for the time being; no work on if they’ll be adding Arabic soon.
It’s a really interesting approach and service, worth checking out for your quest for knowledge online.
