Archive for the ‘Palestine’ Category
Bedkash, A New Palestinian Free Classifieds Portal
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | September 27, 2009 – 10:58 pm |
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Bedkash is a new free classifieds portal for Palestine that was just recently launched in its beta version, providing the service for users in all Palestinian cities.
The service enables users to post the objects they want to sell or the service they can provide, or what they are searching for, for free on the site for other users to search, navigate through and reply to with their offers.
The ads are organized under categories and subcategories, as well as by city, enabling users to go through all posted classifieds narrowing down the selection either by the available categorizations or by specific cities or a combination of both.
Only registered users can get in touch with the person who posted the classified ad, otherwise they just get to see the different details of the posting without any information about the poster.
Bedkash is a new product of Sadaf Technology Development, a Palestinian web development company based in Gaza. The site is available in Arabic only, and the company plans to monetize it through selling online advertising.
Shawshara, An Online Encyclopedia For Arabic Music
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | September 24, 2009 – 1:11 pm | Comments
Shawshara is a community based project aimed at collecting and documenting all aspects of Arabic music in an online encyclopedia.
Shawshara is set up as a wiki based platform enabling anyone to add and modify the contents of any page, without the interference of site administrators, in order to enrich the content and grow the database.
The site currently contains over 25 Arabic artists, their biographies and discographies that translate into several hundred albums, and over 700 song pages which include the song’s lyrics, lyrics translated into English and other languages, transliteration and videos.
The site interface is presented in both English and Arabic, and so is the content, which is translated and transliterated into English, and in some cases into other languages as well.
Shawshara was founded by Waseem Sayegh, a Palestinian, currently living and studying in Canada.
It is powered by MediaWiki, the same open source software that runs Wikipedia.
Google Launches Google.ps Domain Name For Palestine
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | August 13, 2009 – 10:47 am | Comments
Google just announced the addition of a new domain to their list of international domain names google.ps for Palestine.
The new domain will give Arabic-speaking users in the Palestinian Territories, who use Palestinian ISPs, access to Google in Arabic–and eventually, access to more locally-relevant content.
Local domain names are part of a bigger strategy for Google, they’re a first step towards making the web more accessible and relevant for users from around the world, providing local services to them wherever they happen to be.
Google has already previously launched a number of local domain names for other countries including Jordan, Morocco, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Libya among others and plans to continue doing so.
With the launch of google.ps, the total number of international Google domains goes up to more than 160.
G.ho.st Launches API To Enable Third-Party Web Applications
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | May 18, 2009 – 11:00 pm | Comments
G.ho.st, the free open web based operating system / virtual computer, has launched an API aimed at allowing third party application developers to add any web-based application to G.ho.st easily and with a tight integration to the system’s data and preferences.
The API allows the following specific functions (all subject to appropriate user consent)
- Allow a user to launch a third-party web application visually integrated in a window on the G.ho.st Desktop
- Allow the third-party to rely on G.ho.st authentication to effect single sign-on
- Allow a file to be passed to the web application for viewing/editing and to be saved back to G.ho.st Drive
- Provide a full file system to the web application by offering full read/write access to the user’s G.ho.st Drive using Webdav
- Pass user preferences like language, font, etc. from G.ho.st to the third-party application
The API is designed to be very light weight with a simple convenient approach to launching third-party applications by a URL and passing data as parameters to that URL.
The API was also built to be completely technology agnostic; accepting any web application with any backend as long as it is launched in a web page through a URL.
These web applications have to be hosted at the web application developer’s own expense on any server or platform of their choice, as G.ho.st currently don’t provide any hosting for these third party applications. A special case exists for applications that can be compiled into a single file.
For more details on the API, check the G.ho.st API Page.
Zaad, A Specialized Palestinian Directory Search Engine
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | April 2, 2009 – 2:26 pm | Comments
Zaad is a local Palestinian directory search engine that serves up search results from specialized databases, currently covering the Palestinian private sector and NGO sector databases.
Zaad enables users to enter information about their company or association directly to the site’s database, and update it as frequently as they need to. Details submitted to the search engine are confirmed through phone by the Zaad team to make sure all data in their database is accurate.
The service aims to build national databases for several sectors, expanding soon to hotels, restaurants, health centres, and more; positioning itself as an easy entry point to search for and find any type of business or organization in Palestine.
An integrated text advertising solution will be launched in a few days, that will enable advertisers to buy text ads to be displayed with the search results, targeted by category and language, with geo-targeting to be added soon.
The service went live earlier this month, and is available in both Arabic and English.
Zaad is a project of Sadaf Technology Development, a Palestinian web development company based in Gaza.
# Zaad
Google Announces G-Pals Day 2009 In Palestine
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | March 12, 2009 – 8:39 am | Comments
Google announced that upon invitation by the Palestine Information & Communications Technology Incubator (PICTI) and Palestinian IT Association (PITA), with support from UPP and USAID, it will be offering specialized training days in Ramallah (West Bank), aiming to spur economic development in Palestine.
The event will be held over a two day period (March 24 – 25, 2009); the first day targeted at software developers and the second at entrepreneurs.
The agenda is as follows:
Day 1: For Software Developers (March 24th 2009)
Day 1 will focus on pushing the boundaries of web applications using Google developer technologies. Google engineers and web development leaders will lead attendants through one full day of in-depth sessions on the latest Google technologies and hands-on codelabs. The day will also be about bringing brilliant developers together to share their own ideas. Registration form for Day 1
Day 2: For Entrepreneurs (March 25th 2009)
Day 2 will be full of Google product demonstrations for small or medium sized businesses to help spur innovation and entrepreneurship in the region. There will be a discussion on how to create Arabic content using online tools, how to market them and how to monetize. Furthermore there will be presentations of several tools to better manage businesses. Registration form for Day 2
The event will be held in Ramallah at the following venue:
Grand Park Hotel
Al Masyoon Heights
Rafat Road
Ramallah
Tel: +972 2 298 6194
For more information, you can visit the official site here: G-Pals Day 2009
[Via: Leaders of Tomorrow]
Yooyaland – Education & Entertainment For Arab Children
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | October 12, 2008 – 8:47 pm | Comments
Yooyaland is a Palestinian startup that aims to fill the need for creative educational resources for 3-9 year old children in the Arab world; providing resources that blend technology with an enlightening learning process, and utilize Internet as a medium to deliver across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and the rest of the world.
Its exclusive, original content is carefully created to stimulate the children and challenge their intellect; provide teachers with entertaining, educational material; and transform the home educational cycle by giving parents an ever growing library of resources ranging from Yooyaland’s interactive portal to worksheets, toys and other products.
Yooyaland delivers a rich variety of age-appropriate activities to each user, providing parents with the possibility to change the level of difficulty to each activity, according to their child’s pace.
It also focuses on the educational skills that are most important to the child’s development, including basic language skills, number recognition and mathematical thinking, critical thinking, spatial reasoning and logic.
The animations are based on flash technology and demonstrate effective use of e-learning methods such as dividing the content into few learning steps, examining the knowledge gained in each step, and interacting with the child to keep him/her playing online.
To get access to all the lessons and contents of Yooyaland, subscribers have to charge their accounts using one of the supported payment methods: Visa, CashU, OneCard and Yooya Prepaid Cards.
Alia Abu Shmeiss submitted the Yooyaland project to PICTI (Palestine Information and Communications Technology Incubator) back in 2005, where it was then incubated for a period of 18 months, through which it went from idea to reality with support and consulting from PICTI.
PICTI then linked Yooyaland with Hadara, a member of Paltel Group, which launched it to the private sector, making Yooyaland the first case of a merger and acquisition from the incubator in Palestine culminating in transfer of equity shares in exchange of US$450,000 and an additional US$1Million of investment in the company.
Synergos Middle East & North Africa Social Innovators Program
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | July 16, 2008 – 11:28 am | Comments
In October 2007 Synergos launched the Middle East and North Africa Social Innovators Program, with funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and other donors. The three-year initiative seeks to identify and support twenty individuals from Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and Palestine who are implementing successful social projects.
In order to be considered for selection, a candidate must be implementing an idea that has demonstrated positive social change and impact at a local level with the potential for replication in other communities and expansion to a national level. Social innovations will be considered which have as a focus one or more of the following fields; economic, social, or sustainable development; health; education; and culture.
The Program will invest in these Social Innovators through professional development and financial support to better enable participants to transform their small-scale projects into sustainable programs and organizations.
The selected Social Innovators will have access to training, mentoring and peer learning through a network of professionals and social entrepreneurs to help build financial and organizational sustainability for your innovation; as well as facilitation of connections to business, government, philanthropic and other civil society leaders in the area and across the world to leverage their innovation and make a greater impact. Financial awards of up to $17,000 per year, for two years, are also offered to help develop the winner’s social ventures.
The application period for the Social Innovators program began in early May 2008 and goes on until mid-September.
For more details about the program and project submission, check out the official program website: Synergos Social Innovators Program.
Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation & PICTI Sign MoU
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | June 24, 2008 – 5:26 pm | Comments
Dubai’s Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation and the Palestine Information and Communications Technology Incubator (PICTI) have signed a memorandum of understanding to work together on projects and opportunities for economic development.
Under the MoU, the two organizations will be co-operating on initiatives aiming to encourage young entrepreneurs in the region and across the Arab world and identifying promising technology projects for incubation.
PICTI will also support the Foundation’s aims of establishing an Arab Incubators’ Network, which will provide an online resource and collaboration for new businesses and other interested organizations; as well as establishing integrated resources for promoting entrepreneurial activity across the Arab world.
The Palestine Information and Communications Technology Incubator (PICTI), is an independent Palestinian organization that has been created through the initiative and support of the Palestinian Information Technology Community. PICTI and its partner organizations have as their mission the revitalization and the sustainable growth of the Information Communication Technology (ICT) sector in Palestine, through an incubation model that will offer professional business services to Palestinian entrepreneurs who have mature concepts for unique and innovative ICT products assessed to have strong market potential.
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