Archive for the ‘Saudi Arabia’ Category
Video: AdGoing Online Ad Marketplace At DemoCamp Dubai
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | June 27, 2010 – 12:55 pm |
View Comments
AdGoing is a Saudi based company that bills itself as an online ad marketplace, aiming to make it easy to buy and sell advertising online, giving advertisers and publishers a platform to find each other.
The service supports both banner and text ads, as well as their variations. The system is mainly targeted at smaller publishers and bloggers who want to make money out of their advertising spaces, as well as advertisers who want to tap into the system for cheaper advertising rates and to have their ads go on a variety of sites and blogs.
Ads served up on the system are on a CPC (Cost per click) basis, and the system displays ads on a real time auction basis.
Jeddah Food, The Online Restaurant Guide Launches iPhone App
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | June 22, 2010 – 9:40 pm | View Comments
Jeddah Food, the English language online restaurant guide to restaurants in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, recently announced the launch of their new iPhone mobile application.
The application enables visitors to Jeddah, as well as locals, quickly find restaurants around the city, based on your current location, while on the go. It provides a search functionality to look for specific restaurants and cafes around Jeddah, as well as quick categories that enables users to click through directly and locate places by type of cuisine (e.g. Lebanese, Japanese, Burgers etc.)
For each venue, the application provides the venue details, phone numbers, website details, photo galleries, and maps.
Wajhy, Create Your Own Arab Avatar
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | February 16, 2010 – 12:38 pm | View Comments
Over the past years, every now and then a new avatar creation tool would pop up from somewhere, to let internet users create avatars of theirs in the form of South Park characters, Lego men and women, and the list continues; each time people would flock to the new service, create their avatars, and they’d spread them like fire across social networks and all sorts of other online services.
A new tool called Wajhy has been launched, in Arabic, for Arab users, that allows them to create avatars that actually look a bit more like them, and that they can dress in traditional dress too.
The user can choose whether they want to create a male or female avatar, then go in and start setting the options one by one, from shape of face, ears and nose, to what they’re wearing, what their head dress is, and the accessories they’re sporting.
The main differences between Wajhy,which means ‘My face’ in Arabic, and other such services are in the choices of clothing available for men and women, their head dress, the facial hair options for men, and such small details that give a small Arab touch to the avatar.
The service was launched by Remal IT (Saudi Arabia) and SOCOOOL Entertainment (United Arab Emirates), and is still in Beta, but is quite stable and smooth to use.
Qanawati, Check Flight Details & Availability Using SMS
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | October 16, 2009 – 1:06 pm | View Comments
Qanawati (‘My Channels’ in Arabic) is a new mobile based service that was just launched from Saudi Arabia by Remal IT, allowing you to check for flight reservation availability via SMS.
The service enables you to check for the availability of seats to be reserved specifically for the following airlines: Saudi Airlines, Nas air and Sama; as well as for all airlines using IATA data.
Other than that, the service also makes it possible to check the details and status of a specific flight by entering the flight number, and if needed the specific date for it.
Another available option is to check the arrival/departure activity in Saudi airports to see what planes are coming in or leaving on that day and the details of the flights.
The service is based on premium rated sms messages, and currently works with Mobily and Zain, with STC support on the way.
Google Launches Four New Arabic Editions Of Google News
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | September 2, 2009 – 1:05 pm | View Comments
Google just announced the launch of four new Arabic editions of Google News for Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Users in these countries can now access Google News editions specific to their country and get the latest headlines in topics such as Politics, Business, Sports, Entertainment and more.
This is part of Google’s ongoing push to provide local services and more relevant information and news for users, starting with these four countries that represent more than 24 million Arabic-speaking internet users.
Like all Google News editions, these computer-generated Arabic editions aggregate headlines from thousands of news outlets around the world, group similar stories together and link directly to the original sources that publish these stories. This enables users to search for topics they’re interested in, and read a wide variety of perspectives from different sources.
It seems there are plans by Google to continue rolling out more local editions for the rest of the Arab countries in the near future.
NaqaTube: A “Purified” Collection Of YouTube Videos
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | August 27, 2009 – 2:08 pm | View Comments
NaqaTube is a service that was launched a couple of months ago from Saudi Arabia, and that aims to offer a clean alternative to YouTube, preventing youth from watching profane or sexually explicit video clips online. (The word ‘Naqa’ means ‘pure’ in Arabic.)
The site features a collection of “clean” and edited clips from YouTube, cutting out all profanities or sexually explicit clips, as well as censoring videos that are deemed negative towards to the Kingdom’s government, scholars and citizens in general.
In keeping with strict religious guidelines, clips that have music are edited and their music removed, while images of women are banned. NaqaTube visitors are also able to edit their own clips through the site before uploading them online.
Much of the material on the site is religiously inclined and the site’s front page displays links to over 10 channels mainly featuring scholars, preachers, children and other Islamic-related material.
According to one of the moderators of NaqaTube, the site has received nearly 5,000 to 6,000 visitors since its launch two months ago.
NaqaTube was created by Saudi web development company House.
Mo3jam, A User Generated Dictionary Of Colloquial Arabic
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | August 2, 2009 – 8:48 am | View Comments
Mo3jam is a new interesting service which aims to build a user generated dictionary of colloquial Arabic. (Mo3jam is an Arabic word that means lexicon or dictionary.)
The idea of the website is that users from all around the Arab world will be able to come in and share the different spoken terms and expressions used in the various accents and dialects available in all the Arab countries.
Mo3jam hopes to create a central, multilingual knowledgebase of colloquial Arabic, emphasising ease of use and breadth; with the service open to anyone to contribute without any limitations.
Terms can be defined using Arabic (which is the preferred language), English, or French. And even if a term is already defined in the system, users can still their own definition for it, with the best quality definitions bubbling up to the top through users voting on them and adding them to their favorites.
Most major dialects of Arabic are currently listed, but the list is not a fixed one. The system was designed to have multiple levels of dialects and sub-dialects. So suggestions for adding dialects or sub-dialects can be made to the site’s founder.
Registration to the site is not mandatory to start using it or adding terms, although users who want to can either use the regular site registration or login using Facebook Connect.
The site is nicely designed, simple and usable; and is currently available in both Arabic and English.
Mo3jam was created by Abdullah Arif who is from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, but currently living in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Argaam Opens Up To Contributions Through Alpha Beta
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | June 7, 2009 – 3:19 pm | View Comments
Argaam, the Arabic financial portal, has just launched Alpha Beta, a section of the portal for informed visitors to contribute through posting their analysis of news and events taking place in the market, as well as any information that they might have that isn’t necessarily common knowledge to everyone interested in the stock market and economy in general.
Alpha Beta is open for direct contributions in the form of articles, news, opinions, analysis about regional or worldwide stock markets, investment opportunities; as well as comments and followup on articles published on the portal.
Argaam hope to create a vibrant open environment for discussion and sharing of new ideas, enabling the portal’s visitors to connect, interact and exchange opinions and information that will help enrich and develop the investment culture in the Arab world.
The portal’s editors will go over submitted material before it is published to make sure of its quality, accuracy and reliability, as well as its adherence to the guidelines for these articles, which ask for them to be focused, unbiased and precise among other criteria.
It’s an interesting move from Argaam, attempting to tap into the knowledge of the crowds for insider information about a financial market where there’s more to each story than what figures in the official press releases and news, in addition to all that takes place behind the scenes.
As with the parent portal Argaam, Alpha Beta is available in Arabic only.
Kammelna: An Online Multi-player Baloot Card Game Service
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | April 6, 2009 – 10:26 am | View Comments
Taking its first step into the online gaming world, Saudi web company Remal IT has launched a beta of its ‘Baloot’ card game site, Kammelna.
Kammelna is an online multi-player ‘Baloot‘ game, a popular card game played in Saudi Arabia (which is quite similar to the French game Belote), that is built in Flash and runs in a browser.
Being a flash game, the game does not require downloading, and is played directly from within the browser, featuring a simple Arabic interface that is geared toward getting the players started with a game as easily and quickly as possible.
The game also supports firewall traversal, which will allow players to play the game even from within restricted networks.
Remal IT noted that Kammelna.com basic playing features will be free, and that the site will be supported through ads and extra paid playing features. They also hope to roll out more free online games, geared towards the Arab market, in the future.
Remal IT is a Saudi based Internet applications and services startup that was established back in 2005. It owns and operates a network of social sites and Internet applications, and relies on e-commerce and e-marketing for revenues.
Ehsaeyat, Open Free Survey Service Around Technology Topics
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | April 2, 2009 – 10:24 am | View Comments
Ehsaeyat is a new Arabic service that was launched a couple of months ago by Bluemeel as an open and free service holding and publishing results of surveys, mainly around technology topics.
Surveys done by Ehsaeyat are open and free for everyone to access and make use of, in an attempt to help academic researchers as well as business people find the numbers they need for their research and businesses.
The service is aimed at everyone, but mainly at people who don’t have the budget to go to one of the market research companies out there for the numbers and details they need.
Anyone can suggest surveys to be launched and then shared through the site. The surveys done by Eshaeyat are managed through SurveyMonkey, and then their results are published for everyone to access.
The service should come in handy for a number of people, and I think it could be used by internet startups to try and collect more information to help them with their first steps.
Ehsaeyat is still at its beginnings, and a good start it is, I just think they should try to put more focus on their ongoing surveys, and on getting them out there to more people from different backgrounds, incomes, …etc., in order to have a better and more significant result set.
