Archive for the ‘Blogging’ Category
Twitvid.com, A Service to Tweet Videos Quickly And Easily
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | May 24, 2009 – 12:59 pm |
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EatLime, the online video and file sharing service that was previously reviewed here, has gone on and released a new service call Twitvid.com that presents users with an easy way to post their videos to Twitter.
The service doesn’t just post a link to a video when the user tweets, but it uses the patent-pending EatLime technology to upload and stream the video in real time, in a way that a person’s followers on Twitter can start watching the video immediately while it’s still uploading, making it pretty much a live stream.
Users can upload their videos to the service either through the web interface, through their mobile phones (by sending an email or MMS), or through the service’s API.
Just as with other services like twitpic, the user can just login with their Twitter username and password and start uploading and tweeting their videos. Upon logging in, each user also gets an email address that they can use to email their videos directly from their mobile.
The system’s API also helps open it up, making it easy for other companies and developers to integrate the service into their own services and products.
Among future plans is the ability to resume uploading if the connection is lost, enabling users to resume uploading from the exact point where it stopped.
EatLime, the company behind Twitvid.com, is a 5 person San Francisco based company, founded by Mohammad Al Adham from Jordan and Adil Lalani from Pakistan.
Watwet’s New Version With Twitter Link, Channels And Better Language Support
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | May 20, 2009 – 9:14 am | Comments
Watwet, the Arab social networking and micro-blogging platform, has released a new version of their web application code named ‘Suzie’, and with it come a bunch of really interesting new features.
With the recent migration to the Rails 2.2 framework, they’ve worked on better language support on Watwet, which translates into better handling of Arabic in this version, but also opens the door for other languages like French, Farsi, Turkish and Swahili, that are in their future plans.
Something interesting they’ve also gone and opened up is the possibility for anyone to create a channel of their own, without having to go through the Watwet team like they used to in the past.
It should be interesting to see how many people and businesses start using this feature; and when/if we’ll start seeing the concept of sponsored channels.
Complementing this move, the public timeline of Watwet now also shows the watwets coming from channels too, along with the watwets coming from the users.
Another good move with this version is the possibility to link a Watwet account to a Twitter account, in a way that anything posted to Watwet gets automatically posted to Twitter and vice versa. A simple settings page available under ‘Twitter Link’ turns this on for the user.
This makes it easier and more efficient for people who mainly use one of the services, but also want to try out the other, or who want to streamline their status and lifestreaming activities across both platforms.
I expect more focus will be put on the integration with Twitter in the future to try and lure more Twitter users to play around with Watwet, growing their user base and activity level through it to make the service even more interesting to use.
Other than these mentioned points, they’ve also worked on some design and layout tweaks for the interface, as well as on browser compatibility issues.
Some really exciting moves in this release by Watwet, paving the way for some pretty interesting possibilities in the future and for some other features they seem to have hidden up their sleeves.
KuWeet, Your Window To Kuwaiti Tweets
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | May 3, 2009 – 10:04 pm | Comments
One of the biggest factors of Twitter’s success and popularity is the wealth of third party tools and solutions built around it and using its API.
Just recently, I came across an interesting little project built around Twitter that aims to open a window on tweets coming out of Kuwait, and about Kuwait, by the name of KuWeet.
The way it was built is really simple: an account @kuweet was created for twitter users in Kuwait to follow, and then what happens is that all followers of this account are collected and placed in a list. All tweets originating from people on this list are then aggregated into a a public timeline of Twitter users from and about Kuwait.
According to its developer, it’s based on an integration of Twitter2html into Wordpress, with a theme that is pretty much identical to the Twitter interface.
New tweets are fetched every 10 minutes through a planned cron process.
KuWeet is a project by well-known Kuwaiti blogger and tweeter @nibaq.
Minixr, A New Microblogging And Lifestreaming Platform
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | November 25, 2008 – 11:14 pm | Comments
Minixr is a new Microblogging and lifestreaming platform launched from Algeria.
The service enables users to post and share their status updates, links, different types of files (videos, photos, audio) and events with their friends through the website.
Basic social networking features, enabling users to find and follow their friends, building their own personal network on the service are of course integrated.
On the other hand Minixr also offers the ability to automatically pull user activity on a number of other websites (Digg, Last.fm, Delicious, Flickr, YouTube, …etc) and centralize them on the user’s timeline for all followers to see.
If compared to international services, Minixr looks pretty much like a mix of Pownce and FriendFeed.
Minixr also offers users the possibility to send status updates through their mobile phones, or through IM (Google Talk, Jabber, AIM).
The service mainly targets young adults, between the ages of 20-35, from Francophone countries and the Middle East. The revenue model is planned to be solely advertising based.
The service is currently in Beta, with the official launch slated for sometime in January 2009.
The interface is pretty simple and uses pretty much the same format as other microblogging services out there. It is available in French only at the time being, but other languages will be added soon.
# Minixr
Wikeez, A New Social Entertainment Platform
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | November 6, 2008 – 2:00 pm | Comments
Wikeez, is a new Lebanon-based startup, focusing on user generated content around entertainment topics, which was founded by Kuv Capital with a seed investment of US$250,000.
Wikeez aims to allow people to publish and exchange on their favorite subjects centered on entertainment topics (tv shows, movies, celebrities, music and sports).
Each topic is fragmented into 3 tiers:
- Top Stories: Information on the subject; latest news, Bio,…
- Blog Stories: content produced by Wikeez members
- Micro Stories: reactions shared by Wikeez members
Wikeez will also enable people to create their own blogs, fan clubs, get the latest news centered on their passions, as well as socialize with other fans.
The site is still in alpha, with a beta version coming pretty soon.
The company is currently looking to recruit in Lebanon; You can check out their open job vacancies on the StartUpArabia Job Board.
Update: Wikeez is offering invites to their alpha version to all StartUpArabia readers; if you’re interested, just send an email to: invite@wikeez.com.
# Wikeez
Artwitter.com; An Arabic Interface For Twitter
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | October 11, 2008 – 11:30 pm | Comments
Even though there is an Arabic micro-blogging service called Watwet that is very similar to Twitter in functionality, a lot of Arab users have chosen to use Twitter instead, maybe because it has mostly become the international poster child for micro-blogging, or because most of their friends already use it and it’s just easier to follow the crowd. Anyway, many of these users choose to tweet in Arabic, but as the Twitter interface is in English, thus left-to-right, Arabic script which is right-to-left gets quite annoying to read through the English interface.
So Mohamed Al Rehaili, with the help of a number of other Arab bloggers and friends, launched an Arabic interface for Twitter that can be accessed at: Artwitter.com
Artwitter.com uses the functions provided by the Twitter API, to bring its main friend timeline, replies and posting functionalities through a simple right-to-left Arabic interface, without storing any user data on its server.
The site is still in early beta, and it’s still not possible to view a certain user’s timeline or search for tweets, but I’m guessing these functionalities will be implemented soon enough, especially if the service finds success between Arab Twitter users.
Berberus, The Semantic Maghreb Blog Aggregator
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | October 2, 2008 – 4:28 pm | Comments
Berberus is a new blog aggregator that was recently launched to cover blogs from the Maghreb region. The name is an obvious reference to the region and its roots. The site also says it references the existence of a form of berberism (free man) in every blogger who aspires to express themselves freely.
Over the past years, a number of blog aggregators have sprung up in the Maghreb region, mainly covering each country on its own, and there even was a blog called Maghreblog which grouped authors from all Maghreb states who blogged and re-blogged stories from the region, but none of the previous efforts have grouped as many Maghreb blogs in one place.
Berberus currently indexes 1255 blogs from the five Arab Maghreb states (Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania), and aggregates posts and comments from all these blogs. It also provides an analysis of the activity going through these blogs, giving information about the posts and comments activity throughout the region, which the most active blogs and most commented blogs are, and even which posts are the ones getting the most commenting action.
An advanced search engine is provided to search for blogs, posts or comments on certain topics, or by certain people, throughout the region or in a specific country, and in a certain period of time.
Another plus for Berberus is the semantic side of it all, as the tags in the aggregated posts are extracted, and their content analyzed to provide users an easy way to find posts that talk about topics of interest to them; by surfing through the latest tags and checking out the hottest and most talked about issues and topics.
A podcast directory is also included, indexing podcasts from around the region, and offering a central interface to watch or listen to them.
The interface tries to pack all the mentioned functionalities in a way that keeps it pretty easy to use and uncluttered, and it’s rather successful at it. The site is in English only for the time being.
# Berberus
Hyde Park, Group Blog With Social Networking Features
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | September 21, 2008 – 3:56 pm | Comments
Hyde Park is a new interesting Arabic project, currently under development, and which has been wrapped in a veil of secrecy up to now. We at StartUpArabia have been able to get our hands on some information about the project that we’d like to share with you.
Hyde Park is a group blog with integrated social networking features, enabling bloggers to publish freely and as easily as possible.
The main goals behind Hyde Park are to simplify the process of blogging as much as possible and to create more and more connections and interaction between bloggers by bringing them together on one collective blog where they can write about a range of common topics.
With Hyde Park there won’t be any complicated or obligatory steps to blog; a blogger can just enter his name and a password to create an account and start blogging right away, using a simple and clear visual interface. Every blogger has a personal dashboard to publish their blog posts from, get in touch with other blogges, follow comments, …etc.
All blog posts can be voted on (both positively and negatively), with the possibility of showing the blog’s content in the same way used on social bookmarking services.
Content on the blog will be categorized using tags and channels, and can be displayed according to this categorization, date of publishing, or number of votes. Comments on posts can also be followed on an independent page.
As for the social networking side of things; every blogger will get their own personal page to share their personal details and list their blog psots; this page can be totally personalized and redesigned according to the blogger’s taste. Other users can comment on the blogger’s page, much like they can do on a person’s wall on Facebook and other social networks. Bloggers can also build up their list of friends on the site.
A public beta version of the service will be released on October 1st, as a number of standard features continue to be added and completed, before the official launch of the site.
The service will be available in Arabic only at the beginning, with the possibility of more languages in the future.
Hyde Park is a project that was launched by well known blogger Mohammed Said Hjiouij from Morocco.
Watwet Launches New Version With New Cool Design
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | September 16, 2008 – 3:48 pm | Comments
Watwet, the Arab social networking and micro-blogging platform, launched in December 2007 by TootCorp, has just gone live with a really cool new design.
The new design reflects the maturing of the service, presenting the exisiting functionalities in a cleaner and more organized way, and rolling out a number of new features.
Among the base functionalities existing in other mini-blogging services that were added with this version of Watwet are replies, direct access to the public timeline, enabling and disabling SMS updates from certain friends and usage statistics.
Something really interesting Watwet has introduced with this version is the concept of ‘Channels’, which are micro-blogs with specialized content. The Watwet site says that they have signed up more than 18 radio stations, magazines and daily newspapers in Jordan to operate their own channels on Watwet; and that they have content from more than 10 international publishers and media companies around the world.
There are free and premium channels on Watwet. Premium Channels are clearly indicated as such, and thus are paid channels; otherwise the remaining channels are free. The amount to pay for subscribing to a channel varies from channel to channel. The paid channels obviously offer us some insight into one of the ways Watwet plans to monetize the service.
Something they’ve also added with this design are badges that bloggers can use to display their watwets on their blogs, which is something that should get more bloggers on board the mini-blogging wave, and give Watwet more exposure.
Another nice little touch is the launch of ‘Waticons’, little badges that users can pin to their profiles and that something about them visually.
Subscribers with Mobily, the second Saudi mobile operator, can now use SMS to send and receive updates, just like the subscribers of Zain Jordan. All other users, on other networks and in other countries, can only send their updates to Watwet through an international UK number.
IDSC Releases New Report About Egyptian Blogs
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | July 20, 2008 – 11:56 am | Comments
The Egyptian Cabinet’s Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC), the research arm of the Egyptian government, just released a report titled ‘Egyptian Blogs: New social space‘, detailing the status of Egyptian and Arabic blogs in general, their importance and content.
Among the report’s findings are the following:
- The Arabic language doesn’t come up in the top 10 blogging languages in the world.
- The total number of Arabic blogs is estimated at 490.000 blogs, representing only 0.7% of the total number of blogs in the world.
- Egyptian blogs form 30.7% of all Arabic blogs with an estimated number of 160,000 blogs.
- 76.8 % of the Egyptian blogs use the Arabic language, 9.6% are written in English, and 20.8% are mixed.
- 53.1% of the Egyptian bloggers are between 20 – 30 years old; 18.8% between 30-40; 17% under 20 and 11.1% over 40.
- 73% of the Egyptian bloggers are males, and 27% are females.
- Jeeran has the largest collection of Egyptian blogs with around 116.192 blogs forming 72.6% of the total number of Egyptian blogs. Followed by BlogSpot with 16.29%, and then Maktoob with 6.5%.
The full report can be viewed in Arabic here: Egyptian Blogs: New social space (PDF)
