Archive for the ‘Content’ Category
Abjad Hawaz 7o66i Kalamun, lost in the Markup
Saleh Esmaeili | August 5, 2010 – 1:00 pm |
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An Arabic art gallery without some of the best crafted calligraphy holds no value. That’s a fact. Arabic calligraphy & poetry are forms of cultural pride and not just art. Going digital, we lose all that. From readability to interaction. It’s all gone. Bold? Italic? Underlined? Get yourself ten Arabic books. Open’em, read’em, do you find anything in Bold? Italic? or Underlined? No you don’t. But we do have all that on the Web. How come?
Some will debate this with Interaction & Readability unity across different languages–English that is but with all the author-ware software developers’ presence in the region there hasn’t been one solid negating report which gets us to a simple conclusion, not enough efforts, at least not as much as it deserves.
So with all the calls for Arabic content around and how much Arabic content is going to be important for the growth of Arabic users’ online experience and the Internet industry in general, the basics haven’t really been covered.
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Dakwak: A Tool For Website Localization Into 60+ Languages
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | July 27, 2010 – 11:12 am | View Comments
Dakwak is a new startup that was recently launched from Jordan that aims to provide a solution for website localization into 60+ languages.
The site makes it easy for webmasters to integrate Dakwak’s localization and translation service right into their sites; instantly providing their visitors access to content in the language they’re most comfortable reading in.
All it takes is a bit of javascript code that needs to be integrated into the site pages, and to flag the content that needs to be localized/translated; and the rest is taken care of by Dakwak.
The service automatically detects the country a visitor is connecting from based on their IP address, and changes the language of the content to the visitor’s language, switching all the text without breaking the design of the page; unless the visitor chooses to switch back to the base language.
Online Content Bottlenecks in Arabia are loosening up
Saleh Esmaeili | July 25, 2010 – 6:07 pm | View Comments
Looks like all are meeting at the content crossroads. Telecoms/ISPs providing higher bandwidth & speed, Media/Entertainment companies bringing the content online, and we users getting ready to use all that. I skipped Advertisers, let’s give’em a break.
The amount of direct online content piracy on Arabic websites could really shock you out if you weren’t the type that listens to Arabic music. You can download, stream, and do whatever you want with full albums of the latest titles for free, not on some obfuscated or hidden websites, torrent, or file-hosting, no, on proud flashing home pages. With all that around for years(showing the amount of interest) the only conclusion often heard was “Arabs like to get Music for Free when it’s digital” such a passive thing to say.
AnaZahra, 32-year-old Zahrat Al Khaleej gone online? Or is it a step in conversion?
Saleh Esmaeili | July 21, 2010 – 9:25 am | View Comments
Abu Dhabi Media Company(ADMC) is “the” pioneer in the digital publishing space in the Middle East, hands down. New digital platform? They implement n’ use it before anyone else. A media company that techno-geeks love to love. Apart from owning some of the best performing titles in print they’ve been busy going digital as fast as they could and in full steam.
AnaZahra is ADMC’s latest addition to their digital/online portfolio of titles. AnaZahra was introduced as Zahrat Al Khaleej’s branch online, or the Online version of the same magazine? It could get one confused as ADMC introduced a new business unit headed by celebrity Zoya Sakr. It was launched with Zahrat Al Khaleej’s brand used as an endorser and a sister brand, even AnaZahra’s branding borrows from Zahrat Al Khaleej, but then once you go online, print content and online are worlds of differences.
Video: Twtrtales Collaborative Story Writing Through Tweets At DemoCamp Dubai
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | June 30, 2010 – 2:20 pm | View Comments
Twtrtales is a new project that was launched out of the UAE, which aims to enable collaborative story writing through tweets.
Users would basically get to start a new hashtag for a story, and then they’d start contributing to writing the story one tweet at a time by appending that hashtag. On the site, readers would be able to say whether they like a specific contribution or not, and through that decide what goes into the story and what doesn’t.
So in essence, it’s a new kind of publishing platform that hopes to unite tweeters/writers of all kinds, to create and tell stories, which could be general stories or written for a specific cause.
Revisiting Arabic Social Bookmarking And Content Discovery
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | June 23, 2010 – 12:00 pm | View Comments
A bit over two years ago, I wrote a post about the Arab social bookmarking services out there, listing the existing options, how good they looked and how well they seemed to be doing, identifying the top ones at that time.
If anyone were to pull up that same list today and go check on each one of the sites, they’d find that some have shut down, others have become useless and spam ridden, some others have become pretty much inactive, and only one or two are still holding on. What’s clear though is that these social bookmarking services never caught on with Arab web users, and never achieved their founders’ initial dreams for them.
However there are some new kids on the block, who are here to take another stab at social bookmarking and facilitating content discovery for users in the Arab world.
Music Video Service Vevo Plans To Launch In The Middle East
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | June 10, 2010 – 9:23 pm | View Comments
Vevo, the music video service, that was founded by Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group, in partnership with the Abu Dhabi Media Company (ADMC), has plans to launch the service in the Middle East in the first quarter of 2011, according to The National.
Vevo was launched in the US in December 2009, and now ranks fourth in terms of the number of viewers watching videos, behind Google, Yahoo! and Fox Interactive Media, attracting 43.6 million viewers in April, according to comScore.
The version to be launched in the region, which is provisionally being called Vevo Arabia, will most probably have broader content than the US version, including Arabic, Bollywood, Filipino and Chinese music to appeal to the different tastes of consumers in the region.
Vevo is estimated to have 85% of all music videos on its platform, largely because of its position as a Web platform for music giants Sony, Universal and EMI, who provide the website with licensed videos of their artists.
Zoofs, The Most Talked About YouTube Videos On Twitter
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | May 3, 2010 – 1:14 pm | View Comments
Zoofs is a new simple and pretty fun service, offering users a destination where they can start to discover the YouTube videos that are proving popular with people on Twitter. So basically what the service does is scour twitter to find the most tweeted videos, ranks them according to popularity, and serves them up for users to enjoy.
The project is yet a new offering from TootCorp, the Jordan based company that brought us the video-sharing portal Ikbis and micro-blogging service Watwet in the past.
Visitors to the site can browse through videos by category, and also filter videos to show only the freshest (ones that were uploaded to YouTube in the past 72 hours only). The Zoofs team also mark some of the videos they really like as “Zoofs Picks” to highlight them for users.
Saot Al Arab, What Would You Do If You Were The Leader?
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | February 15, 2010 – 4:20 pm | View Comments
Saot Al Arab (The voice of Arabs) is an interesting and ambitious non-profit project that was recently launched for the Arab world, asking visitors what they would do if they were in the leader’s chair, what would be the first project they would launch.
The idea of course is to give Arabs a space to voice their opinions and thoughts in an open and simple way that will let them get their ideas about different subjects and areas across to everyone. In a way, the site attempts to offer a platform for freedom of expression without making it a ground where people can openly criticize their governments, by framing the responses in a certain fictional context.
So basically, users from across the Arab world can go to the site and submit ideas for projects that they would implement and put in place if they were the leaders and decision makers; while other users visiting the site get to vote on the ideas and leave their comments.
Project ideas are categorized by topic: Security, Media, Economics, Education, Culture, Politics, Society, and Technology; and also broken down by Country.
A very interesting goal and milestone for the project lies ahead, as the plan is that after a certain time collecting all these ideas, they will be compiled into a book, a copy of which will be sent to each Arab ruler; the book will also be made available in the market for everyone.
Unfortunately, in order to make sure that nothing that will get the site banned is published, submitted ideas do currently have to go through a screening process before being published on the site.
The project was launched by Hijazi Natsheh, a Palestinian entrepreneur currently based out of the United Arab Emirates.
Shofha.com, Arabic Movies & Series Online On Demand
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | February 13, 2010 – 3:34 pm | View Comments
LINKonLINE, a subsidiary of LINKdotNET (an Orascom Telecom Holding company), has announced the launch of a new entertainment service called Shofha, in collaboration with regional movie and series producers and rights owners.
The new service, which is available in English and Arabic, allows anyone from anywhere in the world, to legally watch the latest Arabic movies and television series online on the same day of their international release. Movies and series are provided in high resolution, commercial free, through online streaming or download; with the video files being all DRM protected, most probably using Microsoft Windows Media DRM.
Shofha.com comes with a good back catalogue of movies and series, either on rental or purchase basis, that can be downloaded or watched online. TV series will be available in both full series form as well as sing episode form; even 5 minute episode highlights are provided for those without much time on their hands.
The available options are to: Buy the video, where a user gets to download the video to their pc and play it anytime they wish indefinitely, with the ability to download the movie up to 3 times; Rent the video, where a user can download the video to their pc and watch it as many times as they want within a 48 hour time-frame; and finally there’s the Internet Cinema option where the user gets to instantly start watching the video through online streaming as many times as they wish in a 24 hour time-frame, with the quality of the video depending on the connection speed the user has.
The prices for each option seem to vary depending on the country, for example international users paying in US dollars would have to pay something like: $US 6 to buy, $US 3 to rent, and $US 9 to stream online; on the other hand, someone in the UAE would pay 9 Dirhams to buy, 5 Dhs to rent, and 7 Dhs to stream online, which is much cheaper.
