Archive for the ‘Sharing’ 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.
Meedan Cross-Language Dialogue Platform Launches Open Beta
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | April 4, 2009 – 12:49 am | Comments
Meedan has officially launched its online service into open beta. Meedan is a non-profit social technology company which aims to increase cross-language interaction on the web, with particular emphasis on translation and aggregation services in Arabic and English.
Through its use of Machine Translation (MT), Machine Augmented Translation (MAT), and distributed human translation, Meedan’s goal is to increase dialogue and exchange between Arabic and English speakers primarily by launching a cross-language forum for conversation and media sharing, in an attempt to foster understanding and tolerance between the Arab and Western worlds.
Meedan means ‘gathering place’ or ‘town square’ in Arabic, and it reflects the service that was designed to stand as a digital town square for a linguistically, culturally, and geographically diverse community of Arabic and English speaking Internet users, coming together online to discuss current events taking place all over the world.
Everything that appears on meedan.net is mirrored in Arabic and English; whether it’s the published headlines, the posted comments, or shared articles; so as to ensure an open two-way conversation.
Meedan was founded by Ed Bice in 2005 and incorporated as a nonprofit charitable organization in 2006.
For more information about the service and to try it out, go to: Meedan.net
New Version For Al-Fawaed Social Knowledge Sharing Service
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | March 23, 2009 – 6:00 pm | Comments
After around a year and a half without releasing any new features, the team behind Al-Fawaed, the Arab social knowledge sharing site has gone and launched a new version of their online service.
Al-Fawaed is a service that lets users share the useful and most interesting points they’ve taken away from reading a certain book or article, listening to a lecture, watching a television program, or even from a personal life experience, in the form of summaries or mind map diagrams.
The new version includes a slight re-design aimed at making the site more user friendly and the information shared on it more organized and accessible. The homepage has been changed to show the latest summaries and mind maps in respective columns, instead of defaulting to the summaries page.
A number of the page elements have also been revamped and re-organized around the page to better present them to the user.
A section offering the user some randomly selected entries to discover has been added to the side of the page, offering an entry point to more summaries or mind maps. At the end of each entry, there is also a new section serving up links to other entries, as well as the previous and next ones.
The possibility to share entries with friends through the most popular online social bookmarking and social networking services has been integrated into the system as well.
A number of technical enhancements have been added to the system too, including keyboard shortcuts to make the creation of summaries and lists easier, tag suggestions, better support for the most popular browsers among others.
Filaty Arab File Sharing Service Launches Mobile Version
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | March 22, 2009 – 9:51 am | Comments
Filaty, the Arab direct file sharing service, which was previously reviewed here, has just launched a mobile version of its service, making it possible for users to upload and share files directly from their mobile phones and devices.
By introducing this service, Filaty hopes to make it easier for people to use the service from anywhere, helping to grow usage of the service and extend their user base.
Users can upload photos and files of up to 100MB through a light, quick interface; and have the link sent to their email address or the email addresses of the friends they want to share with.
The mobile version is available at: http://m.filaty.com (filaty.mobi and filaty.com/mobile work as well.)
On another note, Filaty is now also one of the upload options available in Mrrha, the file mirroring service, previously reviewed here.
Ikbis Introduce New Direct Webcam Upload Feature
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | February 16, 2009 – 6:39 pm | Comments
Ikbis, popular Arab video and photo sharing website, has launched a new feature enabling users to upload videos directly from their webcams.
This means that users who have a webcam and microphone connected to their computers can directly click on ‘Webcam upload’ to access a new interface where they can start recording their messages after enabling the integrated flash player/recorder to access their webcam and microphone.
After recording the video, the user is presented with three options: the possibility to re-record, overwriting the video and recording a new one; a preview option, to check the video before publishing it; and the choice to publish it directly among the user’s videos and shots, after filling in all details about the video (title, description, tags).
This new development makes it a lot easier and faster for users to get their videos on the service, and opens the door for video bloggers who want to get up and running quickly with their podcasts.
Sahritna Unveils Site Redesign And Launches New Features
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | December 1, 2008 – 12:49 pm | Comments
Press Release: Sahritna.com Unveils Next Evolution of Site feature and Design
Amman, Dec. 1st, 2008
Sahritna.com today released a new, cleaner and simpler new design, along with the opportunity for users to preview the next-generation features and functionality. The company is inviting people to use the new design and try out the improved features and engage with the community. The new design is available to all of Sahritna’s more than 50,000 Arabic users and the new registered users over the coming days.
“Based on our vision to create a unique interactive Arabic community and the demand of our loyal users, we have launched a simpler and cleaner design in order to highlight the most recent and relevant information that users value” said Sahritna founder and CEO Bashar Shannak. “Sahritna’s new features make it a lot easier for users to share information and engage in the community.”
The company has been developing the new design since four months. Over the past two months, more than 3,000 Sahritna users offered constructive suggestions on the layout and features, many of which were included in the final version.
Public Profiles: Sahritna allowed its users to create their personal unique pages to deliver their information in a social context. The evolution of the public profiles focuses on user’s identity, their friends, post comments, mutual friends, rating and more. The profile now surfaces more current and pertinent information, about a user and their friends’ on Sahritna.
Profile Comments: Users have complete control over the comments published on their profile. Users are able to delete unwanted comments. And they can post comments on their profile and friend’s profiles.
User Rating: Located on the right hand of the user’s profile, the users are able to rate other users profiles in simple way. This feature enables users to know the popularity of their profile and how their friends think of them.
My Mood: It’s a mean for the user to express his/her current mood and tell his friends how he feels currently. Upon user login he will be able to express his/her mood.
Al Jazeera Launches Citizen Journalism Platform ‘Sharek’
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | November 26, 2008 – 10:22 pm | Comments
The New Media team at Al Jazeera just launched a new citizen journalism platform by the name of ‘Sharek‘ earlier today. (Sharek means contribute or share in Arabic.)
Sharek enables users to upload video material that they’ve recorded using their webcams, video cams or mobile phones; reporting the news that is happening around them.
Other than uploading content through the website, user media content can also be sent via email or directly from their mobiles.
More features will be added soon like live webcam recording, and live streaming from mobile phones.
Uploaded material will be reviewed by Al Jazeera journalists, who will choose newsworthy items and interesting commentary to feature on the ‘Sharek’ website, as well as on Al Jazeera as part of their coverage of a certain story.
This project expands on the successful results of previous trials by Al Jazeera with soliciting and collecting user submitted content on YouTube, and hopes to make it even easier for anyone to pass their content directly to the Al Jazeera team.
The project is pretty similar in concept to CNN’s iReport, with the exception of content being screened before publication in the case of ‘Sharek’ to maintain a certain level of quality.
Sharek is only available in Arabic for the time being, and so content uploaded through it is mainly for Al Jazeera Arabic, but an English version of the service is on the way.
# Sharek
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
3alaRasi, A Portal For Comedy Entertainment Content
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | November 23, 2008 – 9:57 pm | Comments
3alaRasi is a Jordanian entertainment portal that features a mix of funny cartoons, caricatures, articles, videos, photos and audio.
The portal’s content comes both from in-house productions, as well as content generated and submitted by the site’s users.
The site integrates all the regular sharing and social networking features that allow users to create their profiles, connect with their friends, and share all supported kinds of content with them.
In addition to all the kinds of content mentioned above, users can also upload and share games in Flash and Shockwave format.
The cartoons and animations currently produced by the 3alaRasi team are currently inspired by the Jordanian (Awad Abu Shifa, Jaber Kawanes, 7awa) and Palestinian (Falla7) society and culture, but there are plans to expand and add Egyptian and Gulf inspired characters and content soon.
The site’s interface is currently in English only, although an Arabic version should be expected soon.
3alaRasi also distribute their content through a number of mobile channels in Jordan and the GCC, and are looking to expand to other countries in the region.
Other distribution channels have been through Jordanian radio station Mazaj FM airing Audio clips from 3alaRasi, as well as Nourmina TV which aired 3alaRasi cartoon episodes in Ramadan. A new deal with Jordanian daily Addustour, will also see a daily cartoon from 3alaRasi cartoonist Omar Abdallat published in the newspaper.
3alaRasi was launched by ERUM Creative Productions L.L.C, which was founded by Amer M. AbuLaila, Omar Abdallat, Rajai Qawas, and Fahd Oweidat.
# 3alaRasi
Mecca.com Releases More Features And New Design
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | November 17, 2008 – 1:51 pm | Comments
Mecca.com, the Muslim community portal, that also integrates a social networking and user generated content platform, has just rolled out a new look, unveiling a new logo and a re-design for their whole website.
The new design is more colorful and looks more hip; it also feels better organized, optimizing the use of screen real estate.
This new design, comes just a short while after Mecca.com rolling out their new Videos section, where members can upload and share their videos with friends. As with other online video sharing services, friends have the ability to comment, rate, edit, and share videos with other users.
Mecca.com had also enhanced their Photo sharing feature by improving the user interface, and adding the possibility to import photos from Facebook and Flickr.
