Archive for the ‘Tools’ Category
Microsoft Maren: A New Windows Arabic Transliteration Tool
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | July 1, 2009 – 3:51 pm |
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Microsoft has gone on and launched a new application called ‘Maren‘, making its entrance into the Arabic transliteration space.
Microsoft Maren was developed to be a Windows extension that allows you to type Arabic in Roman characters (Romanized Arabic, Arabizi, Arabish or Franco-Arabic) and have it converted on the fly to Arabic script. Maren integrates seamlessly with Windows and works in most Windows applications and websites.
Users around the Arab world widely use romanized Arabic in instant messaging and on social networking sites, and Microsoft’s Maren is following in the footsteps of Yamli and Google’s Ta3reeb in offering these users the possibility to have whatever text they type converted into Arabic.
Up to this point Yamli has been the user favorite in the region, with a number of portals integrating their service, a Firefox toolbar extension that many people were glad to get and even an unofficial Yamli extension called Arabzi that exists for MSN Messenger. Yamli also uses its transliteration technology as a basis to enrich and provide better Arabic search online.
What Microsoft’s Maren offers as a plus is the possibility to integrate the transliteration technology into Windows, and use it everywhere, not just online through a browser; so basically users can use Maren while typing in a Word document or on Instant Messenger or any other Windows application.
The fact that the tool is installed on the user’s machine also means that the solution is available to the user even when he’s offline, and it could even be a bit faster than other solutions that have to send requests back to a server.
It should be really interesting to see how much user adoption Maren will get, but however that works out, this is quite a good effort from Microsoft.
Microsoft Maren was developed by the Cairo Microsoft Innovation Center (CMIC), a Microsoft group representing the company interest in applied research and development initiatives in the Middle East and Africa.
Update: I talked to Habib Haddad, co-founder of Yamli, a bit after the publication of this story, and he commented “I guess big companies recognize a good idea when they see it, as an Arabic startup we are flattered to see this happen. As you know our focus has always been on the user so stay tuned for new releases from Yamli.”
Folowen Releases Public Beta With New Features
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | June 23, 2009 – 2:08 pm | Comments
Folowen, the social media search tool that aggregates social profiles of people and organization’s on several social media sites into one search result, and that was previously covered here, has just gone into public beta.
The tool makes it easier for users to follow a person or organization’s social web; be it a Facebook profile, page, group, a Twitter account, a LinkedIn profile, a YouTube channel …etc.
Currently, folowen uses Google AJAX Search API to find user profiles in 20 social media sites.
A number of new features have been introduced with this public beta, based on the feedback received from the private beta users, among them are:
- Search is now open without sign up.
- Search results will list up to 4 links for each service for you to browse through to find the account you want to follow.
- Direct Follow: It is now possible for you to directly follow the person/organization you searched for directly from the search results page. This feature is currently enabled for only four services (Twitter, YouTube, FriendFeed and Facebook) that you need to connect folowen to from your Settings/Direct Follow page.
Ayna Adds Satellite Imagery To Mobile Version Of Ayna Maps
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | June 19, 2009 – 8:10 pm | Comments
As promised when they first launched the mobile version of their mapping service, Ayna.com has gone on and launched a satellite imagery feature for this mobile version, allowing users to see a high-resolution aerial snapshot of the location they are looking for.
Users of the service can now enter any address in the Middle East on Ayna maps, and click on the “Satellite” link to locate and zoom into the wanted area till having the closest image.
The satellite imagery service on the mobile is empowered by DigitalGlobe technology and updated for 2008, allowing users to view the entire world and zoom into 26 Middle East and North African cities, with streets, malls, points of interest, geographic information, buildings and more, directly from their mobile phones.
The satellite map has the same features existing on the normal map: finding points of interest, getting directions, saving favorites, sharing with friends …etc.
The satellite imagery feature should also be available on the web version of Ayna maps soon.
Twitvid And TwitterFon To Bring Video Tweeting To iPhone 3GS
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | June 9, 2009 – 2:21 pm | Comments
TwitVid.com, the instant video tweeting service previously reviewed here, and TwitterFon, the most popular Twitter application for the iPhone, announced a partnership where the TwitVid video service will be integrated into the TwitterFon iPhone application, enabling its large base of iPhone users to easily Tweet mobile videos to their Twitter followers who can begin watching the videos instantly, even before the upload from the source iPhone is completed.
The partnership comes on the heels of Apple’s announcement at WWDC ‘09 yesterday that the new iPhone 3GS will incorporate the possibility to capture and edit videos directly on the phone.
Kazuho Okui, CTO of naan studio, Inc., creator of TwitterFon, said that they chose to work with Twitvid and not other video uploading applications because it offers the best user experience and high-quality video, along with its unique ability to offer instant playback of Tweeted videos as soon as the video begins uploading, a patent-pending technology created by Eatlime, the company behind Twitvid.
Twitvid has been working on a number of new features ever since their release, among these are the following:
- The possibility to record videos directly from a user’s webcam.
- The conversion of uploaded videos to High Quality video.
- The ability to chat with people when watching a video.
- The Creation of playlists by uploading several videos at the same time.
- The possibility to send videos directly to YouTube after they’re uploaded on Twitvid.
The TwitVid enabled TwitterFon iPhone application will be available at www.twitterfon.com.
Etisalat Launches Own New Instant Messaging Service
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | June 2, 2009 – 10:54 pm | Comments
Etisalat, the UAE telecoms operator, announced the launch of its own IM (Instant Messaging) service for its mobile phone and internet customers.
Etisalat Messenger is similar in concept to other chatting applications like Yahoo! Messenger, MSN and Google Talk, allowing subscribers to send messages in both Arabic and English between mobile phones and computers.
With this move, Etisalat aims to target the young generation in the UAE with whom instant messaging is one of the more popular forms of communication.
Conversations in Etisalat’s messenger can also include multimedia; for example pictures, video and sound clips. Messages sent while recipients are offline are delivered to them as SMS or MMS messages.
Etisalat Messenger comes in two packages; one with unlimited usage at a fixed monthly rate and another which enables users to send and receive unlimited messages for a fixed session period of 15 minutes at a per session cost.
For more details about Etisalat Messenger, pricing and activation; check the product page on the official site: Etisalat Messenger.
[Via: ITP]
Folowen, A New Social Media Search Tool (Private Beta Invites)
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | May 31, 2009 – 9:54 am | Comments
folowen is a new social media search tool that just went live in private beta and enables users to search for the social profiles of different people and organizations on several social media sites, returning all found profiles in one search result.
The aim is to make it simpler for anyone to find and follow a person or organization’s social activities online, be it a Facebook profile, page or group; a Twitter account; a LinkedIn profile; a YouTube channel …etc.
Currently, folowen uses Google AJAX Search API to find user profiles on 19 different social media sites including three Arab ones: Questler, Ikbis and Watwet.
Search is only the first piece in the bigger puzzle that folowen wants to build, and this ongoing private beta is concentrated on perfecting that to make sure that users are getting the right results for their searches. Once out of private beta, the search will be open to anyone without any need to sign up for the service.
Signed up users also have the possibility of having their search history saved automatically so that they can go back to them and view their results at any time.
The next step after search will be to enable signed up users to link up folowen into some of the supported social services to be able to follow/connect right from folowen without having to go to that service. This obviously will only be available for services that have APIs that are open and allow this.
folowen doesn’t aim to be another social network now, or a social activity aggregator, just a facilitator to help people find and connect to each other over several platforms.
folowen is founded by the same team Jordan-based team that was behind Questler: Razan Khatib, Alma Khasawnih and Hassan Shahin.
If you’re interested in getting an invite to play around with folowen, just drop a little comment below and I’ll send you one as soon as possible.
Yamli Releases Beta Of Their Official Firefox Toolbar
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | May 26, 2009 – 10:02 pm | Comments
Yamli, the startup that specializes in smart transliteration technologies for the Arabic Web, just unveiled its new official Firefox browser toolbar.
A Yamli toolbar or extension has been a user request for quite a while now, and Yamli has answered with this toolbar that extends the possibility to use Yamli’s Arabic transliteration technology to any site or web application a user might need to type in Arabic in. By just going to the website and clicking on the ‘Enable Yamli’ button in the toolbox, all text input areas get the Yamli functionality activated for them. Another option is to just right click on the textbox you need to use and activate Yamli for just it.
Basic text input boxes and areas as well as rich text editors are supported and can be made to use Yamli with the toolbar.
The toolbar also includes a search box, enabling users to launch searches on the web using Yamli’s smart Arabic search functionality; Search is available for Web, Images,Video, News and Wikipedia.
Another interesting feature available through the toolbar is the possibility to send updates to Twitter and Facebook directly, using Yamli’s transliteration to write the updates in Arabic.
The toolbar is currently in beta, and is still being tweaked with more features to be added with the final release. It’s available for Firefox only at the time being; but an Internet Explorer version should follow soon.
On another note, other than the official toolbar by Yamli, the Arab Techies Code Sprint 2009, that was held in Cairo, has resulted in a couple of unofficial Yamli related projects: A Yamli bookmarklet that can be added as a link in any browser and used to yamlify any text inputs on a page, as well as a Firefox extension that automatically yamlifies all text inputs on visited web pages. All this possible through Yamli’s open API.
Twitvid.com, A Service to Tweet Videos Quickly And Easily
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | May 24, 2009 – 12:59 pm | Comments
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.
H2O New Media Announces SODA CMS With Support For Location Based Services
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | May 16, 2009 – 12:55 pm | Comments
H2O New Media has just announced the availability of the SODA Content Management System which they describe as the first Web 2.0 Content Management system to support location based services.
These location based services should allow members of any social community built on the SODA content management system to send its users emails, SMS messages and alerts based on a users physical location.
Steve Vaile, CEO of H2O New Media, says that “The SODA CMS allows any community member to receive notifications either by SMS, MMS, Video or by email to their mobile phone based on their location. The development will enable our publishing and corporate customers to offer innovative new services and applications to their customers and internal based on location and vicinity on their mobile phone. Social communities should operate seamlessly between both web PC & mobile handsets, and with SODA taking advantage of location based services its really one of the first social media technology platforms to create a bridge between the online and the physical world.”
He continues to say that “with SODA a customer can deploy a social media platform that will allow its users not only to communicate with each other but to know where each other are, based on their preferences of course. For example if you are a member of a social community you can receive an SMS text when you are close to your friends, marketers can use it to message users are close to a store that has a promotional offer.”
H2O New Media provides social media applications based on software as a service (SaaS) model to corporate companies in the Middle East. H2O New Media clients include United Business Media, Sian Events, Channels Exhibitions, CSM, G2 Publishing and many other leading events and media companies.
Ras2Ras Releases New Version Of Their Comparison Service
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | January 24, 2009 – 6:06 pm | Comments
Ras2Ras, the comparison research service from Yemen; which is based on the simple of concept of putting any two comparable things against each other, and letting people vote on which they like best; has released a new version.
The new release comes with a slightly different new design and layout that still hangs on to the simplicity of the old one, but is just a bit more organized, more visually appealing and integrates their new features.
The service which is still in beta is looking more mature now, with the new design and a number of other previously hanging details ironed out.
Comparisons, or Battles as they’re called on the service, now end after 90 days. Then they can be found up in the site’s results section. Select battle results will also be highlighted by the Ras2Ras team on their blog and elsewhere on the web.
Users can now also join discussions on battles, getting alerts whenever someone submits a reply on the discussion; making it easier for people to follow topics of interest to them.
Other little additions and tweaks have been added here and there, like the rotation of the latest comments on the homepage, the improved URL structure and the site becoming more search engine friendly.
# Ras2Ras
