StartUpArabia – Page 56 – Everything About Arab Startups And Entrepreneurs

PixiPost, Digital Photo Printing

May 19, 2008May 19, 2008 MMM 2 Comments

PixiPost is a Tunisian startup, that was launched back in June 2006, specialized in digital photo printing, and aiming to provide customers with quality photo prints at good prices.

The service gives users the possibility to upload their digital photos, organize them in photo albums and order prints of them. The photos are then printed and sent through the post according to the chosen delivery mode.

Payment for the print orders can be done either online with all major credit cards, using the Monétique Tunisie secure payment platform, or using cashU payment accounts, or for people in Tunisia through transfer of mobile phone prepaid credit.

The user interface is available in both English and French.

I think digital photo printing services are pretty interesting and could come in very handy for the shutterbugs among us who would like to get their photos printed quickly and simply. What would be even greater though would be to see partnerships formed between photo sharing sites like Ikbis and such photo printing services, providing an added-value to both site’s users and making their lives a tiny bit easier.

# PixiPost

DemoCamp Dubai 2 – The Agenda

May 19, 2008May 19, 2008 MMM 2 Comments

As previously announced, the second DemoCamp Dubai will be taking place at the Radisson SAS in Dubai Media City on May 27th at 7:30PM.

The following five demos will be taking place at the event:

Darrb: A marketplace for delivery services, it will be presented by its co-founder Murshed (Previously reviewed on StartUpArabia here)
Logta: A one-stop-shop on promotions for all sorts of products, to be presented by Hisham Baker
Wasfati: The first dedicated Arab portal for food, recipes and nutrition. It will be presented by Fouad Masoud (Previously reviewed here)
SwalifCast: An Arab portal for digital learning, to be presented by Mohammed Al-Fares
mediaME: A user-generated content website for advertising and media professionals, to be presented by Zeid Nasser.

The format will be the same as the first event, with the presenters giving a 10 minute presentation of their work, with another 5 minutes for Q&A.

The presenters will also be available to answer any further questions, receive feedback and share some thoughts after the event.

Momentum In Continued Improvement & Delivery Of Results

May 17, 2008May 17, 2008 MMM

“Tremendous power exists in the fact of continued improvement and the delivery of results. Point to tangible accomplishments—however incremental at first—and show how these steps fit into the context of an overall concept that will work. When you do this in such a way that people see and feel the buildup of momentum, they will line up with enthusiasm.

— Jim Collins ; ‘Good To Great‘

iBlog… iMedia Conference Postponed Due To Financial Issues

May 17, 2008May 17, 2008 MMM

Last month, the iBlog… iMedia conference on consumer generated media was announced, organized by casualPR, a leading PR agency that focuses on blogs and online media.

The event was supposed to take place in Amman, Jordan on Sunday June 1st 2008; But has been canceled due to financial issues and lack of funding and support by Sponsors, even thought the event succeeded in getting a lot of media attention, approximately 100 delegates without any promotions or ads, and a great group of speakers from different countries; including Hervé Cuviliez (Managing Director of DDB France), Alexander McNabb (Spot On PR Dubai), Samih Toukan (CEO of Maktoob Group), Adam Flinter (Online Editor of Gulf News), Ziad Barouni (Founder of Waleg.com) and others.

Some important sponsors did express their interest in supporting next year’s edition; but for this year Samer Marzouq, CEO of erabia, the mother company of casualPR, is trying to reschedule a scaled down version of the conference.

Anyone interested in lending a hand or sponsoring the event can contact him directly at: samer@jazarah.net

The idea of the event is a very interesting one, as it aims to play a role in bringing media and marketing professionals closer to Blogs, highlighting the role that bloggers are playing in changing the face of the media.

Hopefully, the event will still take place, even if on a slightly smaller scale, and that it opens the door to more and bigger editions in future years.

StartUpArabia, A Month Later

May 16, 2008May 16, 2008 MMM 20 Comments

It’s been exactly one month since StartUpArabia was launched to the public, and I thought I’d just share some thoughts and numbers from this first month with you all.

Before anything, I’d like to thank every single person who has taken the time to visit StartUpArabia; leave a comment, email me, call me, IM me, tweet me, blog or do anything in relation with StartUpArabia; I really appreciate all your support, encouragement and offers to help. Rest assured I’ll eventually take you all up on your offers, and that you can count on me too if you need anything at all.

So let’s start with the blog itself and some numbers; up to now 64 published posts, 2 reader polls, 82 comments and 57 spam comments caught by Akismet.

Statistics-wise, things are still picking up steadily, the site has served around 5,700 page views up to now, of which just over 3,000 are unique visits, from all over the world; The feed has 142 subscribers now, and has served 6,980 views over the past month. So yeah, interestingly, more activity on the feed than on the site.

StartUpArabia was noticed by Michael Arrington of TechCrunch on its first day and he tweeted about it here (Thanks Mike); which was a nice little boost for the launch, bringing a good number of visitors.

Content from the blog is currently aggregated on Alltop Startups (Thanks to Guy Kawasaki), TN-Blogs (Thanks to Houssein Ben Ameur), Dwwen (Thanks to the whole Dwwen team), Qwaider Planet (Thanks to Samer Qwaider), and tn-pla.net (Thanks to Nihed & Chiheb).
These are the sites I’m aware of, I’m sorry if I missed anybody, please do let me know.

A big thanks to everyone who links to StartUpArabia from their blogs and websites, it’s much appreciated, and means a lot to me.

Finally, it’s awesome how many great people I’ve been able to meet through the blog this past month, people I really respect and look forward to working closely with throughout the months and years to come.

Thank you all, I hope you continue to enjoy StartUpArabia and the content that is published here.
And again, if you have any thoughts, ideas or suggestions; I’d more than love to hear them from you.

Rules For Revolutionaries (Guy Kawasaki)

May 16, 2008May 16, 2008 MMM 2 Comments

One of the very good books I recommend for entrepreneurs aiming to launch the next big product or service, is Rules For Revolutionaries: The Capitalist Manifesto for Creating and Marketing New Products and Services by Guy Kawasaki in collaboration with previous coauthor Michele Moreno.

Guy Kawasaki was former chief evangelist at Apple Computer, is currently Managing Director of Venture Capital firm Garage Technology Ventures and founder of Alltop.com;

This was the first book I read by Guy Kawasaki, and I truly enjoyed it; His writing style is really light and entertaining; yet precise, clear and straight to the point.

The book is divided into three parts, whose titles alone show the book’s style and tone:

1. Create Like a God: This part discusses the way that radical new products and services must really be found, thought of, developed and updated.

2. Command Like a King: This one explains what kind of leaders are truly necessary in order for such revolutionary products and developments to succeed, the best way to market them and how to avoid the usual big mistakes.

3. Work Like a Slave: This last part focuses on the kind of commitment that is actually required to beat the odds and change the world, and how clients should be dealth with and treated.

A concluding section presents a bunch of entertaining and inspirational quotes on topics like technology, transportation, politics, entertainment, and medicine that illustrate how even some of history’s most successful ideas and people have prevailed despite the scoffing of naysayers.

This book is a very interesting read that I recommend for everyone looking to create a new product or service; it really provides a bunch of very useful advice and tips and gives you pointers on how you should go about it all.

# Rules For Revolutionaries (Guy Kawasaki)

Yamli Wins “Best Web Technology Award”

May 15, 2008May 15, 2008 MMM 9 Comments

Press Release: Online tool that enables the transliteration of Arabic using English characters wins prestigious web award

Yamli.com wins “best Web technology award” within year of launch

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – May 14th, 2008 — Language Analytics, LLC, a software startup, has won “Best Web Technology Award” during the 4th Year Pan Arab Web Awards 2008 (http://www.panarabwebawards.org) for its flagship website, Yamli.com. Yamli allows users to convert transliterated text back into Arabic characters, facilitating access to and the development of Arabic content.

The Pan Arab Web Awards aim to promote the innovative spirit of the web while recognizing the accomplishments of its community members. The competition received an unprecedented number of registrants from the Middle East region, including new entrants from Bahrain, Kuwait, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. The awards ceremony was held on 26 April 2008 at Burj Al Arab, Dubai.

According to co-founder Imad Jureidini, “We are very honored to receive this year’s Best Web Technology Award. This is a recognition, not only of the technological breakthrough that Yamli represents, but also of the Arabic web’s need for such technology.”

Yamli’s patent-pending solution converts the user’s input into Arabic as the user types. To maximize usability, Yamli accepts a variety of phonetic spellings and generates a list of suggested matches. Over time, Yamli will recognize popular patterns of spelling and word selection, increasing its accuracy.

Co-founder Habib Haddad says: “Today, the Arabic language represents less than 0.5% of the content on the Internet. Our mission at Yamli is to empower the Arabic language on the web. We are going to continue to increase that percentage to a much higher number.”

You can view Yamli at www.yamli.com.

About Language Analytics LLC

Language Analytics LLC, a software startup based in Cambridge, MA, specializes in smart transliteration technologies for Arabic and other languages. For more information, visit our website, at www.yamli.com/about/.

Broadband Internet Penetration In The Arab World

May 14, 2008May 14, 2008 MMM 5 Comments

According to recent studies by Arab Advisors Group, here are some numbers that give us an idea about the penetration rates of broadband internet access around the Arab world.

By end of 2007, fixed line broadband penetration as a percent of total population ranged from 8% in Qatar to a mere 0.02% in Sudan.

Qatar, UAE and Bahrain lead with 8%, 7.8% and 7% respectively. They are followed by Saudi Arabia (2.4%), Jordan (1.6%), Palestine (1.5%), Morocco (1.5%), Tunisia (1.1%), Lebanon (1%), Algeria (0.9%), Oman (0.7%), Egypt (0.6%), Mauritania (around 0.1%), Yemen (0.05%), Syria (0.04%) and Sudan (0.02%).

“While absolute broadband penetration in the Arab World may seem low by industrial countries standards, the effective household broadband penetration is much higher. This is related to higher number of people per household as well as line sharing. For example, a new Arab Advisors survey in Egypt revealed that 63.4% of Egyptian households that use the ADSL service, share their ADSL connection with neighbors. A massive 81.9% of households that use shared ADSL lines share them with more than three neighboring households.” Jawad J. Abbassi, Founder and General Manager of Arab Advisors Group noted.

“Based on the survey results, the average number of households sharing one ADSL connection is 2.98. Multiplying the reported number of lines by this figure yields an estimate for households with ADSL connections in Egypt of 956,000 households by end of 2007, much higher than the number of accounts. While ADSL sharing is illegal in many countries and does negatively affect quality, the Arab Advisors Group believes that the practice is widespread in the Arab World. The silver lining is that more households are connected to broadband Internet services which would positively affect adoption of Internet-based services such as e-commerce, multimedia, user generated content and e-government services.” Mr. Abbassi added.

# Arab Advisors Group

Bayt.com To Host First Virtual Job Fair In The Middle East

May 13, 2008May 13, 2008 MMM 2 Comments

Bayt.com the leading job site in the Middle East just announced that they’ll be holding the region’s first virtual job fair. The event will be hosted on a new section of Bayt’s website and will run for five days between 15th and 19th June 2008.

The aim of the event is to offer employers and job seekers alike a chance to conveniently and effectively connect and interact online; thereby providing qualified job seeking candidates with interesting career opportunities; and giving local, regional and international employers access to professionals from around the region; pushing the online recruitment concept even further.

The virtual job fair will feature 3D booths of exhibiting companies, where they will be able to display company information and job vacancies. Visitors to the online fair will be able to leave CVs at the stands and apply for specific jobs. Companies can then connect to candidates through either video or online chat.

This is the first event of it’s type in the region and it will be sponsored by the Emirates Group.

# Bayt.com Virtual Job Fair