Tag: Search Engine

Kngine, A New Semantic Web Search Engine

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KngineKngine is a new semantic web search engine and question answering engine that was launched from Egypt, aiming to provide more meaningful search results to users.

Unlike other regular search engines that focus more on the ranking of pages to serve search results to users, Kngine attempts to understand what the user is searching for exactly or what question they are asking, and then tries to come up with the best information, answers and results it can find.

This is done by analyzing the entered keywords to discover the relationships between them, linking the different found data together and then displaying united sets of related information from around the web.

The kinds of information and details provided by the search engine, along with the search results listings, are: Semantic information about the keywords/concepts, direct answers to the entered questions, comparisons between entered keywords/concepts, and possible links between different types of data such as movies, subtitles, photos, store prices, user reviews and more.

Kngine

Kngine, which stands for Knowledge Engine, currently contains over 1 billion of pieces of data, and features about more than 7 million concepts; 70,000+ companies, 700,000+ movies, 1,100,000+ personalties, 450,000+ locations, 150,000+ books, and more. The interface is currently only available in English.

Even though the product is still in beta, it already shows promise in the way it searches, analyzes and returns relevant results; and we expect it to get even better with time as more work is put into its engine.

The search engine was launched from Cairo, Egypt, and founded by Haytham A. Abd ElFadeel, a Computer Science researcher, focused mainly on the semantic web and search, as well as parallel and distributed computing.

According to the founder, the long-term goal for Kngine is to make all human beings systematic knowledge and experience accessible to everyone; collecting and organizing all objective data, and making it easily accessible to everyone.

Bayarat, An Arabic Online Media Content Search Engine

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BayaratBayarat is a new media search engine that was recently launched in its alpha version catering to the Arab world and aiming to make it easier to search for and find Arabic media content online.

Bayarat is currently only indexing video content from around the web and across online video sharing portals, with plans to add more types of media content in the near future.

A translation layer is integrated into the search engine in order to enable it to search for the same term in Arabic, English, French and Spanish; to broaden the search and return all relevant results.

One of the integrated features to enhance the search experience is an Arabic spell-checker, that suggests corrections for misspelled words that users type into the search box, in order to help them find better results for their searches.

Bayarat

The search engine has already crawled and indexed over 3 Millions videos ever since its launch just about a month ago. The site’s interface is available in both Arabic and English.

Bayarat was created and launched by Monther AbuShaikh, who previously brought us TweetShell, and is also CTO at Ikbis, the popular Arab video and photo sharing service.

Globalvations.com, A Global Search Engine Focused On Innovation

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globalvations.comMultilingual Global Marketing (MGM), a global consulting firm, just announced the launch Globalvations.com, a new search engine specifically focused on global innovations.

The search engine was founded by Malik Laibi, an Algerian entrepreneur currently based in Australia, and developed by SearchChannel, LLC of Oak Brook, Illinois. It currently indexes and categorizes thousands of highly relevant sites that deliver valuable information focused on the world of innovation, aiming to connect its visitors to new technologies, innovative companies, products and business opportunities throughout the world.

The simplistic interface allows visitors to search for editorials and news about a certain topic and industry or to look for startups, with the possibility to choose a specific industry of interest or to search across all industries.
The search results page is very straightforward, offering a listing of what was found and linking out to the respective sites and pages containing the information.

Explaining the idea behind the project, Malik Laibi says that “Working with clients internationally, we found the pace of change in the global marketplace speeds up every single day. With new technologies being introduced so rapidly, and with economies changing across the world, staying up to date on innovation is increasingly difficult. We saw an opportunity to create a global information tool in our search portal, Globalvations.com. For the user, we answer swiftly and directly one simple question: ‘What are the most cutting-edge business and technology innovations that I should know about?'”

globalvations.com

SearchChannel president William Furlong makes the point that “Globalvations.com offers only very specific, innovations-oriented content. Users stay up to date on what they’re truly looking for: research, current news, upcoming conferences, and the actual technologies constantly turned out by the most reputable global businesses and institutions,” and continued that they are “expressly excited about what this tool can do for entrepreneurs, business executives, scientists, government officials, academics, or just for the curious mind!”

Malik Laibi shared his plans to establish a base in the MENA region for Globalvations.com, and that he is currently looking for suitable partners in the region.

# Globalvations.com

Iconty: An Arabic Search Engine For Website Icons

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IcontyIconty is a new niche Arabic search engine, specifically created for web designers and developers, to provide them with an easy way to search for and find icons to use for certain functions on the websites they are building.

Iconty aims to be a central repository for icons, where users can come and search for icons using Arabic keywords, or even English ones, to find the ones best suited for their needs.

Users can sign-up to the service for free and start uploading  their own icons to share on the site so that other people can download and use them as well.

Users can add icons individually through a simple form where they specify the file, the owner and the tags; or upload a zip file with a whole icon set, and then input the details for each icon.

Iconty

Iconty is still in beta; work on it started in February 2009 by a team of three family members: Mahmoud, Mohamed and Alia Rida. The team are currently working on enhancing the organization of the platform and how icon result sets are displayed, as well as making it even easier for users to find icons.

# Iconty

Folowen, A New Social Media Search Tool (Private Beta Invites)

MMM 17 Comments

folowenfolowen 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

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.

Zaad, A Specialized Palestinian Directory Search Engine

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ZAAD

Zaad is a local Palestinian directory search engine that serves up search results from specialized databases, currently covering the Palestinian private sector and NGO sector databases.

Zaad enables users to enter information about their company or association directly to the site’s database, and update it as frequently as they need to. Details submitted to the search engine are confirmed through phone by the Zaad team to make sure all data in their database is accurate.

The service aims to build national databases for several sectors, expanding soon to hotels, restaurants, health centres, and more; positioning itself as an easy entry point to search for and find any type of business or organization in Palestine.

An integrated text advertising solution will be launched in a few days, that will enable advertisers to buy text ads to be displayed with the search results, targeted by category and language, with geo-targeting to be added soon.

The service went live earlier this month, and is available in both Arabic and English.

Zaad is a project of Sadaf Technology Development, a Palestinian web development company based in Gaza.

# Zaad

Yamli Launches New Smart Arabic Search Engine Features

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Yamli Search

Yamli, the startup based in Cambridge, MA, that is funded by ex-Googlers, and that specializes in smart transliteration technologies for the Arabic Web, just unveiled its new search engine that allows users to easily search Arabic content in all its forms.

Various studies show that transliterated Arabic content is ubiquitous due to a large portion of Arabic internet users choosing to write Arabic phonetically using Latin characters in an ad-hoc and informal fashion. Yamli automatically expands Arabic keyword searches to include all of their transliterated variations and returns results for both Arabic and transliterated content. This feature is a breakthrough for Arabic Internet users who are frustrated with having to repeatedly search different variations of their query when searching for music, news or videos.

According to co-founder Habib Haddad, “The challenge with Arabic content is that it’s hard to reach all of it. For example, a simple search for ‘Umm Khulthum’, the famous Egyptian signer, has over 90 transliterated variations – Om Kaltoum, Oum Kalsoum, etc…. Yamli will take an Arabic search term and expand it to include all transliterated variations, returning the maximum number of relevant search results, regardless of whether Arabic or Latin characters were used to write the content. Prior to Yamli, that kind of search was not possible,” concluded Haddad.

Yamli comes with a rich and easy-to-use interface that has been optimized for slower connections. Under the hood, Yamli uses APIs from proven search engines such as Google, Microsoft Live Search and YouTube. Yamli Search also includes Yamli’s award-winning Editor that allows users to type Arabic without an Arabic keyboard.

According to one of the early ex-Googlers Georges Harik, “The web is universal, and speakers of every language should get equal access to information. Yamli continues to do a great job of extending access to information to all Arabic speakers,” concluded Georges Harik who is also an investor in Yamli.

Yamli’s new search engine was first announced at Harvard Business School’s MENA Conference on Saturday, December 4th during a panel discussion on Entrepreneurship in the MENA region in which co-founder Habib Haddad participated.

StartUpArabia got access to test Yamli’s new expanded search features early on, and got to follow the development of the product up until today’s official release; and what truly stands out is how helpful and time-saving the service really is, how simply it is integrated in the interface, and how fast it all actually works.

You can try the new Yamli Search for yourself at http://www.yamli.com/

And here’s a little demo video demonstrating how the new search features work.