May 2008 – Page 3 – StartUpArabia

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

Talabia, Free Online Food Home Delivery Service

May 13, 2008May 13, 2008 MMM 6 Comments

Talabia is a new home delivery company that was launched in Kuwait in December 2007, initially using offline call center services, with the objective of providing a free home delivery service for the leading food products in Kuwait, making it more convenient for consumers to order fresh and frozen food products from the comfort of their own homes and have them delivered to their doorstep.

In April 2008, they took their service online, through a site available in both Arabic and English, bringing their home shopping experience to all connected households in Kuwait.

The site is very well designed, simple and easy to use; it incorporates a well organized and categorized product catalog, making it straightforward to find the products you’re looking for, add them to your shopping cart and place your order; also giving you the possibility to specify your preferred delivery time.

Talabia currently delivers products from leading food brands including Sadia, Hilal, Lamb Weston, Gulfa, Hana and Hayat; and they plan to continue adding more quality brands and products to cover more of the consumers’ needs.

The Talabia website was developed by Olive Interactive.

# Talabia

Business Plan Or No Business Plan?

May 12, 2008May 12, 2008 MMM 16 Comments

As I scour the internet going through bunches of articles and blog posts, and as I read more and more business books looking for more advice and tips on launching startups and running them, one of the main questions that keeps coming to mind is that concerning the business plan.

On one side you have the people who tell you to forget about writing a business plan, and to invest that time into working on your startup, getting things off the ground and moving, and that your business plan will come easily to you later on when you’re well established.

On the other side, of course, are the people who think a business is not a business unless you seriously think about and formulate a business plan for it, and that it’s best done at the very beginning so that you know what your goals are, where you’re taking your startup and how you’re actually going to make money to keep it alive.

Both opinions hold a certain amount of truth and logic in them, but if you’re an entrepreneur thinking of launching a business today, which bit of advice should you follow?
Is there a middle ground between the two?

Personally, I think it’s very important that the entrepreneur have an idea about how they plan to generate revenue to sustain their business and grow it from the beginning, but still move forward with an open mind about it all, fully knowing that their idea could change with the evolution of the project.

How detailed these initial ideas or plans have to be depend on the size of the project and the investment being put into it; sometimes they can be just a tiny thought scribbled on a post-it note, and some other times it’s a big elaborate document.

The importance of having this idea of how the business ‘can’ eventually make money is for it to serve as a guide, a reference point for the entrepreneur to keep in mind as they build up their business, and develop different paths towards that goal, and explore other new ones that open up for them along the way.

What are your thoughts on the issue? Business plan or no business plan?

Ikbis Arab Video & Photo Sharing Site Launches New Design

May 12, 2008May 12, 2008 MMM 8 Comments

Ikbis, the popular Arab video and photo sharing website, launched a new design last night. The new design feels a lot neater and more organized, which is great and isn’t that easy to achieve for a media content site.

A new ‘Contests’ tab has been added, so it’s clear Ikbis are going to be launching more and more contests to encourage users to post more high quality content.

A ‘Coming soon’ banner, showing two primitives and a mosquito, promises a new surprise soon; I’m guessing it’ll be a cool cartoon series by the talented Ikbis designers.

According to Ikbis, this new edition starts to reflect their evolved thinking and some of the new strategies they’ll be rolling out in the upcoming months.

# Ikbis

Chkobba Popular Tunisian Card Game Online

May 11, 2008May 11, 2008 MMM 17 Comments

Chkobba is one of the most popular card games in Tunisia, mainly played by men at coffee shops around the country, but also played at home by men and women alike.

Tunisian web agency Web Carré have successfully captured the Chkobba coffee shop experience and brought it online through Chkobba.net; the game, which is implemented in Flash, gives you a full coffee shop setting, with the small square tables, the coffee cups, cigarettes, hookah (Shisha), in addition to the ambient noises of a coffee shop, all its hustle and bustle, and the songs playing on an old radio in the corner somewhere.

You can also chat with other users while you’re playing, just as you would be doing if you were sitting with them playing in some coffee shop.

You can play solo against the computer, with the ability to choose your competitor’s level, or invite your friends and play with them in a multi-player game. In both solo and multi-player mode you can choose to play in an online championship and win prizes.

The game is in its second version, even though still in beta and might have some little quirks here and there, but it is very well implemented and really nice to play.

An interesting feature they’re adding is the possibility to find users to play with who are from your same neighborhood or near you by displaying their avatars on a map.

There are a number of other little flash games available on the website, but none as well designed or well implemented as the chkobba card game.

# Chkobba.net