Month: October 2008

Yamli Releases iGoogle Arabic Transliteration Gadget

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Yamli iGoogle gadgetYamli has gone on and released a new iGoogle gadget that allows easy access to its award-winning Arabic transliteration technology directly from users’ customized Google homepages.

Yamli’s Smart Arabic Keyboard allows users to type Arabic using Latin characters by converting their words in real time into Arabic text.

The gadget integrates the functionality to convert words from Latin characters to Arabic in order to launch Arabic searches on Google, or to write words and paragraphs that can then be copied and used elsewhere.

To add the Yamli gadget to your iGoogle homepage, you can use the following link: Add Yamli iGoogle Gadget.

Dubai-based Content Syndicate Wins YourBusiness SME Awards

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Content SyndicateAt a recent industry event organised by YourBusiness magazine and Visa, Dubai-based Content Syndicate was awarded two prestigious awards, emerging triumphant in the ‘Best New SME’ as well as the overall ‘Best SME in the GCC’ categories.

The awards were sponsored by HP and Visa International as platinum sponsor of the overall winner category.

The 2008 YourBusiness SME Awards marks the anniversary of YourBusiness publication in the market and by extension seeks to reward entrepreneurs for growth. Sponsors for these awards include Visa International, Emirates NBD, Etisalat, HP, Hamriyah Free Zone, DHL and Forsa.

The awards were open to local and expatriate business owners of small to medium enterprises, or SMEs that employ less than 250 staff, earn up to AED 50 million and operate in the Gulf region. The awards ceremony took place at the Park Hyatt Hotel on 20 October 2008 and was attended by over 200 invitees.

Commenting on the win, Content Syndicate’s Founder & CEO, Maddy Reddy, said: “With SMEs constituting nearly 80% of the business ecosystem, both in the region and globally, we are honoured to be awarded this recognition. It’s also easy to overlook the fact that some of the biggest firms out there were all ‘garage start-ups’ or SMEs when they started out. This award is an important milestone for us in the long and exciting journey ahead.”

The judging panel comprised of senior management from Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation, Visa, HP, Etisalat, HSBC, Emirates NBD, Citibank, YourBusiness advisory board and business consultants.

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Intel Capital Invests In Dubai-Based Startup Sphere Networks

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Sphere NetworksIntel Capital, Intel’s investment arm, joined Dubai Silicon Oasis (DSO) by announcing its investment in Sphere Networks, an emerging Dubai-based startup specialising in next generation network management software. This move marks Intel’s first investment in a company based in the Gulf region.

The investment should help Sphere to expand both its technology base, get access to Intel technologies and develop sales and marketing to deliver its products to market. The amount of the investment was not disclosed.

The startup employs a team of 26 people, from different backgrounds, in Dubai; developing enterprise level network management solutions, which are already in use with a number of government customers in the region. 

The investment, announced today by Christian Morales, Intel VP Sales & Marketing and General Manager, Europe Middle East and Africa, is part of Intel’s drive to expand its economic, educational and technology-related support across the UAE. 

Under this program, Intel continues to increase its investment in four key areas: local entrepreneurship, education, digital accessibility and specialized technical competencies, to help promote technology skills, knowledge transfer and jobs creation in the UAE. 

Commenting on the announcement, Morales underlined the importance of fostering innovative, home-grown ideas and noted that today’s news illustrates Intel’s ongoing commitment to collaborate with local players that share the vision of taking entrepreneurial projects to the next level of global competitiveness. 

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FindWhere Expands Presence In MENA’s GPS Market

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FindWhereFindWhere, a pioneer and global leader of real-time GPS location tracking, announced a few days ago that its website is now fully available in Arabic at www.findwhere-me.com.

The new website arrives on the heels of FindWhere’s recently announced joint venture with Dubai-based I2TC. The partnership creates the Middle East’s leading location-based service provider.

FindWhere’s expanding presence in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region also includes the appointment of regional IT retail expert Dikran Tchablakian to the company’s Advisory Board. FindWhere will ratify several major agreements in the region over the coming weeks.

FindWhere’s Arabic website launched at Gitex — an annual information technology exhibition in Dubai. The new website will provide FindWhere’s MENA customers with secure, user friendly access to current and historical locations of their GPS tracked devices and mobile phones, including address, time and even speed. Services also include “on-the-move” notifications, panic alerts and notification of entry or exit of pre-determined geo-fences.

FindWhere customers can receive Arabic email and text alerts to their mobile phones with information on the location of tracked devices. Real-time location notifications are readily available to customers on demand as a text message.

# FindWhere ME

ABAN Hosts Fourth Annual Entrepreneur – Investor Matchmaking Event

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ABANThe Arab Business Angels Network (ABAN), a subsidiary of Dubai International Capital (DIC), in partnership with Young Arab Leaders (YAL), hosted its 4th annual entrepreneur-investor matchmaking event, taking forward the concept of angel or seed capital investing, a relatively new phenomenon in the Middle East.

The event, held on October 20th at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) spotlighted three aspiring start-ups:

  • White Smile, a project specializing in professional teeth whitening, oral detoxification, and cleansing therapies.
  • Chipmunk, a franchise of an eclectic range of baby products from Belgium. 
  • Khayal Interactive, an Egyptian game production company.

ABAN’s matchmaking events offer entrepreneurial ventures in the MENA region an opportunity to showcase their businesses and connect with high net worth investors seeking start-up investment opportunities. The affluent investors, termed angel investors, provide capital for business start-ups, typically in exchange for ownership equity.

In the past year, ABAN has signed up with several leading regional and international organisations to pool resources and promote entrepreneurialism, innovation and knowledge creation in the region.

Recently, ABAN joined forces with the Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation to foster entrepreneurship among women across the Arab region. ABAN has also collaborated with Dubai Internet City, one of the world’s largest managed ICT clusters and a member of TECOM Investments, to source new entrepreneurial ventures in the high-growth technology sector for further developing the region as a knowledge-based economy.

In addition, ABAN has partnered with Bader Group to support the establishment of a business angels networks in Lebanon. It has also signed an MoU with the Al Ahli Holding Group (AAHG) to promote developmental, cross-learning relationships between Emirati youth and the youth of other countries to help groom competent leaders for the future. 

ABAN offers a wide range of benefits to its members ranging from advice and consultancy to financial support and training for selected entrepreneurs. ABAN also supports proposal pitching to investors, and facilitates collaboration and syndication among investors to maximise investment opportunities. 

The Arab Business Angels Network is scheduled to host its next matchmaking event on December 15th for introducing yet another batch of entrepreneurs to regional investors.

SouqElArab Partners With LebanonPath To Provide More Products From Lebanon

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SouqElArabThe Arab social Web shopping portal, SouqElArab.com, just announced a partnership with LebanonPath.com to better serve Arab communities across the globe with the finest Lebanese and Arab products.   

LebanonPath.com is an Online Lebanese shopping Web site that serves directly from the heart of Lebanon with products such as Lebanese sweets, food, coffee, books, flowers, arts, olive oil, clothing and much more. Through major suppliers of gourmet foods, such as Atayeb Alrif and sweets from Douwaihy, LebanonPath.com has been able to serve customers from all over the world whom have the interest and taste for the Lebanese product.  

The partnership between SouqElArab.com and LebanonPath.com will boost the service from Lebanon with expanding product offering for both Web sites, supporting regional supplier reach and logistics platforms. SouqElArab.com will be offering more products from Lebanon, while LebanonPath.com has the reach of suppliers from the 15 countries SouqElArab.com operates from.  

The CEO of SouqElArab Inc. points; “Our efforts are going in to synchronizing the operations in Lebanon, and concentrating on the core markets abroad by serving them with the best quality and wide product offering. Both operations will be coming together in Beirut, cutting costs, while enriching the service provided to our customers.” Fadi Dababneh continues; “this gives SouqElArab Inc. the focus to expand further in its operations in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Iran.” 

Albert Abu Hamra the CEO of LebanonPath.Com claims “This effective partnership between both LebanonPath.Com and SouqElArab.com will flourish the online shopping services and products in the Arab world, in order to provide the Arabic audience all over the globe with the best quality of these products and fastest door to door delivery of the products”. CEO of LebanonPath.Com adds: “LebanonPath.Com with its operations from Beirut and in full cooperation with SouqElArab.Com will be covering all product lines where a customer will be shopping safely and choosing from between thousands of products”.

Google Launches Arabic Transliteration Tool, Takes On Yamli

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Google Ta3reebGoogle recently launched a new Arabic transliteration tool, that allows users to use their Latin keyboards to type in Arabic text. This move puts them in direct competition with Yamli, a small startup that has proven very popular and generated great feedback; simulating a modern day tech reenactment of David vs. Goliath.

This isn’t the first time Google works on transliteration; they actually launched transliteration services from English to various Indian languages like Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu on Blogger and through Google Talk bots over the past year. 

Now with Google’s push in the Arab world, they’ve gone on and launched ‘Google Ta3reeb’ (Google Arabization). The new tool was one of the services visible at the Google booth at Gitex Technology Week in Dubai.

From my initial usage of the tool, and comparing it to Yamli; Yamli stills seems to maintain the advantage, by being faster and offering more relevant transliterations and word suggestions. But I expect the Google tool will get better with time, as more people use it, and its inner workings optimised.

Google Ta3reeb screenshot

According to an anonymous tip that was picked up by TechCrunch, actually searching for ‘Yamli’ or ‘Yamli.com’ on Google’s Arabic versions like (Google.ae or Google.com.sa), users get a search results page that prominently displays ads for Google’s competing service alongside the search results, which suggests that Google is using Yamli’s name to target ads for their new service.

I’ve contacted both Yamli and Google for their comments on this story and should be following up with their responses pretty soon.

Update 1: Google has gone on and retracted the above mentioned ads.

Update 2: Responding to my enquiry about the story, Yamli co-founder Habib Haddad said “We are happy to see Google serving the Arabic web and we welcome healthy competition. Our primary focus as a young Arabic startup is and will remain on innovations for the Arabic user for whom we think we can continue to make significant contributions.”

DemoCamp Dubai 3 – The Agenda

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DemoCamp DubaiAs previously announced, the third DemoCamp Dubai will be taking place at the Radisson SAS in Dubai Media City on October 28th at 7:30PM.

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

  • Jawaker is a multi-player online gaming site that is dedicated to card games from the Arab world. 
  • Twffaha is a job portal for women, aiming to promote recruiting women in the region. (Previously reviewed here)
  • Untiny is a new service that given a shortened URL, expands it to retrieve the original web address behind it. (Previously reviewed here)
  • Industrials Directory is an industrial search engine and locator that provides one source for finding the exact product, service, or supplier and locate them.

The format will be the same as the first two events, with the presenters giving 10 minute presentations of their work, with 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.

Muxlim Wins World Summit Awards Nomination

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MuxlimAt the Mindtrek conference in Tampere,  Muxlim, an online Muslim social media community service, was awarded the World Summit Awards Finland nomination in the “e-Inclusion & Participation” category.

This award gives the company the opportunity to compete in the WSA 2009 with some of the world’s best e-Content and innovative ICT applications.

Muxlim was founded by UAE raised Mohamed El-Fatatry and Pietari Päivänen in December 2006. The company aims to provide cutting-edge services to the Muslim-Lifestyle Market around the world. 

Muxlim WSA Award

The World Summit Award (WSA) is the global initiative to select and promote the world’s best e-Content and innovative ICT applications. WSA was started in 2003 in the framework of the United Nations’ World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) as a contribution of the Austrian Government to the global effort to bridge the digital divide and close the content gap. WSA activities include national contests and selections of best practice, a global contest held every 2 years and content-focused national and international conferences with exhibitions — the WSA Road Show.

WSA works to strengthen entrepreneurship within content industries and to bring about economic and cultural development through the creative use of ICTs. It supports the UN Millennium Development Goals of ending poverty, hunger and disease, saving the environment and giving a fair share to women.

WSA is an invitation project and a global activity for all who share the understanding of the crucial importance of excellent e-Content creation within the information society. Partners in over 160 UN member states are actively involved in WSA.

Muxlim founder Mohamed El-Fatatry is one of the speakers at SIME Denmark in Copenhagen on November 6th, and at The New Media Event in Dubai, taking place from 14-18 December. 

# Muxlim

New Startup Job Vacancies On StartUpArabia

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A number of new job vacancies have been posted to the StartUpArabia job board.

The jobs available now are at a newly launched startup in Lebanon called Wikeez, that will be reviewed very soon here.

The open positions are all based in Beirut, Lebanon, and are as follows:

For those of you interesed in filling in one of those positions, click on the position of your choice to find more details.
And if you’re a startup operating in the Arab world and looking to hire someone just right for your startup, you can post your job vacancies for free at the StartUpArabia Job Board.