Month: December 2008

ReKrute.com Expands Into Tunisian Employment Market

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ReKrute.comReKrute.com, one of the leading online career portals in Morocco, that was launched from Casablanca in 2006, just expanded into the Tunisian market, recently opening an office in Tunis and launching a dedicated version of their portal.

Like other online job portals, ReKrute.com aims to continuously connect companies looking to recruit in Tunisia with the best candidates out there.

The portal is totally free for candidates searching for a job, hoping to become their main access point to the job market, providing them with fresh job offers, information on the Tunisian job market, career advice and tips, online language tests and more.
Of course, the possibility to just post their CVs to the portals database so that they can be found by employers is also possible. 

For companies, ReKrute.com provides a global and flexible e-recruitment solution, that enables them to search through a database of CVs that match their exact needs, post their job vacancies and get in touch with the right potential employees for them.

All Job offers through the portal will also be reachable through the MSN Maghreb‘s job section which is powered by ReKrute.com.

ReKrute.com

In order to promote ReKrute.com in Tunisia and increase its visibility, partnership agreements are being finalised with big media entities, as well as a number of important Tunisian and European universities.

Ramla Jamel, who previously was a channel manager at Intel Corp., is the general manager of ReKrute.com in Tunisia.

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.

Seminar: Strategic Planning Process: A Must to Survive in Today’s Global Environment

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QRCEThe Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship (QRCE) just announced a new seminar they’re organizing under the theme of “Strategic Planning Process: A Must to Survive in Today’s Global Environment“.

The seminar will be taking place on Wednesday, December 17th 2008 from 3:00 – 5:00 PM, at the Friendship Auditorium of Princess Sumaya University for Technology, in Amman (Jordan).

The seminar will be with Dr. Niren M. Vyas, Distinguished Professor in the University of South Carolina Aiken, USA.

Dr. Vyas has a Ph.D. in Marketing from the University of South Carolina, and has worked in corporations located in Asia, Europe and North America for 27 years, offers consulting services to companies in the USA, Europe, India and Nepal, along with his work in academia for 14 years, the last 9 years as the Dean of Business School at the University of South Carolina.
Currently, Dr. Vyas is in Bahrain as a Visiting Professor with Ahlia University.

Those interested in attending the event can register by sending an email to workshops@qrce.org.

Qatar Science & Technology Park Opens Registration For Next Investor Readiness Program

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Qatar Science & Technology ParkThe Qatar Science & Technology Park (QSTP), has announced that registration is now open for its next Investor Readiness Program seminars.

Comprising five consecutive Monday-evening seminars starting 19 January, the free program focuses on how to become “investor ready” and raise finance. They are open to any Qatar resident that wishes to learn how to plan and build a start-up technology company.

Together the five seminars cover the full process of planning a successful start-up, from idea development through to raising capital and steering the company through its early years.  

Topics covered include:

  • Project selection, development & commercial evaluation
  • Building a management team
  • Business planning
  • Pitching to investors
  • Business development

The seminars and workshops are free, however places are limited and require registration. 

Those interested in attending can register online here: QSTP Investor Readiness Program Registration.

Ayna Corporation Launches Ayna Events Service

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Ayna EventsAyna Corporation announced today the launch of a beta version of their new Ayna Events Service. The service is dedicated to covering the latest events and occasions happening in the Middle East & North Africa.

Ayna Events presents interesting features where events are listed by date and geo-located on Ayna Maps, displaying detailed information with routine options as well as providing comprehensive search criteria.

The service carries a constantly growing database of Concerts and Shows, Conferences, Educational Activities, Entertainment, Exhibitions, Fairs & Festivals, Premiere/Road Shows/Launchings, Seminars, Sports, Theatres and Plays, and Trade Shows taking place in the Middle East & North African region.

Ayna Events

Event Organizers are able to submit their events manually and geo-locate them on Ayna Maps through a user-friendly interface. The service is offered for free and holds different advertising options.

Ayna Events service is presented in Arabic and English and will be adding a number of new features in the coming future.

You can check it out here: events.ayna.com

Report: MENA Advertising Growth To Double In 2009

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An industry report released by ZenithOptimedia, a media-buying arm of one of the world’s largest advertising firms, Publicis Group, says 2009 advertising growth for the MENA region will grow by 10 percent, nearly the double of this year’s expected growth rate of 5.8 percent.

Egypt should be a strong contributor to the growth of advertising in the region, with most of the gains coming from the GCC and the growing pan-Arab advertising market.

This stands out against a gloomy worldwide outlook, forecasting a 0.2 percent drop in advertising spend next year, with the North American market taking the worst hit, expected to decline 5.7 percent. 

Internet advertising is expected to grow 18 percent next year though, both globally and in the North American market, taking a 15.6 percent share of global ad expenditures in 2011, 5.2 percentage points ahead of magazines and 5.6 points behind newspapers. The gap between internet and newspapers currently stands at 15.1 points.

Reduced advertising budgets are expected to help boost internet advertising, which costs fractions of what it costs to advertise via traditional media, and offers advertisers a clear way to track audience.

The report also expects television to do relatively well in the downturn, making up a record 38.5 percent of global ad expenditure in 2010 and 2011.

Muxlim Launches Muxlim Pal, The Virtual World For Muslims

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MuxlimMuxlim, the online Muslim social media community service, has just launched the beta version of “Muxlim Pal”, a Muslim oriented virtual world, complete with its own currency and culture, pretty similar in principle to Second Life.

Muxlim users can now login to the new “Pal” service, and get their personal avatars, called Pals, for this virtual world. First users will also get some free coins to get started with.

Each user gets their own room, that they can decorate and personalize with furniture and gifts, that are already there by default or that they can add from their inventory. These personal rooms are also the place where users can change their Pal’s appearance, by clicking on the wardrobe to change their clothing and accessories, or clicking on their Pal to change their hair, skin and other features.
Pals also get to pray in their own personal rooms.

Getting around in Pal is pretty easy; A red “Navigation” button enables users to visit different parts of the world; and once there, just clicking on the ground is enough to move the Pal from place to place. Clicking on people will tell you who they are. Users can chat and get to know each other through the built-in chat system. The Mosque Social Yard, one of the areas in this virual world, seems like a good place for people to meet. 

Muxlim Pal

One of the places in the virtual world is the Mall, where users can to go shopping for new clothes for their Pal, buy furniture for their room, and get gifts for friends you make in the virtual world.  

A green “Wallet” button shows how many coins your Pal has. These coins can be bought from the website for use in the virtual world.

A bronze “Inventory” button displays all the gifts and items that belong to your Pal, and that haven’t been placed in your personal room.

Muxlim Pal is meant to create an open community for Muslims and non-Muslims alike, enabling people from all over the world to explore Muslim culture. And while there will be religious spaces, Muxlim Pal isn’t really designed to be a religious platform, it will be open to people who are religious and not religious.

# Muxlim Pal   

What Makes Entrepreneurs Entrepreneurial?

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About a year ago, I came across a really interesting study by Saras D. Sarasvathy from University of Washington’s School of Business on “What Makes Entrepreneurs Entrepreneurial?“. Today, I remebered it, thought I’d dig it up and share it here.

In her study, Sarasvathy  examined the reasoning of 30 founders of companies, ranging in size from $200 Million to $6.5 Billion. What she found was that these founders shared a distinct form of rationality that we have all long recognized intuitively as “Entrepreneurial”. She termed this type of rationality “Effectual Reasoning”.

Here is a bit from her study that basically explains this “Effectual Reasoning”:

“Effectual reasoning […] does not begin with a specific goal. Instead, it begins with a given set of means and allows goals to emerge contingently over time from the varied imagination and diverse aspirations of the founders and the people they interact with. While causal thinkers are like great generals seeking to conquer fertile lands (Genghis Khan conquering two thirds of the known world), effectual thinkers are like explorers setting out on voyages into uncharted waters (Columbus discovering the new world).”

And on the process entrepreneurs follow:

“All entrepreneurs begin with three categories of means: (1) Who they are – their traits, tastes and abilities; (2) What they know – their education, training, expertise, and experience; and, (3) Whom they know – their social and professional networks. Using these means, the entrepreneurs begin to imagine and implement possible effects that can be created with them.”

It’s a very interesting study that I really recommend reading: 
What Makes Entrepreneurs Entrepreneurial? (Saras D. Sarasvathy)

Mezed Expands Into Italian Market With BidBloom

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BidBloomMezed, the online auctions site that was launched by Tunisian startup La Référence in mid-2007, and that seems to be doing pretty well, is expanding into the Italian market through its recent launch of an Italian version of the site called ‘BidBloom‘.

BidBloom, applies the same auctions system and logic used in the Tunisian site, as well as the new design that was recently introduced.

Mezed was previously reviewed here, with details about their system, and how their auctions system works, but in short the system used by it and BidBloom is as follows: Users get to buy a number of “bids”, that they then place on an item, raising its price by a certain predefined amount and adding time to the life of the auction. The winner then pays the final amount that was reached for the item.

BidBloom

Something I found weird about the Tunisian version is that the site is only open for auctions during working hours, meaning from 9AM to 6PM. The Italian version stays open a bit longer, from 8AM to 11PM.
But I still don’t get why an online service has to go on pause, and not enable people to bid whenever they feel like it. 

# BidBloom

Questler Content Available Under Creative Commons License

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Questler LogoQuestler, the online learning and knowledge network, announced that they have finally been able to license all content on their website under a Creative Commons license.

The chosen licence is the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License: which means anyone will be able to copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works out of it; as long as they attribute the work, not use it commercially, and make it available under the same license or a similar one.

All existing content on Questler, as well as all newly user submitted content to the website will automatically be available under this license.

The license has been added to all the site’s pages signalling the change, and the terms of use are currently being updated to reflect this as well.