Month: April 2009

Salam Business Club Launches Arabic Version Of Their Business Social Networking Service

MMM 8 Comments

Salam Business ClubSalam Business Club, the social business network built especially for the Arab, Asian and Muslim business world, has just launched an Arabic version of their service.

SalamBC was previously called MuslimBC, before undergoing a rebranding aimed at showing that the service isn’t just strictly for Muslims, and that anyone interested in joining, networking and getting into business with Muslims and Muslim countries from all over the world can join.

As with other business social networks, people can sign up and create their professional profile, then search for people they know on the service or invite them, building up their business network. Groups can also be created around different subjects where discussions can be launched with other members.

An internal messaging system makes it easier for users to get in touch and interact with each other.
Users also get their own personal blog on the service where they can write and share their articles and thoughts, and other members can leave their comments on. RSS feeds will be made available for these blogs in the future too.

SalamBC Screenshot

The interface is pretty simple and geared towards making it as friendly a place as possible for business professionals to connect and interact with each other, share interesting information and resources, and access the latest business news from various sources.

Among the other languages available on SalamBC are English, German, French, Urdu and Turkish; making the service available and accessible to a wide base of business people from different countries and backgrounds.

SalamBC was founded by Rias A. Sherzad and Farid Zazai in 2007. The company is based in Hamburg, Germany and is self and angel funded so far. I met with co-founder Farid Zazai in Dubai on a recent trip of his, and understood that they are also keeping an eye open for possible VC investments.

They’re also working on a really interesting service within SalamBC that no one else has ventured into yet, but I’ll get into that in more detail later, once I get the green light from them to talk about it.

# Salam Business Club

Meedan Cross-Language Dialogue Platform Launches Open Beta

MMM 2 Comments

MeedanMeedan has officially launched its online service into open beta. Meedan is a non-profit social technology company which aims to increase cross-language interaction on the web, with particular emphasis on translation and aggregation services in Arabic and English.

Through its use of Machine Translation (MT), Machine Augmented Translation (MAT), and distributed human translation, Meedan’s goal is to increase dialogue and exchange between Arabic and English speakers primarily by launching a cross-language forum for conversation and media sharing, in an attempt to foster understanding and tolerance between the Arab and Western worlds.

Meedan means ‘gathering place’ or ‘town square’ in Arabic, and it reflects the service that was designed to stand as a digital town square for a linguistically, culturally, and geographically diverse community of Arabic and English speaking Internet users, coming together online to discuss current events taking place all over the world.

Meedan

Everything that appears on meedan.net is mirrored in Arabic and English; whether it’s the published headlines, the posted comments, or shared articles; so as to ensure an open two-way conversation.

Meedan was founded by Ed Bice in 2005 and incorporated as a nonprofit charitable organization in 2006.

For more information about the service and to try it out, go to: Meedan.net

Investing In Technology Forum, Cairo, Egypt – May 12-14th 2009

MMM

Investing in Technology ForumThe Arab Science and Technology Foundation (ASTF), a Pan-Arab NGO with the mission of promoting and supporting Science, Technology and Entrepreneurship as a tool of economic development in the MENA region, has announced its 6th Investing in Technology Forum to be held this year in Cairo, Egypt on May 12th -14th, 2009 under the Patronage of H.E. Dr. Ahmed Nazif, Prime Minister of Egypt.

Organized in cooperation with ITIDA and Nile University, the forum is a networking opportunity for entrepreneurs, researchers, investors, regional corporate CEOs, and all technology leaders in the region who will get together to share experiences, develop relationships and explore business opportunities.

The Forum falls into ASTF efforts to bridge the gap between those who generate technology and those who generates businesses and investments, with the ultimate aim of creating strong, innovative and competitive knowledge-based businesses that can add value, generate jobs and create wealth.

The Forum is targeted at an audience of investment and business professionals; multinational corporations; leading regional corporations in technology innovation; venture capital funds, private equity funds, and investment banks; angel investors and business angel groups; technology leaders in the Arab region; incubators and technology parks; universities and research centers; NGOs and Gov. organizations; as well as technology startups and SMEs.

Read More

Zaad, A Specialized Palestinian Directory Search Engine

MMM 1 Comment

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

Ehsaeyat, Open Free Survey Service Around Technology Topics

MMM

EhsaeyatEhsaeyat is a new Arabic service that was launched a couple of months ago by Bluemeel as an open and free service holding and publishing results of surveys, mainly around technology topics.

Surveys done by Ehsaeyat are open and free for everyone to access and make use of, in an attempt to help academic researchers as well as business people find the numbers they need for their research and businesses.

The service is aimed at everyone, but mainly at people who don’t have the budget to go to one of the market research companies out there for the numbers and details they need.

Anyone can suggest surveys to be launched and then shared through the site. The surveys done by Eshaeyat are managed through SurveyMonkey, and then their results are published for everyone to access.

The service should come in handy for a number of people, and I think it could be used by internet startups to try and collect more information to help them with their first steps.

Ehsaeyat is still at its beginnings, and a good start it is, I just think they should try to put more focus on their ongoing surveys, and on getting them out there to more people from different backgrounds, incomes, …etc., in order to have a better and more significant result set.

Submit Conference Tickets Discount For StartUpArabia Readers

MMM 2 Comments

Submit ConferenceSubmit is a conference / gathering that will be taking place in Dubai’s Habtoor Grand Hotel next week, on the 8th & 9th of April 2009, for entrepreneurs and professionals involved in the Internet industry in the Middle East.

The goal of Submit is to kick-start a yearly gathering to get people with a common interest in the internet, building web applications, entrepreneurship, technology, marketing, and design together in one place, in an attempt to share the latest innovations and developments taking place in the Internet industry across the region and the globe.

Among the speakers at the event are: 

– Ray Milhem (Director and Chairman of the Board – AdvancedIO)
– Robert Hoekman, Jr. (Founder – Miskeeto)
– Ryan Carson (Founder – Carsonified)
– Simone Brunozzi (Web Services Evangelist, Europe – Amazon) 
– Tariq Al Asiri (General Manager – Argaam) 
– Alexander McNabb (Group Account Manager – Spot On PR) 
– Ashraf Khalil (Usability expert & University professor – Abu Dhabi University) 
– Cloves Carneiro Jr. (Co-Founder & CEO – SpinBits) 
– Rida Al Barazi (Co-Founder & Dev. Manager – SpinBits) 
– Mohamed Marwen Meddah (Founder – StartUpArabia) 

StartUpArabia has managed to get a limited offer to the next 10 readers interested in buying tickets to the event a 30% discount, if you buy through this link using the discount code ‘startuparabia’.

# Buy discounted tickets