Month: September 2009

Quirkat Launches New Music Playing Game ‘Al-Moosiqar’

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Al-MoosiqarQuirkat, the Middle Eastern game development studio announced today the launch of its newest online game ‘Al-Moosiqar’ (The Musician), through the company’s online Arabic/English Games Portal, Fuzztak.

‘The Musician’ offers players the chance to reconnect with one of Oriental music’s greatest instruments: The ‘Oud’ or lute as it is more commonly known in the West. The player controls the in-game Musician’s movements to play back classical Oud pieces.

Using a set of intuitive controls, the user can help the in-game Musician hit notes and strum according to the flow of notes on the screen. The Oudist’s facial expressions indicate the success of the playback and successful consecutive notes improve score through multipliers.

‘The Musician’ pretty much follows the same concept as the very successful Guitar Hero franchise, but bringing it to the web and for an Arabic instrument.

Al-MoosiqarAl-Moosiqar

Mahmoud Ali Khasawneh, Quirkat’s CEO, says: “Al-Moosiqar is yet another demonstration of our commitment to building unique gaming experiences generating from our culture and heritage. The Oud is the most important Arab instrument and is nicknamed the Prince of the Instruments. We consider it part of our mission at Quirkat to bring such proud Arab achievements to the gaming world. We hope Al-Moosiqar will provide regional gamers with a unique game experience.”

According to Ms Candide Kirk, Quirkat’s CTO, “Al Moosiqar builds a community layer on top of the existing Fuzztak gamer user base and allows registered users on Fuzztak to upload and annotate their own original musical pieces to the game world for other users to play back — thus the game transforms into a Music Portal of old time favorites and Oud classics, as well as original content from within the user base.”

Quirkat is a Dubai-based company with development studios in Amman, Jordan.

MailPacks Email Marketing Service Launches Private Beta

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MailPacksMailPacks, a new online service that enables companies and organizations to manage and send their email marketing campaigns, has just gone live with its private beta.

MailPacks promises low prices for sending email campaigns and a free tracking and follow-up system to measure the effectiveness of sent campaigns and set up follow up messages.

Using the service, email marketers can create and manage unlimited lists of email addresses, for example having lists for multiple tasks and/or lists for different sites.
When sending they can also choose to send to selected segments and target specific subscribers according to their countries, age, and/or sex.

They also have full control over the design side, as they can fully customize all landing pages with their text and design, and use an integrated HTML editor to create and design their HTML email messages as well as their custom pages. (MailPacks provides unlimited image hosting space.)
A set of pre-designed and tested templates are also made available.

Once done with the design of the message, the spam score for it can be checked, so that the message can be optimized in order to get higher deliverability.

After the email campaign is sent, marketers can keep track of the campaign’s results (opens, clicks, bounces …etc.), and set up unlimited follow up messages at the intervals of their choice.

To be sent an invitation code for MailPacks, you need to send a message to the MailPacks twitter account (@MailPacks) with a small request.

MailPacks was founded by Mamod Mehyar from Jordan, who is also behind Feedoor, that was previously reviewed here.

Euro-Mediterranean School 2009 Open For Entrepreneurs’ Applications

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The Euro-Mediterranean School (EMS), which is an initiative that aims to offer young entrepreneurs from the Euromed countries an opportunity to follow a learning program in the field of business management and entrepreneurship, has opened up applications for the fourth “Introduction to Entrepreneurship” course taking place this year.

EMS was founded by the Milan Chamber of Commerce, the Lombardy Region, and the Fondazione per la Sussidiarietà (‘Foundation for Subsidiarity’). These sponsoring bodies offer full scholarships to all participants covering travel costs, room and board, tuition fee and teaching materials for the entire duration of the course.

EMS 2009 aims to offer young entrepreneurs and managers from the countries bordering on the Mediterranean Sea an opportunity to obtain the entrepreneurial and managerial skills necessary to start and/or develop a business capable of operating in multiple markets within the Mediterranean Basin.

The EMS 2009 is divided into two principal phases, both taught in English:

Phase A: Distance Learning, which consists of an online course entitled ”Business Strategy, International Growth and the business plan” which is compatible with everyone’s work responsibilities.

Phase B: Business education and Networking, where the top 20 students shall be invited to spend 4 weeks in Milan, Italy to continue their course and have an internship.

The 4th edition of the Euro-Mediterranean School – EMS 2009 is planned to run from October 2009 to February 2010. The deadline for application submissions is September 15th 2009.

For a broader presentation, you can check out this pdf file: EMS 2009

[Via: Identity Chef]

UAE Based Startup Sphere Networks To Be Acquired By Major Taiwanese Manufacturer

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Sphere NetworksSphere Networks is currently in acquisition talks with a major Taiwanese manufacturer to sell off the majority of the company, including the intellectual property rights to its network management software technology, supporting research and development team.

Sphere Networks is a developer of enterprise-level network management solutions, that allow organizations to monitor and control thousands of nodes at any one time.

The name of the acquiring company hasn’t been disclosed, but Mohamed Hamedi, CEO and founder of Sphere Networks said that the potential buyer is “the largest OEM hardware manufacturer for networking equipment” in Taiwan. It produces switches, routers, access points and similar products mainly for other vendors, but now wants to start shifting to producing its own-brand products.

After the official announcement Sphere Networks will be fully folded into the acquiring company, including its IP, technology and supporting technical team of 20 employees. It is expected that staff working in sales and human resources will be cut as a result of the process though.

The company was launched in 2005 by Mohamed Hamedi, a Libyan national who moved from the US to Dubai to start the company and personally bankrolled it, until Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority invested in the startup in 2006, and then another investment by Intel Capital followed in 2008. The values of both of those investments were not disclosed.

As part of an earn out agreement, Hamedi should continue to work with Sphere Networks for up to 18 months following the deal.

[Source: ITP]

Google Launches Four New Arabic Editions Of Google News

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Google News EgyptGoogle just announced the launch of four new Arabic editions of Google News for Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Users in these countries can now access Google News editions specific to their country and get the latest headlines in topics such as Politics, Business, Sports, Entertainment and more.

This is part of Google’s ongoing push to provide local services and more relevant information and news for users, starting with these four countries that represent more than 24 million Arabic-speaking internet users.

Google News

Like all Google News editions, these computer-generated Arabic editions aggregate headlines from thousands of news outlets around the world, group similar stories together and link directly to the original sources that publish these stories. This enables users to search for topics they’re interested in, and read a wide variety of perspectives from different sources.

It seems there are plans by Google to continue rolling out more local editions for the rest of the Arab countries in the near future.

IMRG Capgemini: Online Shopping On The Rise In The Middle East

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imrgAccording to the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index, online sales showed a significant increase this year across the Middle East.

Shoppers spent US$8.2 billion online in July 2009, 15.7% more than was spent in June 2009 and 16.8% more than July 2008.

The driving force for the increase appeared to be the clothing, footwear and accessories sector, which showed growth of 18% month on month and 17% year on year.

Retailers across Middle East are predicted to sell US$90 billion in goods and services online in 2010, up 37% from last year.

E-commerce is still a key growth market for the Middle East and has seems to have shifted more into focus for a number of retailers in the midst of the Global recession.

[Source: BI-ME]