Author: dotone

Abjad Hawaz 7o66i Kalamun, lost in the Markup

dotone 2 Comments

أبجد هوز

An Arabic art gallery without some of the best crafted calligraphy holds no value. That’s a fact. Arabic calligraphy & poetry are forms of cultural pride and not just art. Going digital, we lose all that. From readability to interaction. It’s all gone. Bold? Italic? Underlined? Get yourself ten Arabic books. Open’em, read’em, do you find anything in Bold? Italic? or Underlined? No you don’t. But we do have all that on the Web. How come?

Some will debate this with Interaction & Readability unity across different languages–English that is but with all the author-ware software developers’ presence in the region there hasn’t been one solid negating report which gets us to a simple conclusion, not enough efforts, at least not as much as it deserves.

So with all the calls for Arabic content around and how much Arabic content is going to be important for the growth of Arabic users’ online experience and the Internet industry in general, the basics haven’t really been covered.

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Bayt.com’s Communities, Goin’ Social with 4.5m Job Seekers?

dotone 1 Comment

Time comes for Web companies to renew themselves n’ get on with new features n’ enhanced strategies to cope up with users’ needs, opportunities, and competition. Bayt.com has gone through a series of additions to what they offer on their Website.

First was their Buy & Sell section that is just classifieds which is irrelevant to what Bayt.com is known for as a recruitment portal. And recently, Bayt.com added a new section named Communities. The new section is not live yet as it offers an introduction to what is coming up and features the first Community for Marketing professionals offering them Industry News/Updates, Networking, and Professional Assessment. Is that a shot at LinkedIn?

Bayt is rich in user-base, with 4.5 Million job seekers on board, this could be a shot well worth venturing for. Engaging such a big number of users in networking looks great on paper but in reality, the type of users that we’re talkin’ about are job seekers. And this is exactly the opposite of LinkedIn where professionals signup to network first and might get exposed to vacant positions.

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Online Content Bottlenecks in Arabia are loosening up

dotone

Online Content Bottlenecks are loosening up

Looks like all are meeting at the content crossroads. Telecoms/ISPs providing higher bandwidth & speed, Media/Entertainment companies bringing the content online, and we users getting ready to use all that. I skipped Advertisers, let’s give’em a break.

The amount of direct online content piracy on Arabic websites could really shock you out if you weren’t the type that listens to Arabic music. You can download, stream, and do whatever you want with full albums of the latest titles for free, not on some obfuscated or hidden websites, torrent, or file-hosting, no, on proud flashing home pages. With all that around for years(showing the amount of interest) the only conclusion often heard was “Arabs like to get Music for Free when it’s digital” such a passive thing to say.

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AnaZahra, 32-year-old Zahrat Al Khaleej gone online? Or is it a step in conversion?

dotone 2 Comments

Abu Dhabi Media Company(ADMC) is “the” pioneer in the digital publishing space in the Middle East, hands down. New digital platform? They implement n’ use it before anyone else. A media company that techno-geeks love to love. Apart from owning some of the best performing titles in print they’ve been busy going digital as fast as they could and in full steam.

AnaZahra.com - أنا زهرةAnaZahra is ADMC’s latest addition to their digital/online portfolio of titles. AnaZahra was introduced as Zahrat Al Khaleej’s branch online, or the Online version of the same magazine? It could get one confused as ADMC introduced a new business unit headed by celebrity Zoya Sakr. It was launched with Zahrat Al Khaleej’s brand used as an endorser and a sister brand, even AnaZahra’s branding borrows from Zahrat Al Khaleej, but then once you go online, print content and online are worlds of differences.

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All eyes on you, there’s never been a better time to start-up than now

dotone 4 Comments

Governments support, communities, talent, funds, role models & case studies, cutting edge software n’ tools, and soon, better broadband & higher Internet penetration, and a great deal of awareness/coverage by media. You’ve got it all.

Take it back to the days when Web meant that big Blue “e” icon. That’s exactly when we read all about the .com boom in the US and all we could think about was if that was real, spending millions of dollars on some Websites?

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Fear of Sharing Data, an obstacle to integrated start-ups

dotone 6 Comments

In the world of Mashed-up data where we get around platforms and devices seamlessly and access data from everywhere do you think we should fear sharing data anymore? Skimming through a great list of start-ups will easily get your attention that our most successful start-ups and entrepreneurs in Arabia are those who could integrate with the analogue world, offline frameworks, and the real world business/individual needs.

One of the projects that caught my attention at the 2nd Democamp in Dubai was Loomni. Apart from the energetic founder’s enthusiasm & positive aggressiveness at the time of presenting, it got my attention to one very important notion, it isn’t a let’s-go-online kind of project and it is connected to our offline life. Despite its poor branding and non-introducing website it is one of those projects that fills a need, a gap, and it serves. Getting over Loomni, you’d often see start-ups in Arabia hanging around those projects that are not connected to the offline world. Or, it’s often a Web Developer’s other hobby gone online if not an Arabized one.

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Arabize, slap an Arabic funky name on it n’ you got yourself a new startup

dotone 9 Comments

So if you skipped the class where your math teacher introduced Equivalence, you haven’t missed much. You can easily learn it while checking up some of the Arabia’s start-ups with some of the online services that you usually use. Mind you some will confuse you with Equality.

While this could be a degrading statement, there are very functional and online industry evolutionary reasons behind that. Simply it’s not our copycat genes that make us race for developing an Arabic version of the next big thing. Facebook? hah, we can make one in Arabic. Twitter? now that’s easy to make, let’s do that.

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