Category: Startup News

Taufeer.com E-Channel Opens Online Markets To Saudi Retailers

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TaufeerRiyadh-based online shopping service Taufeer.com has launched their new ‘E-Channel’ service to enable retailers in Saudi Arabia to get their products online.

They aim for this new service to be a comprehensive and fully managed e-commerce service for retailers across Saudi Arabia and the Middle East.

The Taufeer.com E-Channel service allows retailers to take full advantage of a range of online tools to quickly and efficiently use the internet as a sales channel. E-Channel gives retailers a single centralized interface to add products; update inventories and prices; add and manage multiple physical stores; review and manage their online orders; and provide online payment service via credit card, logistics and delivery.

Additionally, Taufeer.com E-Channel allows retailers to stay in touch with their customers through a range of tools and community networks.

As for pricing, Taufeer.com will only be charging for actual sales, with fees starting from as low as 1%.

This service puts Taufeer.com in direct competition with Maktoob’s Souq.com Stores, which has been proving a success in the UAE recently.

Souq.com Stores Proving An E-Commerce Success In The UAE

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Souq.com StoresSouq.com Stores, a service launched by Souq.com early this year, and that allows businesses and individuals to set up their own exclusive online merchandise stores to showcase and sell products at fixed prices, is proving to be a big success in the e-commerce scene in the UAE, with a number of big-ticket companies, small business owners and individual traders turning to the e-stores to broaden their market reach and achieve instant results.

Businesses and individuals setting up shop on Souq.com Stores stand to benefit from the extensive customer base already present on Souq.com, which is currently the largest online marketplace operating in the UAE, allowing them to market their products to a pre-existing community of consumers and achieve quick turnover with minimal upfront investment.

Souq Stores already features over 70 stores that trade in Arts & Collectibles, Books, Clothing, Games & Gadgets, Jewelry, Mobiles & Accessories, Computers and Consumer Electronics among others. Large companies including Cellucom and RadioShack have signed up to operate their own stores on Souq.com as well.

Souq.com Stores screenshot

The Souq Stores feature offers customized branded pages through which sellers can showcase all their listings under their own Souq.com store. Souq.com also offers customized and tailored solutions to businesses for their stores, based on their own specific requirements.

Souq.com members trading on Souq Stores will continue to enjoy free delivery of goods within the UAE and benefit from Souq.com’s varied secure payment and delivery options.

With over 140,000 registered users and over 270,000 unique visitors a month, Souq.com has emerged as the premier online marketplace in the region. It recorded over 8.4 million page views in the month of July 2008.

Souq.com is a subsidiary of Maktoob Group.

# Souq.com Stores

D1G Acquires Popular Jordanian Forum E7ki

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D1GD1G recently announced that it has acquired the popular Jordanian forum “E7ki“, one of the biggest in Jordan, to integrate it into the D1G network of websites.

The E7ki forum now operates under the D1G domain name, and is now in public beta, awaiting to be relaunched with a new design and more features.

E7ki is the fifth acquisition by D1G after websites like: “Ya Sater”, 7asnaa, 66g and “Seen Jeem”.

This acquisition follows a trend that some Arab web companies like D1G, Maktoob and others are following; acquiring popular websites and forums to quickly boost their number of users, as well as the page views and visits they generate, in order to attract more online advertisers, thereby generating more advertising income for them.

Ayna Launches Beta Of Online Map Service for the Middle East & North Africa

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AynaA few days ago, Arab search engine Ayna launched a beta version of Ayna Maps, a service that provides interactive maps of places and businesses for all major Arab capitals in the Middle East and North Africa region.

Ayna is one of the first Arabic search engines in the region, and now aims to grow its search services by providing more types of information like its new street level map service covering 26 cities in 17 countries and presented in Arabic and English.

Ayna maps aims to provide detailed street level mapping that is not available through any other online service, including Google, Yahoo, and MapQuest; in order to give businesses and individuals alike the possibility to easily locate and add points of interest. As of the launch, Ayna Maps are preloaded with over fifty thousand searchable points of interest available in Arabic, English and French to meet the needs of local audiences.

Businesses will be able to mark their physical location on a map to guide their customers, and easily embed the marked map in any web site along with their contact details, such as name, address, phone, email, and a descriptive summary.

Doha Ayna Map

Cities covered by Ayna maps include: Beirut (Lebanon); Damascus (Syria); Baghdad (Iraq); Amman, Aqaba (Jordan); Riyadh, Jeddah, Mecca, Madina (Saudi Arabia); Kuwait City (Kuwait); Doha (Qatar); Manama (Bahrain); Dubai, Abu Dhabi (UAE); Muscat (Oman); Sanaa (Yemen); Cairo, Alexandria, Sharm El-Sheikh, Hurguda (Egypt); Khartoum (Sudan); Tripoli (Libya); Tunis (Tunisia); Algiers (Algeria); Rabat, Marrakech (Morocco).

Ayna Maps future releases include providing routing and directions, updating map data, and publishing submitted points of interest for businesses in the region. A mobile version of the map service will also be launched soon.

The idea is a very useful one and really needed in the region, and for an initial beta release it is pretty good; Hopefully future versions will have more detailed and revised maps, with more integrated points of interest.

# Ayna Maps

New And Improved Version Of Araby Directory

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ArabyTowards the end of 2007, Arabic search engine “Araby” bought popular Arab website directory “Eyoon” in order to integrate it as a service of Araby; Araby Directory was officially launched in early 2008.

The goal behind Araby Directory is to add the number of useful services for Araby users, as well as grow the user base, through providing for users’ every need.

Ever since the intial launch, the Araby team have been working on a set of improvements for the Araby Directory service, to enhance usability and provide better and more organized content.

Some of the main enhancements released with this new version are the following:

  • A new design for the directory and an easier way to navigate through it.
  • A number of new main categories and subcategories to better cover and organize as many websites as possible.
  • Addition of a large numbers of websites, organized under their relative categories and subcategories.
  • Integration of the advanced Araby search functionalities to make searching for and finding websites a lot easier and efficient.
  • The possibility to suggest new websites by users.
  • The possibility to report broken links or inappropriate content by users.
  • Display of more information about the websites in the directory.
  • Integration of the “Email to a friend” functionality.

Araby Directory screenshot

Araby is one of the services and companies of Maktoob Group.

# Araby Directory

Zero2Beta: Intense Web Application Design & Development

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Zero2BetaZero2Beta is a new experiment launched by SpinBits and CloudAppers on intense design and development of a useful web application from concept to launch in a couple of days, and releasing it to the public.

With agile development platforms like Rails and the back-to-basics approach to applications, the time to design, develop and launch an application has become impressively short; Zero2Beta is a collaboration effort that aims to push this to the extreme and create something from scratch in a couple of days time only.

It enforces the practice of coming up with a unique idea, designing an application around it, deploying it and getting it out to the public as soon as possible. The idea is that the self-imposed limitations in terms of time and resources will eventually push the team to focus on what really matters and rise above trivial decisions to working on the absolutely necessary parts needed to have something working quickly.

The first application in this experiment, code-named “App1″, and which will be named “Next“, will kick off tomorrow.

A blog to document the different steps of the project has been setup at  Zero2Beta; and a twitter account @zero2beta has been created too, so that people can follow the advancement of the project hourly throughout the next couple of days, with links to posts in addition to some photos and videos as well.

I think it’s a very interesting experiment, and am really looking forward to seeing the results of this collaboration between SpinBits and CloudAppers.

Info2cell Launch SMS and MMS Content Services In Sudan

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Info2cellInfo2cell.com, the leading mobile application service provider in the Middle East, has launched mobile short message (SMS) and multimedia messaging (MMS) content services in Sudan through a joint venture with ADU Communication Technology, a local telecommunications specialist.

The partnership will see high-quality SMS and MMS content services for the booming domestic mobile telecommunications market in Sudan, covering several categories including news, sports, Islamic and entertainment content; BBC SMS News and Sport and DUOA Islamic channel with audio MMS are presently supported.

Recent projects launched under the new services include the LAKI and Women in Islam channels and full coverage of Euro 2008 via SMS and MMS. Additional planned services are ringtones, Java games and the introduction of ‘Magalati’, the first SMS magazine in the country.

Info2cell.com’s subscription base continues to expand significantly around the Arab world, with a further 23.3 percent increase expected by the end of 2008.

Questler Online Learning Network Launches New Version

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Questler LogoQuestler, the online learning and knowledge network, just launched a new version of their service today, with a sleeker looking logo and a new navigation system.

This new version brings a number of changes beyond the design, like:

Channels: New channel pages have been introduced for each user, where you can browse all their contributions, whether quests or comments, per their learning interests or all tags of their posts. Users can go to their settings to customize the design of their own channel.
They plan to launch specialized channels from companies and organizations that have quests to share soon.

RSS Feeds: It is now possible to subscribe to Questler’s everyone feed, as well as to RSS feeds for any specific user channel. RSS feeds are also available for tags and keyword searches, enabling you to follow topics of interest to you.

Extra Tagging: Now everyone can add more tags to any quest when they post a comment on it, this way other users will be able to filter through the Quest View page to see their comments per tags they’ve added.

Quest creation from a comment: Users can now post a comment on a certain a quest as a new Quest; the two will be linked and can be viewed in the Related Quests tab.

Related Quests: When viewing a quest’s details, all related quests will be listed on the same page, enabling interested users to further explore the topic. Recent quests as well as latest quests by the same user are also available now.

Home/Dashboard: To make posting quests easier, it is no longer necessary to go to the quest page to post, it can be done directly from the home page. A new dashboard also helps browse through the latest conversations quickly.

Questler New Version

Another detail worth mentioning is that the Beta moniker has been dropped from this version, which does feel more mature as an online service, more organized and better rounded at the corners.

# Questler

Places.ae Dubai Location Based Directory Goes Mobile

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Places.aePlaces.ae, the Dubai location based directory, previously reviewed here, have taken their service one step further, officially launching the mobile version of their service at http://m.places.ae

The mobile version has been under development and test for a while now, and now that BlackBerry support has been integrated into it, it has been launched officially.

This mobile version also supports iPhone and Windows Mobile clients, with an even more optimized interface as their browsers and UI are better than those of the BlackBerry; as well as any mobile device that can read HTML pages.

Places.ae BlackBerry Home

However, if you have a BlackBerry equipped with GPS, it’s even easier to find places you’re looking for, as place.ae will use the information from the GPS satellites to know where you are and find a list of places that are closest to your current location.

If you click on one of the entries in the list, you will see a little static map of the place, and as phone numbers of the places are often detected, it’s easy to call a place to ask for other details or make a reservation if necessary.

For more details on how to use a GPS-enabled BlackBerry with Places.ae, you can check out the details and instructions on the Places.ae Blog.

weNear Launch Location Based Applications Competition

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weNearweNear, a mobile platform for location-based services and applications, developed by Egyptian company eSpace, just launched a location based applications competition today, which is open to students of The Computer Science Department at Alexandria University, Egypt.

The competition consists in building interesting location based applications using the weNear API. It starts today, July 1st, and the final submission date is August 31st.

Those interested in being part of the competition can go to the weNear competition announcement page to find details about the weNear architecture, documentation, and some initial client/server communication code in several programming languages to help them get started.

Contestants can then submit their applications at the weNear competition sub-site.

Should be interesting to see how this works out, and what different applications come out of it.

# weNear competition