Startup News – Page 9 – StartUpArabia

Ayna Corporation Launches Ayna Events Service

December 11, 2008December 11, 2008 MMM

Ayna 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.

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

Muxlim Launches Muxlim Pal, The Virtual World For Muslims

December 9, 2008December 9, 2008 MMM 8 Comments

Muxlim, 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.

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

Mezed Expands Into Italian Market With BidBloom

December 6, 2008December 6, 2008 MMM 3 Comments

Mezed, 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

December 4, 2008December 4, 2008 MMM 4 Comments

Questler, 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.

Mecca.com Releases More Features And New Design

November 17, 2008November 17, 2008 MMM 11 Comments

Mecca.com, the Muslim community portal, that also integrates a social networking and user generated content platform, has just rolled out a new look, unveiling a new logo and a re-design for their whole website.

The new design is more colorful and looks more hip; it also feels better organized, optimizing the use of screen real estate.

This new design, comes just a short while after Mecca.com rolling out their new Videos section, where members can upload and share their videos with friends. As with other online video sharing services, friends have the ability to comment, rate, edit, and share videos with other users.

Mecca.com had also enhanced their Photo sharing feature by improving the user interface, and adding the possibility to import photos from Facebook and Flickr.

# Mecca.com

Content Syndicate Wins Cool Start-ups Award At TiE-ISB Connect

November 13, 2008November 13, 2008 MMM

At the recent TiE-ISB Connect 2008 event jointly organised by The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) and the Indian School of Business (ISB), Dubai-based Content Syndicate (CS) emerged as the winner in the ‘Cool Start-ups‘ category.

The event took place at ISB Hyderabad from 5 to 7 November. Sponsors included Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, Times of India Group Satyam, Totem Infrastructure and the Indu Group.

This is the third year for TiE-ISB Connect and it is also one of Asia’s largest investor-entrepreneurial events. Tie-ISB Connect 2008 featured over 700 delegates, 30 venture capital firms and various media companies.

The event attracted over 200 business plans of which 149 executive summaries were short-listed for the next round. 30 of the short-listed firms were invited for a final presentation before a judging panel comprising of senior partners and management from Accel Ventures, Google, Canaan Partners, Helion Ventures, Venture East, Clearstone, PA, Virtusa, IDG Ventures, Nexus Capital, Sun Microsystems, Ojas Ventures, Totem and Kuruvindam.

The criteria for selecting the winners were based on the strength of business model, innovation, the team, maturity of business, track record, financials, long-term plans and scalability.

Commenting on the award, Content Syndicate’s Founder & CEO, Maddy Reddy, said: “We are honoured to be a part of this prestigious event. It was a great experience and provided us with a strong validation of our business. I would like to extend my gratitude to our clients, team, investors and partners for playing a vital role in making this happen.”

eSpace Integrating Yamli Transliteration Technology In Popular Online Text Editors

November 9, 2008November 9, 2008 MMM 4 Comments

eSpace, the Egyptian software company behind services like meOwns and weNear, has been a supporter of the advancement of Arabic content on the web, through contributing to Wikimania2008 in Egypt and other various activities, in their attempt to realize the true potential of one of the World’s most spoken languages.

The company is currently taking another step to try to promote and simplify the use of the Arabic language on the internet, and that is by integrating Yamli‘s award-winning transliteration technology, that enables users to type Arabic using Latin characters by converting their words in real time into Arabic text, as a rich text formatting option in a number of the most prominent and popular online text editors, such as FCKeditor, TinyMice editor, as well as in popular forum software like VBulletin and PHPBB.

By bringing Yamli’s technology directly into the tools people are using to write on the web, publishing Arabic language content becomes even easier and more straight-forward, eliminating the fuss of having to keep going back and forth between the Yamli website and whatever other website or tool is being used to write and publish content.

It’s great to see Arab startups and companies working with each other’s technologies and tools to advance a common goal like promoting Arabic content on the web. I certainly wish we see more efforts like this in the future.

eMapia Location Based Marketplace Launches Full Screen Mode

November 8, 2008November 8, 2008 MMM

eMapia, the location based marketplace, which was previously reviewed here, and that integrates Google Maps technology to enable sellers (businesses or individuals) to add their items and link them to specific locations on the map, where they are available for sale (shop or person’s home), recently launched the possibility to view the site in Full Screen mode.

This feature gives users the ability to use the whole width of their screen to navigate through the world map and find products for sale near them; they can zoom by scrolling in and out.

By passing the cursor over the selected item, a little box shows providing a summary of that item’s details.

In this full Screen mode, visitors can also click on the “Show Items” link available in the site’s header to see all items within the current zoom level in the form of a left-side panel showing all the items’ thumbnails; allowing visitors to conveniently and quickly check out the available items.

Yamli Releases iGoogle Arabic Transliteration Gadget

October 31, 2008October 31, 2008 MMM 5 Comments

Yamli has gone on and released a new iGoogle gadget that allows easy access to its award-winning Arabic transliteration technology directly from users’ customized Google homepages.

Yamli’s Smart Arabic Keyboard allows users to type Arabic using Latin characters by converting their words in real time into Arabic text.

The gadget integrates the functionality to convert words from Latin characters to Arabic in order to launch Arabic searches on Google, or to write words and paragraphs that can then be copied and used elsewhere.

To add the Yamli gadget to your iGoogle homepage, you can use the following link: Add Yamli iGoogle Gadget.