Category: Startups

FotoArabia, Arab Stock Photography & Image Service

MMM 4 Comments

FotoArabiaFotoArabia is a new Arab stock photography service dedicated to the Arab community of photographers and artists; that was just launched a few days ago from Kuwait.

The service aims to provide an online place for Arab photographers and artists around the world to submit their high-quality material and put it up for sale. On the other hand, FotoArabia will work on attracting interested buyers from the photo and graphic design market segments from around the world; such as newspapers, magazines, web publishers, and others to search for and buy photographs, illustrations and other artistic material through the website.

Buyers can purchase Download Credits from the FotoArabia store, with credits starting as low as $1 each, with a minimum purchase of $13; these credits are valid for one full year from the date of purchase and become less expensive when bought in bulk. Buyers can use these credits to download images for 1, 3, 5, or 10 credits, for x-small, small, medium, and large files respectively. Even larger resolution images are available, for 15 and 20 credits and video clips are available for 10 to 50 credits.

All uploaded files are inspected for quality and legal integrity before becoming available for sale; and the revenue generated from the sales is divided between the contributor and FotoArabia.

FotoArabia Screenshot

FotoArabia have a limited time introductory offer for the first 50 photographers and contributors. These first 50 contributors will be making 80% of the sale of their photos and/or art work for their first year, after that the earned royalties will be 50%.

The service was developed by Generation Four Company LLC, a Kuwaiti technology company.

# FotoArabia

PixiPost, Digital Photo Printing

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PixiPostPixiPost is a Tunisian startup, that was launched back in June 2006, specialized in digital photo printing, and aiming to provide customers with quality photo prints at good prices.

The service gives users the possibility to upload their digital photos, organize them in photo albums and order prints of them. The photos are then printed and sent through the post according to the chosen delivery mode.

Payment for the print orders can be done either online with all major credit cards, using the Monétique Tunisie secure payment platform, or using cashU payment accounts, or for people in Tunisia through transfer of mobile phone prepaid credit.

The user interface is available in both English and French.

I think digital photo printing services are pretty interesting and could come in very handy for the shutterbugs among us who would like to get their photos printed quickly and simply. What would be even greater though would be to see partnerships formed between photo sharing sites like Ikbis and such photo printing services, providing an added-value to both site’s users and making their lives a tiny bit easier.

# PixiPost

Al-Fawaed, Arab Social Knowledge Sharing Service

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Al FawaedAl-Fawaed, which means “benefits” or “useful things” in English, is an interesting new project, which lets users share the useful and most interesting points they’ve taken away from reading a certain book or article, listening to a lecture, watching a television program, or even from a personal life experience.

There are two ways of sharing these useful points; either by writing a summary resuming and listing them, or by posting a mind map diagram explaining the ideas behind them; in either case presenting the information in a simple format that can be passed on easily; the possibility to tag and categorize these points further organizes them and makes them easier to find.

The aim behind it all is both to be able to go back to these noted useful ideas at a later date, and to share them with the community of users, thereby sharing knowledge in a simple and effective way.

Like all social sites, other site users can vote these summaries and mind maps up or down according to how useful they find them.

Al Fawaed Screenshot

Al-Fawaed was launched in 2007 from Saudi Arabia, with an Arabic interface only, by a team consisting of Nawaf Hareeri, Abdulrahman Al-Harithi, Rakan Yamani and Khaled Hareeri.

# Al-Fawaed

Talabia, Free Online Food Home Delivery Service

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TalabiaTalabia is a new home delivery company that was launched in Kuwait in December 2007, initially using offline call center services, with the objective of providing a free home delivery service for the leading food products in Kuwait, making it more convenient for consumers to order fresh and frozen food products from the comfort of their own homes and have them delivered to their doorstep.

In April 2008, they took their service online, through a site available in both Arabic and English, bringing their home shopping experience to all connected households in Kuwait.

The site is very well designed, simple and easy to use; it incorporates a well organized and categorized product catalog, making it straightforward to find the products you’re looking for, add them to your shopping cart and place your order; also giving you the possibility to specify your preferred delivery time.

Talabia screenshot

Talabia currently delivers products from leading food brands including Sadia, Hilal, Lamb Weston, Gulfa, Hana and Hayat; and they plan to continue adding more quality brands and products to cover more of the consumers’ needs.

The Talabia website was developed by Olive Interactive.

# Talabia

Chkobba Popular Tunisian Card Game Online

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ChkobbaChkobba is one of the most popular card games in Tunisia, mainly played by men at coffee shops around the country, but also played at home by men and women alike.

Tunisian web agency Web Carré have successfully captured the Chkobba coffee shop experience and brought it online through Chkobba.net; the game, which is implemented in Flash, gives you a full coffee shop setting, with the small square tables, the coffee cups, cigarettes, hookah (Shisha), in addition to the ambient noises of a coffee shop, all its hustle and bustle, and the songs playing on an old radio in the corner somewhere.

You can also chat with other users while you’re playing, just as you would be doing if you were sitting with them playing in some coffee shop.

You can play solo against the computer, with the ability to choose your competitor’s level, or invite your friends and play with them in a multi-player game. In both solo and multi-player mode you can choose to play in an online championship and win prizes.

The game is in its second version, even though still in beta and might have some little quirks here and there, but it is very well implemented and really nice to play.

An interesting feature they’re adding is the possibility to find users to play with who are from your same neighborhood or near you by displaying their avatars on a map.

Chkobba screenshot

There are a number of other little flash games available on the website, but none as well designed or well implemented as the chkobba card game.

# Chkobba.net

SouqElArab, Online Social Shopping Portal

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SouqElArab

SouqElArab is a growing Arab online social marketplace; It offers its visitors a social shopping experience whereby they can network with like minded people and do some shopping at the same time.

Their shopping experience is based on users’ recommendations and feedback; Visitors can rate and review products and come together to form a community based on their hobbies and interests.

SouqElArab provides a platform for vendors to bring their product catalogs online and easily start selling their products without the fuss of having to create their own web presences. Suppliers from over 15 countries are currently working with SouqElArab.

Through these different suppliers, SouqElArab offers a large variety of products from Books, Magazines, Music, Movies, e-Downloads and Software, to Food and delicacies, Health Care and Beauty products, Kids’ Toys and Electronics, to Hookahs, Shisha, Clothing, Antiquities, Art, and other Middle Eastern cultural products.

SouqElArab screenshot

The website is available in both English and Arabic; with French, Persian and Afrikaans coming soon, aiming to expand both the user and supplier base.

SouqElArab Inc., founded by Fadi F. Dababneh, is the company that runs the website; with offices in USA, Jordan and Lebanon.

# SouqElArab

CarDaleel, Online Arab Auto Trading Service

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CarDaleelCarDaleel, is a newly launched service based in Jordan, that aims to be an online auto trading hub for people all around the Arab world.

Users can list their cars for sale, including all necessary technical details about them, as well as their state and age, to make them easier to search for and find; photos of the cars can also be included.
On the other hand, users looking to buy a car can go through the cars listed on the website, by country, by make and model, or use the advanced search to find cars based on different criteria of their choice; once they find a car they’re interested in, they can directly contact the seller through the site.

Auto-dealers can also use the service to list their available cars for sale directly on the site, therefore adding a new sales channel to their business.

The interface is in Arabic only for the time being, but an English version is planned soon. The service is completely free for all users, both individuals and auto-dealers.

CarDaleel screenshot

CarDaleel was founded and launched in Jordan by Khaled Salah, Khamis Siksek and Hamzeh Abu Zakham.

# CarDaleel

Wasfati: Recipes, Nutrition And Health Portal

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WasfatiWasfati, which stands for ‘My Recipes’ in English, is a new service that was recently launched to cover the needs of Arab food and cooking aficionados, as well as those interested in nutrition and health tips and articles, by providing a place where users can centralize and save their favorite recipes and articles; those they post themselves or others they find and like by other users.

The service aims to replace those bits and pieces of paper and ripped out magazine pages that people have around their kitchens with little recipes or articles here and there, by taking them online, enabling people to share their recipes, tips and articles with others.
The website users can rate and comment on each others recipes and articles, save them in their list of favorites for future reference, forward them to a friend or submit them to a number of social bookmarking sites.

The site which is entirely in Arabic, is very well designed and very simple to surf around. You can find your way by category (Recipes or Articles) and their subcategories, by viewing submissions from specific users, by checking out certain tags, by viewing the most recent recipes or selected recipes and articles, or by using the search engine to find what you’re looking for.

Wasfati screenshot

Wasfati is based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and was developed with Olive Interactive.

# Wasfati

EatLime, Fast Video And File Sharing

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EatLime, is an online sharing service that attempts to make the hosting and sharing of video and other file formats simpler and faster.

As with other services of this kind, the idea is quite straight-forward; you upload your file, and then share it with the world, by providing a link to your uploaded file.

But EatLime does it with a bit of a twist; Unlike other services, EatLime lets your friends start downloading your shared files as soon as you start uploading them, by providing a link that you can share with them, making the entire sharing process quite faster; All links to files you’ve uploaded to the system are saved to your account so that you can go back to them whenever you need; and you can import all your contacts from Gmail, Hotmail, AOL and Yahoo in order to send out links and share your uploaded files easily and quickly.

When it comes to video, you can upload videos of different formats, choose the player style you want for them, and then either automatically post to a number of services like myspace, facebook, bebo, orkut, hi5 to share with your friends, or have a link emailed to your friends so that they can watch it on EatLime.

The service is free and offers unlimted uploads up to 1GB for registered users. The interface is in English only, it’s very nicely designed, and registration is pretty simple and quick.

EatLime screenshot

EatLime was founded by Mohamed from Jordan and Adil from Pakistan.

# EatLime

Places.ae, Dubai’s Location Based Directory

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Places.ae is one of those simple, small, but very useful services that we really wish we had more of all around the Arab world.

In short, and using their own words which I think say it best, places.ae is a location based directory for Dubai.
Integrating Google Maps, the website helps you find, positioned on a map, anything in Dubai by simply asking you what you are looking for, and the neighborhood you’re looking for it in; from businesses to restaurants to clubs to hospitals to any other place you would want to go to in Dubai.

The interface is very simple and really easy to use; you start typing what you’re searching for and the website helps by giving suggestions, and then it delivers a list of nearby places sorted by how far they are from the location you typed in.

You get to click on each one of these places to see it located on a map, find how other people who have been there rate it and read their comments on it.

Users can also add other places that they know of to the website, thereby giving the community the possibility to further enrich the service.

Places.ae currently only covers Dubai, but should be adding other emirates soon. The service is free, both for users and for businesses for the time being.

This very cool service is a product of the collaboration of code.ae and spinbits.

# Places.ae