Category: Startups

Twatweet & TN Labs: Following Tunisians On Twitter

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Over the past year, Twitter has taken off in Tunisia, much like everywhere else in the world, with more and more users getting on board every day, and it becoming a source for instant information and news about what’s going on in the country.

To make it easier to follow tweets coming out of Tunisia, two projects have surfaced to aggregate tweets from Tunisian twitter users: Twatweet and TN Labs.

TwatweetTwatweet is based on WordPress and uses FeedWordpress and the Twitter API to aggregate tweets from Tunisian users being followed by the @twatweet user. Users who want to be included in the aggregator can follow @twatweet which will follow them back if they’re Tunisian, and users who don’t want to be included can simply block the @twatweet user.

The service uses a theme that matches Twitter’s design so as to keep the experience quite similar.

Twatweet also includes a search engine that enables users to search among tweets by Tunisian users.

Twatweet was founded by Jazem Halioui (@jazinthecity) and Houeida Anouar (@Houeida), and currently aggregates 217 active users.

TNLabsTN Labs, on the other hand, was developed on a Java/JSP backend using Twitter’s streaming API to aggregate tweets in realtime from Tunisian twitter users, automatically updating the timeline.
Users are added by the founder of the service, and have to contact him to be added or removed.

Some of the other features it has is that a preview of links that are posted in tweets are displayed whenever possible, by hovering on the icon next to the link; and hash tags link to their respective search pages on Twitter (not to TN Labs’ own search).

As for search on TN Labs, although it allows for realtime search, it is on all of Twitter not just on tweets from Tunisian users.

An interesting new addition is the possibility to view discussions, with an icon at the end of a certain tweet, opening up a layer with the original tweet and the different replies that followed around it by different users.

TN Labs has a rougher design as the focus has been more on experimenting with features than the overall design.
TN Labs was founded by Sami Ben Romdhane (@samiTunis), and currently aggregates around 237 active users.

Both services provide links to redirect users to the Twitter interface to retweet or reply to a certain tweet; a list of the active Tunisian users they’re following, allowing people either to hover or click through for more details about each user; as well as RSS feeds for updates from Tunisians users.

Twatweet and TN Labs are both still early stage projects, and I’m guessing we’ll be seeing more development happening on both fronts.

Beeyoot, A New UAE Real Estate Property Listing Portal

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BeeyootBeeyoot is a new real estate listings website for the UAE, that was just launched into public beta, and which aims to connect property sellers directly to buyers and renters.

With the current downturn in the real estate market in the country, you’d think this wouldn’t really be best of times to launch a new real estate portal; but Beeyoot believes otherwise and are sure that their model putting property owners and buyers or sellers directly in touch with each other, without any intermediaries, creates room for a new momentum in the distressed real estate industry.

Beeyoot’s platform aims to help buyers and renters save on property searching costs by providing them with a free service, while enabling sellers or landlords to list their properties for a modest fee (AED 50 / USD $15 per month for the basic package), with the benefit of dealing with buyers and renters directly.

More advanced packages for users who want their properties featured more prominently and investors who have multiple properties are also available.

Beeyoot

The interface was designed to be simple and usable, in the same time providing users with quite a rich set of functionalities and filters to find what they’re looking for.

The portal’s services are currently exclusive to the UAE market, however they are planning to franchise the platform to other GCC countries.

The service is currently in beta, and is for a limited time allowing free basic property listings.

Beeyoot also has a blog called ‘The Glasshouse’ which will be featuring relevant information articles about the real estate in the UAE by industry specialists.

Carlog.com, Egyptian Web 2.0 Automotive Portal

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carlog.comCarlog.com is an online automotive portal, that aims to offer its users a complete and comprehensive web experience that enables them to manage all tasks related to their car and speed up all related processes for buying, selling or simply maintaining a car.

Through the portal, users can add and list their cars in the system and keep track of their maintenance history, having the service remind them of upcoming maintenance tasks they have to do for their car.

The site also enables people to search for cars to buy, or on the other hand, create ads to sell their own cars; making it an online marketplace for cars as well. Car dealerships can also use the service to list their available cars for sale on this online marketplace.

The interface was designed to be easy to use and to make it as simple as possible for online users to learn and manage everything throughout their car ownership lifecycle through various applications designed to satisfy the user’s current and future automotive needs.

carlog.com

Carlog.com was founded by Omar Soudodi, who previously founded now-defunct Accelarabia.com, and developed by Egyptian web company eSpace. The site has a dedicated management team from various backgrounds, such as investment banking, technology, marketing, and product development.

Carlog.com was launched at the 14th International African Arabian Exhibition for Vehicles, buses, and Automobile spare parts, Automech 2009; and were one of the participating demos in DemoCamp Cairo last month.

The portal is currently only targeted at users in Egypt only, and is in English, with an Arabic version following soon.

JoCr8, An Online Community For Visual Communicators And Artists In Jordan

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JoCr8JoCr8 is a portal created to connect visual communicators and artists in Jordan, and to be a one-stop resource for them for everything related to design and visual arts.

The site is open to everyone who practices any of the visual arts disciplines; from the traditional painter to the designer to the 3D artist.

Users can register to the site to start uploading their work to build their portfolio, that other users will be able to go through and that they can use as a showcase when applying for jobs.
Signed up users can also go through other users’ uploaded material; leave their ratings and comments on their work; and get in touch with them really easily through the interface.

The portal also plays the role of an e-zine with interviews and articles on visual media whether in Jordan, the region, or around the world. It also publishes art and visual media related news and events mainly happening in Jordan.

On the other hand, JoCr8 makes it possible for users to post and share tutorials on different subjects and topics related to design and art, making the site a source of interesting documentation and learning material too.

JoCr8

Another part of the portal is a job postings section that provides information on visual media job opportunities in Jordan and around the region. Job applications aren’t handled through the site though, it’s just a listings section, and users apply seperately to the jobs.

Jocr8, which was founded by Tambi Jalouqa and is a product of Binary Interactive Studios, won the silver award in the online communities category at the Jordan Web Awards 2008 show.

Sejaal, An Online Community For Arab Poets And Poetry Competitions

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SejaalSejaal is a new online community portal for Arab poets and poetry competitions that was recently officially launched by Jeeran, a leading Arabic user generated content portal, in its efforts to enrich the Arabic internet with a new type of genuine content and a new crowd of users.

Sejaal’s vision is to be the place for poets from around the world, and to provide poets with tools that help them express their talent and share their creativity with other poets and people online.

A “Sejaal” is a traditional activity that Arabic poets used to enjoy throughout ancient times. This form of poetry has faded in the last century due to the invasion of modern lifestyles, as well as cultural dilution. The web site was specifically designed to replicate the real life experience of a traditional “Sejaal” and therefore revive this form by riding on the most popular medium today –the Internet- making it available to anyone, anywhere in the world.

Sejaal

With the beta version launched earlier in January of this year and even though sejaal is an invitation only site where only the good poets are allowed to join, to maintain the level of quality of the poetry at this very early stage, over 300 competitions were created, the topics of which reflected the general mood of events taking place in real life. For example, a competition on the sad events that took place in Gaza was started by Sejaal users through which the poets wrote 50 verses criticizing the attacks against Palestinians and encouraging the resistance of the Palestinian people.

Folowen, A New Social Media Search Tool (Private Beta Invites)

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folowenfolowen is a new social media search tool that just went live in private beta and enables users to search for the social profiles of different people and organizations on several social media sites, returning all found profiles in one search result.

The aim is to make it simpler for anyone to find and follow a person or organization’s social activities online, be it a Facebook profile, page or group; a Twitter account; a LinkedIn profile; a YouTube channel …etc.

Currently, folowen uses Google AJAX Search API to find  user profiles on 19 different social media sites including three Arab ones: Questler, Ikbis and Watwet.

Search is only the first piece in the bigger puzzle that folowen wants to build, and this ongoing private beta is concentrated on perfecting that to make sure that users are getting the right results for their searches. Once out of private beta, the search will be open to anyone without any need to sign up for the service. 

Signed up users also have the possibility of having their search history saved automatically so that they can go back to them and view their results at any time.

The next step after search will be to enable signed up users to link up folowen into some of the supported social services to be able to follow/connect right from folowen without having to go to that service. This obviously will only be available for services that have APIs that are open and allow this.

folowen

folowen doesn’t aim to be another social network now, or a social activity aggregator, just a facilitator to help people find and connect to each other over several platforms.

folowen is founded by the same team Jordan-based team that was behind Questler: Razan Khatib, Alma Khasawnih and Hassan Shahin.

If you’re interested in getting an invite to play around with folowen, just drop a little comment below and I’ll send you one as soon as possible.

TasmeemME: An Online Networking Service For Creative Talents In The Middle East

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tasmeemMETasmeemME, Tasmeem Middle East, is a new service that was launched in its beta version from Jordan, and which its creators describe as the first online networking site for creative talents across the region.

TasmeemME recognizes the link between social connections and finding the right job (if you’re an individual) or the right person for a job (if you’re a company), even more so when it comes to creative talent that is mainly available for freelance work.

The site caters to the creative niche by putting together a service that allows creative people to build their profiles, showcase their portfolios, connect with one another and sell their services; and provides clients with the possibility to post their projects and search for the best talents to work on them.

tasmeemME

The service being in beta, it might still need some tweaks and fixes here and there, but overall it’s in pretty good shape. Still, there are a number of important features that are still under work to be added soon; among them are the following:

  • Bidding on projects: Clients will be able to post their projects with certain specifications for interested users to bid on; and then they’ll be able to choose after comparing talent portfolios and proposals.
  • Marketplace: Users will be able to post some of their work; such as logos, templates, photos and more; as ready-to-buy products for set prices.
  • An online payment system will be introduced to make the whole issue of payments more straightforward and secure.
  • A rating system through which clients get to rate the talent’s work, and vice versa.

The site, which is available in English only, was founded by Noor El-Fadl, Tamam Mango and Khaled Abu Gharbieh, and developed by Indemaj Technology.

# TasmeemME

Twitvid.com, A Service to Tweet Videos Quickly And Easily

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twitvid

EatLime, the online video and file sharing service that was previously reviewed here, has gone on and released a new service call Twitvid.com that presents users with an easy way to post their videos to Twitter.

The service doesn’t just post a link to a video when the user tweets, but it uses the patent-pending EatLime technology to upload and stream the video in real time, in a way that a person’s followers on Twitter can start watching the video immediately while it’s still uploading, making it pretty much a live stream.

Users can upload their videos to the service either through the web interface, through their mobile phones (by sending an email or MMS), or through the service’s API.

Just as with other services like twitpic, the user can just login with their Twitter username and password and start uploading and tweeting their videos. Upon logging in, each user also gets an email address that they can use to email their videos directly from their mobile.

The system’s API also helps open it up, making it easy for other companies and developers to integrate the service into their own services and products.

twitvid

Among future plans is the ability to resume uploading if the connection is lost, enabling users to resume uploading from the exact point where it stopped.

EatLime, the company behind Twitvid.com, is a 5 person San Francisco based company, founded by Mohammad Al Adham from Jordan and Adil Lalani from Pakistan.

Ekree, A Tunisian Portal To Rent Anything Online

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ekreeEkree, which means rent in Tunisian Arabic, is a new Tunisian portal that allows people to post any of their items or belongings online for rent, and gives people who are interested the possibility to rent them.

By providing a platform for renting things online, Ekree aims to fill a gap in the market of classifieds and e-commerce sites, targeting people who can’t afford to buy a certain item, or who only need a certain thing temporarily; and also offering a way for people to make some money out of certain belongings of theirs.

The site is open for both individuals as well as businesses who want to use the site as a platform to provide their products for rent online in hopes of expanding their reach and making their products easier to find.

The interface is pretty straightforward and very similar in principle to any e-commerce site out there, with the only difference being that you rent instead of buy. Available items can be found organized under categories and subcategories or through the search engine, which allows users to filter by keyword, category, subcategories, location, price and more.

After finding an item of interest, the user will find rental conditions with it, and will be able to directly make a reservation to rent the item online from the site.

ekree

In order to build customer confidence, Ekree provides a full circle rating system enabling the rating of items/products, renters, and owners. Standardized rent contracts are also generated through the system to organize rentals happening through the system.

The portal is in French and available for Tunisia only for the time being, but should expand to other countries in the future.

Ekree was founded by Habib Redissi and Tarek Nachnouchi, who are behind a young company called World Easy Web that mainly targeted the European market, but is making its first step into the Tunisian market with Ekree.

# Ekree

Damrej, A New Local Thematic Web Search Engine

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DamrejDamrej is a newly launched thematic search engine developed to make it easier for users to look for different items they want to buy online, special offers, cars, properties, jobs and more.

Damrej takes a local approach, and has been launched for Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Libya and Egypt for the time being; with versions for the UAE and other countries to follow soon.

The services’ robots crawl different websites from the country building its indexes of shopping catalogs, jobs, real estate offers, cars and other types of classified ads; making them all searchable from one central point. The results provide some collected details about the item and point to the original website where the item or offer can be found.

Some merchants or classifieds services also provide an updated feed directly to Damrej to make it even easier to index their content and provide through the search engine.

Users can search by theme, narrow their search by using theme-specific filters, and get results from one or all online services depending on their choice. Related offers are also served up next to the items found through the search.

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