Category: Startups

Kammelna: An Online Multi-player Baloot Card Game Service

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KammelnaTaking its first step into the online gaming world, Saudi web company Remal IT has launched a beta of its ‘Baloot’ card game site, Kammelna.

Kammelna is an online multi-player ‘Baloot‘ game, a popular card game played in Saudi Arabia (which is quite similar to the French game Belote), that is built in Flash and runs in a browser.

Being a flash game, the game does not require downloading, and is played directly from within the browser, featuring a simple Arabic interface that is geared toward getting the players started with a game as easily and quickly as possible. 

The game also supports firewall traversal, which will allow players to play the game even from within restricted networks.

Kammelna

Remal IT noted that Kammelna.com basic playing features will be free, and that the site will be supported through ads and extra paid playing features. They also hope to roll out more free online games, geared towards the Arab market, in the future.

Remal IT is a Saudi based Internet applications and services startup that was established back in 2005. It owns and operates a network of social sites and Internet applications, and relies on e-commerce and e-marketing for revenues.

Meedan Cross-Language Dialogue Platform Launches Open Beta

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MeedanMeedan has officially launched its online service into open beta. Meedan is a non-profit social technology company which aims to increase cross-language interaction on the web, with particular emphasis on translation and aggregation services in Arabic and English.

Through its use of Machine Translation (MT), Machine Augmented Translation (MAT), and distributed human translation, Meedan’s goal is to increase dialogue and exchange between Arabic and English speakers primarily by launching a cross-language forum for conversation and media sharing, in an attempt to foster understanding and tolerance between the Arab and Western worlds.

Meedan means ‘gathering place’ or ‘town square’ in Arabic, and it reflects the service that was designed to stand as a digital town square for a linguistically, culturally, and geographically diverse community of Arabic and English speaking Internet users, coming together online to discuss current events taking place all over the world.

Meedan

Everything that appears on meedan.net is mirrored in Arabic and English; whether it’s the published headlines, the posted comments, or shared articles; so as to ensure an open two-way conversation.

Meedan was founded by Ed Bice in 2005 and incorporated as a nonprofit charitable organization in 2006.

For more information about the service and to try it out, go to: Meedan.net

Zaad, A Specialized Palestinian Directory Search Engine

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ZAAD

Zaad is a local Palestinian directory search engine that serves up search results from specialized databases, currently covering the Palestinian private sector and NGO sector databases.

Zaad enables users to enter information about their company or association directly to the site’s database, and update it as frequently as they need to. Details submitted to the search engine are confirmed through phone by the Zaad team to make sure all data in their database is accurate.

The service aims to build national databases for several sectors, expanding soon to hotels, restaurants, health centres, and more; positioning itself as an easy entry point to search for and find any type of business or organization in Palestine.

An integrated text advertising solution will be launched in a few days, that will enable advertisers to buy text ads to be displayed with the search results, targeted by category and language, with geo-targeting to be added soon.

The service went live earlier this month, and is available in both Arabic and English.

Zaad is a project of Sadaf Technology Development, a Palestinian web development company based in Gaza.

# Zaad

Ehsaeyat, Open Free Survey Service Around Technology Topics

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EhsaeyatEhsaeyat is a new Arabic service that was launched a couple of months ago by Bluemeel as an open and free service holding and publishing results of surveys, mainly around technology topics.

Surveys done by Ehsaeyat are open and free for everyone to access and make use of, in an attempt to help academic researchers as well as business people find the numbers they need for their research and businesses.

The service is aimed at everyone, but mainly at people who don’t have the budget to go to one of the market research companies out there for the numbers and details they need.

Anyone can suggest surveys to be launched and then shared through the site. The surveys done by Eshaeyat are managed through SurveyMonkey, and then their results are published for everyone to access.

The service should come in handy for a number of people, and I think it could be used by internet startups to try and collect more information to help them with their first steps.

Ehsaeyat is still at its beginnings, and a good start it is, I just think they should try to put more focus on their ongoing surveys, and on getting them out there to more people from different backgrounds, incomes, …etc., in order to have a better and more significant result set.

Private Equities ME, A Private Equity Portal For The Region

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PrivateEquities.meUAE-based RichWeb -a member of Tharaa Holding- just announced the launch of PrivateEquities.me, a portal dedicated to the private equity sector in the Middle East and North Africa region.

The portal lists private equity companies and consultancies, as well as a selection of available investment opportunities from around the region; aiming to actively contribute in the development of the private equity sector in light of the Global Financial Crisis, through providing information and updating investors on new investment opportunities, and forming a database for all private equity companies and other related companies.

Mr. Shabeer Mohamed, Managing Director of RichWeb, said “Private equity investments reached $500bn globally, out of which $13bn is based in the Middle East. In light of the new global economic challenges, private equities will be more willing to offer their portfolios and investments to the largest possible number of investors in order to continue to develop their investments. Hence, came the idea of launching a website that connects companies and investors, and offer many services and resources including listings of consultancies working in the field. PrivateEquities.me offers three confidentiality levels for those who wish to keep certain investments and information confidential and offer it to a handful of selected investors, which makes the services the website offers a qualitative shift in the regional private equity sector.”

PrivateEquities.me

The website offers listings of companies, portfolios, investment opportunities, in addition to updated information and the latest news about companies and the private equity sector in general.

RichWeb is offering a free of charge three months trial period for companies to list their information and portfolios, they can also search the available opportunities industry or by country. The visitors will receive the latest updates according to their saved search criteria.

Rich Web intends to continue developing the website, offer additional services and make available all relevant private equity information to visitors and members including researches, reports and interviews with industry leaders through cooperating with top regional media.

# PrivateEquities.me

Kn.tc (Konashah), An Arabic Online Notebook Application

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kn.tcKn.tc, which stands for Konashah, a word that means notebook in Arabic, is just as its name suggests an Arabic online notebook application, made to provide a place for Arab internet users to jot down and save their thoughts, favorite quotes and sites, and anything they’d like to be able to go back to and find in the future.

Konashah enables users to create as many online notebooks to group their notes into as many different categories and themes as they wish.

A Firefox plugin was created for Konashah that enables users to directly start typing their notes from within the browser extension without having to go to the Kn.tc website every time, or to simply select the text they want to clip on any given web page and send it to their notebooks right away.

kn.tc

The design is very simplistic and the interface is really easy to use, with Ajax integration making management of notebooks, as well as updates and changes on notes within them quick and light.

Konashah was developed by Mazen Melibari from Saudi Arabia and is only available in Arabic.

# Kn.tc (Konashah)

3zeema, An Arab Event Organization And Invitation Service

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3zeema3zeema is a new Arab service that was recently launched in its beta version to make it easier for people to organize events and invite their friends and contacts to them, whether it’s a personal or professional event.

The service is free and pretty simple to use; after signing up you can directly start creating events by following three easy steps: choosing a place to hold the event, either by selecting from the list of venues already existent in the site’s database or by specifying a new venue and locating it on a map; the next step is to add the friends and contacts that you want to invite to the event, either by choosing from your lists of friends or friend groups, both of which are administrable from seperate interfaces, or by adding your invitees directly through a little form; finally the last step is to put in the details of the event, confirm the invitation and have it sent out.

Invitations are sent by sms, providing invitees with the details of the event. Invitees can also use their phone number and invitation number to login and view more details about the event and the venue.

3zeema

As an organizer, you can also choose whether you want your event to be public, and thereby viewable by all site visitors, or whether you prefer it to be private. The same goes for the venue, as some people could be hosting the event at their homes, and don’t want to make their addresses public.

If the invitation is sent a long time in advance, it is possible to specify when you want the service to send a reminder to all invitees. It is also possible to specify if the event is a recurring one, inputting its periodicity so that the service automatically sends out reminders to invitees each time.

An events page for each user shows the events that they created as well as all the events that they were invited to.

3zeema was founded by Esam Alwagait, and its beta version was released earlier this month. The service is only available in Arabic and for events in Saudi Arabia for the time being.

# 3zeema 

Musafir, New Online Travel Portal For The UAE

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MusafirUniversal Tourism recently announced the launch of Musafir.com, a new travel website that will allow travelers from the UAE to search for flights to over 3,000 destinations around the world on all leading airlines and book them online in seconds.

Musafir means “traveler” in several regional languages, including Arabic, Farsi, Hindi and Urdu.

The venture was founded in August 2007 by Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah Al Thani, Sachin Gadoya and Albert Dias, with the aim to make booking travel from the UAE just as easy as it has been in the rest of the world for a number of years now.

“We live by three promises to our travelers in everything we do”, said the founders, when asked about what makes Musafir.com different from other travel websites in the region, “great choice, no-nonsense convenience and a premium experience”. The company also offers a Travel Expert service for travelers who would like to customize their trips over the telephone and a Travel Smart guide with tips for travel enthusiasts.

Online travel bookings are expected to account for over 30 percent of the UAE’s outbound leisure travel market by 2012, with e-ticketing and the zero-commission model in particular being credited for the recent impetus.

Musafir screenshot

Musafir plans to offer a number of new services in 2009, including hotel reservations and sightseeing tours, to meet the growing demand. The company is investing AED 3 million in the development of a proprietary trip planning solution over the next two years to make planning holidays from the UAE easier.

# Musafir.com

Ishki, A New Portal For Arabs To Post Their Complaints Online

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IshkiIshki (which means ‘complain’ in Arabic) is an interesting new portal that was recently released from Jordan, giving Arab users the chance to post their different complaints online and get their voices out to the world.

Other than just complaining, the portal lets users start petitions on several issues and collect signatures for them; They can also ask other site visitors for help on certain problems or situations they’re facing.

In addition to all that, the website also gives users the possibility to do the very opposite of complaining, by blowing someone’s horn and singing their praises.

A special imaginary character, humorously called “Dr. Shakib Tanash” (which translates into Dr. Shakib Careless), has his own section where people can share their problems and get his feedback and advice.

Ishki Screenshot

Each complainer gets their own page grouping all their submissions to the website, that they can either make private or keep public. Other visitors can vote on the submitted complaints, requests for help and praises; as well as sign whatever petitions they agree with.

The site is still new and not much content has been submitted yet by users, but the idea is a really good one, and it should be interesting to see how well it goes, what kind of reaction it’ll get from the people, and what role it’ll play in helping spread freedom of speech.

The portal was founded and put together by a talented team consisting of Wael Attili, Mohamed Al Razem, Ahmad Kharbat, and Wahid Barghouthi.

# Ishki 

Laazi, New Job Portal Simplified For Job Seekers

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Laazi is a new job portal that was recently launched in its beta version to cater to the Middle Eastern job market, trying to simplify the process of finding a job for job seekers in the region.

They started by the UAE job market but will be expanding across the entire region soon.

Laazi’s design is very simplistic, and attempts to make things as easy as possible for jobseekers, by eliminating the usually long registration steps; making it very quick to sign up and start searching for jobs on the portal. 

To register with Laazi, a user only needs to upload their CV, and then all information is extracted from there to automatically fill in the registrations forms. All the user has to do then is check if all the information was filled correctly, make whatever modifications he needs and save his profile.

Laazi

Laazi enters a market with some already big and established players, but hopes that by cutting down the time to create an account and start searching for jobs, they’ll be able to lure users their way and get them to use their service.

The beta version of Laazi was launched in September 2008; it’s a product of Danat, the same company behind Logta, which was previously reviewed here.

# Laazi