Category: Jordan

ShooFeeTV Goes On And Launches Its TV Channel

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ShooFeeTVShooFeeTV has gone on as planned and launched its own television channel, which will air an around-the-clock scrolling guide of programs from more than 150 of the most popular satellite channels on the ArabSat and NileSat platforms.

Clips and trailers for upcoming shows and movies will also be aired on the channel, through segments like its ShooFee Aflam, ShooFee 7elo and ShooFee Riyada.

The channel will also broadcast original content developed by ShooFeeTV, where hosts discuss entertainment news.

ShooFeeTV also has plans to integrate some of the features from their portal into the TV channel, such as discussion boards and comment threads for individual shows.

The TV channel has been a project ShooFeeTV has been pursuing and preparing for from the beginning as another platform to provide their service and information to viewers, as well as drive more people to their portal.

The new ShooFeeTV channel is being broadcast via the Arabsat Badr-4 satellite.

Watwet Opens Up Their Platform Through Public API

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WatwetWatwet, the Arab social networking and micro-blogging platform, has gone on and taken another big step forward by releasing a public API covering the different methods and functionalities of the service.

Methods covered include ones to get user and friend timelines, search, follow and unfollow users, retrieve lists of followers and friends, and of course send updates, among others.

This means that developers can now easily integrate the different Watwet functionalities into other web, mobile and desktop applications.

The full documentation for the Watwet API is available at developer.watwet.com.

Watwet

This comes not long after them providing users the possibility to link their Watwet and Twitter accounts, in a way that anything posted to Watwet gets automatically posted to Twitter and vice versa.

On another note, Watwet also went ahead and changed its interface moving to a simple “following/follower” model, instead of the previous “friendship” model that was based on reciprocal agreement from two people to become friends.

Blue Ocean Strategy Seminar – July 27th ’09 – Amman (Jordan)

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The Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship announced a new event, the Blue Ocean Strategy Seminar, which will be held in the Le Meridien hotel, Amman (Jordan) on July 27th 2009 from 5-7 PM.

Blue Ocean Strategy, for those who haven’t read the great book (by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne), is about how to take your business into new expanding, competitor-free markets “Blue Oceans”, which are unlike “red oceans,” which are well explored and crowded with competitors. “Blue oceans” represent untapped market space and the opportunity for highly profitable growth.

It is about following a strategy of value innovation, focusing on utility, price, and cost positions, to create and capture new demand and to focus on the big picture, not the numbers.

The seminar is made for CEOs, COOs, directors, managing directors, general managers, marketing managers, business development managers, innovation leaders, and entrepreneurs.

The speaker will be Mohammad Ajlouni, one of the few certified Blue Ocean Strategy practitioners.

The seminar is free, and anyone interested can sign up using the form here: Blue Ocean Strategy Public Seminar Registration form.

A full 2-day paid workshop will be following on August 10-11th 2009. Details are available here.

Jawaker Launches Campaign Management Tool For Advertisers

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JawakerJawaker, the online multiplayer card games website that was previously reviewed here, and whose co-founder Mohamad Haj Hasan was interviewed here, has introduced a new feature called the Jawaker Campaigner.

Jawaker’s approach to serving ads on its cards games platform has been an interesting and different once from the beginning, with them choosing to move away from the traditional advertising options and coming up with what they call “Cost per Hand” (CPH for short).

The idea is that every CPH credit displays an ad (which consists of branding the back of all the cards on the table, branding the table cloth and a small text ad on the right side of the page with a target link) to the player for an entire round (or “hand”) of play.

Their ad server has been in place for some time now and they have been tweaking it and enhancing it so as to reach a point when they can open it up to potential advertisers to log in and create their own targeted advertising campaigns on Jawaker.
The result of these efforts is Jawaker Campaigner which does just that; enabling advertisers to create their campaigns and choose to target their ads based on: Country, Gender, Age and Time of Day.

Jawaker Campaigner

Advertisers can state the maximum number of hands to serve per day, write their ad text and target URL (in both Arabic and English) and upload their ad images. Jawaker will then approve the campaign and start serving the ads. The advertiser can freeze or delete the campaign whenever they want and can add as many campaigns as they like.

Jawaker automatically deducts credits from the advertiser’s total CPH credits as soon as an ad is served on a hand to the target audience. The advertiser will also be able to see statistics on their campaign such as how many impressions were served, how many clicks their ad got and their average implied click-through rate.

Currently, advertisers need to contact Jawaker in order to get an account and purchase credits, but an automatic sign-up and online credit purchase system should be rolled out soon.

Folowen Releases Public Beta With New Features

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folowenFolowen, the social media search tool that aggregates social profiles of people and organization’s on several social media sites into one search result, and that was previously covered here, has just gone into public beta.

The tool makes it easier for users to follow a person or organization’s social web; be it a Facebook profile, page, group, a Twitter account, a LinkedIn profile, a YouTube channel …etc.

Currently, folowen uses Google AJAX Search API to find user profiles in 20 social media sites.

A number of new features have been introduced with this public beta, based on the feedback received from the private beta users, among them are:

– Search is now open without sign up.

– Search results will list up to 4 links for each service for you to browse through to find the account you want to follow.

– Direct Follow: It is now possible for you to directly follow the person/organization you searched for directly from the search results page. This feature is currently enabled for only four services (Twitter, YouTube, FriendFeed and Facebook) that you need to connect folowen to from your Settings/Direct Follow page.

folowen

Int@j Introduces 20 Jordanian ICT Companies to Intel Capital

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int@j

Intel

Int@j, the Information Technology Association of Jordan, recently conducted an event with Intel Capital, the venture capital investment arm of Intel Corporation, including more than 20 companies from the ICT community in Jordan.

The event focused on introducing the Jordanian ICT sector to Intel Capital and sharing various business aspects and relations among the various ICT sector companies and Intel.

Since its establishment as an ICT industry-support association in 2000, Int@j has been exerting a lot of efforts aiming at advancing the Jordanian ICT sector. Int@j has been looking for various partnerships with different institutions on the local, regional and international levels aiming at creating better ICT industry in Jordan, increasing the awareness of ICT services and products and stressing on the benefits of integrating ICT in other sectors.

The meeting included one-to-one presentations by member companies of int@j where they presented their plans, products, services and solutions to Intel Capital focusing on local capabilities, companies’ talented resources and value added services blended together towards positioning Jordan as the regional ICT leader and point of access.

Intel Capital has been quite active in the region lately, as part of its ongoing push to support local entrepreneurship in the Middle East and fund companies in the internet and technology sectors through its $50 million Intel Capital Middle East and Turkey Fund, which is aimed at assisting the companies in pursuing regional growth and development plans in addition to extending their product offerings.

Feroz Sanaulla, Intel Capital’s Director of Middle East, Turkey, and Africa said “’Intel Capital has a history of pioneering successful technology investments in developing markets to foster growth and innovation. We believe Jordanian ICT companies are well positioned in the region and we are keen on helping them drive technology adoption locally and identify new business opportunities globally.”

ATH Moves To Invest In Mobile Technology In The Arab World

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Accelerator Technology HoldingsAccelerator Technology Holdings (ATH) has announced that it is working on establishing a company to fund investment in mobile technology in the Arab region.

ATH is a holding company that acts through a group of companies established in Jordan and Bahrain to identify, invest in and help build best of breed ventures in the ICT value chain in the Arab world, and that has already funded a number of Arab startups through its IV Holdings venture capital arm.

They’re currently working on raising an initial US$10 million in funds, after which they will move on to hiring a management team to launch and run this new company.

They are particularly looking at areas like security and authentication, based on their expectations that financial transactions over mobile platforms will become very widespread in the region in the future, especially with several of the region’s big mobile network operators launching mobile payment initiatives recently.

This new company will operate as a cross between venture capitalist and commercial investor, building ties and working with foreign companies to bring new mobile technologies to the region. They’ve already started talking to businesses in the UK, Switzerland and Norway about bringing their mobile products to the Arab world.

# Source: The National

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.

D1G Appoints Ex-Yahoo! Vice President Usama Fayyad As Executive Chairman

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D1GSocial Networking and video portal site D1G, which allows users to share, discuss, and distribute rich online content, has tapped into the knowledge and expertise of online data mining and data strategist, Dr. Usama Fayyad, to help catalyze the company into its next stage of growth.

Usama FayyadDr. Usama Fayyad served as Yahoo!’s Chief Data Officer and Executive Vice President of Research & Strategic Data Solution. Dr. Fayyad was responsible for Yahoo!’s overall data strategy, architecting Yahoos data policies and systems, prioritizing data investments, and managing Yahoos data process infrastructure which processed and mined over 25 Terabytes of data per day resulting from Yahoo!’s over 500 million users globally.

Fayyad was also responsible for the advanced technology arm of Yahoo! in Yahoo! Research — the group that is driving innovation in social systems is Search Technology, in Microeconomics and in monetization technologies. He was also responsible for user targeting and grew ad targeting at Yahoo! by 20-fold from when his company was acquired by Yahoo! in 2004 till he left Yahoo! in later 2008.

Fayyad invested into d1g.com, and has become the company’s new Executive Chairman. His entry into the company should provide great value in helping scale the company’s infrastructure to accommodate increased users’ activity and to grow the business to the next level.

“Arab audiences are really thirsty for new-generation rich content and social media represented by the Web 2.0 offerings of d1g.com. I am very excited about d1g.com. I have been informally advising the firm since its early days, and I am very bullish about their potential to grow and provide some of the most dynamic experiences for their audiences and marketers alike.” said Dr. Fayyad. “Since my departure from Yahoo! in the autumn of 2008, I have been evaluating various investment opportunities in the regional online space, and I was very impressed with the skills, expertise and dedication of the company’s leadership.” added Dr. Fayyad.

The company and Fayyad are hoping that he will play a particularly crucial role in helping the d1g.com management team better monetize the company’s inventory through more targeted ad offerings that allows marketers to dynamically generate ads that target various audience criteria such as geography, demography, and browsing behaviour. He will also help expand the offering to our rapidly growing user base across the entire Arabic speaking world.

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.