Category: Content

Ikbis Launch New Advanced Video Player

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IkbisIkbis, the popular Arab video and photo sharing website, has launched a new advanced video player with improved features, interface and performance.

The new video player looks a lot cooler than the old one, and feels more organized, using space in a better way, with a new on hover dock system instead of the old fixed bar at the bottom.

A new HD feature has been added to the player to enable watching videos in high definition, and it is now possible to skip forward by dragging the player head on the timeline.

And following the re-design the Ikbis homepage underwent recently, another key page, which is the single video/photo page was also redesigned now to be more compact/streamlined, giving users easier access to related content, commenting, embedding and social bookmarking services.

ikbis new single page

According to Ahmad Humeid, CEO of TootCorp, Ikbis’ parent company, the design also takes into consideration the increasing demand from advertisers that ikbis has been experiencing, especially in the Gulf region.

Info2cell Partners With Future TV To Provide Content To Mobile Phone Users In Saudi Arabia

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Info2cellInfo2cell.com, the leading mobile application service provider in the Middle East, has recently announced the signing of a content license and distribution agreement with Lebanon-based Future TV to provide video and MMS clips of hugely popular TV programmes, ‘Rossoom Mutaharirah’, ‘La Yomal’ and ‘Abou Riad’, to mobile phone users in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA).

Through the subscription-based service, which will be launched today, users will receive the content three times per week. Each video clip – video IVR, WAP portal, video push and video streaming – will be up to two minutes long, while the MMS content will be 30 seconds in duration.

Bashar Dahabra, Founder and CEO of Info2cell.com, said,: ‘ We are pleased to sign this important agreement with Future TV which will enable us to provide select clippings from three highly popular TV programmes on the mobile phones of subscribers. Info2cell.com is committed to offering the most innovative and exciting content to its subscribers, in line with current market trends and consumer interests, and this partnership with Future TV perfectly complements our strategy.’

Samir S. Hammoud, Chairman and General Manager of Future TV, said, ‘The viewership for our programmes has been growing steadily in recent years and we are glad that this alliance with Info2cell.com has created another vital channel for subscribers in KSA to view clippings of some of our most watched programmes.’

Last year, Info2cell.com teamed up with MBC channel in Saudi Arabia to offer subscribers, video clips, ring tones, wallpapers and Java games of hugely popular television programmes including ‘Tash Ma Tash’, ‘Beiny o Bainak’, ‘Meznah’ and ‘Stories of the Prophet’.

Qatar Living, Community Portal About Living In Qatar

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Qatar LivingQatar Living is an online community portal that was founded in 2005, and that has grown over the years to become a central point for information on everything related to Qatar.

The portal was built around the goal to facilitate connection, participation and sharing of knowledge and experience between members of the community; in order to enrich the content and provide more useful information for everyone, whether they already live in Qatar, or will be moving/visiting there.

Among the features that Qatar Living offers to community members are a free classifieds system, a Q&A system, a guide to Qatar and a forum; all to help users connect to find the different things they need, as well as answers to their questions, and helpful information about living in Qatar.

The portal tries to cater to users’ interests by providing details about the different events taking place in Qatar, as well as a directory of groups of people who share similar interests.

Qatar Living is also behind the Qatar Blogs Project, which aims to group all blogs about Qatar in one place; and then maybe start aggregating their content to help people find interesting stories.

Qatar Living screenshot

The portal is powered by Drupal, and has a well structured design, that makes it pretty easy to navigate and find information. The site currently has around 43000 registered users, and generates an average of 6 millions page views a month.

# Qatar Living

Info2cell Launch SMS and MMS Content Services In Sudan

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Info2cellInfo2cell.com, the leading mobile application service provider in the Middle East, has launched mobile short message (SMS) and multimedia messaging (MMS) content services in Sudan through a joint venture with ADU Communication Technology, a local telecommunications specialist.

The partnership will see high-quality SMS and MMS content services for the booming domestic mobile telecommunications market in Sudan, covering several categories including news, sports, Islamic and entertainment content; BBC SMS News and Sport and DUOA Islamic channel with audio MMS are presently supported.

Recent projects launched under the new services include the LAKI and Women in Islam channels and full coverage of Euro 2008 via SMS and MMS. Additional planned services are ringtones, Java games and the introduction of ‘Magalati’, the first SMS magazine in the country.

Info2cell.com’s subscription base continues to expand significantly around the Arab world, with a further 23.3 percent increase expected by the end of 2008.

Dahsha, An Online Arabic Encyclopedia

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DahshaDahsha is an Arabic online encyclopedia and one of the serious efforts to enrich Arab content on the internet. A lot like Wikipedia, the encyclopedia relies on volunteers to write articles and publish content.

Volunteers can post books, reports, studies, articles and even video, audio and useful programs to the encyclopedia.

Even though I usually encourage Arab users to try and focus on enriching the Arab version of a global encyclopedia like Wikipedia instead of launching smaller regional or local versions, this project is still a pretty interesting one as it covers some types of content that Wikipedia doesn’t support.

The system isn’t as open as Wikipedia though, as users can’t change or edit articles by other users; they can only reply or comment on them. Which means that the site’s administrators have to be more involved in reviewing the submitted content, its quality, and whether publishing it violates any copyright laws.

It’s a good service overall, even though I think there should be some work done to enhance the usability of the posting, replying and commenting features. And as it’s an interactive service built on user contributions, it’d also be interesting to have more details about these user’s profiles, and some more social media features like content rating, bookmarking and suggestions according to the reader’s interests.

The encyclopedia already has a big volume of content published in it covering different categories and topics from computer science and technology related content to art, literature and religion.

Dahsha screenshot

The interface is Arabic only for the time being. The service was launched by Jordanian software and web development company Jordan Tek.

# Dahsha Encyclopedia

Feedoor, Central Feed Management Service

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FeedoorFeedoor, is an interesting feed management service that aims to give users complete control over their feeds, and the flexibility to do whatever they want with them.

The service is quite simple and straightforward, packing a number of features in its corners. Some of the most important and interesting of these features are the following; it gives users the possibility to:

  • Combine and splice several feeds of different formats (RSS, ATOM, RDF) into one feed.
  • Easily add individual items such as videos, photos or audio directly into existing feeds.
  • Create feeds of random items such as videos, photos and audio; thereby creating podcasts or media channels.
  • Customize the look and feel of their feed page by using available themes or creating their own themes.

And for the created feeds, the service provides detailed statistics including: Subscribers, hits, visits, and referrals.

Feedoor screenshot

A developer API was launched recently enabling developers to pull content from hosted feeds, statistics of a certain feed, or the number of subscribers. The API also gives the ability to build and add themes, widgets and doors (small interactive applications that can be integrated into the feed to enhance reader interaction with feed content).

For people hosting their websites on their own domain names and who want to have their feeds hosted under the same domain, the option is offered for free.

A number of publishing and publicizing options are available as well, making it easier to integrate or show off a feed’s content on several places on the web.

Feedoor currently has an English interface only, although it supports different languages in the feed content.
The service was initially launched in 2007 from Jordan by Mahmoud Mehyar.

# Feedoor

Shoof TV, Arab Media Group’s Video Sharing Service

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Shoof TVShoof TV is an Arab video sharing website, which was intially launched by Arab Media Group, one of the largest media companies in the UAE, back in April 2007.

The site’s content is user-generated, with videos submitted from users all over the Middle East.
Users can upload files in several popular video formats, with file sizes up to 50MB. For larger files they can be sent via regular mail to Shoof TV for inclusion on the site.
Uploaded content is screened for objectionable content before appearing online.

The site visitors can vote on the videos using the ‘Applause’ feature, and also leave their comments on them.

As well as hosting user-generated media content, Shoof TV also hosts a number of competitions, with various prizes, to encourage more talented people from the Middle East to submit and share their content. Winners are selected by a panel of judges and by public SMS voting.

Shoof TV Screenshot

Khadeeja Al Marzooqi, the General Manager of Shoof TV, recently talked about the future plans for Shoof TV, and how a TV station will be launched towards the end of 2008, with 100% user generated content, relying on the clips people uploaded on their website.

# Shoof TV

Accelerator Technology Holdings (ATH) Invests In ShooFeeTV

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ShooFeeTVAccelerator Technology Holdings (ATH) announced its investment in ShooFeeTV, a Jordan based interactive entertainment portal that will be targetting satellite television viewers across the Arab world.

ShooFeeTV will be boosted in its aims to combine mobile, online, and satellite technology in order to become this region’s original multi-platform TV guide.

ShooFeeTV haven’t officially launched their service yet, and typing in their domain name ShooFeeTV.com gives you a simple splash page, even thought they’ve been working on a beta version that has been available online for months now here.

No further details were announced about the deal, its terms or the size of the investment.

A more detailed profile of ShooFeeTV and their service will be published on StartUpArabia soon.

# Source: Accelerator Technology Holdings (ATH)
# Related: Ajabni (AR)

Ikbis Launches It’s First Comedy Channel “Ground Zero”

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IkbisWhen Ikbis, the popular video and photo sharing service, launched their new design last week, there was a little teaser ad showing two primitives and a mosquito, promising a new surprise soon, without any details or hints.

Well now we know what that surprise is, it’s a new comedy channel called “Ground Zero” that was just launched on Ikbis yesterday.

Ground Zero is an online show created by Mike Derderian and Mohammed Jaradat.

The show has three segments:

1- Doblage (Dubbing): where they choose a scene from a classic movie and record a new funny conversation over it.
2- Lost in translation: which makes fun of translations with “Professor Eshmael”.
3- Pirates of down town Amman: which will take you on a trip to see the newest pirated DVDs in town.

Ikbis Ground Zero

# Ground Zero

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