Search – StartUpArabia

Tasree3 Expand Their Food Delivery Search Engine To Riyadh

October 1, 2010October 1, 2010 MMM 2 Comments

Tasree3 is a simple and straightforward search engine that enables its users to search for and find the delivery numbers and menus for the different restaurants around town.

The design of the site is very simplistic, centered around a search box that enables users to search for the restaurant they want. There also is a Random button that randomly picks and suggests a restaurant for you, which should come in handy at times when you’re having a hard time picking what to have.

Suggestions are shown as you type your search query, and when you submit your search the results appear directly under the search box without loading another page, showing you the delivery number and providing a link for you to view the menu if you need to. The menu pops up as a layer on the page for you to browse through.

Yamli Releases Enterprise Version Of Arabic Query Expander

August 22, 2010August 22, 2010 MMM

Yamli, the company that brought us products like the Smart Arabic Keyboard and Yamli Arabic Search, is releasing an enterprise version of the technology being used for Yamli Arabic Search in the form of a product they’re calling Arabic Query Expander.

The new service provides a solution for search and data normalization problems when it comes to the Arabic language, by analyzing and identifying all the English and Arabic script variations of an Arabic word, increasing the probability to find matches for searches.

Yamli gives examples like the name “Mohamed Mansour” having at least 80 ways of spelling it, “Mohamed Saleh Abdallah” having 7000 variations, “Jumeirah” having 51 spellings, and the song “Habibi Ya Nor El Ein” having 1207 spelling variations; to make the case for the utility of this tool and how much it can help in solving this problem.

Jeddah Food, The Online Restaurant Guide Launches iPhone App

June 22, 2010June 22, 2010 MMM 2 Comments

Jeddah Food, the English language online restaurant guide to restaurants in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, recently announced the launch of their new iPhone mobile application.

The application enables visitors to Jeddah, as well as locals, quickly find restaurants around the city, based on your current location, while on the go. It provides a search functionality to look for specific restaurants and cafes around Jeddah, as well as quick categories that enables users to click through directly and locate places by type of cuisine (e.g. Lebanese, Japanese, Burgers etc.)

For each venue, the application provides the venue details, phone numbers, website details, photo galleries, and maps.

Kngine Introduces Statistics Platform Called Kngine Stats

May 8, 2010May 8, 2010 MMM 1 Comment

Kngine, the semantic web search and question answering engine, that was previously reviewed here, recently launched a brand new statistics platform called Kngine Stats.

Kngine Stats goes out and collects, organizes, and indexes a large number of records of statistical data from resources such as: the UN, the World bank, the CIA Factbook, and a number of other important sources.

What it does with that collected data is crunch it together to come up with different statistics that users can tap into by selecting a certain topic, viewing the statistics for it and even filtering them; in hopes of making these large datasets easier to explore, visualize and share.

Kngine, A New Semantic Web Search Engine

January 18, 2010January 18, 2010 MMM 14 Comments

Kngine is a new semantic web search engine and question answering engine that was launched from Egypt, aiming to provide more meaningful search results to users.

Unlike other regular search engines that focus more on the ranking of pages to serve search results to users, Kngine attempts to understand what the user is searching for exactly or what question they are asking, and then tries to come up with the best information, answers and results it can find.

This is done by analyzing the entered keywords to discover the relationships between them, linking the different found data together and then displaying united sets of related information from around the web.

The kinds of information and details provided by the search engine, along with the search results listings, are: Semantic information about the keywords/concepts, direct answers to the entered questions, comparisons between entered keywords/concepts, and possible links between different types of data such as movies, subtitles, photos, store prices, user reviews and more.

Kngine, which stands for Knowledge Engine, currently contains over 1 billion of pieces of data, and features about more than 7 million concepts; 70,000+ companies, 700,000+ movies, 1,100,000+ personalties, 450,000+ locations, 150,000+ books, and more. The interface is currently only available in English.

Even though the product is still in beta, it already shows promise in the way it searches, analyzes and returns relevant results; and we expect it to get even better with time as more work is put into its engine.

The search engine was launched from Cairo, Egypt, and founded by Haytham A. Abd ElFadeel, a Computer Science researcher, focused mainly on the semantic web and search, as well as parallel and distributed computing.

According to the founder, the long-term goal for Kngine is to make all human beings systematic knowledge and experience accessible to everyone; collecting and organizing all objective data, and making it easily accessible to everyone.

Taya IT Launches Beta Of Yajeel Content Discovery Portal

January 14, 2010January 14, 2010 MMM

Taya IT, a regional specialist in Enterprise and internet search applications, has announced the beta launch of Yajeel, a new content discovery portal which aims to play the role of an independent gateway to some of the best online content from Arabia.

The portal is in Arabic only, and uses Taya IT’s advanced search technologies to provide Arabic internet users with a new tool to easily discover and share Arabic content online,

Through the Yajeel homepage, users will be able to find the highlights from Arabic content around the web, search through content, as well as navigate through content specific web channels that serve as dedicated portals to the most popular topics available from third-party web publishers. With the beta launch, the only channel available now is a football news service containing the latest news and fixtures from Middle Eastern and international football.

The service also integrates a ranking tool, that allows users to rate the content they view and push it up or down in the listing of “most popular” pages.

The technology behind Yajeel intelligently classifies Arabic internet content, giving users access to a continuously updated stream of relevant web pages categorized according to topics of interest. Users can then customize the stream controlling what they see and how they see it, as well as share content from all web channels with their friends.

The official release is expected to be sometime in February 2010, with a number of new extra features and additional web channels products.

# Yajeel

TwitVid Launches Real-Time Video Search, Virtual Gifts & Analytics

December 17, 2009December 17, 2009 MMM 1 Comment

TwitVid, the service that enables people to easily and quickly post their videos for sharing on Twitter, and that was previously reviewed here, just recently announced the launch of a number of new interesting features.

The new set of announced features is as follows:

Real-time video search: Over the past period, with the continuing accelerated pace at which news and content is shared online, a lot of focus has been going to services that can keep up and offer real-time access to that information and the possibility to search through it. TwitVid attempts to crack that for video, by offering the ability to search through video content posted on Twitter through it in real-time.

Virtual gifts: Virtual goods have emerged as a very effective means of monetization for online games and services. Just a look at some of the companies selling virtual goods through their applications and games on Facebook, and the deals that have been happening around them recently, show how hot that space currently is.
TwitVid debuted its gifting service in November, through which they enable users to buy and send gifts to one another.

Analytics reports: In a bid to offer more value to people who tweet many videos, and who would like more insight on how well their videos are doing, TwitVid has launched a new analytics feature that shows the number of views for a video, its top linkers, the evolution of traffic over time, as well as where the traffic is coming from. Traffic can also be displayed by geographic location and internet domain.

TwitVid has found a lot of success as a platform of choice for video uploaders on Twitter, even attracting a number of high profile and celebrity users along the way.

TwitVid is a product of EatLime, a Sunnyvale based company, founded by Mohammad Al Adham from Jordan and Adil Lalani from Pakistan. The company previously secured a round of funding from investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Amidzad Partners, and XG Ventures.

Bayarat, An Arabic Online Media Content Search Engine

November 11, 2009November 11, 2009 MMM 5 Comments

Bayarat is a new media search engine that was recently launched in its alpha version catering to the Arab world and aiming to make it easier to search for and find Arabic media content online.

Bayarat is currently only indexing video content from around the web and across online video sharing portals, with plans to add more types of media content in the near future.

A translation layer is integrated into the search engine in order to enable it to search for the same term in Arabic, English, French and Spanish; to broaden the search and return all relevant results.

One of the integrated features to enhance the search experience is an Arabic spell-checker, that suggests corrections for misspelled words that users type into the search box, in order to help them find better results for their searches.

The search engine has already crawled and indexed over 3 Millions videos ever since its launch just about a month ago. The site’s interface is available in both Arabic and English.

Bayarat was created and launched by Monther AbuShaikh, who previously brought us TweetShell, and is also CTO at Ikbis, the popular Arab video and photo sharing service.

Globalvations.com, A Global Search Engine Focused On Innovation

July 14, 2009July 14, 2009 MMM

Multilingual Global Marketing (MGM), a global consulting firm, just announced the launch Globalvations.com, a new search engine specifically focused on global innovations.

The search engine was founded by Malik Laibi, an Algerian entrepreneur currently based in Australia, and developed by SearchChannel, LLC of Oak Brook, Illinois. It currently indexes and categorizes thousands of highly relevant sites that deliver valuable information focused on the world of innovation, aiming to connect its visitors to new technologies, innovative companies, products and business opportunities throughout the world.

The simplistic interface allows visitors to search for editorials and news about a certain topic and industry or to look for startups, with the possibility to choose a specific industry of interest or to search across all industries.
The search results page is very straightforward, offering a listing of what was found and linking out to the respective sites and pages containing the information.

Explaining the idea behind the project, Malik Laibi says that “Working with clients internationally, we found the pace of change in the global marketplace speeds up every single day. With new technologies being introduced so rapidly, and with economies changing across the world, staying up to date on innovation is increasingly difficult. We saw an opportunity to create a global information tool in our search portal, Globalvations.com. For the user, we answer swiftly and directly one simple question: ‘What are the most cutting-edge business and technology innovations that I should know about?'”

SearchChannel president William Furlong makes the point that “Globalvations.com offers only very specific, innovations-oriented content. Users stay up to date on what they’re truly looking for: research, current news, upcoming conferences, and the actual technologies constantly turned out by the most reputable global businesses and institutions,” and continued that they are “expressly excited about what this tool can do for entrepreneurs, business executives, scientists, government officials, academics, or just for the curious mind!”

Malik Laibi shared his plans to establish a base in the MENA region for Globalvations.com, and that he is currently looking for suitable partners in the region.

# Globalvations.com

Iconty: An Arabic Search Engine For Website Icons

July 12, 2009July 12, 2009 MMM

Iconty is a new niche Arabic search engine, specifically created for web designers and developers, to provide them with an easy way to search for and find icons to use for certain functions on the websites they are building.

Iconty aims to be a central repository for icons, where users can come and search for icons using Arabic keywords, or even English ones, to find the ones best suited for their needs.

Users can sign-up to the service for free and start uploading their own icons to share on the site so that other people can download and use them as well.

Users can add icons individually through a simple form where they specify the file, the owner and the tags; or upload a zip file with a whole icon set, and then input the details for each icon.

Iconty is still in beta; work on it started in February 2009 by a team of three family members: Mahmoud, Mohamed and Alia Rida. The team are currently working on enhancing the organization of the platform and how icon result sets are displayed, as well as making it even easier for users to find icons.

# Iconty