community – StartUpArabia

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

June 8, 2009June 8, 2009 MMM 3 Comments

JoCr8 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.

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

June 3, 2009June 3, 2009 MMM 2 Comments

Sejaal 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.

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.

Mecca.com Releases More Features And New Design

November 17, 2008November 17, 2008 MMM 11 Comments

Mecca.com, the Muslim community portal, that also integrates a social networking and user generated content platform, has just rolled out a new look, unveiling a new logo and a re-design for their whole website.

The new design is more colorful and looks more hip; it also feels better organized, optimizing the use of screen real estate.

This new design, comes just a short while after Mecca.com rolling out their new Videos section, where members can upload and share their videos with friends. As with other online video sharing services, friends have the ability to comment, rate, edit, and share videos with other users.

Mecca.com had also enhanced their Photo sharing feature by improving the user interface, and adding the possibility to import photos from Facebook and Flickr.

# Mecca.com

If I Can Vote: Express Your Opinions & Build Connections

August 13, 2008August 13, 2008 MMM 6 Comments

If I Can Vote is a new service launched from Dubai to give people from all around the world a chance to voice their opinions on elections and causes from around the world, that they’re not necessarily eligible to vote in.

In an ever so interconnected world, the results of an election in one part of the world, a referendum in another, or a policy change somewhere or the other, can have a ripple effect throughout the world. It’s not to say that the whole world should have the right to vote, but it’d at least be interesting to have their voice be heard and their opinion known.

To that extent this simple service hits the nail straight on the head, giving people around the globe the chance to be heard. The current vote that is open for the world to voice its opinion on is of course the US presidential elections, and the choice between Barack Obama and John McCain as the next president of the United States of America.
In fact, recently I’ve been reading many articles on who’d be better for this or that region among the two contenders, and this website is pretty much an effective way to know that.

An interesting choice that was taken by the team behind the service is that the person voting must explain why he chose one side over the other, which should offer even more insight into what the world thinks.

After the US elections are over, they aim to extend it to cover any future elections or causes: elections in India for example, debates about causes like environment and world peace, …etc.

The service also aims to build an online community, focused on enabling opinionated people to connect with like-minded people or others with opposing views; to that effect people can choose to connect with other people around the world depending on their votes and opinions, and also invite their friends and contacts to the service to let their voice be heard as well. More social features are being added to the site to drive feeds from and into major social platforms.

The site shows the percentage of votes that each side got, the number of votes from top voting countries, and also rotates the votes of some random people, helping you find people you can connect to and read their different opinions.

The site is available in English only for the time being, although I think it’d be interesting to enable other languages as well, so as to open it up to more people, and as the interface is pretty simple and light, it shouldn’t even be a big fuss to add major languages.

# If I Can Vote

Ikbis Arab Video & Photo Sharing Site Launches New Design

May 12, 2008May 12, 2008 MMM 8 Comments

Ikbis, the popular Arab video and photo sharing website, launched a new design last night. The new design feels a lot neater and more organized, which is great and isn’t that easy to achieve for a media content site.

A new ‘Contests’ tab has been added, so it’s clear Ikbis are going to be launching more and more contests to encourage users to post more high quality content.

A ‘Coming soon’ banner, showing two primitives and a mosquito, promises a new surprise soon; I’m guessing it’ll be a cool cartoon series by the talented Ikbis designers.

According to Ikbis, this new edition starts to reflect their evolved thinking and some of the new strategies they’ll be rolling out in the upcoming months.

# Ikbis

Darrb, Community Powered Shipping And Delivery

April 22, 2008April 22, 2008 MMM 4 Comments

Darrb is a new and interesting service launched from Dubai, UAE, that aims to solve people’s shipping needs, at better prices and faster than the conventional methods of shipping.

The idea behind Darrb, which means “way” in Arabic, is to build an online community around an auction based marketplace, that connects people willing to send items from one location to another, with people willing to deliver these items and earn an income as a return.
When users auction their deliveries, deliverers (Darrbers) compete with each other by offering the lowest price and fastest delivery time in order to win the bid. This will ensure that users get the best rates and fastest delivery service.

Payments are arranged outside the system between the sender and the deliverer for each delivery, but a rating and reputation system is integrated into the system to enable senders to rate the quality, price and speed of service of the deliverers once the shipping is done, and help other senders compare and choose which people to work with in the future.

Darrb is a free service for all parties for the time being; People can add delivery orders for free and Darrbers can offer their delivery services without any cost. They do plan to start charging membership fees for Darrbers in the future though, but still have no plans to start taking commissions from users.