Design – 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.

TasmeemME: An Online Networking Service For Creative Talents In The Middle East

May 25, 2009May 25, 2009 MMM 2 Comments

TasmeemME, Tasmeem Middle East, is a new service that was launched in its beta version from Jordan, and which its creators describe as the first online networking site for creative talents across the region.

TasmeemME recognizes the link between social connections and finding the right job (if you’re an individual) or the right person for a job (if you’re a company), even more so when it comes to creative talent that is mainly available for freelance work.

The site caters to the creative niche by putting together a service that allows creative people to build their profiles, showcase their portfolios, connect with one another and sell their services; and provides clients with the possibility to post their projects and search for the best talents to work on them.

The service being in beta, it might still need some tweaks and fixes here and there, but overall it’s in pretty good shape. Still, there are a number of important features that are still under work to be added soon; among them are the following:

Bidding on projects: Clients will be able to post their projects with certain specifications for interested users to bid on; and then they’ll be able to choose after comparing talent portfolios and proposals.
Marketplace: Users will be able to post some of their work; such as logos, templates, photos and more; as ready-to-buy products for set prices.
An online payment system will be introduced to make the whole issue of payments more straightforward and secure.
A rating system through which clients get to rate the talent’s work, and vice versa.

The site, which is available in English only, was founded by Noor El-Fadl, Tamam Mango and Khaled Abu Gharbieh, and developed by Indemaj Technology.

# TasmeemME

ShooFeeTV Launches Newly Designed Bilingual Version

February 24, 2009February 24, 2009 MMM

ShooFeeTV, the free online Arabic television guide, is officially launching a new bilingual version of their website a bit later today, at a launch party held in their Amman offices.

The new version comes in both Arabic and English, with a new more simplistic design, as well as a more powerful search engine, allowing users to find whatever they’re looking for faster.

Among the other new features and additions that were introduced with this new version are:

– The possibility to search either by theme or by type through the 100,000 database entries and the listings detailing the times and programming for the Arab world’s most popular satellite channels. (“Drama”, “Comedy” or television series, films, sports events and other types.)

– The introduction of tagging and tag clouds to better organize the content and help users find what they’re looking for.

– The use of optimized high-quality, high-resolution images on the home page.

Soko Maroc Launches New Version With New Design & Features

December 28, 2008December 28, 2008 MMM 8 Comments

SokoMaroc.com, a free Moroccan online classified ads website, has recently launched a new version of its service, introducing a new design and incorporating a number of popular Web 2.0 best practices.

Their aim was to present the content in an attractive way with very little advertising to help users maximize their sales online, while retaining the concept ”results in 1 or 2 clicks”.

The service is now available in three languages: English, French and Spanish; and has integrated a number of new features like: simple and fast single page ad posting, optimized search tools, and two options to display ads (list or photo gallery).

Another new interesting additiong is the concept of user galleries; Users with a SokoMaroc account can now setup a personal space “gallery” to present their items for sale and details of their activities. They can personalize this space with their logo / photo, contact info and a unique url for it to share with friends and potential buyers.

A Facebook application is also being developed and should be released soon.

SokoMaroc.com has been active since November 2007 and is run by Soko tech, which is based in Boston US.

SokoMaroc.com is a central network of online communities in Morocco featuring free classified ads organized geographically and by categories (Jobs, Real Estate, Auto-Motorbikes, Personals, For Sale, Services, Community, and Resume categories) and forums on various topics in Morocco. The site currently serves over one million page views and 50 000 unique visitors per month.

Sahritna Unveils Site Redesign And Launches New Features

December 1, 2008December 1, 2008 MMM 2 Comments

Press Release: Sahritna.com Unveils Next Evolution of Site feature and Design
Amman, Dec. 1st, 2008

Sahritna.com today released a new, cleaner and simpler new design, along with the opportunity for users to preview the next-generation features and functionality. The company is inviting people to use the new design and try out the improved features and engage with the community. The new design is available to all of Sahritna’s more than 50,000 Arabic users and the new registered users over the coming days.

“Based on our vision to create a unique interactive Arabic community and the demand of our loyal users, we have launched a simpler and cleaner design in order to highlight the most recent and relevant information that users value” said Sahritna founder and CEO Bashar Shannak. “Sahritna’s new features make it a lot easier for users to share information and engage in the community.”

The company has been developing the new design since four months. Over the past two months, more than 3,000 Sahritna users offered constructive suggestions on the layout and features, many of which were included in the final version.

Public Profiles: Sahritna allowed its users to create their personal unique pages to deliver their information in a social context. The evolution of the public profiles focuses on user’s identity, their friends, post comments, mutual friends, rating and more. The profile now surfaces more current and pertinent information, about a user and their friends’ on Sahritna.

Profile Comments: Users have complete control over the comments published on their profile. Users are able to delete unwanted comments. And they can post comments on their profile and friend’s profiles.

User Rating: Located on the right hand of the user’s profile, the users are able to rate other users profiles in simple way. This feature enables users to know the popularity of their profile and how their friends think of them.

My Mood: It’s a mean for the user to express his/her current mood and tell his friends how he feels currently. Upon user login he will be able to express his/her mood.

Next: The Simple, Intuitive And Limited To-Do List Application

July 24, 2008July 24, 2008 MMM 2 Comments

A couple of days ago, as covered here, the teams from SpinBits and CloudAppers launched a really interesting and exciting experiment called Zero2Beta, focused on intense design and development of a useful web application from concept to launch in a couple of days, and releasing it to the public.

The first application in this experiment, code-named “App1″, was named “Next“; The idea behind developing Next was to attempt to approach the old-and-tried to-do list web app in a simpler, more intuitive and limited way; to address short-term task management to handle usual day-to-day stuff.

After 2 days of hard design and development work at the SpinBits offices, sticking to the bare basics, and killing some features: Next was launched moments ago.

The interface is very clean, simple, and usable; and the idea is very straightforward: 1 task at any time, 140 characters per task, 20 tasks maximum; you can set priorities by dragging and dropping tasks into order; and you just start getting things done.

A very good result for something that was built in only a couple of days time.

You can all play around with Next here: movetonext.com

Leading Arab Job Site Bayt.com Crowdsource New Design Online

June 27, 2008June 27, 2008 MMM 9 Comments

Bayt.com, the leading job site in the Arab world, are looking to give their website a facelift, and instead of fully doing it in-house or going to some design company to work on it for them, they’ve decided to try and crowdsource the design online.

From their side, they’ve done a lot of thinking and benchmarking internally, and their staff came up with a preliminary design, that they’re now opening up to different people online to get a fresh perspective on it all, and how everything can be laid out and designed.

They’re doing this through 99designs, where they’ve posted a contest asking people to submit their designs and the way they see the website.

The initial mock-up files featuring Bayt’s own ideas and the elements they want included are provided, with a number of guidelines, what they’re looking for and need in the design, and the no-nos that designers should avoid.

The winning design gets a $500 prize.

It’ll be really interesting to see how this experience works out, and what comes out of it in the end. Really nice move from Bayt.com to try and explore different ideas and artistic directions.

The contest details, how to take part in it, as well as the already submitted designs can be found here: Bayt.com Homepage Facelift.

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