As there are 40,000+ of app developed for iPhone and iPod touch, many of them are not free, AppGiveway offers you the chance to win them. And if you were a developer who wants to promote your app/s , AppGiveaway offers you a free promotional platform.

What’s nice  about the site, is that it’s free for everyone to participate and all what it asks the developers for, is the promo codes which they receive from the Apple Store so it distributes them to its online users, thereby maximizing exposure and potential revenue for the developers in the future from direct links and referrals.

The AppGiveaway, which is founded by Al Lijee who is originally from Yeman and a resident of UK, looks updated every day. It promotes newly launched apps as well as existing applications that are featured in the Apple store.

The apps at the site are categorized in a sidebar, categories include Books, Business, Entertainment, Finance, and Games. AL told me that the site was launched a month ago and already has given away well over 1000 iPhone and iPod applications.

The idea of AppGiveway developed after Apple agreed to provide developers 50 promo codes each: “I heard Apple was providing Developers upto 50 iPhone promo codes for new apps and/or updated apps featured in the Apple Store. I thought, ‘That’s it, why don’t I provide Developers and Publishers a central platform where they can giveaway their promo codes whilst promoting their app much more effectively?’ Then I thought I might as well include categories, too, as this will give visitors a much more convenient way of looking for apps.”Al said.

Al has future plans that include adding a download and forward feature and an iPhone app version of the App Giveaway website.

AppGiveWay was featured last month on CNET, where Rick Broida wrote some ideas to improve the site. In my part I would add: why not develop a user profile, where users can add a iPhone apps wish list and their family or friends can buy it for them? How about integrating with meOwns Egypt based social wish list tool from eSpace? Also why not turn the article section into a blog? People like blogs more than traditional reporting sites!

Note: AppGiveaway is not useful for me since I do not have an iPhone, but I am open for a gift

Microsoft today launched Maren a native windows transliteration that works in all most all windows application without a need for an internet connection.

As we have mentioned in past blog posts, Arabizi which is writing Arabic in Latin characters is popular especially among the young generation in the Arab world, let alone Arabs who reside in the west and do not have any Arabic keyboard. There has been some online application that deals with this problem. But Yamli was the pioneer in making it a business, it has an online editor, API, innovative search that is built on top of the concept and a Firefox toolbar which now is updated to version 1.0. Google followed yamli’s steps and came up with Ta3reeb an online Arabic Transliteration editor and now with an API . Onkoosh on the other hand provides it via its search engine only.

Maren supports the following platform Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista and it supports the following applications: Internet Explorer 7.0 Internet Explorer 7.0, Microsoft Outlook 2007, Microsoft Word 2007, Windows Live Messenger 8.5, Windows Live Messenger 9.0, Yahoo messenger 9.0, Google talk, Firefox 3.0, according to Maren help file.

However under testing I found out that it supports many more: Notepad, Chrome, FF3.5 and TweetDeck. I also found out it is very accurate and much better than Google’s Ta3reeb in terms of accuracy and because you can edit your translated entry easily.

Yamli on the other hand, has recently revealed that 76,645,541 words have been typed with Yamli , many websites and applications has been utilizing Yamli’s API to spread Arabic transliteration elsewhere such as As7ab and Clipat Maktoob, Ikbis,  Yamli messenger 1.0 that works with msn messenger plus live, Yamli wordpress plugin (WP Yamli) and Easy Arabic: a desktop application that transliterate Arabic text and sends them to a collection of applications.

Though the debut of Maren is a serious challenge to Yamli, because if you have it installed, you do not need to use any transliteration software or plugins, to type on msn or the web, since it is already there on the desktop. Habib Haddad, cofounder of Yamli commented on Maren launch by saying:

“It’s a good effort from Microsoft, and I guess they know how to recognize a good idea when they see it. As an Arabic startup we are flattered to see this happen but do remained focused on innovating to better serve our users. We want to thank all who support us in our path and ask them to stay tuned for some cool new releases.”

Marin was developed by Cairo Microsoft Innovation Lab (CMIC), which I visited early this year and met with its team. I emailed Ahmed El-Shimi, Group Manager - Development & Incubations of (CMIC) and asked him whether Marin will be incorporated into Bing and preinstalled with every Windows machine in the future, I’ll keep you updated when he replies.

Sakhr one of the oldest Arabic software companies, founded in 1982 has acquired Silicon Valley based startup, Dial Directions , a voice-activated phone service for driving directions.

I remember the first PC I used in my life was from Sakhr back in the late 80s, running its own property Arabic Operating system, where I used to play games. But during the 90s, Sakhr PC met the dust for Win-tel based PCs. However this announcement is significant because, I think it is the first time an Arab tech company acquires an American IT company (There are rumors of the other way around deals coming soon).

Today, Sakhr ( which competes with ARABCRUNCH DEMO 09 presenter alKhawarizmy in the Arabic search technology category) is specialized in Arabic and NLP software solutions selling basically to government and corporations, with products in the fields of: Speech to Speech Translation, Arabic/English Machine Translation (MT), Arabic/English Text to Speech, Arabic ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) Arabic enterprise &Internet search, Text Mining, Arabic OCR. Arabic CMS and (LMS.) While Dial Directions enables users to dial a special number, ask for an address, business or event, and Dial Directions send an SMS with the address or an intersection. Dial Directions has also released an iPhone voice apps “ Say Who” and “Say where” .

The merger will bring together, Sakhr’s skills in Arabic language and Dial’s skills in network-based speech recognition technology and mobile applications expertise. Both companies have released a beta version of the first real-time speech-to-speech Arabic and English translations for iPhone and Black Berry (see Video below.)

The voice translation solution enables English and Arabic speakers to speak their native language, hear the audio translation, and read the text translation – all with an iPhone or Blackberry. According to TechCrunch the application is currently in testing with select enterprise customers, with plans to release a consumer version around the end of the summer. It appears that the voice will be translated on the cloud via Sakhr translation software, and then the translated input will be sent back to the phone in audio and text, with a matter of seconds. So if there is no Network there won’t be translations.

I do not know how accurate the translation will be, but for short sentences I think it will do fine, however I doubt it will do well in complex long sentences.

Sakhr already sells products to the U.S. departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Justice, as well as to corporate clients. It provides Arabic and English translations for computers.
Adeeb Shanaa, Dial’s co-founder and now CEO of privately held Sakhr Software, told Investor’s Business Daily that the technology will be used by to at least some U.S. military personnel serving in Arabic-speaking nations such as Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

According to Sakhr US press release, the merged firm will keep the Sakhr Software name, all Dial Directions employees have joined Sakhr. The combined company has 200 employees, and will be led by Shanaa as chief executive officer. Fahad Al Sharekh, Sakhr’s previous chief executive, has become Chairman and remains actively involved in developing strategic partnerships for the company. Sakhr’s management team will be based in Silicon Valley and Washington, DC, with an offshore development office in the Middle East. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
( Via: Investor’s Business Daily, TechCrunch and Sakhr.)




Twtri.com developed by Laith Yousi from Iraq, was announced few days ago at GIGAOM’s  Structure 09 event as one of 2 U.S. grand prize winners for Microsoft’s newCloudApp() - The Azure Services Platform Developer Challenge- . The contest winners were judged by 2 industry leaders Om Malik (founder of GIGAOM) and Michael Cote. ( Submission deadline is on July 9 for the International contest of newCloudApp() opens tomorrow.)

Twtri is a very simple why to keep our friends and family updated on twitter, facebook or email automatically with your flight status,  such as when your plane depart, arrived or if there is any delays in the flight. The web app is useful because it saves you the time and the effort of sending SMSs, Tweets or emails, especially if Internet and phone services were not available at the plane.

I asked Laith to give me an example of what type of info Twtri will update the user’s status with, he said:

“Before the flight depart it will show a message on your twitter like this “DL73 scheduled to depart John F. Kennedy International Airport @ 7:05 PM”

After it depart it will show:

“DL73 en route & scheduled to land on SFO International Airport @ 10:58 PM(earliar 5 Minutes)”

if the flight is delayed in the air, it will show:

“DL73 en route & scheduled to land on SFO International Airport @ 11:18 PM(delayed 15 Minutes)”

after it land it will show:

“DL73 Landed in SFO International Airport @ 11:20 PM(delayed 17 Minutes)”

So the process is keeping the status of the flight updated.

( DL73: flight number, 11:01is the airport time.)

He also said that it also updates if there is multi-leg flight (when ever your flight connects with another flight.)

As for the future plans for Twtri, he said he has plans to integrate it with other services as he sees needed. And plans to develop APIs so developers can provide the features of Twtri on their own services or websites. (Twtri currently gets its flight info from flightstats.com)

According to Laith, the monetization model will be: sponsorship on the website and the renting the service to clients who can have Twtri services as part of their offerings. However he said that it will be always free for users.

Kevin Rohling’s IMPULSELIVE a mobile GPS based exercises tracking and sharing service also shared the grand prize  of  newCloudApp  with Twtir. Azure is a .NET cloud platform where applications are hosted and run at Microsoft datacenters. Azure competes with Google App Engine, Heroku and RackspaceCloud.

(Note: I am not flying to Indonesia.)

Updated.

Aljazeera Arabic the well known Qatar based TV network, has just added listeners tweets to its “ Minbar Aljazeera” talk show. This move makes Aljazeera the first Arab TV to integrate with twitter.

Minbara Aljazeera, (which mean Aljazeera Forum) is a weekly Arabic listeners live talk show, that tackles different issues and topics, where listeners call and say their opinion about the current show topic. Users have been previously able to send emails to the show’s email address and the show presenter would read them.

But now, users are able to tweet (via Twitter) their voices about the current program topic to twitter.com/minbaraljazeera , today’s topic was “new media and Iran”.  The presenter today, did read some of the users’ tweet. However she said she had difficulties in reading all tweets.

This is a nice move by Aljazeera, but it would be nicer if users’ tweets and their user names are displayed on the TV screen.

Aljazeera has been doing many new media projects via its new media department, they previously integrated twitter with a mashed up news mapping website for the coverage of the War On Gaza.

Twitter is not massively popular in the Arab world, but this move will help twitter become popular in the Arab world, especially if other Aljazeera Arabic shows follow steps.

I have suggsted before to the founder of WaWet to ask Alajzeera to do the same with WaWet.

Update: Aljazeera English TV channel which is blocked by Cable operators in North America has an online campaign to request the English version of the channel to be on-air in North America.

The Al Jazeera Network Consists of:

• Al Jazeera Satellite channel (Arabic)

• Al Jazeera English

• Al Jazeera Documentary

• Al Jazeera Sports

• Al Jazeera Mubasher (Live)

• Al Jazeera Media Training and Development Center

• Al Jazeera Center for Studies

• Al Jazeera Mobile

• Al Jazeera.net (the English and Arabic web sites)

User generated locations directory for places in Dubai, Places.ae, which ArabCrunch reviewed last year here, has launched recently a new service that allows you to send an email and get requested information right to your email inbox, a concept that is similar to what an IVR system can do but via email.

This service is useful and saves time, since you do not have to open a new browser tab write places.ae in the address bar and then enter your search query. If your email is open all the time just hit “compose mail” enter ask@places.ae and in the subject line you set your search query, for example “pizza in Jumeira”. You don’t have to put something in the body of the email, since it will be ignored anyway.

You will receive an answer a few moments after you send the email, giving you the 10 closest places to the requested location. It also sends you little Google maps in the email. Under testing it took less than 1 minute to get the reply.

It will be cool too if places.ae can release a gmail gadget.

MENA 100 Business Plan Competition, is organized by the MENA-OECD Enterprise Financing Network, in cooperation with the Islamic Development Bank and the MENA Center for Investment. and in partnership of MENA 100 regional Partners including QRCE.

The MENA 100 Competition addresses innovative entrepreneurs, from the 18 Arab countries participating in the MENA OECD Investment Program (Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen)

The primary objective of the MENA 100 business plan competition is to encourage existing and inspire potential entrepreneurs and connect the 100 best of them in the Middle East and North Africa region with potential sources of finance to generate business transactions.

The MENA 100 Business Plan Competition will recognize top performers with cash and in-kind services awards. In-kind services represent professional services donated by sponsors of the competition as well MENA business angels (BA) - venture capital funds (VC) for all participants

The 100 finalists will have the opportunity to present their projects at an event in Manama the capital of Bahrain.

There will be one winner per country and a selection of regional winners:

-The best three regional projects.

-Winners will be invited to participate in the MENA-OECD Business Day

-Networking opportunities in the region and worldwide.

-Possibility to share your ideas, develop them and enter new markets.

The MENA 100 is a competition for nationals from the 18 participating Arab countries in the MENA-OECD Investment Programme . At least one member of the applying team must be a national of one of these countries. Candidates from other nationalities are not eligible to participate .The competition is for new, independent ventures in seed (at the business plan first stage), start-up, or early growth stage. For more info about eligibility criteria go here.

Applications will be accepted until 31st August and MENA 100 event will be held in November 2009, for more information and to access the on-line application form which is available in French and English you can visit the competition website: www.mena100.org.

(Via Mohammed Khawaja)

UPDATE: More details of the deal at the end of the post.

WebProNews reports that Google and the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology have signed a $10 million contract regarding business and workforce development in Egypt.  According to the site the deal was signed in Washington D.C during the Egyptian Minister of ICT, Dr. Tarek Kamel, visit this week along with a representative for the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) .

WebProNews news says that The Google deal was made for the promotion of Egyptian products and services using Google’s advertising platforms. And under the agreement, Google will invest 25% of the money back into the Egyptian economy. “Over the medium to long term, Google’s USD $2.5 million investment agreement may include: growing digital media start-ups, incubation venture capital, angel funding of the ICT sector and potentially training students in online advertising.”

So this seems like Google is winning a major advertiser for its Adwords (and possibly DoubleClick) in the region, however giving back 25% of the deal to support entrepreneurship in Egypt is something great for Egypt’s IT sector and the Arab region in general, and something that we at ArabCrunch applaud Google for. I’ve never heard of any International tech company giving some money it makes from government deals in the region back to help the IT startup seen of that country (excluding AMD). I know Intel, Cisco, and Microsoft offering many initiatives to support in bridging the tech divide. (Sun Microsystems donated several servers to universities in Jordan during the last years.) But these were not cuts from a deals they made, if anyone knows otherwise please let us know.

I encouraged before here on AC and else where; Arab governments to ask International IT companies to open R&D centers when they consider buying their solutions with millions of dollars. We need R&D centers in the region because they transfer technology and skills that are very much needed to take the IT industry in the region to its next level. I’ve heard that the Emirate of Abu Dhabi has plans to open a chip factory for AMD in UAE soon, since it has acquired about 20% of AMD through its sovereign fund vehicle Mubadala Development.

Google has been moving strongly in the region with new products and initiatives, such as Google Online Business Plan Award with Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship. That’s why ArabCrunch has added a new Category titled “Google” which marks Google’s related posts in our Category list.

I’ll contact Google to get more details of this deal and update you here accordingly.

Update 1: According to Wael Ghonim, Google’s Product & Marketing Manager, Middle East & North Africa, Egypt will promote by using Google advertising technologies the following sectors: Tourism, IT and Industrial Business.

Campaigns will have a global nature and will target audience in US & Europe as well as the Arab countries. He added nothing has been decided yet in terms of the details, but the ad campaigns are expected to be combination of text / display ads. Sources say MCIT will be managing this for all the different Egyptian ministries, and there will be different landing pages created to brand Egypt and specific businesses. Egypt has been doing a nice job online with sites such as Egypt Memory and Eternal Egypt web sites.

As for the $2.5 million reinvestment, sources say it is part of MCIT policies (so it’s not specific to Google), this is what Microsoft also do in Egypt .

“We are really excited about this partnership as we are committed to add value to Egypt.” Said Wael.

An email will be sent to Egypt’s MCIT to get a better understanding about the reinvestment policy.

In August 2008, Juniper Research forecasted that Service Provider revenues, derived from mobile money transfer services and remittances, will exceed $5bn globally by 2013. While the research firm Informa, predicts that by the same year, more than 424 million mobile users will be sending money to other mobile users in the same country via their mobile phone, and 73 million will be sending money internationally via their mobile phones. Africa and Middle East are predicted to be one of the top regions of the global international mobile money transfer gross transaction value.

Traditional money transfer and credit card companies are trying to be part of the mobile payment loop in order not to lose their business, while mobile operators and software vendors across the world are deploying different schemes to capitalize into this opportunity. Putting ideas into action, Kuwait based Zain, which is considered the fourth largest mobile network in the world in terms of geographic presence, with a footprint in 22 countries spread across the Middle East and Africa with over 60 million active customers, and Western Union, a global leader in money transfer, recently announced that they will work together to deliver mobile money transfer services in countries in Africa and the Middle East through Zain’s new Zap platform.

The Zap service provides Zain customers access to a wide range of transactional services from their mobile phones. Customers can interact with select bank accounts, top-up or transfer airtime, and move money to businesses, friends and family. The service allows customers to pay bills such as electricity, and can even be used to settle grocery bills in the supermarket. Zap has been operational in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda for several months, making mobile banking services available to more than 100 million people in East Africa. Zain has also announced plans to introduce Zap in 22 markets. (ArabCrunch will do a follow-up story about when Zain will launch Zap in Middle East, by next week, inshallah.)

As Zain’s Zap is only available for Zain Mobile subscribers, this agreement with Western Union will enable Zain’s Zap to reach far beyond its members; Because Western Union has a global agent network of more than 334,000 locations in 200 countries and territories.

When the service is launched, consumers will be able to send cash money transfers from participating Western Union locations around the globe in the same way they do today. Zap customers who are enrolled in the service in select countries will be able to choose whether they want to receive their money in cash at a Western Union Agent location or in accounts tied to their mobile phones (their “mobile wallets.”)

Money-transfer receivers who receive funds in their mobile wallets will be able to pay bills, buy airtime or cash out through the Zap service at more than 12,000 Zap agent locations in East Africa.

The service will be introduced in select countries when regulatory approval has been secured. The service with Zain will be operational in countries with significant international and intra-Africa remittance activity.

Dr Saad Al Barrak, Zain Group CEO, said in a press release,

“This service will enable the millions of people who are abroad to send money home swiftly to their friends and families not only in the cities but also directly to the villages across these countries.”

Western Union has established cross-border Mobile Money Transfer pilots in a variety of corridors around the globe. The Western Union service currently allows mobile subscribers in the Philippines to receive funds sent from select Western Union Agent locations directly into their mobile wallets. In the future, Western Union will also offer consumers the option to send funds directly from their mobile phones for pickup at Western Union Agent locations globally or directly to another mobile subscriber. Western Union is extending its global distribution network through alliances with mobile network operators.

Zain brand is wholly owned by Mobile Telecommunications Company KSC, which is listed on the Kuwait Stock Exchange (Stock ticker: ZAIN). Zain is listed in the Financial Times’ Global 500 Index which ranks the world’s largest companies based on market capitalization.

In 2008 , Zain Group recorded all time high consolidated revenues of US$ 7.44 billion, an increase of 26% compared to 2007 and net profits of US$ 1.2 billion, an increase of 6% on 2007. Year on year customer growth across the two continents in which Zain operates was 50% with the Zain Group serving 63.54 million managed active customers at 31 December, 2008.

Zain operates in the following countries: Bahrain, Burkina Faso, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Iraq, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Malawi, Madagascar, Niger, Nigeria, Palestine (currently operating as Paltel Group), Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. In Lebanon, the company manages ‘mtc-touch’ on behalf of the government. In Morocco, Zain owns 31% of Wana Telecom through a joint venture.

Arab Techies a gathering umbrella for Arab techies which I am one of its members, has just announced the release of the first outcomes of a four days Arabization Codesprint, which was attended by 15 participants from 8 countries in the Arab World and was held in Swiss Club in Cairo,  Egypt between 20  and 23 May 2009. (Read ArabCrunch coverage of the first ArabTechies gathering here. )

The released outcomes are 10 open source projects including libraries to improve search normalization and indexing of arabic text for PHP, Python and Ruby, Modules and Plugins for Drupal and Wordpress that enhance the user experience of arab speaking users. And a Arabic stemmer and Verb conjugator.

These 10 open source projects are:

Qutrub

Arabic verbs conjugator. Download.

Qutrub (web)

A web interface for Qutrub the Arabic verbs conjugator. (Check the conjugator live)

ArPHP integration with Wordpress

A plugin for Wordpress to integrate with Ar-PHP library. Download.

ArPHP integration with Drupal

Modules for Drupal to integrate with Ar-PHP library. Download.

Yamli for your browser

Integrating Yamli service with your browser. Download.

Arabic normalization Ruby

Preparing Arabic text for indexing using Ruby. Download.

Arabic normalization PHP

Preparing Arabic text for indexing using PHP. Download.

Arabic normalization Python

Preparing Arabic text for indexing using Python. Download.

Ar-Morph Ruby

Stemming Arabic words using Ruby. Download.

Ar-Morph Python

Stemming Arabic words using Python. Download.

“some of the missing pieces in improving and encouraging Arabic content on the web and a providing a better computing experience for Arabic speaking users are not solved by code.” Said Manal Hassan member of Arab techies in a post at the Arabtechies website, she added  “Well classified open access Arabic language corpora and linguistic data is sorely missing, a point that was strongly emphasized in the 1st Arab Techies gathering.”

Arab Techies has also released a classified Arabic Stop-Words list, Manal added” Apart from code and linguistic data some problems are better solved by documenting best practices, we proudly present the first draft of the (RTL design best practices and examples) document.”

These projects are hosted on Arab Techies Projects Space and ArabCrunch thanks everyone who helped in in coding these projects and we encourage you to post feedback on each projects’ discussion pages, whether it’s a bug report or a suggestion.