The Bedaya Business Angel Network, in cooperation with El Hassan Business Park in Amman Jordan announced its latest start-up business to successfully secure angel investment through Bedaya’s networks.
These investments in Mixed Dimensions, a leading provider of technology and tools for interactive entertainment developers, hope to ensure the company’s successful global product launch in spring 2012.
Amount of the deal was not disclosed.
Mixed Dimensions CEO, Muhannad Taslaq, was thankful for the advice and assistance he received from the Bedaya Angel Network. “Their continuing efforts to sponsor Jordanian start-ups through business incubation, investment guidance, and other programs create the necessary environment for pioneering companies to grow and expand.”

The American University in Cairo’s School of Business – Entrepreneurship & Innovation Program is organizing Fekrati a national business idea competition open for Egyptians with a prize for top winner of 50,000 Egyptian pounds.

The aim of this competition contribute to the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Egypt by helping the country’s next generation create and lead their own successful business ventures.

The competition application deadline is in 5 days, it is open to Egyptians between the age of 18 and 30 and is open individuals or teams. In case of a team, the maximum number of members allowed per team is 4. The competition will be open to all sectors.

Selected applicants will under go training workshops then they will submit business plans where they will submit Business plans summaries winners of this round will receive mentoring. Then teams will submit final revised business plans and winners will demo in-front of investors and prizes will be awarded.

To apply for the competition go here.

Shoutit is a social marketplace to trade that is an evolution of classified listing, it takes classified concept to new grounds buy offering social aspect such as folowing of people and stuff that maters to you.

On Shoutit users can post a request (shout) be it a good service or help they need and the amount they request and the local community and respond. They call also offer things for sale too.

Shoutit also helps you to build your shopping profile listening (following) to stuff that you like, and then it will try to always show you recommendations based on what you listened to (interested to). You can also build a listeners base which gives your shouts a louder effect and make them reach more people. You can follow a specific tag for example iPhone4 to see what offers are available for iPhone4.

The startup is based in Dubai and it is angle backed as per The National has 5 employees, the site has attracted more than 250,000 page views and 10,000 users. It planes make money by renting businesses a profile whereby they could send out targeted offers based on potential customers’ interests.

Flat6Lab’s most recent demo Day l was highlighted by an array of announcements one of which was their official induction into the Global Accelerator Network (GAN). GAN is the largest and most prominent network of accelerators in the world. Championed by TechStars, the Global Accelerator Network was created in 2010 under the management of some of the top accelerator programs and alongside the White House’s Startup America Initiative. With that, Flat6Labs becomes the first accelerator in Africa to join GAN.

By joining GAN, Flat6Labs would have expanded its network and reach from a regional to a global scale. Flat6Labs will now have access to a larger group of investors, mentors and entrepreneurs. This will help connect the program’s member entrepreneurs to global partners and investors with whom they can collaborate and grow. Each of Flat6Labs’ companies will also receive over $100,000 worth in free perks from over 25 of the best vendors in the world as well as many training opportunities.

Queen Rania Center for entrepreneurship (QRCE) a not for profit organization based in Amman, Jordan and aims to spread entrepreneurship in Jordan has announced yesterday that it launched its 5th business plan competition: Queen Rania National Entrepreneurship Competition (QRNEC.)

Unlike last year this year competition is aimed at students at universities and not open for non students except if they were teachers and applying teams have members who are students. Application submission is open now till mid-may 2012.

QRNEC awards amount to over $30,000, awarded to projects in the fields of ICT, Biotechnology, Agricultural Technology, Renewable Energy, Water, Life Sciences, and Advanced Technologies.
As part of the competition successful team will receive Entrepreneurship Development Bootcamp and Mentoring & Coaching.

Focus.com has made an informative infographic about startups and how they look like in 2011 and how startup form and grow. The infogrpahic answers questions about : who the startups are? What are they doing? What are they spending? How old are they? What are they doing? Who will break even? What problems are they facing? Here the infographic and its details you can leave a comment if you found something interesting.

In the presence of representatives from Sawari Ventures and the American University of Cairo, School of Business, Entrepreneurship & Innovation Program (EIP), Flat6Labs Cairo based startup accelerator celebrated the end of its second cycle with its teams’ Demo Day. In line with the startup accelerator’s aims, the event was a final opportunity for its cycle’s seven teams to present and demonstrate the potential of their respective projects to an audience of entrepreneurs and investors.

In attendance at the Demo Day were the Flat6Labs mentors and staff, reputed IT figures from the region, and investors who were keen on witnessing the progress of the cycle’s teams.
GyroLabs was the first team to step forth, outlining their vision of the possible collaboration between the worlds of television and Internet, one that they are have already taken strong steps towards implementing. Eshtery followed with their plan to revolutionize the shopping experience as known to the Egyptian society, allowing people to shop for groceries using smartphones without losing anything from the joy of the shopping experience. AskNative demonstrated how it plans to serve the adventurous, knowledge seeking public through a question-answering platform that serves to facilitate travel experiences. 2ogra illustrated their plans that are intended to revolutionize Egyptian transportation by developing productive experiences between customers and taxi drivers. Yadget explained their vision of a social experience that is centered around items and places and not just people, wherein people can leave virtual notes anywhere and everywhere. Crowdsay spoke of their desire to facilitate the virtual existence of artists in a platform that allows for talents to grow and be hired. Finally, Nafham brought the team presentations to a close with their vision of an online system that aids in developing the educational system in Egypt by helping students in their education process away from the world of private tutors.
Afterwards, Mr. Hany El-Sonabty, Managing Partner of Sawari Ventures, gave closing comments, during which he mentioned that ‘ Flat6Labs next cycle will begin by early June 2012.

Souq.com and the American University in Cairo’s Entrepreneurs Society have teamed up to launch The Hit 2012, the first product innovation competition for the university’s students, which gives participants the opportunity to win LE 50,000 to start up their business and own a commercial channel through an online store on Souq.com.
The concept of The Hit was developed by Souq.com and the Entrepreneurs’ Society, under the support of Sherif Kamel, the Dean of the School of Business. Its aim is to raise student interest in entrepreneurship and innovation, by providing a platform for a practical learning experience. The process shows young Egyptians that with an innovative idea that is properly researched, they can create a product and develop a commercial model to sell it. Souq.com is giving the students real opportunities to go to market with their ideas.
“Our aim is to spread entrepreneurship awareness and foster an entrepreneurial spirit among AUC students and among the Egyptian youth,” said Youssuf El Samma, CEO, Entrepreneurs’ Society. “We chose to partner with Souq.com because through them students with innovative ideas can build business models for products that will get retailed online and will have real buyers in a matter of days. There are many wonderful ideas and concepts among students, who are the entrepreneurs and business leaders of the future. The Hit has encouraged these innovators to bring their ideas to life.”

In collaboration with the Adham Centre for Television and Digital Journalism, each stage of The Hit 2012 was filmed and posted online as webisodes. Today, out of the 16 teams who pitched their ideas to a panel of expert judges, only 10 teams remain in the competition. These 10 have now received LE 1,000 each to build a prototype of their product and present it.
Prior to the prototypes presentations, Omar Sodoudi, general manager for Souq.com in Egypt, spent an entire day mentoring the teams in his office. “It’s been such a journey, watching the ideas of these young entrepreneurs develop and get nurtured to the stage they’ve reached today. The most important thing for us is that all of these ideas end up on the market, not just the winning “Hit”. The teams or the ‘entrepreneurs’ need to start expanding their thinking beyond the idea, but more into setting up a business operation, and how they’re going to make money. We’re offering them an online retail channel, but we also want to encourage them to learn more about all the possibilities of e-commerce.”
The prototype presentations will be filmed on May 3rd and the videos posted on the website for the public to vote on. The voting results will determine the five finalists who will present their fully developed prototypes to the judges. In the final round, the online voters will get to choose the winner of The Hit, which will be announced in an awards ceremony at the American University in Cairo’s New Campus on May 9th.
The Hit 2012 is supported by Souq.com, the Adham Centre for Television and Digital Journalism and KUWADICO.

The competition is divided into three rounds
 
Idea Generation and Executive Summary
100 teams participate in this round by attending the session on Idea Generation and Product Innovation to incubate their initial ideas and learn about the dynamics of ecommerce in Egypt. Participants are then required to send their executive summaries for evaluation
 
Planning Round
In this round participating teams attend the session on Business Case writing where they learn how to plan, write their business cases and present their elevator pitch to the judging panel. 16 Teams are then chosen to take part in the first episode where they pitch their ideas to the judging panel. The panel of judges will choose eight teams and online voters will pick the two other teams to become the top ten.
 
Branding Round
In this round the top ten participants are not yet announced which gives a chance to all 16 teams to brand their businesses and products. The 16 participating teams will attend the session on Branding and Marketing where they learn how to fully develop a marketing campaign and brand their products.  In the second episode top 10 teams are announced and they get a chance to present their full marketing campaigns to the judging panel.
 
Production Round
In this round the top five are not yet announced and therefore all ten participating teams will attend a session on Supply chain and Building a prototype. Participating teams are then funded with 1,000 EGP to build a prototype of their product and present it to the judging panel. Voters will then choose the top four teams to present their fully developed prototypes and the judges bring one of the bottom six back in the competition to present his prototype forming the top five.
 
Final Round
Voters get to choose this year’s Hit through online voting on our website.

E-commerce is hot in the Arab world and now it is taking off after several years. Last year group buying site GoNabit which was founded in UAE was acquired by LivingSocial for a price around $10 million.

Today brings a news of another milestone for e-commerce in the Arab world, MarkaVIP Amman, Jordan based flash shopping site has secured investment of $10 million Series B funding led by European venture firm Prime Ventures. It’s joined buy participation from New York City-based Invus Financial Advisers (IFA), Antwerp-based Hummingbird Ventures, and San Francisco-based Lumia Capital.

According to TechCrunch the cash will be used to expand MarakaVIP operations and marketing and also expand to other parts of the Arab world, specially the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC.)

MarkaVIP, was founded in Jordan in November 2010 by Alkhatib and Amer Abulaila, MarkaVIP’s CTO. Its has 1.5 million registered users and is adding around 5,000 new members per day,

At AC we have been receiving invites from a site called mawwell.com which says it would be the first crowed-funding platform in the Arab world aimed at creative, artistic, innovative, scientific, sports related, green project.

Though we could not get much information about the platform here what it says:
”
Project creators will keep 100% ownership of their work and will build a unique relationship with their contributors
- Not all projects will be eligible to be part of Mawwell. Indeed, Mawwell will not be a place for soliciting donations to causes, charity projects, or business expenses

You do not have an idea yet but want to contribute?
- Whether you have an idea yet or not you can:
- Support projects you like
- Discover talent
- Share these projects with your friends.”

We have emailed the people behind this project and we will update you here by the will of God. From what information it provided seems it would be something like Kickstarter in the U.S where users can donate small or big financial contribution to a project. Such a project is important if it succeeds in bringing seed funding for innovative projects in the region.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on facebook that his company is acquiring iPhone and Android popular photo sharing startup Instagram.
Mark did not say how much was the price, Update: the price is $1 billion in a combination of cash and shares of Facebook according to facebook announcement. but he said unlike other facebook acquisitions instagram will keep growing independently. And that it wont milt inside facebook.

“We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience. We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks, the ability to not share your Instagrams on Facebook if you want, and the ability to have followers and follow people separately from your friends on Facebook.”

Recently launched opendayz one of the first batch of startups to launch from Alexandria Egypt based startup accelerator Tahrir2 offers an ecommerce portal for home and small businesses to market their products while offering buyers products and logistics at reasonable prices. The idea came to a group of girls to help local businesses market their products in a more efficient way than facebook pages while offering them logistics and services in delivery and cash collection.

In three months this startup managed to start from a concept to a working business with customers and revenue stream. The team behind this startup are 6, 3 technical and 3 operational and business.

The goal of OpenDayz according to Samer ElSahn CEO of Tahrir2 is is to serve a niche market with high capacity but not attended. as all other ecommerce websites focus more on brands and big stores rather than attending to small businesses and local ones.

“For now OpenDayz as any startup incubated in Tahrir is focusing on scaling and generating revenue that will self sustain it. After that the plan to move to other markets in the region might need funding.”

As how the startup plans to market it self Samer told AC “Opendayz is moving with a sales and marketing team that works on the ground and attend events, while doing sales calls to businesses using facebook. On the other hand digital advertisement is done through social networks and the use of social sharing tools to get traffic.”

Second startup that also recently launched from Tahrir2 is , Funwave it is a social gaming company that is trying to offer a different twist as Samer notes, “they are trying to build realistic social games. They are trying to bridge the gap between the virtual world and the real world. “
Their first game is Ultras , which is a football game, in which the player builds his academy and his team to play with his friends. “The reality part which we are holding back until we build our user base will be the competition between football teams fans to get the highest scores for their teams and make their teams win in a virtual league that takes place at the same time of the real league.” Samer Said.

This startup is built with 4 team members, 3 engineers and a concept/graphics artist. The game targets the Arab region but they have an eye on global expansion.

As for seeking early stage rounds Samer said “Again like any Tahrir startup, they are focusing first on building a business that is self sustaining. Looking for VC funds is an option.”
For marketing Funwave is using in game social marketing methods to get players.

Tahrir2 the startup accelerator that is based in eAlexandria Egypt and is Head cofounded by Mohamead Gawdat Google’s Emerging Markets ! got its 2 startups launched.

The 2 startups are:

1. opendayz.com : www.opendayz.com, an e=commerce portal for home and small businesses to market their products while offering buyers high quality products and logistics at reasonable prices. Pilot launch will target Egypt.
2. Ultras  from funwave : A social games company targeting middle east with related games. Starting with Vuvuzilla, a football game on facebook. https://apps.facebook.com/funwave_ultras/?fb_source=timeline
In the next post we will write more about those 2 startups.

Another third company is coming out at the end of this month from Tahrir2 called  www.shootget.com. Shootget is a company that aims to make interacting with static ads possible through a mobile app.

Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP), has announced five new rounds of investments.
 
Anghami.com: “ Unlimited Music for your ears” got seed funding The startups is Mobile music and web music streaming service targeting the Arab World with premium Arabic and foreign music content. A Turkey based VC is investing alongside MEVP in this round. Visit www.anghami.com

Laimoon.com closed serias A investment the startup is a a job search engine. Currently focused on jobs in the UAE and Qatar, Laimoon helps companies easily connect with talented professionals. Expansion plans to the rest of the Middle East are underway. An institutional UAE based investor will be investing alongside MEVP in this round. Visit www.laimoon.com

Box & Automation Solutions: closed serias B investment the startup is  a cash management, audit and treasury solutions provider, via the SWIFT network. It allows treasurers and decision makers to fully monitor and audit their global cash positions in real time. Sigma Gestion, a French SME fund is co-investing alongside MEVP in this round. Visit www.boxautomation.com
 
 
Pin-Pay: a mobile payment service provider allowing mobile phone users to pay and receive payments into their bank accounts.
Bank Med and Bank Audi have both invested alongside MEVP in Pin-Pay. Visit www.pin-pay.com. This is th second round MEVP invests in Pin-Pay.

Mezzabites Technologies Company LTD. (Falafel Games):  a designer and producer of Arabic content online MMO games targeting MENA audience. The venture arm of the project is Dubai-based Satcaster, MBC Group, under their new division, “MBC Ventures”, are investing alongside MEVP in this round. Visit www.falafel-games.com and also MEVP invested 2 round in Falafel games.

Four innovative projects have been named winners in the latest Seed Fund round at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).

The winners were announced at a Gala dinner at the Academic Campus, Thuwal on Wednesday March 14, 2012. They were on hand to discuss their individual products and innovations at the event.

Here are the projects:

Envirola: Rimantas Kodzius
A low-cost heavy metals detection instrument that provides an ease-of-use portable solution. The device has a wide range and a high degree of accuracy.

 
iDivers: Michael Berumen
The first solution to enable full functionality of touchpad devices underwater.

MuseTech: Steve Cutchin
A photo-real 3D immersive environment allowing museum visitors to feel as though they have been transported to a remote location.

NOMADD: Georg Eitelhuber
The NO Water Mechanical Automated Dusting Device cleans desert-based solar installations cost effectively and in an environmentally responsible manner.

Winners will receive up to $200,000 over 24 months Seed Fund may offer access to industry experts and mentors through KAUST Entrepreneurship Center, lab and office space, and other forms of entrepreneurial support

Today At the MIT Enterprise Forum Arab Business Plan Competition Workshop session taking place in Abu Dhabi, Ken Morse, Senior Lecturer and Managing Director of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center shared some tips with the business plan’s 50 Semifinalists, along with 20 Semifinalists from Global Innovation in Science and Technology (GIST) Competition. 

Here are the tips

1. Expanding market share is more important that reducing costs

2. Its not about you it is about them

3. no one is going to buy from you unless they think that you understand them

4. Sales is all about listening and understanding

5. God gave you two ears and one mouth, don’t forget the ratio

6. you need a customer and sales focused part in your company

7. Remember the people who helped you along the way, that is what entrepreneurs do

8. when you signed up for entrepreneurship, you didnt sign up to be comfortable

9. first step for pitching, define who you are pitching to

10. define who is your target customer, one

11. you stop pitching when you die

Source: @MITEFarab

The Egyptian revolution is achieving its objectives one after the other in the hard way, with paid souls and blood in the long march for justice, freedom and Independence from domestic and foreign tyranny and conspiracy.

However, Egyptian economy is not doing well. Egypt has a high level of poverty rates, around 40%, its economy is dependent in few things to earn hard currency: tourism, Swiss canal some Gas and what Egyptian workers outside Egypt send back home.

Beside basic human rights and political freedoms the economic case should be dealt with in order to achieve one of the revolution’s objectives: social justice. To that end Egypt must work hard to transform it self into a scientific production and excellence. Producing world class R&D projects that can produce world class startups that can solve problems in different avenues with innovative solutions, products and services.

Egypt has no shortage of great people and scientists like Dr. Ahmed Zewail a Nobel prize winner and a professor chemistry and professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) as he has the right vision and plan with his City of Science and Technology. Which was conceptualized back in 1999 but was established right after the blessed Egyptian revolution.

The City of Zewail is becoming a reality now. It offers the right pillars that can help transform Egypt into scientific production and excellence, in helping bring innovation and the out break of innovative tech startups that can compete at the world level which in turn will bring hard currency to Egypt and provide employment to thousands of people and raise the standards of living for Egyptians.

The pillars for the The City are Zewail university, Research Institute , Technology Pyramid or Park, Think tank.

Technology Pyramid:

Will offer gifted entrepreneurs and scientist the opportunity to incubate and develop their new technologies and industries.

The technology Pyramid or technology Park will provide some financial assistance and appropriate space and will take in exchange a share of the startup equity which would help the city generate income while building world class tech companies that can penetrate the international markets.
The Park will also provide R&D center and will invite different multi national tech companies to come up and open research centers. It can do so since it can demonstrate to blue chip companies that it has the skilled work force necessary for such R&D centers to function.

Egyptians will benefit from working with multinationals with gaining more experience and expertise which in turn will help them launch their own tech satrtups. The technology Pyramid will work also as a commercialization arm for inventions coming from other pillars of the city namely the Research Institutes.

Research Institute:
Research  Institute will provide researchfrontiers necessary to provide commercial innovative solutions to problems in these frontiers and they are:

Helmy Institute for Medical Sciences (HIMS)
Center for Aging and Associated Diseases
2. Institute for Nanoscience and Informatics (INI) 
3. Institute for Imaging and Visualization (IIV) 
4. Institute for Energy, Environment and Space (IEES) 
5. Institute for Economics and Global Affairs (IEGA) 
6. Institute for Virtual Education (IVE) 
7. Institute of Basic Sciences (IBS)
Center for Theoretical Physics
 Some fields of research will be particularly relevant to the needs of Egypt and the region. These include R&D in energy, information technology, medicine, and other areas relating to water resources and global climate change.

“In the initial phase, there will be up to twelve research institutes. With the passage of time and beyond its first decade, there may appear the need to create new research institutes, but the uniqueness and distinction of the institution must be strictly maintained”

The institutes will be open to anyone accepting students and researchers from anywhere in the world but priority will be given to Egyptians.

Zewail university:

  The university will carefully train selected students in basic state-of-the-art science and engineering and offer them hands-on research opportunities. The total number of students will not exceed 5000 and any increase must be unanimously approved by the Board of Trustees. The university will be equipped with the most advanced tools and laboratories.

Students of the university will provide the minimum pool of scientists and researchers to carry on research in the different institutes and in launching state-of-the-art tech ventures that can be incubated at the tech park.

Think Tank:

Egypt faces a number of challenges and risks, among them is the Nile, power, housing and so forth. The think tank will carry on scientific analysis of major projects of development and for the assessment of national risks associated with them and they will be then presented to policy makers.

I am are very excited about city of Science and Technology it has the right tech and scientific ecosystems that Egypt needs in order to transform it into a scientific and tech center in the world. The project is registered as a not for profit and will be funded through 2 main means and endowment that will provide monetary resources from profits from its projects and from direct donations. The city did not achieve its objective in collecting the necessarily funds. It has collected around 10% of the money necessarily. It needs your help so if you believe in january25th revolution you should go ahead and donate here to this critical project for the future of Egypt. #EgyptCan

Mubawab , operating 17 local country websites across the Middle East and North Africa, announced today that it has received $850,000 in funding from Grupo Intercom, One of Spain’s l Web consortium, as well as from international business angels, to further develop classifieds portal for the Arab region. Well-known Web brands emerging from Spain that Grupo Intercom has previously backed include Softonic, eMagister, InfoJobs and BuyVIP.

Mubawab’s aim is to make it easier for people across the Middle East and North Africa to find everyday things online – from real estate to cars, jobs and household items.

The company also announced today that it is now serving 600,000 visitors per month and generating several thousand user-posted classified ads each day – after just 14 months of company operations. Mubawab’s content comes from users, as well as through feeds and partnerships with local businesses and portals.

Despite its rapid growth, Mubawab also faces unique challenges specific to the Middle Eastern market. Shadi el-Hajj, Mubawab CTO, explains: “The Arab online market is still young but with the popularity of social networking and mobile telephony, it’s maturing faster than the underlying economic infrastructure. For example, many countries in the region don’t have reliable street addresses but yet demand for location-based services is emerging. This often creates the need to really think outside the box with the technical solutions we go for.”

News surfaced end of last month that Saudi based Kammelna Games! has been acquired by Turkish game developer Peak games! a maker of social games.

Sources familiar with the matter has confirmed to ArabCrunch the deal and said the price tag was 10 million USD in cash and stocks.

Kammelna is a web based card games popular among Saudis called baloot, it has been seeing impressive usage among Saudis.

Peak games is a Turkish based game developer that targets the Arab world and Turkey with culturally relevant games. With more than 20 million monthly active users, Peak Games says it has become one of the top four social game companies in the world in the past 14 months,.

Peak Games is run by chief executive Sidar Sahin. Kammelna was founded by Essam Alzamel, who will continue to run the studio in Damman, Saudi Arabia.

Peak Games already has studios and offices in Istanbul, Ankara, Barcelona, Berlin, San Francisco and Amman Jordan.

The company is funded by Earlybird Venture Capital, Hummingbird Ventures, and serial business angel Evren Ucok. Peak Games has 150 employees and Kammelna has 30.

Hello everyone we are glad to announce that ArabCrunch is back after staying away for around a month. This happened for reasons out side our hands. We decided that we would never close ArabCrunch.

From now on we promise you more fresh news, views and take on on Arab Tech, social media and entrepreneurship and how they impact our lives politically, socially and economically.

Stay tuned.

Spam is a major problem that the internet suffers from, to fight spam websites uses captcha when submitting a form or registering for an account.

Up until now Capthca has been using random English letters that a users needs to submit in order to go to the next step in registration or in posting a comment. But few days ago, UK based Hsoub launched Arabic Captcha. meaning it uses Arabic letters, and since Arabic words combine Arabic letters together it is hard for automated software to figure them out.

This is much needed initiative to fight spam and hackers in the Arabic web, but the Captcha does not work with people who do not know Arabic, since they do not know how the letter looks like after being combined with other letters.

Hsoub Arabic Captcha comes with API so any website can use. well done for such initiative.

Competing for $40,000 and six scholarships to the university of Sharajah in UAE, 120 promising Arab students and scientists concluded their participation in the 2nd Annual Intel Science Competition at an award ceremony help last night in Sharjah under the patronage of Dr. Sultan Al Qasimi, member of the UAE Supreme Council.

Anas Eshtaya from Palestine won the first prize for his movement and gas detection project followed by Sara Al Nasser and Hayfa Al Bassam for 2ndh and 3rd places for their projects in the fields of Medicine and Health Sciences and Behavioral Social Sciences.

Other winners included Hasan Bani Salameh from Jordan for his project in Chemistry, Mohammad Othman from Palestine for his project in Energy and Transportation, Radwan Othman from Lebanon for his project in Intelligent and Safety system engineering.

In total 81 science projects were showcased according to Dr. Martina Roth, Director of Intel’s Global Education Strategy, Research and Policy.

Here is the list of winners:




Updated: typo edited, we are very sorry.

Many people have startup ideas but they never see the light. GoodorGreatIdea.com tries to change that. The site offers its users to submit startup ideas and rate and disuss it with others. The submitter of the idea earns points depending on his idea rating. As a result, both great ideas and people with great ideas bubble up over a period of time.

The site also helps people form teams around an idea.

GoodorGreatIdea.com is founded by Mohammed Guller , the startup is based in Danville, California, USA.

Saudi based National net ventures (n2v) has announced that it invested in Mj in the region (Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and UAE) , they have not invested until now in pure play e-commerce ventures, I would advice them to seek to diversify their investments and explore new disruptive e-commerce ideas.

Jordanian gaming developer Quirkat has launched MENA Speed (Sur3a) on Sony Play Station, the company says the game works with both PSP and PS3.

“MENA Speed is the first drag race game with tracks in major cities across the Middle East, pumping adrenaline with screeching tires and burned rubber across the roads of Dubai, Amman, Kuwait and Cairo. The player can customize and upgrade the car then accept challenges across different terrains.

 
There are many different power-ups to enjoy by upgrading the car engine, gearbox, cooling system, and manifold to improve its performance; and customize its look with different paint jobs, spoilers and rims; all with a wide range of options.”

While it provides an edge “somehow” for regional gaming developers to develop games with local touch “or” feel, they are encouraged to rather create a new untapped and exciting games that can be combined with the rich Arabian and Islamic cultures.