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.

Preston & Walker Pte Ltd. singapore based investment firm is offering 1 Million USD for the most promising business plan with a global scope.

“Our aim really is to look for the next big thing – whether it is an idea to generate more jobs, to change the way the game is played in a specific industry, to create a more socially responsible world – or even just to inspire us to learn more about ourselves,” said Gareth Walker, who is the company’s founder in a press release.

Participants in the contest cab submit their business plan here, and it will be judged by a team of anonymous millionaire judges. A small registration fee will be charged. For those who are selected, the judges will consider investing a maximum of US $1,000,000 of seed funding, as well as offer help in development of the ideas, serving as mentors to jumpstart the business. Deadline for submissions is December 31, 2011, and winners will be announced on January 31, 2012.

Participants may belong to a start-up or early stage venture.

For more information, including rules and regulations and registration fees, see the competition Web site.

Falafel Games, producer of the fully Arabic themed browser-based MMO game Knights of Glory, has been selected as a Finalist for Red Herring’s Top 100 Asia award, a prestigious list honoring the year’s most promising private technology ventures from the Asian business region.

The Red Herring editorial team selected the most innovative companies from a pool of hundreds from across Asia. The nominees are evaluated on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, such as financial performance, technology innovation, quality of management, execution of strategy, and integration into their respective industries.

Falafel Games, with operations in China and the Middle East, was founded by Lebanese and Syrian Gaming and Internet veterans.

Updated.

Ideavelopers, managers of the Technology Development Fund (“TDF”) and is a subsidiary of EFG-Hermes, recently lead a Series A investment round in Offerna, Egypt’s first group buying site.

Established in March 2011, Offerna provides its customers with deals that feature discounts of 50-90% for various products and services, in return guaranteeing merchants a minimum number of buyers.

Offerna competes with regional group buying sites such as GoNabit which was acquired by living social and Cobone which is part of Jabbar group. Offerna which currently focuses on the Egyptian market is planning a regional expansion.

Offerna is lead by Abdullah Assal, founder and CEO, who returned to Cairo after completing his MBA at Stanford to bring the group-buying model to Egypt.  Offerna’s founding team includes also Sinan Khatib, previously Director of Business Development at BuyWithMe, one of the leading U.S. group buying sites, Yasser Lotfy, previously manager of Etisalat Misr’s Mass Market Revenue and Retention, and Tamer Adel, regional e-commerce expert.

Offerna is TDF’s fourth investment in e-commerce-related companies, recently the VC invested in nefsak. Through its e-commerce investments, Ideavelopers aims to build a network of companies that not only jump start e-commerce in Egypt, but also allow for Ideavelopers’ companies to benefit from portfolio company synergies.

EFG-Hermes was one of the early investors in Maktoob around the year 2000, Maktoob was acquired by Yahoo in 2009.

Noqoush a Jordanian mobile advertising startup which announced in August that it raised 3 million USD in funding, has announced today launching its mobile advertising network for the Arab region called “AdFalcon”.

AdFalcon enables marketers and advertisers to reach their targeted audience based on so many factors like location, interest, device type and model, operators …etc. Furthermore, it also has a dashboard and reporting engine would help track the campaign performance and provide statistical results.

Noqoush has also revealed the launch of its developers fund and publishers program, where developers and publishers can sign up to start generating revenues by serving mobile Ads on their registered applications. Publishers and developers can get from 60% to 78% of mobile ads revenues generated by their mobile app or mobile website, Noqoush says it supports all mobile platforms.

The company said on its website that it is starting with 90,000,000 monthly impressions.

It is worth noting that the number of cell phones users in most Arab countries exceeds 80% of the total population, whereas it exceeds 100% in the GCC countries. Also, the number of mobile internet users is exceeding 25 million users in the Middle East and northern African countries based on a study published recently by spot on PR and effective measure.

Maysalward announced today that is has received investment round from Turkish venture capital firm Timar Ventures.
Maysalward is one of the first if not the first mobile games developer in the Arab region. It was founded in 2003 in Jordan with offices in Amman and Irbid.

Maysalward has a portfolio of 35 mobile games and 20 online games with titles such as Trix, Tarneeb and Balote regional card games, which were in the top download charts over the past 5 years.  Portfolio includes Tawla backgammon, street football, super arcanoid, word search and other casual and classic arcade games. Maysalward games can be found Nokia Ovi Store, BlackBerry App World, Apple App Store and other independet App stores & operator portals. The Company latest games just launched include “Hand” (a variant of Rummy) on the BlackBerry App World and “Colonel” on Apple App Store. The company says on Nokia Ovi store during 2011it has exceeded more than 250,000 downloads.

Timer Ventures, is chaired by Dr. Boulos Doany the founding CEO of Oger telecom. The VC has recently invested 1 million USD in Jordanian accelerator Oasis500.

The company says that this investment will help Maysalward focus in developing games over numerous App stores and expand in to several new markets.

The amount of the deal was not disclosed.

When learning one of the common programming languages like C++, English language in most cases is a barrier for young Arab kids to learn software programing at a young age.

Kalimat comes to bridge the gap by offering an Arabic educational programing language for kids in which developers write the code using Arabic letters.

According to Mohammed Sayed, the language is easy to learn but provides enough features to allow for complex programs and it has attributes that are familiar to developers such as Object-oriented programming, Dynamic typing , Garbage collection and creating .exe files.

The language is open source freely available on Windows , Ubuntu 32-bit and Ubuntu 64-bit here is a book in Arabic to teach kids how to use Kalimat.

Update: Samy the author of Kalimat says ” Just wanted to tell people who downloaded the September 2011 edition: There’s a bug that prevents the creation of .exe files! I fixed it in the October edition, available now from the official site (http://www.kalimat-lang.com) or from http://code.google.com/p/kalimat/downloads”

This project is important and I would like to ask fellow developers to joins the community and further develop it and enhance it. It would also be very useful for Arab schools to add it to their curricula and teach it for kids at a young age.

The project is founded by Mohamed Samy from Egypt, many thanks for this great offer.

Many startups specially Arab ones underestimate the importance of public relations in branding their products and in marketing them. Take a look at startup weekends events in recent Arab countries, does anyone remember them or what they do? does anyone use them? where are they now?

Public relations is a cheapest way to market your products or startup and entice people to use it, if people do not know about you they will not use you.

In nut shell you need to develop media contacts and write a well written press release about your product and services, and pitch your story to the media and journalists from the angle that interest them and their readers not yours, meaning if you have a cooking website you can target women life style magazines by pitching your story in a way that your startups saves time when looking for a recipe to cook something.

I am not going to go through how to write a press release and how to develop media relations, I am going to ask entrepreneurs and specially Arab startups to do the minimal which is having a blog for the company and email relevant media sites like us, with your news.

In your blog you need to keep your users updated with what is new at your company, example: new features, new millstones, new partnership deals and so on. And this is not enough you need to email the media.

Main stream media in many cases won’t understand your startup and the possibility of having an article about you is low. We do encourage to target them but here at ArabCrunch, because we cover Arab startups and the Arab tech sector, your news is important to us and our readers, so go ahead and start sending us your news and we will cover you “inshallah” in ArabCrunch English and ArabCrunch Arabic. You do not have to send a press release, just the basic news of what, when, why, and where. This effort does not need a team or a special PR agency, a startup of 1 or 2 people can handle a small job like that.

One note, we read every email that is sent to us but we can not respond to every email, however if your news is interesting to our readers we promise to do our best and cover it.

Remember in many cases startups die not because the startup idea is horrible, but because their founders did not do the minimal marketing and PR effort. And for those startupweekendrs please stop being lazy and do the minimal and email us

PS: here is 12 Ways to Market Your Startup With Zero Ad Spending.

#image credit.

2 days ago I arrived  to my beloved country Egypt. I am planning to stay here for few days, in mind with  a new project that would help push entrepreneurship in Egypt and the region and I would like to meet the startup and tech community here.

The post title says that ArabCrunch is in Egypt, not that ArabCrunch is not here, it is. We already have Arabic tech writers and team members who are Egyptians like Mohammad Sayed and Moemen Mohammed, our security partner Spirula Systems and above all our readers and fans.

I would like in this trip to meet with everyone startups, VCs, geeks and our readers. So we might have a small meetup soon.

AreebaAreeba a business social network geared towards residents of the Arab world has reported reaching 650 thousand registered users from 110 countries, in less than a year since its launch.

The Dubai based AreebaAreeba offers smiler functionality to Linkedin, users can post status update where other users can comment on them, start and join groups, blogs and events and discuss topics on forums. However looking at the site you see there is not much activity and user generated content.

Deputizing for Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah, Princess Sumaya bint El Hassan, President of the El Hassan Science City and the Royal Scientific Society, today has welcomed the winners of the fourth round of Queen Rania National Entrepreneurship Competition (QRNEC).

Founded by the Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship in 2004, with the full support of El-Hassan Science City & El-Hassan Business Park, the competition aims to fuel the spirit of Entrepreneurship, Creativity and Innovation across society in Jordan, and to help Jordanians to turn their entrepreneurial ideas into successful companies that supply innovative products and services to regional and global markets.

“I am confident that the outputs of this competition will add more life into Jordan’s Innovation Ecosystem by providing additional dealflow, investment and incubation opportunities,” said Princess Sumaya.

For his part, Farhan Kalaldeh, the Executive Director of QRCE, pointed out that the focus of this year’s competition was to attract investors and raise their awareness of the investment opportunities offered by emerging technology startups and the commercial potential of transforming ideas into products and services aimed at regional and global markets. Moreover, the focus was directed at strategic sectors of the Kingdom’s economy, such as ICT, Clean Technology and Life Sciences.

QRNEC had 400 participants in its fourth round, with more than 120 projects. The competition process involved comprehensive training in the areas of strategic planning, business plan development, project management and other topics related to starting and growing high impact technology companies.
Thirty teams were nominated for the final phase of the award in three categories: Startups; Projects under Development (Pre-Startup); and Universities. Project sectors were Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Clean Technology and Life Sciences. From these, 19 winning projects were selected:
In the Startups Category, the following projects were selected:

• First place: Mixed Dimensions (MXD) – a company that develops tools for gaming companies and online Interactive 3D applications developers.
• Second place: Naratech Labs – a company that assists pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, chemicals, food and beverages manufacturers to develop new products.

• Third place: TAQETNA – a company that develops smart renewable energy products and services.

In the Projects Under Development/ Pre-Startup Category, the following projects were selected:

• First place: Nitrate Production System – Developed a business plan for a company to design and manufacture an innovative new (patent pending) device for producing Nitrogen-based fertilizer in continuous and sustained quantities without the high cost of production associated with petrochemical-based fertilizers.

• Second place: Taltol – Developed a business plan for an online marketplace where users can buy and sell digital content & products.
• Third place: EduServ – Developed a business plan to provide online tools to establish better links between schools and parents.

In the Universities Category, the following projects were selected:
• First place: Mawdoo3.com from Hashemite University – Developed a business plan for the first Arabic website to offer high quality Arabic articles with automated Arabic keyword analysis service.

• Second place: Jordan Unmanned Systems’ from German Jordanian University – Developed a business plan to produce electrically powered UASs (Unmanned Aircraft Systems) for a variety of applications.

• Third place: Yadawi from Yarmouk University – Developed a business plan for an online store selling handmade items on regional and global levels.

It is worth mentioning that QRNEC awards amount to $50,000, awarded to projects in the fields of ICT, Agricultural Technology, Renewable Energy, Water, Life Sciences, and Advanced Technologies.

Amman, Jordan based Akhtaboot one of the major players in online recruitment has rolled out a new video application feature that would enhance companies recruitment filtration of job applicants .

The video application feature provides companies with the option of asking job seekers to record and save a 60-second video answer to a question specified by the company as an application requirement.

This feature also aims to help job seekers to market themselves with a quick video that goes directly to employers.

There are many cooking resources online, but what distinguish Zaytouneh is that it provides short quick and professionally done tutorial cooking videos.

Founded by Jordanian female entrepreneur Fida Taher Alawieh, the site is currently available in Arabic but plans an english version in a couple of months according to Fida’s tweet. Fida says over Twitter that she plans 200 videos in 2 months and 1000 over a year time.

This service comes handy for people who want short and fast cooking recipes specially bachelors like me.

Here is a video in how to prepare “Taboula” Salad:




(PS: we will update this post with more info once we get them)

Two Jordanian startup who were incubated in Jordan based startup accelerator Oasis 500 have secured investment rounds.

Masmoo3 turns Arabic books into Arabic Audio formate available through several channels such as Apple’s App store, Google Android, Windows Mobile 7, web and others, while Dakwak reviewd by AC in July 2010 offers websites crowd sourced translation.

Masmoo3 received funding from angle investor investor Ihab Al Ramlawi, while Dakwak received investment from IV Holdings, according to government run Jordan Times the amount of the deals were not announced.

Are you a college student or recent grad who has passion for online marketing and wants to get some solid experience from a well known tech media brand?

Do you like to help startups?

If the answer is yes, then we would like to welcome you to join our growing team and help you in your career path.

What we will require from you is 2 to 3 hours of work a day to carry some marketing and business development tasks, including forming partnerships with tech events around the world and in social media marketing.

Requirements:

- Student or recent grad in marketing or computer related field.
- Passion for technology and startups.
- Passion for social media, marketing and an active user on Twitter.
- Fast learner.
- Excellent English in speaking and writing as it will be your primary language in work.
- Disciplined and honest.
‫-‬ Does not work and never worked with any spying agency or with the freeMason underground network. As these organizations try to infiltrate media sites.
- You do not have to be an Arab, nationality does not matter, however candidates from recently freed countries like: Egypt, Tunis, Libya and for sure Gaza will have priority.
- We do not differentiate between male and females, both are welcomed.
- This is unpaid internship and you will work from home and you should have your own computer.
- Send your CV to jobsATarabcrunch.com and tell us why you want this internship.
- If you prove to be good in your work we will consider you for a full time position if you have the necessarily resources.

Lisa Kawar a Jordanian mom was looking for a certain product and had to visit so many stores and waste a lot of time, checking around where to find it. that’s when she thought “why dont we have a website, on which we can search for products in the different stores in town” and Menwayn was born.

Menwayn launched about a week ago in beta mood covering only Jordan for the time being, is a comparison shopping site for a wide range of products the are available on brick and mortar stores such electrical appliances, office equipment, furniture and products for the whole family including babies, kids and teens, meaning the site does not offer its own bought products or manages inventory and fulfillment.

The site offers consumers to list products according to the option the they chose such as brand, technology, dimensions, price range or seller name. Products can also be listed to all the sellers who have this product their location, full contact details, their listed prices, and even special offers when available. However what is lacking is a feature that can list a single product availability in all stores and the price list of each store for that product.

Menwayn offers offline stores a free admin panels to add and update their products list with information such as description, availability, price, contact details and special offers. Lisa has told us the site secured 25 stores in Jordan from big local brands such as ike hikmat yassin, hani darwish khalili, tahboub, zaki ghul, smart buy, and issa murad.

Lisa told us she plans to add more Arab countries soon and plans to enable users to buy products online. The site is available in Arabic and English and is incubated in Jordan’s accelerator Oasis 500.

Startup Genome a project that originally launched a survey from over 3,200 startups to investigate “the science of startups” has launched a new web tool to benchmark your startup according to the findings of the report called Startup Genome Compass.

Users can create an account, and take a 20-40 minute test that classifies their startups by type and stage.

A personalized report will then be generated which will gauge a startup according to the to the 5 aspects of startups: Customer, Product, Team, Business Model, and Financial the tool . Users can retake the test once a month to test the health of their startups.

Take the test and let us know how you find it!

Tomorrow is Eid Al Fitr in most Muslims countries. In this occasion I send my greetings (see my Video below) to All Muslims worldwide and specially AC’s Muslim reader: Happy Eid, Eid Mubarak and May Allah accept from me and you. If you are not Muslim then I also wish you a happy Tuesday  :).

What Is Eid Ul Fitr?

Muslims celebrate ‘Eid ul Fitr on the first day of Shawwal — the tenth month of the Islamic calendar, following the month of Ramadhan (in which the revelation started and ended 20+ years later, and which is also the month of fasting). Following a Lunar calendar, Muslims mark the beginning of the month with the sighting of the new crescent.

The month long fasting of Ramadan culminates into the festival of ‘Eid-ul-Fitr (the Festival of Fast-Breaking). It is a festival of joy, family reunion and thanksgiving to Almighty God. The giving of a special charity for this occasion is obligatory. This is known as Zakat. Muslims dress in holiday attire, attend a special community prayer in the morning, and visit friends and relatives. Greetings of “‘Eid mubarak,” or “a blessed ‘Eid” are exchanged.
Eid Ul Fitr Prayer

:

Allaho-Akber, Allaho-Akber. La ila-ha ill-lal-lah. Allaho-Akber, Allaho-Akber. Wa-lilahill hamd. 

(Allah is great, Allah is great. There is no god but Allah. Allah is great, Allah is great. And all praises are for Allah).

Here are some links to websites that helps you know more about Islam:

Islam Guide.

Islam Web

Islamic Tube

Just Quran

Best Islamic Sites

Sisters Magazine

#image by creativesam,

Traffic james is a major problems in condents Egyptian cities, there were several attempts to develop an application to tackle this problem.

Bey2ollak developed by a group of Egyptian developers tackles this problem at the heart it update users with traffic conditions in major egyptian cities and users themselves report conditions.

The site has an iPhone, BlackBerry، Nokia and Android app and is also available in web version and mobile web version. The app can get more useful if it can suggest alternative routs to jammed streets.

(Via ArabCrunch Arabic Edition)

in Arabic English and French. But the concentration is in Arabic. Especially the voice over:)Birdy Nam Nam is an iPhone/iPad game that was released by Lebanese developers Wryb Tech few months ago in beta mood as phase of collecting data and feedbacks.

Recently the game is officially launched the developers amended it, added more levels, weapons, character, they also amended the gameplay and revised the sound effects etc…

Here is the story of the game:

Early 2011, a group of Arab scientists in Dubai started experimenting a new drug on all kinds of birds; the drug was intended to turn birds into man’s best friend… They would clean the house, wash the dishes, do the laundry, cook healthy meals… Well simply make man’s life easier!

Everything was going well until something went terribly wrong, and the drug had a side effect which transformed those chicken into killing machines.

Without mercy, they fled the labs and started attacking Dubai, seeking for revenge. Their plan was simple : WORLD DOMINATION!

As the world was falling apart, people were crazily afraid and the fate of the human race was sealed: there was no escape from annihilation… Until a hero rose from the ashes, determined to fight back and save Humanity!

The player takes the role of the hero whose mission is to fight the birds invasion in a quest around the Middle East. The player will try to shote hostile birds, using many weapons and methods, even strategy for the advanced levels.

The game has 19 Levels including KSA, UAE, Beirut, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Qatar, etc.. We did not play the game because we do not have an iPhone but we liked it idea.

The game is available in iPhone and iPad iOS 3.2.2 or later on the iTunes app store. The game is in Arabic English and French. But the concentration is in Arabic. Especially the voice over:

And here is the game video from the developers:




Amman, Jordan based Noqoush Mobile Media Group, the Arab company specialized in mobile advertising and mobile media monetization, reported that it has closed first 3 million US dollar investment round.

In a press release the company stated that a group of Arab and Foreign angel investors lead the round but did not disclose who ( we will try to get their names.)

The company said that the round will be used to help Noqoush with developing its mobile advertising technology “AdFalcon”, what it describes “the region’s first specialized advertising platform developed to link mobile applications developers, mobile website owners with advertisers to provide them with the a chance to achieve financial returns.” Something that sounds similar to US based Admob which was founded by Syrian entrepreneur Omar Hamoui and was acquired by Google in 2009 for 750 million dollars.
We have little information about Noqoush, it said in the press release that it was founded in 2010. A linkedin profile for Mahmoud Iswaid from Jordan stats that he is a cofounder in the company, he previously worked with Yahoo and Maktoob before its acquisition by Yahoo. We will try to get more information and update you here.