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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Info2cell.com, one of the Arab region oldest mobile service application provider in the Middle East, has announced the recent launch of 3ala TV ( means on TV), a specially-designed interactive TV guide website – for users to find selected TV channel schedules and information about their favorite shows and actors. Users can also sign in the website for the latest news, read blogs and also participate in live forums.

Moreover, users can also create their own pages and select their favourite actors or TV programs, while also being able to add friends, who are already registered on this website, to their page.
The site competes with Jordan based IV Holdings funded startup ShooFeeTV. Having a quick look at 3alaTV, you find that ShooFeeTV is richer with information about programs and TV channels.

As in most countries in the world Ramadan is one day to start. a new startup has emerged to provide Islamic mobile apps for all devices. which would be handy to help Muslims during the holly month.

Islamic Appstore provide Muslims direct access to thousands of Islam-oriented contents in different sections such as The Holy Quran, Ahadith, Prayers, Supplications, Ringtones, Wallpapers, nasheed… All what users need is to connect to www.islamicapp.com using their mobile, tablet or Smartphone browsers and start downloading various contents.

Islamic appstore is also available for Developers as they can start publishing their contents and apps using the developer portal.

Scapehouse is a new social media site that might a little bet late to the Google+ game. the startup comes with a new vision for online discussion,

On facebook people share stuff with their friends only, on Twitter the game is different, people share with their followers who do not have to be their friends.

Scapehouse brings both: users can share stuff with their friends only or with friends and followers, something that is close to the idea of Google+ main feature: circles. The site brings full news feed page, where users activities of commenting or liking an update is visible.

Unlike Twitter, updating a post is not limited to 140 characters, and users can comment on each update in a chronicle order and can like or dislike it. Resharing an update is also available on Scapehouse and can be shared with friends only or with both friends and followers, with the option to add comment of the shared content.

Abdullah Khan cofounder of site who is the from Karachi Pakistan and currently lives in UAE told AC that they have been working on the site 6 months now and have launched in beta around 2 months ago, before Google+. ( the other cofounder is Ali Razzouk : From Aleppo Syria, Living in Dubai UAE.)

Now that Google+ has gained 10 million users in 2 weeks since its launch, Scapehouse has a challenging time to compete, But it was a nice idea nevertheless. Would you use it?

Humans do make mistakes. and the media is not an excpetion, even NY Times was once misinformed about a story.

This might be the first time we post wrong information. We posted that Aranim which is founded by the son of Jordan’s current prime minster “Suleiman Bakhit” has launched the Arabic FarmVille Clone “the happy farm.”. But Aranim connected us via Twitter saying that they are not associated with the game. Suleiman informed via Twitter that the game that is associated with Aranim is “Happy Oasis.”

So we apologies to Aranim, Suliman and to our readers and we will make sure mistakes like this do not happen again.

On Happy farm users build farms grow crops harvest them to get more coins and share gifts with friends. Users can also use Facebook credit to buy more coins ( buying extra credit seems how they are going to make revenues.) While Happy Oasis uses an Arabic character to grow an Oasis and harvest its crops.

In general International startups are not encouraged to copy International ventures, however in some cases having an Arabic clone or a clone with a true local touch and feel works. Take GoNabit for example which ended being acquired by LivingSocial.

I think Happy Farm and Happy Oasis  might be hit in the Arab world.

The interest in learning Arabic in the world has increased in the last decade, specially in in USA. There many reasons behind “why” many are learning or interested in learning the language. Some are Muslim reverts who do not know Arabic and want to learn it in order to better understand Quran and Hadith. Some are CIA/FBI agents who want to learn it for their spying, interrogation job, or when coordinating with other tyrant Arab secret police agents. Some work with the US army and want to learn it to deal with Arabs in occupied areas such as Iraq. Others are Middle East university stream students and want to learn it as it is part of their studies. and there are others who are not Muslims and who just want to learn it because they are fascinated with Arabic and the Arab world.

Whatever was the reason, Arabic Coach provides the platform to connect anyone who wants to learn Arabic from around the world with native Arab teachers from the Arab world.

The site offers those who want to study Arabic the option to browse teachers see their profile, video intro and ratting, then they can schedule virtual teaching sessions with the desired teachers, conducted via Skype or Yahoo messenger.

Each teacher can determine his own hourly rate. in which the student has to pay, Arabic Coach takes 20% fee from each teacher. Teachers are provided with a suggested curriculum, lesson plans, and assessment tools, but they have the freedom to use their own methods. All teachers go through a screening session before their profile goes live.

Syrian animation startup OX Animation has launched Anmish, a do-it-your-self video animation creation.

On Anmish users can choose from various ready-made collection of caricatures of famous figures in the world to create animations. After choosing the caricature you can record a voice over and play with the different emotions for the character such as close up shot, medium shot, full shot, Happy, sad and any, hit save and your done.

Here is an animation for Hillary Clinton I created and one for Gaddafi. It would be helpful if OX Animation add embed option to the videos.

achtART is an E-Commerce site for Arts and Crafts says it aims at helping regional and Lebanese artists and crafts-people showcase their artistic creations through an online platform and offer those creations for sale.

The site showcase artists products according to the category they belong to: paintings, home/ office accessories, design jewelry, wooden structures, not for profit, furnitures and fashion accessories.

Like any other e-commerce site achtART allows you to view items with their price add them to shopping cart and buy them at checkout. The website also features some of its artists.

The site has a nice concept but since it is about art, I think it should improve its design and UI.

Jabbar group is expanding the companies it invest in to include now Joob.

Joob is like Expedia but with focus in the Arab world, it enables you to search for flights from one destination with the option in filtering them by price, number of stops, airlines, time of the day.

The site also allows you to search hotels and filter them by hotel rating, price, Amenities, name and neighborhood.

The site is in English and Arabic and still in beta mood.