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.

Almost every day there is a new technical term in english, Mustalahatek aims to be the place to provide translations to those terms into Arabic.

In Mustalahatek users can add terms and add translation to each term. If one term had more than one translation, users can vote the best translation and the most voted will be used.

The site is still in beta, and it needs to improve  its UI as it is not users friendly. However this project is much needed project in order to spread IT knowledge among the Arab communities as translating Arabic terms makes it easier for users who do not know english well.

The revolution has succeed in Egypt by ousting the US government poppet, the dictator Husni Mubarak. Though the transition period did not end yet. The Army is in command paving the way to elected president and parliament, but there are forces who try to launch counter revolution.

The former regime in Egypt relied in 2 forces the corrupt members of its National Democratic Party (NDP) and State Security Investigative (SSI) or in Arabic AmenDawla, SSI was trained by the FBI as Wikileaks cables reveal and was working as a torture heaven for the CIA. Both of SSI and NDP existence was based on corruption, torture, spying on the Egyptian people and illegal methods to achieve unjust objectives.

Many members of NDP and SSI members are not happy about new Egypt because corrupt people like them have no place in post revolution Egypt. Many reports from Egypt suggest that remnants from both forces are trying to hijack the revolution by acts of bullying theft and so forth. Not to mention drug gangs who are taking advantage of power vacuum in some places on the country.

Here comes Zabatak which means I caught ou as a platform to eliminate corruption incidents which would help clean Egypt from such evil behavior.

On Zabatak user can report theft, bribery, violence, and commercial cheating incidents from the web or via an android app. Moreover users can pinpoint the location of the corruption incident and the site owners say they will report to authorities to take action.

The site also offers custom email alerts about incidents from certain locations and it is integrated with Google maps.

You may question that some users can abuse the system. Well, first users can vote each incident up or down and I think since each incident can be verified and investigated then abuse would be minimal.

One of the incidents that related to tech is about corruption case against Arab Science Foundation (ASTF), the report says forgery, theft and firing employes happened at the NGO, plus not reporting on foreign Aid ( disclaimer: we could not verify this report.)
Corruption is wide spread in the Arab world among the oppressive regimens who rely in AmnDawla (ISS) copycats to oppress the population. I hope that reform comes to the rest of the Arab world, all AmnDawla copycats are dismantled and we  will see projects such as Zabatak in every Arab country.

Zabataj uses open source Ushahidi platform

iWasinTahrir.com is an initiative designed to allow visitors who witnessed Egypt’s uprising against the Mubarak regime, to leave their mark in history; Something like a virtual online “Million Man March”.

It’s a place where all Egyptian revolutionaries can leave their mark in a more personal manner, and to share their experiences with the whole world and future generations to come. It also has a digital memorial – Martyrs Flag – for all Egyptian Martyrs – we consider them as such and God is the decider- who died while freeing their country, Egypt.

The web site displays a view of Tahrir Square in Cairo which was the center of the revolution that freed egypt from a dictator, all you have to do is point at one of the flags and upload you pic and add your mark. You can also search for users based email or name. By clicking on each flag you get the names of people who were there or signed up their mark, click on the name to view their mark to history and to see their pic.

The site is a creation of 2 egyptian companies PULSE and ICON CREATIONS production.

The group buying startups spree are everywhere now a days in the Arab world, we have Cobone based in UAE from Jabbar group now operates in Amman, Jordan, Dubai, Sharija and Abu Dhabi in UAE, Beirut in Lebanon, cobone plans to expand to Cairo and other cities in GCC region. GoNanbit funded by Bayt and based also in UAE also operates in the cities that cobone operates in plus Kuwait city , we have offerna from Egypt which is covers Cairo and we have Groupon opening a branch in Dubai, UAE and operates in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

The new addition to group buying startups is Hmizate from Morocco who is targeting the Moroccan market with deals and discounts from many shops in Casablanca.

Like the others, Hmizate offers deals every several days with deep discounts to shops and restaurants that you can earn if enough people joined the deal. Say 10 people must commit to buying the deal in order for it to happen and you get charged only when the deal is complete.

The startup founder Kamal Reggad told us that his startup Hmizate has 100 000 subscriber and has raised funding from Himvest Holding a private company in morocco that operates in different sectors; advertising, real estate, energy… which recently started a fund for tech startups.

We do not know how much did Mmizate raised, however we sent an email to Kamal and we will update you here once he answers.

Update: Kamal declined to tell us how much they were funded.

If you grow up in the Arab world you remember growing on TV cartoon series such as Adnan wa Lina, Grendizer and Abtal Al-Mala3ib . Istikana offers you the online place to view on demand the complete episodes of such series for free.

The site has a wide variety of shows that span from, Drama, Cartoon, Theater, Comedy to Religious.

According to the site’s cofounder Samer Abdin all the site’s content is legal and licensed either direct from the content owner, or an authorized MENA re-seller.

Legal video content platforms is not new to the Arab world, there are Egypt based Forga, Shahid from Dubai based MBC group and Shofha from Egypt based LinkDotNet. While Shahid main focus is offering MBC’s run Series and movies free on demand, and Shofha on movies and Series licensed from variety of sources such as Rottan where users have to pay to buy or rent movies and shows and view them on the site or download them. Istikana focus on Arabic classical shows and offer them for free and on demand. As for Forga it offers movies, series, trailers, video clips and actors’ profiles, though most of the content Forga has are modern movies and much less content for series, we found only 2 of them!

Istikana business model according to Abdin is based on advertising as the site currently run display ads and in-video pre roll ads.

The classical Arabic video on demand service is founded by Samer Abdin and Tareq Abu-Lughod and is self funded but it also has received early angel investment from a Googoglar Sami Shalabi.

The site enables users to embed videos on any web page here is the first episode of Grendizer:



“What do you wish for?” Hany Rashwan, a 20-year-old Egyptian studying Computer Science at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, recently launched Kolena.org to allow users in post-revolution Egypt to discuss their answers to this question. Rashwan envisions Kolena, a word that means “all of us” in Arabic, as “Egypt’s online interactive Town Hall Meeting…a place for people to go to submit and vote on ideas for change.”

The importance of social media in the recent Egyptian Revolution has been a subject of debate, yet Rashwan’s project looks to position online activism at the center of Egypt’s ongoing reform process. After its first week, Kolena has attracted over forty reform proposals, distributed across categories such as Foreign Affairs, Religious Affairs, Justice, and Economic Development.

Kolena users have the ability to submit ideas for reform via their Facebook profiles, as well as respond to the ideas of others by voting them up or down in terms of importance. “Better Public Schools” currently ranks at the top of its composite list.

One challenge faced by social networks such as Twitter and Facebook is the difficult task of organizing user-generated information. Individuals have trouble rallying around specific reform projects in such an environment, however Kolena’s ranking system has the potential to foster organized and democratic political action. The site’s staff also filters posts in order to address spam and duplicates.

Until now, users on Kolena have focused on goals such as “Better Public Schools” rather than the tangible steps necessary to achieve them. This initial dialogue is an important part of any reform process and it will be interesting to see if the site evolves to directly impact political discourse in Egypt in the future. For now, Kolena.org is an idea-gatherer rather than an idea-generator. Will the Arab world take advantage of this new platform?

Rashwan was reached via email and expressed interest in expanding his site to other Arab countries.