As an estimated three million pilgrims have gathered yesterday on the plains of Arafat in Mecca for a key rite of Hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage. Worldwide, around two billion Muslims are celebrating the holiday known as Eid Al Adha.

In this occasion ArabCrunch greets every Muslims worldwide: Eid Mubarak and may God bless you. And for our readers who are not Muslim, we say: Happy Saturated and may God guide you and us to the best.

You’ll find interesting information about the holiday of Eid-ul-Adha and about the Hajj at the following links.

-Eid-ul-Adha (the Festival of Sacrifice) is celebrated throughout the Muslim world as a commemoration of Prophet Ibrahim’s (PBUH) willingness to sacrifice his son for God. Eid-ul-Adha is celebrated on the tenth day of the month of Zul-Hijja.

-The Hajj, or pilgrimage to Makkah is a central duty of Islam whose origins date back to the time of Prophet Ibrahim (PBUH). It brings together Muslims of all races and tongues for one of life’s most moving spiritual experiences. For 14 centuries, countless millions of Muslims, men and women from all over the world, have made the pilgrimage to Makkah, the birthplace of Islam. In carrying out this obligation, they fulfill one of the five “pillars” of Islam, or central religious duties of the believer.
(source:�Ummah 2.o)

For more detailed explanations of the rich history and traditions of Islam, feel free to visit the following sites:

Islam Guide.

Islam Web

Islamic Tube

Just Quran

Best Islamic Sites

Sisters Magazine

#pic from Aljazeera English.

On Wednesday dozens of mental health doctors in the general secretary of mental health in Cairo Egypt protested in front of Abasia hospital against transferring Dr. Basma El Aziz manager of media at the secretary to investigation, after she issued a statement that rejected transferring political activists and those with opposing opinion to mental health hospital.

This comes after transferring Egyptian blogger Maikel Nabel to a mental hospital, he was sentenced of 3 years in person over charges of insulting the military on a tweet. Maikel was sentenced by an Egyptian Military court and he was on hunger strike since then.

Maikel is one of more than 10,000 Egyptians tried by military court since Mubarak’s ouster, according to human rights groups.

One of the tactics used by tyrant regimes is to accuse its opponents, journalists and others of being mentally ill. In many cases mental doctors work as undercover agents for secret police to pass whatever they like or they would be subject to blackmail.

This story reminds us of some suspicious people who wrongly accused ArabCrunch founder Gaith Saqer of being mentally ill after the site last year revealed parts of governments plots against the site and free media.

#image credit.

Tech bloggers and the media in the recent weeks were busy pointing out the conflict of interest TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington and his the blog standing as he has founded a Venture Capital fund “Crunch Fund”. As he would favor some startups and companies he funds over the others.

But that was not the only conflict of interest the site suffered from. As it stands in favor of Jews. Israel and it expressed in multiple times its hate to Islam. ArabCrunch is not affiliated to techcrunch.

Michael Arrington says he belongs to the Jewish faith, under his leadership his blog was spreading anti ّslam hate posts and pro Israeli propaganda. Often in contradicting stands in a proof to the world its own bias to Israel and Judaism.

Take a look at this post TechCrunch defends the anti Islam movie the “Fitna” and asks Google not to delete it from Youtube as TC writes “What Google does now will be an interesting test for a company that claims “do no evil” as its company mantra” ….”so ultimately it will be up to Google to decide between free speech and global jihad.”

I watched the movie the Fitna, its full of baseless lies against Islam calling it a terrorist religion. The maker of the movie takes scripts of the Quran out of context and takes some Sheikhes speeches out of context too, to prove that Islam is a religion of terror, that wants to kill all non Muslims. Which is totally untrue and even AlQaeda does not even carry such believe.

So according to TechCrunch publishing a video that is full of lies against Islam is “free speech,” but when it comes to Jews, free speech is not free speech anymore: In one post Arrington asks Facebook to delete groups that question the holocaust. Saying that Facebook is not subject to free speech. “The first amendment doesn’t apply to private companies.” ( an excuse often used by some Jews in tech forums to justify deleting other anti Israeli terrorism)  and goes on to say in this post and other posts, that Facebook should take a stand “firm against racial and religious hatred.”

Even worse, TechCrunch in this post questions whether “Islam the new Satanism?”

WOW, so to Arrington to questions the holocaust is racial and religious hatred but to spread lies about Islam and call it a terrorist and a satanic religion is not hatred against religion and an insult against 2 billion Muslims around the world!

In spreading Israeli propaganda, look at titled: “Hello World: Israel is Out-Classing You in Civil Disobedience” were TechCrunch claims that Israel is the most civilized of all countries and nations since the strikes in Israeli occupied cities are non violent and that the Israeli government did not meet them with violence. forgetting that Israeli forces uses violence against “Israeli citizens” of Palestinian origins (both Christens and Muslims) whenever they demonstrate against unjust policies and discrimination by the Israeli government and society. It forgets that “Israel” killed and kills Palestinian men, woman and children in west bank and Gaza in peaceful demonstrations. It forgets that Israel keeps seizing land from its native inhabitants and keeps building settlements, it forgets that Israel killed around 2,000 civilians in its war in gaza, it forgets that Israel does not recognize the right of millions of Palestinians to return to their homes that Israel has forced them while giving a citizenship to any jew, just because he is a jew even though he nor his grand grand parents never even visited Palestine before. and the list keep going ……..

Some pics of Israeli and American forces terrorism in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon:

image credit

Mohammaed Al dura.

Mohammed Al dura.

Sabra and shateal massacre.

American soldiers murdering Iraqis.

I am not questioning here the holocaust, nor saying all jews are evil, but proving here with evidence that TechCrunch under Arrington has been racist and anti Islam, not that every writer at TechCrunch is from this caliber but the above posts proves what TC coverage was over the years is biased when it comes to jews, Israeli and Muslims.

There are many startups founded by jewish entrepreneurs in US or “Israel” that has been covered by TechCrunch, but is TC biased favoring Jewish and Zionist founded or funded startups compared to others from other religious and political backgrounds? taking into account that most VC’s in Silicon Valley are jews? as TC hatred to Islam and its bias with jews in general is evident in in its posts under Arrington’s leadership. We are “suspicions” what do you think?

#Arrington pic,

We have great news, Anas Marwai has been freed in Syria according to Ardriod blog post. Anas Marwai founded Ardroid that specialize with Arabic news and views about Android.

Anas Marwai was arrested in July 2011 with no charges, by the security forces in Syria, obviously for political freedoms.

We do not know if Anas was tortured, this is wide spread in most Arab countries, but even if he was tortured, we do not expect that he would announce it, maybe because he was blackmailed.

Tomorrow is the first day of Ramadan in many countries around the world. In this occasion we send our greetings to all Muslims worldwide and specially AC’s Muslim readers. and to our non Muslim readers of ArabCrunch we also wish you a happy month It is worth mentioning that Ramadan Kareem is trending on Twitter.

As with every year here are some links to websites that help you know more about Islam:

Islam Guide.

Islam Web

Islamic Tube

Just Quran

Best Islamic Sites

Sisters Magazine

#image by Sama.

Wonder why the U.S Government attacked Wikileaks? they claimed it is national security, but the truth is that they did not want the world to know about their crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries, whether it is the number of civilians including children and women the US army and the CIA killed, or to know about illegal torture and rape happing inside CIA and US, Pro US Afghani and PRo US Iraqi detention center, Or how the CIA and US state department conspire with other Muslim and Non-Muslim dictators against people and other countries.

To hide their crimes and mislead the public about the truth the U.S Defense Department extreme technology arm “Darpa” is developing its Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC) program. “It’s an attempt to get better at both detecting and conducting propaganda campaigns on social media. SMISC has two goals. First, the program needs to help the military better understand what’s going on in social media in real time — particularly in areas where troops are deployed. Second, Darpa wants SMISC to help the military play the social media propaganda game itself.” According to wired, SMISC algorithms will be aimed at discovering and tracking the “formation, development and spread of ideas and concepts (memes)” on social media.

The requested SMISC project also needs to be able to seek out “persuasion campaign structures and influence operations” developing across the social sphere.
SMISC will not be about flagging negative content about US and it s army but also to help it in counter-messaging.

SMISC would be used in the environment in which [the military] operates” and where it “conducts operations. Which means according to wired the system will be directed to non U.S social media communities.

Now according to The U.S Smith-Mundt Act pointing propaganda campaigns at US audiences is illegal.

However, this program will definitely cross that line, as with the power of Retweets, reshare on facebook and Google plus. U.S army propaganda will eventually reach US domestic audience and thus mislead them about the conduct of U.S foreign policy.

This is not the first time that a U.S government body has used social media for propaganda purposes. There many incidents that are reported in the media like this one and others that no body outside the spy circle would know about.
Another example, is In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, has invested cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. Visible crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon. Then Visible “scores” each post, labeling it as positive or negative, mixed or neutral. It examines how influential a conversation or an author is. Finally, Visible gives users a chance to tag posts, forward them to colleagues and allow them to response through a web interface.

Also the CIA and Google (shame on Google!) has invested in Recorded Future that scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents — both present and still-to-come.
While it is morally incorrect to lie to anyone and mislead them whether they are Americans or non Americans, we humbly ask congressmen, law makers, activists, net freedom organizations, executive, entrepreneurs and geeks to take action and use Smith-Mundt Act to end US army and the CIA online and social media propaganda efforts because based on that act it is illegal, the public has right to know the truth and free flow of information should be granted. Not lies and deception. to coverup crimes.

It was a dream to me, it was a dream to see Arab corrupt tyrants to fall one after the other. However this comes with a price. First our friend Slim Amumu was arrested in Tunisia (now he is a minister) second Wael Ghonim was arrested in Egypt to be released later. Now the turn is for Syria. Anas Marawai founder of popular Arabic android blog Ardroid has been arrested in Syria since 1/7/2011.

we’ve known Anas over 2 years online but we never met face to face, he helped in ArabCrunch fight to end the US sanctions against Syria, and force linkedin to end its blockhead against Syrian users, in which we succeed.

We ask the Syrian authorities to release Anas immediately and I ask ArabCrunch advisor Abdel Salam Haykal to interferer with the Syrian authorities for his immediate release. We hope he is not tortured and goes back to his family safely.

Friends of Anas launched a campaign online to support his release and we urge ArabCrunch readers to support the effort. And if you are a blogger please go ahead and blog demanding his freedom.

Campaign website

Facebook page

On Twitter use the following hashtag:
#freeAnas

Hold on Anas there are thousands of people with you.

PS: expect me to be the next one arrested.

Update: Zaid Tillawi from Jeeran Marketing told AC that Jeeran is not planning to shut down its blogging platform and that you can create a new blog when you sign up on Jeeran Places.

Amman, Jordan based Jeeran is in route to shut down its blogging platform, it has ended new registration ( registration did not work at our end, Update, you can create a new blog when you sign up on Jeeran Places.) and expected to shut down its blogging platform all together soon later. It has moved its Music site to bandoora. The site has redefined it self as a site for local reviews and discussions.

Now when going to Jeeran you can go to local communities in Amman the capital of Jordan, Riyadh , jeddah , Damam and Khubar in Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Dubai in UAE and Kuwait city in Kuwait .

Each city site includes a directory of places in services, restaurants, electronics and so on. Users can review each place and join discussions about their local communities. All current Jeeran cities are in Arabic except Dubai and Abu Dhabi as foreign expats are the majority in these 2 cities.

Jeeran places competes with Saudi Startup Qaym in terms that it provides a section for restaurants reviews, Kuwaiti restaurant review site Yallawain and fast restaurants numbers finder Tasree3.

Jeeran is backed by investments from Intel Capital and Jordan based VC IV Holdings. To read about Jeeran’s history you can go here.

Is it a smart move for jeeran to end its blogging, video and photo sharing platform?

Once a week we introduce our sponsors to our readers and let them know a little more about who they are and what they do and what they have to offer. You can say thanks to the companies that make ArabCrunch happen by checking their respective website.

ArabCrunch is the #1 source for Arab tech startups, companies, social media and mobile. Interested in being a ArabCrunch sponsor? Our readers are smart, tech-savvy decision makers from the tech led community. To find out more about our sponsor packages, visit our advertising page or email us.

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Seems that Wikileaks started something that can not be stopped, clone versions of the site are poping everywhere in order to expose governments corruption.

Latest of them is a site called KSA Leaks which is being hosted on blogger and posting leaks about what is happening in the Saudi kingdom.
Currently the site displays what documents of corruption at some of Saudi Arabia official and private media.

The Arabic sites has been reported to be blocked in Saudi Arabia by Twitter users, we could not confirm that.

The US State Department entered into competition against ArabCrunch with very “fair terms” under the pretext of “helping Muslims.” As part of the Obama’s Promise and engagement plans for entrepreneurship and tech innovation in the Muslim world as a new pillar to fight “extremism” or “terrorism”. And After we posted about a leak from sources with relevance to both US department of Defense and US State Department about the US administration plans to destroy Arabcrunch of “if we do not join them, they will destroy you”( The leaks are security level leaks to the US administration.) A wave of social media propaganda started against ArabCrunch on Twitter and elsewhere offline.

The main allegation is that “we come to ArabCrunch to read tech news not politics.” some said ” I was a fan, now you lost me, forever”!!

Where were these people when we covered Obama’s entrepreneurship summit? Or when we covered the Arab funds that got funded by the US government?? These posts were not political too? the US administration is political in nature? Where were these people who attended the event with Obama along with US intelligence officials? this is not politics! No this is just “business”!!! Why they were fans at the time and now “No more?”

As we started to reveal more of the plots committed by the CIA, Mossad and the global Zionist movement to bring us down, the social media propaganda campaign grow. Now we see more blog posts by low level unpopular blogs attacking ArabCrunch and its founder with whatever they can by calling our posts as “rants” “ArabCrunch is a personal blog, no more professional” they are hallucinating. “He needs series help!!!”

Why now? why would these people take the effort and time to come and attack ArabCrunch with such a cheap way?

Well, most of the propagandist are Arabs or who have fake Arabic profile on Twitter. non of these people ArabCrunch attacked by name before, while some are self confessed Zionists and “Israelis”, So why they are attacking us?

Very simple reason, most of these people are paid social media mercenaries,  all these tweets, blog posts with “ready made thread of comments” are mostly a propaganda campaign designed to mislead the public about the authority and credibility of ArabCrunch that it took us about 2,5 years of hard-work at night and at sun light. Why they are misleading the public?

This CIA leaked document shows that the US intelligence had plans to destroy Wikileaks since 2009 by attacking its heart which is its “trust,” so people around the world specially Americans discredit any leak on wikileaks as fake and not true!

So these people where just misleading the public to cover the crimes the CIA and Zionism committed against ArabCrunch and other Muslim independent websites. Whether it is an intentional move by most or unintentional by a few, who were miss lead by those poppets.

One of the tweets of the people who was tweeting with enthusiasm against us (claiming to be fans and then swithcing sides later!!) “made fun” of a certain Arab ruling family member linking them to ArabCrunch. In that country and by law insulting members of the ruling family means jail for about 2 years. The guy and those who Retweeed after him is never prosecuted and never go to jail!!!

We totally condemn that tweet and totally disagree with it and we wont link the person or the tweet here so we do not get into trouble by “miss understanding us” from the authorities in that country. However these are one of the attempts to bring trouble to us by any means possible.

Look at this Tweet here:

Mustapha said he never heard of ArabCrunch untill the other guy wrote “some propoganda” in his post about us, and he found us “a bunch of loonies.” Yet he has been following or knew about AC from at least 2009 as this Tweet reveals: (sorry Mustapha we had to link your Tweet, it was public)

To political and media observers, these propaganda campaigns are very old school tactics that are not new to the US administration, CIA, Mossad and Zionism and their history of blackmailing anyone who “do not join the good effort.” or “the good fight for the good cause!”

The US administration and hillary clinton has a history in misleading the public and launching propaganda against its enemies or rivals or basically anyone who “do not join.” In technology the hypocrisy was very clear when Hillary attacked China for infiltrating China’s regime oppositions’ email account on Gmail and called for Internet freedom in her speech. as she said
“We stand for a single Internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas,” citing China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt among the countries that censored the Internet or harassed bloggers!

Yet on the same day, the US administration goes and orders the largest open source software repository online, sourceforge, to ban 120 million innocent people in Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Syria and Sudan from downloading open source software. In yet another contradiction of the open source principals: of No discrimination against persons or groups or Fields of Endeavor!

In China Google shuts down its offices and rally the world, the pretext “free speech,” yet in our case, CIA and Zionism have freehand to accesses our email on google! no security, no privacy to sites that are from the Muslim world!

It is worth mentioning here for the sake of disclosure that Google founders Sergey Mikhaylovich Bri and Larry Page are both Jewish.While ArabCrunch founder is Muslim, Arab and a proud Jordanian his father is originally from Gaza strip of Palestine which is occupied by “Israel” a jewish run state.

The US government have a history in attacking free-media that expose its crimes against humanity, Aljazeera was bombed before and its staff were murdered by the hands of US warrplanes.

Here is also a video of how US government treats journalists from Reuters:

We know some will come and say, “who is ArabCrunch compared to Aljazeera? or Wikileaks? Wikileaks is leaking sensitive data that “are deemed” threat to the US national security by exposing informants names! ArabCrunch is a tech blog not a political blog.” Some others said “what you are doing is propaganda to gain popularity” while others said ” You failed and this is to cover your failure.” another new soft attacks by both some Arabs and Zionests “we are unfollowing ArabCrunch because it is now a political blog.”

We refuted at the beginning of this post the political allegations, but we do not know which is true “are we losing popularity because we uncovered parts of the CIA and Zionists plots against ArabCrunch, or are we gaining??” Did we fail or are you at our glory?

Again all these claims are designed to mislead and confuse the silent majority of mostly American and European men and woman who refuse tyranny and blackmail to stop following ArabCrunch and to discredit us from any credibility with multiple contradicting claims and deceptions!

Its 100% true that our resources are not a match at any level to those who attacked us and to those of the US federal government or to those of the Zionist moment. We do not have half a billion to spend to buy one of the world’s top hosting companies. We can not pressure governments or orchestrate coupes ( even if we did we will never.) But our operational costs are low, even though the attackers are making their best to cut any chance of our growth or existence. Whether they are sources of news or revenues that can cover our costs. But our traffic is all times high, Generally, success or failure of any websites is based on traffic growth and We got that! All the thanks to God and then to you the reader. But US Admin is pressuring advertisers not to advertise on ArabCrunch.

It is true that we are not at the size of Aljazeera, it is true we are not a political blog, which we were wondering why would they attack us? are we a threat to US national Security? Are we a threat to Zionist Security and control on the world? We are not terrorists for sure, we have a nobel cause in helping entrepreneurs and geeks in the Muslim world and all over the world. But the CIA, Mossad or Zionism do not just attack or try to recruit political figures or Main stream TV stations in the Muslim world. Or only head of states. If you read the Entrepreneurship in Banana republic post you will know that they try to recruit or attack businesses and the media. The Social media front is nothing new to them with their attacks on Millatfacebook.

To conclude, one of the claims is that Arabs live under “conspiracy theory” and that ” in that part of the world ( Muslim world) often when they fail, they start to play the victim side!”

The truth is that conspiracy theory is no more theory when facts in the ground exist, conspiracy is lived everyday in the Muslim world, Why Palestinians were driven from their homes and land confiscated on almost daily bases? Why Palestinian Muslims and Christen woman and men are humilated in Israeli prisons and check points every day? Are they super powers? are they not victims or are the playing the victim side? did the 2 million innocent Iraqi children, women, men and the elderly, plaid the victim side? when the US federal government war machine systematically murdered all of them?

We have no political affiliations at ArabCrunch nor an ideology, we don’t consider anyone as enemy even the US administration and for sure we do not enjoy writing about the CIA Mossad and Zionism plots against us.

But we have the right to expose those who attack us and inform the public about “how things are being done with Obama’s promise to the Muslims world.” ArabCrunch was not the only site whose leadership is from an independent Muslim and Arab background, Millatfacebook was attacked by the same group: CIA and Zionism.

We want peace and we do not want to be involved in any politics, we are not just another commercial startup, ArabCrunch is a cause, our mission is to drive entrepreneurship and tech innovation in the Muslim world and the globe. And this mission requires to inform the public how things are being done in these 2 frontiers.

We are not anti- American or Anti Semitic, we are anti- injustice tyranny and blackmail of special interests at the US government. “Israel” is put into quotations simply because that area is a conflict area, this is not a political statement.

We understand carefully that CIA and Zionism will launch a strong retaliation against AC and Gaith Saqer bigger than just tweets for exposing their crimes and find out who our sources of leaks are. The nature of retaliation will be the usual fabrication of crimes that often happen to political opposition in most third world countries. When that time comes ( seems very soon), then the same people ( and new faces) who launched these smear propaganda against AC and its founder, will come yet again, to justify every byte of the fabrication.

There have been some confusion among some our followers on Twitter and facebook about our tweets since we recently started to share our readers’ comments on ArabCrunch English and Arabic.

Yes, we started to tweet our readers’ comments on ArabCrunch via our Twitter account, but that does not mean we necessarily agree with them, it is just to inform our Twitter followers of these comments and to offer our readers more visible voice. If anyone do not like the comment, he/she is welcomed to comment back on ArabCrunch.

Normally when we share a reader’s comment, we start the tweet with “comment” or “commenter” or the user name depending in how best we can shrink the tweet into 140 characters, the limit that Twitter offers.

On the Retweeting: We do retweet tweets from our followers and other places around the web, again that does not mean that we necessarily agree with the content of the tweet or the post. It is just that we find the Tweet or the post worth sharing or think it is of interest to read, again that does not mean we necessarily agree with the tweet’s content in fact in many occasions we do not. Example, if we stumbled into a post about “how Communists work with technology,” that does not mean we are communist, in fact we are NOT and we DO NOT have any political ideology or bias at ArabCrunch. But it would be of interest to know how communists use or work with technology.

This also applies to our facebook page, as we also started to share with our followers some of our users’ comments and other posts from around the web.

At personal user level, people need to note that if a person “Likes” a page or an update on facebook, it does not necessarily mean he/she really “likes” everything in that page or update, he might disagree with the whole update. But since Facebook does not have the text option of “follow” status update or “follow” a page many people will think that this person truly likes this page because the word is “liked”, which in many cases is not true. As again it might be something he/she likes to share or follow, however in other occasions he might truly like that post or update.

We hope this post clarifies some of the confusion about the stuff we share on Twitter and facebook.

Thanks,

After we posted about Hillary Clinton’s and the U.S Department of State plans to enter into competition with ArabCrunch with a new project under the U.S department website. As part of the US government engagement plans for entrepreneurship in the Muslim world ,  as a new pillar to fight “extremism” or “terrorism” as the U.S administration says.

A lot of people misunderstood the issue as ArabCrunch is against competition.  The conversation about the issue dragged by some people  ”intentionally or unintentionally” away from the main points .

We are not against competition, in fact we already have competitors in different fronts and many of them are our friends, and many of us supported each other in different ways, competition is healthy and helps everyone innovate. History also has examples that even giants at the size of Google fail to compete with solid startup such Youtube.

But Google is not the U.S federal government. What we are against is unfair competition, the point about US Department of State entering in competition against ArabCrunch is that it is not just against free market principles, as our sources who are close to the US Department of Defense and the US State Department has informed us that if we do not join the US government effort, they will destroy “you.”

We already said “NO” to Greg Behrman Member of US State Department Policy Planning Staff about his “Collaborating” idea, as the term sounds like become “our spy.” And personally I hate that type of “business” “whether it is Evil “business” or whether “it is ethical and its ends and means are justified “. However, Craig might not “necessarily” mean “become our spy.”

To those who do not know,  The Washington Post recently published a web report about the size of the Intelligence community in USA alone, it includes about 1 million people and thousands of locations and companies that are used as a “cover” for secret operations.

Out side USA, the CIA reach is even bigger, they are “almost” in every country and the nature of their job is covered. Meaning they do not have the CIA banner on their T-shirts. You can use google for more info.

We are not here commenting whether the large size of the US intelligence community is justified or not, or whether all its operations are ethical or not, we are here just stating facts.

Some people have told us that there are many ways the CIA “might” hurt the writer of this blog post and ArabCrunch, “for example”, a small DDoS attack to divert attention from something else. US government pressure on certain other governments that would make life harder for us as another “example.” – PS: “example” does not necessarily means it really happened.”

That is why I talked about unfair competition and being “concerned”, their resources and reach is beyond mine or that of ArabCrunch at any standard. Even if the U.S Federal government resources put into this are not “massive.”

This is not a nationalistic feeling, it is not Arabs against America or Americans, or East VS. West, No. It is true that I am not American but a Jordanian citizen, even if I was an American citizen it would not be fare at any measure.

This is about  injustice and liberty.

At ArabCrunch we do not consider Americans as enemies at all, we do not consider any nation as enemy, we do not have this nonsense views. In fact we plan to increase our coverage of International & U.S startups, and more startup events not justs in the Arab world but also in USA and Europe to help drive innovation and create jobs. Again we have no political agendas at ArabCrunch or political opinions.

We are NOT anti-american as a certain “person” accused me wrongly before, at ArabCrunch and me have many American friends, and many of them have helped us in different ways. We admire innovative companies  in USA such as Google, Twitter, Gowalla and Facebook ( but not all Facebook practices) and we admire the entrepreneurship drive and culture in Silicon Valley.

I am not afraid as I wrongly stated, but “concerned”, again we have no plans in considering the US Federal government as an “enemy”, even  ”if” they do, or “if” “certain parties inside it do” or “is miss informed”. And I do believe that whats some people accuse some US federal government personnel of being “evil”  or “poppets to certain lobbies ”  is not necessarily true. I am sure many  people have good “intentions.”

But at least in technology, Hillary Clinton has proven before to be saying something and then doing something else. As with the case of China , Source Forge and around 120 million innocent people in South Korea, Cuba, Iran, Syria and Sudan who were banned from the freedom to code freely. And the US president Obama has wrongly before called social media as “a distraction”, even though it was one of the reasons behind the success of his presidential campaign. Social Media includes blogs personal, corporate or professional, such as ArabCrunch.

The Guardian reported that earlier this year, “Wikileaks published a US military document which disclosed a plan to “destroy the centre of gravity” of Wikileaks by attacking its trustworthiness.”

We said before there are plots from different directions against ArabCrunch, we are not at liberality “now ” in identifying more info.

At ArabCrunch we are not “yet” mainstream, but we are not “nothing” as certain “parties” suggested, the fact is we are growing day after day and moth over month, and we have been for a while and still the #1 tech, startups and social media blog from the Arab world, our worldwide ranking according to invesp is number 6 worldwide in innovation and e-commerce categories and 10th in startups. Our ranking is ahead of entrepreneurship blogs from icons such as Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and Forbes. ( taking into account that investp does not measure our RSS subscribers from Feedoor which we still use for now and that our monthly visits is much much more than what invesp reports.)

Again, we do not have political comments so we are not commenting whether George Bush is a great man or not or if Obama is a great man or not, but Bush said once “with us or against us”, we are not commenting whether this saying was applied before or still applies to the current Obama’s administration’s policy. But does this saying apply to the technology industry and entrepreneurship in the Arab and Muslim world? and to ArabCrunch? Is the U.S government “engagement plans” will be “positive” to everyone?  Even to those who refuse to join? or criticize “wrongly or rightly” ? The near and mid term future has more answers!

Yesterday I received many calls asking me about our sources who are close to the U.S State Department and the U.S Department of Defense who have informed us that if you do not find ways to collaborate with the U.S State Department, they will destroy “you.”

I am not at libirty to provide “sources” of anything of relevance to anyone. and I hope the following comment at the previous post that sounded from someone from “certain secret intelligence community” has any implications to my  personal freedom and  safety:

“Well obviously I think there is always room for such articles in the tech world. Specially when it’s on “the right” side.
Thanks for the writer and the people who commented. As long as, this topic remains here in this page “only” its no big deal. We can move on, just knowing what we had to know.
Thanks for the update “

#Images by: merfam, Ben Fredericson and Marco Bellucci.

Tweetmeme has been an innovative startup, its Retweet button that allows people to Retweet any story  ( repost to their Twitter stream) has been installed  according to the company by over  200,000 websites ( we are one of them.)

Just about now I tried to reweet an Arabic story and found out the tweet is tranlsated into English like this:

This is annoying because the content is in Arabic and I want to tweet  Arabic posts in Arabic not in English where non Arab speakers who follow me or other users on Twitter would click on the link, thinking this is an English post but come to see Arabic text that they can not read,  as tweetmeme bit.ly links do not use google translate to translate the whole post . Which I hope this won’t be the case in the future since Google translate has a horrible Arabic to English translation.

So I think the best way is to disable translation of post title by default but allow users to get translation it if they want to. As for now user can pass this non sense translation by clicking English to Arabic in the REtweet popup.

Nevertheless the new good thing of the new Retweet buttons is that they are now translated into 7 languages English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Portuguese. Tweetmeme  says that they will open a new section to crowed source translation into other languages.

You’re an entrepreneur and just launched or want to launch the business of your dreams but don’t know the first thing about how to leverage the Internet to empower your business?

This series of guides is for you!  This is the third part of our “Get on the Web: A Guide to the non-techie Entrepreneur”, and it covers why a having a blog can help your business.  You can read Part I: Domain Names & Hosting Explained here and Part 2: Power Your Business Email with Google Apps here.

The “I don’t have anything to say” Syndrome

This is the answer I get from most people, when I urge them to setup a blog.  Perhaps they think that by “blog”, I mean “talk about something personal”, and think no one would want to know about “insignificant” pieces of information about their daily life.

A blog is about one main thing: sharing knowledge, but if you think blogging about how good your “mansaf” (منسف) was, is a subject some people would like to read about, then you may as well go for it, and invite me over the next time please.

On a serious note though, think of a blog as a podium (and quite a comfortable one if you’re blogging while relaxing on your couch and in your sweats rather than in a suit).  What is it you would do if you were given the chance to stand up on a podium and give a lecture to a massive audience (besides freaking out of course):  one way of going about it is to share with the audience something you’ve learned over the course of your career.  Perhaps a good proportion of your audience will know most of what you’re talking about, but our experiences are so different, that you’re bound to find plenty of subjects, situations, things you learnt which helped you in your line of business, which others will find useful.

Positioning, Engagement of Audience and Updates

A blog therefore allows you to educate your audience, providing lessons, tips, tricks, landmines to avoid, whatever your field may be.

When you do this on a regular basis, a blog positions you as an expert, thus helping build your online reputation.

You get to engage with your audience better: accept comments from readers, reply to them, listen to what people think of your ideas, seek advice or feedback on some of your products or services, and so on.

You can keep your audience up to date with your company’s news, or share with your audience best practices in your industry.

Lead Generation: Market Your Company Online

Last but certainly not least: a blog allows you to generate more traffic to your website.  How?

First and foremost, Google ranks websites based on so many parameters, three of them being “the freshness” of your content (i.e. the newer the content is on your website, the better), another one being the number of internal pages your website has, and another one being on how “keyword” rich your content is.

Since blogging is supposed to be a frequent continuous process, you guarantee freshness of content on your website.  And since each post you write typically gets allocated a dedicated “page” on your website, you’re basically increasing the number of internal pages on your website.  And finally since you’re going to blog about things relevant to your industry, or field, you’re automatically going to be using keywords relevant to your industry.  With enough time and enough posts, you increase your chances of getting ranked high on Google for keywords relevant to your industry.

Ranking high on Google, or other search engines, will help drive traffic to your website.

Another way a blog helps you drive traffic to your website is by actually posting your blog entries on your social media channels: most, if not all of us, are members in a social network or another be it Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or other.  Once you write a new blog post, make sure you mention it and link to it in your social network’s “status”, this will drive traffic to your website, and, if you’re lucky, someone from your network will like your article and will share it with their own network and so on and so forth, thus increasing footfall on your website.  Here is an example:

A blog increases visibility for your website, and if your website is designed with conversion in mind, you increase your chances to get an inquiry about your services, so go on, start blogging!

Here are examples of company blogs in different industries:

http://www.meirc.com/blog.html

http://rwntrading.com/blog/

http://www.dubaibusinessadvisors.com/blog/

In my next post, I’ll explain how you can set up a blog for your company using readily available technology, stay tuned.

#Photo by Kristina B.

It is ironic to read that US President Obama said at Hampton University, Virginia,”information has become a distraction that is putting new pressures on the U.S.A. and “democracy.” ”

I do not know who advised Obama to say these words but Social Media has played a major role in Obama’s Presidential campaign success bringing him 10s of millions USD of donations to least say.( Full videos for THOMAS GENSEMER Obama’s Online Campaign Manager and ArabCrunch Interview at the end of this post)

According to MacDailyNews Obama said “With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation.”

How does information becomes a distraction? When over the Internet people control what they view and when to view? When social media is shifting the power from big corporate media into the average guy me you and anyone via things like Twitter, Blogs, facebook, Flicker and Youtube. This is creating “democratic” forms that is not controlled by anyone and ranked and filtered by the mass.

It is dangerous to read about these views from the president of the most powerful country in the world which also controls the Internet, affecting not only US users but users around the world. It also brings a fear of unbalanced US government decisions that might add censorship and control over the free flow of information. This brings to mind the SourceForge US government case against around 170 million innocent people in Syria, N.Korea, Cuba, Sudan and Iran.

Doing so will not only be a backward step for free media and the right of every human to know the truth and write code freely, but a major step that will stifle innovation and social media. Lets not forget  social media brought Obama to the door step of the white house and created 10s of thousands of jobs in USA.

The iPad will turn industries upside down, so does it make sense that obama just held a summit on entrepreneurship and innovation, and yet is now attacking the very company named the most innovative company for the 6 consecutive year (Apple if you do not know.)

Obama, social media saved lives and brought you to power, so please respect it.

# Post Edited for Clarification.

Today we introduce to you a new theme design for ArabCrunch EN, the third one since we started in late  April 2008.

Now you will see the navigation bar links to the different categories  we  wrote about, we also plan to add more categories so stay tuned.. now we see tighter integration with ArabCrunch.NET and the whole ArabCrunch Group.

Comments are not more visible on the right-side bar, so do not forget to add your comments rather than just read

And you see we have a new footer that has the tag cloud plus our Twitter and fan pages. i am so tired to blog more than this, but here is ArabCrunch in 2008 when we (it was me alone) started:

ArabCrunch in mid 2008:

and Today here is ArabCrunch in 2010:

The blog theme was heavily customized from bloggingtips by our Arabic writer and designer Waleed  Asender, many thanks to him. ( ArabCrunch Arabic new theme will be added shortly.)

As  many Muslims strive to live according to Islam in their life and in their daily commercial dealings in the west and in non Muslim countries, a number of Muslim entrepreneurs provided the needed services via a number of useful websites.

Here is a list of 6 sites providing guides for Halal Restaurants, Muslims Friendly Hotels, Mosques and Islamic centers, videos and virtual community.

This list can also be useful for Jews as the food code are similar.

1-Muslim friendly hotels: HalaTrip

Offers Muslims and Jewish users (since many religious restrictions are shared between both religion.) Reviews for hotels around the world, from things such as: if there is a women-only pool or not, if the hotel does not serve Alcohol, if the hotel has a prayer room, plus the location of the hotel on google maps.

The founder of HalaTrip is Karim Saad who lives in Austria you can follow HalaTrip on ArabCrunch.NET here.

2-Halalfire Media LLC, headquartered in San Carlos, California is the home of one of the largest Muslim networks on the Internet, claiming over 27 million page views and over 7.25 million unique visitors annually.

3-Masjed and Islamic centers guide: Salatomatic:

Offers the largest list of Mosqoues and Islamic centers around the world. Useful site when you travel and want to find masjeeds to pray Jumaa. Besides offering basic info and the location of each masjeed. Salatomatic offers interesting facts about the availability of  near by parking and so on. Users can also leave their feedback and even follow the masjeed.

The site also has an iPhone app that returns a list of restaurants, markets, and mosques near you. with sharing information, reading reviews, retrieving contact information capabilities, and provides driving directions. The site also has plans for Windows Mobile ,android, BlackBeery and Palm Pre apps. (iPhone app price: : US$2.99.)

3-Zabihah: halal food guide worldwide.

From the same mother company of Salamatoc, Halalfire Media, Zabihah the site lists halal restaurants, groceries, business mosques and schools. The site offers a profile of each restaurant with basic info such cuisine type, halal authenticity, price, payment accepted, hours, phone, website and map location.
The site boost 3866 Restaurants, 2200 Markets, 171 Products  and 35084 Reviews.

4- halalapalooza: Halal e-commerce guide.

Also form HalalFire, halalapalooza is a comprehensive directory of Islamic e-commerce website categorized in: Multimedia, General stores, clothing, travel, cards and gifts, foods and Snacks, Charities and Children’s Item.

5-muxlim: Muslim life style.

Finland  based  startup covered on AC before, was originally a blogging  and a social network  platform, but recently it focused more into syndicating content with relevance to Muslims from around the web.

6- Halaltube:

A video sharing site that focus is primarily on Islamic lectures, users can post content from youtube and google video.

If you have a blog or a website with feeds it would be smart to integrate it with the new Buzz in town: Google Buzz.

In case you missed the news, Google Buzz is the new social status update service from google that is integrated with Gmail, google maps, Google Reader and all other Google services ( including Mobile app) making it a strong offering compared to Twitter, in which all the extra services that Google buzz have are available via on Twitter third party developers in which you need to use separately with Twitter. ( ArabCrunch Arabic review of Buzz also make sure to follow ArabCrunch account on Buzz.)

Since its launch few days ago, Google Buzz has gained traction and seems is going bigger and bigger with real usage every morning.

As a blogger or a marketer, Social media tools like Twitter, Facebook and now Google buzz are a great way to market your blog/or website, to stay connected with to your readers and even attract new ones.

So our friend at the Jordanian startup Feedoor did not waste time and launched few days ago a connecter that updates your Google Buzz account in real time automatically.

Like Google’s Feedburner, Feedoor helps you manage your feeds and get users stats such as visits and clicks, but unlike Feedburner, Feedoor offers extra services such as feed merging and filitring plus it delivers your feed in realtime  as it supports the 2 most popular realtime protocols RSScloud and Pubsubhubbub ( feedburner supports Pubsubhubbub only) Moreover, even if your website feed does not support any of the 2, feedoor uses superfeedr the “real time feed parsing service” to get your feed posts in your buzz time line almost instantly.

However Integrating your feed from feedoor to Google buzz account is not one click away, it takes few steps, but does not need any coding. Just go Feedoor blog post here and watch the step-by-step slide for instruction into how to connect your Feed to buzz with Feedoor and in realtime.

( Disclosure: I am an advisor to feedoor.)

Congratulations Arab startups, 2009 was your year, the year we saw the largest influx of startups in the Arab world. Which why we started ArabCrunch in the first place and launched a social platform to empower you: the Arab and the emerging markets startups and geeks community.

According to PostRank Top blogs 2009, ArabCrunch was Ranked #1 in the Arab world and #24 worldwide in the startup category, beating who?

Well funded blogs run by serial entrepreneurs who made 10s $ of millions, Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and Forbes, who both are ranked #43 and #45.

Postrank crunched 2 billion metrics from the past year to rank the blogs by their engagement within each topic populated by their users. In total, they selected nearly 491 topics containing 15725 total blogs, and built a detailed profile for the performance of each site – their overall rank, their engagement profile over the entire year, and their top posts as determined by their audience. (more about info here)

Our hard work last year did not just make us a premium source to the world most popular blogs and news agencies about Arab startups and tech, but also reaching 20,048 total engagement points with 224 stories posted. 75% of engagement was off-site. 53.2% on Twitter, 11.7% on Digg, 3.9% on Brightkite full info here.

Our friends at CenterNetworks and our partners at our last ArabCrunch DEMO event, ranked 13, our friends: from Pakistan Startupmeme ranked 14 . TechCrunch got their blog to number #2 trailing after Startup News from YCombinator. Third place went to VentureBeat. 4th to place to consultancy blog and 5th to Gawker’s Valleywag . Our friends and arabcrunch demo 09 media partner at Mashable were ranked #1 in social media and #2 in entrepreneurship. While our other friends at ReadWriteweb ranked #1 in web 2.0, #3 in business and #4 in entrepreneurship

Redux:
I started ArabCrunch with 2$ investment back to 2008 from my home using an old PC and a sluggish Internet. the 2$ were the only money I put on ArabCrunch ( Thanks to God and then to our sponsor Feedoor.) Today: we are the largest Blog focused on startups, social media and mobile in the Arab world. We have the first and largest social platform to empower startups and geeks and the largest launchpad event for Emerging technologies in the Arab world. We are a full time angel funded startup by  former Yahoo senior VP Bassel Ojjeh and our business is to help startups and geeks. But we need your help, to spread the word about what we do, and if you have cash be a winner and be one of our sponsors.

RETweet this post hash tagged #ArabCrunch24 and Win a Prize Valued 100$

Now since ArabCrunch massive engagement is there because of you, we offer you a 100$ worth of prize, be it a great book, a software or an iPhone apps. All you have to do is ReTweet this post with the Hash tag #ArabCrunch24  and within 48 hours we will chose the winner.( AC employees are not eligibale to the contest.)

Jordan based Feedoor, the feed management service, today announced that Real-Time feed updates such as RSS or ATOM updates can be enabled for any website or blog. By implementing Real-Time protocols within it’s technology and with the help of Superfeedr the Real-Time feed parsing service, Feedoor can now convert any feed into a Real-Time feed.

With this announcement, websites and blogs can use Feedoor to manage their feeds and send Real-Time notifications of new posts while at the same time have the ability to view full statistic of how users interact with their feed. “For publishers, when news is breaking, few minutes delays can be a killer.” said Mahmoud Mehyar founder of Feedoor, he added “now by using Feedoor, publishers and bloggers do not need to worry, their feeds get pushed to feed readers in Real-Time”.

Unlike Google’s Feedburner which only supports Pubsubhubbub protocol, Feedoor also supports RssCloud, the two are the most common Real-Time feed protocols. And uses Superfeedr smart polling service to handle feeds with no Real-Time protocols and convert them to “near” Real-Time feeds. “Our concern was making it possible for any publisher to enable Real-Time updates of his/her feed even if the original feed lack any Real-Time protocol” said Mahmoud.

For example WordPress.com one of the world’s most popular blogging platform uses only RssCloud protocol for Real-Time feed notifications. “Today we offer the possibility to over 18 million WordPress publishers and 9.2 million blogs hosted on wordpress.com, to manage their feeds in Real-Time.” Mohmoud concluded.

#Disclosure: The writer of this post provide advising to feedoor.

After many days of hard work, after over a year of full time dedication to help startups and techies like you, today AC reached a major milestone: ArabCrunch.NET First Online Social Platform in the Arab World focused on Startups & The Technology Industry. With this announcement, the social platform, was what you the passionate startup and tech community wanted AC to develop for you  and as I mentioned back on April that AC will do it! when I wrote about the ecosystem that we need to have in order to help grow the tech industry in this region and turn our economies into knowledge based economy. Today Our promise is delivered, Here is the ecosystem in one place

ArabCrunch.NET, Helping The Arab World Innovate

ArabCrunch Group Extends Technological Reach with First Social Network in the Arab World focused on the technology industry

Amman, Jordan and Silicon Valley, CA – Tuesday, November 10, 2009 – ArabCrunch Group announced today closing a round of funding and the launch of ArabCrunch.NET, the first social network dedicated to creating an environment that fosters innovation, entrepreneurship and mentorship for Arab entrepreneurs throughout the world. ArabCrunch.NET offers a dynamic platform for collaboration amongst the various stakeholders within the technological ecosystem from Berkeley to Bahrain.

The launch came during a press conference held by Arab Crunch in cooperation with Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship at the headquarters of the Royal Scientific Society.

“ArabCrunch.NET will facilitate knowledge transfer and enable veterans from Silicon Valley to work with and mentor young talent from the MENA region,” said Bassel Yassine Ojjeh, a former Senior Vice President of Yahoo!, Inc. USA, a serial entrepreneur and Board Member of ArabCrunch Group, who led the round of funding. “We’ve built ArabCrunch.NET to fuel innovation, create a knowledge based society and an environment for job creation in the region that will serve high tech professionals throughout the 22 Arab countries and the western hemisphere.”

“We’re thrilled at the opportunity to be the first dedicated group that focuses on accelerating the innovation cycle both here in Amman and throughout the Arab world,” said Gaith Saqer, Founder of ArabCrunch Group. “Ever since we launched ArabCrunch.com in 2008, we have been committed to finding the most compelling technological innovations that impact the Arab world – this next chapter allows us to help foster collaboration on a scale never seen before in our region. We have built a social platform that connects participants and helps them find crucial resources, build strategic partnerships and promote services.”

Since it’s unveiling in 2008, ArabCrunch.com has grown to one of the most widely read technology blogs in the Arab world with over 30,000 monthly visits. Founded on the principle of “professional blogging,” ArabCrunch.com has become the primary source of information about the latest technological advancements relevant to the Arabic world. An Arabic version based on “citizen journalism” was launched last month and has met with great success.

- END-

About ArabCrunch Group:
ArabCrunch Group’s mission is to inform, impact, inspire and create an Arab centric technology ecosystem that delivers information, and connects Arab entrepreneurs both in the region and throughout the world via its properties, ArabCrunch.com, ArabCrunch.NET and ArabCrunch.com/ar. About

Arab Crunch.NET:

The mission of ArabCrunch.NET is to help accelerate entrepreneurship and technology innovation in the Arab world by delivering an online social platform that connects participants of the technology ecosystem.
ArabCrunch.NET is the first online social platform dedicated to connect and support technology companies, entrepreneurs, techies, scientists, academia and investors in the Arab world. ArabCrunch.NET is a project from ArabCrunch, the publisher of arabcrunch.com and ArabCrunch Arabic Edition.

About Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship:
The QRCE is a non-profit, non-governmental organization established in October 2004 and is now a complement of El Hassan Science City. The center’s mission is to support economic development through offering a package of services to promote excellence and market technology. The centre particularly targets college students, researchers, inventors and initiators to enhance and build their personal capacities. QRCE offers this group consultation and works to develop their sense of excellence and initiative through a set of programs including Queen Rania National Entrepreneurship Excellence Competition, Technology Commercialization Program, Connect Jordan and Princess Sumaya University for Technology’s Entrepreneurship Society (DART).

Creative Commons (CC) is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to make it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright. CC provides free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work  so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof.

With this launch, Jeeran CC channel will have blog posts and media materials on how to use CC in creative work, plus a focus on Aljajzeera CC work http://cc.aljazeera.net and the latest clips from Aljazeera under CC.

The new channel aims to spread CC culture in the Arab world which is close to the OpenSource World.
Jeeran has recently undergone a makeover, introduced other channels under different categories, like Cars, health and so on, which are basically an aggregate of relevant blog posts from its community of bloggers.

Updated.
Aljazeera, the popular Arab TV Network and the only English TV station that is based from the Arab world has officially launched its blog network called Aljazeera Blogs .

Update: Aljazeera English TV station remains blocked by US cable operators with no reasonable justifications rather than being racists. was blocked, as it seems the blocking was lifted and AJ english is available via 5 Operators . ( Thanks for the notification Tom Garnier.)

Aljazeera blogs feature blog posts from its extensive global network of reporters. The blog network currently has several sub blogs: Africa blog, Asia Blog, Americas Blog, Europe Blog, Middle East blog and Business blog.

CNN, on the other hand,  has already an older, bigger and more extensive blog network also from its own staff. However, it is good to see more opinion in English, especially that it is coming from an Arab based TV network rather than only from a US network, even though most of Aljazeera’s current bloggers are westerners.

Another Interesting aspect about Aljazeera Blogs is that posts are licensed under a creative commons license , so people can reuse and republish. The same way Aljazeera was the first news broadcaster to do so early this year.

Aljazeera network’s web 2.0 team has been busy launching many useful social media applications. ArabCrunch was following Aljazeera, this link shows all the posts AC has published about Aljazeera work in the mobile and the Internet fields.

Updated.

Few days ago Smashing Magazine, the popular design and web development website with over 4 million visits per month has acquired the popular Egyptian blog Noupe which  also specializes in website design and  development.

Noupe was founded in Egypt 2007 by Noura Yehia, and has grown significantly with great posts tutorials and how-to tailored to designers, web developers and bloggers.

The blog is popular with the Digg community as many of its posts hits Digg homepage quite often. It has an active community who comments and retweet heavily too. The blog has 34,913 RSS subscribers, and I believe the monthly visits are in the hundreds of thousands.

The price of the deal was not announced, but it has great implications. The same way Yahoo’s acquisition of Maktoob will affect the IT industry in the Arab region. According to my sources the amount of Yahoo Maktoob deal was 200 million dollars.

Congratulations to Noura, to all the Arab bloggers and the tech industry in the region. This proves again that professional blogging is not a waste of time; and that you can make it here in the region even if you did not get millions of dollars in funding; bootstrapping is the way to go.

Update: This news is also important since Noupe is a global blog in English which means that it is a global idea not a regional clone.

Noura said in a blog post announcing the deal that she will spend some time in her other blog DevSnippets a public gallery where readers can submit the best code and design posts. In addition, she is planning to launch a new project in 2010.