http://arabcrunch.com ArabCrunch is one of the first Arabian originated Blogs, that is dedicated to profiling and reviewing Arab originated startups and existing Internet and Mobile companies and their products and services. Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:37:27 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en We waited for few days and nobody wrote about  it, so we moved on and broke the news with a guest post from Abdulrahman Idlbi as we were upset when SourceForge the world’s largest open source software hosting website, blocked around 171 million people from Syria, Sudan, Iran, N. Korea ... http://arabcrunch.com/2010/02/sourceforge-simi-unblocks-syria-sudaniran-n-korea-cuba-freedom-loving-admins-unblock-now.html Apple recently posted an updated Terms of Agreement for publishing applications to the App Store, and among the changes are newly added countries in which Apple's iTunes Store is set to expand, these countries are: Jordan, Tunisia, Armenia, Botswana, Bulgaria, Kenya, Macedonia, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Niger, Senegal and Uganda. ... http://arabcrunch.com/2010/02/apple-itunes-store-soon-in-jordan-tunisia-armenia-bulgaria-niger-and-8-other-counties.html As a thank you to our loyal readers we launched our first twitter contest, celebrating the #24 worldwide blog rank ArabCrunch achieved in 2009 under the hashtag label of #ArabCrunch24. And today I am glad to announce the winner of first ArabCrunch Twitter contest  is Nouha Mahmoud (ArabCrunch.NET profile ... http://arabcrunch.com/2010/02/the-winner-the-first-arabcrunch-twitter-100-contest-arabcrunch24.html Today i was hungry, and did not know what to eat, I was tired of junk food and pizza, so i hit this website called tasree3 to help me find something to eat. And it did it, in a fast way. tasree3 which means speed in Arabic is build in a simple ... http://arabcrunch.com/2010/02/dont-know-what-to-eat-for-dinner-tasree3-helps-you-with-speed.html As you might know we achieved unprecedented Arab rank in the blogs scene, as ArabCrunch earned the first rank in the Arab World and the 24th rank worldwide, beating both The Wall Street Journal and Forbes Blogs in the startup category. We also have ArabCrunch.NET the first and largest social platform ... http://arabcrunch.com/2010/02/arabcrunch-is-hiring-online-ad-salesbusiness-development-executive.html Are you an entrepreneurial spirit? Are you constantly thinking about how to create value and build news business, or How to improve or transform your organization? Are you trying to find innovative ways of doing business to replace old, outdated ones? These are the questions that Business Model Generation book starts with. and ... http://arabcrunch.com/2010/02/business-model-generation-part-i.html The Palestine Investment Fund (PIF), a publicly owned investment fund which aims to strengthen the Palestinian economy through key strategic investments, and private equity group Abraaj Capital announce the first closing of a US$50 million private equity fund dedicated to Palestine. The private equity fund will focus on investing in small- ... http://arabcrunch.com/2010/01/abraaj-capital-palestine-investment-fund-launch-50-million-private-equity-fund-for-palestine-smes.html At Apple's major event today steve Jobes just announced iPad and iBooks store priced starting at $499, iPad is mutli touch version of Pod with great features, iBooks will be like iTunes app store,you will be able to download books from the cloud. It looks like a bookshelf ... http://arabcrunch.com/2010/01/breaking-live-apple-announces-ipad-and-ibook-store.html This is the first time a fully supported Yahoo! search engine has been available in Arabic and is currently in its first phase  on Maktoob.com . And this is the first integration step between Maktoob and Yahoo after the acquisition! Yahoo Arabic search is run on Yahoo!'s own search engine not ... http://arabcrunch.com/2010/01/yahoo-launches-arabic-search-via-maktoob.html According to Opera's State of the Mobile Web report, In Southeast Asia among mobile-Web users, Google is at the top of the rankings for numerous countries, with the very significant exception of Indonesia where Google is only at #6 and Yahoo! is at #2. The vast majority of Opera Mini ... http://arabcrunch.com/2010/01/opera-yahoo-more-popular-than-google-in-indonesia.html Amman, Palo Alto. Even though we are still in private beta, our small engineering and product development team has been working hard to improve ArabCrunch.NET , the technology ecosystem community,  to empower more than 1000 members and growing everyday. Based on many users' feedback, we have launched a new release with the following features: Improved ... http://arabcrunch.com/2010/01/arabcrunch-net-hits-over-1000-members-and-launches-improved-startup-qa-with-smart-matching.html In a move to counter Google’s Free navigation applications, Nokia just announced that starting March 2010, new Nokia GPS-enabled smartphones will include the new version of Ovi Maps www.nokia.com/maps, pre-loaded with local country map data, and that turn-by-turn voice guidance will be free for 74 countries in ... http://arabcrunch.com/2010/01/nokia-makes-worldwide-walk-drive-navigation-free-on-smartphones.html On Twitter, Orange CEO Majd Shweikeh tweeted last week that iPhone3GS will be available within few weeks which is expected to be officially available with Orange Jordan launch of the first 3G network in Jordan. . ArabCrunch called Majd to get her clarification but she said that 3G ... http://arabcrunch.com/2010/01/iphone3gs-and-3g-network-in-jordan-within-few-weeks.html Update: SourceForge Simi Unblocks Syria, Sudan,Iran, N.Korea & Cuba- Freedom Loving Admins: Unblock Now: Since Linkedin lifted its blocking against Syria after ArabCrunch reported the incident ( and kept it against Sudan ), we heard different reports that American officials are preparing to waive some of the sanctions against ... http://arabcrunch.com/2010/01/following-clintons-internet-freedom-speech-us-based-sourceforge-blocked-syria-sudan-iran-korea-cuba-is-open-source-still-really-open.html Ever since we launched Startups Q&A application in ArabCrunch.NET we had important questions asked, and we had great answers to them from leading industry professionals, entrepreneurs and executives. Today we start posting a weekly post that highlights hot startup questions that were posted on startup Q&A application section of ... http://arabcrunch.com/2010/01/weekly-hot-startup-questions-and-answers-on-arabcrunch-net.html As the trend of foreign capital continues to rise in the Arab region, some major players start to appear, shedding light on what the online Startup scene in has the potential to be. Today we introduce you, to Diwanee. Diwanee Group in the words of its founders: "is a group of ... http://arabcrunch.com/2010/01/diwanee-joins-mena-scene.html Launched in November last year, SafqaOnline which means in Arabic "deal online" is a new startup from Ramallah, Palestine,  that is  similar to craiglist but provides better user interface and is geared towards the Arab world. SafqaOnline caters to both merchants and individuals, for merchants it provides easy way to establish ... http://arabcrunch.com/2010/01/from-palestine-safaqonline-a-craiglist-for-the-arab-world.html What Queen Rania of Jordan and Arianna Huffington Co-Founder of the most popular blog in the world Huffington Post or any other 2 users have in Common on Twitter? MuTweeps (ArabCrunch.NET profile), a service we think has potential to grow and become a very handy tool for all twitter users out ... http://arabcrunch.com/2010/01/mutweeps-what-queen-rania-and-arianna-huffington-have-in-common-on-twitter.html 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 ... http://arabcrunch.com/2010/01/breaking-top-blogs-2009-arabcrunch24-1-in-arabia-and-24-worldwide-beating-forbes-and-wall-street-journal.html iKbis, Jordan based video and photo sharing site is going ahead with a plans to differentiate it self from its main competitor Google's Youtube as executives of the leading telecom and ISP companies said during a conference lats year that youtube represent around 40% of Internet traffic in the region. iKbis ... http://arabcrunch.com/2010/01/ikbis-to-syndicate-its-videos-to-several-arab-satellite-tv-channels.html Updated. Yesterday, Jordan's high appeal court has decided to extend the reach of Jordan's print and publications law to any electronic medium . The court’s decision, issued last week but published yesterday only today, empowers authorities to prosecute or impose fines on any electronic medium of Publishing from SMS to the ... http://arabcrunch.com/2010/01/a-tweet-facebook-or-a-blog-comment-or-even-an-sms-can-get-you-to-prison-in-jordan.html Mohamed Nanabhay is the person who founded Al Jazeera's New Media group, which was responsible for many of Aljazeera's online innovation and now is leading the Al Jazeera English online operations and serves as website Editor-in-Chief. Few days ago, the news was buzzing over the Internet when one of the most ... http://arabcrunch.com/2010/01/aljazeera-head-of-new-media-mohammed-nanabhay-became-investor-in-seesmic.html Saot AlArab is a new not for profit Arabic website that aims to crowed source decision making in Arab countries and link the voice of Arab citizens with their political leaders. Users from across the Arab world can submit ideas of projects that they would implement if they were the decision ... http://arabcrunch.com/2010/01/saot-al-arab-com-what-arab-citizens-want-from-their-political-leaders.html Founded in Alexandria, Egypt in 2007 vimov ( Vimov on ArabCurnch.NET) is another example of the startup that mixx its business between developing software for others (out sourcing) developing open source software and proprietary software. For developers: vimov has started its own product releases with "aviate" : a free software ... http://arabcrunch.com/2010/01/vimov-egypt-based-open-source-and-iphone-developer.html As everyone knows Mobile devices are becoming more like computers, take a look at iPhone 3GS, Droid and N900. Today, with new smart mobiles you can do everything you do on a PC as processing and memory speed are going up. However, it is not really everything, because the screen is ... http://arabcrunch.com/2010/01/612010-uk-startup-to-launch-devices-that-will-kill-pcs-and-the-tv-screen.html