Datak Telecom, one of the largest broadband Internet service providers in Iran, has selected Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., a leading provider of telecom systems and mobile phones, as its sole WiMAX equipment vendor to bring the first WiMAX Wave2 service to Iran.

The installation and deployment of Samsung’s WiMAX network equipment will begin in Tehran this month and the first commercial Mobile WiMAX service will be introduced in the second quarter of 2010. Samsung is providing a full range of Mobile WiMAX solutions, including base stations, access service network gateways, and all the related equipment and services.

“WiMAX service is perfect for the Iranian market where the population reaches 75 million but the internet penetration is still very low,” said Bahman Satarian, CEO of Datak Telecom in a press release.

He added “The cooperation with Samsung, a global leader in Mobile WiMAX industry, is a good opportunity not only to introduce the latest generation of mobile data technologies in Iran, but also to accelerate the economic growth of Iran.”
“Working closely with Datak Telecom, we hope to advance Iranian broadband culture, and eventually expand to other neighboring countries in the Middle East and South West Asia.” said Woonsub Kim, Executive Vice President and head of the Telecommunication Systems Division at Samsung Electronics.

Datak Telecom is the Internet subsidiary of Social Security Investment Company, Iran’s largest Investment house. It the leading local operator providing broadband internet services such as ADSL, IP-Wireless for business and residential users in Tehran. The company is currently the only WiMAX operator in Iran with the latest Mobile WiMAX technology. Datak Telecom plans to gradually extend its WiMAX services to cover all of Greater Tehran with various customer-centric services such as VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), video and location-based-service and more.

Samsung provides its equipment to 25 Mobile WiMAX operators in 21 countries. Currently, Samsung is focusing on accelerating Mobile WiMAX business in Middle East. Mobily, the largest 3.75G mobile operator and wireless broadband provider in the Middle East and North Africa also selected Samsung as its prime equipment vendor.

The WiMAX Forum has recorded 484 WiMAX Deployments in 141 countries and forecasts that there will be more than 133 million subscribers for commercial service by 2012. WIMAX which is short for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, is a telecommunications technology that provides wireless transmission of data using a variety of transmission modes. WiMAX deployment in Middle East has been mostly to provide Internet access wirelessly at a longer range. WiMax systems competes with a number of wireless mobile/data systems including 4G.

Updtate: Filaty told me that the attack they got was a DoSS type, the site seems up and running now.

Saleh Al Zaid the founder of Untiny the Saudi based short url untiny service provider (reviewed by AC here.), just told AC that his site is under DoS Attack since yesterday. Though the site and its services is still up and running. While Filaty a file and image sharing startup from Egypt has been under attack for 3 days and is currently down.

A denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) or distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users. which led to an effort to bring down an Internet site Internet site or service or to prevent it from functioning efficiently temporarily or indefinitely. DDoS differs than Dos Attack that it is carried by too many IPs usually using male-ware like what happened recently Twitter and Facebook.

Untiny attack was Dos which is an easier to deal with than DDoS attacks, as for Filaty I do not have information about what type of DoSS attack they got, their Twitter account mentioned being under Dos/s attack in Arabic in which DoSS and DoS are writing in the same way.

Saleh told ArabCrunch untiny was getting 20 requests per second, the site was under attack for 7 hours and got over 500 thousand requests. He said the site usually gets 20 000 requests per day. Saleh Added that the attackers are using Unity API by sending too many requests to it to unity one url which is this one: http://untiny.me/api/1.0/extract/?url=http://bit.ly/4Cgh3rs&format=text

Ahmed Mekkawy the security expert from Egypt wrote here a nice post on ArabCrunch explaining how he managed to survive a DoSS attack.

ArabCrunch condemns� such attacks specially on Arab startups as according to Wikipedia Denial-of-service attacks are considered violations of the IAB’s Internet proper use policy, and also violate the acceptable use policies of virtually all Internet Service Providers. They also commonly constitute violations of the laws of individual nations.

Feedoor, Jordan based Feed management service has moved its servers to Rack Space Cloud. Cloud Computing a set of pooled computing resources, delivered over the web, powered by software. The main benefit of cloud computing is that website owners do not have to spend a lot of money and resources in managing their own servers, in cloud computing they only pay for the resources they use, in a pay as you go bases. Another benefit is that websites hosted in the cloud can coupe with sudden increase in traffic since the service is very scalable.

Mahoumed Mehyar founder of Feedoor and MailPacks said “Now publishers and feed consumers can enjoy a very stable feed service.” He added “this is the first step in Feedoor expansion plan.” He hinted that in the coming weeks Feedoor is preparing to launch its next version with very new and exciting stuff.

RackspaceCloud competes with Google App Engine, Heroku and Azure.

(Disclosure: Feedoor is the main sponsor for ArabCrunch.)

Jeeran is an interesting Arab internet company because its story resembles the stories you hear about in Silicon Valley (USA): A Tech startup that starts from the founders’ garage or dorm and then makes it big (example: HP, Yahoo and Google to name a few.)

Jeeran was founded in 2000 by then two Jordanian students and entrepreneurs Omar Koudsi and Laith Zraikat in Amman, Jordan as an Arabic web based WYSIWYG tool to create websites similar to Yahoo’s closed Geocities . The founders learned web development by their own and launched Jeeran.com, first from their homes.

Later on, they got incubated in Amman based incubator iPark. Then Jeeran graduated and opened its own offices and started recruiting more people.

Around 2005, Jeeran added an Arabic blogging platform that is similar to Google’s blogger where users can start their own blogs in Arabic, the platform was in-house developed using Microsoft’s .Net technologies. Today, Jeeran Blogs hosts around 140,000 blogs and competes with Yahoo’s Maktoob Blogs, Albawaba Blogs, along with Blogger and Wordpress.com since the last 2 are Arabized now.

In October 2007 Jeeran got funded with around 1 million (JD) Jordanian Dinars according to sources. (0.71 $ USD = 1 JD) From one of the most active regional venture capital firms IV Holdings in the region.

Also in2007 Jeeran launched Khabbr an Arabic clone to the popular social media site Digg. Khabbr has not really taken off like Jeeran blogs or Digg it self. It currently has around 7,500 members and is based on the PHP open source software digg duplicate Pligg.

Around that time, Jeeran also added video and photo sharing and social networking capabilities, however at the time the design of the users profiles was not streamlined like the what you see on facebook, it is more like MySpace HTML customized users’ profiles (MySpace is cleaning up its users profiles design.) In this front Jeeran competes with Ikbis from Jordan, D1G from Jordan AlsoFacebook from USA, Netlog from Belgium and Masrawy from Egypt along with Yahoo! Maktoob’s As7ab.

As a proof that Intel Capital has started to get serious about investing in the region’s tech companies, May 17th 2009 was the day when Jeeran received its second round of funding from Intel Capital along with another IV Holding portfolio, ShooFeeTV. The amount of funding was not disclosed and I have not heard a solid number yet.

As with Khabbr, Jeeran maintained its what I call Give Them A New Brand Name strategy for its new projects, when In June 2009 it launched its new offshoot and a very good replacement for the Forum based Arabic poetry websites: Sejaal.com a web 2.0 community for Arab poets that also offers poetry competitions.
Jeeran is also an Investor in Talasim a Jordan based “Arabic comedy” website, that I referred to as useless website with some silly content. A comment that one of its founders was not happy with when he approached me yesterday during Amman Twetfestival event. (Sorry it is not a personal attack, but I do not like allot of the content on Talasim and I am free to express my opnion )

Very recently Jeeran launched a new subsidiary called Jeeran Research a research agency tailored to the Arab world that competes directly with Yahoo’s Matoob Research.

Today, Jeeran claims a 1.4 million unique registered members and over 7 million unique visitors per month (April 2009). Though, some sources told me that most of Jeeran traffic is going to Jeeran blogs, however this information could not be verified.

Though Jeeran story is similar to Silicon Valley success stories since it got started using very few resources, it took its founders a longer time to get funding, than any of their US based counter parts and has not realized an exit yet.

This is true, partly because back in 2000 and mostly until now there were few, if any active Venture Capitalist (VCs) and tech investors in the region. Let alone that international tech investors did not look seriously to the tech industry in Arabia.

Saying that, I am sure that Yahoo’s Maktoob acquisition of Maktoob is a game changer along with the Internet giant Google’s serious efforts in the region. As I said before when AC broke the acquisition news, now VCs and Investors alike see an exit to their investments, which would diffidently change their view to the returns of their investments in Tech Industry around the Arab world, a view that ArabCrunch has been trying to change for a while now by giving FREE buzz on this blog to tech entrepreneurs and the industry in general in this region along with events such as ARABCRUNCH DEMO.

Stay tuned for more details about Jeeran and IV holding on ArabCrunch as I have promised before to Interview separately Omar Koudsi the cofounder and CEO of Jeeran and Emile Cubeisythe managing director of IV HOLDINGS, but due to the busy schedule the official interviews never took place. But Inshallah soon I will do separate interviews with both of them.

#University of Jordan Photo by Roba Al-Asi.

Jeeran one of the popular social media communities in the Arab world has  recently launched a new subsidiary called Jeeran Research a research agency tailored to the Arab world (they call it MENA !) that competes directly with Yahoo’s Matoob Research.

The new company is using a new reward based Arabic/English survey community called Nazrati –(Arabic meaning: my point of view) to collect consumer data and analyze research for participating companies.

Nazrati is using opt-in methods for users to participate in online surveys, polls and community discussions. In return Jeeran Research will offer its members rewards. Currently it is offering giveaways that value rang from 1000$, 500, 400 down to 100$. According to Nazarti’s website the reward scheme will be based on  monthly and quarterly prize draws.
Like Yahoo’s Maktoob Research, Jeeran Research will be used primary by companies operating in the Arab world, to gauge users’ opinion and feedback which would help companies fine tune their product and marketing strategies.

(Next post the Story of Jeeran.)

Jordan based Wizrads Productions was founded by serial entrepreneur and ex-maktoobian Sohaib Thiab along with Hussam Hammo, Afif Toukan and Omar Turk and was angel funded by 3 friends of Sohaib. The startup which specializes in Arabic online multiplayer games, started with the hit game Arabain Hitman in March 2009 that achieved today around 94,400 registered player.

With its current network of 4 Arabic games, Wizards Production has achieved healthy growth with over 30 million page views and 500,000 visits, according to Sohaib. The company used viral marketing methods to increase its members base, such as giving points to players ones they invite their friends.

Wizards Productions’s games are all free, the revenue model is based on optional premium accounts and upgrades that the member can buy to progress faster in the game, members can do that through prepaid cards, credit cards and soon through SMS payments, as Sohaib told ArabCrunch. The startup plans to launch more games in coming future.

Here is a breakdown of each game:

• Ramoys: Which was launched 2 days ago and is still in early beta, is a space strategy game where start building planets to extract resources to build R&D and technical capabilities that allows them to build defences with a fleet to attack other planets. The idea is to attack other planets in order to occupy new land and to build a powerful defence system to defend the player’s planet. Within the 2 days Ramoys has achieved around 500 registered players.

• Sa7ara: Launched last month and now boost a 10,000 plus members. Sa7ara is also browser based game, its idea is similar to Ramoys but for older civilisation where players in this game can choose between 4 different races: Arabs, Parisians, Pharaohs, and Rome. In Sa7ara, You start with scratch, you need to build your kingdom and prepare your army to defend your territory and attack other to gain more land. Unlike other similar browser based games that are merely translated version of other games, sa7ara is the 1st game of its kind totally developed in the Arabic world. 10K+ members

• Arabic Mafia: Where the player lives a mafia life, in the game they key is to workout at the gym to gain more strength, then buy weapons and find legal job to get money and start attacking other players. Arabic Mafia has 4000 members and was launched in August 2009 before sa7ara.

• Arabian Hitman: is similar to Arabic mafia but it does have in-game differences, the game was launched in March 2009 and currently has 94,400 registered players.

Twestival is one of the offline Twitter events that has gained some global adoption. The Twestival events are organized by volunteers around the world in their local cities under short timescales, Twestival is run by volunteers and independently from any not-for-profit; the event is used also to raise money for charity organization.

Last year, the event took place in few Arab cities, this year it comes to Amman, Jordan, Dubai-UAE, Abu Dahbi-UAE, and Beirut-Lebanon. here is the info about each event:

• Dubai Twestival 2009

The Jam Jar

12 September 2009 :: 8 PM – 11 PM

St. 17a Comm 368, Al Quoz, Behind Dubai Garden Centre, Exit 39, Sheikh Zayed Road.

• Abu Dhabi Twestival 2009.

Ramadan Tent – Le Royal Méridien

13 September 2009 :: 8:00 p.m.
Al Markaziyah, Abu Dhabi.

• Amman Twestival 2009

Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship
13 September 2009 :: 9:00 pm
Jubieha , Amman

ArabCrunch live streamed the last Amman Twestival in February 2009.

Google had google Answers a questions and answers community site that was based on paying researchers , however that service was shutdown in 2006. In the Arab world Google just entered again the Q&A market with Google Egabat which is still in Beta. (Egabat means answers in Arabic)

Egabat differs than Google Answers mainly that anyone can answer and there are no cash payments for good answers instead points and karama that encourage participations. So the more the user answers and the more his/her answers are rated as “good” the more points he will get thus being able to answer more.

Egabat also competes with Yahoo!Maktoob’s Seen Jeem (Arabic for Q & A) but it has different features, like you can subscribe to Q&A categories, or bookmark a question. One more difference is that when answering a question Google uses it powerful search engine to get references from around the web: blogs, urls, videos, news, books, and maps. All you have to do is type the name and hit search.

Like Yahoo answer which has no Arabic version, Google Egabat also comes with a user profile that is similar to users profile. Though unlike Yahoo Answers, In Egabat users can send questions directly to other users.

All in All Egabat has a simple interface -like all Google products-, already has an active community, has nice notifications system, email or on site, and other features that puts it on top when compared to Seen Jeem. But not being realtime the service does not really satisfy my taste.

We are in the realtime world, we want things right way, work cannot wait for an answer that comes hours or days later, we want it now. And to be honest my friend Mahmoud Mehiar founder of Feedoor and MailPacks suggested several months ago to me to launch a realtime Q&A service but in English. We thought of using AI to determine where to rout the question in realtime via twitter, but dropped it after I learned about Vark which was in beta at the time. Vark enables realtime Q&A via Gtalk, it scans your facebook profile to determine which topics you would be an expert in and routs you questions based on that to you, only from your facebook friends or friends of theirs.
Saying that Egabat is new and in beta, I expect more things to be added to it, here is a video that Google made abut Egabat:

The Middle East’s number one job site announced today the launch of a mobile version of its website, which will enable job seekers to access the Bayt.com website on their mobile devices, while on the move. Job seekers can simply enter m.bayt.com into the web browser of their mobile device, then instantly search all of the jobs that are currently available on the main Bayt.com site.

Bayt.com mobile, which went live on September 6, is the first such mobile job site to be launched in the Middle East that specifically designed for the region’s job.

As part of Bayt.com mobile, job seekers will be able to apply from their device to any of the listed jobs that are of interest to them on the site, simply by using their stored CVs, and adding a cover note if required.

“The launch of Bayt.com mobile essentially builds on our wide range of existing job searching services, by adding a new platform that enables job seekers to access Bayt.com job postings exactly when, where and how they want to,” explained Akram Assaf, Chief Technology Officer, Bayt.com.

Now that the site is operational, Bayt.com said that it will be adding a variety of additional services to make the job search even more efficient for job seekers on the move. Job seekers will have the option to refresh their stored CV from their device, as if they were using their PC. When job seekers have found positions from their device but want to save them for applying at a later stage, they will have the option of emailing their found jobs to their Bayt.com account, or to their personal email.
Furthermore, the online site will be developed to allow jobs seekers to search for positions by sector and industry, as per the existing online site. It will then offer the option to view how many times their CV has been viewed by employers, in addition to other CV statistics – right on their mobile device.

The service also helps employers. Their postings will automatically appear on the mobile version of the site, thereby giving employers greater access to the hard-to-find candidates.

The battle between Microsoft and Open Source is never ending. This video produced by Jordanians mimic how fanatics on both sides defend their turf.

Enjoy :

The video is produced by Mohammad Shobaki from Jordan and Amman Filmmakers Cooperative.

The short movie was JordanianFilms Official Selection in: – International Panorama of Independent Film and Video (06), Greece. – Jordan Short Film Festival (06) competition, Jordan. – Izmir International Short Film Festival (06), Turkey. – The International Festival of Video Art of Casablanca, Morocco. – Clermont-Ferrand Int’l Film Festival Market (6), France.

# Image by Gustavo.