2 days ago Facebook announced on the homepage (once logged in) that face book in English UK is available. The drop down menu offered an array of  international languages including Arabic as beta.

Before Arabic was only available in the facebook’s translation app. Now it is an option for any user to add it without installing the app.

The interface is now completely in Arabic, and was translated by facebook users themselves. Where translated content could be voted by users in order to verify its accuracy.

 This move will take any language advantage of any Arabic social network. like Maktoob’s As7ab and Jeeran.

By far, millions of Arabs use facebook everyday, even those who do not know English well, I’ve seen guys with little English skills use facebook, even though they do not understand everything yet they managed to use its main tasks. Now all they have to do is go to account>>setting>> and chose Arabic as the language. Note that there are many Arabs who know English well and would feel more comfortable reading and writing in Arabic more than any other language. 

Watch now the live broadcast:

The Twestival or Twitter Festival according to its website “

does have similarities to a Tweet-up in the sense that people from Twitter connect offline to network and catch up socially. There are three key reasons to explain what is special about Twestival. 1) It is a much larger event in scope which involves teamwork by volunteers; 2) It’s open to a wide range of people in Twitter communities, so although most are still early adopters, you will find a mix of diverse industries represented; 3) The most important reason : the Twestival supports a social cause by bringing awareness and raising funds collectively.

My take is short this event was inspired by TechCrunch 50 and DEMO events and Mashable meetups, it is bringing a mix of both of them to the Arab World. Bellow is the press release pleas repost in your blog/website, and do not forget to embed the badges found here  in your blog too, to spread the word about this event and the great Arab startups who took the challenge .

ArabCrunch and DART Offering a Platform for Arab Startups to Launch at ArabCrunch DEMO 09 Event

AMMAN, Jordan – (9, Feb, 2009) – Arab Innovation is hardly spotted, but with ArabCrunch DEMO event it will be subjected to change. The event will give Arab startups the chance to present their newly developed products and launch it, in order to get good outreach to target customers and gain access to both investors and media.

 ArabCrunch- a blog dedicated to profiling Arab originated startups and established companies, and DART- the student entrepreneurship society at Princess Sumaya University for Technology (PSUT) one of the major programs at the of Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship (QRCE) are organizing the 1st ArabCrunch DEMO, which is a regular event that is planned to be the Arab world’s launchpad for emerging technologies. This event will take place on the 23rd of February in Amman, Jordan at the Princess Sumaya University for Technology and will include keynote speaking remarks form top regional and world class technology and e-marketing experts. It will be followed by a networking reception to ignite new relationships that can help the attendance in their business and to further deepen knowledge sharing. 

The event is organized as an effort to bring enthusiasm to newly launched companies and products, find great Arab innovation, spot technology trends, and learn from the experiences of emerging startups, current corporate players and from the expertise of world class keynote speakers. 

Gaith Saqer the founder and editor of ArabCrunch summarized the importance of the demo event “Unlike their western counter parts, Arab tech entrepreneurs and startups face many difficulties, such as lack of funding and marketing support. We are creating a platform to help them overcome those difficulties. The platform will allow the early-stage, and mostly unfunded innovative companies to take center stage and demo in front of fellow entrepreneurs, CEOs, venture capitalists, IT professionals, IT students, media, advertising agencies, and early tech adapters.” He added. “We chose these startups based purely on their innovation, without regard to their own financial resources. We try to help those startups thrive and succeed, as for the established ones, we help them gain further market momentum.” 

Saqer Concluded “We are able to organize this event because of the generous support of the following companies: e-Marketing MENA as a platinum sponsor, Maktoob as a gold sponsor, Ikbis as a bronze sponsor and great support from our media partners: Mashable, Addustour Newspaper, The Star Newspaper and CenterNetworks.”

This unique event will give the chance to five Arab originated startups to present their products and services. The presenters from Jordan are: Ishki, a Web 2.0 portal that aims to be the first Arab complaints platform, and MailPacks which is an auto responder system. The other three presenters from Egypt are: Adhere from Citex Software, which is an open-source mobile advertising platform, in addition to weNear from eSpace, a location-based framework that connects people’s Interest. And Al-Khawarizmy; which developed new Arabic search algorithms and solutions.  

Several discussions will be held after technology and business experts had presented their products. There also will be keynote speakers from the region and the world speaking at the event, to share their know-how and expertise in managing and running great innovative world-class companies, thus help spark vigorous discussions and debates during the event. The Keynote speakers are: from USA: Sumaya Kazi, Senior Social Media Manager at Sun Microsystems and founder of The CulturalConnect, she is an internationally recognized innovator, leader, speaker and award-winning entrepreneur. From UAE: Khaled Jabasini, the Founder and CEO of E-Marketing MENA, the leading digital Media consultancy in the Middle East and North Africa, with the largest digital reach in the Arab speaking world, serving more than 600 million monthly impressions and over 29 million unique users, and Lebanon: Herve Cuviliez, the Managing Director of KuvCapital the leading Pan-Arab and European seed investment venture capital firm with investment in both regions. 

Highlighting the main reason behind organizing the event, Mohammad M. Khawaja, Deputy Director of QRCE said on behalf of DART “we partnered with ArabCrunch, one of the leading blogs for Arab tech startups to further build a wider regional ecosystem to help spread entrepreneurial spirit and innovation across the Arab world, and help Arab startups innovate the next generation of products and services and succeed in presenting them to the market”

DART is the student entrepreneurship society developed by QRCE. It focuses on promoting the entrepreneurial spirit amongst PSUT students as a style of life, and have an ambitious expansion plan to establish DART societies in all other Jordanian universities. While QRCE is a regional player in entrepreneurship development and technology commercialization, with a mission of supporting socioeconomic growth by providing an array of programs and services that support startups and SMEs at different stages. 

ArabCrunch is a professional blog, that is dedicated to profiling and reviewing Arab originated technology startups and existing Internet and Mobile companies, and their products and services, especially in Web 2.0 and Mobile 2.0. The blog is currently in English, an Arabic version is intended to be released soon. In addition to more ambitious projects aimed at helping create a technology revolution in the Arab world.

The event will take place at Friendship auditorium Princess Sumaya University of Technology (PSUT) Amman, Jordan. Attendance will be free of charge, with previous preapproval. Registration can be done online by visiting the event’s website: http://events.arabcrunch.com/demo9/

eSpace was founded in the year 2000 at the hands of eight fresh graduates from the Computer Science Department, Alexandria University, Egypt. They started the company with a mere investment of 200$, using initially a shared apartment. During its 9 years, eSpace has undergone a series of changes and today it is seen as a leader in Open Source software development, with several significant contributions.

During my last visit to Egypt, eSpace’s team invited me to visit their office. While visiting, I was impressed by the tech and the geeky work they had accomplished. (Disclosure: eSpace paid for my travel expenses from Cairo to Alexandria, and for my accommodation expenses.)

Open Source Contribution:

Ruby On Rails:

eSpace has developed “NeverBlock, a Ruby library that allows developers to write non-blocking, concurrent code in a transparent manner - meaning that you will keep coding in your traditional ways while, at the same time, benefiting from non-blocking IO operations. “This helps in developing scalable web apps, using fewer resources on the server” explains Hamdy A. Khalil, Products Manager at eSpace. NeverBlock was released in Q3 2008, and caught the attention of the ROR community (for example see: RubyInside igtiva and infoQ).

eSpace’s team added MySQL Database driver for NeverBlock, thus the second database driver for NeverBlockafter the PostgreSQL driver. “The only way to achieve concurrency in Rails 2.2 and Ruby 1.8 in MySQL is to use eSpace MySQL driver, so now we can do more than one connection to the data base.” added Hamdy. This achievement was also greeted by cheers from the Ruby community.

“Version Cache” is another achievement by eSpace; it is A Ruby on Rails (v2.1.0) plugin that provides additional caching features. It solves the problem of having to expire your cached stuff via the provided Rails methods and, instead, it relies on versions.

“Method Cache” is an additional eSpace contribution to ROR. It is a Rails (v2.1.0) plugin that tries to solve the problem of having to call a method repetitively.

Those achievements were rewarded by the Ruby community with an invitation for eSpace to speak during the 2008 RubyConf, which took place in Orlando, Florida, USA.

I do not know of any other ROR contributor in the Arab world, but eSpace sets the road map for Arab evelopers and software houses to follow the path and make open source software a strategy to accomplish their visoions.

iPhone:

As iPhone currently does not support Arabic, eSpace has done some work in Arabizing the iPhone with some libraries as an open source initiative. The other solution to using Arabic in iPhone is using iPhone Google Maps Component was also developed by eSpace as an Open Source component that you can add to your iPhone application to access all the basic features of Google Maps (similar to Android’s MapView); see it in action here.

Why Open Source?

Samer El Sahn, CEO of eSpace, says “first, (we) are trying to provide part of the equation, not just as technology users, but as a technology maker. The second aim is to prove our technical competence to the world. Thirdly, we want to promote an open source culture which helps the community grow, in which we will benefit and grow. Regretfully, we do not see any Arabic contribution.”

The company started as an outsourcing house from 2000 to 2002, using C, Java, Visual studio to develop apps for the Web, the Desktop and for Windows Mobile.

In 2002, the company started developing its own products; they developed PharmaSpace, an Arabic application for pharmacists. Later in 2003, they developed SalesBuzz, a mobile Sales Force Automation (SFA) targeting FMGs. Among the customer were Nestle, Cadbury, P&G. Between 2005 to 2006, eSpace sold SalesBuzz to Bitechonlogies and focused again on outsourcing. When Web 2.0 started to kick off, they used Java and J2EE, selling to American clients through a technology consulting firm in USA which brought sales to them.

Concerning the period from 2007 to 2008, El Sahn says “we started to explore different grounds; we had some cash from our outsourcing business, and (we) started realizing the vision of eSpace. We started testing the web and mobile market with 2 projects: weNear – a Mobile Location based Framework- and meOwns- a social sharing tool to what you own.”

Why ROR?

The company started using ROR along with Java in 2006; SalesBuzz admin was in ROR. In 2008, eSpace totally shifted to ROR. But why ROR?

ElSahn  El Sahn says “1- It is easy to develop apps using it. 2- (Less) design and development time is needed; something that takes 6 month (using other languages), takes 2-1 month on Ruby. 3- High adoption rate. 4- ROR is more powerful than PHP for the Web and is richer.”

A Technology Company:

ElSahan El Sahn says “we brand our self as a technology company; we consider the past 8 years (as having been a period to) build our technological experience. We aim to help others realize their ideas- mainly startups or anyone with ideas but without technical capabilities.”

Some of the company’s  recent customers include Microsoft, Google (doing gadgets for their iGoogle,) AlSaha and Yamli.

The company has developed technologies in Data mining and Matchmaking; ElSahan El Sahn says “we are taking social networks to the next level”. These technologies can be used in meOwns, for example: at the first level it can be used in recommending things and people as friends based on interest. At the second level, it can be used to detect what people own what things and what items are similar, ex: iPhone, Apple and iTunes. The matching system detects relationship between dispersed pieces of information.

Economic Crisis:

ElSahan El Sahn says “we are not affected by the current economic crisis; the reason (is that our rates are lower than other technology firms with the same level of technological experience in the Western Hemisphere.”

He added, “so we are benefiting from the current economic conditions because we are more cost effective.”

Interactive Ventures Holding Company (“IV Holdings”), a wholly owned subsidiary of Accelerator Technology Holdings (“ATH”), that  invests in Internet and Interactive companies serving the global Arab audience, has become a strategic financial investor in MediaScope Ltd, a pioneering digital marketing and publishing company based in Jordan with operations across the Middle East.

Founded in 1994 by Jordanian entrepreneur Zeid Nasser, MediaScope holds a leadership position in media and advertising consultancy and publishing in its home market, and has recently expanded its business model to cater to online publishing, digital marketing and sales services.

“With global online adspend expected to reach over US$60 billion in 2011, MediaScope holds the potential of driving the growth of this industry within our region, especially as Internet penetration, entrepreneurial start-ups, and market confidence in online communications continue to grow across the Arab World”, said Fawaz H. Zu’bi, Chairman of IV Holdings. “With this investment, MediaScope will be able to leverage its acquired digital sales and marketing expertise to emerge as a leading regional digital media network.“

One of MediaScope’s most prominent products is mediaME.com, the Middle East’s first and leading user-generated portal for advertising and media professionals, which boasts over 4,500 registered professionals, with influence in key advertising markets in the Arabian Gulf and Levant.

Commenting on the partnership, Zeid Nasser, Founder and CEO of MediaScope, added that “We are proud to join this fraternity of forward-looking media and technology businesses, under the IV Holdings banner. We were looking for more than just funding, and we have found the industry-specific understanding and daily involvement we were seeking.”

“This year could be a defining one for the online advertising industry across the world, but particularly in the Middle East, as digital media could flourish through its cost effectiveness and unparalleled reach, amidst a slowdown in other forms of media expenditure. We at MediaScope, through our digital media products and services, will be championing an industry shift towards digital and serving the market from a new base in the Gulf, in addition to our home base in the Levant,” concluded Nasser

IV Holdings other investments include:

JEERAN, CONSERVUS, SHOOFEETV, CONTENTSYNDICATE, TALASIM.

We made the news again, this time a complete post about ArabCrunch was featured on CenterNetoworks and HYPED.NL, you can find the CN post here. 

Hany was the person who tipped CenterNetworks about us.

CenterNetworks CenterNetworks NYC-based blog that “was relaunched in September 2006 to focus on the “new” Internet. The mission is to help industry professionals learn more about topics including: social networking, Web 2.0, and social media. In addition, one of the main goals with CenterNetworks is to helpyou create better web apps.  

CenterNetworks is edited by Allen Stern. Other contributors include: Darren Herman, Hank Williams, Shannon Clark, Rick Turoczy and Sanford Dickert. “

Immediately I arranged with Allen to get CenterNetworks as a Media Partner to ArabCrunch DEMO 09: The Launchpad For Emerging Technology in the Arab World.

Thank you Hany and Allen. 

As for HYPED.NL the post is here,  the blog talks about Internet and e-business, it is in Dutch language from Holland and I could not understand anything from the post except “ArabCrunch.com is success.”

I am happy for this news, the more AC gets international coverage the more buzz the Arab startups get. 

Note: AC has also been mentioned on ReadWriteWeb before here (RRW is one of the top 10 blogs worldwide) but I did not post about that.

Cisco announced that it will be hosting Cisco® Expo Saudi 2009 on Feb. 9 and 10 at King Fahad Cultural Center in Riyadh at the same time the event will be streamed live online for Free. With the theme “Experience Today the Network of Tomorrow,” this year’s event  is expected to bring together more than 2,500 business decision makers to discuss key technology trends and to share best practices that will transform businesses and increase business productivity in the kingdom.

Cisco Expo Saudi 2009 will also examine the critical role that information and communications technologies (ICTs) play in the development of innovative business solutions for the enterprise, public sector and real estate markets. Based on the concept of the network as the platform, the event will include a series of in-depth sessions covering unified communications, collaboration solutions, the Connected Home, “smart education” systems and the latest trends in Web meetings. For the first time, the event will use several Web 2.0 platforms such as Twitter and Facebook and will be streamed live online via Cisco WebEx™. Videos from the event will also be hosted on YouTube. Visitors will also experience interactive demonstrations on next-generation technologies like Cisco TelePresence™. 

Dr. Badr Bin Hamoud Al Badr, managing director of Cisco Saudi Arabia, said: “In this current economic climate, companies are looking at smart technology solutions that can improve business productivity and enhance collaboration. Cisco Expo Saudi gives us an excellent opportunity to network with customers and partners to highlight how Cisco innovations can help enterprises address real-world business issues.” 

Certified partners who will be present at Cisco Expo Saudi 2009 include SBM, Dimension Data, Al-Moammar Information Systems MIS,  IDIS, Nour Net, Oger Systems, Al-Jammaz Distribution, Ebbtikar, , Jeraisy Communications Services, Al-Fanar, IP Magix, Data Consult Saudi, AwalNet, AlKhaleej Training & Education, Synergy Professional Services, BMB, R&M, Globitel, Fluke Networks, Getronics and NetBack Bone. 

Cisco Expo Saudi 2009 is a registration-only event. Those interested in attending Cisco Expo Saudi can register online by visiting http://www.cisco.com/web/ME/exposaudi2009

Gmail has added a much need feature move messages to a folder or label, before messages could be only labeled but stayed under inbox, which sometimes creates clutter, the only way was a complicated way:  to move an email out of your inbox and into a label you first had to apply the label using the “More actions” menu and then click “Archive.

Move to label allow you to have a cleaner email, and find messages easily, at the same time you can still label them and keep them in inbox, if you want.

Buttons and menus at the top of your inbox now looks a bit different (look bellow) now they look nicer

Google has also added keyboard shortcuts Auto-complete so if you with have a lot of labels, you can select the one you want just by typing the first couple characters.

These new features work on Arabic and English email, and possibly with all other languages supported by Gmail, but I have only tested them on Arabic and English interfaces.

These new features are also available to Google Apps email users.

I love Gmail, it is the best web based or (SaaS) email available today, because of it is fast and the many useful easy to use features, plus its team continues to add and innovate more frequently than its counter parts HotMail and Yahoo Mail, that is way I chose to use Google apps for ArabCrunch email.

The Arab Advisors Group analyzed the ownership structure and revenues of all fixed PSTN line and cellular operators in sixteen Arab countries. The analysis aimed at examining the “actual” level of privatization and state ownership in each country measured by the proportionate share of each operator of total market revenues. The analysis also revealed that the Palestinian market is the most privatized market.  

The Arab Advisors Group has analyzed the ownership structure and revenues of all fixed line and cellular operators in the region. This was intended to shed a light on the actual level of privatization and state ownership in each country measured by the proportionate share of total revenues for the first nine months of 2008.  

A new report, “Privatization Levels in Arab Fixed and Cellular Operators” was released to the Arab Advisors Group’s Telecoms Strategic Research Service subscribers on January 19, 2009. This report provides a detailed analysis of the ownership structures and revenues and the level of privatization by revenues of all the cellular and main fixed operators in the countries covered. Please contact the Arab Advisors Group to get a copy of the reports Table of Contents.  

 “Lebanon and Libya have the least privatized telecom markets, with 100% government share (ownership) of PSTN and cellular telecom revenues. The public sector in Kuwait had the highest share of the PSTN and cellular revenues amongst all examined public sectors. In terms of local private sector revenue share, Palestine and Kuwait had the highest shares. Finally, in terms of foreign ownership proportionate share of revenues, Jordan had the highest share of 75% of proportionate PSTN and cellular revenues, followed by Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria.” Ms. Hadeel Sakkijha, Arab Advisors Sr. Analyst commented.   

Fadi Francis Dababneh the founder and CEO SouqElArab.com ( a social shopping e-commerce website) was a smart and motivated entrepreneur. I met him once before I started ArabCrunch and told him about my plans for it, we discussed different plans to take SouqElArab to the next level, but he told me he lacked funding to do that.

I have suggested few ideas to him, in order to drive SouqElArab growth and sales such as creating a smart widget for books and items that SouqElArab sells, so web site owners and bloggers can embedded it in to their blogs or websites, the widget would suggested contextual books and items related to each post, and SouqElArab would share revenues with the blogs and websites that are part of this widget network.

ArabCrunch has been following SouqElArab and published few of its stories. We will continue to follow SouqElArab and we ask the people who mange it now, to keep sending us their news and updates.

Fadi has been very passionate about his startups, he was treating it as his baby and he even stopped his day job as an academic lecturer at the German-Jordanian University to focus on SouqElArab. I used to chat with him over the Internet every once and while and get to know his news and what is happening with SouqEl Arab.

Fadi like any Arab entrepreneur had a hard time getting VC funding, he asked me once to publish a guest post about his experience with a Jordanian VC, a very negative post, but he backed off at the last minute.

Fadi had an MBA in e-commerce from UK, while there, he founded a user generated magazine. In Jordan he was Project Manager of AdabWaFan.com and Business Development Manager and founder of Fast company a printing company.

As I am writing this post few tears dropped from my eyes, I feel so touched since I know Fadi and he is like us very much involved in the Arab entrepreneurs’ community. This makes me think how death can be close to anyone of us, what remains when we die is our deeds and work in this life which Allah SWT will judge.

We will miss you Fadi, my deepest condolences to his wife family and everyone. He is a deep lose to us here too, in the Arab starup community.

Fadi favorit qoute on Facebook was :

“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.” Cyril Connolly.

Good bye Fadi .