Last year Google started something useful for the Arab tech and startups ecosystem by hosting events in several Arabian cities branded gdays.

As with last year Google developers conference is coming to the region once again. Google has announced that gJordan is coming to Amman (the capital of Jordan) on October 23 & 24! and to Dubai g|uae on October 19 & 20!.

The 2 events have the same format, first day is geared towards developers focusing on Google developers tools in mobile (android) cloud computing, and so on.

The second day is geared at technology Entrepreneurs, Webmasters, University Students, IT and Business Professionals.

Registration is free, and space is limited, so register now for the day of your choice below on gJordan and gUAE

We wrote back on July 2010 about Dakwak a Jordanian startup that use crowed sourced community translation to help improve translating websites to almost any language.

Recently the startups launched on site widget that allows your sites visitors to edit and vote up or down the translation of your site with out leaving it.

Also Dakwak has recently launched file based translation where webmaster can upload their language files and have them translated to other languages of their choosing, then they can point the file location to their visitors if they wish to help in improving the translation. Among other feature the startup has launched is enabling webmasters to default the language translated on their site.

Dakwak is now incubated on Oasis 500 a Jordanian startup accelerator program.

In the spirit of spreading positive, inspiring stories from Palestine, a group of young volunteers started TEDxRamallah, the first TEDx event in Palestine and Jordan to be held in April 16, 2011.  TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-LIKE experience.

TEDxRamallah will take place in Bethlehem on April 16^th with simultaneous events in Beirut and Amman. Over 20 cities will also simulcast the event, reaching areas as far as Shanghai, Montreal and Reykjavik and as near as Damascus, Dubai and Riyadh.

Some of TEDxRamallah, the speakers include, Gisel Kordestani director of New Business Development at Google for Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region. Suad Amiry a Palestinian architect, author of “Sharon and my Mother in-Law: Ramallah Diaries”, Fadi Ghandour founder and CEO of Aramex, a global logistics and transportation solutions provider, Rim Banna Palestinian singer, lyricist and composer. Julia Bacha an award-winning filmmaker who has worked on films exhibited at the Sundance, Berlin, Jerusalem, and Dubai International Film Festivals, and broadcast on Al Arabiya television among other channels, Mohammad Khatib is a Palestinian refugee who grew up in Arroub Camp originally from a village called Qastina. co-founder Bazinga! a startup catalyst and a tech hub in Ramallah, Talal Abu-Ghazaleh is the godfather of Arab accounting, also credited for promoting the significance of Intellectual Property in the Arab region. UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon appointed Abu-Ghazaleh, as vice chair of the UN Global Compact at the UN headquarters in New York. He was born in 1938 in Jaffa, Palestine. Wael Attili  co-founder and chief creative officer of Kharabeesh Network and many more.

If you want to attend You can register here deadline is  13th of April, you can support the event by adding a twibbon to your Twitter or Facebook profile, or follow the event page on Facebook or Twitter pages.

Disclosure: ArabCrunch is a media partner to TedXRamallah.

One of the oldest online news sites in Jordan Ammoon has accused Jordan Intelligence in hacking the site.

The sites’ editor in chief Bassel Elkour told Jordanian newspaper Assabel the hacking happened when the site posted a statement from some of Jordan’s tribal leaders criticizing certain parties inside the government and corruption in Jordan.

Okur added that the site received direct threats from certain Jordanian security parties one day before the hack and on the next day a message popped up on the site saying that “ because you did wrong to the images of the country your site has been hacked by Jordanian expats in Australia! ” Okus dismissed the message as a decoy.

Like Tunisia, Egypt and the rest of the Arab countries Jordan is a police state who’s intelligence interferes in all aspect of life: sports, tech community media etc and has strong ties with the CIA.

On the story that Assabeel posted about the incident one commenter wrote: “ anyone who accuse Jordan intelligence will die!”

The country has recently been witnessing demonstrations across many cities against economic conditions, inflation and in demand for policy change. The country’s main opposition party showcased last month evidence of fabrication to the last parliamentary elections’ results.

Jordanian opposition main demands are a new election law and a change to the constitution which allows the prime minister to be elected or emerge from a parliament majority block, rather than how it is done now: appointed by the king.

Update:

Oasis told us via Twitter that non jordanian “should work and establish their company inside Jordan!”

In June Former Chief Data Officer of Yahoo Dr. Usama Fayyad and current Chairman of Arab portal d1g told AC that Oasis 500 a technology startup accelerator in Jordan will launch in August this year. But now Oasis 500 website has been launched accepting applicants from entrepreneurs anywhere in the world, for its first round of a 6 days entrepreneurship training program.

The training program is offered for free, candidates who successfully complete the course will be eligible for incubation and funding of 14,120.30 USD (10,000 Jordanian Dinar -JDs-) for 2 month period. In return Oasis 500 will take 10% equity of the startup.

After the two months, an additional follow-on funding (average JD 50,000 – 70,641.42 USD-) will be available to a small subset of entrepreneurs, as determined by Oasis 500 investment committee, to obtain further incubation and preparation for an angel investment round.

The incubation period is at the new King Hussein Business Park in Amman Jordan and includes internet and hosting,legal advice, and mentoring is offered during incubation. Another rounds of investments are possible on pitching to more angels investors.

We do not know what is the exact date of the first training program as Dr. Usama was unavailable since he is traveling. We did a video interview with him, but we did not post it online yet, due to some technical difficulties including the horrible status of Internet speed in Jordan.

Oasis 500 aims to launch 500 startups in Jordan in 5 years. Here is the application link and this FAQ page has more details about the program.

E-commerce is an old school in USA, but in the Arab world it did not really take off for many reasons starting with credit cards are not common to borders and customs between Arab countries that complicate issues further.

And because of that, solving a problem in this sector might get you funded as Gate2Play has officially received the first round of funding from the most active Venture Capital firm in the region IV Holdings.

To fill the gap, a number of startups and companies provided prepaid cards starting with Jabbar’s CashU and Onecard. Visa and MasterCard partnered with several local banks to issue their own prepaid cards

Jordanian entrepreneur Muhannad Ebwini an ex-Maktoobian and GM of onecard cofounded Gaet2Play to consolidate the e-payment situation in the region. As Gate2Play will enable merchants to use its hub to process any of its e-paymnet partners. Making it more easy for merchants and driving more business for e-payment providers.

Muhannad told ArabCrunch that Gate2Play signed with many merchants, payment gateways in the region and expect to launch its in June this year. Here is my Video Interview I made with Muhannad during Arabnet conf in lebanon where he explained the e-payment situation in the region with more details and  his startup business model. ( He disclosed the funding round in the video so the news is not breaking since it was recoded around 1 month ago but it is exclusive to AC )

Yahoo! Middle East has today announced the official opening of its new offices in Dubai, UAE and Amman, Jordan. Rich Riley, who joined 1999 when Yahoo! acquired the start up company he co-founded and serve as the Senior Vice President & Managing Director, Yahoo! in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) has travelled to the region in order to host the official inauguration of both sites.

The offices both offer a spacious and fun environment providing staff with nice facilities such as table tennis, foosball, Wii, a café with TV and Sat connection, as well as refreshment machines and kitchen facilities.

Yahoo has been expanding its staff  in the Arab region as they hired recently many people from mid level to executive level.

As ArabCrunch first broke, Yahoo! Middle East acquired Maktoob.com, the leading online community in the Arab world, with more than 19 million unique users, in August 2009.

This acquisition sparked fire to the Arab Internet and tech industry, as now Investors see the exist window wide open to home grown startups, new startups are emerging almost on a weekly bases, new VCs and accelerators are being started and about to launch as ArabCrunch will report soon.

As a followup to our last post about Zain’s Jordan launching Ibda3 a startup incubator Dr. Abdul Malik Al Jaber CEO of Zain Levant Region along with Reem also from Zain were kind  to answer via email our questions and provide more information about the program:

AC: What type of support you provide the startups? funding? resources what type?Do you provide office space?

Abdul Malik Al Jaber: We provide office space, that is fully equipped with all required hardware for content industry. We also provide resources in the relevant area for the incubated project; technical, marketing, legal, HR, etc.

We provide seed funding as well as per the project.

AC: what happens after the startup is launched? what do you take in exchange for all the offering you offer?

Abdul Malik Al Jaber: “The projects that are selected, go through a process of pre-incubation and then incubation and then graduation.

We have a VC (Venture Capital) fund that is attached to the incubator. The VC works like any other VC fund, which means we invest in some projects and we take shares. Such project are registered in the form of a limited liability company and the VC takes a stake based on the project and the amounts that will be invested.”

Reem Al-Odwan from Zain added this followup:

1- for now this program is launched only in Jordan, we are looking to launch it in other countries that F.U.N is already established there in cooperation with Zain Jordan and Zain Group.
2- we are not going to limit the funding per project to a certain amount. The funding will be fair to make the project succeed.
3- our percent will also depend on the kind of project and the period of incubation, it will be around 35-50%.
4- the VC fund so far is 100,000 JD.

We wrote last August 2009 about a 3 different e-commerce approaches in Jordan mentioning PhotoJONET, A photo storage and printing website service. But PhotoJONET did not live long due to disagreement between its founders.

Today PhotoJonet cofounder Issam Hijaz is brining his startup again but under a new name: Snap2Shop and a new partner with a new plans including regional expansion.

Like PhotoJONET Snap2Shop enables users to upload photos, order prints and pay cash on devilry  making life a bet easier for printing quality photos. And it does not only cover Amman, but this time all jordan, Issam told AC, as Snap2Shop is using posta plus with delivery time up to 3 business days at a flat rate of 2 Jordanian dinars (2.82 $ USD) for prints under 20 JDs . ( Celebrating its launch Snap2Shop is giving away new users 10 free photos print orders)

Issam told ArabCrunch that they will be adding online payment in partnership with visa Jordan and plans a mobile app on Symbion and iPhone.

(Follow Snap2Shop on ArabCrunch.NET here.)

Leadership Formation, a Jordanian firm focused on strategy and transformation through consulting and training offerings, is organizing the first Organizational Success & Excellence Executive Forum to be held on December 9, 2009 at the Sheraton Hotel Amman, Jordan.

The Forum in which ArabCrunch is a media partner in, will be a unique opportunity for those in leadership positions to network and gain insight into global and local trends. The Forum’s objectives are in exploring the foundations of success and their role in the local market by creating a stronger sustainable future. In addition, it gathers local, regional and international experts to discuss the four cornerstones of success: Leadership, Governance, Execution, and Strategy.
The event, being held under the patronage of Suhair Al-Ali, Jordan’s Minister of Planning and International Cooperation, includes executives and leaders from noted for-profit, non-profit, and governmental organizations. Such as Greg ogry Balestrero President and CEO Project Management Institute (PMI) , Linda C. Crompton President and CEO, BroardSource and Osama Fatalleh COO, Aramex.
The Forum Key Topics are:

• Leadership and its impact on organizational sustainability
• Difference between leadership and management in ensuring success
• Building solid corporate governance practices
• Implementation of governance across organization types, including family business, for-profit, and NGO
• Executing effectively to ensure organizational and project viability
• Corporate culture’s impact on organizational success
• Building a robust strategy that is capable of addressing changing market needs
• Critical elements in building a sustainable business model

(For full event agenda can be found here.)
Philip Diab, CEO of Leadership Formation, stated that the forum is a great opportunity for local and global executives to meet and discuss Leadership, governance, execution and strategy to ensure their business continuity and growth during tough financial times.
For the Forum registration you can go here.

Abraaj Capital Group announced today that it agreed to acquire all of Riyada Ventures the leading venture capital firm in the MENA region. The acquisition is at the core of a major new push by Abraaj into the small and medium enterprise (SME) space, which is aimed at stimulating and supporting entrepreneurial activity in this vital segment of the MENA region’s economies.

Riyada Ventures, which was set up in the Jordanian capital, Amman, in 2005, this week won the ‘Venture Capital Firm of the Year’ award for a second straight year at the Private Equity World MENA 2009 conference in Dubai.

Riyada Ventures, whose track record encompasses more than 25 regional and international venture-capital transactions, also operates an office in Cairo. Its founder and CEO Khaldoon Tabaza has worked in the MENA venture-capital industry since 2000, prior to which he set up several high-growth entrepreneurial ventures. In 2006, the World Economic Forum (WEF) named him a ‘Young Global Leader’.

Riyada has previously invested in MediaScope, ArabAdvisors, and Kindisoft  flash security tools developer from Jordan.

Riyada Ventures will be integrated by Abraaj into its newly launched regional SME and Entrepreneurship initiative. Khaldoon Tabaza will continue as the CEO of the new business line of Abraaj.

Abraaj has enjoyed significant past success in the SME space, having been an early backer of Maktoob.com, the leading Arab language portal recently acquired by Yahoo! It was also the original institutional investor in companies of the caliber of Arabtec, Aramex and Amwal at very early stages of their growth stories, each one resulting in significant returns for the Dubai based PE firm.

Through the new initiative, Abraaj will invest hundreds of millions of dollars in SMEs across MENA with the aim of creating high-impact, high-growth, successful businesses to fuel innovation, job-creation, sustainable growth and economic diversification. At its core, the platform will give enormous support to the indigenous entrepreneurship that exists across the broader region.

Abraaj will work with governments, regional and international development and investment organisations, and Abraaj’s investor base to provide a pan-regional platform from which investments will be made.

In addition to the commercial objectives of the platform, Abraaj will also provide entrepreneurial support at the grassroots level in the form of business mentoring, training and technical assistance so as to stimulate the entrepreneurial spirit in business communities across the region.

For companies in which it invests, Abraaj will provide a dedicated back-office platform to offer both strategic support services and operational functionality to facilitate growth plans and provide mentorship to the young entrepreneurs in the SME space, which comprises more than 80% of economic activity across the MENA region.

As a further commitment to the countries in which it will invest, Abraaj will allocate a portion of the funds raised for a given nation to the development needs of its less fortunate communities by partnering with an established sustainable development fund that provides patient capital and that subscribes to the philosophy of sustainable philanthropic capital.

Founder and CEO of Abraaj, Arif Naqvi, said: “We are delighted to welcome Khaldoon and his team at Riyada Ventures into the Abraaj group, to spearhead our regional enterprise-development initiative. Abraaj is committed to creating the region’s largest dedicated platform to support entrepreneurship and innovation within the high-growth economies of the MENA region.”

Founder and CEO of Riyada Ventures, Khaldoon Tabaza said: “Abraaj’s groundbreaking initiative in the SME and entrepreneurship space will be a positive inflexion point in the development of high-impact, high-growth ventures in the MENA region. We are honoured and delighted to be part of the Abraaj success story.”

Creative Commons (CC) the equivalent body to open source software foundations but for content has finally launched its Amman chapter.

The launch was part of CC first Salon in Jordan and in the Arab world which took place Talal Abu Ghazaleh business Forum.
The forum also focused on how CC could be applied to business, artistic, entrepreneurial activities in the Arab world by showcasing case studies as the CC AL Jazeera repository.

Update: Video Interview here.

More Updates here: Jabbar acquired e-Marketing MENA.

Update: Yahoo press release is at the end of this post, Financial terms were not disclosed, but my sources say the deal is over than 100 million.

Update: As we said other Maktoob websites that are not branded under Maktoob name will be called “Jabbar” a new company separate from Yahoo! (souq.com, Cashu, tahadi MMO games, Araby.com and Maktoob Research.) maktoob.com will be called  Yahoo Middle East and products will be cobranded Yahoo and Maktoob. ( ArabCrunch was 1st to break the acquisition deal world wide.)

Update: It is official, YAHOO buying maktoob! Yahoo has 20 million users in the Arab world maktoob 16 million according to Maktoob Business.

Update: After 2 days Yahoo products will be made Arabic and content Arabized. Yahoo Messenger and Yahoo Mail will be first to be Arabized.

Keith Neillson VP emerging markets Yahoo! was speaking spoke during the press conference.

Updates before the press conference confirmation:

Update1: Story is folding,  Yahoo will announce in a press conference shortly.

Update2: The number is bigger than 100 million USD, a source told AC was told.

Update 3: The deal will include maktoob.com but not maktoob group as I was told, stay tuned for updates here.

The talks between Yahoo and Maktoob have been around for 2 years now, but in the last few months, it was confirmed to ArabCrunch that the talks are serious.

Yesterday 24th of August 2009 was historical day for the Arab Internet and Tech industry if the news tips we got were proven to be right (Confirmed and the press conferences is up now), as according to reliable sources Yahoo team signed a deal to acquire Maktoob the largest Arab portal yesterday, the price is not clear but estimated at around 100 million USD. (Update: Financial terms were not disclosed, but my sources say they are more than 100 million USD.)

Update: According to the sources, there will be a press conference soon with half an hour.

This deal is significant, because it is the largest acquisition that happened in the tech sector in the Arab world since ever. It means allot, now Venture Capitalist (VC) and investors will see that there is an exit in funding they put into startups from the Arab world. Which means there will be more VCs and funding activities happing in the Arab world, which means more Arab startups and more jobs!

What we need next, is to see a world class IPO for an internet or a technology startup from the Arab world especially in the Internet space.

Maktoob started back  around  1997 as the first Arabic web-based email, founded in Amman, Jordan by Samih Toukan and Husam Khouri. The web-based email reached around 115000 users within a year, the company received funding from EFG HERMEZ and then Abbraaj Capital which sold its equity to Tiger Global Management. Maktoob now operates over a dozen of websites under Maktoob brand ranging from search (via Araby.com) web mail, social networking, blogging platform, sports, Q&As, photo and video sharing. Today Maktoob visitors stand around 16 million a month, as the largest portal in the Arab world from the Arab world.

Official press release from Maktoob Business:

“RELEASE: Yahoo! Maktoob acquisition

Aug 25, 2009

Yahoo! to Extend Reach to Millions of Consumers in the Arab World; Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Maktoob.com

Combination of local expertise and global scale to provide best online experience for consumers in the Arab world and platform for advertisers in the region

SUNNYVALE, Calif. & DUBAI, Aug 25, 2009 — Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO) today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Maktoob.com, the leading online community in the Arab world, with more than 16.5 million unique users.

“This acquisition will accelerate Yahoo!’s strategy of expanding in high-growth emerging markets where we believe Yahoo! has unparalleled opportunity to become the destination of choice for consumers,” said Yahoo! chief executive officer Carol Bartz. “Access to information and communications tools can positively impact people’s lives in many ways, and with the acquisition of Maktoob.com and our investment in the region, the Arab world will soon get a Yahoo! experience in Arabic with relevant local language content, programming and services.”

Internet users in the region will benefit from the combination of Yahoo!’s popular products and services with Maktoob’s compelling local content, which today reaches one in three people online throughout the Arab world. This acquisition will extend Yahoo!’s current offerings by adding capabilities to deliver relevant Arabic-language content and services, as well as Arabic versions of Yahoo!’s popular Yahoo! Messenger and Yahoo! Mail services. Maktoob.com is accessed by users in countries that include UAE, Jordan, Kuwait, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

“Yahoo! and Maktoob are natural partners and this combination should help energize the Internet market in the region as a whole. We are excited about Yahoo! building a stronger presence in the Middle East and bringing its compelling suite of services to Arab users in Arabic,” said Samih Toukan, Founder of Maktoob.

While Internet usage in the Middle East has grown more than tenfold since 2000, most markets are still in the early stages of adoption. According to the World Bank, there are more than 320 million Arabic speakers worldwide, while less than one per cent of all online content is in Arabic.

With Yahoo! and Maktoob.com’s combined audience and platform, advertisers will have access to the reach and sophisticated targeting capabilities they need to effectively engage with the region’s online consumers. Spending on online advertising is expected to grow by 35 – 40 percent this year in the region, according to Madar Research.

“Internet users in the Arab world will have access to Yahoo!’s vast content portfolio, as well as world-class communications products, which will be available in Arabic for the first time. In addition, advertisers will be able to leverage the vast reach of the newly combined audiences to effectively market to consumers across the region,” said Ahmed Nassef, general manager of Maktoob.com.

Maktoob.com was founded in 2000 by Samih Toukan and Hussam Khoury as the world’s first free Arabic/English Web-based email service, and since then has grown to be the leading Arab online community in the region.

“Yahoo is acquiring Maktoob.com for the strong brand and audience it has built over the last nine years and the passionate team they have assembled, which we believe is the strongest in the region,” said Keith Nilsson, senior vice president, Emerging Markets, Yahoo! “We see great growth potential in both audience and advertising in the Arab world and combining with Maktoob.com will allow us to quickly build our presence there with high quality products. This is a big win for publishers, advertisers, and consumers in the region.”

This acquisition is part of Yahoo!’s larger strategy to grow its business throughout the world’s emerging markets by connecting consumers with the content and services that matter most to them in their local language. The company’s Emerging Markets business group, headquartered in Singapore, is responsible for Yahoo!’s fastest growing markets such as South East Asia, India, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. Yahoo! has a strong track record of delivering great Internet experiences and helping fuel Internet adoption through partnerships with local developers and content providers.

Following the acquisition, Maktoob.com will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Yahoo!. Ahmed Nassef, the current general manager of Maktoob.com, will continue to lead the Maktoob.com teams and will report to Keith Nilsson. It is expected that the transaction will be completed in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Upon completion of the deal, the remaining Maktoob Group companies – including Souq.com, cashU.com, Araby.com, and Tahadi.com – will operate under a new entity called the Jabbar Internet Group, managed by Samih Toukan. Yahoo! and the Jabbar Internet Group will continue to have a strong commercial relationship going forward, which will include the promotion of Jabbar companies on the Maktoob.com portal.

Financial terms were not disclosed.”

Last March we reported that CIApple, the startup that works in the field of computational intelligence, won the first place in ASTF ‘s technology business plan competition -seed category-, yesterday I recorded a video interview using my mobile with its founder and general manager, Hussein Al-Natsheh to track the startup progress since then.

In this interview Hussein tells us that his startup has grown now from a part time project to a full time business with the support of $21,000 a grant from SRTD and his startups’ first product “Ciapple Clustering Tool” is currently in beta testing.

We also discussed many other topics, such as the support Microsoft is offering startups like CIApple. Just play the interview to know more:




(Disclosure: Hussein Al-Natsheh is a friend of mine, he is also Technology Transfer Program (TCP) manager at Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship (QRCE)  who was an organizing partner in the 1st ARABCRUNCH DEMO event)

During the second day of the 6th Media and Telecommunications Convergence Conference which was concluded yesterday in Amman-Jordan, We live streamed via my mobile few sessions, and we also held a mobile payment panel discussion between 3 involved parties from Jordan and UK: Janit Abdallah, Director of Business Development of PayNet a Jordanian based joint venture between Visa Jordan and Specialized Technical Services (STS), which provides regional e-payment processing service, Karmel Manasrah, Product Sales Manger-Telecom of the Jordanian Telecom and Enterprise software company, Eskadenia and Pretti Johansson Chief Wireless Officer of the UK based mobile banking and payments company, Monities.

How soon can the Arab world accept mPayment? Mr. Janti Abdallah Sts

And here is a 4 minute video covering some parts of Janti presentation (sorry for the low sound quality)




As for the mPayment panel, here is the 19 minute video I shot using my mobile (apologies that it was cut at the end due to technical problems.)




 Update: post edited.

Habib Haddad the cofounder of Yamli, the Arabic transliteration utility and search engine,  delivered an interesting lecture titled” Idea to Reality” on May 18th at Princess Sumaya University in Amman, Jordan, as part of The Entrepreneurs Week which was organized by Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship (QRCE) from the 16th  tell the 21st of may 2009.

Habib presented an interesting lecture in how to turn your startup into a real thing, he used his experiences in starting Yamli and growing it as an example that Arab startups (and non Arabs) can take lessons from.

I announced originally on my twitter that I ‘ll do a live streaming of the lecture on ArabCrunch Channel on Qik, however the WIFI connection did not work at the event location at the time of the lecture, even though I tested it a day before. Nevertheless the lecture videos were synchronized  latter to ArabCrunch Qik Channel. Only about 10 minutes of the begging of lecture were missing.

Here are the videos I shot using my Nokia 5800 mobile (I think Nokia should thank me for over publicizing Nokia 5800 on  ArabCrunch )

folowen which is currently in closed-beta is a useful tool that enables users to find profiles of people and organizations in different social media sites ( currently 18.) Users can save searches and chose which social media networks they want the results to be yielded from. The service uses Google API to fetch results, yielding in few cases inaccurate results.

folowen is founded by the same founders of Amman, Jordan based Questler.

Razan Khatib cofounder of folowen told me that once folowen is out of private beta, search will be open to anyone, and there will be no need for signing up.

Razan revealed a nice upcoming feature that has a good benefit: signed up users will be able to link their services from folowen (twitter, YouTube accounts…etc.) so once they search for anyone they can follow/connect to them directly from folowen without the need to go to that particular service and initiate that request. This will be applicable to service providers with appropriate APIs. She also said that Social alerts will be coming up as well.

As for the business model Razan said it will be based on advertizing from one end, and charging some future service providers to be included in folowen service directory.
Folowen competes with Wink and Pipl.

If you want an invite to folowen simply comment in this post with a valid email address.

Inside Jo is the 1st Jordanian startup to develop a GPS car navigation system. The company is a joint venture between Jordan based, Delaware, USA incorporated award winning backup company Genie-Soft  which was founded by a Jordanian young entrepreneur Muayyad Shehadeh in 2001, and Jordan based companyREBORN INDUSTRIES which specialized manufacturing of automation and electrical switchgear.

Inside Jo offer GPS Car Navigator device plus an online mapping portal for Jordan. It provides details of every street level with the names of each street in Amman (The capital of Jordan), something I never saw in any of its online mapping competitors. Inside Jo provides mapping solutions that not just tourists badly need but also a very handy solution for the residents’ of Jordan.

Online Mapping:

Inside Jo online mapping portal is up and running in beta mood, the website which is in English and Arabic promised soon, offers maps, city search, weather and entertainment guide in Amman.

“Maps” is the main section of the website and it offers you away to search the map by address or location, Inside Jo has added thousands of interest points that users can search for or add the missing ones.

Once you search for an interest point say “KFC” in this example, it shows you all the available locations of that interest point, when clicking at one of these locations, you get the telephone number and the address of the interest point and if you click read more you get to see the latest reviews of that spot or you can add your, though reviews are moderated before they can be displayed.

The other beauty of the system is that it can give you directions to that location from anywhere in the map, just right click on the map and choose “Drive to Here” and then go to your start point location in the map and chose “Drive from Here”. The website then displays a detailed map with the best route you can get, it also calculates the distance and the Taxi charge. In this example driving from Jordan University South Gate to KFC near six circle, is 8.8 KM long and costs 1.77 JD by Taxi, which is about what the Taxi fare costs. “The Get Directions” feature is the most important feature, because it provides direction from any location on the map to any other one you chose, this comes handy using the GPS device, however the web version comes short at providing written step by step directions just the rout.

Sharing came to the mind of the developers of Inside Jo, you can share the location of the map using a URL or an Embed option, or you can send current map by email or print it.

The “City Search” of the Inside Jo website provides you with a directory of interest point that spans from Restaurants with all its types, such as Arabic and Fast Food, to Religious Organizations which includes Churches and Mosques. Browsing through the interest points leads to a page for each interest point with its location on the map and the spot phone number, you can also see reviews or add yours and even bookmark or print the page. 

On Inside Jo website the entertainment section offers you with Cinema, TV guide and Radio sections. However for the time being, only cinema section works offering you what is currently showing and when in all Amman Cinemas and the location and phone number of each cinema house.

GPS Device:

The GPS Car Navigator device is called GNav and comes with no monthly fees only one time buying payment, however it is not available yet in the market, but will be available in July 2009, according to InsideJo website.

GNav comes with a touch screen visual and voice navigation system. Auto re-route, 2D or 3D map view, built-in point of interest  database and Customizable Route Methods an important feature to use during traffic jams, where you can  choose the way you want to navigate to use the most freeways, least freeways, fastest time, shortest distance and avoid toll roads. Exclude specific streets or freeways after a route is calculated to get there the way you want.

GNav is 4.3 widescreen, high-quality touch screen,  Weight220 g  and buttery life up to Battery life up to 4 hours, however the battery can be recharged via the car electric outlet (Lighter, 5V). The full list of GNav’s features can be found here.

Here is a video of how the device works:




# Inside Jo
 

Yesterday Gorden Grayish, Vice President EMEA Intel Corp, told ArabCrunch in a video interview (find it at the end of the post) that Intel Capital the venture capital arm of Intel, will announce an investment tomorrow in Amman, but he did not mention much more information.  This morning they announced that the investment is in two Jordan-based digital content companies: Jeeran and ShooFeeTV.

Jeeran: a social media community with blogs, social networks, video sharing and website builder, that has around 1 million members and 7 million unique visitors per month.

ShooFeeTV: A new startups that is content provider and aggregator of Arab satellite channel listings which centralize information for more than 120 channels including programming information, celebrity news, pictures and video clips with 200,000 entries increasing daily.

Both of these companies received investment from Jordan’s venture capital firm IV Holdings. And with this investments, the total number of companies Intel Capital has funded in the region since last year is 7.

Below is the video interview we made with Grayish yesterday during World Economic Forum in Dead Sea, Jordan. In the interview Grayish talked about Intel Capital, Intel’s R&D activities in the region, and the status of the tech industry in light of the global economic situation.

Via IV Holdings Blog and ArabCrunch.




Colleges of Computing and Information Technology/Jordan branch held last Tuesday 12/4/2009 a technology lecture at the Arab Open University in Amman, as part of Third Information Technology Forum which commenced at the Islamic University (IUGaza) in Gaza.

The lecture in Amman used a video conference with the Forum in Gaza.  According to the organizers this lecture is part of academic support initiative to the Islamic University of Gaza, the Union has launched earlier, in collaboration with a number of Academic institutions in the Arab world.

ArabCrunch tried to live steam the event via Qik using my Nokia 5800 mobile, but due to continues wireless network disconnections, we were not able to stream the whole event, however the lecture video conferencing with Gaza went well, as it was using a specified IP.

During the lecture in Amman Dr. Fawaz Al Zool the Chairman of King Abdullah IT Faculty, presented e-government and how it would use the Internet and the web to streamline operations and create a better service for citizens.

Dr. Iman Abu Rob, Chairman of IT faculty at Al-Zarqa private university spoke about the quality of websites. And Dr Jihad Al Sadi Chairman of IT and computing at Arab Open University (video interviewed by ArabCrunch) spoke about e-learning, from e-courses and the use of web communities to foster the learning process.

According to the organizers, the Academic support initiative to Universities in Gaza was announced in the 26th of Feb. 09 after the “Israeli” war on Gaza which targeted civilian infrastructure such as universities. The initiative aims to strengthen collaboration between Arab academics in Arab and foreign universities and academics at the universities in Gaza in all fields, through mutual research and coordination in conferences and in the exchange of scientific publications.

According to a press release by IUG the forum was under the theme “Towards an information society”, and it aims to highlight the role of regional institutions in the development of social use of information technology.

Below is my Interview with Dr. Al –Sadi, bear in mind the quality is not so good, since it was done via mobile (Nokia 5800) at a low connection speed. (Actually I just started using Qik half an hour before the lecture, so again excuse me. We’ll have more live streaming tech related videos on ArabCrunch channel at Qik, so do not forget to subscribe there.)




 This year is witnessing a growing array of people and companies entering the funding space for tech startups and companies in the Arab region, with Intilaq from Bayt.com and others who we will announce about them soon on ArabCrunch. And as of today Evolveplus based in Amman, Jordan has entered this space.

Evolveplus is a holding company that can be considered a Venture Capital (VC) in one hand or a Private Equity (PE) on the other. This means it provides funding for startups and companies from its own money (unlike many cashless VCs we see in the region) and from investors who subscribe to its different funding packages that are run in a similar fashion a VC fund is run. However there is a thin line between a VC and a PE, and a clear definition is still evolving in our part of the world.

Evolveplus investments focus revolves around technology from water and energy to Information and communication technology (ICT). “Anything as long as it has a technology angle in it” said Rami Alkarmi a serial business and social entrepreneur and Funder and Managing Director of Evolveplus. He added Like any innovative ICT automation feature that helps you do (things you could not do before or at a cheaper rate.) Evolveplus is looking for unique ideas that have potential to “evolve” themselves and help evolve the economy, Rami explained.

The investment company main target is to fund startups and companies in the Arab world with special attention to Jordan but they can also invest in any company worldwide. “The main objective is to help build the economy of Jordan and Arabic region.” Rami told ArabCrunch.

Evolveplus is open to provide funding to the following types of businesses, under the name of e+ Funds:

• Early Stage Growth Series: from idea up to the requirement of 1st round funding. Funding amount: 50,000 – 350,000 Jordanian Dinars (JD) – 1 JD = 1.41 United Stats Dollar (USD)-
• Restructure Series: Targeting underperforming ventures who have products, strategies, and/or target markets that are fundamentally sound but which require enhanced management, sales or marketing techniques, financial or operational controls, or other modifications in order to improve their prospects and operations. Funding amount:  300,000 – 1.2 million JDs.
• Established Growth Series: Targeted ventures who seek to finance projects or growth strategies with private equity funding, especially given limited access to capital markets and expensive/limited credit Funding amount : 750 ,000- 3 million JDs.

The amount of equity Evolveplus will retain in e+ Funds is based on case-by-case bases according to Rami.

The majority of the current investments are from Rami’s family funds; however they do have other investors. And as not all Evolveplus funds series are fully invested , Evolveplus welcomes investors. 

Besides the e+ Funds, Evolveplus has other packages for investors (direct investors and institutional investors) who seeks to maximize their ROI and companies who seek funding:

• e+ Direct Project Investors: are investors with specific  interest in a target sector/ venture allowing e+ to have majority control (51%) of target ventures (until exit) while limiting e+ Funds exposure to 20-30% per investment. e+ Fund Investors are given priority in direct project investment opportunities.
• e+ Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) are structured  as close Ended, Jordanian-incorporated private shareholding companies that directly invest in target ventures it can also be investments in a specific sector. e+ SPVs are designed to have majority voting power ( min 51% of capital) without exposing e+ Fund to risks higher than 20-30% per invested venture. 

Besides funding, Evolveplus will provide qualified startups/companies with management support, capital structure advice, business development & sales Generation, improved financial reporting & MIS And advice in improving the Corporate Governance.

Evolveplus website is here however it is still going through development. And to apply for funding you can fill the form here.

ArabCrunch is excited to have another Venture Capital firm in Jordan and the Arab world. We look for more VCs to be born in our part of the world, specially those who invest in seed ideas and those who care for market potentials rather than immediate financial returns.

Do you know Al-Kindi (also known as Alkindus)  (Arabic: أبو يوسف يعقوب إبن إسحاق الكندي )? most probably not. He was a 9th century pioneer in cryptanalysis  and cryptology, he also devised new methods of breaking ciphers, including the frequency analysis method. Using his mathematical and medical expertise, he  also developed a scale to allow doctors to quantify the potency of their medication. Al-Kindi  is one of many Muslim scientists that  represent a 1000 years era of bright ages for the united Islamic Khilapha state an era that is branded as the dark ages of Europe, or Mid Evil age.

As with scientist during the Islamic civilization peak Alkindi was specialized in many streams of science, where  he was also an Islamic philosopher, scientist, astrologer, astronomer, cosmologist, chemist, logician, mathematician, musician, physician, physicist, psychologist, and meteorologist. To read more about him go here.

Living to his legend a Jordanian startup branded themselves with his name: meet Kindisoft.

Kindisoft works in the lines that Kindi has pioneered, but dealing with modern age Rich Internet Applications (RIA) problems: security and IP.

Kindisoft provides software products to protect the developers intellectual property (IP) and strengthen the security of Rich Internet Applications (RIA).

The current two software solutions are secureSWf and JCipher.

As a software developers, you would have spent a lot of time and hard work to develop an application, you want to prevents illegal redistribution, and hide security vulnerabilities of your RIA, you would also love to decreases size and increase the performance of your app and enhance your application’s source code security.

Kindsoft’s secureSWF does all that and acts like a “watchdog” of your asset protecting your SWF files from decompilers. where according to Kindisoft today, there are more than 22 Flash decompilers exist, that abusers can utilizes to view your ActionScript source code.

secureSWF version 3.0  which was released by Kindisoft last August, is a sophisticated obfuscation, protection and encryption solution for Adobe’s Flash and Flex ActionScript. Version 3.1 will support Adobe AIR and is due to launch soon.

The software comes in three editions, and is cross platform supporting Windows, Mac and Linux. Here is the comparison charts for three editions of secureSWF. You can also get fully functional Demo of SecureSWF here, where it only shows a visible watermark that says “protected by secureSWF” on protected SWF files.

As for JavaScritpt protection Kindisoft offers JCipher  a a JavaScript obfuscation and optimization tool, it reduces JavaScript code size, and makes it much harder to understand and reverse engineer your JavaScript code. JCipher is still in early beta testing stage, the latest version is available for download here. The name JCipher is dervied from Cipher is orginate from (Middle French as cifre and Medieval Latin as cifra, from the Arabic sifr = zero) click here to read the full Wikipedia entry.

Kindisoft is venture backed  by Riyada Ventures and is currenlty profitable. It has been founded by Ammar Mardawi back in 2005 when Ammar was still in a student at Princess Sumaya University for Technology. The company which is based in Amman, Jordan won in 2006 The First Arab Universities Technology Business Plan Competition organized by ASTF and Intel Corporation, and The Queen Rania National Entrepreneurship Competition (QRNEC)

Watwet the micro blogging & social networking Arabian clone of Twitter has launched a new design today with some new features. ( I have reviewed watwet in the past here)

What is new:

The new design is very nice, sleek and straightforward, I personally like it. And it seems other wawaters did. The new design also comes with a number of pre-built themes.

Huda a watwet users even demanded more:

can we have a dynamic design that changes automatically according to time of day, in the morning and at nite (night)? nice font btw (by the way.)

.

Now Mobily’s customers (the second Saudi mobile operator) can send and receive SMS updates, as well it has been the case for Jordan’s Mobile operator Zain’s customer. But if using any other mobile operator in Jordan KSA or anywhere worldwide you can only now send SMS updates.

Other new features include:  a Badge similar to Twitter’s badge which allows you to embed your wawets updates to your blog or any website, be it your updates or your friends, also a new Facebook app and statistics which list all the user activity stats, such as: number of watwets, friendship request , ..etc.

Public  timeline has been added with latest, featured, and channels: which now has Play FM ( A customer to  Ahmad Humeid’s  other company, he is the CEO of iToot Corp the owner of Wawet and Ikbis) and  Shopping guide. But both at the moment are not functioning. Though this shows that Wawet is introducing social media to businesses so they use it as a marketing tool,  thus watwet will in turn make money.

What is missing:

Wawet’s -as I said before- main differentiation to twitter is its 2 way MMS service and its Arabic interface. Also as I said before Watwet might have benefited from Twitter ending out-bound SMS services to Arabia and most of the world. But anyways Twitter with around 2 million users has not gone main stream in USA yet, let alone in the Arab world!

Though since Watwet 2 way SMS service is limited to Zain’s customers in Jordan, and now Mobily in KSA, there is no real value for users like me in using the service. Plus there is no desktop app that can let me receive and send updates like Twhirl does with Twitter, identica and seesmic. It is really annoying to keep hitting refresh to see latest friends updates or to get my email spammed with tens of updates per day.

Actually by looking at watwet’s timeline it tells you that usage rates seems to be very low with few updates from only few users per day.

I have sent a watwet to Ahmad Humeid with few questions but he did not answer.

UPDATE: Husni Khuffash Google Country Business Development Manager, UAE, said that Google officially has not made final decision regarding the location of its upcoming engineering center in the Arab world. But I have other sources who say Jordan will be the place.

Google is being active lately organizing seminars and lectures in Amman/Jordan, and posting Job vacancies on different regional job recruitment websites. First it was “The Art of online Advertising (covered here)”    and  “Online Advertising in the Arab World: Impacts and Opportunities” Seminar  which will commence next Thursday.

“The Culture of Google Life Inside, and How to Apply? “  will be held on Wednesday the 20th of August , 2006, Amman / Jordan at Sham Hotel between 6:00 and-9:00 pm.

The speaker will be Husni Khuffash Google Country Business Development Manager, UAE.  In which he will give an insight into Google’s work culture. The lecture will be followed by a networking evening gathering professional and senior executive.

The title of this lecture points out that Google that wants to recruit in Jordan, and it has been confirmed to me by multiple sources that Google is in the process of opening an office in Amman, Jordan.

The lecture is organized by IEEE Gold and Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship (QRCE).
To register you can email khawaja@ieee.org.

Participation fees:

IEEE member: JD 4.
IEEE non-member: JD 6.

The Seminar is organized by Google and Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship  (QRCE). The speaker will be Husni Khuffash Google Country Business Development Manager, UAE. Where he will give an insight into Online Advertising in the Arab World.

The seminar will be held on Thursday, August  21th 2008, from 5:30-6:30 PM at the Friendship Auditorium- Prince Sumaya University For Technology.

ArabCrunch will be there and will provide you dear readers with nice coverage, InshaAllah.

To register you can email google@qrce.org