As 2011 is about to end, history was rewritten in 3 Arabs countries and counting. Bu Azizi started something that can not be stopped.

But what where the top search terms coming for Egypt and Saudi Arabia? Google released today it is annual Zeitgiest a look into the year’s top google searches. We would like to note that Facebook and Twitter and news where the among raising trends. meaning more new users for both Facebook and Twitter and more interest from the general public in political news.

Fastest Rising Searches in Egypt ( we translated them to Arabic)

Jan 25th revolution

Mydan Al Tahrir

Facebook

Jocks 2011

7th day ( a newspaper)

Mubarak Trail

Twitter

Finance Ministry

Google Gravity

Love forbidden serias.

Egypt’s Fastest Rising People:
Mubarak

Wael Ghonim

Hisham Al juokk

Isam Sharaf
Tamer Ashour

Omar Katamesh

Hussien Salem

Ahmed Al Shahat

Ahemd Iz

Jamal Mubarak

Egypt top Google news:
Al Youm Al sabaa
Al Maser Al youm
Youtube
Masrway
Adustour
Facebook
news
google
al jumhuria
al shourok

http://www.googlezeitgeist.com/en/top-lists/eg/google-news

As for KSA: fastest raising searches:
Youtube
Facebook
hafez
games
twitter
spongup
aljazeera
heart heart song
al arabiya
bank Al tasleef

KSA fastest rising people:
Ghadafi
Myriam Fares
Ali Abdallah Saleh
Maher Almaakulai
justin Bieber
Mohamd Abdo
Manal Aalem
Khaled Abdul Rahman

KSA Googel news:
Mohamed Abdo
manal Al alem
Khaled And Al rahman
Itihad sports club
Egyptian league
Al Yaman
Reyal Madrid
Al Nasr sports club
Egypt
Barcelona

Google has launched recently a website dedicated to Egyptian parliamentary election that starts today.

The site http://google.com.eg provide a number of services, news about the election aggregated from the web and that can be filtered according to any egyptian political party or issue.

It also has a section which provides a google map mashup that asks users for their national number to get info about where to cast their vote and other voting information, this is done using Egypt’s supreme juridical comity for elections sites.

Also google has a YouTube Channel dedicated for the election called “sayyedqararak” that features videos from elections candidates. The channel is in partnership with BBC, Egyptian Satellite Channel On TV and Egyptian news Maser Al Youm.

As today is the election and if you were an Egyptian who did not vote yet, this is a useful service for you.

According to sources in Egypt, Mobile service is offline in Tahrir square in Cairo Egypt, the square is witnessing a new revolt against the military rule in Egypt with around 1 million people demonstrating.

We do not know if it was switched off intentionally by mobile operators -after a request from the government in Egypt – or not. Vodafone one of the mobile telecom operators in Egypt says over Twitter that the service is running and the outage might be due huge traffic.

In the first version of the Egyptian revolution in January this year , one of Husni Mubarak tactics -which did not save him- was to switch mobile network off.

#image credit.

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

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

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

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

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

#image credit.

Ideavelopers, managers of the Technology Development Fund (“TDF”) and is a subsidiary of EFG-Hermes, recently lead a Series A investment round in Offerna, Egypt’s first group buying site.

Established in March 2011, Offerna provides its customers with deals that feature discounts of 50-90% for various products and services, in return guaranteeing merchants a minimum number of buyers.

Offerna competes with regional group buying sites such as GoNabit which was acquired by living social and Cobone which is part of Jabbar group. Offerna which currently focuses on the Egyptian market is planning a regional expansion.

Offerna is lead by Abdullah Assal, founder and CEO, who returned to Cairo after completing his MBA at Stanford to bring the group-buying model to Egypt.  Offerna’s founding team includes also Sinan Khatib, previously Director of Business Development at BuyWithMe, one of the leading U.S. group buying sites, Yasser Lotfy, previously manager of Etisalat Misr’s Mass Market Revenue and Retention, and Tamer Adel, regional e-commerce expert.

Offerna is TDF’s fourth investment in e-commerce-related companies, recently the VC invested in nefsak. Through its e-commerce investments, Ideavelopers aims to build a network of companies that not only jump start e-commerce in Egypt, but also allow for Ideavelopers’ companies to benefit from portfolio company synergies.

EFG-Hermes was one of the early investors in Maktoob around the year 2000, Maktoob was acquired by Yahoo in 2009.

When learning one of the common programming languages like C++, English language in most cases is a barrier for young Arab kids to learn software programing at a young age.

Kalimat comes to bridge the gap by offering an Arabic educational programing language for kids in which developers write the code using Arabic letters.

According to Mohammed Sayed, the language is easy to learn but provides enough features to allow for complex programs and it has attributes that are familiar to developers such as Object-oriented programming, Dynamic typing , Garbage collection and creating .exe files.

The language is open source freely available on Windows , Ubuntu 32-bit and Ubuntu 64-bit here is a book in Arabic to teach kids how to use Kalimat.

Update: Samy the author of Kalimat says ” Just wanted to tell people who downloaded the September 2011 edition: There’s a bug that prevents the creation of .exe files! I fixed it in the October edition, available now from the official site (http://www.kalimat-lang.com) or from http://code.google.com/p/kalimat/downloads”

This project is important and I would like to ask fellow developers to joins the community and further develop it and enhance it. It would also be very useful for Arab schools to add it to their curricula and teach it for kids at a young age.

The project is founded by Mohamed Samy from Egypt, many thanks for this great offer.

2 days ago I arrived  to my beloved country Egypt. I am planning to stay here for few days, in mind with  a new project that would help push entrepreneurship in Egypt and the region and I would like to meet the startup and tech community here.

The post title says that ArabCrunch is in Egypt, not that ArabCrunch is not here, it is. We already have Arabic tech writers and team members who are Egyptians like Mohammad Sayed and Moemen Mohammed, our security partner Spirula Systems and above all our readers and fans.

I would like in this trip to meet with everyone startups, VCs, geeks and our readers. So we might have a small meetup soon.

Microsoft Corp. announced the promotion of Ali Faramawy to Corporate Vice President Microsoft Corporation and President – Microsoft Middle East & Africa. The promotion recognizes Faramawy’s strong leadership and his contributions to helping “to fuel growth across the region. ” It also underlines the growing role of MEA (Arab world) as an area contributing to the overall success of Microsoft.

As corporate vice president, Ali Faramawy will continue to be responsible for Microsoft’s operations in the Middle East & Africa (MEA) area. MEA is one of thirteen areas that comprise Microsoft’s worldwide operations. Microsoft said that “the area represents one of Microsoft’s fastest growing and most dynamic markets – and certainly its most diverse.” Microsoft MEA is comprised of 32 offices representing 79 countries across three continents. Faramawy has led the region for seven years .Ali Faramawy’s previous title was Vice President Microsoft International and President – Microsoft Middle East & Africa.
Throughout his twenty years career in the IT industry, Ali held different Technical, Sales and Managerial roles in different parts of the Middle East and in Europe with companies like Dun & Bradstreet Software, NCR Corporation, Yokogawa Marex and finally Microsoft Corporation.

Ali joined Microsoft in October 1997 as the General Manager of Microsoft Egypt. After a successful four year spell in that role, he moved on to assume additional responsibilities for the area of Eastern Mediterranean, which encompassed Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Cyprus & Malta.

In May 2002, Ali moved to take on the newly established position of Regional Director – in charge of Sales, Marketing & Services for the Middle East and Africa Region.

Ali graduated from the Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, majoring in Computer Science & Automatic Control and has an MBA in Strategic Marketing from the University of Hull in the UK. He is married and has two sons.

Traffic james is a major problems in condents Egyptian cities, there were several attempts to develop an application to tackle this problem.

Bey2ollak developed by a group of Egyptian developers tackles this problem at the heart it update users with traffic conditions in major egyptian cities and users themselves report conditions.

The site has an iPhone, BlackBerry، Nokia and Android app and is also available in web version and mobile web version. The app can get more useful if it can suggest alternative routs to jammed streets.

(Via ArabCrunch Arabic Edition)

Hacktivists group Anonymous has organized a protest against USA San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART ) for shutting down cell phone service to four stations in downtown San Francisco in response to a planned protest. The protest was planned against killing an innocents man by BART police.

EFF called the action Pulling a Mubarak in San Francisco. Hunsi Mubarak shut down cell phone connection and the internet during the Egyptian revolution.

So here we go Arab Spring has reached USA with governments in US emulating Arab Tyrants tactics this time at home , for decades the backing for dictators was abroad .

here is the live stream: follow the protest live on Twitter hashtag #opBART



Here is another feed:



Live video for mobile from Ustream


Below is surveillance video from the Civic Center BART platform on July 3 when Charles Blair Hill was shot.



It’s arguably proven that the internet had played the most important role as a tool that led to the successful revolution in Egypt, eMarketing Egypt made a study to explore how Egyptians dealt with the internet during the revolution.

Ossama El-Badawy, the Online Competitive Intelligence Manager, stated that it is obvious that the internet in Egypt witnessed a dramatic growth after the revolution; the following figures just give a quick view for the current interment status in Egypt:
- 23+ million Internet users,
- 7.7+ million Facebook users,
- And 100%+ Twitter users growth during recent months

The survey was dedicated to explore in details the way Egyptians dealt with the internet during the revolution, the main findings can be listed as below:
-  28% of internet users purely relied on the Internet to stay tuned with the revolution news and updates
- This percentage goes up to 63% among those who participated in the demonstrations
- The Internet had solely shaped the views of 17% of users regarding the recent events
-  As expected, Facebook had been the prime tool used to tie up with events and news as mentioned be 71% of users
- Finally, 45% of users will increase their reliance on the Internet to tie up with coming news and events

I hope more Arab tyrants are toppled soon.

E-commerce in the region is reaching the tipping point, as the market seems more mature to deal with this type of commerce, yesterday LivingSocial one of the leading group buying sites in the world acquired GoNabit.

Earlier this month, Ideavelopers closed a deal with Sherif Nassar, Founder and CEO of nefsak.com, where Ideavelopers will invest 10 million EGP (1.67639 million U.S. dollars) in his company. Founded in 2008.

Nefask says it has been the fastest growing Egyptian online retailer with sales increasing five times year over year. Today nefsak’s online catalogue has over 18,000 products covering a wide range of categories from computers and electronics to home decoration and fashion. The investment according to a press release will help nefsak develop into a household brand and scale its operations to meet growth expectations.

In his comment on the investment, Ideavelopers Managing Partner, Tarek Assaad said, “We are delighted to work with nefsak, we believe they are the leader in their market. The level of dedication and passion that Sherif Nassar demonstrated while building this company is impressive. These characteristics are essential in an entrepreneur whose aspiration is to build an amazon.com for the Middle East”.

This investment comes as Ideavelopers’ third investment in an e-commerce related company. In mid 2008, Ideavelopers had invested in SMART Cards Applications, a company that runs an electronic network for distributing food rations. Later that year, it also invested in Fawry, the leading provider of payments services. “We believe that e-commerce is reaching an infliction point,” said Ziad Mokhtar, Partner at Ideavelopers, “the people who were 10 years old when the Internet first came to Egypt in the late 90s are now entering the workforce. Adding the increased proliferation of broadband, this translates into a critical mass of users who feel safe, spend more time, and can spend more money online.”

Sherif Nassar started attracting the attention of local and international investors in late 2010. “I chose Ideavelopers”, Sherif says, “because I knew they can help support the company as it grows. They can provide necessary funds, sound strategic advice, and access to local networks”. Both, Tarek Assaad and Ziad Mokhtar from Ideavelopers, as well as Mr. Sameh Farid have joined the board of directors of nefsak.

Ideavelopers is Egyptian based venture capital firm a subsidiary of EFG-Hermes Private Equity. The firm manages the Technology Development Fund – a $50 million fund focused on early stage technology companies. To date, the firm invested over $25 million in 17 companies operating inside and outside Egypt.

Shutting down the internet cost egypt millions of dollars according to studies in the mater, however that crime did not go unpunished.

An Egyptian court has ordered former egyptian president Husni Mubarak and other former officials to pay 90 Million USD for shutting down the internet and cell phone networks during the Egyptian revolution.

According to Aljazeera Mubarak is sentenced to pay 200 million Egyptian pounds (1 Egyptian pound = 0.16787 U.S. dollars), former prime minister Ahmed Nathef 40 million EP, and former interior minister Habib Al Adli 300  million EGP for damages that “the national economy has suffered.”

It is worth mentioning that the former regime blocked Twitter other websites before shutting down the internet.

#image credits.

A team in University of Alabama in Birmingham, USA have discovered 1,000 tombs, 3,000 ancient settlements and 17 pyramids via satellite infrared survey.

According to BBC the team analysed images from satellites orbiting 700km above the earth, equipped with cameras so powerful they can pin-point objects less than 1m in diameter on the earth’s surface.

Infra-red imaging was used to highlight different materials under the surface.

#image credits

Jabbar’s group buying site Cobone has expanded to Cairo, Now offering special offers to the resident of the city.

Like Groupon and Livingsocial Cobone works by offering special deal with deep discounts on restaurants health club and so on, users commit to the deal and if enough people buy the deal it goes live.

With this move Cobone competes Cairo specific group buying site: offerna. It also competes with other regional group buying sites: GoNanbit , Groupon, Fustuq, and Hmizate.

Egypt’s Ministry of communications and information technology  (MCIT) has released ICT indicators in brief for February of 2011. The report says that there are 71.46 million Mobile subscribers in January growing at 1.13 % from previous month with annual growth at 27.95% while Mobile penetration rate is at 91.32 %.

As for the Internet the report says that there are 23.51 millions internet users in January growing at 2.12% from previous month and growing 39.61% annually. Internet penetration rate in January was 30.05% from the population growing at 8.14% annually. While the Proportion of households using the internet from home was 32.76% growing at 7.25% annually.

Another interesting point from the report is that the number of Internet Mobile subscribers is a growing trend: as in January 11.32% of Mobile subscribers use Internet via mobile handsets that is around 8.09 million mobile internet users, ADSL subscribers are 1429.40 thousand.

As for the number of ICT companies ( Information and communications technology companies) the number is 3972 companies in January growing around 1% over the previous month and 13.49% over the previous year, these companies employed 205.28 thousand people and have issues capital of 44870.5 Million Egyptian Pounds.

To get the full report you can view the embed below:

Wael Ghonim Google’s head of marketing tweeted that he is taking a sabbatical from Google to start a tech Non government organization to “fight poverty and foster eduction.”

Wael has been one of the admins of Facebook page We Are All “Khaled Saed” page, Khaled Saed is an activist from Alexandria who was beaten to death by Egyptian secret police for posting a Youtube video that shows evidence of police corruption. The page attracted 10 of thousands of followers and so far has 1,173,996 members. The page call for protests in the events that lead to the ousting of former Egyptian president Husni Mubarak was crucial.

In February Wael went missing in Egypt to later we get the info that he was arrested and was released on 7th of February to emerge as one of the Egyptian revolution leaders.

We will update you here with more info about the NGO once we get them.

Egypt’s Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) signed an agreement with the Social Development Fund (SDF). The agreement is about cooperation between both bodies to offer loans to companies working in the IT sector at a total value of EGP 150 million at an interest rate of 6%, half of which will be covered by ITIDA.

Via Cairo ICT.

“What happened in Tahrir  was a miracle by all mean, having a young generation lead the liberation of a nation with technology in the heart of this revolution changed all the standards and rules well known by the all of us. The World stood still watching what is going on and will continue to watch how we will accomplish the next wave of the revolution by liberating our economy and building a nation of startups from entrepreneurs rather than tycoons. Our belief in these values made us take the step to build the accelerator that will seed the revolution spirit, unlock the youth potentials and help them through their journey in building their empire. ” Said Samer El Sahan cofounder of Tahrir Sqr.

Startups in Alexandria egypt can now rejoice, Mohammed Gawdat who is heading Google emerging markets and businesses in Southern, Central and East Europe, Middle East and Africa. along with Samer El Sahn former CEO of eSpace a well known web development house in the region is launching Tahrir Sqr a web and mobile startup accelerator and cowering space in the city that was built by Alexander the great.

Tahrir Sqr offers startups physical location, mentorship and funding. We asked Samer El Sahan who acts as the CEO of Tahrir Sqr about how much they would invest and how much equity they would take from each startup he said that it is It is dynamic and will be handled case by case and would be around 15,000 USD and up. the seed funding called tahrir seed fund and the incubator would bring funding from other angel investors.

As for how much each startup will stay before graduating Samer said it is also dynamic and will be handled case by case.  As for corworking space, it will be offered for entrepreneurs for free.

The incubator currently accept applicants and will be launched officially April 1st. Mohammed Gawdat is the investor and partner in Tahrir also sets in its board of directors, Samer El Sahan is founder and CEO.

# Mohammed Gawdat’s image via TedX Dubai.

The revolution has succeed in Egypt by ousting the US government poppet, the dictator Husni Mubarak. Though the transition period did not end yet. The Army is in command paving the way to elected president and parliament, but there are forces who try to launch counter revolution.

The former regime in Egypt relied in 2 forces the corrupt members of its National Democratic Party (NDP) and State Security Investigative (SSI) or in Arabic AmenDawla, SSI was trained by the FBI as Wikileaks cables reveal and was working as a torture heaven for the CIA. Both of SSI and NDP existence was based on corruption, torture, spying on the Egyptian people and illegal methods to achieve unjust objectives.

Many members of NDP and SSI members are not happy about new Egypt because corrupt people like them have no place in post revolution Egypt. Many reports from Egypt suggest that remnants from both forces are trying to hijack the revolution by acts of bullying theft and so forth. Not to mention drug gangs who are taking advantage of power vacuum in some places on the country.

Here comes Zabatak which means I caught ou as a platform to eliminate corruption incidents which would help clean Egypt from such evil behavior.

On Zabatak user can report theft, bribery, violence, and commercial cheating incidents from the web or via an android app. Moreover users can pinpoint the location of the corruption incident and the site owners say they will report to authorities to take action.

The site also offers custom email alerts about incidents from certain locations and it is integrated with Google maps.

You may question that some users can abuse the system. Well, first users can vote each incident up or down and I think since each incident can be verified and investigated then abuse would be minimal.

One of the incidents that related to tech is about corruption case against Arab Science Foundation (ASTF), the report says forgery, theft and firing employes happened at the NGO, plus not reporting on foreign Aid ( disclaimer: we could not verify this report.)
Corruption is wide spread in the Arab world among the oppressive regimens who rely in AmnDawla (ISS) copycats to oppress the population. I hope that reform comes to the rest of the Arab world, all AmnDawla copycats are dismantled and we  will see projects such as Zabatak in every Arab country.

Zabataj uses open source Ushahidi platform

iWasinTahrir.com is an initiative designed to allow visitors who witnessed Egypt’s uprising against the Mubarak regime, to leave their mark in history; Something like a virtual online “Million Man March”.

It’s a place where all Egyptian revolutionaries can leave their mark in a more personal manner, and to share their experiences with the whole world and future generations to come. It also has a digital memorial – Martyrs Flag – for all Egyptian Martyrs – we consider them as such and God is the decider- who died while freeing their country, Egypt.

The web site displays a view of Tahrir Square in Cairo which was the center of the revolution that freed egypt from a dictator, all you have to do is point at one of the flags and upload you pic and add your mark. You can also search for users based email or name. By clicking on each flag you get the names of people who were there or signed up their mark, click on the name to view their mark to history and to see their pic.

The site is a creation of 2 egyptian companies PULSE and ICON CREATIONS production.

Google has launched today Google Maps domains enabling local search within a country in Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Oman, and Saudi Arabia.

The Interface of these local maps is available English and Arabic as well French in some countries. Google navigation comes enabled with new Google Maps domains. Google Navigation offer directions from one distention to another.

Also users can now in these countries create “My Maps” a customized version of the user’s maps. Say your favorite hangouts.

Google also launched Google Map Maker in Saudi Arabia and UAE, Google Map Makers allows users to use their local knowledge to practically edit the entire map – from roads, businesses, parks, schools and more

Intel Corporation made its first acquisition in the Arab world, today it announced through its standalone business entity Intel Mobile Communications, that it has acquired most of the assets of SySDSoft, a privately held software company based in Cairo and hired approximately 100 of the company’s electrical engineers and computer scientists. SySDSoft designs IP based solutions in the software stack and physical layer domain, and RF/analog circuits embedded in mobile platforms. Its product portfolio covers technologies such as WiMAX, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Wireless USB, and LTE.

This news is great for Egypt post-revolution and to the Arab world, as now more and more investors see  the exit window for their hight tech investments open again. Lets not forget Yahoo Maktoob deal that brought excitement and was like an energizer to the Internet industry.   Hope next time we break news at AC it will be an IPO for an Arab startup.

Here is the full press release from Intel, we do not know how much the acquisition was for:

Intel Acquires Egypt-based SySDSoftCAIRO, Egypt and SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 14, 2011 – Intel Corporation, through its standalone business entity Intel Mobile Communications, today announced that it has acquired most of the assets of SySDSoft, a privately held software company based in Cairo and hired approximately 100 of the company’s electrical engineers and computer scientists. SySDSoft designs state-of-the-art IP solutions in the software stack and physical layer domain, and RF/analog circuits embedded in mobile platforms.“The acquisition of engineering and design talent from an Egypt-based company in the field of cutting-edge wireless and communication technology is the first of its kind for Intel in the Middle East,” said Arvind Sodhani, president, Intel Capital and executive vice president, Intel. “The acquisition shows Intel’s continued long-term strategic commitment to the region and its appreciation of its young, growing talent pool.”SySDSoft’s solutions enhance Intel Mobile Communications’ existing multi-communications portfolio, specifically accelerating its 4G LTE efforts with the addition of leading software development and design capabilities. Intel Mobile Communications is an integral part of Intel’s strategy to accelerate always-connected computing platforms founded on energy-efficient performance, Internet connectivity and security, and spanning a variety of device and market segments, including laptops, cars, smart phones, tablets and TVs.“As we enter an era of multi-communication broadband solutions, Intel’s products and technologies will be important to our vision of billions of connected devices,” said Dr. Hermann Eul, president of Intel Mobile Communications. “Intel is making the necessary investments to further enhance its existing world-class wireless product portfolio and to offer the most reliable platforms to our customers that will work seamlessly across a range of global networks. The acquisition supports this strategy and we believe that SySDSoft’s proven and experienced engineering team, combined with Intel Mobile Communications’ existing wireless strength, positions us well for continued growth in LTE.”

“What do you wish for?” Hany Rashwan, a 20-year-old Egyptian studying Computer Science at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, recently launched Kolena.org to allow users in post-revolution Egypt to discuss their answers to this question. Rashwan envisions Kolena, a word that means “all of us” in Arabic, as “Egypt’s online interactive Town Hall Meeting…a place for people to go to submit and vote on ideas for change.”

The importance of social media in the recent Egyptian Revolution has been a subject of debate, yet Rashwan’s project looks to position online activism at the center of Egypt’s ongoing reform process. After its first week, Kolena has attracted over forty reform proposals, distributed across categories such as Foreign Affairs, Religious Affairs, Justice, and Economic Development.

Kolena users have the ability to submit ideas for reform via their Facebook profiles, as well as respond to the ideas of others by voting them up or down in terms of importance. “Better Public Schools” currently ranks at the top of its composite list.

One challenge faced by social networks such as Twitter and Facebook is the difficult task of organizing user-generated information. Individuals have trouble rallying around specific reform projects in such an environment, however Kolena’s ranking system has the potential to foster organized and democratic political action. The site’s staff also filters posts in order to address spam and duplicates.

Until now, users on Kolena have focused on goals such as “Better Public Schools” rather than the tangible steps necessary to achieve them. This initial dialogue is an important part of any reform process and it will be interesting to see if the site evolves to directly impact political discourse in Egypt in the future. For now, Kolena.org is an idea-gatherer rather than an idea-generator. Will the Arab world take advantage of this new platform?

Rashwan was reached via email and expressed interest in expanding his site to other Arab countries.

If you worked in recruitment before you know the amount of time and pain you put to find the right candidates. Current Job boards like Bayt, Akhtaboot and Monster are all out dated.

The painful hiring process with these platform works either by posting a job vacancy and wait for candidates to apply or search the database of CVs. And Oh Boy that process eats lots of your time and is not organized.

BasharJobs comes to re-engineer that process, making it much easier and less time consuming for the both sides, recruiters and job seekers.

On BasharJobs candidates create what Basharjobs call Talent Profiles (TPs) instead of uploading their CVs ( they can export their Linkedin Profile). TPs are more structured and visual than CVs making them easier to read and easier to use for matching with jobs. Intelligent matching algorithms then match TPs with jobs from employers , producing in real time job recommendations for job seekers and candidate recommendations for employers. Thus both job seekers and employers no longer need to search for each other.

According to Muhammad A. Algarhy Basharsoft founder and CEO, Matching is based on 30 dimensions from both sides and they have different weights, for example, marketing title has higher wight, 5 years experience in marketing has higher weight.

Basharjob Business model is different than other job boards, instead of buying CVs to view or a slot to post a job, recruiters can post a job for free view profiles that match the job, but only pay to get the contacts of these profiles.

The system has also other nice features for recruiters to help them get the right candidates, each profile has a tag cloud, which are collections of keywords from users profile that help recruiters to get a better idea about the person, job seekers can add a 3 to5 minutes video about themselves. They can also tag each profile as short listed or rejected, rate applicants, commenting on profile for internal use and job seekers can see their application status, and the probability to win this job.

BasharJobs is developed by Basharsoft which is incubated at Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center (TIEC ) in smart village, Cairo, Egypt, The startup won the business plan the incubator runs every year and is funded via a grant of 170,000 USD.

I met with Basharsoft CEO Muhammad A. Algarhy when I visited Egypt in December he told us that they plan to release psychometric assessment integration. Basharsoft also has Spring Talent Management a job board engine used to develop custom job boards for niche segments and industries. and WiseRec is an online careers section for SMEs sold on a SaaS model with features to collect and screen applications.