N2V (National Net Ventures), one of the leading Internet Holding in the Middle East, announced its latest investment in Electrony.net, the first specialized startup in consumer electronics reviews in the Arab region.

“The popularity we have achieved in no time proves the dire need for such a project; thus, N2V’s expertise and know-how combined with our ambition will help us build on our success.” said Mohammed Albsimi, Electrony’s CEO.

Electrony.net, a Saudi based startup, has been founded by Mohammed Albsimi in February 2010. It aims to establish the first comprehensive consumer electronics guide in the Arab region. The guide provides reviews, reports and other necessary information to a wide base of users in the Middle East.

N2V (National Net Ventures) is an Internet Holding company, whose core business is to develop online and interactive web-based ventures. N2V invests capital in a variety of ventures from startups to more established companies; it also offers infrastructure, resources, experience and know-how to these companies to accelerate their growth. This is the 4th investment for N2V this year and 5th since it started its investment program. N2V invested before in restaurant social reviews site Qaym Real Estate listing portal AqarMap, gaming portal true-gaming.net and wedding portal Yebab.

ENDS

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
 





Update: More pics at the end of the post.

Update 2: More bigger pics.

Update 3: From CrunchGear Look at the end of the post.
Update 4: Look at end of the post.
Update 5: From TC Look at the end of the post.

Seems like TechCrunch’s “Crunchpad” the web wifi enabled tablet is coming soon according to this pic (Update: Arrington removed the pic) on posterous.com tweeted by scobleizer:

Crunchpad is a low cost touch screen web tablet which will be sold  for around $299 according to  Michael Arrington founder of TechCrunch (TC).

The device began development around 10 months ago after Michael Arrington wanted a “dead simple and dirt cheap touch screen web tablet to surf the web” and found that no company was developing such a device.”

The device is a webtop that uses the browser as the “OS” that means it relies heavily on software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications which allows it to use low cost hardware.  Detailed specifications according to TC’s last post :

• 12-inch touchscreen with a 4:3 aspect ratio. 
• Single-point touchscreen. 
• Via Nano processor. 
• 1 GB of ram. 
• 4 GB flash drive (To store the OS and browser and any cache.)
• 1024×768 resolution .
• Wifi.
• Accelerometer. 
• VGA Camera.
• 4-Cell Battery .
• Dimensions: 12.5″ x 9.7″ x 1.3″ (
• Weight: 3 lbs .
• Software: Full install of Ubuntu Linux on the prototype with a custom Webkit browser (TC said they will be “stipping linux down to its core in the next internal release” to improve speed/decrease resources needed & improve battery life.)
• Ports: Power, Headset, 1 usb (for plugging in external keyboard if needed.)
• Boot time: 10 seconds from cold boot.

Below you can see CrunchPad Prototype B videos, I just hope multi touch will be available on the final shipped version. In any case it seems like Sun Microsystems’s vision of “The Network is the Computer” is being brought to the consumer market by a blog which hired part-timers to put things together.

Update: Arrington has removed the pics from his posterous account however Stammy has some more:

Update 2 more bigger pics via  Dustin Curtis:

Update 3: TC is not very happy with the leaks, (I asked Arrington if he wants me to take the pics out immediately after publishing, but no response) CrunchGear said “prototype is equipped with an Intel Atom processor and a 12″ capacitative touchscreen”, with more “disclosure during the next week, along with video of the new text input and all that other good stuff.” which means it might be multi-touch.
Update 4: I forgot to disclose that ArabCrunch is not affiliated with TechCrunch.

Update 5: Michael Arrington said on TC:”The key uses: Internet consumption. The virtual keyboard will make data entry a pain other than for entering credentials, quick searches and maybe light emails.” which hints that CrunchPad won’t be Multi-touch.

It can be used for:

“This machine isn’t for data entry. But it is for reading emails and the news, watching videos on Hulu, YouTube, etc., listening to streaming music on MySpace Music and imeem, and doing video chat via tokbox.”

Latest Hardware specs:

“The hardware would consist of netbook appropriate chipsets (Intel Atom or Via Nano), at least a 12 inch screen, a camera for photos and video, speakers and a microphone. Add a single USB port, power in and sound out”

Price:

“it can be built for less than $250”but they can sell for $300.

Who led the effort:

“That effort was led by Louis Monier, with software developed by Singapore-based Fusion Garage and industrial design work by by David Yarnell and Greg Lalier from Dynacept.”

Where do things stand?

“Well, I’m not ready to say yet. But one thing I’ve learned about hardware in the last year is that you need partners to actually make things happen, and the credit for what we saw today goes entirely to the Fusion Garage team. Those guys are rock stars.”

Whether the gadget leaks were accidental or in purpose it provided a great PR buzz for the device. As for it’s pricing the real cost is in the after sales support, So there are 2 questions: how they gona handle support? Dell Style (web and phone)? And how they gona do sales? Web and resellers? I think in the next week we will know.