Saudi Arabia is looking for investors for a $109 billion plan to create a solar industry that generates a third of the nation’s electricity by 2032 according to bloomberg.

The plan is to have 41,000 megawatts of solar capacity within two decades, nuclear, wind and geothermal would contribute 21,000 megawatts.

The government is targeting 25,000 megawatts from solar thermal plants, which use mirrors to focus the sun’s rays on heating fluids that turns a power turbine. Another 16,000 megawatts would come from photovoltaic panels

Ka-care a government agency set up in April 2010 to oversee the nation’s renewable energy strategy. estimates Saudi Arabia’s peak electricity demand will reach 121,000 megawatts in the next 20 years, with half of that power generated using hydrocarbon fuel. with half of that power generated using hydrocarbon fuel.

Saudi Arabia occupied the first rank among the countries with the highest proportion of mobile phone users in the world with a ratio of 188%, followed by Vietnam and Oman in the second and third places respectively, according to a recent study.
The study conducted by the United Nations Conference on Trade and development (UNCTAD) indicated that this percentage is by far the highest when compared to the other Arab Gulf states which in turn filled advanced positions in the list with Oman being ranked second with a rate of 165%, followed by Kuwait (160%) and the UAE (145%) respectively.
In his comment on the results, the Mobile Channels Company’s (MCC) General Manager, Salem Alenzi, said: “The kingdom of Saudi Arabia has scored a high growth percentage in the number of mobile phone users between the years 2005 and 2010. This proportion duplicated three times over this five year period, while it did not exceed a ratio 59% in 2005.”
Alenzi added: “It is remarkable that the Arab Gulf states occupied the world’s first ten positions in the list. This can be attributed to the positive economic situation which these countries are witnessing and the increasing number of consumers with high purchasing power, besides the growing presence of foreign workers who constantly communicate with their employers and countries of origin.”
The specialized report also revealed that the number of mobile phone users is escalating among teenagers and 9-year-old children, and that this trend is chiefly driven by the widespread use of the Internet in the Saudi community. The study explained that the Internet is the main source for hundreds of thousands of the most frequently downloaded applications and programs on smart devices which enable users to browse the web content including social networking sites, business applications, data processors, chat programs, protection tools, games and much more.
Alenzi highlighted the economic aftermaths of the high rates of mobile phone use in the area which, in turn, led to introducing new companies specialized in developing electronic work environments while inspiring old firms, with sound recording and TV production businesses being on the top, to revolutionize their existing electronic platforms to keep pace with the latest mobile phones.
According to Alenzi, the demand for smart phone applications whose market share amounts to almost $12 billion is expected to rise within the few coming years in light of the widespread of low-cost 3G and 4G smart phone devices and the availability of country-wide telecommunication networks offering high connectivity and download speeds for smart devices.

Four innovative projects have been named winners in the latest Seed Fund round at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).

The winners were announced at a Gala dinner at the Academic Campus, Thuwal on Wednesday March 14, 2012. They were on hand to discuss their individual products and innovations at the event.

Here are the projects:

Envirola: Rimantas Kodzius
A low-cost heavy metals detection instrument that provides an ease-of-use portable solution. The device has a wide range and a high degree of accuracy.

 
iDivers: Michael Berumen
The first solution to enable full functionality of touchpad devices underwater.

MuseTech: Steve Cutchin
A photo-real 3D immersive environment allowing museum visitors to feel as though they have been transported to a remote location.

NOMADD: Georg Eitelhuber
The NO Water Mechanical Automated Dusting Device cleans desert-based solar installations cost effectively and in an environmentally responsible manner.

Winners will receive up to $200,000 over 24 months Seed Fund may offer access to industry experts and mentors through KAUST Entrepreneurship Center, lab and office space, and other forms of entrepreneurial support

Saudi Arabia Communications and Information Technology Commission, a government body that overseas the sector, has issued its report for the first half of 2011.

The report (Arabic link) says that there are 12.5 million Internet users in Saudi Arabia representing 44% of the population a growth from 5% in 2001. Saudi Arabia’s population is 27 million. While Mobile subscribers has reached 54.8 million, with prepaid accounts represented the majority of subscribers as 87%, meaning that Mobile penetration rate is 195%. As for fixed telephone lines at the end of the first half of 2011 the number reached 4.49 million lines with penetration rate at 16%.

As for broadband internet which includes DSL and WiMax the number is 1 million subscriber. while broadband number for other wireless connection methods the number was 11 million. the report does not identify the “other wireless methods”

Saudi based National Net Ventures or (N2V) is one of the largest Internet holding companies in the Arab world, it invests “venture funds” in Arab Internet and mobile startups and owns and develops its own ventures. The Company owns a number of popular websites including: HawaaWorld an Arab women destination site, N2V Development House a software and web out sourcing company, SNSEO social media and SEO company, and Net Advantage: the first specialized Internet media house in the Arab world.

While N2V’s investment program breaks into, Seed program: which uses a startup accelerator model, offering capital, mentorship and office space for 3 to 6 month, this program is aimed at startups that did not launch their products yet. Early startups: focus on web and mobile ventures, and specifically, consumer web, the program invests cash on startups that already launched and are operational. Joint Startups a program to work with international companies to develop join venture to penetrate the Arab market and N2VLabs: is N2V’s own produced startups with the leadership of their Entrepreneurs-in-Residence.

All these programs have been launched relativity recently by N2V, the company is expanding massively and hiring top talent in the Arab world. Among them is Nagi Salloum ex-marketing manager for Google MENA was recruited N2V head of marketing.

Under Nagi direction the company marketing efforts are directed at making N2V one of the most recognized Internet brands in the Arab world, or Google of the Arab world as Nagi puts it: “we at N2V are focused on disrupting digital Arabia” To do so, the company has been sponsoring tech and entreprunership events across the Arab world.

And most recently N2V aimed at its facebook page, the page 1 month ago had around 75 fans in then N2V launched a logo contest last month, which changed everything.

The facebook contest asks participants to submit a design of N2V logo made from any physical material ( photoshop made logos are not accepted) to win iPhones, iPods and Samsung Galaxy tab and Galaxy S II.

The winners are determined by calculating the most voted photos, so this step has increased the viral growth of the app, as participants rush to ask their friends to vote for their logo. And in order to participate, you have to like N2V page on facebook page first. Other viral elements of the app are voting and commenting on photos which shows up on the users facebook stream, which in turn would bring more users.

N2V did spend on facebook ads to promote the contest but as Nagi says “We consciously decided to have very limited ad spending, and instead design a very viral Facebook photo contest app to grow our fan base by. This proved a right strategy and eventually helped us reach thousands of new users very quickly.”

He also said “We launched the N2V page and competition 21 June, 2011 in order to build awareness of N2V brand, and connecting with users in a fun and engaging way. ”

The contests has been an instant success in less than a month the contests generated over 100,000 fans for N2V facebook page (now it is 109,272 fans), over 2300 photos submitted and 40,000 votes.

Several companies connected N2V and started using the app “including big brands such as LIVE MENA, and we are finalizing discussions now with several other local and global companies. We are also excited to release a site just for this application to allow companies and users from around the world to use it.” said Nagi.

Nagi attributes the contests success to “very close attention to every detail when designing the application, from user experience, user behavior, 24 hours moderation and monitoring, promptly answering user queries.”
The contests ends on 30 July 2011, you can view submited logos and submit your own here.

What can brands, marketers and entrepreneurs learn from this success: do not just start a facebook fan page and promote it with FB ads, innovate and bring new ideas to drive engagement and fans.”We like to believe that we created one of the most intuitive and engaging photo voting application, with such high quality that easily competes with similar global apps.” concludes Nagi.

HawaaWorld, one of N2V’s companies, announced that it has acquired “entertainment world” http://www.tt5.com, one of the largest entertainment websites in the Arab world, to serve its goal of enriching its content. Amount of the deal and its terms were not announced.

tt5.com offers entertainment content on a daily basis covering fields such as images, videos, games, stories, funny situations, stories from our culture, and news from all over the world.

HawaaWorld, the largest female website, provides its members with useful content and the latest services. Recently, female members have been able to post their classified advertisements free of charge. HawaaWorld website is one of the ten most visited websites in Saudi Arabia; it receives 12 million visitors a month, and has more than one million members from 170 countries.

Mobily a mobile operator in Saudi Arabia has launched Mobile apps competition with Awards up to 90,000 USD. Mobile developers can compete on 3 awards: best app award, best app idea award, best app design. each awards will offer the winner 30,000 USD in cash prize.

The competition is open for all developers (Update: seems only for Saudi Arabia residents) on all mobile platforms and has started accepting applicants yesterday. Last day of submitting apps is 25th of June 2011. Then a voting period will start 1st of July and will end on the 30th of July 2011, only registered users to Mobily developers community can vote apps.
On the 1st of August the winners will be announced.

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

National Net Ventures (N2V), one of the top leading t Internet Holding companies in the Middle East, announced today its investment in True-Gaming.net, a video games portal geared to the Arabic market.

We do not know how much did N2V invested in true-gaming.net or whether this investment is part of its early stage investment package to startups where they offer cash plus inkind support with things such as ads accross its network of publishers on its advertising networok NetAd-vantage, howover a press release from N2V says that the Investment will help True-Gaming.net expand even more and reach a new audience worldwide.

Rashid Al Ballaa, N2V CEO stated in the press release that “Investing in True-Gaming.net comes as part of our plans to expand into the online and mobile gaming industry”.

This investment is the first this year for N2V and second after its investment last year in UAE based weddings portal Yebab.

Seems that Wikileaks started something that can not be stopped, clone versions of the site are poping everywhere in order to expose governments corruption.

Latest of them is a site called KSA Leaks which is being hosted on blogger and posting leaks about what is happening in the Saudi kingdom.
Currently the site displays what documents of corruption at some of Saudi Arabia official and private media.

The Arabic sites has been reported to be blocked in Saudi Arabia by Twitter users, we could not confirm that.

Want to tweet a long email with attachments? want to share your email on Twitter? Twitemail helps you do that in very easy way: just send your email to your assigned Twitemail address and your email will be shared in your Twitter feed.

To start using Twitemail signup with your twitter handle get your Twitmail address and your done.

Here is our test:

If you want the other way around, which is sending your tweets to email addresses look for Tweet To Email covered last March here.

Twitemail is founded by Saleh Al Zaid, Saudi serial entrepreneur and former ArabCrunch Saudi Ambasador  his other projects are: untiny: uniting short URLs and twtbase: twitter app database.

We wrote back in the 12th of July, that Qaym the Arabic restaurants social review site  from Saudi Arabia would make decisive decisions within weeks, but the good news came up today.

Restdroid an Arabic Android application that uses Qayem API’s was released today,  the app offers Qaym’s restaurants information services over android devices. Moreover Qayem team said that they also received request to develop iPhone and BlackBerry apps.

So what does Restdoid offers?

- Selecting a country and city to search for restaurants or view best 50 restaurants.

- Selecting restaurants based on their types, ex: Italian, Chines, Sea Food etc.

- Viewing restaurant on google maps

- Viewing restaurants reviews by Qyama’s users and more.

The app is developed by a new Arabic android development teams called devdroid. who said they would release the app completely open source and would leave GPS feature to be added by  the community developers. The app needs internet connection to work here is the video:
PS: Arabic letters are not fully aligned in the video  as the developers said that they used unarabized simulator.




Sukar a private shopping club that offers on a weekly bases from well known brands at discount rates up to 70% has started offering delivery to Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon. It was available before only in UAE. Sukar was launched end of last April.

Jabbar group is the majority owner of Sukar, the other e-commerce company that Jabbar owns is Souq.com like ebay but for  the Arab world ( an auction site) has announced partnership with Mobily a Mobile operator in Saudi Arabia. Now Mobily users can use Mobily loyalty program points called “Neqatai” and redeem them in buying goods on the auction site.. Souq.com is available in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and UAE.

Jabbar’s e-commerce quest did not stop in 2 companies, as the growing success of Dubai Based group buying startup GoNabit has led Jabbar to announce its own copycat called cobbone.

GoNabit managed to get the backing of Bayt ( a leading Middle East e-jobs site) as a majority share holder. Both Bayt and Jabbar share the same investor, NewYork based Tiger Global Management.

Updated: ArabCrunch sources who are close to the 3 telecom operators in Saudi Arabia confirmed just now the deal has been made between RIM and Saudi Arabia, BlackBerry service to continue in the kingdom. Official Announcement most likely tomorrow, UAE to follow.

Yesterday, Saudi Arabia’s BlackBerry (BB) ban went into effect, but users reported that the device services are still up and running. While UAE’s BB ban will take effect next October.

ArabCrunch sources close to Saudi Arabia 3 mobile operators told us the deal has been reached between RIM the mother company of BlackBerry and authorities in both Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates, the deal will allow BlackBerry services to continue in both countries while giving authorities some hand in “monitoring.”

AC’s sources said that RIM will continue to claim “no access” is provided and the key issue  for RIM was in giving access to authorities in these countries without a court order. AC sources added that today or tomorrow an official announcement will be made.

Today Alrabiyia news station along with others reported that Saudi Arabia Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) and 3 mobile operators in the kingdom: STC, Mobily and Zain has reached an agreement with RIM the mother company of BlackBerry, where content being transformed across BB devices can be monitored by the local authorities.

Saudi arabia, UAE and India has expressed before security concerns about BlackBerry services namely its encrypted email service. India said that BlackBerry was used in the last year in bombay attacks by the prepeptuaters.

Alarabiya said that local servers installed by RIM is being tested in Saudi Arabia, there are around 700,000 BB users in Saudi Arabia. Our sources however could not confirm that but said “certain setup will be made.”

We have contacted RIM before but they said they have nothing to say and we will contact them now for more information.

At her end US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recognized there is a “right to free use and access” that could be infringed by countries banning BlackBerrys. “We are taking time to consult and analyse the full the range of interests and issues at stake, because we know that there is a legitimate security concern,”

Her government has a semi-secret government contractor that calls itself Project Vigilant which monitors the traffic of 12 regional Internet service providers and hands much of that information to federal agencies.

At ArabCrunch we were vigilant of Clinton’s Internet “freedom speech” on January this year where she cited China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt among countries that censored the Internet or harassed bloggers!, she said  ”We stand for a single Internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas,” At the same day her government ordered sourceforge to deny free open source to around 120 million human beings in Syria, Sudan, Iran, N. Korea & Cuba, a direct contradiction to the open source philosophy of No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups and No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor.

Saudi Arabia Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) asked  the 3 operators in Saudi Arabia: Saudi Telecom Co, Mobily and Zain Saudi Arabia to immediately stop the BlackBerry (BB) service in the country starting this Friday.
This comes 3 days after news went out of the kingdom decision in blocking BB messenger and in UAE’s decision in blocking BB messenger, email and web browsing.

With this news, now BlackBeery lose more than 1 million users in UAE and Saudi Arabia, as there are around 700,000 BB users in Saudi Arabia, security concurs are cited as the main reason behind this decision. As RIM the mother company of BB store its devices encrypted messages in its servers.

RIM the mother unveiled yesterday BlackBerry Torch 9800 which will start selling 12th of August for 199.99 with two-year contract via AT&T in USA.

Torch 9800 has a 3.2-inch HVGA capacitive 360×480 touchscreen, 4.4″ (5.8″ open) x 2.4″ and weighing 161.1 g, an optical trackpad, 512 SDRAM, 4 GB eMMCmemory included up to 32 GB, 5 megapixel camera with flash capable of shooting 640×480 video, BlackBerry 6 OS, and the usual smartphone features like Bluetooth and 802.11b/g/n WiFi. Torsh has all the current BB features and seems more exciting as it is both touch and has a keyboard, plus the trackpad.

#Via Aljazeera English.

Around 10 days ago ArabCrunch  had a meeting with Barig Seraj the CEO of ICT Ventures a Saudi based Venture capital firm.

Barig Seraj informed us about his company and his recent investments, ICT Ventures is a growth based VC that focus in the IT sector. The VC firm made 3 investments so far. First in Mobidiv an Egyptian mobile app developer that is working on a special Chines SMS service, then they invested in ITs2 a digital security company in Saudi Arabia and lastly ICT Ventures closed  an investment round with IdealRatings a SaaS app providing Islamic Shariah screening, purification, and  fund management service for financial institutions that identifies and manages Shariah compliant instruments in the world. IdealRating is founded by Egyptian entrepreneur Youssri Helmy . The SaaS startup received 2 rounds of funding before from  Technology development fund in Egypt and then from Jordan based VC IV Holdings.

Here is the video interview with Barig, were he shed the light on his firm, the companies the invested in and how would they excite.

The Interview was done in Four Seasons hotel in Amman, Jordan. After the interview the hotel’s security came to question the writer of this post about using a camera ?!

Saudi based, restaurants social review site or “Yelp for the Arab world” Qaym has launched a new design for its Arabic site that includes a number of features: new cities page design that now includes restraints guide, badges for active members, improved search that now comes with suggestions among other additions.

In the blog post (Arabic link) announcing the new UI Jihad Alammar, founder & CEO of Qaym said that Qaym is going through critical time and that decisive decisions will be made in the coming weeks regarding the future of his startup.

Jihad also described a number of challenges that Qyam face, on top of them according to him, is that the Arab Internet users is still hostage to the “Forum Culture” and that Arab Internet users are used to forums basic UI (user interface) which makes it difficult for non-forums sites like Qyam to be used by the average Internet users. This point is also shared by  Mohammed SAHLI the founder of Arabic links  sharing site (stumbleUpon Arabic clone ) Merkab.

However Jihad mentioned that the explosive growth of Facebook among Arab users is a major factor in changing this culture and Arab user perception about how to use the web, as Millions of Arab users are being used to social tools and apps on facebook.

The other challenge he said that Qaym face is lack of interest among Arab developers to use Qaym API which they launched recently.

We wish all the best to Qaym and hope they thrive, the same to all Arab and International startups, But is it true Arab users are still hostage to the “forums culture” ? if true Why? This question has been a debatable question on ArabCrunch.NET Startup Q&A here.

Facebook everywhere.

In its push to make Facebook available to everyone anywhere at anytime, Facebook launched back on May 2010 ZERO Facebook or 0.facebvook.com  an optimized mobile version of Facebook that includes all of key features of Facebook: update status, view news feeds, like or comment on a post, reply to messages but comes with no photo viewing.

On May Facebook said it has reached agreement with 5o mobile operators to offer ZERO Facebook free for their mobile customer ( no data charge) in 45 countries ( DU of UAE is on the list).

As ZERO Facebook is offered for free to mobile users, it does not come with photos, and if users want to view them they will not incur data charges.

Today STC, the number one landline and Mobile Operators in Saudi Arabia (KSA) said that today it started offering in collaboration with Facebook http://0.facebook.com for Free to its Mobile users. This announcement for sure will further convert Saudi Internet users to use facebook from other social networks such as Hi5. Twitter 2 way SMS on the other hand is also available for STC customers. Facebook has 2,385,580 users who said they live in KSA.

#Thanks @faisal_asif for the tip.

Saudi Arabia based N2V, the holding company of successful Arab Internet brands such as OneCard an e-paymant method that comepetes with Jabbar’s CashU, Net Advantage one of the largest online advertising network in the Arab world and JEEL a web hosting company Saudi Arabia, Mubasher.info a financial portal, Hawaaworld.com women online community and Egypt Development Center (EDC) is announcing its new investment program geared towards startups in different stages.

N2V new investment program combines the accelerator model where they are leveraging thier current portfolio of companies to provide in-kind services to startups combined with the venture capital model of cash for equity.

The new investment program is geared towards early stage and growth web and mobile startups with focus but not limited to Arab entrepreneurs anywhere in the world.

Here is a brief about each program:

Cafe Startups:

Is somehow a virtual incubator that is designed for geek entrepreneurs who have interesting startup projects and developed an initial beta version, -N2V won’t accept project on the idea stage.-

In this program N2V offers startup projects consulting and in-kind services, whether it is actual web development to enhance the beta version of the project, online marketing, online advertising, SEO, PR, online payment solutions, hosting and web design. The cafe startups program does not offer cash but as mentioned above: in-kind services, it also offers mentorship and monetary support for entrepreneurs to attend events and is planning a silicon valley tour for participating startups.

With Cafestartup program N2V does not require the project founders to quit their current job, and a business plan is not required. The founders can work from home or caffe, hence the name “Caffe Startups.”

In Cafe Startups program N2V takes 5-10% equity from the startup, The program is designed to last for 6 month to a year.

Mohammad Khawaja business development manager of N2V and contributing writer to ArabCrunch told AC “We want these startups to succeed or fail quickly.” which is a nice mentality, to see if the project can evolve into a successful business so to take it further rather than to waste resources in something that may not grow.

To me Cafe Startups is a nice model but I think it should offer a bet more, at least some cash for the founders to work full time to grow the project rather than keep it as a part time project. Startup projects need full attention, dedication and commitment to grow. On other side why this program not open for people who have great ideas coupled with experience and dedication but need the technical skills to start it!

Early Startups Program:

Is for either Cafe Startup’s entrepreneurs or early stage startups, in this program tailored after the startup passed the proof of concept phase, and needs to accelerate the growth of their business and grow its team members.

In This program startups are required to submit a business plan. And it try to take the startup project into the next level via cash and in-kind investment. To qualify for this stage the startup needs to answer many questions such as how they will make money ( the business Model.)

The in-kind services are similar to the services offered to the cafestartups program like web development, hosting, online marketing events attendance etc. and is offered “when needed as needed”
As for cash N2V offers up to 1 million USD in this stage in return of up to 40% of equity.

Growth Startup Investment Program:

Is some how a series “B investment” round for taking the startup to the corporate level: hiring c-level executives, forming a board of directors, expand offices in new markets ..etc.. In this program the criteria for startups to qualify for an investment is as Ahamd Takatkah investments program managerat N2V told AC ” passed the proof of concept phase, attracted considerable traffic and have a solid revenue streams and have been around for a couple of years.”

According to Ahmad growth startup program offers cash investment in the range of a couple of millions of Dollars, as for equity take, it is open on deal by deal bases.

Joint Startup:

In this program N2V is ready to partner with established companies to form a new joint venture project that could evolve into its own spinoff startup, N2V offers cash and in-kind service such as managing, developing and marketing support to new project. Here, the project is owned jointly by N2V and the partner.

“N2V is currently discussing 2 joint projects with 2 different web development companies in Amman, Jordan and Dubai, UAE” Ahmad told ArabCrunch.

N2V is part of National Technology Group (NTG) one of the regions largest IT conglomerate which achieves annual revenues of around 800 Million USD according to N2V CEO Rasheed al Ballaa.

N2V is planning a big exit for  itself with an IPO within few years as for the startups it invests in the exit is even via merger and acquisition (M&A) or via N2V IPO.

Here is a presentation from N2V that further explains their investment program:

Update: the site’s homepage is up again.

Saudi bank Riyad Bank has been hacked by a group of hackers who posted a message demanding to end the service of the Mayor of Al Madina province in Saudi Arabia. Al Madina is the second holiest city in Islam, and the burial place of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him and it is the capital of the first Islamic state established by the Prophet and his companions after early Muslims migrated from oppression imposed by their people in Mecca around 1400 years ago.

The hacker/s only managed to hack the homepage of the site as the internal pages seems intact, the hackers displayed  a message  on the bank’s homepage apologizing to the bank and saying “we are hacking you to deliver a message to the king of Saudi Arabia.” They asked him to fire the Mayer.

As AC broke yesterday the heavy rains that stormed the Saudi capital Riyadh flooded many parts of the city, causing damage and putting human life in danger. Many were trapped and some unverified reports suggest incidents of death. As we reported Twitter was instrumental in almost everything related to this sad event.

Since ArabCrunch also writes about Social Media, today we put together a guide on how to use social media and the Internet for to save lives and help the residents of Riyadh. Thanks to everyone for supporting the people of Riyadh. ( I will update this post if we managed to get more online resources please leave a comment if you know any.)

• Stay updated and informed:

1- Retweet and share this guide on facebook or via email so more people can use it to save life and help out.
2- Use Twitter with hash tag #RiyadhRain whenever you report any incident or follow the same hashtag for live updates.
3- Use RiydhRain.com or Twubs for live update also we have a a widget at the end of this post.

4- Go to Presidency of Meteorology and Environment (PME) early warning website for weather conditions though Twitter hashtag #RaidhRain is more realtime

• Ask for Aid or volunteer to save life

Residents of Riydh did a great job as many went and volunteered to save lifes, Saudi civil defense is asking for more volunteers

1- Ask for Aid by filling this app also if you are on Twitter via using hashtag #RiyadhRain #aid

2- If you are in trouble point your location using your mobile via Gowalla or Foursquare, also add hashtag #RiyadhRain.

3- If you would like to volunteer look for emergency requests here or call civil defense here: 014645260 ex 346 or via the facebook group “We are all the sons of Riyadh” or this app.

#volunteers apps via Jihad .

• Report and View Open or Closed Streets

Saudi Arabia startups Qayam has launched google maps mashup here http://www.qaym.com/rain/ enabling users to report and view opened or closed streets.

• Videos and Pics:

1- look at ArabCrunch Arabic post about the videos.

2- Ismaeil at picaso also Twubs.

3- saudijeans has some videos too.



#photos via y NaWaF0 and Yfrog

Update:
A new post: #riyadhrain Catastrophe SocialMedia Guide to Save Lives, Ask for Aid & View Traffic..

A massive flood has just stormed the Saudi Capital Riyahd and Twitter was the first and only platform until now that broke the event before any other media.

Saudi Arabia twitter users are tweeting live from flooded streets with pictures incidents and emergency warnings.

Some of the tweets include warnings about which streets that are completely flooded and rendered unusable, other tweets dispatch emergency calls about the collapse of building at Amirah Noorah Female University.

With this event, now we can say that Twitter is at the heart of RealTime Media and is very useful for such a sad Emergency situation.

If you live in Riyadh or want to follow the sad events use the hash tag #Riyadhrain which is being updates every second, you can also ask for which street to use using the same hashtag.

ArabCrunch wishes for everyone in Riyadh to pass through this sad event safely.

Google announced yesterday that it has added a new feature to its contextual online advertising platform Adwords, for advertisers targeting Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

The new feature allows advertisers in both countries to target ads only to specific region, city or geographical location. Google is able to deliver regional targeting because it knows the IPs that are coming from each city as such it can target ads based on that.

Geo-targeted ads are an efficient way to reach more qualified prospects. Narrowing it to a region or city level means, Google is targeting small and mid size businesses such as restaurants and caffe shops who would more likely advertises locally at the city level than nationally.

City level advertising is no doubt effective for small businesses, but Google can draw more small business crowds to its Adwords, if it can target ads targeted  to city neighborhoods.

The vast majority of Google revenues comes from adwords, whose main customers at the global level are small and mid sized businesses, as such Goolge managed to keep making profits despite the global recession while competing companies such as Yahoo! has been struggling to stay relevant because Yahoo! for instance relies on advertising from big brands, an advertising segment that cuts ads when faced with financial problems.

NDrive a Portuguese based company has launched NDrive’s navigation applications for the iPhone, providing mapping solutions for a number of countries around the world with plans for more maps in the future. For the Arab World NDrive has launched 3 iPhone Arabic/English navigations apps for United Arab Emirates (UAE) , Saudi Arabia Morocco and Egypt.
“With NDrive, iPhone users can now benefit from NDrive’s simple, intuitive interface, turn by turn spoken navigation, and unique features.” said Eduardo Carqueja, founder of NDrive.

NDrive navigations apps take advantage of iPhone’s GPS and Touch capabilities, so it can be used for navigation in the car, while walking or on an outdoor adventure and has turn by turn voice navigation commands. The apps run on iPhone 3G and 3GS and can be purchased from iTunes. The apps cost 99.99 USD. Maps on NDrive are provided from TeleAtlas the same company that provides maps to Google Maps and Competes with Navteq a wholly-owned subsidiary of Nokia.

NDrive Navigation System seems to have a number of useful features among them that users do not need a data plan, other features include:

• Three different routing modes: auto, pedestrian and adventure.
• Fast search that can search by initials.
• Advanced graphics so as to approximate reality more closely. 6-10 FPS/sec makes for video like navigation.

Routing and maps:

• Turn by turn spoken navigation
• Quick routing calculation algorithms
• Route demo or map of route when trip planning
• Alternative route selection options
• Adventure mode for off-road, air or at sea use
• Thousands of important buildings represented in 3D
• Publish and share location based information with other users directly from your device.

Personalization:

• User interface fully optimized with iPhone, rotate iPhone and map will adjust.
• Innovative Multi-touch gesture recognition for zoom, tilt and rotate that allows you to control and interact with the map. Kinetic scrolling.
• Call, SMS or visit websites of POIs directly from NDrive’s interface.
• User interface available in 28 languages

Founded by Eduardo Carqueja and Joeo Neto in 2001, NDrive Navigation Systems is a Portuguese company that began developing navigation software in 2005. Since 2009 NDrive has turned its focus to developing GPS programs for mobiles. NDrive software is compatible with iPhone, Symbian, Windows Mobile and Android platforms on hundreds of mobile devices.

(In the future I will test the apps and post more here Inshallah. )

Post Updated and edited . To see what the Twitter world has been saying about the event tune in here.

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) is opening now. KAUST inauguration is very significant because it is the biggest technology R&D center and university in the Arab world and is supported by a multi-billion dollar endowment (Islamic Waqeef), thanks to the great support of King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. (The Live streaming video at the End of the post.)

The University which is open to men and women from around the world offers degrees in 9 fields of study:

1. Applied Mathematics and Computational Science (AMCS)

2. Bioscience (B)

3. Chemical and Biological Engineering (CBE)

4. Computer Science (CS) 5. Earth Science and Engineering (ErSE)

6. Electrical Engineering (EE)

7. Environmental Science and Engineering (EnSE)

8. Materials Science and Engineering (MSE)

9. Mechanical Engineering (ME).

The state-of-the-art university will focus on key research fields:

• Resources, Energy and Environment;
• Biosciences and Bioengineering;
• Materials Science and Engineering;
• Applied Mathematics and Computational Science.

KAUST which its core campus is located on more than 36 square kilometers along the Red Sea at Thuwal in Saudi Arabia, has deployed Cutting-edge laboratories that will enable researchers to make major scientific breakthroughs.

Other research institutions in the Kingdom and the region will link to KAUST’s supercomputer and other laboratory facilities through the 10 gigabytes per second (Gbps) Saudi Arabian Advanced Research and Education Network (SAREN).

Some of the great massively heavy weighted gears you can find at the laboratories are:

Supercomputer: Shaheen — the Arabic word for peregrine falcon (Falcon also means Saqer in Arabic) — is the fastest supercomputer in the Middle East and one of the most powerful in the world. Developed with IBM, it is capable of 222 teraflops, or 222 trillion floating point operations per second. In non-technical language, this means Shaheen can solve 222 trillion complicated calculations per second.
• 16–rack IBM Blue Gene/P System providing 65,536 processor cores.

• Next-generation data center with scalability to achieve exascale computing requirements.

• High-performance storage and networking subsystems to support double precision peak performance with 64 terabytes of aggregate memory capacity.

• Petaflop capability within the next two to three years, with scalability for future demands.

• A storage subsystem composed of multiple storage building blocks providing 1.9 petabytes (one quadrillion bytes) of raw capacity and an aggregate bandwidth of 16 Gbps.

Visualization: CORNEA is a fully immersive, six-sided virtual reality facility that gives students and researchers the ability to turn data into 3D structures that they can interact with and examine. It was built in partnership with the University of California, San Diego.

• A Mechdyne-built VL6 with the world’s highest resolution (100 million pixels) and brightest (10,000 lumens) visualization environments.

• 24 Quad HD Projectors, the highest native resolution projectors available at 4096×2160 pixels each.

• An advanced spatial/surround sound audio system that adapts to match visual images – the only known research center of this type in the world.

• A multi-purpose room with a 32 million pixel digital cinema projection system that enables stereoscopic viewing for 75 people.

Nanofabrication, Imaging, and Characterization: A clean-room environment equipped with leading-edge tools to support research in advanced materials, biotechnology, electronics and photonics, and MEMS/NEMS.

The Imaging and Characterization Labs include a suite of 10 advanced nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometers and facilities for scanning, transmission, confocal, and Raman microscopy, magnetic and thermal measurements, allowing scientists to examine nanostructure devices and surfaces down to the level of individual atoms.

Coastal and Marine Resources: Located next to the Red Sea, the Coastal and Marine Resources Lab facilitates marine research.

The facility builds and deploys modern oceanographic instrumentation and provides operational services to support research vessels for marine exploration, diving, and sampling. Indoor and outdoor seawater facilities allow researchers to culture marine organisms.

Analytical Core: These labs boast highly skilled staff focusing on spectroscopy, chromatography and mass spectrometry, trace metals analysis, wet chemistry, and surface analysis.

Biosciences and Bioengineering: These facilities include genomic and proteomic labs essential to the study of cellular molecules for DNA sequencing and genetic analysis, as well as the investigation of cellular processes. The genomics facility is equipped with robots and laboratory automation.

KAUST opening is a new dawn for Saudi Arabia, the Arab world and the world in general, as we will see the next break- through technologies coming from the land Two Holy Mosques.

Investing in R&D is what will bring the technology sector to its next level in the region and pave the way for the next generations of Tech Startups. And as my new friend told me, Thuwal might be their home base.

We at ArabCrunch have been asking Arab governments to get involved and to invest billions of dollars on R&D, But  today we see it  happing for real. Thanks to the King Of Saudi Arabia and thank you, for using calling it “Waqef” not an NGO, which shows how much you respect our past when Muslims used Waqef before the term NGO was ever there.

We hope the amount of Investment put into the Facilities, equipment and Human resources will bring US soon break-throughs that will solve real problems to Saudi Arabia the region and the world.

Here is the live streaming of the ceremony:
Update: Live video streaming is over here is a link to the recording.

(PS: thanks to TechCrunch for reporting about this event as I knew about it via a CrunchGear post, unfortunately my Saudi friends where kind of lazy to ping me before hand .)