Many people have startup ideas but they never see the light. GoodorGreatIdea.com tries to change that. The site offers its users to submit startup ideas and rate and disuss it with others. The submitter of the idea earns points depending on his idea rating. As a result, both great ideas and people with great ideas bubble up over a period of time.

The site also helps people form teams around an idea.

GoodorGreatIdea.com is founded by Mohammed Guller , the startup is based in Danville, California, USA.

Many startups specially Arab ones underestimate the importance of public relations in branding their products and in marketing them. Take a look at startup weekends events in recent Arab countries, does anyone remember them or what they do? does anyone use them? where are they now?

Public relations is a cheapest way to market your products or startup and entice people to use it, if people do not know about you they will not use you.

In nut shell you need to develop media contacts and write a well written press release about your product and services, and pitch your story to the media and journalists from the angle that interest them and their readers not yours, meaning if you have a cooking website you can target women life style magazines by pitching your story in a way that your startups saves time when looking for a recipe to cook something.

I am not going to go through how to write a press release and how to develop media relations, I am going to ask entrepreneurs and specially Arab startups to do the minimal which is having a blog for the company and email relevant media sites like us, with your news.

In your blog you need to keep your users updated with what is new at your company, example: new features, new millstones, new partnership deals and so on. And this is not enough you need to email the media.

Main stream media in many cases won’t understand your startup and the possibility of having an article about you is low. We do encourage to target them but here at ArabCrunch, because we cover Arab startups and the Arab tech sector, your news is important to us and our readers, so go ahead and start sending us your news and we will cover you “inshallah” in ArabCrunch English and ArabCrunch Arabic. You do not have to send a press release, just the basic news of what, when, why, and where. This effort does not need a team or a special PR agency, a startup of 1 or 2 people can handle a small job like that.

One note, we read every email that is sent to us but we can not respond to every email, however if your news is interesting to our readers we promise to do our best and cover it.

Remember in many cases startups die not because the startup idea is horrible, but because their founders did not do the minimal marketing and PR effort. And for those startupweekendrs please stop being lazy and do the minimal and email us

PS: here is 12 Ways to Market Your Startup With Zero Ad Spending.

#image credit.

Deputizing for Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah, Princess Sumaya bint El Hassan, President of the El Hassan Science City and the Royal Scientific Society, today has welcomed the winners of the fourth round of Queen Rania National Entrepreneurship Competition (QRNEC).

Founded by the Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship in 2004, with the full support of El-Hassan Science City & El-Hassan Business Park, the competition aims to fuel the spirit of Entrepreneurship, Creativity and Innovation across society in Jordan, and to help Jordanians to turn their entrepreneurial ideas into successful companies that supply innovative products and services to regional and global markets.

“I am confident that the outputs of this competition will add more life into Jordan’s Innovation Ecosystem by providing additional dealflow, investment and incubation opportunities,” said Princess Sumaya.

For his part, Farhan Kalaldeh, the Executive Director of QRCE, pointed out that the focus of this year’s competition was to attract investors and raise their awareness of the investment opportunities offered by emerging technology startups and the commercial potential of transforming ideas into products and services aimed at regional and global markets. Moreover, the focus was directed at strategic sectors of the Kingdom’s economy, such as ICT, Clean Technology and Life Sciences.

QRNEC had 400 participants in its fourth round, with more than 120 projects. The competition process involved comprehensive training in the areas of strategic planning, business plan development, project management and other topics related to starting and growing high impact technology companies.
Thirty teams were nominated for the final phase of the award in three categories: Startups; Projects under Development (Pre-Startup); and Universities. Project sectors were Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Clean Technology and Life Sciences. From these, 19 winning projects were selected:
In the Startups Category, the following projects were selected:

• First place: Mixed Dimensions (MXD) – a company that develops tools for gaming companies and online Interactive 3D applications developers.
• Second place: Naratech Labs – a company that assists pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, chemicals, food and beverages manufacturers to develop new products.

• Third place: TAQETNA – a company that develops smart renewable energy products and services.

In the Projects Under Development/ Pre-Startup Category, the following projects were selected:

• First place: Nitrate Production System – Developed a business plan for a company to design and manufacture an innovative new (patent pending) device for producing Nitrogen-based fertilizer in continuous and sustained quantities without the high cost of production associated with petrochemical-based fertilizers.

• Second place: Taltol – Developed a business plan for an online marketplace where users can buy and sell digital content & products.
• Third place: EduServ – Developed a business plan to provide online tools to establish better links between schools and parents.

In the Universities Category, the following projects were selected:
• First place: Mawdoo3.com from Hashemite University – Developed a business plan for the first Arabic website to offer high quality Arabic articles with automated Arabic keyword analysis service.

• Second place: Jordan Unmanned Systems’ from German Jordanian University – Developed a business plan to produce electrically powered UASs (Unmanned Aircraft Systems) for a variety of applications.

• Third place: Yadawi from Yarmouk University – Developed a business plan for an online store selling handmade items on regional and global levels.

It is worth mentioning that QRNEC awards amount to $50,000, awarded to projects in the fields of ICT, Agricultural Technology, Renewable Energy, Water, Life Sciences, and Advanced Technologies.

There are many cooking resources online, but what distinguish Zaytouneh is that it provides short quick and professionally done tutorial cooking videos.

Founded by Jordanian female entrepreneur Fida Taher Alawieh, the site is currently available in Arabic but plans an english version in a couple of months according to Fida’s tweet. Fida says over Twitter that she plans 200 videos in 2 months and 1000 over a year time.

This service comes handy for people who want short and fast cooking recipes specially bachelors like me.

Here is a video in how to prepare “Taboula” Salad:




(PS: we will update this post with more info once we get them)

Two Jordanian startup who were incubated in Jordan based startup accelerator Oasis 500 have secured investment rounds.

Masmoo3 turns Arabic books into Arabic Audio formate available through several channels such as Apple’s App store, Google Android, Windows Mobile 7, web and others, while Dakwak reviewd by AC in July 2010 offers websites crowd sourced translation.

Masmoo3 received funding from angle investor investor Ihab Al Ramlawi, while Dakwak received investment from IV Holdings, according to government run Jordan Times the amount of the deals were not announced.

Lisa Kawar a Jordanian mom was looking for a certain product and had to visit so many stores and waste a lot of time, checking around where to find it. that’s when she thought “why dont we have a website, on which we can search for products in the different stores in town” and Menwayn was born.

Menwayn launched about a week ago in beta mood covering only Jordan for the time being, is a comparison shopping site for a wide range of products the are available on brick and mortar stores such electrical appliances, office equipment, furniture and products for the whole family including babies, kids and teens, meaning the site does not offer its own bought products or manages inventory and fulfillment.

The site offers consumers to list products according to the option the they chose such as brand, technology, dimensions, price range or seller name. Products can also be listed to all the sellers who have this product their location, full contact details, their listed prices, and even special offers when available. However what is lacking is a feature that can list a single product availability in all stores and the price list of each store for that product.

Menwayn offers offline stores a free admin panels to add and update their products list with information such as description, availability, price, contact details and special offers. Lisa has told us the site secured 25 stores in Jordan from big local brands such as ike hikmat yassin, hani darwish khalili, tahboub, zaki ghul, smart buy, and issa murad.

Lisa told us she plans to add more Arab countries soon and plans to enable users to buy products online. The site is available in Arabic and English and is incubated in Jordan’s accelerator Oasis 500.

Startup Genome a project that originally launched a survey from over 3,200 startups to investigate “the science of startups” has launched a new web tool to benchmark your startup according to the findings of the report called Startup Genome Compass.

Users can create an account, and take a 20-40 minute test that classifies their startups by type and stage.

A personalized report will then be generated which will gauge a startup according to the to the 5 aspects of startups: Customer, Product, Team, Business Model, and Financial the tool . Users can retake the test once a month to test the health of their startups.

Take the test and let us know how you find it!

Humans do make mistakes. and the media is not an excpetion, even NY Times was once misinformed about a story.

This might be the first time we post wrong information. We posted that Aranim which is founded by the son of Jordan’s current prime minster “Suleiman Bakhit” has launched the Arabic FarmVille Clone “the happy farm.”. But Aranim connected us via Twitter saying that they are not associated with the game. Suleiman informed via Twitter that the game that is associated with Aranim is “Happy Oasis.”

So we apologies to Aranim, Suliman and to our readers and we will make sure mistakes like this do not happen again.

On Happy farm users build farms grow crops harvest them to get more coins and share gifts with friends. Users can also use Facebook credit to buy more coins ( buying extra credit seems how they are going to make revenues.) While Happy Oasis uses an Arabic character to grow an Oasis and harvest its crops.

In general International startups are not encouraged to copy International ventures, however in some cases having an Arabic clone or a clone with a true local touch and feel works. Take GoNabit for example which ended being acquired by LivingSocial.

I think Happy Farm and Happy Oasis  might be hit in the Arab world.

Updated: below the post.

Dan Stuart CEO & founder of GoNabit confirmed that LivingSocial has acquired GoNabit. He told ArabCrunch that LivingSocial does not want to disclose terms of the deal.

He said “we have high plans and high expectation and we will expand to new markets” GoNabit is now a LivingSocial company “and likely down the road we will take their brand as they have awesome technology.” But he did not specify when.

Update: GoNabit sent us the acquisition  announcement press release here it is:

LivingSocial-GONABIT DEAL MARKS First E-COMMERCE ACQUISITION FOR MIDDLE EAST

Regional market set to mature with entry of world-leading local commerce brand

Dubai, UAE, 28 June 2011 – The acquisition of GoNabit.com, the Middle East’s original group-buying website, by LivingSocial, the online source for handpicked experiences at a great value, marks a milestone development for the region’s e-commerce industry. The deal is the first large-scale acquisition of an e-commerce company in the Middle East and signals further market maturity as one of the world’s leading local commerce brands enters the region. Under the new agreement, GoNabit will become a LivingSocial company.

Approached by several international group-buying players, GoNabit chose to partner with LivingSocial because of a clear alignment with the company’s vision and values. With a shared mission to create exciting and affordable experiences for members and valuable new marketing opportunities for merchant partners, GoNabit says the acquisition enables them to better serve their stakeholders and continue to pioneer e-commerce in the Middle East.

“GoNabit’s acquisition by LivingSocial is a milestone in the development of e-commerce in the Middle East. E-commerce is in its infancy in this region and the entry of prominent global player LivingSocial signals the next phase of the industry’s development here,” said Dan Stuart, CEO and Co-founder, GoNabit.com.

“Our acquisition by LivingSocial has really strengthened our ability and resolve to continue being the best group-buying website in the region. Both Dan Stuart and I will remain in our respective roles for the foreseeable future and all GoNabit staff have been retained,” added Sohrab Jahanbani, Chief Operating Officer and Co-founder, GoNabit.com.

“As with previous acquisitions, LivingSocial has again chosen to align with a local company that possesses similar values and ways of doing business. We are excited to enter the dynamic Middle East market and further strengthen our strategic global efforts to bring LivingSocial values to members across the globe,” said Tim O’Shaughnessy, CEO and co-founder, LivingSocial.

GoNabit was co-founded by Dan Stuart and Sohrab Jahanbani in January 2010, with investment and support from Bayt.com, the Middle East’s leading job site.

Speaking about the acquisition, Akram Assaf, Chief Technology Officer of Bayt.com said, “I extend my congratulations to the truly dedicated GoNabit team for their success story. We at Bayt.com are proud to have been a part of a business that allows people to live their lifestyle of choice and we are eager to be involved in more innovative ventures in the future.”

Headquartered in Dubai, with local offices in all its markets – Abu Dhabi, Beirut, Amman and Cairo – the company has recently announced popular new deal verticals catering to specific interests. Dubai Family, dedicated to providing fun deals suitable for children and parents alike, and the pan-city GoNabit Getaways website which offers exciting holiday deals and travel packages are both enjoying a growing popularity. In addition to being the first group-buying website in the Middle East, GoNabit is the first company of its kind to offer deals in Arabic. Members in Abu Dhabi, Amman, Dubai, Beirut, Cairo and Sharjah, Ras Al Khaimah and Ajman have saved more than $5 million USD in the past year.

LivingSocial also announced its launch in The Netherlands; the acquisition of Ensogo, a leading daily deal website in the Philippines and Thailand; and DealKeren, an Ensogo company based in Indonesia. Along with the GoNabit deal, these two new acquisitions and the Netherlands launch bring the total number of countries in which LivingSocial operates to 21. The company’s reach now spans six of the seven continents.

Terms of the deals were not released.

Shoppers can continue to save and discover on www.gonabit.com.

About LivingSocial

LivingSocial adds surprise to every calendar with handpicked daily deals you can share with friends. Members enjoy at least 50% off on the coolest, local experiences. Local business owners get an easy and cost effective marketing tool to attract new, loyal customers. In 2010, one of the fastest growing companies in the space expanded with LivingSocial Escapes offering easy weekend trips at great value. In April, LivingSocial has unveiled Instant Deals – real-time, mobile offerings delivered via members smart phones featuring deals within .5 miles of their location. Based in Washington, DC, the international brand and has saved nearly 30 million subscribers more than half a billion dollars in 21 countries on 6 continents.

About GoNabit

GoNabit is an online marketing company that uses the power of social commerce to nab unbeatable discounts of between 50-90 per cent on things to see, eat and do in the cities in which it operates. It was the first group buying website to launch in the Middle East and offers businesses a risk-free customer-creation engine. GoNabit was founded in 2010 by experienced entrepreneurs Dan Stuart and Sohrab Jahanbani and is majority-owned and supported by Bayt.com, the number one job site in the Middle East. GoNabit has the highest level of Verisign’s SSL encryption and is also the first company in the UAE to have its database management verified by TRUSTe.

Each day subscribers to GoNabit get the opportunity to purchase an unbeatable deal on something cool to do in their city. To successfully “nab” the deal, it must first tip – the point at which a minimum agreed number of purchasers opts into buying the deal.  Once the tipping point is achieved and the deal goes live, any GoNabit subscriber can purchase it. The deal is available for 24 to 48 hours, or 72 hours for weekend deals.

For more information visit: www.gonabit.com

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Almost every day there is a new technical term in english, Mustalahatek aims to be the place to provide translations to those terms into Arabic.

In Mustalahatek users can add terms and add translation to each term. If one term had more than one translation, users can vote the best translation and the most voted will be used.

The site is still in beta, and it needs to improve  its UI as it is not users friendly. However this project is much needed project in order to spread IT knowledge among the Arab communities as translating Arabic terms makes it easier for users who do not know english well.

Many entrepreneurs think the hard part of building a successful business is coding, while it is important milestone, but if no body bought it or used it, your startup will go no where.

Today we assemble a quick list in how to market your startup with zero ad spending, you are encouraged to tweet the method you found most effective and add your say :

1-Leverage Your Network:[tweet]
Ask your friends, family, coworkers, Facebook, Twitter and email connects to join your startup and use it, ask them to invite their friends.

2- Add Viral Components [tweet]

The best why to grow your user base is to add viral component to your web app, you need to allow members to invite their friends to join them on your site. This is best done when you offer incentive to do so. Foursquare growth is partly because of Twitter and Facebook integration, whenever you check in to a location or gain a badge it tweets the info. People link their Twitter and Facebook accounts with Fouresquare  because they see value of notifying their friends of their were abouts.

3- Get Bloggers to Write about You [tweet]

Look for relevant blogs to write about you, even if your startup tech oriented you might fall on other non tech bloggs, say Location based blogs. Beofre you do that, friend the bloggers, look them up at Twitter, look for their personal blogs, engage with them so they know you and write about your startup. Email them their news, but remember bloggers are very busy people you need to shoot a short and coherent email that is customized to the blogger. Whenever you add a new feature connect the blogger who wrote about you and send him your updates pin pointing to the last coverage you got.

4- Submit your startup to ArabCrunch.NET, Younoodle and CrunchBase
[tweet]

5- Partner with Events: [tweet]

Offer events of relevance to your business free ads in exchange for adding you as a media partner.

6- Create an Interesting Company Blog: [tweet]

Your startup’s blog should not just publish news about new features you release, make your blog an industry voice. web apps developers 37signals ‘s blog has established it self as an industry destination in design, business, experience, simplicity, the web, culture, and more. and helped the growth of their paid apps.

Remember to add “post this blog pos”t to Facebook and Retweet buttons, this help virally push your blog posts hence your startup

7- Release an API:[tweet]

By releasing an API developers will find new ways to use your product and bring new customers to you for free. Twitter’s API helped build an ecosystem that reshaped Twitter form just a SMS tool to an information exchange hub, most users use Twitter via desktop or mobile apps rather than Twitter.com

8- Participate in Business Plan Competitions: [tweet]

You do this not just to win the cash award, but winning a competition would help push your startup more people, they will recognize it and will push it with the media not to mention when you add the award badge to your website it would build more trust to your startup.

9- Recruit a Celebrity to Join You: [tweet]

Get someone famous to join your startup put him on the board of directors or so. Celebrities bring their fans along to use your app, they get you instant media coverage and build trust in your brand.

When Brian Lee founded  LegalZoom in 2001 as a website that provides legal documents, He recruited Robert Shepero who is one of the most famous litigators, well known for OJ Simpson trial. Getting Shepro joining LegalZoom helped gain needed people trust.
Take Twitter as another example and the major role celebrities play in bringing millions of new users and mainstream press attention.

10- SEO: [tweet]

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via organic or nonpaid methods. You should build your product from the beginning with SEO in mind. Many people will find you via searching.

11- OEM: [tweet]

Original equipment manufacture (OEM)r, were a reseller would resell your product using his name. this is case is mostly used in software and hardware. When I used to work with Telefinity a Telecom software company we had an OEM partner in Pakistan who used to sell our call recording solution to call centers there, without him we would have spent lots of money opening an office in Pakistan.

12- Have an Awesome Product: [tweet]

If your product sucks no body will use it, so before you go into marketing your startup, your product should provide value to users and offer a strong reason to use it. Do not do a copycat.

Now you have a another tip, you can share it to help other entrepreneurs ?

#image credits.

Plug and Play Silicon Valley startups incubator and accelerator has launched its offices in Cairo Egypt in Smart Village calling it PlugandPlayEgypt.

PlugandPlayEgypt will offer Egptian entrepreneurs and startups physical office space, mentorship, access to its network for angel and venture capitalists and funding from its Venture Capital partner Rising Tide.

Rising Tide Chairman is Ossma Hassanien, Plug and Play founder and CEO Saed Amidi, Plug and Play Egypt is headed by Hazem El Wassimy.

The incubator already has incubated a number of Egyptian startups including:

• Offerna.com: Egypt’s group buying like groupon and to compete with Cobone and GoNabit.

• DNA: digital-advertising agency

• Books.com.eg Arabic e-bookstore.

• Bebasata.com: technology products e-commerce site

• EME International: Is a mobile developer develops in almost all mobile platforms mobile apps for education, payment and enterprise has sales force automation mSales, Mybroker stock prices, and mParent, the company has introduced a mobile application for the K-12 education industry.

• WirlesssStars: Mobile app developer has “Inta Feen” app an Egyptian foursquare clone with check-ins and badges for usage with Amaekn features which tells users which places are the most popular.

PlugAndPlay is accepting applicants, anyone interested can fill a form here.

Some times having something in Arabic that is close to an English website is of benefit to the average Arabic user, with Elcinema this case is true.

Elcinema provides a comprehensive users generated database about movies and TV shows unlike Jordanian startup shoofeetv which focus more on Middle East satellite channels and TV shows.

The site showcase latest Arabic and English movies with a video trial, users can rate the movie, add a review and even add basic info that pertain the movie. the site also maintains a news section about Movies and Cinemas. It has a video only section where you can see the latest trials of episodes, movies , their songs and Making.

Elcinema is developed by Egyptian startup Damlag and is mostly geared to the Egyptian viewer as it only features movies showtime for Egyptian cinemas.

The site’s recent addition is Arabic satellite channels guide.

ArabCrunch over Twitter around a week ago said that AC’s founder was aware he was under surveillance, he confirmed that he was aware since several months ( might mean 5-7 or 20 or 40:) (surveillance: that does not necessarily mean on the ground or just online by NSA, we do not comment at this point for security reasons.)
The leak from the US State Department and US department of Defense about Obama’s administration criminal plans (CIA) to destroy ArabCrunch are a security alert to those agencies and their dogs, as such the agency and its dogs would look for sources of the leaks and any evidence.

We mentioned for the first time in the last post who is behind the terrorist DDoS attacks and criminal hack of ArabCrunch blog. Now we will reveal more plots, as all these plots were designed to force ArabCrunch founder to become a CIA agent or remove him from the leadership position or get red of him in one way or another or destroy ArabCrunch with anyway, whether by blocking advertisers from advertising on AC so there are no revenues and we go bankrupt, or to the level of cutting the line of communications for ArabCrunch have with the outside the world, by manipulating our email on google ( we did not talk about Voice yet).

The CIA/Mossad and the global Zionist movement are ready to go at any level to destroy AC. The Zionist infiltration of United States of America is a secret to too many Americans, the way they operate is no different than they way Banana republics operates: control key power elements: Media, Economy then you control politics.

In 1997 the world hottest news was about Bill Clinton Monika Laynski Scandal, The US president was blackmailed by this young Jewish girl, she had her shirt with the “evidence” for 2 years! why? because she was a trap (card) to be used when needed.

Some say in USA that the blackmail was orchestrated by the Israeli Prime Minister Natneyaho, Monika is a member of an Israeli Party and when she went back to “Israel” she was greeted with flowers and roses as a hero who saved “Israel.” We mentioned in the last post, that the father of Gaith Saqer the founder of ArabCrunch is Dr. Mohammad Saqer a senior Muslim BrotherHood leader, and was an ex-president of Islamic university of Gaza.

• Dr. Mohmmaed Saqer is believed to be a former Hamas leader during his stay in Gaza in the 1980s. in the 1980s and during Dr. Mohammad presidential period of Islamic University in Gaza he was a target for several assassination attempts. He lives in Jordan and teaches at the University of Jordan.

Again we stress, AC’s founder Gaith is NOT a member of Muslim brotherhood or Hamas or any political parties. AC’s founder is not involved in any politics. But his job requires him to meet people from different walks of life. That does not mean he agree with anyone point of view or believes.

The Mossad is always actively fresh for new recruits as a recent announcement reveled that they have succeed in recruiting a son of a Hamas leader. Mossad tries to recruits not just Hammas leaders but their direct family members. Not just that anyone they can add as an asset. and Not just Mossad tries to recruit other Arab Intelgance agncies and the ICA too.

• One of ArabCrunch American fans who owns shares in one of the most poplar sites in USA has been facing several lawsuits.

We asked him if those are because of his support to AC, he said “Yes extreme Israelis are behind this!” The guy is not Muslim or Arab by the way!

• CIA acquired ArabCrunch hosting company

ArabCrunch was in negotiations with a major hosting company in Texas: Softlayer, the hosting deal would bring salable server bandwidth to serve AC’s growing visits. We were waiting for this deal to happen because we had a deal with another company that would bring us 10s of millions of visits per month and potentially make us the number 1 blog or 2 in all categories ahead of Huffington Post. Negotiations with the hosting company took sometime and was about to close when we were close to close the deal, boom a private equity firm comes and acquires softlayer!!! And who is this private equity firm?

It is GI Partners a firm that has secured $4.0 billion of capital commitments on behalf of recognized institutional private equity and real estate investors in the U.S., Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

GI Partners is CIA front for its business, spy and military operations, GI Partners runs an imam program to brain wash Iraqi prisoners and destroy their well, a common tactic used before by clonal powers such as UK the program name is Russian and East European Partnerships (REEP) Inc., REEP/OSS Web site, also offers “intelligence support operations.”

A REEP Inc. Web site announced in August 2008, for example: “Counter Intelligence Agents – Urgently needed. – There is a unique opportunity to serve the United States as an interrogator and Counter Intelligence Agent as part of a rebuilding effort in Iraq.” (This REEP Web site has been taken down since truth-out.org asked a REEP official about the ad in August, and the REEP web address now transfers visitors to a combined REEP/OSS Web site.) So Basically did GI Partners blocked our partnership with Softayer? well since the deal went south after GI become the owner. We believe so. Now we are hosted with a CIA owned company.

• CIA/Mossad Accessed and tampered ArabCrunch EMAIL

That means not only the CIA and Mossad have access to our google email but the CIA have direct access to our server! Very nice! We mentioned before that the CIA and the Mossad had access to our email, now also confirmed: our server, We know that certain data that belong to us else where has been played with, and since there are thousands of files we do not know what else was added or deleted. Probably not just to fabricate crimes against AC’s founder and AC but also to wipe of any evidence of their passing by!

• Former Israeli Army Solider is one of the people behind Obama’s Entrepreneurship Plan

Former Israeli Army solider (six years in the Artillery Forces) Mickey Bergman is a major architect of Obama’s and the US State department “Muslim entrepreneurship engagement plans” Founder and President of the Solel Strategic Group (SSG) Current clients include: the Clinton Global Initiative, the Aspen Institute (jointly with the U.S. Department of State), New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, the Robert Redford Center at Sundance, and J Street.

Completed contracts also included the Reut Institute, former Member of Knesset Ami Ayalon, the American Jewish World Service, the Elders, and the University of Utah. He also works Aspen Institute as Director of the US-Palestinian Partnership (UPP).

With the Governor he helped negotiate a “ceasefire” between the government of Sudan and local Darfur militias He continues to work in collaboration with Governor Richardson as his Foreign Policy Advisor to the Middle East and Africa.

Aspen Institute is the main think tank behind Obama’s engagement and tech plan for the Muslim world: this person who is involved “very much” with these “efforts” is a former Israeli army soldier.

• Coupe attempt in certain Arab Country in September linked to the CIA

One of our friends is an Arab foreign minster, we asked him to help us get signatures from other Arab and non Arab foreign ministers in the illegal and the obviously now unfair competition from the Obama’s admin.

He promised to raise the issue with secretary general of Arab league and make it a discussion issue in the next meeting of Arab foreign Minster which ended last week! Boom, coupe attempt in that country! email does not arrive to his inbox and no much wording from him!

• Other Plots:

The other plots that the some CIA criminals did from leaking wrong news that we know that they are wrong, but they leaked them in-order to make us write about them which would bring our coverage trust down.

The other plots were designed to confuse AC’s founder and make him think “even by force that he is hallucinating” one more! the CIA and Mossad pigs have started a counter campaign on new blogs, or via tweets making fun of AC and trying their best to confuse the public that “who is AC” it is nothing! no cares about you! Well we are something, and Obama is determent with his entrepreneurship plan to engage Muslims in “a very nice way” as the case with AC and the case or Iraqi Journalists.

• Former FBI Director Running Obama’s “Engagement” with Muslims

Oh this effort is run by Former senior FBI executive at the US nationally security advisor. FBI are “nice people!” It is not just ArabCrunch, every Muslim tech Startup should submit to Zionist and CIA well or out of business. It happened to others but they did not publicly talk about it. We did! and we are almost done!

There is no doubt that it would be useful to track down your personal daily expenditure along with your income, as it will help you manage your income and expenditure in a better way.

This is what Syrian based startup creative web group‘s Msrofi offers to the Arabic user, you enter your expenditure under a certain category say: mobile credit at the end you see a graph of your expenditure inline with your income.

Unlike US based Mint which pulls your financial data (bank, credit card, mortgage, loan and investment transactions from over thousands US financial institutions) daily and automatically, on Msrofi you have to enter it manually.

It would be very difficult of Msrofi ( which means my expediter in Arabic) to offer such service in the Arab world as Mint, since the financial system in the Arab world is not fully online and we do not know if for example banks offers APIs for third parties to use. But its worth the effort for creative web group to peruse.

Mint was acquired by Intuit for $170M USD. the startup which was founded by Aaron Patzer received investments of 31 Million USD.

Creative web group is founded by Syrian entrepreneur Mohammad Zaher Ghaibeh and Hala Deeb.

Facebook used its translation tool to crowed source its International site wide translation efforts. Where users submit translations and they are voted up or down or others can suggest better translations.

Dakwak a Jordanian startup founded by Waheed Al-Braghouthi former ROR developers with Arabic micro blogging site WatWet, was launched today to help any website to localize to  60+ languages in simple steps.

Webmaster need to create a project for their website choose the languages they want their site to be translated to and then add a code on their website .

Now users can view your site in other languages and participate in improving the translation via signingup on Dakwak website (vote translation up or down, or suggest a new one) Dakwak uses Google translator combined with its own machine translation engine to improve the translation.

In the coming weeks Dakwak will launch widgets that allows user to translate your website without leaving it.

We think Dakwak is a step forward to help localize websites as it saves money and time and we might use it in the future at ArabCrunch.NET

Here is a video in how dakwak works:




While Aqara Estate a Jordanian startup founded by ex-Jeeran female employee Hanan Khader offers real estate agents in the Arab world and sellers the ability to list land, buildings or apartments for sales or rent. Aqaramap a Yamni startup that was launched last April came with emphasis on location by pin pointing the real estate address to the map.

MLS MENA an Egyptian startup that said will launch its alpha version next September wants to take the whole real estate market several steps ahead. Addressing that there is no standard integrated listing system similar to the MLS in USA and other developed markets.

The startup will work with governments and real estate companies to get the public records and use that data on its website :

The exact size of the property lots and the ownership, and the real historic sale prices. Plus offering user the ability to compare the estate to similar properties that got sold in the region recently.

MLS MENA promise also to bring relevant points of interest data that will be acquired from third parties, and historic trends that buyers and sellers can collect, sort, and analyze. Thus helping users make more informative decision before buying or renting.

“Users can buy/rent a property by searching our website and connecting with the agent or owner directly. We are just a marketplace for them to meet. ” Eng. Yusuf Shahen founder of MLS MENA told AC.

As per business model it will be freemium “we allow users to add listings for free, but they can add featured listings a for a premium price.” Yusuf added.

According to him MLS MENA has started a pilot program with the Cairo Agency for Properties. A prototype (alpha version) to be launched by September and public beta launch by the beginning of 2011.

The startup is seeking angel and VC investors.

Update:1 Omer Zaheer Meer CEO of Millatefacebook said the site now boost 334,000 members.

Update2: the site url is millatfacebook.com ( double LL) Milatfacebook.com is not the  original Millat which achieved 334,000 members and faced DDoS attacks. It is a new site that seems want to take advantage of Millatfacebook popularity.

Update 3: Millatfacebook site seems some time sluggish.

After being down for around 3 weeks, Millatfacbook the Pakistani social network for Muslims is now back online.

Millatfacebook has emerged in what it calls to “Unite Muslims” and boycott facebook in light of the heinous facebook fan page of “draw the Prophet Mohammad day.”

Millatefacebook accused the CIA and “Israel” of launching a DDoS attacks against them, they also accused Yahoo! and what they called “Zionest facebook” of plotting to destroy them.

Today, I finally managed to register to see the site and add my profile profile here, the social network looks ok and it has many of the features that facebook has, it seems that it is build using an open source socialnetwork platform using PHP.

this is the original Millatefacebook ( double L) UI:

This is Millatfacebook clone Milatfacebook with one L UI:

The site design is not that great and needs improvements, however if Milatfacebook team needs to make this project a success they need to add and resdign the site features and create something different and more appealing “socially” than what they offer now. For example forums is an outdated being from the 90s era.

It is good to see a Muslim social network competing against facebook and it is also healthy to see even anyone from anywhere competing with facebook. As facebook is now 500 Million strong this hopefully  would put pressure on facebook management to respect users privacy and make sure that  groups that insults Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) has no sanctuary on facebook. I am with freedom of speech and with free flow of information, but the case here is different than freedom of speech, Me As a Muslim allow me to tell you that Islam allows non Muslims to believe in whatever they want, non Muslims has the right to discuss if Islam is truly from God or not, believe in God or not, but Prophet Mohammad and all the prophets of God should be respected, why do you want to insult Prophet Mohammad? Essentially those people who started these competition have deep hate to Islam and they should differentiate on their hate between Prophets of God ( whether they believe on them or not) in one side and political and military leaders or movements on the other side.

Again if you missed, ArabCurnch has no political or religious affiliations. In fact people (Muslims and non Muslim)  from  different back grounds and colors from USA, Europe, Africa and Asia have worked or volunteered, interned or supported ArabCrunch  in one way or another.  ArabCrunch is focused on tech, startups, innovation, social media and mobile and not a political blog but sometimes politics are mixed with tech.

We do not know where Millatfacebook is being hosted, they said in previous communicated email that they will be hosted with 2 Pakistani Telecom companies. Hosting a site in a Muslim country is not a safe haven, as free speech in political issues are not granted, for example criticizing any head of state in most Muslim countries will mean impressment for the person if it is not being wiped out from the face of earth. That is why it will be hard see any Internet or Media startup located in the Muslim world that provides complete freedom of speech, otherwise it would be not for profit and its founder unknown to the public.

Freedom of speech is more granted in USA and Western countries with some variation between them than most Muslim countries, Pakistan though has some how more political freedoms including speech than the most other Muslim countries.

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:

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Arab Business Plan Competition, which is the equivalent of MIT 100K Entrepreneurship Competitions in Boston, has today announced  this year winners.

The Little Engineer from Lebanon won the first place and 50,000 USD, BioBusiness from Egypt is the first runner-up with a $15,000 prize , while Arabic Coach from Yemen and EG-Bioinformatics from Egypt are named as second runner-ups both received $5000 each in start-up funding. The announcement was made at annual celebration the competition in Cairo this weekend.
The competition went into stages, the the 4 winners where selected from 9 teams that where qualified for the third round of the Competition from the following sectors: Energy, Engineering, Healthcare, Internet, Software and Telecom.

Here is the bio of each winning team from MIT Arab Business Plan Competition  website and at the end of the post you will see the bio of all 9 teams:

1-The Little Engineer:
from Lebanon.

The Little Engineer is an after-school edutainment center which introduces kids and teens [age 4-16+] to pre-engineering courses such as robotics, physics, electricity, electronics, renewable energy and more. Students enrolling in one of the offerings will visit the center once per week, for 8 successive sessions closing with a competition. This center guarantees a friendly atmosphere where children can have fun while learning and building skills with the help of qualified staff. The course fee is $200.

Team:

Rana El Chemaitelly, General Manager
Albert Shamieh, Marketing Manager
Nadia Alamah, Branch Manager
Marwa Harb, Branch Manager

Stage: operational

2-BioBusiness:
from Egypt:

The solution being developed by BioBusiness for the continuous monitoring of blood glucose is a small product that will fit into a hand- held battery-operated ergonomic shape. The product is comprised of two pieces, the gBracelet is worn anywhere on the arm and is the main measurement sensor which transmits the glucose measurements wirelessly to the gMon hand-held device. The gMon is the main display device. It displays the continuous curve of blood glucose levels, keeps track of the glucose level trends, and produces alarms of current/ predicted glycemic highs or lows.

Team:
Islam Badreldin, R&D and Information Manager
Amr Elwakeel, HW Lead Engineer
Mostafa Elwakeel, General Manager
Stage: Conceptual

3-Arabic Coach

From Yemen.

Arabic Coach will enable students to browse teachers’ video based portfolios and schedule virtual teaching sessions with the desired teachers. The online teaching sessions are fully interactive and each teacher can determine his own hourly rate, and Arabic Coach gets 15% of the teachers’ profits. The teachers will be provided with a suggested curriculum, lesson plans, and assessment tools, but they will have the freedom to use their own methods. All teachers will go through a screening session before their profile goes live on our system. Also, we will have a sophisticated teacher rating system to reward high quality teaching methods.

Team:
Amad Almsaodi, CEO
Mohamed Almussaabi, COO
Saeed Alfagieh, CTO

Stage: Conceptual

3-EG-Bioinformatics
from Egypt

EG-Bioinformatics provides software products and services for genomics data management and analysis. Its products include novel software programs for comparative genomics with applications in healthcare, agriculture, and pharmaceuticals. Its services include cloud-based data management and analysis, development of customized solutions on behalf of global customers, and conducting data analysis on behalf of regional customers. The business model is based on ‘pay-per-use’ basis, subscription, or licensing.

Moustafa Ghanem, Chairman & CEO
Mohamed Abouelhoda, CSO
Sameh El-Ansary, CTO
Mohamed El-Kaliouby,
Development Manager

Stage: Prototype ready

And here is the profiles of the 11 teams:

Update: here is the list of the board of directors:

Usama Fayyad, Ph.D. Emile Najib Cubeisy Managing Director of IV Holdings, Ambassador Karim Kawar, President of Kawar Group, Nashat T. Masri, Founder and Partner of Foursan Group, Hussam Khoury ex-President and co-founder of Maktoob Inc, Aiman Mazahreh President of STS, Walid Tahabsem, President & CEO, Integrated Technology Group. Tarik I. Awad, Tarik I. Awad is the Executive Director of the King Abdullah II Fund for Development (KAFD)

Last year was a turning point for the technology and internet industry in the Arab world when Yahoo acquired Maktoob, so I might call it “The Start Year”. This year we are seeing more programmers to fund and support startups in different Arab countries.

In Jordan and the Arab world in general there are only a few business plan competitions from organizations such Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship, ASTF, and MIT Arab Business Plan Competition.

Many bright entrepreneurs won the competitions, but many of the business plans remained on the shelfs as no seed funding was available. To that end Dr. Usama Fayyad, Former Chief Data Officer of Yahoo and current Chairman of Arab portal d1g told ArabCrunch today he is launching Oasis 500 to address the gap of seed and early stage funding shortage.

Oasis 500 is a type of accelerator similar to Y Combinator as it offers funding and incubation. Oasis 500  aims to push 500 startups in Jordan in 5 years and will offer several programs starting with training courses for entrepreneurs with ideas.

The courses will include business plan development, marketing and sales etc. and would last for 4- 6 weeks.

According to Usama the training program will start around August of this year and will take a quota of around 100 entrepreneurs for several rounds every year ( any one with a tech idea according to Usama.) At the end of each program Oasis 500 will choose 10 ideas to invest in with an average of 10,000 Jordanian Dinars per idea and provide incubation (offices) for a period of 2 months.  If the startup is qualified there will be additional investment of an average of 50,000 USD.

Oasis 500 will also bring an umbrella for all the angel networks in Jordan so that startups can more easily pitch to them.  So an additional capital investments can go from 100,000 to 500,000 USD depending in the company or deal.

Usama told AC that Oasis 500 will be closing its first fund, of about 6 million USD in September this year.

Next week more details about the Oasis program, who is behind it, their qualifications, criteria, etc. will be posted when I interview Ussama in few days again.

#Image by Mathias M

ArabCrunch opens guest posting to entrepreneurs and  industry professionals- todays post is by Omar Aloyoun, he is Technology, Marketing & Product Management specialist and a Business Strategist in EVERNET. He was one of the entrepreneurs who pitched at Arabnet conference. He is looking forward to bringing new Customer-driven & Market-driven e-products to the world. You can reach him at his ArabCrunch.NET profile here. ( if you want to be a contributor or post a guest post email me at EditorATarabcrucnchDOTcom, Guest posts does not represent AC’s point of view.)

The majority of conversations and web-storming sessions that took place during and after the successful ArabNet conference were all focused on the importance of an organized follow up to the conference. It’s a call for an Industry CRM and a measurable call-to-action plan between the region’s proactive users, Venture Capitalists, Social Media Moguls (e.g. Google, Yahoo) and entrepreneurs.

ArabNet event was an important step that has helped accelerate, predict and shape a roadmap of the Web industry in our region. A zone rich with money, skilled human resources and a unifying language landscape but still lacks the momentum to innovate and achieve due to many factors that have been discussed extensively during the conference eight panels.

One of the most compelling experiences that made the scene at ArabNet is the Live Tweeting which proved how social media are shaping today’s conversations and events. The instant ArabNet attendees were actually front channeling the conference panels discussions; an exciting back channel conversation (#ArabNetMe) was winding up on the twitter-sphere.

Both the region’s competencies and weaknesses were clearly described by many leaders. Many hot discussions were insisting on overriding organizational and governmental Paradox to ignite Arab Innovation. This was clear in Fadi Ghandour speech at the conference laying a big responsibility on all industry players including Governments, Private Sector, VCs and Entrepreneurs. He also stressed out the importance of true utilization of youth talents, creating new jobs, commercializing ideas and stopping talent immigration.

During Google Arabia event in Dubai, Google has characterized year 2009 as the Internet tipping point for MENA and the year in which the Internet has graduated in the region.

Mohammad Gawdat (Google’s Managing Director, EMEA) adds that a total of 3224 patents filed from MENA region in last 13 years, with Jordan leading with more than 150 comparing to 233,000 patents for Japan. Gawdat adds that optimism is on the horizon and that the region has the chance to ‘leapfrog’ over Western region; it’s the responsibility of all online players including users, agencies and web moguls.

So what makes an Innovative nation?

As per Steve Jobs CEO of Apple  “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower”, so where shall we locate innovation in MENA knowing that Web industry in the region is a me-too adopter of others technologies for products that were created for different cultures and segments.

MENA region has a low Tech Startups Density Index comparing to neighboring countries, USA, and Europe. This index reflects how much these startups can attract venture capital dollars per person. Entrepreneurs and Youth are the bricks of our new economy, and talent and technology plays a major role in keeping these startups on the cutting edge whatever challenges they face. An Innovative nation calls to invest in brains not bricks and needs to transform any challenges it faces into assets and to leverage the business talents of young people.

Real innovation is about adding value for both the business and its consumers. An Innovative culture nurtures entrepreneurship spirit even within inside companies by having an Internal Marketing Tactics (B2E/Business-To-Employee) through initiating a wide brainstorming sessions with creative employees, allowing promoted ideas to see the light of day by developing an efficient value chain.

Companies also need to engage in ideas conversations with external customers to capture ideas on their offerings. This will help shape future products roadmaps, formulating a dynamic forum to capture and act on customers’ best ideas, and taking these innovative ideas to markets.

An innovative nation utilizes untapped resources and assets to achieve unmet needs by filling a gap in the market. We need creators’ entrepreneurs who can make real difference and we don’t need more imitators. We want startups that build and establish value before preplanning monetization and money will follow.

Many startups need to reinvent themselves and more serious angel investors are needed to empower more startups out of the life cycle funnel. Many investments are gaining market share with a continuous market growth (The Stars as Per BCG Matrix); these can be converted to cash cows by providing them with all resources they need.

What applies to startups, also applies to commercialization of ideas. Fadi Ghandour said: “In order for innovation to really occur, we need to stop launching new ideas and focus on a few whether they succeed or fail”. Another approach is to uncover great ideas, generate a large quantity of them; a few may break even and many may become rewarding and pay back the costs of the broken down ideas.

Ideas are a dime a dozen. People who implement them are priceless, Mary Kay Ash.
Measuring innovation in MENA Advertising Ecosystem

MENA crowd should change the way they look to Advertising pinnacle. Whether it is Holistic Social Media Advertising, Contextual Text Based advertising (e.g. Google AdSense), Display Advertising or Keyword Search based CPC Advertising. According to Google, “Users need advertisers because they provide valuable additional information”.

The ArabNet advertising panel has missed a crucial point of why we have few advertisers?

Advertising platform resides in a two sided market where advertisers make up for one side and media publishers make up the other site.

The problem resides in the lack of advertisers’ landing pages readiness. Many potential advertisers are Brick & Mortar businesses that do not have a significant online presence or online business strategy. Brand’s online presence lack real value, does not engage with its audience, neither have a direct sales channel and have a bad design. Offline businesses without an online strategy underestimate the rewards coming from starting their new digital channels.

Brands should gain better ROI by adding Analytics, capturing customer insights, starting a professional blog, writing whitepapers and having an online customer acquisition strategy that enable building customers database. Any systematic marketing or re-marketing efforts will fade without profiling customers.

By communicating these values through the marketplace, the first building block for a real MENA based Affiliate Network (Performance Based Marketing) can be setup. A business or retailer will recruit affiliate publishers who can match an industry segment with their targeted audience. By cultivating the advertisers’ performance, we will encourage more publishers to enter the market.

The total outcome will transparently encourage and promote more quality Arabic content. Although MENA region have 56 million online users in Arabia region, we contribute for 1% of world’s online content.

Social Media Innovation

I  was impressed during ArabNet Online Advertising panel when Khaled Jabasini (Founder, E-marketing MENA) partially stripped to make a buzz, as a symbol of social media true utilization and how originating a positive word of mouth will support brand’s products more than any well written brand’s own sales pitch because it’s a trusted experience message originating from customers to the customer, and as Jabasini said: “advertising with zero dime cost” by allowing a brand to engage positively with audience and build a mutual experience. This is aligned with the new myth (via @umairh) “Advertising is the price a business pays for not being creative”. And as per Nielsen, “Winning online is about Serving Audience and not creating impressions!”
MENA region demand is for more collaborative business in the cloud, more service-oriented customer-centric dynamic platforms than static webs.

According to Yahoo!’s Alexa top 500 global websites, only 6 MENA based sites are in the list, including Google’s KSA and AE regional search page. (Maktoob #162, Kooora.net #251, Traidnt.net #400 and MyEgy.com #440).

Final Opinion

Innovative institutes do exist in the region; however their activities and influence are limited to the country or the region they are in. They need to expand beyond to include more areas in the MENA region. One example is Microsoft Innovation Lab in Cairo (MILC).

Going back to the Web industry CRM, I can say that ArabNet has triggered a new collaborative network between industry experts (Look @ ArabNet Twitter Lists), never seen before in the region. Experts are fragmented in each country and if we invite a Silicon Valley Investor to Jordan for example, there is no centralized database, or no mean of reaching talents, and the same matter applies to the whole region. For this ArabCrunch.net was created as the first Arabian web Industry hub that enables collaboration and technical Q&A Web-Storming sessions between experts and entrepreneurs and as brands and experts’ database.

Final advice to startups: focus on current trends and era that can be summarized by “The Internet is reaching into the phone” and “Browsing is out; engaging experiences are in”. One example utilized by many brands and agencies is mobile targeting and advertising. The users are sent to the mobile version of their websites when a mobile browser is detected.
Let us carry forward the innovation cycle in the region. Let us embrace the endless possibilities.

When we released ArabCrunch.NET in private beta as the social platform that empowers the Arab tech ecosystem only in English, an Arabic Interface was part of our plans and today it is opening live to anyone to signup.

Now millions of Arabic native entrepreneurs technology professional, geeks, academia students will have access to all the great offerings ArabCrunch offers them:

-Networking within the tech industry, with top notch executives, and with serial entrepreneurs like the cofounder and CEO of the world’s most popular mobile browser Opera, VPs and directors from Jabbar,Yahoo, Google, Microsoft.

- Mentorship opportunities with senior executives and other industry gurus from companies such as Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and from successful Arab, US and international serial entrepreneurs who have been successful in Silicon Valley, Europe and Arabia.

- Asking questions related to Enterpunership on starting a business and getting answers from well advised community that share what they know by answering others questions.

- Networking with other Tech Startup and companies in the region and worldwide, finding and networking with Service Providers, Venture Funds to help with funding, Incubators to help them get office space and other services, Organizations to help them find support services, whether starting and growing a company or increasing the technical skills of an engineer or the tech company’s staff. Lastly, help contribute to and use the open source projects developed by devoted and passionate Arab geeks.

Today ArabCrunch.NET boasts 1833??? members and grows everyday organically. The new social network will be integrated with ArabCrunch global events under ArabCrunchStart initiative which are organized by ArabCrunch and our ambassadors in the USA ( Seattle, NY and Silicon Valley), London, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and other countries around the world soon to join.

ArabCrunch.NET is not only about startups and business; we look at the problems facing the tech industry as an ecosystem. We will be enhancing and offering more features that empower every participant of the ecosystem in new ways never seen before (any feedback is welcomed). Stay tuned.

Amman, Jordan; Nablus, West Bank – No one denies the hardship that Palestinian brothers are facing in West Bank, starting from the suffering caused by the occupation and the high number of unemployment among Palestinian youth.

A couple of Palestinian youth wanted to do soemthing to start a change, the idea came in one of the meetings of Amr Tamimi, Ayman Awartani, Omar Abu Safieh and Mohammad Asmar. First, they thought of a video community for technologist in Nablus, Palestine. Later, they decided to make it such an event from time to time.

Amr started with his friends with a small event hosted at his dad’s office in Nablus. They called it DEMO.PS It quickly moved to An-Najah National University with more than 80 attendees. The theme of the event was to share experiences and educate the public about Palestinian startup companies and how to make them successful.

Demo.ps organized a series of sessions that talk about many topics, such as:
Startups and innovations
Web applications, and development
E-marketing and solutions for making business
Mobile development
New Technologies
Programming Language
And more …

Today, we are proud to announce that Amr Tamimi is the ArabCrunchStart Ambassador in the West Bank. Amr Numan Tamimi is a very talented student at An-Najah National University, and a well known web developer specializing in Ruby on Rails.

Well, We at ArabCrunch have a clear mission of helping Arabs, Muslims and people in the emerging world to just innovate.

We started 2 years ago with this English blog with only 2 USD investment, then successfully concluded ArabCrunch DEMO, the launchpad event for Arab technologies last year.

At the end of 2009 we launched ArabCrunch in Arabic to bring our vision to everyone we can reach in the Arab world. And in less than a month launched ArabCrunch.NET as the first social platform to connect and empower Arab tech professionals with mentorship and startup Q&A  along with the ecosystem social profiles . Thanks to the backing of Bassel Ojjeh Former Vice President Yahoo!

About one week ago we announced here ArabCrunchStart a global events initiative from ArabCrunch and run in collaboration with AC’s global Ambassadors program, a program which aims to help at the grass root level, entrepreneurs  to start their startups and to help geeks innovate and be come top-notch engineers.

Today, DEMO.PS moves in to its next level, I am glad to announce that DEMO.PS is now part of ArabCrunchStart program and now called ArabCrunchStart #Palestine.

With this announcement ArabCrunch continues playing one of its important roles since day one of its inception, which is bringing the fragmented, emerging and young Arab technology and startup sector together, from Silicon Valley, to Bahrain.

Under this announcement ArabCrunch ambassadors will work closely with private and non – government entities in the West Bank of Palestine promoting entrepreneurship and offer free mentorship to Palestinian youth via ArabCrunch.NET mentorship match making program.

ArabCrunchStartPalestine will work in 2 tracks: startuping and technology advancement, and will host a series of events featuring top notch local and global speakers, startups and highly skilled engineers.

ArabCrunchStartPalestine will also work closely with the Palestinians startup and tech community and help them in any way possible.

DEMO.ps will redirect to ArabCrunchStartPalestine profile on ArabCrunch.NET/StartPalestine and all events will be managed via ArabCrunch.NET upcoming events application.

Quotes:
Gaith Saqer, ArabCrunch Founder.

” At ArabCrunch we started small, using a very old PC. Our brothers at DEMO.PS are young and also started small with almost nothing, but like AC they are growing day by day, and this is what startups are all about,”

” Palestine is in the heart of every Muslim and Arab, serving our Palestinian brothers should be a top priority to anyone. As the only completely independent entity with a full time staff that is focused in helping Arab entrepreneurs, tech professionals and geeks, ArabCrunch is very proud to serve the youth in Palestine”

Amr Tamimi from Demo.ps team:
“ I ‘ve been following ArabCrunch since its inception, I saw its growth day after day, I am honored to be an ArabCrunch Ammbsador in the West Bank and 48 territories. Now by becoming a part of the ArabCrunchStart team DEMO.PS will grow to its next level in helping Palestine youth to innovate at a grass root level”

“Uniting DEMO.PS with ArabCrunchStrat should be a model for all Arab tech professionals. We need unity.”

“Uniting DEMO.PS with ArabCrunchStrat should be a modle for all Arab tech professionals, we need: unity.”

If you are a Twitter user, there is a high chance that there are a lot of people you care about who are not using Twitter yet, at least in my case mom and dad!

But, almost everyone uses email, if you wanted to to keep them updated with your tweets or some of them, Tweet To Email is the solution. launched last night, the app is very simple to use, you create a new account, setup groups that contains the email addresses of people you want to keep them updated selectively and then you just add a short hash-tag to your tweets whenever you want to target a certain group of people) as each group has its own hashtag example: #TM1

The app also saves you time from manually adding emails by auto importing your address boook if you authorize it to.

Tweet To Email founder Ali bin Yahia told ArabCrunch that if anyone sends a #TN1 tweet with hashtag it wont get to your list unless that tweet comes from your Twitter handel.

Ali who is originally from Yeman and lives in United Arab Emirates (UAE) added that he plans to add more free and paid features for websites and blogs like RSS email subscription widget and a free Blackberry (BB) application that can send your tweets to your BB contacts,

You can follow Tweet To Email on ArabCrunch.NET here. Cool startup i will use it to email any Tweet or Retweet stuff I find important to some close contacts.