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.

US based National U.S.-Arab Chamber of Commerce (NUSACC) has opened registration to its Fifth Annual High Tech Road Show Las Vegas and Silicon Valley January 11-18, 2012 to both business leaders and high-level government officials from throughout the Arab world.

The trip will include attending International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) NUSACC will also arrange meetings for delegates with senior executives representing some of the biggest names in the tech industry as well as SMEs and government officials. Also it will include visits to high-tech companies, research facilities, and educational institutions in Silicon Valley.

For more info you can visit the site, space in the delegation is limited and will be available on a first-come, first-served basis. fees for participating in the High Tech Road Show is $2,500 per person and it does not include air ticket to the US.

#image credit

The U.S government suffers from “Dissociative identity disorder,” or multi-persona disorder. Publicly they talk about democracy, human rights, liberty and the right of nations to rule themselves and decide their future . Yet in practice the consecutive US administrations “Democrats or Republican” have been the historical backers of brutal dictatorship and police states in the Muslim world and non-Muslim world, alike.

From Tunisia to Egypt, the U.S governments has backed both regimes, in a recent Wikileaks leaked U.S diplomatic cables that provide a glimpses of the relationship of both oppressive: the FBI has been providing training to Egypt’s state security ‘torturers’ the state security and investigative service (SSIS).

Historically U.S governments have been supporting the state of “Israel” for decades in monetary funding that are being used to build new settlements on land that has been confiscated from the indigenous inhabitants of the land, and in advanced weapons used to kill Palestinians.
Yet in another evidence that the U.S government “under Bush or Obama “call for democracy is baseless the U.S government did not acknowledge the outcome of the last free parliamentary elections in west bank and Gaza!

In Iraq the government of the United States of America killed 2 million Muslims and Christian Iraqis in the name of freeing them ( according to International human right organizations) . And yet after the Iraqi resistance taught them the real lesson of freedom, they started withdrawing ( not finished withdrawing there are still thousands of US troops in Iraq) their troops and yet another deception, they handed the occupation to 100,000 or so of international mercenary forces and to a poppet Iraqi government and army.

So to conceal all their crimes against Muslims and Arabs and to help them win the propaganda war or what they call the “battle of hearts and minds.” Officials of the U.S states dep. are joining Twitter to “engage” “ it is to deceive” the world specially Muslims.

The latest U.S state dep., engagement (deception) effort with Muslims and Arabs is via launching an official Arabic account @USAbilAraby which its first tweet says:

“U.S state dep. acknowledge the role social media plays in the Arab world and we would like to be part of your discussion”

and that discussion to them are now in the forms of Tweets to deceive the Arab public opinion about what the U.S government is doing, as the account was tweeting about the need of change in Egypt praising the Egyptian revolution and so forth….

Oh Ya we believe you!

Political propaganda has entered a new chapter today, it is now Propaganda 2.0. courtesy of Hillary Clinton – Secretary of hypocrisy and miss-leading the public .

In a press release landed to AC, US department of state said its special envoy for International energy Affairs, David Glowyn signed with the Director General of the National Resources Authority for the Government of Jordan Dr. Maher Hijazin a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Shale Gas resources.

Under the MOU cooperation will include and not limited to, a series of workshops where U.S Geological Survey (UGSGS) would conduct as assessment of Jordan’s Shale Gas potential and visits from the Jordanian side to US counter part in the industry.

Jordan is poor in its energy resources, it exports all its oil consumption and big chunk of its Gas consumption.

Shale Gas is natural gas produced from shale. Developing Gas Shale industry in Jordan will help the Kingdom’s energy sector as well as its economy which spend around 2 billion USD a year on importing oil.

#image credits

When ArabCrunch founder Gaith Saqer started ArabCrunch he made his best to stay away from politics as he was advised that in this part of the world it will bring him and AC problems.

At ArabCrunch we never accused “Israel” of anything, we never opened the books of the Zionist movement intentionally because we know how strong they are at least in USA. We understood the consequences of such events that it would create problems to us inside USA at least. But that was not enough they wanted Gaith to “become a spy or die.”

When the DDoS attack against ArabCrunch happened we intentionally refused to point the finger against anyone, Why? because we hopped we can survive it and that there wont be more plots that can bring us down to the ground.

But today we can not shut up in the face of growing conspiracies against us. We have been doing investigation (before or immediately or after the DDoS attack, this information can not be provided now) and the investigation lead us to know the parties behind the terrorist DDos attacks, the criminal defemation and hacks of ArabCrunch blog that insulated Islam and all other criminal plots against AC and its founder, designed to bring ArabCrunch down or we have to work for the Zionist agendas.

The CIA, Mossad and the global Zionist movement are the ones behind these attacks all other parties are just tails. The DDoS attack and the subsequent hack attacks against ArabCrunch and all other criminal plots against AC and its founder.

The DDos attacks where not just a diversion of AC’s resources to be on the defense but to make AC move its servers to be hosted outside USA with a certain company in a Banana republic whose “laws” will ensure AC can be brought to legal troubles.

Another revelation we make today is that the father of ArabCrunch founder (Gaith) is Dr. Mohammad Saqer who holds PHD from Harvard. Dr. Mohammad is a senior Muslim Brother Hood leader, and was an ex-president of Islamic university of Gaza.

in the 1980s and during Dr. Mohammad presidential period of Islamic University in Gaza he was a target for several assignation attempts. When he visited Jordan back at one occasion the Israeli occupation of Gaza refused to give him permission to go back to the strip. Dr. Mohammad is a Jordanian citizen since the 1960s. He then kept the presidential position He currently lives in Amman with his wife after 2 divorces with his son and doughtier of AC founder. AC’s founder lives down satires of Dr. Saqer house. AC’s founder is not a member of Muslim brotherhood or Hamas or any political parties. AC’s founder is not involved in any politics. But as his job requires to meet people from different walks of life. that does not mean he agree with anyone point of view or believes.

The Mossad often targets not just Hamas members or people who might be in some relation with them ( As Hamas has originated from Muslim brotherhood) for recruitment also their immediate families such as this spy. Other intelligence agencies too monitor and do its best to recruit Hamas family members.

ArabCrunch founder Gaith Saqer’s mother is Zulikha Abu Risha, she is an opinion writer at a local newspaper -alghad- and a poet. Most of Zulika’s writings are in social issues. essentially she attacks Islam and works in changing the public precipitin about Islam under the pretext of such posts as the Athan voice is too load!

Obama and hillary are liars in being against burning the Quran!

ArabCrunch was not the only Muslim website targeted by DDoS attack and other plots from the CIA and Zionism , Millatfacebook too experienced that.

MORE TO COME…

“Exposing War Crimes is not a Crime.” this is the slogan of Supporters of US intelligence soldier Bradly manning, they have started since few weeks online and offline campaign to free the suspected Wikileaks whistle-blower.

Bradly is a suspect of leaking massive amount of Inelegance cash about the war in Iraq and US embassy communications in Middle East, that if exposed would shed the light on many secrets and CIA operations in the region.

Yesterday facebook has frozen Bradly Managing facebook supporters page facebook.com/savebradley has been and the admin could not login to update it and post information or links on the page.

The network of supporters emailed facebook but noreply, but after Wikileaks Tweet about the matter and BradllyManaging supporters post along with other supporters efforts the page is unfrozen.

One of the videos Bradly Managing leaked was this one where it shows US army helicopter kills innocent journalist in Baghdad :




Brady has been held in custody since few monthes and is facing criminal charges for leaking secret dumps.
US Congressman Mike Rogers asked for his execution. However Bradly is lucky of being US citizen, if he was a citizen of certain Arab countries, he would face cooked up crimes he did not commit.

At ArabCrunch we feel worried that CIA/ Mossad and other intelligence agency access to our email might lead to expose  our sources with relevance to US department of Defense and the State department. We feel worried about the fate of AC’s founder Gaith Saqer that might put our sources in grave danger.

In a meeting at the house of Dr. Saed Salamn head of Ajamn network Dhahi Khalfan Tamim Dubai Police chief said that United States of America is the first beneficiary from absence of BlackBerry surveillance in his country, and said that USA has an interests in Spying in his country.

Al Tamami showed before evidence of “Israeli Mussad” intelligence agents being behind an assignation which took place in Dubai early this year killing a senior Hamas Military members.

Tamimi added that “the west” has acused us that we have curbed BlackBerry users’ liberty while USA, UK, “Israel” and other countries are allowed to access all users data. Al Tamimi remarks in the meeting was published by Alkhaleej newspaper (Arabic link.)

In the meeting that gathered some of top telecom, IT and education executives in the country, the speakers asked for establishing tech research centers in the country to support decision makers and stressed the need for local engineers to handle sensitive data, as Dr. Mansour Al Our cited that information security  is very important now a days, he cited examples of information leakage one of them in 2005 and 1997 with Israeli spying on US President Bill Clinton and on the US State Department, he cited Bill Clinton Monica Lewinsky case as another example of Israeli spying in the united states of America. saying that Israel has provided components to computers that were used by US security and its political branches.

Other speakers like Ibrahim Shamsi head of communications wondered why UAE government seeks help from foreign experts to assess and laydown plans for its branches IT needs while there is existing local talent?

Saudi Arabia has reached an agreement with BlackBerry to get access to users data, our sources with relevance to telecom operators in region told us that UAE and BalckBerry are expected to reach such agreement at the end of the road. UAE said before they are banning BB by next month.

(Discolors: Unfortunately US State Department is a competitor to ArabCrunch.)

Bit.ly the popular link shortening service have posted a blog post about @clickabit saying that “Clickabit is a curated list of some of the surprising and delightful things that are trending in the bit.ly data stream.”

So is this Bit.ly’s new Twitter account for trending links? If so it would be helpful to see the most popular/trending posts/links since Bit.ly links are also shared over IM, email and Web not just Twitter and facebook giving more scope about trending links and posts than Twitter’s trending topics.

We tested the links on @clicabit and did not notice if something is trending or not!

If some of us think SMS is dead in the US, Twitter do not. The social media startup just announced launching Fast Follow SMS feature, which allows anyone in the US to receive Tweets on their mobile phones even if they have not signed up for Twitter. For example juts type follow ArabCrunch to 40404 in the US and now you start receiving Tweets from ArabCrunch.

Fast Following is currently available in the US but Twitter  said it is working on more countries to add.

This feature is a smart move by Twitter as its adoption rates in the US is not close to Facebook’s 500 million members, now non Twitter users can start experiencing Twitter instantly even if they did not have an account as this cuts many steps of going online, signup and then figure out how Twitter works.  I think this feature will bring a great amount of  new Twitter users.

( You can Follow ArabCrunch on Twitter @ArabCrunch .)

Whistleblower website WikiLeaks that is now well known for releasing the Afghanistan War Log of around 90,000 secret US military documents and the Baghdad shooting Video seems to be preparing for a new massive batch of leaks.

A Tweet sent by the Twitter account of Wikileaks asked for 700,00 USD for its next harm-minimization review, and accused the Pentagon and the media of not helping in the efforts of harm minimization.

That money seems to be going to help edit 15,000 more documents about the war in Afghanistan which might mean removing the “informants” names or a 260,000 pages that involves the Middle East or a new  a batch of fresh leaks and that money might be used to support the organizations infrastructure such as servers and so on as it lives off donations as a not for profit organization. Wikileaks accepts donations via different means starting with big to small payments on sites such as micropayment site Flattr.com.

The Pentagon has asked wikileaks recently “to do the right thing” and remove the war logs but wikileaks spokesman said more leaks to come.

Wikileaks accused in another tweet that “the pentagon wants to bankrupt us by refusing to assist  the review.

“Pentagon wants to bankrupt us by refusing to assist review.Media won’t take responsibility.Amnesty won’t.What to do?”

The Obama administration has asked today Britain, Germany, Australia and its other allies to consider criminal charges against the founder of WikiLeaks Julian Assange to limit his cores Europe movement.

While an American official was quoted by The Daily Beast saying ““It’s amazing how Assange has overplayed his hand,”…. “Now, he’s alienating the sort of people who you’d normally think would be his biggest supporters.”

He was referring to 4 human rights organizations such as the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission AIHRC.

Wikileaks replied via Twitter by saying “Research note: AIHRC is primary funded by the occupying forces of Afghanistan.” and “Remember well those organizations currently rushing to push the Pentagon’s agenda without fact checking.”

A Petition posted online with the title of “Defend WikiLeaks – End the Secret Wars” said that “We believe that WikiLeaks and those whistleblowers who declassify documents in a time of secret war should be welcomed as defenders of democracy, not demonized as criminals. We support their First Amendment rights and welcome their continued disobedience in response to a long train of official deception.” The Petition has gathered   a number of well known people with 3061 signatures saying.”

Wikileaks has released on March 15, 2010 a classified 32 page U.S. counterintelligence investigation reveled a plan in plotting to destroy the center gravity of the site by attacking its “trust.”

Geoff Morrel, the pentagon’s press secretary requested 2 days ago wikileaks to do “the right thing” and remove Afghanistan war secrets  logs 2004-2009. Something that has no meaning since the logs has been publicly available for around 20 days now in different digital formats.

However the Pentagon keeps demanding to cancel the sites plans of releasing more classified military documents.

Wikileaks spoksman responded by saying, that the site will keep publishing documents because that is what they do, as AP reported.

The spokesman who used the nick name name Daniel Schmitt to protect his real identity said that public knowledge about ongoing issues like the war in Afghanistan is the only way “to create something “like safety.” as the public scrutiny will influence governments to enforce better polices.

He also unveiled that the site requested from the white-house prior to the publishing of the war logs asking “International Security Assistance Force provide us with reviewers” but this request was rejected as the white-house  said they are not interested in “harm minimization.”

Schmitt reveled that the site founder Julian Asang works with 3 others on a full time bases and the site has between 800 to 1,000 volunteers around the world. The site is has also Arabic version that is yet not fully translated.

Wikileaks has announced recently plans to post new batch of “fresh leaks.”

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.

The Pentagon has asked Wikileaks the site that posted around 90,0000 US military logs of 6 years archive of the war in Afghanistan to do “the right thing” and remove the log.

The New Work Times reported that Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary saying the logs gave Taliban and other militant groups access into US military tactics and techniques and revealed the names of the Afghan informants.

The Pentagon is worried about 15,000 more secret documents the site plans to post in addition to potentially others.

The U.S government has set- off a criminal inquiry led by the army and the F.B.I as 80 analysts from the US military and the F.B.I working to analyze the log file and its “damage.”

Geoff Morrell call has no meaning now since  the war logs has been also available  for around 20 days for free download on in different formats such as: CSV (15 MB), MYSQL ( 16 MB) and HTML (75 MB)

The site founder Julian Assang rejected repeatedly the U.S goverment acquisitions  saying the logs showed “thousands” of war crimes that may have been committed in Afghanistan.”We are familiar with groups whose abuse we expose attempting to criticise the messenger to distract from the power of the message.”

WikiLeaks posted on Torrent recently  an encrypted 1.4-gigabyte  file as an “insurance” in case the site goes on the dark.

The Pentagon has acted in perplex manner, as reports after the site leaked the famous Baghdad Video of Iraqi civilians were alleged to have been killed by U.S. forces,  suggested that his life is under danger and then news broke that a US official was quoted saying “we like his cooperation.”

The Guardian reported that earlier this year, “Wikileaks published a US military document which disclosed a plan to “destroy the centre of gravity” of Wikileaks by attacking its trustworthiness.”

Wikileaks was founded in 2007 and run by volunteers, the site’s  servers are hosted in Sweden where laws in the country protect “leaks”.  The site which has been under financial shortages partnered recently with Flattr, a Sweden based startup that is  affiliated with the Pirate Bay and provides a micropayment platform that helps people share small amount of money to other websites called “Flattrs”, the Wikileaks Afghanistan war diary has collected hundreds of flattrs so far. As the site seems as an unstoppable force in the world’s media.

Should Wikileaks “do the right thing” or “the right thing is to continues leaking”?

#Julian Assang Photo credits.

After we posted about Hillary Clinton’s and the U.S Department of State plans to enter into competition with ArabCrunch with a new project under the U.S department website. As part of the US government engagement plans for entrepreneurship in the Muslim world ,  as a new pillar to fight “extremism” or “terrorism” as the U.S administration says.

A lot of people misunderstood the issue as ArabCrunch is against competition.  The conversation about the issue dragged by some people  ”intentionally or unintentionally” away from the main points .

We are not against competition, in fact we already have competitors in different fronts and many of them are our friends, and many of us supported each other in different ways, competition is healthy and helps everyone innovate. History also has examples that even giants at the size of Google fail to compete with solid startup such Youtube.

But Google is not the U.S federal government. What we are against is unfair competition, the point about US Department of State entering in competition against ArabCrunch is that it is not just against free market principles, as our sources who are close to the US Department of Defense and the US State Department has informed us that if we do not join the US government effort, they will destroy “you.”

We already said “NO” to Greg Behrman Member of US State Department Policy Planning Staff about his “Collaborating” idea, as the term sounds like become “our spy.” And personally I hate that type of “business” “whether it is Evil “business” or whether “it is ethical and its ends and means are justified “. However, Craig might not “necessarily” mean “become our spy.”

To those who do not know,  The Washington Post recently published a web report about the size of the Intelligence community in USA alone, it includes about 1 million people and thousands of locations and companies that are used as a “cover” for secret operations.

Out side USA, the CIA reach is even bigger, they are “almost” in every country and the nature of their job is covered. Meaning they do not have the CIA banner on their T-shirts. You can use google for more info.

We are not here commenting whether the large size of the US intelligence community is justified or not, or whether all its operations are ethical or not, we are here just stating facts.

Some people have told us that there are many ways the CIA “might” hurt the writer of this blog post and ArabCrunch, “for example”, a small DDoS attack to divert attention from something else. US government pressure on certain other governments that would make life harder for us as another “example.” – PS: “example” does not necessarily means it really happened.”

That is why I talked about unfair competition and being “concerned”, their resources and reach is beyond mine or that of ArabCrunch at any standard. Even if the U.S Federal government resources put into this are not “massive.”

This is not a nationalistic feeling, it is not Arabs against America or Americans, or East VS. West, No. It is true that I am not American but a Jordanian citizen, even if I was an American citizen it would not be fare at any measure.

This is about  injustice and liberty.

At ArabCrunch we do not consider Americans as enemies at all, we do not consider any nation as enemy, we do not have this nonsense views. In fact we plan to increase our coverage of International & U.S startups, and more startup events not justs in the Arab world but also in USA and Europe to help drive innovation and create jobs. Again we have no political agendas at ArabCrunch or political opinions.

We are NOT anti-american as a certain “person” accused me wrongly before, at ArabCrunch and me have many American friends, and many of them have helped us in different ways. We admire innovative companies  in USA such as Google, Twitter, Gowalla and Facebook ( but not all Facebook practices) and we admire the entrepreneurship drive and culture in Silicon Valley.

I am not afraid as I wrongly stated, but “concerned”, again we have no plans in considering the US Federal government as an “enemy”, even  ”if” they do, or “if” “certain parties inside it do” or “is miss informed”. And I do believe that whats some people accuse some US federal government personnel of being “evil”  or “poppets to certain lobbies ”  is not necessarily true. I am sure many  people have good “intentions.”

But at least in technology, Hillary Clinton has proven before to be saying something and then doing something else. As with the case of China , Source Forge and around 120 million innocent people in South Korea, Cuba, Iran, Syria and Sudan who were banned from the freedom to code freely. And the US president Obama has wrongly before called social media as “a distraction”, even though it was one of the reasons behind the success of his presidential campaign. Social Media includes blogs personal, corporate or professional, such as ArabCrunch.

The Guardian reported that earlier this year, “Wikileaks published a US military document which disclosed a plan to “destroy the centre of gravity” of Wikileaks by attacking its trustworthiness.”

We said before there are plots from different directions against ArabCrunch, we are not at liberality “now ” in identifying more info.

At ArabCrunch we are not “yet” mainstream, but we are not “nothing” as certain “parties” suggested, the fact is we are growing day after day and moth over month, and we have been for a while and still the #1 tech, startups and social media blog from the Arab world, our worldwide ranking according to invesp is number 6 worldwide in innovation and e-commerce categories and 10th in startups. Our ranking is ahead of entrepreneurship blogs from icons such as Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and Forbes. ( taking into account that investp does not measure our RSS subscribers from Feedoor which we still use for now and that our monthly visits is much much more than what invesp reports.)

Again, we do not have political comments so we are not commenting whether George Bush is a great man or not or if Obama is a great man or not, but Bush said once “with us or against us”, we are not commenting whether this saying was applied before or still applies to the current Obama’s administration’s policy. But does this saying apply to the technology industry and entrepreneurship in the Arab and Muslim world? and to ArabCrunch? Is the U.S government “engagement plans” will be “positive” to everyone?  Even to those who refuse to join? or criticize “wrongly or rightly” ? The near and mid term future has more answers!

Yesterday I received many calls asking me about our sources who are close to the U.S State Department and the U.S Department of Defense who have informed us that if you do not find ways to collaborate with the U.S State Department, they will destroy “you.”

I am not at libirty to provide “sources” of anything of relevance to anyone. and I hope the following comment at the previous post that sounded from someone from “certain secret intelligence community” has any implications to my  personal freedom and  safety:

“Well obviously I think there is always room for such articles in the tech world. Specially when it’s on “the right” side.
Thanks for the writer and the people who commented. As long as, this topic remains here in this page “only” its no big deal. We can move on, just knowing what we had to know.
Thanks for the update “

#Images by: merfam, Ben Fredericson and Marco Bellucci.

It is not a jock Obama’s administration plan for “entrepreneurship” in the Muslim and Arab world, as the U.S. government Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) approved recently a total of $455 million in financing to support the establishment of five private equity investment funds.

We  have gathered  data about the U.S. federal government plans for “entrepreneurship” in the Arab & Muslim world, so expect more independent coverage coming from AC. As for now here are the names of the 5 funds with some details, these 5 got the financing out of 87 proposals sent to OPIC.

1. Riyada Enterprise Development Growth Capital Fund: OPIC Board approved up to $150 million in financing to support the fund, which will invest in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) throughout the Arab region focusing on tech. Riyadys is managed by Khaldoon Tabaza from Jordan and was acquired by abraaj Capital. Target countries for the fund include Egypt, Turkey, Palestinian Territories, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Oman, Algeria and Morocco.
2. Accelerator Technology and Innovation Capital Partners managed by the Jordanian mother company of IV Holdings which invested in Jordanian startups Jeeran, ShowfeeTV, Gate2Play, Wizerd Production, from UAE CONSERVUS, CONTENT SYNDICATE, from and SF, CA ,USA: IDEALRATINGS. The OPIC Board approved up to $25 million to Accelerator, the fund focus on digital content, internet services, mobile applications, mobile financial services, technology services and platforms, next generation media, entertainment and software development sectors. Target countries for the fund include Jordan, Lebanon, Palestinian Territories, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia among other Arab and Islamic countries.
3. KIPCO Opportunity Fund: PIC Board approved up to $150 million in financing to support the fund, focus: developing infrastructure and maturing financial markets in the MENA region, including in the financial services, media, infrastructure and information technology sectors. Target countries for the fund are Jordan, Lebanon, Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia, although the fund may also invest in other countries in the MENA region. KIPCO Private Equity,  is owned by Kuwait Projects Company (Holding) K.S.C. (Closed), a Kuwait-based company which to date has made over 60 investments valued at approximately $23 billion. The fund has a target capitalization of $1 billion.
4. Citadel Capital Joint Investment Fund: OPIC Board approved up to $100 million in financing to support the fund, which will invest in companies in various stages of maturity, including traditional buyouts, growth capital investments, turnaround situations and greenfield projects. Sectors of interest include waste management, transportation and logistics, manufacturing, and production of building materials and alternative energy. Citadel Capital Management Limited, is owned subsidiary of Citadel Capital SAE, an Egypt-based company which is one of the leading private equity investment firms in the MENA region. Citadel Capital currently manages a total of $3.7 billion in equity and has completed investments in 19 platform  ompanies. The new fund has a target capitalization of $500 million.
5. Siraj Palestine Fund I : OPIC approved up to $30 million in financing to support the fund, which will invest in start-ups and SMEs in the Palestinian Territories, and potentially in larger companies with growth potential. fund focus: information and communication technology services, agriculture, clean technology, healthcare, education, manufacturing and financial service. fund manager is Siraj Fund Management Company, a Ramallah-based company owned by Massar International, another Palestinian company that manages a network of 15 subsidiaries operating in real estate development, financial services, and corporate business development. The fund has a target capitalization of $80 million.

TechWadi is hosting its first event in Beirut, Lebanon on the 23rd of this month. The event will discuss on accelerating entrepreneurship and venture capital in Lebanon and across the Arab region.

The forum will gather US Mulsim and Arab Investors, executives, entrepreneurs and policymakers from the US state Department.

The event will be held at American University of Beirut Olayan School of Business for one day and will start at 9 pm Lebanon time. It will kick off with guest speakers from Berytech, techwadi and AUB Olayan School, then with a speech by Greg Behrman from US state Department. It will also include speakers like : Saeed Amidi, General Partner, GTIP, Tony Feghali, Director, Entrepreneur Center of OSB, Ossama Hassanein, General Partner, GTIP , Magid Abraham, Founder and CEO, NASDQ listed comScore and Hala Fadel, Chair, MIT Enterprise Forum.

For  registration and full agenda you can head to this page.

(Disclosure: ArabCrunch is a Media partner to this event, The events has the U.S. department of state  as one of its sponsors, ArabCrunch is completely independent and has no political views, so we do NOT endorse the US government or the US Department of State in any way.)

# AUB pic by deutsch_laender.

Want to edit a video for your family or for your coworkers or create a stunning presentation Faculte helps you do that online with no need to install a software.

Faculte which is another sign of the growing SaaS sector, allows you to publish video clips,images, videos, power-points, documents and audio or arrange them into a multi-chapter videos or slide shows offering a more interactive experience. The site also offers ways to distribute the content via widgets or embedded player.

To do so Faclute web-based studio comes to aid, it allows you can record on-demand presentation, create a picture slide show, publish videos clips in a multi- chapter video, create multi media presentations, demo or tutorials
The Studio has very interesting features and is simple to use, some of the nice features it has recoding via a web cam and mic, grapping photos and video from the web on the fly and adding your own files from your PC ( in my case Mac).

For starter Faculte studio is free but add features requires payments starting at 25$ a month. The service is great for trainer, educator, marketers, sales people, I suggest that they have some sort partnership with knowledge training startup loomin.com and slideshare.

The basic services of the web app offered for free, Professional package which has more feats cost 25$ a month, as for Enterprise the site does not specify how much the cost is.
Faculate is based in SF bay Area in California, its founders are Maher Hakim – Co-Founder and CEO orginally fronm Syria and Mark Valentine – Co-Founder and COO.

Here an embed of a test presentation I made:




The opening session featured Larry Summers, Director of the National Economic Council and Assistant to the President for Economic Policy. He highlighted the fact that growth rates recently have been phenomenal compared to the Industrial Revolution – not by a factor of 2 or 5, but by hundreds. And mainly concentrated in emerging markets. This story will be written by entrepreneurs. Larry shared his belief that Entrepreneurship isn’t just new technologies, it’s new ways of doing business, new perspectives, new organizational methods. Economic growth is “better recipes”, and the path for permanent and continuing change is “the path of innovation”.

The morning session was called “Promoting entrepreneurship and enabling business”, with Karen Mills, Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration; Kemal Dervis, Vice President of The Brookings Institution; Obiageli Ezekwesili, Vice President for Africa at the World Bank; Sheikha Hanadi bint Nasser bin Khalid Al Thani, founder and CEO of Amwal; and Dr. Mohamed Ibrahim, Founder of Celtel International.

The audience brought up the issue of “culture” several times. Why is the Arab world so failure-averse? Sheikha Hanadi disagreed that it is a problem of culture: it takes 3-4 years to start up a business in the Arab world, and so “failure” means much more than in Silicon Valley, where businesses can restart in a matter of months. This is a key point, suggesting that policy changes are in order to make the economy more fluid and flexible.

Another recurring theme: a network of Angels to fund companies in the $5000-$500,000 range. Typically, it is previously successful entrepreneurs that fund smaller ventures and take a risk; as more and more success stories emerge from the region, this network will be created. Sheikha Hanada weighed in: not only is capital important, but angels need to put in their experience, their knowledge, and their mentorship. Dr. Mohamed Ibrahim is an angel, but he is focused in his home country of Sudan; he cannot spread his energy to the entirety of Africa or the Muslim world – others are needed.

Sheikha Hanada highlighted one major problem: 50% of unemployed in the Arab world are first-time job seekers.

Dr. Mohamed Ibrahim weighed in on the use of the “China model” for the Arab world: first, China is a huge country with sufficient scale and market to develop independently of the rest of the world. Second, for years China operated on severe oppression: shooting mayors, officials, etc for “treason”. Most importantly, even the Chinese one-party President steps down every 8 years: what of the Arab leaders? If you want the Chinese model, implement it in all its ways.

The after-lunch session was titled “Unleashing the Power of Women Entrepreneurs” and featured: Valerie Jarrett, Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor, with an introduction from Farah Pandith, Special Representative for Muslim Communities, U.S. Department of State; Tamara Abed, Director of Aarong; Faridah Nambi Kigongo, Founder and Managing Director of Nambi Children Initiatives; Dina Powell, Global Head for Corporate Engagement at Goldman Sachs; and Muhammad Yunus, Founder of Grameen Bank. I could not attend the whole session because, as press, we had to undergo early security check for Hilary Clinton’s speech, but I caught the beginning:

Dr. Mohamed Yunus, Nobel laureate and founder of Grameen Bank –with 8 million borrowers and over $8 billion distributed spoke first. Dr. Yunus discussed the beginning of his micro-finance plans: the banks only lent to people who already had money, and less than 1% of all borrowers in Bangladesh were women. So Yunus gave himself as a guarantor, and made a commitment that 50% of borrowers should be women. They saw that money funelled to a family through women had a greater effect than the same money through men, and now out of Grameen’s 8 million borrowers, 97% are women. Yunus discussed every person’s choice: you can be a job seeker, or a job giver. Everyone can be an entrepreneur.

Updated.
Aljazeera, the popular Arab TV Network and the only English TV station that is based from the Arab world has officially launched its blog network called Aljazeera Blogs .

Update: Aljazeera English TV station remains blocked by US cable operators with no reasonable justifications rather than being racists. was blocked, as it seems the blocking was lifted and AJ english is available via 5 Operators . ( Thanks for the notification Tom Garnier.)

Aljazeera blogs feature blog posts from its extensive global network of reporters. The blog network currently has several sub blogs: Africa blog, Asia Blog, Americas Blog, Europe Blog, Middle East blog and Business blog.

CNN, on the other hand,  has already an older, bigger and more extensive blog network also from its own staff. However, it is good to see more opinion in English, especially that it is coming from an Arab based TV network rather than only from a US network, even though most of Aljazeera’s current bloggers are westerners.

Another Interesting aspect about Aljazeera Blogs is that posts are licensed under a creative commons license , so people can reuse and republish. The same way Aljazeera was the first news broadcaster to do so early this year.

Aljazeera network’s web 2.0 team has been busy launching many useful social media applications. ArabCrunch was following Aljazeera, this link shows all the posts AC has published about Aljazeera work in the mobile and the Internet fields.

TwitVid.com which we recently reviewed here, announced a partnership with TwitterFon. With this partnership iPhone users will very soon be able to tweet Mobile videos to their followers by using Twitvid.com which has very recently add a feature that allows Twitter follower to watch those videos instantly- even before finishing the upload-

This represent a good news  for the US users of the just announced iPhone 3G S in USA, since even though the new iPhone 3G S supports MMS, but the only iPhone carrier in America AT&T  seems not ready for this service yet.

Other new cool features TwitVid.com has added  recently are:

• Mobile uploading via Email/MMS.
• Videos conversion to High Quality.
• Chatting with people when watching a TwitVid.
• Ability to make playlist by uploading many videos at once.
• Ability to Send your video to YouTube after it’s on TwitVid.

Eatlime.com is behind the TwitVid.com  which is founded by  Mohammad Al Adham from Jordan and Adil Lalani from Pakistan.

Updated.
The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is the premier technical event for developers and IT professionals innovating with Apple platforms, attended by around a thuosand people.

While posting this, they announced that Apple sold more than 40 million iPhones.

In this event Apple usually announce its new products. Here is the live video stream:



Note: please be patient the connection is not so great and it goes on and off all the time . When it goes off, it will say, simply refresh the page from time to time. The connection usually comes back within a minute or so.

Update: The new iPhone is called  iPhone 3G S ( “S” stands for speed) it will be available in the U.S on June 19, and will be available in much of the rest of the world on July 7.

Highlights:

•  OS 3.0 supports over 30 languages including Arabic.
• The new iPhone is significantly faster than the current model.
• MMS: Support for sending Photos, contacts, audio files, etc over the cell network
• 3 megapixel camera with auto-focus.
• Voice control.
• Apple claims that the iPhone 3G S will get 9 hours of web surfing now when on WiFi — that’s up from 6 hours on the current iPhone. 3G talk time will be the same 5 hours.
• iPhone 3G S will come in two sizes, each with two colors: White or Black. The low-end 16 GB version. The high-end 32 GB .

Update 2: here is a 30 sec. video commercial of the new iPhone 3G S:



Via: Ustream, CrunchGear and TechCrunch.

Just a couple of days ago woopra, the real-time website tracking and Analytics application, released the final latest release candidate for 1.3  of its desktop tracking application before the forced mass upgrade from the 1.2 release. ArabCrunch has reviewed Woopra before here.

If you do not know the term release candidate (RC), it refers according to Wikipedia, to a version with potential to be a final product, ready to release unless fatal bugs emerge. RC is generally used for testing purposes by private beta testers and is not ready for general release.

According to a blog post by Elie Khoury the founder of Woopra, the new 1.3 RC2  is much more stable than 1.3 RC1 and has a number of new features such as: a new theme editor which adds the ability to create your own themes, new Woopra Light Theme, and A new Quick Stats feature resides at the top. RC2 also comes with a number of User Interface enhancements and optimized code that decreased CPU consumption. Many bugs fixes have been also part of this release.

Next month Woopra will launch the final 1.3 version, which will come with a number of major changes. Such as: server side notifications,  which will give you the be the ability to get notified while you’re not connected by other means like SMS and email as Elie Khoury  has told me.





Update: More pics at the end of the post.

Update 2: More bigger pics.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Update 2 more bigger pics via  Dustin Curtis:

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

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

It can be used for:

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

Latest Hardware specs:

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

Price:

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

Who led the effort:

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

Where do things stand?

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

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

Last month I reported on ArabCrunch that facebook launched Arabic beta, but as of today yeserday its officially launched along with Hebrew according to Ghassan Haddad, ‎Director of Internationalization‎ at facebook.

As with all other Facebook international languages translation, facebook Arabic and Hebrew was translated by the community of volunteers, with around 2.130 Arab translators while in Hebrew it is 2,103 , Arab translators submitted 29.294 Translations, while the Hebrew translators submitted 34,666 translations.

Both Arabic and Hebrew are Semitic languages and both are different than English thus have some challenges when used on the Web. Both languages begins in writing at the right-hand side of the page and ends on the left, so Facebook managed this challenge by making the design and the layout of the interface for both languages accommodate both languages’ special features.

Another challenge that facebook managed to tackle is that in Arabic and Hebrew, two words with the same meaning are used differently based on whether a person is male or female so they developed a feature they called “dynamic explosion”, which detects a person’s gender and selects the matching translation according to Haddad.

Arabic is the official language of more than 20 different countries including Palestine, Iraq, Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, but each country has a different dialect, in which not every person from a certain Arabic dialect understand all others, and many times a certain word means something else in another Arabic dialect. So facebook used the official Arabic called Al Fusha ( الفصحى) – the Arabic dialect of Quran – which is the standard language used in media, publishing and other formal and religious circles.

Testing the Arabic interface of facebook, revels that facebook and the community have done a great job, the translation is accurate and I would say better than the translation I see in many Google products! However there are more Phrases that needs to be translated to Arabic such as “Email Friend Finder” , according to facebook Translations app there are still 9.420 untranslated phrases to Arabic while for Hebrew the number is 586 (Hebrew speakers are around 5 million!)

This launch is a mile stone for Facebook and Arab Internet users especially in countries where Arabic is the only language people know such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, (Arabs are around 400 million people, and only around 35 million are internet users.)

Facebook has regional competitors such as Maktoob’s As7ab and Jeeran, ArabFriendz and Kalam.

But to my perception and from the perception of the people I know Facebook by far is the most popular social network in the Arab world, even before launching the Arabic version, and it seems facebook is doing ok in monetizing its Arabic user base, I always see ads on facebook using its DIY advertising application, in Jordan where I am based, the same case happened while logged in to facebook in my last visits to Egypt and Lebanon in the last 2 months.

Facebook is now available in 40 languages with over 60 more in development, but according to Haddad facebook “goal is to make Facebook available in every language across the world.”

Conclusion:

OF all the other Arab social Networks, I find As7ab the most advanced, it has the nicest and easiest to use interface among its rivals ( excluding facebook), and shares many features of both facebook and MySpace such as profile customization using HTML, Networks, Groups, Events, Photo and Video sharing, Blogs, Gifts, and Celebrities (like facebook Fan page).

Maktoob which is the largest Arab home grown portal with around 14 million visitors per month and other Arabic social networks are challenged by Facebook move specially in countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but as Ala’a A. Ibrahim a Zend Certified Enginer commented “believe me a lot of the users who are using Jeeran or As7ab or … etc, already have facebook accounts, but they think of it as another place to get dates.”

Though Maktoob is stronger in other features as a full regional Arabic portal like Yahoo, I think they need to integrate all their sub sites and features with As7ab and release an API for third party developers, in order to make As7ab more of a Social network for Arabs rather than one of those sites I have account at or dating website. Until this happen I see Facebook will remain the Social Network of Choice for Arabs.

OpenX Technologies, has announced that the company has experienced significant growth across its various product lines and in the size of its publisher community. As of December 2008, more than 300 billion ad impressions now run through OpenX’s open source software monthly. In addition, the company’s recently launched OpenX Hosted (Saas Version of OpenX) product has already achieved a more than 1 billion monthly ad impression run rate and generated 2,500 new publisher sign-ups, while the newest version of its core OpenX Ad Server has more than 10,000 active downloads and has achieved a 25 billion monthly ad impression run rate. The company also announced that the OpenX community now has more than 35,000 total publishers, a 25% year-to-date increase, and those publishers power more than 150,000 websites across the Internet.

OpenX  growth is attributed to offering a customizable and free to use open source software that is easy to use by anyone, an ad serving solution that provides publishers with the ability to take control of their ads and maximize their ad revenue and relevance.

OpenX Hosted Adaption:

Since the October 2008 launch of OpenX Hosted, the new product has enjoyed massive adoption. In only six weeks, Hosted has generated more than 2,500 new sign-ups. The product has already seen a monthly run rate of more than 1 billion ad impressions. Week over week growth of the number of impressions flowing through OpenX Hosted is more than 100%.
OpenX Hosted, which contains the same popular software found in the OpenX Ad Server, allows publishers to use the software to operate all aspects of ad serving while OpenX provides all the hardware and back-end infrastructure, leaving publishers free to focus on maximizing their advertising revenues. The product’s rich feature-set enables publishers to manage their advertising campaigns across multiple direct advertisers and ad networks, prioritize and optimize their campaigns, and use sophisticated targeting tools.

OpenX Ad Server Growth:

In August 2008, OpenX announced the launch of version 2.6, a major update to its core, downloadable ad server. Since that launch, growth in usage of the new version has exploded with more than 25 billion ad impressions running monthly through the more than 10,000 publishers now actively running version 2.6.
The new release contains dozens of new features requested by the OpenX community, including a new application programming interface (API), a dashboard and a faster ad tag.

OpenX Community Expansion:

The OpenX community has continued its global expansion with a 25% year-to-date increase. The community’s more than 35,000 total publishers power more than 150,000 websites across the Internet. Using the company’s software in either its Hosted or downloadable version, OpenX publishers generate more than 300 billion ad impressions monthly. OpenX products are now used in more than 100 countries and are translated into twenty-five languages – with Arabic being one of them-by community contributors.

Competition:
The main competitor is google Ad Manager Tim Cadogan CEO of OpenX told ReadWriteWeb There are 3 main differences:
1)    OpenX is an independent, neutral provider, it does not aim to leverage Adsense .
2)    OpenX is open source and “infinitely customizable”.
3)    Very feature rich” compared to other ad servers – and not just Google’s

New Business model

In conjunction with its release of new products, OpenX has developed four new revenue streams.

•     First, the company began to provide professional services to its publishers in October 2008.
•     Second, OpenX now offers three new premium support packages with a variety of installation, upgrade and training services and are primarily targeted at large and medium publishers who use the company’s popular ad server.
•    Third, enterprise level publishers can upgrade their accounts at any time to premium Hosted packages that include additional ad impressions, support resources, service level agreements and customized solutions developed by OpenX to meet their specific needs.
•    Fourth, the company has begun a pilot of OpenX Market, a new monetization platform designed to connect the company’s vast publisher community and their rich inventory to a wide array of advertisers, helping everyone in the OpenX ecosystem monetize in new and better ways.

OpenX was an evolution from PHPAdsNow, then renamed to OpenAds, in which I tested locally around 3 years ago, and since they received a multimillion dollar funding from Accel Partners, Index Ventures and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, the re-branded to OpenX.
The company is based in Pasadena, California, with offices in London and Poznan, Poland.