We waited for few days and nobody wrote about  it, so we moved on and broke the news with a guest post from Abdulrahman Idlbi as we were upset when SourceForge the world’s largest open source software hosting website, blocked around 171 million people from Syria, Sudan, Iran, N. Korea & Cuba: from downloading open source software, a complete breach to the open source definition section 5 and 6:

5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.
6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

And a direct contradiction to Hillary Clinton’s Internet freedom speech that cited China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt among countries that censored the Internet or harassed bloggers!

3 days after the blockade news, which caused massive out rage all over the web such as this, sourceforge issued an announcement saying that they are not happy, but they have to comply with  U.S. laws or they will face possible penalties including fines and imprisonment.

However, Today SourceForge made a forward step ahead, instead of blocking all software downloads to innocent people of these countries now project admins can unblock them, if they ” conclude that your project is *not* subject to export regulations, or any other related prohibitions,” according to SF announcement.

This is a great move by SF, however the sad part about it that the blocking is enforced by default to all projects! which is not really a solution. as Khaled al-Horani a web developer from Syria told ArabCrunch:

‘I am a web developer, I opensource tools daily, and most of these tools are hosted on SF. Today, I wanted to prepare a new server with some tools like PHPMyAdmin and I couldn’t download it because it’s hosted on Sourcefoge. Many important application for web developers and programs and even for normal people, are also hosted on SF which I can’t download and use it now for my work. All projects’ download pages now take you to a white page instead of the old page which told you that you are prohibited to download from SF. Actually I don’t trust SF anymore! do they telling us lies? like “Some good news: SourceForge removes blanket blocking”. I think this step will affect the picture of Opensource in people mind’s for long time.”

ArabCrunch has emailed SF to clarify its stance of why not whitelisting all projects by default, As how would project admins will know about this feature?! unless they follow SF blog everyday!

We will also email google to know if they will put less restriction to the 170 million blocked people at Code.Google.com

For now, if you are a project admin on SourceForge who believes in free open-source, its principles and in the freedom of people to innovate without discrimination, please go to:

Develop -> Project Admin -> Project Settings to find a new section called Export Control. and change the export setting. After that, all users will be able to download your project files as they did before SF last blockhead.

Apple recently posted an updated Terms of Agreement for publishing applications to the App Store, and among the changes are newly added countries in which Apple’s iTunes Store is set to expand, these countries are: Jordan, Tunisia, Armenia, Botswana, Bulgaria, Kenya, Macedonia, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Niger, Senegal and Uganda.

In the Arab world iTunes is currently available in Egypt, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.

While iTunes Store (and hence an App Store) still not available in these countries, this means it should open pretty soon. It took about a month the last time between them updating the agreement and the actual iTunes Stores opening, According to Amr Ramadan General Manager of VIMOV.

#Thanks Amr for the tip.

As a thank you to our loyal readers we launched our first twitter contest, celebrating the #24 worldwide blog rank ArabCrunch achieved in 2009 under the hashtag label of #ArabCrunch24.

And today I am glad to announce the winner of first ArabCrunch Twitter contest  is Nouha Mahmoud (ArabCrunch.NET profile @nohaMahmoud, who was selected randomly from the 149 RTweets the post received.

Noha works as a software developer and research assistant at Nile University in ‪Management of Technology (MOT) Program‬.

As per the terms of the contest ,  the winner should choose a book, a software or an iPhone app.

Nouha choose to buy the following books from Amazon:

1-Smart and Gets Things Done: Joel Spolsky’s Concise Guide to Finding the Best Technical Talent (Hardcover) by Joel Spolsky.
2-Unleashing the Ideavirus (Paperback) by Seth Godin
3-Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design (Paperback) by Jenifer Tidwell
4- Jamie at Home: Cook Your Way to the Good Life (Hardcover) by Jamie Oliver

And today she received from us Amazon 100 USD gift card that is why the announcement was delayed but in the futrue we will announce things quickly.

How did she win? we tweeted asking followers to choose a number from 1 to 10 Ibrahim Manna Co-Founder of Wheels Express was first to Tweet and choose the number 2, so the second person who appeared on Twitter search using #ArabCrunch24 REtweet the post which was Nouha.

Congratulation Nouha and ArabCrunch readers, we plan more contests in the near future. To be sure you have a chance to win follow us on Twitter @ArabCrunch and @ArabCrunchNET keep Rettweeting our posts.

Today i was hungry, and did not know what to eat, I was tired of junk food and pizza, so i hit this website called tasree3 to help me find something to eat.

And it did it, in a fast way.

tasree3 which means speed in Arabic is build in a simple concept that is similar to goole search.

As It has only one search bar where you enter the restaurant name that you want to buy from, in case you do not remember the restaurant name, it helps you with a auto complete. Then hit lookup number, and the site looks up the number for you, moreover you can get to see the menu of that restaurant and add your own review.

And because everything is built on AJAX, you get all the info you want without leaving the homepage.

But Tasree3 did not help me that way! It helped me through hitting the random button which displayed to me random restaurants, until something interesting.

Like JoOrder (which we reviewed here before), tasree3 only links directly to the restaurant which is the one who does the delivery after your call, not at3ree3. But unlike JoOrder, Tasree3 is much helpful, because it has speed and its random button, is interesting for people who do not really know what to eat.

tasree3 was helpful to me because of the user experience it offered and its database of 70 restaurant it has. I just wish if they expand to other Arab countries to help residents of these countries when they are hungry and do not know what to eat!

Now here is my random meal via tasree3:

As you might know we achieved unprecedented Arab rank in the blogs scene, as ArabCrunch earned the first rank in the Arab World and the 24th rank worldwide, beating both The Wall Street Journal and Forbes Blogs in the startup category.

We also have ArabCrunch.NET the first and largest social platform to empower Arab entrepreneurs and techies. And we organized last year the largest DEMO event in the region: ArabCrunch DEMO.

We have 10s of thousands of impressions across all our sites every month, so we need someone who can drive and close ad campaigns from key advertisers ( classical and social media ads) and close partnership deals with others. In order of us to cover our costs and continue serve our loyal readers and members.

This is a full time job and the location is Amman, Jordan but we are open for Dubai applicants.

If you love what we do at ArabCrunch and believe in our values this is your life time career, you close deals and meet monthly targets we will love you and you will grow with as we grow.

Here are more details about this job ( to view other all ArabCrunch jobs go here.)

Job Description:
• Selling online ads (Classic and Social Media) with the ability to meet sales targets every month.

• Continually identifying leads and new potential customers from external sources.

• Handling all in coming leads.

• Handling and growing leads. Face to Face, Telephone and online presentations and sales.

• Creating creative online marketing and social media plans for our clients.

• Working with both agencies and direct clients.

* Generate sponsorship deals for our event.

• Implement and track each client online campaign using OpenX ad server.

• Study our visitors and social media stats to propose offers to our advertisers.

* Administer all sales support systems in line with internal requirements.

Skills:
*Demonstrate a very strong background in online advertising sales if not, then you must have strong offline advertising sales track record.

* Existing relationship with both advertisers and ad agencies .

* Skilled negotiator who is target-driven.

* Natural interest in startups/technology / Internet/ social media/gadgets/PCs as our work and many of your potential clients work in these areas.

* Ideal person is someone who has drive, and enthusiasm, and passion.

* BA/BS degree in any relevant field.

This role would suit a determined person. Who enjoys a fast paced, creative and fun working environment whose input will have a direct contribution towards the company’s success.
To apply send your CV to jobsATarabcrunch.DOTcom with the title: Online Ad Sales/Business Development Executive.

About ArabCrunch Group:

ArabCrunch Group’s mission is to inform, impact, inspire and create an Arab centric technology ecosystem that delivers information, and connects Arab entrepreneurs and technology professionals, both in the region and throughout the world via its properties, ArabCrunch En http://arabcrunch.com, ArabCrunch.NET http://ArabCrunch.NET, ArabCrunch Arabic and via its events. ArabCrunch blog is ranked as one of the top 25 blogs in the world.

Are you an entrepreneurial spirit?
Are you constantly thinking about how to create value and build news business, or How to improve or transform your organization?
Are you trying to find innovative ways of doing business to replace old, outdated ones?

These are the questions that Business Model Generation book starts with. and if you answered “yes” to any of these questions, this book is a must for you!

From iPhone to google.com, from modern telcos to Wii and Facebook, from Skype to the RedHat’s open source Model. All these success stories are based on new business models or similar ones. In which this book tries to unpuzzle and offer a way to describe, analyze and design business models and help you come with your new one.

” A Business model describes the rationale of how an organization, creates, delivers and captures value.”

The book offer an easy to use concept that allows you to describe and think through a business model of your organization, your competitors, or any other enterprise. This concept as the book says has been applied and tested around the world and has been by companies such as IBM, Ericsson, Deloitte and many others.

The concept is based on 9 basic blocks that shows how the company will make money:

1- Customer segment: the group/s of people the enterprise aims to reach and serve.
2- Value proposition: the bundle of products and services that creates values for a specific customer segment.
3- Channels: how the company communicate and reaches customers segment to deliver its value proposition
4-Customer relationship: the types of relationship a company establish with specific customer segment, it can range from personal, automated, community, self service, etc.
5- Revenue streams: the heart of the model, where the cash will come from?
6- Key resources: physical, financial, intellectual, or human resources required for the business model to work.
7- Key activities: key action to make the business model work.
8- Key partnerships: partners and suppliers to make the business model work.
9- Cost structure: to all of the above.

The book which is co-created by 470 strategy practitioners ( including Mohammad Khawaja of QRCE) is must to any entrepreneur and creative thinker. As one of the handy things is the book simplicity and the use of visuals to get help you evolve. for example the above blocks are visualized in a canvas which helps you describe and analyze and design a business model.

In future posts I will highlight some of the books mentioned blocks, patterns and apply iPad to the canvas. My next post will walk you through value propositions elements.

-

The Palestine Investment Fund (PIF), a publicly owned investment fund which aims to strengthen the Palestinian economy through key strategic investments, and private equity group Abraaj Capital announce the first closing of a US$50 million private equity fund dedicated to Palestine.

The private equity fund will focus on investing in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Palestine across a range of sectors and stages of maturity. Abraaj is the largest private equity group in the Middle East and North Africa, with offices in six countries.

With a first closing at US$15 million, the private equity fund is the first of its kind dedicated to the Palestinian economy. The initial commitments from the sponsors – PIF and Abraaj – will be supplemented by funds raised from investors in further closings planned later this year.

SMEs account for more than 95 per cent of enterprises in Palestine, 84 per cent of private-sector employment and 55 per cent of gross domestic product.

Although SMEs are a critical backbone of the local economy, the sector is underserved in terms of access to capital and degree of institutionalization. The private equity fund will give access to much needed capital for growth and expansion, as well as leverage managerial, operational, strategic know-how and regional networks. It will also help strengthen corporate governance.

Fund Manager

Abraaj, through its SME investment-management platform – Riyada Enterprise Development – will manage the fund, which is expected to make 20 to 25 investments over the next four years.

The fund complements PIF’s Loan Guarantee Facility (LGF), which facilitates financing for SMEs by providing loan guarantees to the lending banks. LGF has facilitated more than US$50 million of financing to more than 200 SMEs in the last two years.

PIF is the largest and most dynamic investor in Palestine, with US$800 million in assets under management. It aims to build a strong economy by developing strategic projects in vital sectors, such as SMEs, real estate, energy, telecommunications and finance, while maximizing long-run returns for its ultimate shareholder – the people of Palestine. PIF has an unrivalled track-record in partnering with leading international, regional and local institutions, and attracting foreign direct investment to Palestine.

SME Platform

The private equity fund with Abraaj is the first investment vehicle managed by Riyada Enterprise Development, Abraaj’s recently launched investment platform dedicated to SMEs.

Abraaj has seeded the Riyada platform with US$50 million of its own capital. As Abraaj builds its SME platform out across the Middle East and North Africa, the size of the regional SME fund is expected to increase substantially to about US$ 700 million through Abraaj’s established regional and international partners, and investors.

The Riyada platform marries the largest single source of long-term capital dedicated to entrepreneurs in the region with an investment strategy specifically tailored to the SME segment.

It also addresses the biggest issue facing regional SMEs today other than access to finance, namely institutional support, including back-office functionality, improved governance, and access to top-tier human talent and mature business networks.

Abraaj has permanently relocated several of its senior investment professionals into Riyada and will establish a presence in the Palestinian city of Ramallah to support the private equity fund. Together with selective additional hires, Riyada will – in due course – comprise 25 to 30 full-time investment professionals.

At Apple’s major event today steve Jobes just announced iPad and iBooks store priced starting at $499, iPad is mutli touch version of Pod with great features, iBooks will be like iTunes app store,you will be able to download books from the cloud.

It looks like a bookshelf and there s a button to a store. It’s an iBook Store to allow you to discover, purchase, and download e-books right on your iPad.

Update: price start at 499 USD worldwide shipping in 60 days of iPad, there is also iPad with no 3G, iPad has also external and visual keyboard. “At $499 a lot of people can afford an iPad. 16GB is our base model. For 32GB it’s $100 more, and for $100 more than that you get $64GB. The 3G models cost another $130.”

Full specs from apple’s website:
LED-backlit, IPS Display
The high-resolution, 9.7 inch LED-backlit, IPS display on iPad is remarkably crisp and vivid. Which makes it perfect for web browsing, watching movies, or showing off photos. It’s also been designed to work in any orientation — portrait or landscape. And because it uses a display technology called IPS (in-plane switching), it has a wide, 178° viewing angle. So you can hold it almost any way you want, and still get a brilliant picture, with excellent color and contrast.

Multi-Touch
The Multi-Touch screen on the iPad uses the same revolutionary technology that’s in an iPhone. But for iPad, the technology has been completely reengineered for the larger surface, to make it extremely precise and responsive. So when you’re zooming in on a map, flicking through your photos, or deleting an email, iPad responds with incredible accuracy. And it does just what you want it to.

Thin and light
One of the first things you’ll notice about the iPad is how thin and light it is. The screen is 9.7 inches, measured diagonally. So overall, it’s slightly smaller than a magazine. And at just 1.5 lbs and 0.5 inches thin,1 it’s easy to carry and use anywhere. There’s also a slight curve to the back. Which makes it easy to pick up and comfortable to hold.

Up to 10 hours
battery life
To maximize battery life, Apple engineers took the same lithium polymer battery technology they developed for our notebook computers and applied it to the iPad. As a result, you can use iPad for up to 10 hours while surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching videos, or listening to music.2

Wireless
With built-in 802.11n, iPad can take advantage of the fastest Wi-Fi networks. And it’ll automatically locate available Wi-Fi networks, which you can easily join with a few simple taps. iPad also comes with Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR, which lets you connect to devices like wireless headphones or the Apple Wireless Keyboard.

3G
iPad will also be available in a 3G model, with super-fast data speeds up to 7.2 Mbps.3 So if you’re traveling, or you happen to be somewhere that doesn’t have a Wi-Fi network, you can still get a fast connection for surfing the web, downloading email, or getting directions.

iPad is available with a choice of 16, 32 or 64GB flash storage.

The 30-pin dock connector on the bottom of the iPad allows you to dock and charge it. It also lets you connect to iPad accessories like the Camera Connection Kit or the Keyboard Dock.

Audio
The powerful, built-in speaker produces a full, rich sound. Which makes watching a movie or listening to music even more enjoyable. It also comes with a headphone jack and a built-in microphone.

Accessories
There are lots of great accessories that have been specifically designed for iPad. The Keyboard Dock, for instance, is a dock with a full-size keyboard. There’s also a standalone Dock. And because iPad has built-in Bluetooth 2.1, it’ll work with an Apple Wireless Keyboard, too. There’s also a Camera Connection Kit that lets you import photos from a camera or SD card. There’s even an iPad Case that not only protects it, it also allows you to use iPad in various positions, to make it easy to type, look at photos, or watch movies. And through a range of accessories, iPad can output to TVs, projectors and displays.

|**SPECS: 9.7 inch IPS display, 0.5 inches thin, 1.5 pounds in weight.

- MEMORY SIZE: 16, 32, or 64 GB solid state hard drives

- CHIP: 1 GHz Apple A4 chip. It looks like they went in-house to build this thing.

- Wi-Fi: 802.11n
- It has a virtual keyboard.  A dream to type on,  according to Steve.

- It has Google Maps, and of course is web-enabled. It’s lightning fast.

- YouTube can be watched in HD. The Demo of Star Trek was pretty impressive, but it’s not widescreen, though.

- You slide to unlock

- The music player looks like a new version of iTunes.
- BATTERY LIFE: 10 hours

- Includes Speaker, Microphone, 30-pin connector, Accelerometer, and compass

Pics via Mashable and gdgt

This is the first time a fully supported Yahoo! search engine has been available in Arabic and is currently in its first phase  on Maktoob.com . And this is the first integration step between Maktoob and Yahoo after the acquisition!

Yahoo Arabic search is run on Yahoo!’s own search engine not Microsoft’s bing. Yahoo Arabic search competes not just with Google’s Arabic search but with Jabbar Group’s Araby search engine, which used to be part of Maktoob Group !

According to Opera’s State of the Mobile Web report, In Southeast Asia among mobile-Web users, Google is at the top of the rankings for numerous countries, with the very significant exception of Indonesia where Google is only at #6 and Yahoo! is at #2. The vast majority of Opera Mini users in Southeast Asia are in Indonesia.

On the other hand, Facebook is now the most-visited social network on the mobile. Unique users of Facebook grew more than 600% during 2009, helping the site surpass VKontakte, formerly the most popular social network among Opera Mini users. Twitter saw its usage increase more than any other social network, surging more than 2800% in just one year.

Opera’s State of the Mobile Web Report, published monthly, provides information on the top global trends affecting the mobile Web. The full report is available from http://www.opera.com/smw/. In addition to the top global trends and country snapshots, this month, the report highlights Southeast Asia and examines social networking on the mobile Web.

Global Trends

- In December 2009, more than 46.3 million people used Opera Mini, an 11% increase from November 2009 and more than 159% compared to December 2008.

- Those 46.3 million people viewed more than 20.7 billion pages in December 2009. Since November, page views have gone up 10.1%. Since December 2008, page views have increased 223%.

- Opera Mini users generated over 315 million megabytes (MB) of data for operators worldwide in December 2009. Since November, the data consumed went up by 10.5%. Data in Opera Mini is compressed up to 90%. If this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed over 2.9 petabytes (PB) of data in December. Since December 2008, data traffic is up 206%.

- The top 10 countries ranked by number of Opera Mini users are (in order): Russia, Indonesia, India, Ukraine, China, South Africa, United States, Vietnam, Nigeria, and United Kingdom. This month Ukraine overtook China, Vietnam continues its ascent (at the expense of the United Kingdom) and Nigeria is back on the list after a 3-month absence, pushing Poland out of the top 10 for the first time.

Social networking on the mobile Web

- Facebook is the top social-networking site, worldwide. Given the popularity of Opera in Russian-speaking countries, VKontakte used to be in the top position (based on unique users), but it was overtaken by Facebook in 2009.

- Twitter was the other big winner in terms of growth in 2009, with the number of unique unique users jumping more than 2800%.

- All of the listed social-networking sites, except for Friendster, showed significant user growth (via Opera Mini) in 2009.

Southeast Asia trends

- The top 10 countries using Opera Mini in Southeast Asia are: Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Brunei, Singapore, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.

- From December 2008 to December 2009, page views in the top 10 countries of Southeast Asia increased by 599%, unique users increased by 385%, and data transferred increased by 587%.

- Vietnam and Indonesia lead the top 10 Southeast Asian countries in terms of page-view growth (1,316.4% and 641.9%, respectively). Vietnam and Indonesia also lead the top 10 Southeast Asian countries in growth of unique users (846.9% and 419.7%, respectively). Brunei leads the top 10 Southeast Asian countries in page views per user, with each user browsing 987 pages on average each month.

- Facebook is now the dominant social-networking site in Southeast Asia among mobile-Web users.

- By far, Opera Mini users in Southeast Asia prefer Nokia handsets.

Amman, Palo Alto.

Even though we are still in private beta, our small engineering and product development team has been working hard to improve ArabCrunch.NET , the technology ecosystem community,  to empower more than 1000 members and growing everyday.

Based on many users’ feedback, we have launched a new release with the following features:

Improved Startup Q&A app:

Statrup Q&A: is a place to ask questions, get and find answers and post polls about startups, entrepreneurship and the business of technology, specially in the Arab world.

• Relevant Matching:  If you added tags to your profile that are relevant to your experience or areas of Interest , now you will be able to click on (My Matches) tab  . This will allow you to view  Questions that matches your profile tags. If you did not add your profile tags please do now.
• Best answer: now users who asked a question, can chose the best answer from all submitted answers.
• Crunch Up and Crunch Down: Vote on the Questions and Answers. We call it Crunch Up and Crunch Down. By voting you can voice your say about which question and answer you find more interesting.
• Rearrange and Choosing the Best Answers: To give you better filtering options, you can rearrange answers by oldest, newest, votes. In addition, you can get to choose your best answer.
• Bookmark Questions: Interesting questions could be bookmarked to view them later. Your bookmarked questions will show on your activity stream.
• Sorting Questions: Now you can view Questions based on Recent, Most Popular, My Matches or Unanswered.

Profile Activity Stream:
You can track all your activities in your profile activity log. This is the first step in getting your followers to be more engaged with you.

Homepage:
Now you can see a little widget for Startup Q&A in your homepage.

Better Privacy:
Now your stream will never show when you log in and log out of ArabCrunch.NET to other users.

Cross Browsers Compatibility:
Now ArabCrunch.NET is compatible with all popular browsers: FireFox, IE, Opera and Chrome.

Miscellaneous:
Now you can Crop Images, after uploading your picture or logo, go to your profile view and click Crop profile photo right above your photo.

Now that we gave you a brief about this release, Please go ahead and use Startups Q&A by asking Questions and sharing the Answers that you know. To get 1-to-1 help from world class experts or to help others, apply for a mentor or help a mentee whether in starting and running a business or in increasing technical know-how.

PS: tomorrow we will announce #ArabCrunch24 Twitter contest, stay tuned.

In a move to counter Google’s Free navigation applications, Nokia just announced that starting March 2010, new Nokia GPS-enabled smartphones will include the new version of Ovi Maps www.nokia.com/maps, pre-loaded with local country map data, and that turn-by-turn voice guidance will be free for 74 countries in 46 languages.

The new version will also include traffic information for over 10 countries, as well as detailed maps for over 180 countries.   The nice thing about Ovi maps is that they come preloaded to your Nokia device saving you time and cost of downloading map data over the cloud.

Here is a video of Ovi maps on N900:




On Twitter, Orange CEO Majd Shweikeh tweeted last week that iPhone3GS will be available within few weeks which is expected to be officially available with Orange Jordan launch of the first 3G network in Jordan.

.

ArabCrunch called Majd to get her clarification but she said that 3G network and iPhone3Gs will be launched before the end Q1 2010! She said that Orange already has iPhone3GS in their warehouses, but did not start mass selling them.

However, our sources confirmed that orange sold a number of iPhone3GS devices through its stores.

Update: SourceForge Simi Unblocks Syria, Sudan,Iran, N.Korea & Cuba- Freedom Loving Admins: Unblock Now:

Since Linkedin lifted its blocking against Syria after ArabCrunch reported the incident ( and kept it against Sudan ), we heard different reports that American officials are preparing to waive some of the sanctions against Syria imposed by the Bush administration , but few days ago these sanctions became worse: SourceForge.net the world’s largest open source software development web site blocked users from downloading free open source software from “banned locations” meaning users and developers form Syria, Sudan, Iran, N Korea and Cuba are banned.

This puts developers from Syria, Sudan, Iran, Korea and Cuba and their IT industry in the dark since many development tools that every developer needs are hosted on sourceforge and since also Google blocks downloading software for its open source repository code.google.com for users from these countries.

This event is a direct contradiction to the open source philosophy that SF preaches, this also comes in light of US secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterdays speech urging Internet freedom! as she said:
“We stand for a single Internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas,” said Clinton in a major address that cited China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt among countries that censored the Internet or harassed bloggers!

To this end, we have a guest post from Abdulrahman Idlbi, Opinions expressed by guest writers do not necessarily reflects ArabCrunch’s point of view. However we condemn SF blockhead and call it a sad event that contradicts with Clinton’s call for “equal access to knowledge and ideas” and with US congressman Brian Baird ideas, who agreed with ArabCrunch that open source should be open.
( ArabCrunch.NET has opens source profiles and there was a thread opened about this subject here.)

Here is Idlbi guest post:

The following statement has been on SourceForge.net Terms of Use for a while [1] (but who’d care to read them anyway?):

Prohibited Persons

You represent you are not a person on a list barring you from receiving services under U.S. laws or other applicable jurisdiction, including without limitations, the Denied Persons List and the Entity List, and other lists issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security, detailed at http://www.bis.doc.gov/complianceandenforcement/ListsToCheck.htm (or successor sites thereto). Users residing in countries on the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control sanction list, including Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria, may not post Content to, or access Content available through, SourceForge.net.

As of January 2008, people from those countries can browse SourceForge projects and download from them, but access to the secure server was not allowed, so they would not be able to log in to SourceForge or contribute to projects. As of January 2010, blocking went further with not allowing people coming from “banned locations” to download anything from SourceForge.net, having a response similar to this one: http://sourceforge.net/t7.php.

Basically, the case is not totally new. For a long time, people on those countries lived with the fact that companies like Mathworks and Microchip block their sites in their faces, and others like Sun prevent them from downloading their products. However, that has not been a great problem: programmers in Syria are still using Java and PIC microcontrollers, and students in Iran are still doing their research using Matlab; most of the time, using the same techniques and tools that are developed to avoid the raising censorship in many countries around the world.

Sun has blocked people in several countries from accessing its so-claimed open source projects, but users in those countries have reluctantly ignored the situation as they managed their way around, coping with Sun’s own definition of open source. However, the latest incident, SourgeForge.net blockage, has been surprising and disappointing for FOSS people in those countries. SourceForge.net defines itself as “the world’s largest open source software development web site” [2] with the previous link directing to opensource.org, where you can read the following definition [3]:

The Open Source Definition

Open source doesn’t just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the following criteria:

…

5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups

The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.

6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

…

So, what? Free software is a matter of freedom: people should be free to use software in all the ways that are socially useful. Or is that freedom a right for some people but not for others?

While celebrating the birthday of Martin Luther King a few days ago, it seems we still have a long journey to walk against discrimination in all its ugly faces, even with having the Open Source and OpenNet initiatives. It is kind of misleading to hide behind political considerations or terrorism threats to justify those acts of discrimination (which are not that different from the Third World governments’ justifications of Internet censorship), as those acts would only affect, if they would really do, normal peaceful people. Actually, the only effect I see is not simply an increasing feeling of prejudice or suspicion among the computing society, but more remarkably, distrust and losing faith in initiatives raising shiny mottoes with supposedly great ethics behind, such as “Software Freedom”. When a student or an academician in one of those banned countries read a report like “Access Denied” or know about OpenNet Initiative [4], they feel a bitter irony. They believe that the people behind such efforts should pay more attention to the behavior of their own government, which is leading the “Free World”.

How should the community respond? NautilusSVN developers can set an example. They had their project hosted by Google Code when they received complaints from a Syrian blogger on being blocked due to US export policies. The developers found that going against their open source philosophy, so they moved their project to Launchpad, renaming it to RabbitVCS [5]. However, would Launchpad be the next on the list? Maybe the open source community have to consider migrating their projects to “less free” countries with no export control regulations, so they can express their software beliefs more freely.

Without an action taken, Free Software would become, at least for us, a matter of biased ethics (which are usually not called ethics anymore), rather than a matter of freedom. Sorry, Martin… I have a dream, that one day open source would be really open…

Note:

It worth mentioning that Internet content blockage against some countries is not restricted to getting software or services. It is really disappointing to try to participate in a global humanitarian event such as Earth Hour or Google Haiti crisis response to make a donation, to find out that parts of those websites (powered by Google) are blocked. Even donating to Haiti victims is an act of terrorism? I thought the US is the one who’s committing crimes against the environment and climate, so shouldn’t US citizens be the ones to be blocked by EarthHour rather than Syrians?

[1] SourceForge.net Terms of Use. http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/sitelegal/wiki/Terms_of_Use

[2] About SourceForge.net. http://sourceforge.net/about

[3] The Open Source Definition. http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd

[4] OpenNet Initiative. http://opennet.net/

[5] The migration happened after correspondence between a Syrian blogger, M. B. Noimi, and the developers of NautilusSVN. Parts of the correspondence can be downloaded from: http://mbnoimi.net/w/wp-content/plugins/download-monitor/download.php?id=4. The original story appeared on a blog in Arabic: http://mbnoimi.net/w/?p=712

Guest writer bio:
Abdulrahman Idlbi is computer engineering master’s student at King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM.) His interests include researching using technology in enhancing learning and creative thinking among children, in addition to following the continuing blockage of internet resources in the face of people from countries banned by US export policies. - CC with Attribution to ArabCrunch and Abdulrahman Idlbi with a link back to this post.-

Ever since we launched Startups Q&A application in ArabCrunch.NET we had important questions asked, and we had great answers to them from leading industry professionals, entrepreneurs and executives. Today we start posting a weekly post that highlights hot startup questions that were posted on startup Q&A application section of ArabCrunch.NET coupled with a selection of their answers. ( ArabCrunch.NET is still in private beta.)

Here is this week selection (if you do not have an invite to ArabCrunch.NET and want one to use ArabCrunch.NET Q&A section  the first 3 comment in this post and I will invite you.)

• How i can forecast targets to my web project?

hi all

i am ahmed from egypt ,me and my friends working on web project in the field of management solutions on the cloud
we targets small and midsize companies in the middle east and north africa but i have problem in the marketing plan
i do not know how i can put targets to our marketing plan i how i can measure and forecast this targets
our product will be free trial for small period and after that will be divided to packages and will be payed service

Answers:

Ammar Mardawi

How important is it for your business to forecast sales volumes accurately? What difference does it make? Are you going to take different actions?
With most startups, sales forecasts are not as important as it appears to be. All what you need is set a target that you can measure your progress against. Just make your best guess at the market. There are two schools of thoughts on setting a target:
- Set it to the maximum that you believe is still possible. This will make you work harder and achieve more. But will also make it less-likely to achieve and may make you feel a little disappointed by the end.
- Set it to something that you can blow out! Guy Kawasaki recommends this, as it’s more important to feel motivated by the end of the year when you achieve double or triple your targets than setting them high at the beginning.
Anyway, make sure your goals are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Bound.

Nader Soliman:
Ahmed, that’s a bit hard question, so let’s poll the conversation with something actionable.

1. You want to live say for 1 year. See how much cash you have, how much you spend and plan to spend for a 1 year then you can find how many customer you need to keep you afloat. That’s a simple equation.

2. You need to keep track of *conversion* rates and tie up these conversion events to actions you are doing. For example, and assuming you are marketing from your website. What actions lead to more visitors to your site? What actions made more of these visitors fill up a form to get a free trial? etc. These actions that increased conversions needs to be magnified.

As usual, these are general suggestions and needs your creativity as entrepreneur when implementing it, so we need to hear back from your experience for better benefit to the whole community

Djilali Tabbouche:

Ammar and Nader sum it up: you need metrics and milestones to measure and adjust your progress according to the market feedback.
The key is to find your market: writing a business plan, we all end up on throwing the thing down the drain as the only valuable and accurate info you will get are those coming from your clients.
I believe in the fremium model (not always applicable):
• let people try it for free
• get feedback
• iterate
• get feedback
• …
• GENERATE VALUE
• CHARGE
Hope it will help.

• Question: How to make a business plan?

Hello World!

I have ideas for couple of projects I want to implement and maybe turn into my own business. I know how to implement them technically, but the point is i don’t know for sure how to plan for it from the business side of view..
I want some tips on :
• creating a good business plan
• raising capital, specially in Egypt
• How to choose the team
• Should the team members get salaries at first, or should it be revenue share
• what are the difficulties involved?

and other questions, but lets start with these.
I appreciate your time in advance.
Answers:

Yasser Tawfik:
http://www.tbpc-astf.net/static/download.html

Dyana Pari Nafissi:

Business Plans:
I employ one or two very simple models on the concept to get the informal thought process on the business rolling.  One I call the “journalist’s approach” where the inventor defines the who, what, when, where, why and how of the concept. OK – to be specific, I usually use an excel here  for an opportunity that will appeal to multiple markets.
The primary business plan model I use is “Purpose, Process, and Payoff.” Sure I change those words into something more mainstream depending on the sector and the environment I for which I am developing the plan. But it is easy for me to think….what is the purpose of this thing?  what are the steps we need to take to fulfill this purpose?  why are we doing this?
As you bring your team together, you will engage them in this process too; us innovators get caught up in the moment, the daily production, but is is essential to keep your strategic goals aligns with your daily activities.  Lots of brainstorming and white board erasing comes with the turf of developing a effective business plan yet so many entrepreneurs skip this highly lucrative step.
This understanding your concept and the value it creates – societal, financial, perhaps environmental – can be repurposed into a 2-page executive summary and the seeming increasingly standard 10-12 ppt presentation.

I know many people hire business plan writers and certainly that is an option. But I think if you are going to invest your time and energy, I think you need to write your own map. (-:
What do you think?
GOOD LUCK!!!!!!!
Ammar Mardawi:

All what’ve been said is great. But you don’t have to do that if you’re technical. Just identify your market (as accurate as you can, doesn’t have to be perfect). Set up your 3 month minimum targets in any term that you find suitable. I suggest that you don’t get money involved here, try number of active users, new registered users per week, downloads per week .. etc. And just throw in a prototype for people to try.
If you are achieving your minimum targets, then look into business planning, hiring a team, investing your own money and creating a business.
My point is, if you can transform an idea into a prototype before starting a business, then you have a great prevelige of verifying your market without taking any risk. Good Luck!

Question: Which mobile devices are recommended to develop Mobile apps for them?

hello everyone ,

i have an idea for mobile application and i wonder which mobile devises ( android, IPhone , Nokia S60 , …)  that are recommended to develop the apps for them based on their market share in Arab world and its users are they willing to download/buy the application .
Thanks

Answers:

Amir Kabbara:

A couple of questions:

Is your application specifically for the Arab World or the Arabs in general? Can your application be used by anyone else? There are a lot of Arabs that reside outside the Arab world, would they also be interested in the application you will be creating? If there are Arabs in the US that are interested in your application then you need to look at the US mobile market.. the iPhone leads the smartphones market there.

I know that it’s just an application but the first thing I would do is understand who my customer really is. From there, I’ll try figuring out which devices my customers are using. Even if the iPhone is leading the market, if my users are business users then i’m more likely to create apps for BB.

As for the app prices, I have a different view point.. I’m a finance guy .. if you can make money on something then go ahead and charge for it or at least figure out a way to monitize it..but Gaith does have a good point, you need to create a brand name for the future..I would recommend a fremium model where you have a free limited version of the app (to create a name for yourself) as well as a paid version with advance features so you can cater to both your paying and non-paying customers and make enough money to develop your next application.

I personally purchase ovi and iphone apps frequently and don’t ever remember looking at the company/developer’s name.. Unless its companies like EA and Zynga I usually get what seems interesting and useful and check out the customer feedback and rankings then make my decision from there..but that just me.. not sure how the mass market thinks..

Let us know when the application is available..and where you decide to develop it..

Ammar Mardawi:
@Samer: I agree, just do a great app!

Mobile app development for the iPhone and Android still do not have their competitive edge in the region. And it does not have anything to do with market penetration. It’s simply because iTunes is still not available, and you can’t buy from the Android market in you’re in the middle east.

The reason of mobile apps vendors success in the iPhone didn’t have a lot to do with the technology or market penetration. It was all about the app store. Apple’s 7 years of experience in selling music on iTunes (iPods) before the iPhone is what made it possible for some app vendors to make a million dollar a week in revenue from their iPhone apps.

So, pay more attention on how you’re going to market and sell your app before looking into market figures.

The other thing that I can point out is the devices variety of the platform. iPhone app developers didn’t have to update/create new version for the new iPhone versions (3G and 3GS). Unfortunately, it is not true for android. I had a simple app in the Android store since the G1 which I had to update when Android 1.5 and 1.6 came out. And it’s very likely I have to update it again for 2.0 and 2.1. The variety of screen sizes and availability of the physical keyboard is another pain. Nokia has the same problem but multiplied by the number of nokia devices

So, there is a lot of work to be done. You’re very likely to spend a lot of time and effort porting your app. But first, just do a great mobile app!

As the trend of foreign capital continues to rise in the Arab region, some major players start to appear, shedding light on what the online Startup scene in has the potential to be. Today we introduce you, to Diwanee.

Diwanee Group in the words of its founders: “is a group of various companies dedicated to digital business”. It has come and brought with them, as they like to put it, all of their “Savoir Faire” appropriately expressing their sense of timing to start developing online projects in the region.

It must be pointed out that their colorful background of expertise ranging from Senior Executives and talented professionals in prestigious firms of the like of Tribal DDB, Condé Nast France, and Pixel Veggie, with a gripping sense of regional culture, is going to separate this group from the crowd, and we expect to see some interesting work from them in the future.

They currently hold 5 companies with a strategic alliance with Brightcove, an Internet TV platform/network that allows content makers to monetize their content with ad revenues.

We got some answers straight from Hervé Cuviliez, a Managing Partner in Diwanee, in addition to being Executive VP, Middle East & Africa at Tribal DDB and Managing Director at Kuv Capital. He  thankfully agreed to answer some questions we had regarding Diwanee Group, its plans in the region and more:

(Herve was a speaker in the last ArabCrunch demo 09 event.)

AC: How long has the group been established officially?
Hervé: Officially 3 months

AC: How long unofficially?
Hervé: One and a half year, Diwanee is the consolidation of activities we have previously funded in which we were detaining a majority stake. We have always asked our companies to create synergies and work together. Today, the creation of Diwanee is one step closer in our ambition to create a leading Internet group in the Middle East.

AC: Why the name Diwanee?
Hervé: Diwanee, which could be interpreted as a collection of great ideas. Our logo is a combination of the English and Arabic pronunciation “I”. We played with the double “ee“ in grey for the latin way of writing it, and the ‘ي’ in red for Arabic.

AC: What is your relationship with KUV Capital?
Hervé: Kuv capital is a financial company. Its job is to invest our partners’ money. Today, Kuv Capital is the sole shareholder of Diwanee, but in the future, we are planning to welcome new partners within Diwanee in order to accelerate its development.

AC: As VP of Tribal DDB, should we consider this an act of massive expansion in the region?
Hervé: Yes, One of our agencies Pixel Veggie represents Tribal DDB in the MENA region; we are planning to have a Pixel Veggie office in every MENA country.

AC: How did the acquisition of Pixel Veggie happen? Should small/medium web development firms be on the look out for acquisition in other MENA countries?
Hervé: We now own 82% of Pixel Veggie, our plan now is to acquire or joint venture with interactive agencies in every the MENA region. Our next move, which will take place early this year will be Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

AC: Tell us about your alliance with Brightcove, what will you get and what they will get?
Hervé: Online video is a major trend both on Internet and Mobile. Brightcove is the worldwide leader in online video service provider. So it was important for Diwanee to have a solid partner in this matter. We have our different teams trained by Brightcove, whether it is our sales or technical team. From our side, we help Brightcove to make deals with Media agencies in the Middle East. The next step is to launch solutions and services together.

AC: Products: please share with us some details about them:
Azia wa outour.com: (Fashion & Couture wordpress blog in the Arab world)
Hervé: The blog is a temporary website. The full speed version will be live in January. We have a journalistic team in Beirut and correspondents in UAE, KSA and Egypt.

ClickMena
Hervé: Click Mena is a media representative. The portfolio is a combination of really targeted audience websites such as Wikeez.com and major international portals having massive circulation in the Middle East like Dailymotion.com. Click Mena focuses on engaged users, we only represent online properties with active users (voting, publishing, commenting, active in the social community), and they are the most profitable for Brands. In other words, with Click Mena, Media agencies buy less traffic and get a better result.

Mabrook.me:
AC: What is it about? When is it going to be launched officially?
Hervé: Our ambition behind Mabrook.me is to build the largest email database for marketers. It’s actually in beta version; we are actually testing the software. The major investment was the CRM software to manage the database, campaigns and results. We now accept media partners for data collection based on a revenue sharing.

AC: How many acquisitions and/or mergers have taken place in the region by your Group so far?
Hervé: This year, We have done 3 joint ventures (Azia wa outour, the 2 others are not launched yet) and we have develop 2 new companies (Mabrook.me and Spotlight). We plan to have the same trend in 2010.

AC: What size of Venture Capital are we talking about when considering websites in the region? 5 digits? 6 digits?
Hervé: We will be more around 5 digits it’s more than enough to valid a proof of concept and see if there is some traction

AC: We hear a lot of talk about Arab countries with good technical development professionals, and others with good management professionals, what’s your take on this matter?
Hervé: I have a mix feeling about this, we definitively find really good professional but they are used to work much on their own, using their own tools instead of using worldwide proven open source solutions. For example, we are using drupal for our publishing activities and we struggle to find good drupal developers. The bigger the investment on Internet will become the more companies will ask for widespread platform. When you are doing a 250,000 USD investment online, we don’t want to use a homemade CMS even if it’s a good one. We had the same trend in US and Europe; it will come for sure in the Middle East.

AC: We heard you have been evaluating a number of websites in the region for possible acquisition/funding; do you have any announcements to make?
Hervé: Not yet, we are actually reviewing some projects.

AC: Why Beirut as your main office location in the region as appose to Dubai as most other companies choose, or Amman for that?
Hervé: There is often a confusion about this regarding Diwanee. Business wise, we are not a Lebanon based company we are doing 70% of our business through our Dubai office and 30% in Europe. 0% in Lebanon. Most of our back-office team (developers, creative, journalists, traffic managers) is in Beirut, because there are talented people here but business wise and legally, we are an Emirati company. We have our offices in Dubai Media City.

AC: We heard KUV has been pushing for an Internet City in Lebanon, how is it going?
Hervé: Good and bad. Good by the interest that every people have in that project but bad economically because without any government help you realize there is no way to build a performing and affordable solution at the same time (the price of the land is the real problem in Lebanon). If you look every successful example in the world, they had a public help. But we keep on pushing and we will find a solution.

AC: Finally, What advice would you give to entrepreneurs in the Arab region? Where’s the money at?
Hervé: Talented people, talented people and talented people.

Its also worth mentioning Wikeez is one of Diwanee’s more well known properties in the online entertainment industry, which received $250,000USD seed funding back in 2008.

In conclusion, we here at ArabCrunch think that the interesting combination of firms and professionals forming this group will have a serious slice of the Arab world market in the future. Keep your eyes on these guys.

Launched in November last year, SafqaOnline which means in Arabic “deal online” is a new startup from Ramallah, Palestine,  that is  similar to craiglist but provides better user interface and is geared towards the Arab world.

SafqaOnline caters to both merchants and individuals, for merchants it provides easy way to establish a web presence and create a virtual store online with contact information, services provided.

It also provides both merchants and individuals, free advertisements spaces that categorized in 5 Main Categories which are: Automotive, Real estate, Stores, Marketplace and Professions (Jobs).

As the founder of SafqaOnline George Halabi puts it:”there here are plenty of classifieds websites on the internet. the classifieds idea is old, craigslist was online in 1996, what we did is concentrated on the user experience and came up with a friendly user interface that makes finding information easy and straight forward.”

SafqaOnline is currently available in Arabic and English interfaces, It automatically converts posted ads into other languages. French and other languages will be added in the near future. The startup self funded and aims to generate revenues from ads. Its regional competitors include Asuaq.

What Queen Rania of Jordan and Arianna Huffington Co-Founder of the most popular blog in the world Huffington Post or any other 2 users have in Common on Twitter?

MuTweeps (ArabCrunch.NET profile), a service we think has potential to grow and become a very handy tool for all twitter users out there, can provide some of the answers.

In a nutshell, Mutweeps gives you a sense of relevance, that’s a big word, let me break it down: Mutweeps basically lets you know the people, any two Twitter users both follow, example Gaith and I both follow the same 113 people, which would make me consider Gaith and I could have something more than ArabCrunch writing in common

As for Queen Rania of Jordan and Arianna Huffington MuTweeps tells us they both follow 4 twitter users out of 1,136 Arianna is following (she has 362,820 followers and is  on 3,454 Twitter lists) while Queen Rania is following only  (1,220,209 followers and she  is on 3,888  twitter lists)

And the 4 people they both follow are all male and they are all well known Twitter users: Evan Williams CEO of Twitter , @richardbranson Chairman of Virgin Group, Anderson Cooper of CNN and Biz Stone Co-founder of Twitter.

Now Why should anyone care about this service? Well simply put, Relevance. We see it in Facebook just as your about to add a friend, I for one think it’s a great idea. Perhaps one day Twitter will create a small tag cloud for every user, smack MuTweeps along, and give us an idea of who and what we have in common with other twitterers before befriending them.

Mutweeps is a project from Wael Orabi from Syria, he is an old reader of ArabCrunch.

Congratulations Arab startups, 2009 was your year, the year we saw the largest influx of startups in the Arab world. Which why we started ArabCrunch in the first place and launched a social platform to empower you: the Arab and the emerging markets startups and geeks community.

According to PostRank Top blogs 2009, ArabCrunch was Ranked #1 in the Arab world and #24 worldwide in the startup category, beating who?

Well funded blogs run by serial entrepreneurs who made 10s $ of millions, Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and Forbes, who both are ranked #43 and #45.

Postrank crunched 2 billion metrics from the past year to rank the blogs by their engagement within each topic populated by their users. In total, they selected nearly 491 topics containing 15725 total blogs, and built a detailed profile for the performance of each site – their overall rank, their engagement profile over the entire year, and their top posts as determined by their audience. (more about info here)

Our hard work last year did not just make us a premium source to the world most popular blogs and news agencies about Arab startups and tech, but also reaching 20,048 total engagement points with 224 stories posted. 75% of engagement was off-site. 53.2% on Twitter, 11.7% on Digg, 3.9% on Brightkite full info here.

Our friends at CenterNetworks and our partners at our last ArabCrunch DEMO event, ranked 13, our friends: from Pakistan Startupmeme ranked 14 . TechCrunch got their blog to number #2 trailing after Startup News from YCombinator. Third place went to VentureBeat. 4th to place to consultancy blog and 5th to Gawker’s Valleywag . Our friends and arabcrunch demo 09 media partner at Mashable were ranked #1 in social media and #2 in entrepreneurship. While our other friends at ReadWriteweb ranked #1 in web 2.0, #3 in business and #4 in entrepreneurship

Redux:
I started ArabCrunch with 2$ investment back to 2008 from my home using an old PC and a sluggish Internet. the 2$ were the only money I put on ArabCrunch ( Thanks to God and then to our sponsor Feedoor.) Today: we are the largest Blog focused on startups, social media and mobile in the Arab world. We have the first and largest social platform to empower startups and geeks and the largest launchpad event for Emerging technologies in the Arab world. We are a full time angel funded startup by  former Yahoo senior VP Bassel Ojjeh and our business is to help startups and geeks. But we need your help, to spread the word about what we do, and if you have cash be a winner and be one of our sponsors.

RETweet this post hash tagged #ArabCrunch24 and Win a Prize Valued 100$

Now since ArabCrunch massive engagement is there because of you, we offer you a 100$ worth of prize, be it a great book, a software or an iPhone apps. All you have to do is ReTweet this post with the Hash tag #ArabCrunch24  and within 48 hours we will chose the winner.( AC employees are not eligibale to the contest.)

iKbis, Jordan based video and photo sharing site is going ahead with a plans to differentiate it self from its main competitor Google’s Youtube as executives of the leading telecom and ISP companies said during a conference lats year that youtube represent around 40% of Internet traffic in the region.

iKbis will be launching a number of specialized video shows and episodes in its online website and a TV show that highlights iKbis channel owners and the original videos of its users to be syndicated within a month on several Arab Satellite TV channels .

In line with this plan, iKbis has launched recenlty “combo4″ a daily show, that runs from 1-3 pm in the local time of any Arab country. The show is being descirbed as as lunch hour break TV show that highlights videos being shared on iKbis, -an Arabic mini version of Diggnation show-.

Goerga Akra CEO of iKbis told ArabCrunch that Combo5 is targeting employees at lunch break with a method of entertainment a 4 minutes Arabic show that displays 4 videos from iKibis, 1 minutes for each.

He also said that iKbis will launch season 2 of its last year’s popular Ground Zero episode. And plans to launch a combination of video shows and series in topics ranging from Do-It-your-self (DYI) to Islamic and female oriented shows.

This move will not only differentiate iKbis from Youtube and its regional competitors such as Yahoo Maktoob’s Clipat, Jeeran’s Kilpat, andD1G and Jordan’s cartoonsupstar 3alarasi but will also give it a wider reach. I just hope that Classical Fusha Arabic will be used in these shows rather than the local slang that other Arab citizens will not understand.

Here is a video of one of Combo4 shows with the Arabic Michael Jackson :




Updated.

Yesterday, Jordan’s high appeal court has decided to extend the reach of Jordan’s print and publications law to any electronic medium . The court’s decision, issued last week but published yesterday only today, empowers authorities to prosecute or impose fines on any electronic medium of Publishing from SMS to the Internet user from Twitter user, to facebook, to journalists, bloggers and editors for publishing online material that the law finds wrong.

Basil Okur, editor of the famous Jordanian online news site Ammon said that he will comply with the law but wondered how the law will be implemented? taking into consideration the technical challenges law enforcement will face.

He told ArabCrunch that according to the court order, a publication definition is any thing published, meaning anything circulating online: forums, Tweets, blog posts and comments , Facebook wall comments and email. Some others, even believe that SMS is included in the law!

On his part, Mutasem Demou Lawer, Mu’tasem Dmour Executive Director, The Arab Society for Intellectual Property (ASIP) said that the law extends to any medium that has any written word or ideas.

This means your Tweet might get you to prison. Some others said for example if you did not loggin to your facebook account for about a week and someone commented in your fan page or profile and the comment contained word that can be punished by the law you will be subject a fine or be prosecuted by the law.

Monitoring the law seems like mission impossible according to Okur as the Internet is full of millions of posts and comments. And as the gmail accounts of some human rights activists where hacked in China and the hacking Google’s domain name in  Morocco last year by Pakistani hackers. Basil Okur wondered what will happen if some one hacked a site and added his content or a small comment that might be deemed illegal by the law? he said his site receives thousands of comments everyday!

This law has another implications to news sites that has the commenting system up and running and to the growing list of Jordan’s user generated startups and companies. As Jeeran or Yahoo Maktoob for example provide a blogging platform, does this mean Jeeran and Yahoo Maktoob will be responsible to any comment posted in to their 100,000 plus blogs? and forced to shut down by athurities?

The same case implies to iKbis, Watwet, D1G, your blog ArabCrunch and your ArabCrunch.NET!

Nidal Mansor, President of Center For Defending Freedom of Journalist  told ArabCrunch that there is no prison punishment in Jordan’s print and publications law but said that Jordanian journalist could face court trails under different laws which might result into imprisonment.

However, The law does include fines and the closing of the publication!

Nidal questioned whether under the new law websites needs to have registration as a print publication and whether its owners need to be registered with the journalist union as the  law for print print media stipulates.

In my part I ask are all Jordanians who have Internet access and mobile phones are considered as journalists now?

( PS: I called and emailed Joanne Kubba from Google Middle East PR, Jeeran’s CEO Omar Kudsi and Yahoo VP Middle East Ahmed Nassef for comments in this news, but until the publishing of this post there was no answer from neither one.

Update: Google Spokesman said that Google has no comment at this stage. ArabCrunch will keep you posted with more in this story.)

Mohamed Nanabhay is the person who founded Al Jazeera’s New Media group, which was responsible for many of Aljazeera’s online innovation and now is leading the Al Jazeera English online operations and serves as website Editor-in-Chief.

Few days ago, the news was buzzing over the Internet when one of the most popular Twitter’s Desktop and mobile clients Seesmic acquired ping.fm a service that can update your status to 50 social networks through e-mail, IM (my favorite), SMS or the web.

But which was not covered is that Mohamed was an angle investor in Ping.fm since last year. which in later stage Joi Ito one of the first angel investors in Twitter it self and Reid Hoffman of Linkedin Invested another angle round to ping.fm. And with this acquisition Mohammad became an Investor in Seesmic.

Mohamed told ArabCrunch that he has other investments but “not disclosed for the time being.”

Before Mohamed’s 5 years work in Doha, Qatar with AJ, he co-founded a web development company and a large online portal.

Saot AlArab is a new not for profit Arabic website that aims to crowed source decision making in Arab countries and link the voice of Arab citizens with their political leaders.

Users from across the Arab world can submit ideas of projects that they would implement if they were the decision makers and other users can vote the ideas and add their comments.

Project ideas are categorized into: Security, Media, Economics, Education, Culture, Politics, Society, and Technology.

After a certain time the web site owners will write down submited ideas into a book and send it to all Arab leaders.

I have just added an idea which is to create a pan Arab and Islamic fund to finance Research and Development (R&D) in any Arab and Muslim country with 10 billion USD in capital. But the website came with a message that says” your idea is under review and will be published soon.” Which I think discredit the site from being really open. Something that is understood, since the site will be banned in many Arab countries, if their political leaders were criticized.

What do you want your leader to do?

Founded in Alexandria, Egypt in 2007 vimov ( Vimov on ArabCurnch.NET) is another example of the startup that mixx its business between developing software for others (out sourcing) developing open source software and proprietary software.

For developers:

vimov has started its own product releases with “aviate” : a free software to help developer deploy their software from “localhost” PC to the server, providing a number of features that makes life a bet easier for developers such as: file synchronization to the server over SSH and FTP and version control system. ( full list of features can be found here.)

In the iPhone front for developer, vimov’s provide an application/library called iSimulate” to solve the issue of not being able to use multi-touch and the accelerometer in the iPhone Simulator. iSimulate wirelessly sends multi-touch events, the accelerometer and compass events, and the GPS location to the iPhone Simulator. Providing speed to test before deployment and offers the ability to record high quality videos for your iPhone app. Available at the iPhone app store iSimulate costs 15,99 USD

For non developers vimov offers through the app store “exorcist” an iPhone game that uses many of the powerful features of the iPhone and costs 1.99 USD.

Here are 2 videos for exorcist and iSimulate:

As everyone knows Mobile devices are becoming more like computers, take a look at iPhone 3GS, Droid and N900.

Today, with new smart mobiles you can do everything you do on a PC as processing and memory speed are going up. However, it is not really everything, because the screen is small which limits the interaction between you, the mobile and its apps. That is why PCs until today remain the choice for heavy duty work: coding, designing, game playing, multi media, word processing, etc.

Enter Light Blue Optics (LBO) a UK startup that will change all of that, the 15$ million VC backed startup will launch on the 6th of January 2009 2010 at Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the “Light Touch” mobile projector device (pico projector) modules which are Holographic Laser-based, and allow the user to touch the projected image to provide user input, according to Picoprojector-info.

Meaning, LBO’s pico projector will enable you to have a wide screen of your mobile anywhere at anytime. On a wall and down onto a table, making it easier for people on the move to share, supporting WVGA-QVGA . Not just allowing you to see a wide screen of your device, BUT to use that widescreen the same way you use your touch mobile. Meaning you can use a projected style visual keyboard to type, (solving the small keyboard problem with mobiles and cutting the need to buy and carry an external keyboard.)

Not just that, you can open close, rearrange stuff in the projector using your finger tips on the “space” (Not the cloud) to move stuff, which also ends the need for a mouse. And kills whiteboards for group meetings and collaboration. Also it ends the need for tablet PC, like Apple’s upcoming iSlate.

Moreover, why would you need a TV screen? Just use LBO pico projector point it to anywhere and start enjoying your Theater at anytime.

According to LBO’s website, its proprietary holographic laser projection technology can also be used in other applications: the car dashboard “steering laser light exactly to where it is needed, creating very bright, energy-efficient displays.” for example warning you of new obstacles, accidents, etc. Mixx that to augmented reality and enter SCI FI today.

Whether LBO demo at 6th of Jan will deliver its promise, Holographic Laser-based pico-projectors will bring the end of PC and TV. Sun Microsystems came with a vision in the late 80s: the Network is the Computer, Today it is not just The Mobile is the Music player, Mobile is The Computer and your portable cable TV not just a supplement to your PC.

More about LBO technology can be found on their  PDF files on their website and on this slideshare doc:

#Thanks to @zsafwan for the tip.