Aljazeera just launched a new free iPhone website version that enables users to watch Aljazeera English from live via m.aljazeera.net ( click on LIVE on the top menu bar or on the LIVE banner further down.)

Aljazeera plans to add Arabic mobile website shortly with Live links. The only English news channel from the Arab world also plans to add different handset support in the coming future according to Safdar Mustafa head of AJ mobile unit.

11 days ago, the number 1 TV station in the Arab world has launched its Arabic channel Live streaming iPhone app for free and made its apps on Symbian and Windows Mobile free.

Eric Schmidt CEO of Google (the only company than managed to compete with Microsoft in all fronts and lead) is now in Dubai for Abu Dhabi Media Summit an event ArabCcrunch was not invited to! ( I was invited a source confirmed seeing my badge at the event, and I just digged for the email invite and found it, i did not notice before, since I get over 100 emails per day!) However Twitter is not short in leaking news and content.

Wael Ghonim Google MENA Marketing Director posted some updates about his speech at the conference on his Twitter timeline.

Eric said in the summit that “silicon valley companies have big interest in MENA as a fast growing region.” a fact that is not only backed by Yahoo! ’s maktoob acquisition last year, but also with a number of facts: Facebook Arabizing its UI, Skype Arabizing its UI and opening an office in the region, also the number one country which has the highest visits to ArabCrunch EN is USA and the number one stats is California home of Silicon Valley.

Eric also revealed more interesting facts and stats:

- 9% of time spent online is on facebook and youtube .. 20% of americans spends more than 2 hours online.

-about a billion people are coming online for the first time in the next three years

-politicians are more aware now that everything they do or say is broadcasted to everyone

-commenting in USA Iran sanctions: A best way to liberate a society is to enable them to communicate

-one third of MENA population are younger than 14 .. These guys are going to get online in few years.

(via Wael Ghonim on Twitter, follow him at ArabCrunch.NET here.)

As we update the news about Google offering Palestine free SMS chat via gmail with info from a trusted source that Google also offers this feature to the African country Ghana and “Israel”, Google spokesman just confirmed officially that update, here is the list of mobile operators list of operators Google Free SMS chat currently support:

• Ghana: MTN, Zain, Tigo, Kasapa.
• Israel: Pelephone and Orange.
• Palestinian Territories: Jawwal.
• United States: All operators.

It is worth mentioning that in Palestine and Arab countries the person who sends the SMS is the one who gets charged unlike USA where the receiver (update: and the sender ) hold the burden.

Google spokesman commented on the subject by saying:

“SMS in Gmail Chat is a feature that allows Gmail users to send SMS messages to their contacts? mobile phones using Gmail Chat. We believe SMS in Gmail Chat bridges online and mobile communications, bringing a new level of flexibility and mobility to Gmail Chat. We hope to extend this to additional countries and additional carriers in the future, but have nothing to announce at this time.”

Google’s CEO Eric Emerson Schmidt is present right now in United Arab Emirates where he attended Abu Dhabi Media Summit.

Welcome Eric

Update: as per our suspicion it turned out that “Israel” and Ghana have the service too.

Google has a neat gmail feature that lets user to send free text messages (SMS) to their friends directly from your Gmail account that works the same way gtalk works. Gmail SMS service was originally launched only for US mobile numbers in 2008. But now it has been available in Palestine for free via the palestinian mobile operator Jawwal (now owned by Zain) . Google verifies Palestine as the “Palestinian territories” which to them is West Bank and Gaza.

We do not know why Palestine from all the world’s countries? we will ask google now and let you know. Update: it turned out that “Israel” and Ghana have the service too, but palestine is the only Arab country that has the service

Google recognized Palestinian people in west bank, when it launched last year google.PS special domain for Palestine as ArabCrunch broke.

#Thanks to Ibrahem Eljabour for the tip.

Call it web 3.0 or Augmented reality (AR), the technology that overlays digital content such as text, graphics, or 3D models on real objects through any video output. A Technology that is changing the face of life because of the way it makes life easier.

In the last months of 20009 we saw a spike in startups and companies entering the AR space, however innovation is not near ending in this space as germany based metaio released a new version of its open augmented reality browser junaio 2.0 The version 2.0 is now available in the iPhone App Store offering Indoor usage, web- and user-based information channels and an open API for developers to an open browser platform enabling everyone to create and experience mobile augmented reality.

What is more junaio 2.0 is first to enable AR the possibilities indoors. By combining the GPS- and compass-based geo-information with the so called LLA-marker- technology that is patent pending- users now can experience augmented reality not only in the world outside but even within buildings. This feature can be used e.g. for museums where visitors can point their camera on the info next to the exhibits and gather information directly on their mobile phone. “

The feature can be experienced with the “scavengAR”-hunt by Porter Novelli at the famous South by Southwest Conference (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, UAS. Where visitors have to find clues in the real world throughout the SXSW venues, collect digital items on them and be the first to finish the augmented reality scavenger hunt and win prizes.

Social AR Channel Concept Meets Twitter

junaio 2.0 also introduceing a new way to arrange the location based content and LBS by offering mobile content channels in the real world via augmented reality. The currently include the categories: News, Culture, Shopping, Games, Travel or Food and for example help users to find the closest and best rated restaurant more easily. Furthermore every user can set up his/her personal channel and share posts, notes or points of interests with friends or make channels public to everyone. With this feature users can share their experiences, 3D objects, Twitter messages, website infos or recommendations of nearby locations with their friends and build the junaio-social community.

The first content provider channels included within the junaio 2.0 platform, will be a US-based transportation service provider (tba.) and the Eventful Channel.

Mobile devices are being used in many ways and every day they are getting smarter, as a result there  are new markets being opened by the abilities of smart phones. Today, Juniper Research published a report that estimate a “mobile retail market” to exceed $12 billion by 2014.

The mobile marketing and retail strategies report found that the mobile retail sector – defined by Juniper as comprising mobile coupon redemption values, smart poster fees and advertising expenditure – would initially be dominated by coupons.

The report found that mobile advertising expenditure would exceed coupon redemption values by 2013 as digital adspend is increasingly transferred into the mobile space.

As the retailing industry and brands are becoming aware of, and implementing the mobile device into, the retail cycle. According to report co-author Howard Wilcox, “Retailers have recognised that, even ahead of their wallets, people will usually make sure they do not leave home without their mobile device.

The mobile channel offers merchants the opportunity to differentiate from their competition and acquire customers that become loyal.” Meanwhile, additional factors such as the growth of the mobile web, the availability of high speed mobile broadband networks, and the ever-growing usage of SMS were offering retailers, brands and merchants new opportunities to communicate with customers and potential customers and to offer the ability for them to shop by mobile.

Other findings from the Juniper report include:
·         For brands and retailers, mobile offers the ability to change campaigns quickly (for example by time of day), and crucially the ability to track the success and customer acquisition rates.
·         Usage of the mobile in a live shopping situation can be particularly effective – for example for product price comparisons.
·         While the mobile will be an effective channel for younger users who organise their lives around their mobile phones, older demographic groups are likely to be less receptive to using their mobiles in a retail situation.

#image by hiromy.

Until recently Google presence in the region was with a small office in Dubai, Cairo and Saudi Arabia, with a small team whose focus was in Google Ad words, marketing, PR and Arabizing some of its products, excluding the fully Arabic Google’s Ejabat. While all the development work for Google has been carried out from its center in Switzerland.

However, we see now a major change in that direction as we see bigger regional push from Google, as its now seeking to employ more people in the region. This comes few months after Yahoo!’s acquisition of the largest Arab portal : Maktoob.

Recently Google was looking for Head of Arabia – Emerging EMEA, who according to the job post will be developing a business plan for google in the region and select which markets to focus on.

Google also is looking for a Regional Marketing Manager, Middle East North Africa (MENA) ,Policy Manager, Middle East and Northern Africa – Cairo or Dubai at Google and Enterprise Account Manager, MENA – Dubai.

We wrote last August 2009 about a 3 different e-commerce approaches in Jordan mentioning PhotoJONET, A photo storage and printing website service. But PhotoJONET did not live long due to disagreement between its founders.

Today PhotoJonet cofounder Issam Hijaz is brining his startup again but under a new name: Snap2Shop and a new partner with a new plans including regional expansion.

Like PhotoJONET Snap2Shop enables users to upload photos, order prints and pay cash on devilry  making life a bet easier for printing quality photos. And it does not only cover Amman, but this time all jordan, Issam told AC, as Snap2Shop is using posta plus with delivery time up to 3 business days at a flat rate of 2 Jordanian dinars (2.82 $ USD) for prints under 20 JDs . ( Celebrating its launch Snap2Shop is giving away new users 10 free photos print orders)

Issam told ArabCrunch that they will be adding online payment in partnership with visa Jordan and plans a mobile app on Symbion and iPhone.

(Follow Snap2Shop on ArabCrunch.NET here.)

With US recessions not yet over and jobs market still tight, every penny you have can adds up to your bottom-line. With bunndlebuy you can save hard-earned currency in buying music, outdoor, Sunglasses and DVD items by leveraging your social circle or similar buyers to get bargain deals.

The way bundlebuy works according to Amad Almasodi cofounder and CIO of Bunndelbuy is as the following:

1-Say you have a seller who sells an item for 100 USD and you ask him how much would it cost to buy 50 items of your product? and he offer each one at 70 or 80 USD.

2-Bunndlebuy do not buy them now, rather offer the merchant tentative commitment.

3- Then Bundlebuy.com adds the deal which would be the cheapest price in town, but in order for buyers to get it, 50 people have to join the bundle. When the number of “bundlers” is complete, say 50 buyers or more. Bundlebuy, charge their credit cards and buy the products and have the seller send them to the buyers. If the deal gets less than the 50 lets say, only 2 or 5 buyers, Bundlebuy cancels the deal and don’t charge the credit cards.

So if you want to buy an item make sure to share it in your facebook and Twitter followers, so you can get more buyers to help you get the deal.

This innovative group buying or social buying solution is only available to the US market in the time being with plans to expand to the Arab market, according to Amad.

Amad who is from Yaman has cofounded this project with 2 of his MBA colleagues: Ryan Hart CEO of BunndleBuy and Kyle Hart  as COO.

Great idea, the startup monetization model is from commissions earned from each item sold via the site (Lookup Bundlebuy ArabCrunch.NET profile.)

It took about one month since our last speculation about Orange Jordan launch date of the first 3G network in Jordan. But, today Orange 3.5G up and running and covering initially west Amman, Irbid and Zarqa. Mobile 3Gs comes inline with Orange late launch of iPhone 3Gs around 2 weeks ago.

To me and people who live in Jordan, even though the whole 3G rollup is late, this news is very exciting as the network speed is up to 7.2 Mbps and you can use it on your laptop or Mobile.
Orange Mobile 3G+ data plan starts with 19.90 Jordanian Dinners (JDs), with unlimited Internet and voice minutes to Orange mobile and fixed number. however Orange notes in its website”when exceeding the fair usage policy of 2GB,data consumption will be charged per MB at 4p/MB (local use only) .”The other 2 options for monlhty offers are:
* Mobile 3G+ X Large:
mobile data (internet) unlimited 1 voice minutes to all Orange mobile and Orange fixed numbers 1500 voice minutes to all other local networks 300 SMS unlimited 2 monthly fee 39.90
*Mobile 3G+ Unlimited:
mobile data (internet) unlimited 1 voice minutes to all Orange mobile and Orange fixed numbers unlimited 3 voice minutes to all other local networks unlimited 4 SMS unlimited 2 monthly fee 79.90.

As for pay as you go mobile offer 1GB  costs around 14.99 Jds.

Even though Orange’s mobile offer seems ok, its internet offer is not  feasible enough for me to switch my slow “Orange” ADSL to Orange 3g+ internet plan for laptops as its starts with 9.9 JDs for 1GB monthly data bundle, 1p/MB excess of bundle rate with a USB dongle price at 45 Jds.

Orange will have a monopoly for one year in Jordan over 3G, in which after that other operators can enter the market.

#Image by: cogdogblog

The number one TV news station in the Arab world, Al Jazeera, has just launched its Arabic channel Live streaming iPhone app for free. It also made its apps on Symbian and Windows Mobile also free removing the subscription fees ( you can get the Symbian and Windows Mobile from here, the app supports Symbian S60 5th Edition (touch screen), Symbian S60 3rd Edition, Symbian S60 2nd Edition, Windows Mobile with touch screen, Windows Mobile without touch screen and UIQ 3.)

Aljazeera launched last July 2009 its English channel live video feed app for the iPhone at the price tag of 2.99 USD, however, according to sources the english iPhone app will also soon be available for free .

Like the English app, the Arabic channel live streaming iPhone app is developed by LiveStation and compatible with iPhone and iPod touch and requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later .

“The app which can be accessed from anywhere in the world, contacts via 3G when a WIFI access is not available. When using 3G, you can watch the channel in standard quality, in order to minimize bandwidth requirements. However when the device is connected to a Wi-Fi network, you will automatically have access to a higher quality version of the channel which makes full use of the high speed connectivity offered by Wi-Fi networks. If you like, you can change the default settings to view the standard quality version of the channel at all times.”

To download Aljazeera Arabic live app for iPhone you can go here.

Some of the fruits of hosting multinational companies in the Arab world is being realized today, Ahmad Zaharan a Palestinian ex-Nokia and his ex- Nokia Australian college , David McKern, launched today their startup infinitec’s first product today: Infinite USB Memory (IUM) Drive.

As you see in the pic IUM looks like any USB, but instead of storing data inside the stick it uses any thing that has a USB port as the storage space, enabling “infinite” data sharing ( videos, photos, doc..etc) using WIFI network meaning the device act as wireless connector between a personal computer and anything that is USB-enabled.

IUM solves tones of existing problems, today for example we tried to share a bunch of data with a colluege, fortunately I had enough space on my USB drive, but if I did not have enough space I’d have to free some space. IUM can also help you do a lot with its sharing capabilities including: watching your DVD, Blu-ray in our TV from your PC or DVD player, and connect your laptop to projectors effortlessly ( more about other uses of IUM can be found here.)

The device will cost less than US$150 and will be available around 1st July 2010 with selected dealers online stores and retail stores across USA, Canada, Europe and the Arab world.

Zahran was quoted at the UAE based the National, that his startup infinitec is backed by his own savings and he also said that he is positive about the device success, we hope so too.

If you work in the tech industry, it is business 101 to know what your competition is up to. And there is no place better than Twitter to know what your competition are up to, you can create a list and follow the tech companies you want to follow. Or use TwitHorus ( ArabCrunch profile) and get more insight.

TwitHorus aggregates and displays real-time tweet updates of tech companies by category directly from the source, it also provides statistics/analysis on the tweeting activity of companies, insights on how twitter users are reacting to updates of each company, and real-time search capabilities.

For example Google profile on Twtihorus shows that google peak day on twitter this week is Thursday. And the most active SaaS (software-as-a-service) company is volusion.

The app also provides tech tag cloud, so we see which tags has the most mention among tech companies: we see CEO followed by funding, SOA and Android.
Moreover, Twtihorus provides you with what are the Trending Tech topics now: #spotify, #Android and #app
We do not know what business model Twtihorus will rely on, as Twitter it self have not used one yet, but we know that it is useful for both business professionals in the tech industry and geeks who want to know more about the companies they like.
#Twtihorus is created Kamal Reggad from Morocco.

Since around 2 years ArabCrunch has been fighting through this blog to help Arab startups and the technology industry in this region. Before us, Arab American technology professionals came together to create TechWadi, as a non profit networking organization with a similar vision to ours.

Reaching Achieving that vision was not yet fully reached, as advancement has been slow in many fronts. For example, one of the major pillars of creating a technology ecosystem which is funding, has been missing at large.

Though, last year was a turing point, when more venture capitalist and angel investors made a number of investments, in companies such as Jeeran , shoofeeTV and ArabCrunch Group.

The date 25. August 2009, when Yahoo acquired Maktoob, will be written in history as critical point for the Arab tech and Internet industry, as it might cause massive changes to this industry, as now investors see the exist window open. Smilier to the impact that was caused by AOL acquisition of an �Israeli� startup called ICQ back in 1998. As after AOL acquisition, the tech industry in �Israel� started to boom and billions of dollars were raised to fund early stage startups.

With these facts in mind, US and Arab investors will coverage together in Sunnyvale, California, USA at the Global Technology Forum ( 50% discount to ArabCrunch readers just enter the promo code “SVNET” here) to discuss how Silicon Valley can help grow a Successful Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Arab region. As many see the big opportunities that might be gained in investing in Arab talent and the challenges the lays ahead in growing the technology industry in the Arab and Muslim world.

The event which is organized by TechWadi and PlugAndPlayTechCent will�be held on March 18, 2010 at 440 N. Wolfe Rd, Sunnyvale, CA 94085 and will bring up distinguished speakers such Ossama Hassanein, PhD�Managing Director, Newbury Ventures- Saeed Amidi CEO, Plug and Play- Ramy Adeeb, Principal, Khosla Ventures- Karim Fahmy Director, Intel Capital (Silicon Valley)- Bassel Ojjeh Lead Investor, ArabCrunch Group- Emile Cubeisy Managing Director, IV Holdings and Ali Diab VP, Product Development, AdMob. ( full list of speakers and event agenda can be found here)

The event will also discuss US presidents� Obama Global Technology and Innovation Fund �that will provide financing ranging between $25 million and $150 million in total capital for each selected venture capital fund. (ArabCrunch is completely independent and it has no political affiliations as such we do not endorse Obama or any political party.)

( Disclosure: ArabCrunch is a media partner to the Global Technology Forum 2010.)

As I mentioned last year on this post , when I was young, I grow up reading an Arabic Magazine called “Majed” which is based on one of the most popular Arabic children’s comic book character.
Tomorrow, Majed will enter new chapter in his life, as he will enter the Augmented Reality (AR) world via a game. As in a press release we got from Abu Dhabi Media Company (ADMC), the publisher of Majid, reveals that tomorrow’s and March 3 editions of the magazine will feature a special page which, when held up to a webcam, will overlay the users’ real world surroundings with computer generated imagery, creating an interactive ‘mixed reality’ environment.

AR technology, was the buzz word in 2009, it started with by a couple of startups in Europe such as Layar’s ‘augmented reality browser’, an application that shows what is around you by displaying real time digital information on top of reality through the camera of your mobile phone.

In Majed’s case readers will enter a Majid-themed world on their computer screens and even play an interactive racing game with Majid, if they download a special software from Majid.ae and holding up the designated magazine page to their webcams. This will launch an environment, which users will be able to explore by rotating the magazine in front of the webcam, while the game will be controlled via a keyboard.

The ‘magical’ page in the AR-enabled issue of Majid will contain a printed ‘marker’, which, when held up to a webcam, triggers the digital recognition software downloaded from the magazine’s website. This in turn launches an interactive environment allowing users to experience the mixed reality environment.

AR applications such as Majed’s, bring another level of engagement from the audience, in which key advertisers such as BMW, Hugo Boss and Lego, started to explore the AR potentials via different AR apps and characters.
The AR applications is estimated to worth US$350 million by 2014, up from the mere US$ 6million mark in 2008, according to US-based ABI Research.

US-based ABI Research estimates that the industry for US-based ABI Research estimates that the industry for AR applications will be worth US$350 million by 2014, considerably up from the mere US$ 6million mark in 2008.

Abu Dhabi Media Company ’s Digital Media arm which is run by Ricky Ghai, has been active in the online front with a number of innovative ideas, however in August I objected to their unnecessary Joint Venture with US based Gazillion, because we have regional talents who can carry the required work.

Around a week ago, the most popular social network in the world Facebook acquired a 2 employee Malaysian startup, called Octazen Solutions , which develops contact importer software that facebook was reported using for some time now, according to GigaOM today’s story by Liz Gannes .

Facebook spokesmen told GigaOM that this is a “talent acquisition”  and that Octazen will remain based in Malaysia, making them the first Facebook’s “visible” full time employees based in Asia. ( We heard there are few of others who work form 2 Arab countries.)

Facebook has now 400 million users, including 250 million added last year alone, email invites was the main reason behind its growth and Octazen Contact importer played a pivotal rule in Facebook expansion, since they made it easy for facebook users to import their email address-book after the users submits his email and password. As users usually do not remember their contacts email addresses and even if they did, they won’t type 100 email address to invite.

Before the acquisition Octazen was licenseing its software to other customers.

If anything the Octazen story can teach entrepruners: focusing on solving a small problem with 2 team members can be more fruitful than trying to solve big and complex problems, and you do not need to be in Silicon Valley to start something global.

With this acquisition facebook has now acquired 3 companies including Friendfeed and Parakey.
(via insidefacebook.)

It is still 6 weeks till you can an iPad, but as developers rush to develop an iPad app it would be great -if you are one of them- to have the full features of the iPad up and running in your app and fully tested.

iPad SDK has multi touch up to 5 fingers Accelerometer, Compass or GPS, but since you do not have an iPad, you can not use them on testing since will be using the pointer.

Folks at the Egyptian open source and iPhone startup, Vimov solved today these problem with their just released iPad support for their application/library “iStumlate” ( AC previous review.)

Now when you have iSimulate installed on you iPhones or iPod however, your multi-touches on the iPhone (which gets interpolated for the larger iPad screen), the movement recorded by the accelerometer, the location and orientation captured by the GPS and Compass, all get wirelessly sent to the iPad Simulator, so you can develop virtually any application they want, before the iPad is itself released!

“You -just- need to install iSimulate on your iPhone, add a library in your iPad project” said Amr Ramadan General Manager Vimov.

iStumlate is priced at $15.99, but it’s now on sale at $9.99. To buy it and for more info you can go here. You can also follow Vimov on ArabCrunch.NET here if you have an Invite to AC.NET.

Social media marketing is the most effective marketing approach because it is viral and much cheaper than other forms of marketing, as social media or PR 2.0 can provide brands explosive growth that would require millions of USD spending in other forms of marketing.

The process of socialmedia marketing starts with identifying your target audience, and then see which community they are using the most, then be there, engage them and then monitor your progress to re-align your social media strategy.

In USA social media marketing has become a big buzz word as many organizations rush to capitalize on social media platform either via offering services or tools to other companies or via Do-It-Your-self.

However in the Arab world social media marketing is still in its baby steps as most traditional PR companies and marketers in the region, did not yet get it. As they are not tech savvy at all and still thinking in the 1970 PR and advertising mentality. ( They use the Internet to check news, read email, and nudge someone over facebook and someone them asks us to see a draft of our post before publishing, something they can only dream about!)

Educating the public that millions of Arab Internet users actually turn to social media everyday might change the backward thinking of traditional marketer: There are around 7 million members from the Arab world on facebook, 100s of thousands of blogs coming from users from this region, and around 40% traffic from Arab ISPs is going to Youtube as the major telecom operators reveled so during last year Arab Advisor Conference. Let alone the ever growing users who are joining Google Buzz, Twitter and other social media platforms such as ArabCrunch.NET and Netlog.

Another factor that would help regional marketers turn into social media is the availability of tools that can help them monitor and manage their campaigns that are regional specific, in which Arabic is the keyword.

Yesterday, help seems has arrived as Media Watch a traditional and online media mentoring company launched SocialEyez , which they call the first dedicated social media monitoring service designed to capture and analyze Arabic content online.

SocialEyez currently provides 3 types of services (According to their website):

1- Do It your Self: Online subscription service where you setup & manage your own account using a web interface.
SocialEyez will help organizations better understand and manage their online reputations, react to customer feedback and interact with customers using social media platforms.

2- co-managed account:
Socialeyes will dedicate on person to help clients setup and manage their account.. This service includes helping you filter results, add/delete keywords, identify most important sources to monitor, etc.

3- Managed account:
SocialEyes will monitor on the clients behalf and send a customized daily, weekly, or monthly round-up reports.

We do not know which social platforms SocialEyez actually monitors, facebook? Twitter? YouTube? as we did not test their service yet, but we know from experience that google alerts is not helpful. Though SocialEyez launch is not successful as our email to socialeyez contacts us email info@socialeyez.ae returned with �Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:�

#Thanks SpotOnPR to the tip. You can also read Hicham post in Arabic about online brand management -

#Image modified from Anne Helmond’s image.

If you have a blog or a website with feeds it would be smart to integrate it with the new Buzz in town: Google Buzz.

In case you missed the news, Google Buzz is the new social status update service from google that is integrated with Gmail, google maps, Google Reader and all other Google services ( including Mobile app) making it a strong offering compared to Twitter, in which all the extra services that Google buzz have are available via on Twitter third party developers in which you need to use separately with Twitter. ( ArabCrunch Arabic review of Buzz also make sure to follow ArabCrunch account on Buzz.)

Since its launch few days ago, Google Buzz has gained traction and seems is going bigger and bigger with real usage every morning.

As a blogger or a marketer, Social media tools like Twitter, Facebook and now Google buzz are a great way to market your blog/or website, to stay connected with to your readers and even attract new ones.

So our friend at the Jordanian startup Feedoor did not waste time and launched few days ago a connecter that updates your Google Buzz account in real time automatically.

Like Google’s Feedburner, Feedoor helps you manage your feeds and get users stats such as visits and clicks, but unlike Feedburner, Feedoor offers extra services such as feed merging and filitring plus it delivers your feed in realtime  as it supports the 2 most popular realtime protocols RSScloud and Pubsubhubbub ( feedburner supports Pubsubhubbub only) Moreover, even if your website feed does not support any of the 2, feedoor uses superfeedr the “real time feed parsing service” to get your feed posts in your buzz time line almost instantly.

However Integrating your feed from feedoor to Google buzz account is not one click away, it takes few steps, but does not need any coding. Just go Feedoor blog post here and watch the step-by-step slide for instruction into how to connect your Feed to buzz with Feedoor and in realtime.

( Disclosure: I am an advisor to feedoor.)

Tarneeb.com is a place you go to play cards (aka Bridge or Contract Bridge), for those of you who aren’t familiar with the game, its basically played by four players who form two partnerships; the partners sit opposite each other at a table. The game consists of the auction (often called bidding) and play, after which the hand is scored.

Tarneeb.com brings you all the good things in the popular card game most Arabia gahwa regulars are familiar with, the setting, the sounds, but most important, it brings you that hard to find fourth player that always seems to cancel last minute, it does that by allowing you to add any number of required players as AI (Artificial Intelligence machine) player called THETA. I saw one person playing with 3 THETAs instead of people, she explained: “because they’re faster than humans”.

Those of you who are familiar with similar services such as Jawaker or 6arneeb are about to leave now, but hang on, it gets better, apparently the website was built for this AI machine called THETA instead of it being the other way around, meaning the creators needed a lot of data to provide THETA in order for it to learn to play like humans, so they built the website in order to teach it!

So not only will you be participating in creating a smarter AI machine every time you and your friends play Tarneeb, but you’ll probably have fun too.

The website is straight forward, for those of you who want to jump in and play a fast game and go, you don’t have to register, in addition to it being very colorful and built with engaging graphics & characters, containing public and private chat, and a user interface supporting both English and Arabic for most of the website.

We tested the site for basic functionality and ease of use, and thought we would warn you about a couple of issues, first of all Arabic, which currently, isn’t supported in the Game Room, in other words you can’t use Arabic in chat, and can only view it with English labels, although its founder assured us this issue is being currently being tested.

Another issue we had was with the meaning of some of the labels in the Game Room as you can see above, simply put, we didn’t know what they meant till we played a couple of games, because the status of a player is shown as an image with no description, not even in the Help section.

Last but not least, was weak ‘Bad Word Filtering’ in public chat, which seems to be a hard task, that with transliterated Arabic being the only means of communication (no Arabic chat support remember), in addition to the lack of filtering Bad Words in the English language in private game chat also, yet when raising the issue with the website’s management, we were told its being resolved.

In my opinion, the website is built quite professionally, basically with Flash and .NET on the front-end, and obviously with some serious potential, which led us to have a small Q/A with its Founder Mahmoud Hajo who filled us in on some things we were wondering about..

When was THETA created? What branch of Adaptive Technology is it based on?
Tarneeb co-founder Kareem Seddik and I began working on Project THETA in early 2008. The first prototype created was named THINKY, a mock-up version written in VBA and actually presented through EXCEL! We were obviously consumed by the idea of creating a very smart computer player that can master card games and learn from its mistakes. Project THETA was born!
The idea driving Project THETA extended beyond mathematics, we wanted to actually mimic human behavior in all its complexity; a very aggressive idea indeed. In order to achieve this, we had to resort to artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques. THETA stands for Adaptive Tarneeb Emulating Human Thinking (in reverse). Without going into the techy, geeky details, and uncovering the guts of the algorithms used, let me illustrate with an example: As you may know, one of the main stages of the Tarneeb game is the betting stage, during which the power suite (the Tarneeb) is determined by the highest bidder. THETA considers multiple factors when deciding how much it should bet. For example, the strength of THETA’s hand, how much THETA’s partner bet, how much each opponent bet, who is left in the betting game, THETA’s position on the table, the total score of the two teams so far, hesitation factors and more! But this is not all. After THETA homes in on the bet value, it reverts to its experience, and tries to “remember” similar situations and learn from what has happened. Based on that, THETA may decide to get very aggressive, or play conservatively this time. The ultimate goal is to make the best decision that will on the long run increase its team’s chances of winning. Now remember, THETA has infinite memory, and it uses that memory to store every move played, not only by it, but by every single human player that ever visited Tarneeb.com. So far, THETA has statistical database of over half a million complete games.
When it comes to deciding which cards to play, THETA has a number of strategies that it checks every time it has to play a card. Based on its view of the world, it decides which strategy to implement. It goes without saying that playing the right card is even trickier and more complicated than betting. It is, in many cases, a matter of art not science.
So, THETA is learning with time, trying to mix it up until it finds the statistically best strategies that have the optimal chances of winning. This feedback system can in fact be viewed as a simple neural network.
To sum up, THETA is learning at a very fast pace. It has yet to unleash its real powers. Perhaps it is waiting until the site comes out of Beta. That is when THETA will take all its experience and dominate the game’s arena, so my advice to all the human players out there: BEWARE of what you do in front of THETA!
For other cool information about THETA, visit: http://www.tarneeb.com/theta/

What’s the business model? Has a revenue stream been generated?
We have been very consumed by the notion of smart AI machines that play card games. We wanted to develop highly sophisticated machines that anyone could challenge through a simple browser. Given our passion for Tarneeb, the obvious gap in the market, and the feedback we received about Project THETA, a business plan was put together to capitalize on this opportunity. The model has then been tuned to fit the Middle East Market. The result is a solid strategy with revenues forecasted in the near future. We are still in the development stage and very excited to see the pieces of the puzzle all fall in place.

How Many users are registered?
Our website supports Guest registrations and Member registrations. We currently have about 60,000 registrations with a 1:8 member to guest ratio. The fundamental difference between the two is that members have more website features enabled. These include chatting, a private inbox, score keeping, a profile, and more freedom to interact with other users. The guest registration is a quick instant play method that allows visitors to immediately experience the game. We track these conversions closely as we add features or simplify the user interface. On a daily basis, we have hundreds of members and thousands of guests that visit us. Every day is a new record for Tarneeb, and this really gets us excited. Currently, we have surpassed the six figures in monthly visits.

When did you launch website?
Tarneeb.com came to inception in March of 2009. It was a beta launch, and we are still pretty much in that mode. We had a soft launch under a different domain prior to February, but that was mainly for proof of concept.

Are you receiving any kind of funding?
Tarneeb.com has been growing very organically, in all aspects. We have not spent a cent on advertizing or promoting the site, and we have not sought any external funding thus far. This aligns with our strategy and our planned capital structure. The founders have been keeping the project afloat from their piggy banks. At the right time, we will be open for that smart investment that will accelerate our road to success.

How long did the development process take? (Concept, Technology, Website)
How big was the first developing team? How big is your team today?
It is common to hear about startups that started in the basement or garage. In our case, it started on a volley ball court in Austin, Texas. The project then moved to a couch with an initial team of less than a handful. Kareem and I were very dedicated, but most importantly, it was all about having fun. All our team members had full time jobs (and for some of us we had families, music bands, or MBA programs), but we always found time for Tarneeb. Most of our development was done after midnight, or on Saturday nights (yes, we used to spend our weekends with THETA!). Today, our team has grown considerably and is continuing to do so as the project proves itself.

Do you have plans to expand?
Absolutely, this is merely the beginning… all I can say is STAY TUNED!

What is the hardest thing you faced (are facing) trying to launch the site?
We have definitely faced a fair share of challenges launching the website. As traffic started to increase, downtime naturally started becoming more expensive. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. We were obsessed with making our solution so robust and scalable that we pushed our launch date several times. Eventually, we just had to go for it. Had Microsoft decided to wait until Windows became bug free, we would have still been running on DOS J! Perhaps the hardest thing that faced our launch was to decide on when!

Any advice to starting entrepreneurs in the region?
In our opinion, the most important aspect of any start-up is the team. We cannot stress the importance of making sure you have the necessary passion, commitment, talent and trust on the team. These values will be put to test time and time again, and will ultimately determine the outcome of the business. Secondly, approach any project with a solid business plan, a sound strategy, smart goals, planned contingencies and realistic expectations. Lastly, have fun. Enjoy it — every second of it. After all, the project is your dream!

All in all, I personally think the idea of building a website to provide data that helps an AI machine learn how to play like a human (hopefully a good one too) is plain cool and smart, I hope they fix the couple of issues they have holding them back from providing a service that can compete with the other existing services in the region (especially language-wise), and inspire others.

Smilier to our last year ArabCrunch DEMO 09 event, International Business Alliance Group is organizing ArabNet in Beirut, Lebanon-March 25-26, 2010. The Conference will be bringing together people from the Arab Internet community to network and help startups from across the region.

Top investors, Internet executives and leaders from Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, AdMob and Intel will address subjects that are critical to the Arab Web Industry including: e-commerce, gaming, mobile, content, online advertising, social networking, new media, and startup fundraising.

The conference will also include pitch sessions: Ideathon & Startup Demo.
The Ideathon will feature 10 select entrepreneurs to introduce their fresh startup ideas. The Demo will select startups with innovative products to pitch and exhibit their companies. To apply and know more visit ArabNet.me.

(Disclosure: ArabCrunch is a media partner to ArabNet)

Few hours ago we live streamed Nokia’s major regional press conference where they announced the launch of ‘Comes with Music, ’which offers people a year of unlimited access to the entire Ovi Music catalog with the ability to keep all downloaded tracks even after the year is over.

The Arab world launch covers 11 markets that include Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestinian Territories, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman. With the purchase of the new Nokia X6 16 GB Comes With Music edition, users will have access to a music catalog of an estimated four million tracks from the biggest international and regional labels that people will be able to download for free. The device with the service will be commercially available the first week of March, for an estimated price of USD 600, excluding sales taxes.

“ You can enjoy the music on the Nokia X6 device or your dedicated PC. The songs are yours to keep. So after the year is complete, the licenses do not expire and you can continue to enjoy all of your music,” said Jake Larsen, Head of Music, Nokia Middle East and Africa.

Music is provided by all major international and regional labels including Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music, EMI Music, Rotana, Mazzika, Melody Music, Platinum Records, and leading content aggregator The Orchard, as well as thousands of independent labels. The content covers a cross section of Western and Arabic music, as well as among others, Indian, Pakistani and Fillipino catalogues.

Nokia X6:

Capable of playing up to 35 hours of music, the Nokia X6 is Nokia entertainment device, combining 16GB of on-board memory, ARM 11 434 MHz processor, with a TFT capacitive touchscreen 3.2” finger touch interface, and runs on Symbian OS v9.4, Series 60 rel. 5. Nokia pitch the device for “music lovers and social butterflies”, the Nokia X6 has a 16:9 widescreen. With direct access to Ovi Store, the Nokia X6 is integrated b with 20 friends and virtual communities, like Facebook, to your homescreen.

Nokia Comes With Music is now available on altogether 27 markets worldwide, including Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestinian Territories, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman, as well as Australia, Austria, Brazil, Finland, Germany, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Singapore, SA, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, Spain and Russia.

Our Take:
Experts put iTunes Music store and its seamless integration with iPod, the main reason behind the success of iPod, which in turn helped push the iPhone. Apple has been neglecting the Arab region and until today only few Arab countries have a dedicated iTunes store ( more soon.)

Arabic Music is not available on iTunes as far as I know, so with this Move Nokia is set to dominate the Music Industry in the Arab world, they offer you one year free unlimited download with a prize of Zero and regional Music, Now Apple has to play the catchup game on this front not visa Versa.

Nokia did not reveal what will happen to users who wants to download Music after the one year nor when this service will be available on other Nokia devices, however I believe they will charge for downloading and what is important I think, Nokia has figured a away to enable e-payment in the Arab world, as until now credit card penetration is low. maybe, paying via SMS, Mobile bill etc.

Update: The event’s video is below to read the text details go here.

We are here live in Beirut Lebanon for a major announcement from Nokia, here is the live streaming:
updates:
Nokia launched Music store, it comes with with free unlimited Music for 12 months.
Nokia to bring unlimited Music to 12 Arab countries, with 4 million songs, Nokia did deals with Sony, Rotana, Universal and other Music producers.

Nokia X6 will be first to come with Nokia Music Edition.

Speaker from Rotana: from every dollar we make we lose 1 dollar from piracy.
more to come…

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.