StumbleUpon the social media web site was reported on a blog post being blocked by the largest ISP and telecom company in UAE, Etisalat

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The blog post is found here. StumbleUpon that has currnelty 5,483,186  members is owned by eBay, is a user generated reviewing and rating of websites, where people can share them with their friends and all other members. It is a great way to discover websites based on anyone’s interests, where Stumbling (finding) website can be filtered to certain tags. Stumbling and other features can be accessed through StumbleUpon browser toolbar and its web site. You can find my StumbleUpon profile here While the StumbleUpon is blocked to Etisalat customers, those connecting through rival operator du are still able to access the site. The site joins other social networking services which are banned by Etisalat, including micro-blogging service Twitter, social networking site Orkut owned by google, and photo sharing site Flickr owned by Yahoo! Sites can be blocked in the UAE for ‘inconsistent with the religious, cultural, political and moral values of the United Arab Emirates’, according to Telecom Regulation Authority (TRA) rules. These rules can be enforced if a deal between Etisalat and StumbleUpon is made, where StumbleUpon would not show content violating to TRA rules to any UAE resident. Etisalat is an Arabic word that means communications.

On a rare move among one of the Arab leaders or maybe any of the world’s leaders, King Abdullah II of Jordan, commented on local Jordanian blog Black Iris  and Addusstor Jordan’s daily newspaper web site.
On the blog the king was commenting on a post about his latest interview  with Petra ( Jordan’s Government news agency ) where he dismissed rumors about the future of  Jordan.

Here is the King’s comment on Black Iris:

Thank you all for your feedback and comments. I am very happy and proud to see so many responsible citizens engaging in this dialogue. People must not be afraid to express their opinions without using aliases. We are a country of freedom, tolerance, diversity and openness, and everyone has the right to express their thoughts – no matter what they are – in an atmosphere of respect, so long as they are not personally offending others, attempting character assassination or undermining the nation’s interest. Your comments only indicate how deeply you care about Jordan and its future and I am happy that we are partners in the development process.

I welcome this move by the King, and would love if he starts reading ArabCrunch and post comment on it because ArabCrunch champions Jordanain and Arab startups, and we aim to help transfer Jordan and the Arab world into the knowledge based economy, in line with his vision

We would like to see similar moves by other Arab and world leaders.

Embracing the internet and specially web 2.0  is one of the ways to reach grace root communities. This practice has been heavily used in the US presidential elections to promote the candidates and raise funds for their campaigns. For example some of the candidates setup Myspace and facebook profiles, twitter and digg accounts. But these tools were managed by the staff members of the candidate, while King Abullah comment is made by him.

Any one knows if George Bush has any real published comment on the internet? please comment .

Places.ae BlackBerry version allows users to find locations near them by using GPS, making the process of finding locations of restaurants, hotels, shops and so on, more easy and more convenient when on the go.

This move puts places.ae in the LBS (Location Based Services) market, but currently Places.au services are only available in Dubai while more Emirates to be add soon.

Places.ae is a useful, convenient and simple service; it started as a web locations directory for places, submitted by the users, and then expanded into other communications channels such as IM, mobile, and twitter.

Places.ae web interface is very easy to use and straight forward; just type the place (ex. pizza) and where it is near by, while you are typing these entries the web site suggests related words, just like Yahoo search suggestions.

Then Places.ae yields to you the search results where you can click in one of them, once in the place page for example: Oregano, it shows the location on Google map, phone number, descriptions, associated tags, and you can even rate this place and add comments. thus providing users with reviews of each place.

The service does not stop short,  it also provides you with the option to add the place to your favorites so you can find it easily next time. And it lists you at the place page similar places, a way to help you discover more places.

Even though Places.ae is currently useful it can be even more useful if it add more features and services such as: The user can optionally add his default location -such as home and work) on his profile, thereby when searching; he does not have to type his location.  Just type find places near me, and places.ae will retrieve places near his location and how far they are from him. At the same time providing the user with directions to reach that place.

Another one would be adding location based social networking , or possible integration with location based photos and videos from flickr.com and YouTube.com for example when I am at starbucks @ Ibn Battuta Mall page, it would be useful to find photos and videos taken in that location.

I also suggested to Michael Hendrickx the founder of places.ae to add GEO-RSS to the site, allowing users to subscribe to a location’s feed and get that location places update. ( I recommended ArabCrunch sponsor Feedoor to manage the feeds.)

The BlackBerry version has my first suggested feature: it detects the user’s location via GPS to find places near him and it shows how far they are from him. ( my suggestion was for the web)

When the user click the place entry he will see a little static map of the place, And phone numbers are often detected, so it’s very easy to call that place, in case the user wants to.

To access this service you need BlackBerry with GPS device, a mobile data connection and Java script enabled browser.

The BlackBerry version is part of Places.ae ongoing mobile version development , which can also server Windows Mobile and iPhone clients. but for the latter two, places.ae is currently optimizing the interface.

since they have slightly better browsers (and UI) than a BlackBerry.

Before launching the BlackBerry Places.ae launched PAM (Places Answering Machine) to support other communication channels.

Pam is what links the places.ae search engine with other communication channels available on the Internet.

According to places.

Currently PAM supports Gtalk Windows Live Messenger and Twitter. SMS, E-mail and possibly Yahoo! Messenger will be added to PAM soon.

On the future places will launch API

so people can start their own “version” of places.ae”

According to Hendrickx.

Places is the work of Michael Hendrickx -from Belgium is IT security expert who currnelty lives in UAE-   and Spinbits . It was developed using the Rails framework.

weNear a mobile 2.0 location based  platform developed by Alexandria, Egypt based eSpace,  has launched location based applications competition using the weNear API.

The competition is open to the students of The Computer Science Department at Alexandria University, Egypt.

The final submission date is 31 August 2008 11:59 PM Alexandria time. If you need more info about the architecture of weNear, API documentation, and weNear generated client/server communication code in several languages  go here, and to submit your application you can go here.

weNear is  a personal assistant installed on your mobile device that’s always on the lookout for nearby events that are of interest to you.

It business model is based on location based advertising, a market that is projected to reach billions of dollars.

This is a smart move by weNear team, which will help add more applications on top of weNear, adding more value to the end user, but I wonder why they did not open the competition to whole Arab world?

I am looking for a part-time Arabic writer for ArabCrunch, to write for the to be launched Arabic version of the blog.

You can be a high school student, a student at university or employee at a tech Company.

All you have to have is passion for tech, the web and cool mobile apps.

You should also understand web 2.0 and mobile 2.0 terms (is a must). Have some business sense or experience, excellent Arabic and English, and the love to write for fun.

Job description:

• Work from home or anywhere there is a PC/Laptop and the Internet.

• Translate stories from English to Arabic.

• Write posts in Arabic, profiling and reviewing Arab originating startups and newly launched services by established companies in the Arab World.

• From time to time you will be conducting interviews with senior executives using email, IM, twitter, phone and even face to face meetings.

Qualifications:
• Passion to tech blogging in Arabic.
• Excellent Arabic and English.
• Tech savvy.
• Basic business and management skills.
• BA in Management, Marking, MIS or Computer Science is preferred.
• Having a personal blog is a plus.
• Management experience with a Web 2.0 or Mobile 2.0 company is a plus, plus.

Send your CV to Arabcrunch@gmail.com with 2 of your best written articles, and mention to me your favorite tech blogs.

Launched by Albawaba the Middle Eastern Portal, Sharekna is another free Arabic-English video and photo sharing website.

Sahrekna competes with a score of regional players such as: iKbis, Maktoob’s Clipat , Maktoob’s Zoom,  and d1g.com

The service allows users to store photos and videos up to 500 MB, and upload a maximum file size of 10 MB. According to the website FAQs. But on my dashboard it showed that my total available space is 1000MB? I do not know if this bug or if they forgot to update their FAQs.

Photo types allowed to upload are:Jpg, png, bmp, while video formats are: .MPG, .AVI, .QT, .MOV, .MPEG, .ASX, .MP4, .3GP, .FL.

When uploading photos and videos you can tag them and assign them to a category, or add them to an already created album.

One of the things I expected to find and was missing is the ability to add albums while you are uploading.

The website is still in version 0.1, so for now it only provides the basics. Here is the list of some of the missing important features:

• The ability to set the privacy to photos and videos, such as viewable by me only, friends or public.

• Other aspects of social networking features such as: Full profiles, the ability to add people, friends grouping, and sharing privacy within each group of friends, friend’s activity feeds. However the site allows you to send messages to other members.

• Groups: Where users can create  communities based on specific topic or interest. (Maktoob’s Zoom has this feature but not its Clipat.)

• RSS feeds of every thing from the most popular, each category and each tag, to user’s feed. Adding feeds will help users stay updated with their favorite content without visiting the site every time -A basic web 2.0 feature-. I recommend them to use Feedoor.com, to open, mix, edit and track their feeds. (Disclosure Feedoor is our sponsor)

• Bookmarking of videos and photos, with sharing and privacy options.

• Rating videos and photos besides the commenting feature currently offered.

• Embedding option to any web site or blog: This would increase traffic to the website.

• Adding Ajax to things like: Upload, messaging and so on. This will improve usability.

• Adding tags cloud to the homepage. I founded it on a single photo or video page but not on the homepage.

Other basic features not found: About us page, and no link to the Sharekna’s blog on the footer or the header of the site.

Most of the missing features are already available on Maktoob clipat, iKbis and d1g.com

I tried to search for any differentiation to the other regional players, but I did not find any.

According to Skarekna’s FAQ:

What makes Sharekna special?
We are proud to serve users in the Arab world and beyond. Our service is available in Arabic and English and we pay extra attention to content and community safety. You can always trust that Sharekna will be a safe, friendly, and fun place to host your pictures and videos and to connect with new friends.

But that thing is promised with all it competitor, and some of the most viewed photos are of women in bikinis, so where is the special community safety in  Sharekna?

Sharekna design is not cranky to the eye, but it does not have the feel of the modern Web 2.0 design. Their regional competitors have done much better job on that end.

Sharekna traffic rank on Alexa.com  32,885, which is close to iKbis 29,555, and much lower to its parent Albawaba, and D1G, while Albawaba’s rank is head to head with D1G.  But all of them disappear when compared to Maktoob’s ranking.

Albawaba’s traffic rank is ( 9,206 ) They were founded around the year 2000 before the dotcom bubble bust -almost the same time as Maktoob was founded and raised its first round of funding, and when Arabia Online the former Arab portal got around USD 26 million of funding- as a an Arabic/English portal offering things such as news, forums, web based email, and web guide. And a business site for the Middle East and North Africa region, called menareport.com.

Albawaba was the first in the region to add a blogging platform, but they were slow in adding and building other new services.

After about 2 month of testing ArabCrunch in Alpha version using blogger, we finally moved to beta and being hosted using the self hosted wordpress.

The beta launch came kinda late because I was busy with my life, and trying to sort out things. Now I will dedicate more time to ArabCrunch, and update it regularly with more great stories about Arab originating web 2.0 and mobile 2.0 startups and established companies.

The beta launch uses a nice custom theme, which provides many new features such as categories, tag cloud, and sponsoring. We also added pages, such as (submit startup) and (submit news) pages, where we allow startups and companies to notify ArabCrunch about their product(s)/service(s) and news using forms. While others can share with us tips of an inside news they have.

These new features are common in any professional blog, so it was necessary for ArabCrunch to have them in order to grow, and because blogger does not offer the same great features wordpress offers.

Under beta launch we will still have some bugs to fix, so bear with us. and stay tuned for our the full launch which is coming soon.

We have a list of features to add to our blog, and as time passes we will add them gradually.

If you are an Arab originated startup or an established company in the areas we cover, we would like you to notify us about what you do and what is new with, so we can profile and review you here, providing you with advice and help spread the word about you.

I thank every one who contacted me and giving their feedback. I also would like every one to help spread the word about ArabCrunch which in turn will help Arab originated startups to excel and grow. You can do so by doing the following:

1- If you are a blogger or a news reporter please write a story about ArabCrunch.
2- Email all your friends telling them about ArabCrunch.
3- Link ArabCrunch to your blog or websites.
4- Follow us on twitter here.
5- If you are using twitter, wawet, Brightkite, or any other microblogging platform, please do repost our posts.
6- Join ArabCrunch Group in facebookand linkedin and invite all your friends.
7- Social Media: Submit and vote posts from ArabCrunch on facebook, digg, reddit, stumbleupon, mixx or any of your favorite social media website.
8- Subscribe to our RSS feed here.
9-  Add ArabCrunch to Technorati.
10-Tell every one you know about ArabCrunch :).
11-Use any other innovative way to spread the word.

We also urge our readers to post comments to our posts, to create a conversation where every one can benefit from.

Finally, many thanks to Feedoor.com and its founder Mahomoud who made this release possible. And I thank them for being ArabCrunch first sponsors. We wrote about feedoor here. I ask everyone to open their feeds with feedoor, whether it is a blog posts or comments feed, social activity feed , or any other feed.

About feedoor:

Feedoor is the ultimate feed service where you can add many items, create and merge many feeds from outer sources with different feed formats (RSS,ATOM,RDF) in one single feed, you can also customize the look and the feel of your feed the way you want.

Wi-tirbe is the second WIMAX ISP operator to launch in Jordan covering west Amman only for now, The first WIMAX service was launched last year by Umniah the 4th mobile operator in Jordan.

Wi-tribe Jordan is a a subsidiary of the regional telecommunications company wi-tribe limited, which is a joint venture between Qatar Telecom (Qtel) Q.S.C and A.A. Turki Corporation for Trading and Contracting (ATCO) of Saudi Arabia.

At the beginning of 2007, wi-tribe Jordan secured a 3.6 GHz frequency license for Fixed Broadband Wireless Access (FBWA) in Jordan. and its WIMAX stations was supplied by Airspan Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: AIRN).

Current wi-tribe fees range from JD 17 a month for 256 Kbps to JD 40 for 2Mbps. full price range can be found here.

Today is the big day has started, but if you try now to download FireFox version 3.0 from Mozilla.org you would not be able, since hundreds of thousands are trying to download it.

Here is a secret link for you that enables you to download it now . (Size 17.2 MB)

FireFox has around 14,000 downloads a minute! This will put them well into the tens of millions of downloads in a 24 hour period if they can sustain it. Where they are poised to shoot a world record.

The some of the main features of Firefox v. 3.0 are: Fixed memory leak problem in Firefox 2: so it will use less of your RAM, much faster load times, a smart location bar: That suggests sites you’ve visited before or bookmarked when you type a URL into the address bar, better security against phishing and malware, and bookmarks can be tagged (When they can integrate it with delicious?)

Here is a list of all the new and improved features.

Firefox is the No. 2 browser with 18 percent market share compared to Internet Explorer’s 75 percent.

Most of our readers are FireFox users.

Nokia has introduced new Maps 2.0 services in the Arab region as part of Ovi, the company’s mobile internet service brand name.
Maps 2.0, the updated version of Nokia Maps has left beta stage and is now ready for consumers to download. Nokia’s mapping and navigation solutions give people navigation features, local content and world maps directly on their mobile device.

The service also mixes photos and videos with maps, whenever you take a pic or a video shot the software auto tags its geolocation- an idea I wanted to do years ago-

The service is available only on few Nokia phone models only, and you have to download the software on your mobile to activate the service. You can get it here.

The map will carry you photos and video on top of the locations taken from., for example: you took a shot down at a street in Dubai, and then went to Sharika and took more in different locations. You just use the map to see where they were taken.

You can also share your Videos/ photos with their location online, via embedding your map widget into your favorite social network and blogs such as myspace, facebook and blogger, and your startup pages such as netvibes.

Here is an example of how it looks like of a trip done by National Geographics:

Other features of the mapping service are important and handy such as the ability to search for addresses and interesting places, find the easiest way there, the ability to share your favorite hangouts with friends, and the ability to buy in-depth city guides and voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation. Another interesting features is the ability to send maps and directions to your friends’ mobiles - now there’s no excuse for them turning up late!-

Source:

# AMEINFO

# Nokia

# OVi