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• FOSSFactory: Collaborative Free Open Source Design, Development & Funding Community

  Published: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 15:34:45 GMT

  There is no doubt that open source movement is taking over the world, 72% web sites run on open source server Apache, wordpress the open source blogging platform based on PHP/MYSQL is the #1 blogging platform in the world. Major sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Google on open source software such as PHP, Python, Ruby and Java.

  FOSS stands for Free and open source software software that is liberally licensed to grant the right of users to use, study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code.

  Ontario, Canada based FOSS Factory comes to help accelerate open source and FOSS development by providing a social platform for people to collaborate on design, funding, and development of new open source software.

  The open source development community site helps anyone who wants get a certain software or plugg-in to be developed as an open source to post their ideas or sponsor a project/s with a certain amount of money while helping open source developers earn Cash for the open source work they do.

  

  FOSSFactory  lists current open source projects that users added, each project has its requirements, bugs/Subprojects where developers can report bugs that can be marked completed after solving them, Sponsors a table of the current project sponsors and how much they are welling to pay. Activity: a timeline with what is happing to the project, Submissions:  where developers and designers can submit solutions.

  The project view also displays current project lead, bounty, funding goal, related projects, and offers users to create subprojects, file a complaint, report a bug. And each project has a Git Repository. Users can vote projects up and “watch them” this adds them to  ”My Projects” section of the users personal workplace on FoSSFactory called “My Factory.”

  

  My Factory includes, the users duties, his projects submitted or followed, setting and the ability to add monthly sponsorship.

  Here how it works how FOSSFACTORY works:

  
  

  • Submit an idea or project:

  You can submit an idea and project, specify its functional requirements and if you want you can sponsor it by offering cash bounty in return for its development. Each project can also be divided into smaller projects sub-projects with their own own requirement. This helps make the project managed by smaller tasks, anyone can submit subprojects and they can be any of type: function, class, module, library, or even a completely separate executable program.

  • Each project has a “project lead”:

  The user who is responsible for keeping the project moving. his/her responsibilities include accepting/ rejecting requirements changes, review submissions and decide if they satisfy all project requirements. By default the project creator is the project lead, if that position is left vacant, any of the site members can become that person. perorate goes to members who hold the largest number of project credits.

  • Sponsorship:

  You can sponsor your project or any project, by using funds in your “reserver” a virtual currency that you can transfer money using PayPal. With Each dollar you contribute you get one credit, which helps you use inorder to become a project lead or to transfer credits to other members to help them become project leads of other projects. Our suggestion is that developers should get also credits for submitting complete projects. As they can also be good project leads.

  • Payments:

  In order for a developer to win the project allocated funds he/she must be the first person to provide a complete solution to the project as a single submission. The submission must satisfy all of the project requirements at the time of submission.

  But there is a”cool-off period” between the submission approval and the actual payment this could be between 24 hours to 2 weeks. The purpose of this delay is to give community members a chance to assess whether the project lead has made a mistake, or even acted in bad faith. During this interval, members can file a complaint if they believe there is a problem.

  As for completing a subproject, When a subproject is solved, the solver is paid the sum of any funds contributed directly to that subproject, plus its share of its parent project’s funds

  FOSSFactory implemented several methods to help solve disputes in case they arise between project submissions and its approvals/dispoovales and that can be found here.

  The site makes money from deducting a certain percentage from the transaction fees from all bounty payments, also a community deduction is a must whenever a project is successfully completed, as a certain % will be distributed among the top ten featured projects, or can be sent one of several open source charitable organizations.

  At ArabCrunch we are big fans of open source, we would not be able to be here without it. So kudos to FOSSFactory, however we would suggest a better visual display with arrows of how the open source community development works and if it is possible to make  the process less complex.

  FOSSFactory is founded by John-Paul Gignac, and Abdullah Bakhach, the startup lead investor is Steve Sutherland. The site source code is distributed under the GNU Affero General Public License and can be found here.

  You can follow FOSSFACTORY on arabcrunch.net here.

  
  

• “Israeli” Prime Minister @Netanyahu Joins Twitter & YouTube, Seems Not Knowing His Way Around!

  Published: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:54:28 GMT

  

  Following the steps by many politicians from around the world  and the region like Obama, Queen Rania, El Baradi or Hamas, “Israeli” Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu has joined Twitter, facebook and Youtube in what it seems a bid to open conversion with Israleis and thew world.
  “Social media channels are today vital to Israeli public relations, government transparency and keeping the public informed,” the prime minster’s bureau said in a statement the Israeli newspaper Haartz has received.

  
  @Netanyahu is where he tweets. His tweets include both Hebrow and English Tweets, but the guy seems not knowing his way around as at the time of writing this post -3:30 GMT- many of Netnayahu’s tweets include broken links to his facebook page that we could not find! Also his tweets include official non casual announcements which is not the common way among the tweeps, who mostly like casual less press release like tweets.

  

  @Netanyahu is following 423 users, being followed by 8,053 and listed in 687 lists. By Taking a quick peek at who he is following we see that most of them are Jewish “Israelis” or Jwish Americans such as United States Of America Senator Joe Lieberman who is  also Jewish  and Israeli early stage VC Ouriel Ohayon. We could not find any Arab or Muslims that netanyahu follows.

  

  On his Youtube channel the first video that appears date to the 11th of August where Netanyahu greats all Muslims in the Month of Ramadan.
  In the 31st of May an attack by Netanyahu’s Army on Fotilla aid ships headed to beasgaed Gaza strip resulted in killing a number Internettionla activists and that has caused the hashtags #freedomflotilla and #Gazaflotilla to trend on Twitter, despite the few hours  of “glitches.”

  The prime minister  office listed  aims with this entrance  are “transparency, public relations and public information.” Is Netanyahu enternce to social media world is to create transparency or will be used as a propaganda platform for his government policies?

  #Pic Via Haartez

• Facebook Population: Arabic The Fastest Growing, English Falls from The Majority Leadership

  Published: Mon, 30 Aug 2010 21:25:25 GMT

  Inside Facebook released few days ago its Inside Facebook Gold report, with data about membership and usage across the number 1 social networking site in the world Facebook.

  The report reveals the shift of Facebook population of more than 500 million users, from being dominated by US citizens and English speaking people to more of an international play ground.

  According to the report Arabic had the highest growth rate in August with around 18%  followed Portuguese by around 11%, this is due to the increasing number of Brazilian coverts from Google’s social network Orkut to Facebook, as Facebook is showing strong growth in Brazil.

  

  As for Arabic, despite that its high growth rate it is still the smallest of the top 10 languages, holding around 1%. Our source inside Facebook informed us few months ago that Facebook users from the Arab world stands at around 16-18 million users ( we will update you soon with the latest numbers.)

  

  English has dipped from holding 50% of languages on Facebook to 47.95%. The second language was spanish with 14.43%, then French with 5.26%, Turkish makes the 4th largest language on Facebook with 4.66%, while the largest Muslim country in terms of population Indonesia holds the 5th rank with 4.44%.

  That also means that  3 languages moslty spoken by Muslims ( Turkish, Indonesian and Arabic) make around 11% of facebook users holding the 3rd place ahead of French, which implies that facebook has to be more concerned about Muslims feelings with provocative stuff such as (draw Mohammad -peace be upon him- day on facebook) as someone like Millatfacebook might eat the lunch.

  This shift in Facebook population, also means that facebook is eating users from Google and Yahoo at the international level, which is a good news for Facebook and International social marketers alike, as ads on Facebook now can be targets to specific languages not just English.

  #via insidefacebook.

• New Aljazeera English Website Goes Live, What Do you Think?

  Published: Sun, 29 Aug 2010 22:19:30 GMT

  Aljazeera English is the first english news network to be headquartered in the Arab world (Doha, Qatar) the 24-hour  News TV network which is a division from the famous Aljazeera Arabic news channel has been doing some interesting stuff online in the last year or so.

  Just about few hours ago the English.Aljazeera.net has been relaunched with a much better design, navigation layout and more integration with Aljazeera English videos.

  The home page of Aljazeera displays the featured news ( Now it is Obama Marking Katrina Anniversary), breaking news on a ticker, below it other featured news, then videos, in-depth, blogs and programmes.

  

  The main toolbar makes it easier than in the pervious one  to navigate through the site and is divided into  news which cover all continents, in-depth, features a number of analysis point of views about hot issues, programmes which are Ajazeera (AJ) English video programmes such as Empire, Riz Khan and Inside Story. The Video section offers clips from Aljazeera English and can be filtered into a specific continent or programmes. Business section is more of a general business news than the other parts of the site but it also include business blogs and a special AJ English TV show.

  As for Aljazeera Blogs was launched in October 2009 offers different  point of views and analysis from Aljazeera’s correspondents around the world.

  

  The single story page view for the site has a left bar which includes boxes of things such as “what is hot” and “featured.” this help users find more stuff from Aljazeera English meaning more page-views for the site.

  Aljazeera English also offers its users the option to subscribe to its programmes via Podcast, watch live via mobile apps including iPhone, Windows Mobile and Symbian.

  PS: we asked Mohamed Nanabhay from Aljazeera English few questions about the new design and will update you once we get his reply.

  We liked the new design, how about you?

  
  

• iPhoneIslam Launches Arabic Keyboard for the iPad: Arabtaller iPad

  Published: Sat, 28 Aug 2010 15:42:13 GMT

  

  If you can not wait for Apple’s official iPad Arabic keyboard you might try jailbreak your iPad and use Arabtaller.

  iPhoneIslam the site behind the first Arabic version of jailbroken iPhone OS released the software yesterday, it allows you to type Arabic letters on your iPad using a visual touch based keyboard.

  The App price is 9.99 USD and  you can buy it from here. To install it follow these instructions from iPhoneIslam (At your own risk ArabCrunch holds no liability what so ever)

  1- open Cydia
  2- hit Manage then choose sources
  3- liick on edit then click add
  4- enter http://apps.iphoneislam.com
  5- click on add source
  6- click done
  7- you will see iPhoneISlam on the top
  8- you will find Arabtaller iPad
  9-  top left you will see install ciclk on it and then click confirm
  10- now click ReSpring
  11- now go to setting to add the Arabic keyboard
  12- click on settings then general then keyboards then International Keyboards
  13- click on International Keyboards and add the Arabic keyboard.

• Iraqi Official Sells School Computers, US Army Asks for an Investigation!

  Published: Sat, 28 Aug 2010 14:13:56 GMT

  

  The US occupation forces of Iraq asked for investigation for what it said an Iraqi official selling computers assigned for Iraq school kids.

  According to Aljazeera the US army said that an Iraqi official sold computers that cost 1.9 million USD in less than 50,000 USD in the 16th of august at Iraqi port Um Alqaser port.

  Iraq has made 41 billion US dollars in 2009 for crude oil sales, unemployment rate is estimated between 30 and 60%, while a poll in 2007 estimated the civilian death toll in iraq since US war in 2003 to be of around 1 million human beings.

  #photo by simminch.

• @clickabit Trending Links/Posts Shared Using Bit.ly?

  Published: Sat, 28 Aug 2010 00:51:55 GMT

  

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

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

  

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

• AdobeAir.me: A Directory for Adobe Air Applications

  Published: Fri, 27 Aug 2010 23:44:24 GMT

  

  If you are not familiar with AdobeAir it is a cross platform runtime environment developed by adobe for building and running rich Internet applications using Adobe flash, Flex, HTMl and Ajax and can run as desktop applications.

  The platform fame started with debut of Twitter desktop app such as Tweetdeck and Seesmic, both allow you to manage your Twitter account/s, lists search and so on from one place on your desktop.

  There are also many other desktop app that are based on Adobe Air, and there is where AdobeAir.Me from Egypt comes to aid, as it lists a directory of many adobe air applications in one place offering you the option to find them under different categories such as social networking, RSS readers, Design and so on.

  The site design is appealing, but we do not know if they will be able to attract enough visits to monitaize from ads.

  At a personal level I do not like Adobe Air desktop apps because they consume lots of resources, CPU and RAM, so that site might not be useful for me.

  AdobeAir.me is founded by Hosam Adel from Egypt.

• Paragon Software Launches The Famous Al-Mawrid Al-Qareeb Dictionary For iPhone & Windows Mobile

  Published: Thu, 26 Aug 2010 20:57:52 GMT

  Paragon Software Group, has launched the voice enabled Al-Mawrid Al-Qareeb Arabic-English and English-Arabic Dictionary Mobile app from the oldest and largest publishing house of Arabic books and educational materials – Dar El Ilm Lilmalayin.

  Al-Mawrid Al-Qareeb is now available on the latest series of Windows Mobile devices, iPhone and iPod touch (Apple versions include iPad support for early adopters), in addition to the version released in early 2010 for Symbian S60 3rd Edition and S60 5th Edition devices.

  

  Key Features of the app:

  • 33,535 words, phrases and definitions
  • Portrait and landscape views (for Apple and Windows Mobile devices)
  • English audio pronunciations prerecorded by native speakers
  • No Internet connection required – easy access anywhere, anytime and without any charges
  • English words are translated in any grammatical form
  • Read e-mails, documents, and web pages from the device and get word translations without leaving active applications (for Windows Mobile)
  • Touch screen support (for iPhone, Symbian and Windows Mobile devices)
  • “Fuzzy search” and wildcards (“*”, “?”, etc.) features help to find and translate words even if users do not remember the exact spelling.
  • Hyperlinks between articles and directions to easily switch between related entries
  • “Flash Card Quiz” to add new words to flash cards and test knowledge at leisure
  •  “History” feature displays the last looked-up entries
  • Possibility to clear “History” (for iPhone)
  • List of similar words in case of misspelling (for Apple and Symbian devices)

  OS: iPad, iPhone and iPod touch OS 2.0-3.X; Windows Mobile 6-6.5 Standard, Classic and Professional; Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC and Smartphone devices, Symbian S60 3.x – 5.0 phones.
  Price:
  Apple devices is available for 14,99 USD (11,99 EUR)
  Windows Mobile and Symbian is available for 39,95 USD (27,95 EUR)

• Google Forms Now in Arabic

  Published: Wed, 25 Aug 2010 12:27:12 GMT

  

  Google forms is part of google free web-based business suite Google apps, which offers anyone with easy tool to create questionnaire without any coding.

  You can send the send questionnaire via email and respondents can answer from an email message. The responses are saved in a spreadsheet and can be viewed graphically.

  

  Now forms can be sent in Arabic with right-to-left enabled and is ready to take right-to-left input.

• Video: Motorola Launches Milestone XT720 in the Arab World, A Droid Less Keyboard

  Published: Wed, 25 Aug 2010 11:11:36 GMT

  

  Motorola launched in United Arab Emirates its the QWERTY-less MILESTONE brother: Milestone XT720, called Motoroi  in other markets. MileStone is the non American name for Droid devices.

  Other countries in the Arab region will have the devices in the shelves in few weeks.

  The new device brings a 8 megapixel camera with Xenon flash, 720p video recording and Android 2.1.

  Milestone XT720 packs a 3.7-inch capacitive touchscreen with 480×854 pixel resolution and multi-touch support, 550  Update: upgraded to 720 Mhz ARM Cortex A8 processor, 8GBmicroSD, 256MB RAM, and 512MB ROM.

  

  As per connectivity it comes with the usual WCDMA 1700/2100, GSM 850/900/1800/1900, HSDPA 10.2Mbps (Category 9/10)/7.2Mbps (Category 7/8), EDGE Class 12, GPRS Class 12, HSUPA 5.76Mbps, MicroUSB, GPS with digital compass, Bluetooth Class.

  The device also offers HD video capture at 720p, video playback onto HDTV via HDMI cable, Talk Time (3G): up to 270 mins. Talk Time (GSM): up to 540 mins.

  Retail price is Retail Price AED 2699 (USD Approx. 739.45)

  Here is our video Interview with Motorola product manager Bashar Hafez where he show case Milestone XT720:
  



• HTC Launches HTC Desire in the Arab World

  Published: Wed, 25 Aug 2010 10:25:32 GMT

  

  HTC Corporation announced that it is introducing the HTC Desire in the Arab world. The HTC Desire comes with HTC Sense experience which is HTC’s UI customization of Google’s Android Mobile Operating system.

  HTC Desire comes with a large 3.7-inch AMOLED capacitive multi touchscreen display, powered by a one gigahertz Snapdragon processor and is Adobe Flash 10.1 ready. The HTC Desire also includes an internal 576 MB RAM; 512 MB ROM, a card slot for microSD, up to 32GB, 4GB included, Camera of 5 MP with LED flash, and optical joystick. The handset supports 3G, GSM and all the usual connectivity types : GPRS, 3G, WLAN, Bluetooth, MicroUSB 2.0.

  HTC Sense used in the device includes a widget called HTC Friend Stream that aggregates all social communication including Facebook and Twitter into one organized flow of updates. it also include Quran, Prayer time with Qibla Direction, Dictionary and a Hijri calendar.

  The HTC Desire will be broadly available at a retail price of 625.97 USD by the end of August 2010.

• AVG: Turkey and Russia Top Risky Places For Internet Surfers, Sierra Leone & Japan The Safest

  Published: Mon, 23 Aug 2010 23:17:38 GMT

  

  Internet security company AVG just released a study that looks at the safest and most dangerous places to be hit hit by a malicious computer attack or virus.

  According to the study the most dangerous countries for web surfers is Turkey with an average of 1 in every 10 users face a threat to be hit online, followed by Russia 1 in every 15 users, Armenia (1 in 24) and Azerbaijan (1 in 39). While some of the world’s safest surfers can be found in Japan and Taiwan and seven of the 10 safest countries in which to surf the Internet are in Africa.

  AVG said in a press release that data was taken from 144 countries, involving over 100 million PCs ( i think mostly Windows based), enabled AVG to look at the incidence of security threats that its software had to deal with in the last week of July. From these figures, AVG came out with an average for attacks per user per country.

  USA is at number nine when it comes to the riskiest places to go online where 1 in 48 people were hit by an attack , UK is ranked 31st (1 in 63), Australia 37th (attack ratio = 1 in 75) while German web surfers come in at number 41 (1 in 83).

  Sierra Leone had the fewest attacks with on average one in 692 web surfers facing an attack, Niger is second and Japan third with one in 404 facing an attack, is arguably the safest place to surf the net.

  As per continent the safest continent is Africa (1 in 108), and by a long way South America (1 in 164), North America scored 1 in 51. In Europe 1 in 72, while in Asia (including Asia Pacific) 1 in 102.

  VG spokesperson, Roger Thomson attributed the risks to a number of reasons,” the tendency to access semi-legal or illegal download sites, while some of it probably is down to being less cautious when it comes to sharing links and files online. Another factor is the popularity of Internet cafes and people generally sharing computers. However, it is safe to say that even in these countries, a minority of users account for a large proportion of attacks.”

  Thomson cities that the low attacks rates in Japan to the country’s broad-band high penetration rates and that Japanese web surfers are generally more aware of safe and risky surfing behaviors.

  As  for Arab countries, the numbers are: Iraq 1 in 49.6, Oman 1 in 54.9, Iran 1 in 55.4, Qatar 1 in 56.3, Yemen  1 in 64.9, Kuwait 1 in 74.6, UAE 1 in 80.5, Jordan 1 in 98.0, Saudi Arabia 1 in 110.5, Syria 1 in 181.4. The Global average is 1 in 73.

  The study can be found here.

• At The Time of Facebook Location’s Launch, Jeeran Ventures Into the Location Game But with No Check-in

  Published: Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:11:14 GMT

  

  The launch of facebook locations has taken lots of buzz, the service allows users to check in using their touch phones into different location, know where their friends are and get information about places and discover new ones. Facebook places competes head to head with startups such as NY based Foursquare, texas based Gowalla and Face2face ( our review of Face2face here.), Even though Foursquare and Gowala were appeased by beiing invited to show up at facebook launch event of facebook places and even though Foursquare , Gowalla, loopt, Face2Face and other social based localtion startups still preserve some differentiations such as badges and rewards while face2face focus is on privacy, But the entrance of a 500 pound gorilla into the locations business might killer to all of them as the facebook boost over 500 million active users.

  

  Indeed, most experts agree that facebook locations might be a killer to Gowalla and Foursquare, but having a 500 pound gorilla competitor such as facebook is one thing, when compared to the gigantic new competitor to ArabCrunch represented by the US state department, least to mention facebook has no CIA agents, but the US federal government do have over a million, who could be “or already put” into “good use.”

  Unlike the US market, Foursquare and gowalla adoption rate in the Arab world is somehow limited to a bunch of geeks and early adaptor but who seems to be in the rise, specially that Gowalla iPhone app is available in Arabic. which seems the reason behind Jordan based Internet company Jeeran decision to venture into the location market at the local level. As the site launched few days ago local Arabic social portal for the capital of Jordan Amman calling it: Jeeran Amman.

  

  Jeeran Amman, has 2 features right now: Amman Places and discussions. Amman discussions provides a forum for users to discuss city wide issues, but Unlike facebook Locations, Gowalla and foursquare. Amman places does not depend on users checking-in online or via smart phones, there is no checkin but rather user can add review of the location and “like” it or “dislike” it. However the value of the Amman Places is providing information about the place and see what people think of it. Something that facebook has now with its location services but plus check-ins.  Also unlike facebook locations, Gowalla and foursquare. On Jeeran  Amman Places users can not add a new location, but are already added by Jeeran staff. and users can not share photos on that location or leave tips or gain points and badges, or see who of their friends are around them.

  Jeeran places also competes also with Saudi Startup Qaym in terms that it provides a section for restaurants reviews.

  We called Omar Kudsi, Jeeran’s cofounder 2 times to get more information about Amman Places and whether they will also launch iPhone app with check-ins and launch places in other Arab cities, But Omar did not answer our calls.

  Jeeran’s venture into local sites comes after a series of new product launches: Jeeran Channels: news about cars, sports and so on. Jeeran improved it UI including a much better user profile, entered the Music business with Jeeran Music .

  Jeeran was started in 2000 with an Arabic clone of Yahoo’s closed geocities then ventured into blogs, introduced social networking aspect: profiles, the ability for users to share photos and videos, launched a poetry social site sejaal.com along with an Arabic digg clone called Khabbr.
  In an unpublished ArabCrunch video interview with Feroz Sanaulla Investment Director at Intel Capital which was made few month ago he said that Jeeran is the best performing company in his portfolio and wants them to over spend to gain more users. Intel Capital is the second investor in Jeeran.

  But can Jeeran local social sites make a stand to Facebook Places which has around 16 million Internet users in the Arab world?

  ( Disclosure: Jeeran is also venture backed by Jordanian Internet venture Capital firm IV Holdings, IV Holdings mother company Accelerator Technology Holdings was approved a 25 Million USD fund from the US federal government, The US State Department to enter into competition with ArabCrunch)

• Update: N2V First Investment is with UAE Based Web Wedding Startup Yebab

  Published: Mon, 23 Aug 2010 12:08:34 GMT

  Updated.

  

  There is no doubt at least to me that for any person wedding and getting married is one of the greatest blessing’s in life. Yebab help brides in United Arab Emirates (UAE) find various suppliers and services needed for the wedding, from caterers to dressmakers, artists, photographers and traditional musicians.

  Yebab is now entering its next face as it got the first investment round from National Net ventures N2V, the Saudi holding and investment company we wrote about back in June 2010. N2V investment in Yabab is the company’s first.

  The investment round was made in both cash and inkind, and will be used to expand Yebab in other Arab countries in the region and launch a new enhanced version of the site. N2V will also use its woman portal HawaaWorld.com to cross market Yabab’s services.

  Yebab makes money from advertising the site is already cash positives.

  Yebab is founded by serial Emirate entrepreneur Murshed Mohamed. Murashed’s other ventures are eMapia a location based marketplace  and Darrb a crowed sourced delivery marketplace that seems offline now.

  Update: In the press release site Murshed said the site has 200,000 users.

• Video- WikiLeaks: US Intelligence Planned to Destroy Us as Far Back as 2008, Smear Rape Allegations Dropped

  Published: Sun, 22 Aug 2010 20:30:51 GMT

  2 allegations hit Whistleblower website Wikileaks‘ founder Julian Assange in Sweden, the first one involves rape  but was dropped only after 6 hours.

  Wikileaks got famous after leaking 90,000 documents involves the war in Afghanistan around a month ago, and before that releasing video footage of a U.S army Apache Helicopter killing journalist in Iraq. Since then Obama’s administration has been publicly attacking the site and looking for ways to press criminal charges.

  Wikileaks said over Twitter“ Reminder: US intelligence planned to destroy WikiLeaks as far back as 2008.” The site on March 15, 2010 published a classified 32 page U.S. counterintelligence investigation reveled a plan in plotting to destroy the center gravity of the site by attacking its “trust” and credibility.

  In an interview with Aljazeera English Asang said  that Wikileaks was warned by Australian intelligence of such things. However, he said they do not have yet an evidence of CIA involvement in this allegations but called it “Smear.”

  Mentioning rape, many Iraqi prisoners accused US forces in Iraq of rapping them, while some CIA reports shows that rape threats where used as interrogation techniques by CIA operatives.

  Wikileaks prepares to release another 15,000 documents relating to the war in Afghanistan.

  Here is Alajzeera video interview with Assang:
  



• AqarMap.com Launches a New Version

  Published: Sun, 22 Aug 2010 14:42:47 GMT

  

  AqarMap.com a real estate startup which was launched in April, has launched a new version. The Yemeni startup differentiate it self from other players in the market by focusing in location and linking with google maps.
  The new version focus in making searching and access to information quicker ans easier.  Plus Adding a listing is has become more easier. Now all you need to do is type the city name to narrow your search quickly and then hit the location on the map to get info about the real estate.

  The startup also announced that it has achieved 600 registered Real Estate companies and brokers. AqarMap.com compete with 2.5 years Jordanian startup Aqar Estate which is supposed to launch a new version this month.

• Souq.com Launches Its Marketplace in Kuwait, Any Kuwaiti Can Become a Seller

  Published: Sat, 21 Aug 2010 13:17:41 GMT

  

  Souq.com was launched in 2005 from Maktoob group (Now Jabbar Group) as an auction site, it initially covered Jordan, then expanded into UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The site is not anymore just an auction site, but rather a marketplace for anyone to sell or buy, Souq.com supports many formats (auction, fixed price and Classifieds for the Real Estate and motor vertical.)

  Selling in souq sounds a straight forward 123 process: register, add product name, choose the payment method, done. Once a user buys your item, Aramex will contact the you to collect the item, once the the items is delivered to the buyer the funds will be released to your wallet, now it can be transferred to your bank account.

  Souq also has what is calls SouqSafePay, where it will release funds to the seller only once the buyer receives and approves the item.

  On the Kuwaiti store, Souq also has a storefront for Kuwaiti bricks and mortar stores where users can buy directly from them directly.

  Kuwait Souq is available in English and Arabic.

• Clarifying ArabCrunch Sharing Policy On Twitter & Facebook

  Published: Thu, 19 Aug 2010 22:33:38 GMT

  

  There have been some confusion among some our followers on Twitter and facebook about our tweets since we recently started to share our readers’ comments on ArabCrunch English and Arabic.

  

  Yes, we started to tweet our readers’ comments on ArabCrunch via our Twitter account, but that does not mean we necessarily agree with them, it is just to inform our Twitter followers of these comments and to offer our readers more visible voice. If anyone do not like the comment, he/she is welcomed to comment back on ArabCrunch.

  Normally when we share a reader’s comment, we start the tweet with “comment” or “commenter” or the user name depending in how best we can shrink the tweet into 140 characters, the limit that Twitter offers.

  On the Retweeting: We do retweet tweets from our followers and other places around the web, again that does not mean that we necessarily agree with the content of the tweet or the post. It is just that we find the Tweet or the post worth sharing or think it is of interest to read, again that does not mean we necessarily agree with the tweet’s content in fact in many occasions we do not. Example, if we stumbled into a post about “how Communists work with technology,” that does not mean we are communist, in fact we are NOT and we DO NOT have any political ideology or bias at ArabCrunch. But it would be of interest to know how communists use or work with technology.

  This also applies to our facebook page, as we also started to share with our followers some of our users’ comments and other posts from around the web.

  At personal user level, people need to note that if a person “Likes” a page or an update on facebook, it does not necessarily mean he/she really “likes” everything in that page or update, he might disagree with the whole update. But since Facebook does not have the text option of “follow” status update or “follow” a page many people will think that this person truly likes this page because the word is “liked”, which in many cases is not true. As again it might be something he/she likes to share or follow, however in other occasions he might truly like that post or update.

  We hope this post clarifies some of the confusion about the stuff we share on Twitter and facebook.

  Thanks,

• Yahoo! Promotes Pakistan Relief On Its Homepage, Google Doesn’t

  Published: Thu, 19 Aug 2010 15:34:08 GMT

  

  We wrote 2 times before about the floods in Pakistan that killed an estimated 1,600 people, made 4 millions homeless and affected  about 20 million human-beings.

  

  Yahoo! has joined the effort and added a link to its logo on its website to Pakistan Floods how to help Page on yahoo that offers a guide in how to help a long with a list of Organization that you can donate to and news and vidoes.

  Thank you Yahoo !

  

  As for Google it has setup a special web section for Disaster Relief in Pakistan, offering donations options and tools to help in the disaster such as look for someone, find someone, also Disaster Relief in Pakistan. Resource Finder is a tool to help disseminate updated information about health facilities and services

  This is the second time that Google failed with Muslims this month, before Bing beat them by featuring Ramadan images on its homepage. Google did not offer a Ramadan Doodle but a number of Chrome themes.

• Quran Links User Generated Classification of The Holy Quran Related Sites

  Published: Thu, 19 Aug 2010 14:48:43 GMT

  

  As we enter the 9th day of the holly month of Ramadan, Quran Links pops up as  a new site in English and Arabic for Muslims and interested non-muslims  offerring classified guide to Islamic and Quran related web sites. Visitors can suggest a new site, rate and add comments on an existing listed site. But the site already boost a number of Quran related sites in tags such as Video, Mp3, Quran Interpretation and so on.

  Quran Links owners say that the site is not for profit, does NOT belong to any political or any particular denomination. It’s developed by SADAF Technology Development from Gaza, Palestine, and is managed by a team of volunteers.

• Updated: Dushare: Cloud Based P2P File Sharing App

  Published: Wed, 18 Aug 2010 08:06:31 GMT

  Update: this site might be of a security risk, the site marketing personnel refused to provide us with his full  name or send us more details related  to security.

  They finally responded and here is the update:

  Update 2:

  We got this response from Dushare marketing team:

  How do you close the connection?
  1. The connection is closed as soon as the second peer refreshes his page after recieving file or closing the browser page.

  if the link is there in the cloud? how would we know that the user PC is not wide open to you guys or anyone?

  He is not open, we have implemented a 128-bit encryption algorith on the transferred packets.

  Another thing, the link can only be picked by one peer, no one else can coonect to it. You can also password-protect your files. And ones the sender leaves our page or doesn’t send another thing. All connections are closed.

  Let me explain in details:

  1. You pick a file, it gets prepped up and url is produced for you to send it to your friend/other peer.
  2. The file link is clicked on directly, http://www.dushare.com#45130 or can be retrieved by entering the code “45130″ in the “claim” part.
  3. upto to the point the url is produced, no security risk or any ports or sockets are sockets are exposed.
  4. When the other peer, click on the url link and connect to you. The data packets are encrypted using a 128-bit AES encryption. This encryption is required for any tampering of data  by a middle man other than the receiving
  peer.
  5.We expose no ports or sockets. Once the other peer picks up the file, no one else can pick up the file and url link is useless. You can even password-protect your files.

  The above explains the security part.

  As for the connection,

  You(sender) identify yourself with an id on the main server with your IP, then when the other peers picks the file, he has an ID, and IP, The actual data packets are transferred directly between ID 234 to ID 434 securely.

  We have no control and we cannot intercept the file transfer as its transferred directly from peer 1 to peer2. Even in the case, the data is tampered by a man in the middle. It is encrypted using a 128-bit AES encryption.

  I hope that clarifies your security concerns.

  Another addition, The url link cannot be picked by more than 1 peer. You can also password protect your files.

  Update 3:

  From dushare team: “With p2p technology you don’t have access of anytype to the peers pc. It’s simply sending and recieving data packets and decoding them.”

  
  

  

  There are different ways to share files with peers, coworkers and friends using tools such as torrents and ex- Google MENA Marketing Manager Nagi Salloum’s Loomn.it

  Dushare brings the concept of P2P (peer 2 peer) to the web and for free, no registration,  just hit upload any file of any-size and then share the key with your friend, he/she can join the link to chat with you while getting the file.

  Dushare claims that it does not see your files or chat logs as they rely on secure direct transferee connection between the 2 peers. Dushare also offers the option to protect your files with a password.

  Dushare is a product of DuLeaf FZE a United Arab Emirates’s Dubai Silicon Oasis based company. We do not know what is the startup model but we have replied to their coverage request and will let you know if they answer.

  On the file sharing front, Infinite USB Memory Drive (IUM) also from Dubai provides unlimited file transfer between devices using WIFI.

• Swedish Pirate Party Will Host Several New Wikileaks Servers

  Published: Wed, 18 Aug 2010 05:09:12 GMT

  

  Whistleblower site wikileaks that got famous after releasing 90,000 documents about the war in afghanistan (Afghanistan War Log) last month, but before that,  the site has been under fire and threats from US federal government officials publicly and secretly, specially after releasing a video of US Army Helicopter killing journalists in Baghdad. The main threat however is the site’s hosting.

  Today torrentfreak revealed that during Julian Assange Wikileaks founder visit to Sweden, Wikileaks signed a deal with the Swedish Pirate Party to host the site.

  “I love opportunities to demonstrate that one of the biggest differences between us and the other parties is that we positively leap at any and all changes to take real responsibility for changing the world, rather than just commission reports and avoiding blame like the archetypal politician,” Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak.

  Swedish Pirate party partnership might offer “much needed” help to wikileaks if it gets voted into Parliament next month as it could use Parliamentary immunity to run the site from inside the Swedish Government, making it impossible to take the site offline through legal procedures.
  According to Aasang the party might also help pass a legislation that guarantees press freedom by copying what he called “Iceland’s Modern Media Initiative” and might work in joint projects with Wikileaks.

  According to Wikipedia the Pirate Party (Swedish: Piratpartiet) is a political party in Sweden founded in 2006, strives to reform laws regarding copyright and patents. The party’s agenda also includes support for a strengthening of the right to privacy, both on the Internet and in everyday life, and the transparency of state administration Last year the part was 3rd largest political party in Sweden. The party has a EU parliament seat. and plans to launch anonymous, log-free ISP.

  There are dozens of Pirate Parties around the world.

  Wikileaks plans to publish before the end of this month another 15,000 documents relates to the war in afghanistan but this time, names of Afghan spies might be removed.

  # via torrentfreak.

• The Youngest Arab Entrepreneur:14 Years Old Kuwaiti Achieves 800,000 Downloads for His iPhone App

  Published: Tue, 17 Aug 2010 23:30:56 GMT

  

  His name is Abdulrahman AlZanki and Yes he is 14 and Yes he is Kuwaiti and Yes he is a teenager and Yes he rides BMX bikes and Yes he develops iPhone apps and Yes he learned it alone and Yes his iPhone game rechead 800,000 downloads.

  Abdulrahman AlZanki might be the youngest Arab and Muslim entrepreneur at the age of 14  ( as far as we know) and he is still in 10th grade but aims to go to Stanford once he finishes his high school. ( I do not think he will have any problem getting full scholarship.)

  At the age of 11 he started to learn how to make websites, according to Kuwaiti blog p0ach, he always loved playing games but always wondered how these games are made! So it took him  2 weeks to finish his first iPhone game, he didn’t have any programing experience before that, he learned it all by him self.

  

  His flagship free iPhone app Doodle Destroy was his most successful app, the game offers its players a goal to” keep the blue cube on the gray blocks. Tap to destroy the red blocks. While at it, the other blocks may fall or tip over based on real physics action. Good timing and smart thinking will help you to complete your goal.”

  With over 800,000 downloads Doodle Destroy reached the top 50 in the US App Store. It also reached the top 5 in many other countries in Europe. Doodle Destroy is averaging about 20,000 downloads per day. My other game “DoodleBounce” was also successful -Top 5- in Canada.

  Doodle Destroy is not the only iPhone game developed by Abdulrahman there many more with a price range of 0.99 cents: doodle destroy 2, bowAndArrow 2 , Lines Remover, Flying Taxi, Monkey Mood, Wood Destoryer, Lines Remover 2, Blocks Destoryer2, and Ibannana.

  The story of Abdulrahman shows that self driven interest and determination are the main ingredients for success, he made this achievement at the age of 14 while many computer  science graduates at the age of 23+ in Jordan, other Arab countries and even around the world can not write a single clean line of code!

  We will feature an interview Abdulrahman soon.

• July Stats: Google Leads the US Search Market at 66.2% Yahoo Second Growing at 8%

  Published: Tue, 17 Aug 2010 21:39:51 GMT

  

  ComScore the leading company for measuring web stats released today its July 2010 qSearch analysis of the U.S. search marketplace.

  Americans conducted more than 16.6 billion total core search queries in July with Google Sites leading with 10.3 billion searches growing 1% from June 2010, followed by Yahoo! Sites growing at 8% with 3.4 billion and Microsoft Sites with 2.1 billion growing at 1% from June.

  

  ComScorer base Total Core Search on the five major search engines, including partner searches, cross-channel searches and 
contextual searches. Searches for mapping, local directory, and 
user-generated video sites that are not on the core domain of 
the five search engines are not included in these numbers.

  As for Explicit Core Search, ComScore defines it as user engagement with a search service with the intent to retrieve search results. The stats as follows:

  

  Out of Nearly 15.6 billion explicit core searches were conducted in July, Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in July with 65.8 percent market share at 10.3 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 17.1 percent at 2.7 billion searches up 0.4 percentage points and Microsoft sites with 11.0 percent growth a 1.7 billion searches . Ask network captured 3.8 percent of explicit core searches at 588 million searches (up 1 percent), followed by AOL LLC with 2.3 percent at 365 million searches.

  #image via Stéfan.