Startup Accelerator Oasis 500 Open Its Doors to Applicants From Any Country
In June Former Chief Data Officer of Yahoo Dr. Usama Fayyad and current Chairman of Arab portal d1g that a technology startup accelerator in Jordan will launch in August this year. But now Oasis 500 website has been launched accepting applicants from entrepreneurs anywhere in the world, for its first round of a 6 days entrepreneurship training program.
The training program is offered for free, candidates who successfully complete the course will be eligible for incubation and funding of 14,120.30 USD (10,000 Jordanian Dinar -JDs-) for 2 month period. In return Oasis 500 will take 10% equity of the startup.
After the two months, an additional follow-on funding (average JD 50,000 – 70,641.42 USD-) will be available to a small subset of entrepreneurs, as determined by Oasis 500 investment committee, to obtain further incubation and preparation for an angel investment round.
The incubation period is at the new King Hussein Business Park in Amman Jordan and includes internet and hosting,legal advice, and mentoring is offered during incubation. Another rounds of investments are possible on pitching to more angels investors.
We do not know what is the exact date of the first training program as Dr. Usama was unavailable since he is traveling. We did a video interview with him, but we did not post it online yet, due to some technical difficulties including the horrible status of Internet speed in Jordan.
Oasis 500 aims to launch 500 startups in Jordan in 5 years. Here is the application and this has more details about the program.
ArabCrunch Selects Spirula Systems as a Server Side Security Partner
I am happy to have Spirula Systems as our servers admin partner, I recommend them to anyone, here is the press release for immediate publishing:
Amman, Jordan – Alexandria, Egypt. ArabCrunch – the number one tech, startup social media and mobile a English & Arabic blog, social network, and events in the Arab world – announces today forming a new partnership with Spirula Systems, the new rising Egyptian startup focusing on system administration and security.
Founded in 2008 ArabCrunch is the only entity from the private sector in the world that is fully dedicated to empower entrepreneurs, startup, tech professionals, and geeks in the Arab world, and emerging markets via its network of sites and events. With over 100,000 page-views per month today ArabCrunch includes: ArabCrunch EN, ArabCrunch AR, ArabCrunch.NET, ArabCrunch DEMO and ArabCrunchStart global events.
In April, ArabCrunch EN which is ranked 6th in the world in blogs about innovation, has been under massive DDoS attack followed by penetration attempts, Since then Spirula Systems played a pivotal role in defending ArabCrunch servers.
“We are proud to partner with a company that helped us during the hard time of the criminal massive DDoS attacks that brought down Arabcrunch.com site for few days, the attack was followed by penetration attempts” Said Gaith Saqer Founder and Editor of ArabCrunch.
Spirula System will bring its staff’s extensive experience in systems security and server administration to manage ArabCrunch servers and defend them from future and current cyber threats and attacks.
“Unfortunately there are people with bad intentions online, who keep using sophisticated techniques to bring down many useful and innovative sites, with this partnership we will stay on top of threats that ArabCrunch servers face and offer our expertise in defending them.” said Ahmed Mekkawy, founder & CTO of Spirula Systems.
In his part Saqer said ” Our partnership with Spirula will help us focus on continuing to serve our readers and members with breaking and insightful unbiased news and analysis and great apps and events.”
-end-
About ArabCrunch:
ArabCrunch Group’s mission is to inform, impact, inspire and create an Arab centric technology ecosystem that delivers unbiased information, empowers and connects Arab entrepreneurs, geeks, and technology professionals, both in the region and throughout the world via its properties, ArabCrunch En and Arabic blogs ArabCrunch.NET and its events.
ArabCrunch EN:
The ultimate source for Arab tech startups, companies, social media and mobile in the Arab world.
In 2009 ArabCrunch EN was ranked according to postrank as the in the top 24 worldwide engaged blogs ahead of Financial Times, WallStreet Journal and Forbes blogs about Entrepreneurship. Today ArabCrunch is ranked #6 worldwide in the blogs about innovation, 7th in e-commerce, 10th in the startups category according to invest.
ArabCrunch.NET
ArabCrunch.NET is the first and largest online social platform dedicated to connect and support technology companies, entrepreneurs, geeks, scientists, academia and investors in the Arab world.
Spirula Systems is a startup that is located in Alexandria, Egypt. Following the professional open source business model, and embracing free software values, Spirula aims to support the small to medium business switch its IT infrastructure – or part of it – to the use of open source software. This support varies, starting from switching the systems and being the second level support, to designing complicated structures spread across multiple geographical locations and operating such a system so as to keep it secure and to help maintain its high performance.
Supporting the local free/open source software communities is a commitment that we have taken upon ourselves, as without such communities all the software we use would not exist.
Our mission is to support and encourage business decision makers in adopting Free/Open Source Software, by offering high quality, reliable, and affordable services. While our vision to achieve that is to give systems, security, and infrastructure services to small-to-medium businesses, while targeting the local market, the MENA region, and the whole world.
جوجل و CIA يستثمران في شركة تتنبئ بالمستقبل من خلال الويب
صحيفة ول ستريت جورنال تؤكد أن جوجل تطور شبكة إجتماعية ،جوجل مي؟
كثر الحديث عند متابعي الويب عن نية جوجل دخول سوق الشبكات الإجتماعية لمجابهة خطر فيبسوك الداهم وذلك بعد فشل جوجل بز أو صدى جوجل وصول عدد مستخدمي فيسبوك ٥٠٠ مليون شخص. فتارة إسم المشروع جوجل مي، و لكن آخر تسريب كان عن نية جوجل إطلاق جوجل ألعاب و إستثمارها في شركة زينجا مالكة ألعاب مافيا [...]
PadPress باد برس إضافة ورد برس تظهر مدونتك كتطبيق أي باد
Opera State of the Mobile Web World Cup Edition: iPhone Top in US, Nokia Top in Africa, Russia and China
Opera the oldest independent Mobile browser company today published it’s State of the Mobile Web Report World Cup Edition, a report that offers deeper inside into major mobile web browsing trends, this time the report focus is worldcup and Africa. In Africa Mobile phonepenetration is higher than PC penetration.
In june 2010 Opera Mini had over 59.4 million users, a 3.2% decrease from May 2010 but an increase of 124.7% since June 2009. Opera backs the slight decrease in key metrics “can be traced to certain countries where we have experienced some technical and political challenges that now are about to be solved.”
As for how many pagesviews Opera Mini users viewed the number was over 27.3 billion pages in June 2010. Since May, page views have gone down 3.4%. Since June 2009, page views have increased 161.8%.
According to the report Africa is seeing an explosive mobile browsing growth, where Sudan and Ghana lead the top 12 countries of the region in terms of page-view growth (4,645.6% and 916.5%, respectively). Sudan and Ghana also lead the top 12 countries of the region in growth of unique users (1,225.0% and 498.8%, respectively). Kenya leads the top 12 countries of the region in page views per user, with each user browsing 639 pages on average each month
The top 12 countries using Opera Mini in that region are South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Ghana, Sudan, Libya, Tanzania, Ivory Coast, Namibia, Mozambique and Mauritius. from June 2009 to June 2010, page views in the top 12 countries in Africa increased by 182%, unique users increased by 124%, and the amount of data transferred increased by 160%.
Other findings of the report:
- Facebook, Google and YouTube all do well in Africa. Facebook is the top-ranked site in six of the twelve listed countries, and Google is ranked #1 in the remaining six countries.
- Nokia remains the most popular handset brand in Africa, followed by Sony Ericsson, Samsung, and LG.
- iPhone is the leading handset for Opera Mobile users in USA fowled by BlackBerry 8330 (“Curve”) and then BlackBerry 9700 (“Bold”), Samsung SPH M810 (“Instinct s30”), Nokia 5130 XpressMusic ranks 9.
- Most Popular sites in USA: google, Facebook, youtube, wikipedia, yahoo, my.opera.com, accuweather.com, nytime, Twitter then Myspace.
- Russia:Nokia is the top handset first Nokia 6300 followed by Nokia 5130 XpressMusic, Nokia 5310 XpressMusic, Nokia N73, Nokia 2700c. Topsites are vkontakte.ru then yandex.ru, google comes 5th.
-China: all tops 10 handsets are Nokia starting with Nokia 5130, top sites are : kaiqi.com then baidu.com, google comes third.
-Egypt: saw Unique-user growth since June 2009: 158.5%, all top 10 handsets are Nokia, top sites are google.com, Facebook, youtube, getjar, ketomob, yahoo, yallakora 7th.
- Sudan: saw Unique-user growth since June 2009: 1,225.0%, top 10 handsets all Nokia, tops sites: google, Facebook, youtube, ketomob, gear, live.com, bbc.co.uk. my.opera.com, yahoo.com and wikipedia 10th.
- Libya’s 10 top handsets are all Nokia top 3 sites: google.com, youtune and then Facebook.
- The top sports sites visited by Opera Minin users in June 2010: goal.com then, livescore, fifa.com, m.championat.ru, m.espn.go.com
Opera also held its first Opera Mini Mobile Web World Cup. Opera used per capita mobile browsing figures to determine the match winners. The results were quite different from the real games, with Chile and Argentina advancing to the final match. Chile squeezed by Argentina by just 4.1 pages-per-user on that day to win.
More stats on the report’s page here.
مصروفي تطبيق الويب لإدارة المصاريف الشخصية
كوبون: مشروع جبار الجديد للتجارة الالكترونية سيقدم عروض لسلع وخدمات محلية من خلال الشراء الجماعي
From Syria, Msrofi Mint for the Arab World
There is no doubt that it would be useful to track down your personal daily expenditure along with your income, as it will help you manage your income and expenditure in a better way.
This is what Syrian based startup ’s offers to the Arabic user, you enter your expenditure under a certain category say: mobile credit at the end you see a graph of your expenditure inline with your income.
Unlike US based which pulls your financial data (bank, credit card, mortgage, loan and investment transactions from over thousands US financial institutions) daily and automatically, on Msrofi you have to enter it manually.
It would be very difficult of Msrofi ( which means my expediter in Arabic) to offer such service in the Arab world as Mint, since the financial system in the Arab world is not fully online and we do not know if for example banks offers APIs for third parties to use. But its worth the effort for creative web group to peruse.
Mint was acquired by Intuit for $170M USD. the startup which was founded by Aaron Patzer received investments of 31 Million USD.
Creative web group is founded by Syrian entrepreneur .
Cobone a New Group Buying Startup From Jabbar to Compete with GoNabit
It seems the growing success of Dubai based e-commerce group buying startup has opened Jabbar group appetite to enter the market with a new startup called
Jabbar group which emerged after Yahoos’ acquisition of maktoob receiving an investment of 20 million USD from the old owner of maktoob includes the : souq (auction site) ikoo ( online ad network) CashU (payment card) Tahadi (Arabic games), Sukar ( private e-commerce club)
GoNabit is founded by ex-bayt’s head of its venture arm and has received investment from Bayt. our recent interview with Dan.
In few words Group buying works by offering time limited deals, if enough people join to buy the deal everyone gets it, if not no one is charged. The key is ti viral promote the deal across social media an email, which helps the site grow quickly.
Both Bayt ( leading regional job recruitment site) and Jabbar has NewYork based Tiger Global Management as the same investor, Jabbar’s CEO is Jordanian entrepreneur and angel investor
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