This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.
Web apps are a friend to all who mash the keyboard from nine to five. They live in the cloud, are accessible from any Internet connection and are great for chopping those mundane work tasks off at the knees.
We’ve previously highlighted a batch of web apps that reduce the headaches and keystrokes associated with common tech chores, and after receiving some great feedback from readers, we thought it only right to hunt down a few more worthy bookmarkables.
See below for five more picks, and remember to leave your own time-saving web ditties in the comments.
Let’s face it: Your coworkers are annoying and their incessant chatter makes it hard to focus on anything but cat pictures. Sure, Keith from accounting is a nice guy, but enough about Idol already, you’re a grown man for God’s sake.
We kindly recommend SimplyNoise, a white noise generator you can fire up with one click, should the office get rowdy during crunch time. In actuality, the app can generate three different kinds of static noise: white, pink and brown. If you’re looking for warmer, less grating frequencies (like those found in a waterfall or an ocean), go with brown. The app even remembers your volume preferences.
The television is getting more interactive, at least for Comcast subscribers.
The cable company on Tuesday announced partnerships with Facebook, Intel and others to bring social media integration and application support to its content service, Xfinity TV.
“This new experience transforms the way consumers watch television with a new guide and user interface that makes the TV screen more interactive, personal and social,” Comcast stated in an official release.
Comcast’s current user interface is in dire need of an upgrade and pales in comparison to competitors, such as AT&T’s Uverse cable service.
Also in need of an update is the current crop of underpowered set-top boxes the company provides to its subscribers to access content, which are mostly manufactured by Motorola. Per the partnership announcement, Comcast will use an Intel-based set-top box, manufactured by Pace, to power both the new apps and the added integration with Facebook’s network.
The company did not mention anything about remote controls, which are known for having a plethora of useless and unnecessary buttons.
Comcast CEO Brian Roberts will give a live demo of the new service at the cable industry trade event The Cable Show Thursday, which will be available via live stream at 10 a.m. EST (7 a.m. PST) on Comcast’s website.
It is unknown at this time if the new service, which is already being tested in Augusta, Georgia, will integrate with Comcast’s recently announced plans to add Skype integration to its HDTV service, which the company announced Monday.
Filed under: Business and Technology, media, News, social, Social Media, VentureBeat
The startup landscape in the Middle East may be quieter than much of the rest of the world, but don’t let that deceive you. Behind the scenes, there are countless talented developers working on services, applications and websites, some of which not only cater to a Middle Eastern audience, but to the entire world. From sites built on the Groupon model, to video sharing sites, to browser extensions, there is no stone that has been left unturned.
That’s not to say that Middle Eastern startups aren’t working in the face of some pretty intimidating obstacles. The Middle East is still on the hunt for its Silicon Valley, and internet usage in the region is significantly lower in comparison to the rest of the world. But that number is slowly increasing, along with the number of awesome startups in the region.
There are a few startups that have been around for several years now, and they have demonstrated just how successful they can be. Maktoob was one of the first Middle Eastern success stories, bought by Yahoo to the tune of USD 80 million. Others such as Yamli, Bayt and many others have gained a strong following in the region over time.
We’ve put together a list, in no particular order, of 15 startups coming out of the Middle East which you should definitely keep an eye on.
Istikana
Jordanian based Istikana, an Arabic version of Hulu, offers full length video content in Arabic that is one hundred percent legal. As we’ve mentioned before, Istikana is not the first site of its kind catering to an Arabic viewership, but it sets itself apart by providing older content. With on-demand videos in a variety of genres from Cartoons and Theatre, to Comedy and Religion, take a trip down memory lane with some great Arabic classics or discover some shows you’re too young to remember.
The content has primarily come from Jordan, but from Egypt, Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia is on its way. With 3 to 4 new titles released on a weekly basis, you can constantly come back to Istikana and get your fix of Arabic videos. Istikana can also be accessed on the go from your iOS or Android devices.
Visit Istikana
Cashbury
Still in private beta, Cashbury is definitely one Middle Eastern startup you have to keep an eye on. Loyalty cards are still a popular marketing method to create brand loyalty in the Middle East. The guys behind Cashbury have come up with an environmentally friendly alternative, which will also come in handy for those of us who tend to accumulate several loyalty cards, and never end up using them, because we forget them at home.
Cashbury provides a smartphone app that ensure that your loyalty card comes with you no matter where you go. Business owners who want to get in on the action will have to pay a monthly fee of $9, which is likely less than what is paid to print loyalty cards themselves.
Visit Cashbury
Offerna
With Groupon leading the way in the group buying phenomenon, it’s no surprise that several Middle Eastern specific group buying websites have made their way to forefront of the region’s market. A few have stood out, one of which is Cairo-based Offerna, whose name literally means “Our Offers” in Arabized English. Originally slated to launch in January 2011, Offerna’s doors officially opened in March, offering deals in its home town, there are plans to expand throughout the Middle East.
The site has already met with resounding success in Egypt, with offers selling out in a matter of hours, despite the fact that e-commerce is a niche concept in the country. The success is atributed to knowing the Egyptian consumer and givng them what they want. Available in both Arabic and English, the site offers a daily deal, with purchases including restaurant, spa and workshop discounts.
Visit Offerna
Gonabit
The first company in the Middle East to cash in on the group buying craze, Gonabit started out in Dubai and has now expanded into several other cities across the region. Gonabit has several firsts to its name, including being the first to break into certain markets, including Kuwait, Lebanon and Jordan, as well as being the first site of its kind to offer an Arabic interface. Like Offerna, Gonabit offers a daily deal for each of the cities it caters to.
Visit Gonabit
Nahel
E-commerce has finally come into its own in the Middle East with several major online retailers that have Middle Eastern consumers turning to the Web instead of the mall for their shopping needs, such as Souq.com and Otlob Mall. Nahel entered the e-commerce scene in 2009, and looks to be a true contender for Souq, offering a variety of products to online shoppers from electronics to books to health and beauty products. The sheer volume of brand names, including Apple and Blackberry, is bound to make Nahel a huge success in the region. The UAE based site caters to a local audience, while also offering international shipping on all products via Aramex.
Visit Nahel
Marginize
Marginize is a browser extension that gives you a space to interact with other users who visit the same sites as you. Taking a page from location-based social networks, you can “check in” to a site, and leave a comment about it. Like FourSquare’s Mayor incentive program, the most active Marginize participant for each site becomes its ‘curator’.
In addition to Marginize user comments, you will also see what is being said about the site on Twitter. Based in the US, with a Lebanese developer at its helm, Marginize is one of the Middle Eastern startups which has gone beyond the region and has been met with resounding success throughout the world.
Visit Marginize
Genieo
Based in Israel, Genieo is a great news app that studies the stories that you read and generates a personalized website, or as they put it, newspaper, just for you. Genieo’s accuracy is impressive, and not only gives you an interesting way to keep up with your favourite sites, it also allows you to discover new sites you may have overlooked.
After downloading and using the browser extension for a while, you’ll find a wealth of articles and information waiting to be read, without having to lift a finger. Genieo is Windows and Mac compatible and works with Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari and Opera.
Visit Genieo
Edufina
Edufina is a Jordan-based bilingual hybrid site, providing a forum, news updates, and basic information on universities in the Middle East. The site aims to become the one-stop shop for all university-related information from the region, for students, parents and educators.
Prospective students can compare up to 3 different universities at a time when choosing the right college. The site, however, isn’t without its glitches. The search function doesn’t seem to be working, and the profiles of many of the listed universities are far from complete. If these kinks are worked out, the site could become an invaluable tool for students throughout the region.
Visit Edufina
Aqar Map
Aqar Map is one of the best realtor sites available for a Middle Eastern audience. Based out of Yemen, the site caters to anyone looking to buy or rent a space throughout the region. You can search for apartments, villas and even land by city. Your search results can be further narrowed down by real estate for sale or for rent. Aqar Map takes out the need for a middle man and becomes your very own personal real estate agent, whether you’re looking to sell or buy.
What really makes the site useful is the fact that sellers not only announce their prices up front on the site, they also place images of their spaces online so you’re fully informed about the space before you decide to go and take a look.
Visit Aqar Map
Mimix
Still in its early stages of development, Mimix, the winner of the 2010 Global Startup Battle, is a Lebanese startup which, once launched, could aim to bridge a language barrier that we don’t often think of. A desktop application, Mimix translates both spoken and written words into international sign language. To begin with, Mimix is focusing on translating the English language into sign language, with the ambitious plan of expanding into translating other languages into various sign languages and dialects.
Visit Mimix
Nakhweh
Nakhweh is a community service website which makes it easy for volunteers to find an organisation to get involved with. NGOs and civil service societies can sign up for free, putting out a call for volunteers, telling people exactly what they’re looking for. So far, the Jordan based website only has listings from Jordanian organisations, but there is an amazing amount of potential in the site to really make a difference throughout the region. Nakhweh has also launched a blood drive in order to link blood donors with those in need.
Visit Nakhweh
Kngine
Kngine is an Egypt-based search engine which does things a little differently. Rather than yield search results based on rank, Kngine is a semantic search engine which tries to understand what you’re looking for by analyzing your search terms and how they relate to each other. Kngine has met with great success despite having some pretty stiff competition from other similar sites around the world, such as DuckDuckGo.
Visit Kngine
Shofha
One of Istikana’s main competitors in the market is Shofha, which was the first site of its kind to launch in the Middle East. The site, available both in English and Arabic, offers a variety of full length films, both old and new, with most if not all of them Egyptian in origin. However, unlike Istikana, you do have to pay to download or stream the films. You can buy, rent or stream movies on Shofha, but in order for the site to work, you have to have Microsoft Silverlight installed.
Mustalahatak
Mustalahatak is a recent addition to the Arabic web, and if it receives enough contributions, it has the potential to become the leading authority in Arabic tech terminology. Any Arabic speaker knows how English technology or Internet related terms are simply Arabized. Rather than twist an English word to suit an Arabic accent, Mustalahatak (which literally means ‘your expressions;), uses crowd sourcing to translate these words into Arabic.
While the interface certainly leaves something to be desired, this can be overlooked (for now) because of the site’s potential. To contribute your own translations, you can either sign up for a free account, or connect the site to your Facebook account.
Visit Mustalahatak
Mawaly
Mawaly is a site that any Arabic music buff should have bookmarked. The site is pretty much your one-stop shop for everything you need to know about your favourite Arab singers. With Mawaly, You can stream thousands of songs, watch music videos, and keep up with the latest industry gossip and news. Mawaly is 100% legal, but in order to take advantage of the site’s features, you will have to sign up for a free account.
Available only in Arabic, our hope is that they will eventually launch an English version of the site, so non-Arabic speakers can get a taste of the latest in what Arabic pop music has to offer.
Visit Mawaly
Do you have any favourite startups coming out of the Middle East? Let us know in the comments.
While pursuing our passion for making things that bring value to millions of people, we built mobile apps to address the needs of non-profits, open government initiatives, etc. We realized that the apps we were thinking of creating, were in the same class as the millions of next-gen mobile apps. These apps are going to use backends because they will upload/download data, use location and social information, and buy and sell things. To do all this, the mobile app has to connect to a backend stack, but building a backend stack sucks. We decided that we were going to make it ridiculously easy for developers to set up, use and maintain backends for mobile and tablet apps. We call it Backend as a Service.
-Kinvey Founder and CEO Sravish Sridhar
Kinvey is one of the brand new companies about to launch out of TechStars, an incubator program in Boston (MA), Boulder (CO), New York City (NY) and Seattle (WA) that has helped numerous companies attract over $25 million in venture capital and angel investment. Kinvey, a company that has created a cloud backend service for mobile apps, will be graduating from this spring’s Boston class.
Kinvey pronounced like convey is a “Backend as a Service” that makes it incredibly easy for mobile app developers to focus on making beautiful, user-friendly apps. Kinvey is betting that the next generation of wireless devices and apps will empower billions of people across the world in ways that will change the face of learning, communication and commerce and that Kinvey will be the hub of that change.
Sridhar and his co-founders came up with the idea in September 2010 and started building the first version. They spoke to hundreds of mobile app developers for input and found that every mobile developer just wants an API. They don’t want to figure out platforms, stacks and tools and how to put those things together. They want to focus on the application and user interface.
Let’s say you’re a mobile app developer who wants to create a fictional app called Videogram. The developer would tell Kinvey, I want the app to take video, upload it, geotag it and then allow it to be pushed to social networks with commenting features. The developer has a a choice on whether he or she wants to store that video on Amazon, Rackspace, or any other cloud service or leave the decision up to Kinvey. In 10-15 minutes, Kinvey sets up a backend to Videogram. The ability to auto-generate those APIs from models is Kinvey’s secret sauce.
Imagine you want to paint your home. With Kinvey, you’d pick the colors, click on the walls and all of a sudden you’d see your house in various colors. Kinvey lets developers focus on writing beautiful client applications by providing a dynamic backend including data storing, location and social networking tools.
Watch Kinvey’s video for more:
“I completely bought into the fact that mobile applications are going to change the world that we live in and what mobile technology in general can do for the developing world,” says Sridhar. “Myself and my cofounders knew we wanted to take this company to the next level from day one so we decided that an accelerator program would be the best way. We got so excited when we found TechStars. The best thing about TechStars is [Director] Katie Rae. She is absolutely amazing. World-class entrepreneurs and investors in Boston spent a lot of time working with us to help accelerate our business, in large part, due to the respect they have for Katie and the reputation she has in the Boston startup community.”
The Kinvey team was new to the Boston area. In a period of just a few months, they built a network of a few hundred technical, marketing and startup gurus, who have all helped them personally and professionally. In the future, Kinvey wants to be the de facto data hub for all mobile data. Once they accomplish this, Sridhar says there will be plenty of monetization routes.
Previous to Kinvey, Founder and CEO Sravish Sridhar was a part of the founding team at United Devices and wrote software that harnessed computing power on over 3.5 million PCs to conduct cancer research. He is also the founder of We Flap, a non-profit that helps other India-based non-profits tap into the social graph. Sravish, who grew up in India, met his CTO Morgan Bickle and Creative and Marketing Director Ryan Light at the University of Texas.
So far, over 100 developers have signed-up for Kinvey’s private beta. For now, the service is free for private-beta users and they will announce pricing after going live in the fall, which could be anywhere from a few thousand dollars a month down to a dollar a day depending on the complexity of the app. Developers will only start paying when their application goes live. Not wanting developers to ever feel stuck, Kinvey will always have the option for a one click “export all data” in multiple formats, allowing the developer to delete their account (thus losing backend support) and walk away with their app, completely free of cost.
Interested in joining the closed beta? Sign up here.
TechStars’ Demo Day in Boston will take place on June 15th, 2011. As the guys have coined this term “backend as a service,” expect quite a bit of humor during their presentation. TNW’s Brad McCarty will be there to report.
Read more on TechStars, don’t miss:
An interview with: TechStars’ David Cohen on startup rockstars.
TechStars: The next great incubator unleashes 11 startups in NYC.
TechStars Boulder: Inside the magic and mentorship of the top startup accelerator.
In the same way Facebook connects people and provides a platform for developers to build applications, Scandit, a Swiss-based barcode scanning startup is creating a similar marketplace connecting people with products whilst enabling developers to use the ScanditSDK to build and monetize apps using their barcode scanning technology.
Mobile product interaction is hot property in the technology industry right now, with a number of startups trying to converge offline-online consumer experience. eBay acquired bar code scanning startup RedLaser last year in a move that will help eBay add to the $1.5billion revenue it made via mobile payments in 2010.
Endorsed by the global barcode standardization organization as its preferred technology, Scandit claims to be the fastest, most reliable barcode scanning technology that doesn’t require autofocus, which means it still works well with devices like the iPhone 3G or the Nokia E7. The orientation detection means it doesn’t matter which way you hold the product when scanning be it sideways, upside-down, or curved.
The company also offers real-time analytics in the form of Scanalytics which feeds back data from applications about the products people are scanning, how often they scan and the scanning location so developers can better understand their customer’s behavior and needs.
For developers on a tight budget the company has developed an ad-supported price plan which means developers get access to Scandit’s technology for free to develop apps on iOS, Android and Symbian/Qt. Revenue for Scandit comes in the form of advertising revenue share and licensing of the SDK for iPhone and Android platforms, Scandit will also create value in building an aggregate database of consumer information from all the applications developed on it’s platform.
In the video above I test out the app and speak to the company’s CEO and co-founder Samuel Mueller.
” src=”http://5.mshcdn.com/wp-content/gallery/5-more-handy-web-apps-to-save-you-time-at-work/vector-magic-640.jpg”/abrbrpImagine this crazy scenario: The boss needs you to print up event flyers, but all she has is a tiny 100 pixel logo from the corporate website. (I warned you this was going to get emcrazy/em.)br br Resizing this graphic with standard imaging software will render it pixelated and unprofessional. What you need is a vector asset — a mathematical representation of the logo that a graphic designer would use to scale the image at any size without sacrificing quality.br br Vector Magic is a remarkable little app that translates standard web images (JPG, GIF, PNG, etc.) into scalable vector art. We gave it a shot with Mashable’s logo, and the results were impressive and crisp. Mileage may vary depending on the complexity of the image, but even small, multicolored icons made great vectors in our testing. Photographs might get dicey, but it’s worth a shot.br br Vector Magic packs a bit too much power to be totally free, but you get the first two vectors on the house, and a basic account is only $7.95 per month for unlimited use — well worth it, especially if you’re making a lot of PowerPoint presentations or websites./p brh43. a href=”http://dummyimage.com/”Dummy Image/a/h4 br a href=”http://mashable.com/2011/06/22/web-apps-office-work/#175533-Dummy-Image”img width=”400″ style=”border:none” title=”3. ” src=”http://7.mshcdn.com/wp-content/gallery/5-more-handy-web-apps-to-save-you-time-at-work/dummy-image-640.jpg”/abrbrpSpeaking of images, are you ever building a presentation or website and find yourself in need of a visual placeholder? You you’ve got a killer stock handshake photo coming, but right now you’re just getting your layout down, and the measurements need to be precise.br br You could fire up ol’ MS Paint, slice out a 600 by 300 pixel box, color it red, save it to your computer, open PowerPoint, import the image, what did I name the image?, I swear I just saved the image, is it in My Pictures?, I can’t find the image, seriously where is this thing, restart MS Paint, emad infinitum/em.br br emOr/em, you could snag Dummy Image from your bookmarks bar, type in your dimensions and drag the graphic onto your slide.br br I think we’re done here./p brh44. a href=”http://simplynoise.com/”SimplyNoise/a/h4 br a href=”http://mashable.com/2011/06/22/web-apps-office-work/#175554-SimplyNoise”img width=”400″ style=”border:none” title=”4. 
The television is getting more interactive, at least for Comcast subscribers.
