Daily Deals in Egypt Made Easy

December 8, 2011 Leave a Comment

No wonder if you are confused with the huge number of daily deal sites in Egypt! Group buying is growing everyday in Cairo and people usually get lost in the flood of emails and newsletters they receive from these sites. Wouldn’t it just make our lives easier if we can access all these daily deals in Cairo from one place?

Finally a website called Offeratak - which means your offers is offering this service for free… All you need to do is just subscribe with your name and email in 5 seconds and baaang! You’re done.

This video demonstrates how Offeratak works by collecting the daily deals from Egypt

 

Filed under Daily Deals, Fun Stuff, New Technologies Tagged with , ,

Egypt Yellow Pages App Released on BlackBerry App World

May 19, 2011 Leave a Comment

One month after the launch of BlackBerry App World in Egypt, Egypt Yellow Pages have released the BB App on the App World. This is one of the first BlackBerry applications (perhaps the first one) that are submitted from Egypt. This application launch was a developed by a brilliant new Egyptian startup called Apptitude.

What makes our BlackBerry application unique is not only being one of the first Egyptian publishers to join the App World, it has also been developed based on the community demand on different social networking sites especially Twitter… Our twitter friends joined out application beta testing program and provided us with very useful feedback and many additional features to add. Also their ongoing support helps us to add more features and make the application better….

A big thank you to our list of honor beta testers:

Mostafa khaled Beige

Mahmoud Ahmed

Mahmoud Abdel Aziz

Ramy Temraz

Bassem Osoris

Gamal Omar

Abdou Omar

Islam Badr

Mohammad Mokhtar Eltrissi

You can download Egypt Yellow Pages BB App from App World here.

Filed under BlackBerry, Egypt Yellow Pages, Mobile Yellow Pages, New Technologies, Yellow Pages Tagged with , ,

BlackBerry App World now in Egypt

April 12, 2011 2 Comments

BlackBerry App World

BlackBerry App World

After waiting for it for a really long time, it has been confirmed today that BlackBerry App World is now available in Egypt. Although no official published news by RIM confirms this. Many users from Egypt have reported that they were able to access AppWorld and download application from it.

Many people wonder why did it take all this time to launch the store in Egypt. RIM has responded to this question saying that they do not launch the App World in a country unless they have signed an agreement with all the mobile operators to avail it for the users. Perhaps that could be the reason of the delay.

Egypt Yellow Pages BlackBerry App

Egypt Yellow Pages BlackBerry Application

The launch of BB App World in Egypt must be good news for users, developers and application vendors. Distribution of BlackBerry apps is not a simple task specially with all the device and OS specific features available, which makes it harder for the application vendors to do the correct device and OS detection and avail the correct version of the application to the correct device and the appropriate OS version.

As a Yellow Pages publisher, we are very delighted about availing the Black Berry App World in Egypt which will enable us to distribute and deliver efficiently our free local search application for Egypt. Currently, you can download Egypt Yellow Pages BlackBerry application from here. It is available for Curve, Bold and Torch models. There are 2 versions of the application, one supports OS 4.6 and another one supports version 5.0 or higher which has more features and functionalities embedded.

Filed under BlackBerry, Egypt Yellow Pages, Fun Stuff, Mobile Yellow Pages, New Technologies, Yellow Pages Tagged with , ,

Android on fire, Windows Phone 7 under fire!

March 8, 2011 Leave a Comment

Stephen Elop Nokia’s CEO is probably one of the most unlucky guys today, he probably choose the worst time ever to kill the symbianOS and replace it with Microsoft Windows Phone 7, a choice that many people criticized and said it would rather be much better for Nokia to partner with Google and use Android.

comScore has announced that Android, the 2 years old platform, is now the most popular operating system on smart phones in the US, having just surpassed BlackBerry, iPhone and Windows Phone 7 (WP7),  having now a market share of 31.2%.

The irony here for Nokia  is not just the lost opportunity to catch up the leading mobile operating system but also the loss  of market shares of the new partner Microsoft which has down to only 8%. This must be very frustrating for Microsoft, they launched their new WP7 last October aiming at competing Android and iPhone, what you typically expect is that their market share would grow due to this new product or at least stabilize but not fall down.

Smart Phone Market Share, Jan 2011

Smart Phone Market Share, Jan 2011

 

A good question to ask here, was Stephen Elop’s choice of Microsoft as a partner influenced by being an ex Microsoft executive or by believing so much in Microsoft products? Somebody has to answer this.

Smart Phone market share numbers in January 2011
Smart Phone market share numbers in January 2011

 

Nokia must now share Microsoft’s frustration, apple must be happy that they didn’t loose any ground against Google’s Android but rather Android took from the market shares of the other market players especially BlackBerry…

I wonder if the same market dominance will be possessed by Android on other markets worldwide.

Filed under Analytics & Statistics, BlackBerry, Google, iPhone, Microsoft, New Technologies Tagged with , , , , , ,

Yellow Pages Partners Day Video

February 28, 2011 Leave a Comment

Here is the video from Egypt Yellow Pages partners day event that took place in Four Seasons Nile Plaza in garden city

Filed under Advertising, Egypt Yellow Pages, New Technologies, Yellow Pages Tagged with ,

Egypt Yellow Pages Partners Day

January 19, 2011 Leave a Comment

I’m a little late to talk about this one, but last Sunday, January 16th 2011, was Egypt Yellow Pages first event for 2011, the best thing we thought we would do this year with, is to honor our partners and give them a big thank you for being so awesome through 2010… Our event title is Enhancing Local Search And Location-Based Services With Key Strategic Partnerships…

Hosted in the Four Seasons Nile Plaza in garden city, more than 40 communications media specialists, editors and journalists covered the event that was attended by Egypt Yellow Pages strategic partners: Ministry of state of administrative development – e-Government, Nokia/Navteq, Al Masry Al Youm and Akhbarak.net

The event started with the keynote from Marc Lambert, managing director of Egypt Yellow Pages. The speech was so insightful, Marc explained how our strategic partners will help us enhance the local search services on more platforms by making it available through our partners sites and in the same time focusing on offering location based services which is the future of the local search…

 

Marc Lambert giving his keynote in the event

Marc Lambert giving his keynote in the event

I had the opportunity then to present some figures and insights about our achievements in 2010, which ended up with us having more than 175,000 business listing in our database out of which 115,000 are geocoded. At the time i am writing this blog post, we have about 180,000 listings and approaching 120,000 geocoded listings… 2010 was also a year that witnesses tripling our website traffic from 400,000 visits per month to over 1.2 million visits, a truly new milestone for local search in Egypt.

 

 

Mohamed Salah, Director Digital Media, Egypt Yellow Pages presentation about insights and search trends in Egypt for 2010

Mohamed Salah, Director Digital Media, Egypt Yellow Pages presentation about insights and search trends in Egypt for 2010

Our partners were the ones who presented our strategic partnership details to the media, the following were representatives of  our partners:

Mathia Nalappan, General Manager – North Africa, Nokia
Phil McKinnon, Head Of Marketing – North Africa, Nokia
Mohamed Abd El-Jalil, Head Of Solutions Sales – North Africa, Nokia
Sahar Afia, Project Manager – Government Services Development Program, Ministry Of State For Administrative Development
Kismet EL-Sayed, Shareholder / Business Development Director, Al-Masry Al-Youm
Osman Ahmed Osman, Founder, Akhbarak.Net

Read more of this post

Filed under Advertising, Egypt Yellow Pages, eMarketing, Mobile Yellow Pages, New Technologies, Yellow Pages Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

The Best Optimizer Is Between Your Ears

May 20, 2010 Leave a Comment

I still remember The Art of Assembly book by Randall Hyde that I read during college and his qoute

The Best Optimizer is Between Your Ears

The idea simply was revolving about the fact that if you focus too much on details and try to keep optimizing something that works really slow by just trying to get the assembly code more efficient or by using higher processing power, then you are just wasting your time… 20% or 30% performance improvement in an application that runs in 40 or 50 seconds isn’t really that much… What you should be looking at is a totally novel solution.

Well he was right, but this time the optimizer was not between my ears, it was between the ears of the people who developed the Sphinx Full Text Search Engine… Using Sphinx our team was able to make our ypanalytics tool much faster, we use this tool to analyse the user search trends and usage of Yellow Pages sites…

The tool now became 60 times faster! a mysql query that took 2 minutes to execute using an optimized mysql query now takes 2 seconds to execute using sphinx! Perhaps it is worth mentioning that the query originally took perhaps 4 or 5 minutes to execute before query optimization but still normal optimization is not enough by any means.. you just need a new solution to solve a new problem, solutions which you already know and have dealt with might not be sufficient any more…

Filed under Egypt Yellow Pages, New Technologies, Yellow Pages Tagged with , , ,

Egypt Yellow Pages becomes the official data provider for e-government

April 23, 2010 2 Comments


In a huge step that will shape the Egyptian information community, the e-Government has chosen Egypt Yellow Pages to be the official partner who will provide many service to the government portal including providing information of different government  entities contact information and map locations.This is a result of the  cooperation agreement Yellow Pages signed with the Ministry of State for Administrative Development under the patronage of Prof. Dr. Ahmed Darwish, Minister of Administrative Development.

With more than 33 ministries in Egypt, it was almost impossible to get a phone number of a governmental office or organization, even if you go to the website of that ministries most probably you would find the information you are looking for and if you did it will be likely outdated. Now, not only this contact information will be available and up to date, but also maps will be displayed showing their locations and you can filter by city and area to select the one that is nearest to you.

e-government new maps serivice
e-government new maps

service

Egypt Yellow Pages have been known very well from both consumers and businesses in Egypt as the local search provider that provides the information about any business in Egypt with a database that is growing each day to reach now more than 140,000 listings and increasing. Now having Yellow Pages create and update the full  content for the Egyptian government  is an important milestone in the history of the company, and from my opinion and without exaggeration it is an important milestone in the history of Egypt as it strengthen the link between the citizens and the government, something the government is trying to achieve but with little success so far.

The cooperation agreement also involved linking the new mapping service to applications and forms currently available in the portal. The service is currently available for over 72 services provided by the following authorities: Real Estate and Documentation Authority, the Egyptian Electricity Authority, Directorates of Education and Directorates of Health Affairs, with more government authorities to be added. You can access the government maps section by clicking here.


Filed under Egypt Yellow Pages, Maps, New Technologies, Yellow Pages Tagged with , ,

Egypt Yellow Pages Partnership with Otlob.com

March 16, 2010 1 Comment

Last week we hosted a press conference at our premises in Maadi to announce to the media the launch of the strategic partnership between Egypt Yellow Pages and Otlob.com the online food delivery website in Egypt owned by LINKdotNET. More than 40 reporters, journalists, PR,  IT Specialists attended the conference that introduced the new food delivery service on Yellow.com.eg

Click here to try out the new food delivery service in more than 380 restaurants

Here is the video report of the event:

Here are some event photos:

Yellow Pages & Otlob.com Partnership

From left to right Mohamed Salah, Marc Lambert, Ahmed Eraqi and Walid El Saadany

Yellow Pages & Otlob.com Press Conference

Yellow Pages & Otlob.com Press Conference

Reporters at the event

Reporters at the event

Many reporters, journalists and IT Specialists attended the press conference

Many reporters, journalists and IT Specialists attended the press conference

Filed under Egypt Yellow Pages, New Technologies, Yellow Pages Tagged with , , , , ,

Navteq & Turkey Yellow Pages Event Photos

January 29, 2010 Leave a Comment

Some photos for the joint press conference between Navteq, Nokia and Turkey Yellow Pages to announce signing the strategic partnership deal through which Turkey Yellow Pages will provide business listings information of more than 500,000 listings to Navteq.

Navteq and Turkey Yellow Pages Teams

Navteq and Turkey Yellow Pages Partnership

Presentation by Göktuğ Okan Oğuz - General Manager of eBusiness - Turkey Yellow Pages

Presentation by Göktuğ Okan Oğuz - General Manager of eBusiness - Turkey Yellow Pages

Press Conference of Navteq and Yellow Pages

Press Conference of Navteq and Yellow Pages

After all,  I want to say that the big winner from this partnership is the large user base in Turkey who will benefit from combining the maps of Navteq and the data of Yellow Pages

Filed under Maps, New Technologies, Yellow Pages Tagged with , , , ,

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