How it all went;
The usual Lebanese National anthem, officials introducing and launching the event, some guy telling us about his personal life and how he talked with Bill Gates (*yawn*) and the last speaker was the representative of the Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri, Dr Tarek Mitri  Information minister. Dr Mitri, as usual and expected with all Lebanese ministers and governments, admitted that “there should be good infrastructure, there should be blah blah blah yada yada yada please someone change this tape that we’ve been hearing for ages now…” anywhOO!

Off to the panels, the first was moderated by Omar Christidis, the man who have been nagging us at every tweet up for the past few months about the whole thing! And he did a great job! Hats off mate!
They tackled the “Ecosystem of Entrepreneurship”, great advises, guidance, educational, VERY informative in my opinion…Samih Toukan gave excellent advices, took me personally into an enchanting trip of how Maktoob started and how it kicked every Arabic portal’s ass and how they were the first to get acquired by a giant like Yahoo (yes I am sentimental)

Ideathon was up next…I was totally disappointed, like shattered, like where the HELL is the creativity folks! A classified jobs engine? A mobile application development company? A mobile business card application? A social media company?! WHAT THE EFFIN F!  Where is the creativity?!
The only idea that SHOULD win is Maya Zankoul’s, an Arabic font for the web that is readable, friendly and saves the lives of the designers and web developers along with the readers! Kudos to that Maya, you ROCKED! You can and will get the attention of almighty blessed be his name Steve jobs and the Anti-Christ Microsoft. Your idea comes from a NEED a WANT and hits the bull’s eye when it comes to usability and user experience along with an ARTSY side wink

The second panel was title “Startup Fundraising “, I dosed off a few times and woke up to a morning woody in the middle of the day. Mr Fady Ghandour though was simply amazing, he named things the way they are, loved his bluntness.

And then the other disaster…Startup Demo…I fell asleep, had a wet dream about a car, and woke up to an even worst nightmare, E-commerce…Here’s how it is folks (the ones at the panel) I didn’t sell a kidney (or whoever gave me the card) so that you show off your curriculum vitae! We want solutions, not your personal achievements, I can always google your ass to read your resume or stalk you on Linkedin. We want solutions!
Nevertheless, the panel’s members are well educated, knowledgeable persons who know what they are doing, but unfortunately they don’t know how to share…

Now, fair is fair, it was awesome, it rocked, great crowd, great vibes, lots of networking, got to mingle and talk with people from Google, Vodafone, Yahoo et al! I can only say great job Omar! and see you tomorrow for the really GOOD stuff! (oh and it trended on TWITTER! power to the people!) last thing, people went on and on and on about empowering Arabic content, and everything should be done in Arabic…but, the whole thing was in English! I know we need to “trend it” I know there are folks from Google/Yahoo/Facebook/Netlog/etc etc etc but something should be done in Arabic! If my memory doesn’t fail me a German person made that comment out loud (he was happy it is in English so he could understand…)

Update 1: 40% of the attendees were Jordanians, the Lebanese were at Saint George’s beach or waiting in line at Skybar Beirut for a few drinks, some were out shopping at some overly expensive shop…

Anyways, I ran a few tests on several search engines, Araby, Ayna, Bing, Google, Yahoo/Maktoob. I came to a small conclusion;

Araby: it should be an all exclusive entertainment search engine if it wants to survive. Other than that it has no chance. A full on search engine was not made for Araby. And it’s time to start using a proper engine with a proper algorithm. Enlarge your video/image/audio index or Google will swallow the rest of what’s left of it. Some usability issues.

Ayna: it should be a an all exclusive local search engine if it wants to survive.Other than that it has no chance. A full on search engine was not made for it. And it needs to start using a proper engine with a proper algorithm. Better maps are needed ASAP or else Google will swallow the rest of what’s left of it. Major usability issues.

Bing: retire please (or start building proper options for the search engine, results wise it is O K)

Google: Usability, results, options, diversity, overall, still the king with no real threat at all (yet?). Downside, they have to plug the map/local search, saw a few shy attempts, they have to unleash all the data they are getting for FREE from US the USERS!

Yahoo/Maktoob: Considering it’s relatively new in the Arabic market, it is O K, results are O K, but lacks basic functionality just like Bing. Shape up fast or die. (Even though it’s the default search engine on Maktoob, it won’t help much, we saw the same failed attempt by Araby…)

Now the comparison chart, it’s not that extensive, but it gives you a pretty good idea of the major differences between the search engines. All answers marked NO didn’t work at the time of the writing of this post (Feb 8th, 2010) if it is working please take a screen-shot and get in contact so I can update.

The search term means “The Elements of Social Architecture” I wanted to try something “different” they all got the good results except Ayna, the first two results were totally irrelevant.

. Araby Ayna Bing Google Yahoo/Maktoob . Search Term: عناصر المعمارية الاجتماعية 3,239 Results 138 Results 4,050 Results 223,000 Results 26,700 Results . Results (1st) A List Apart النسخة العربية : عناصر المعمارية الاجتماعية عمارة – ويكيبيديا، الموسوعة الحرة A List Apart النسخة العربية : عناصر المعمارية الاجتماعية A List Apart النسخة العربية : عناصر المعمارية الاجتماعية A List Apart النسخة العربية : عناصر المعمارية الاجتماعية . Speed in seconds N/A 0.9154 N/A 0.9 0.26 . Cached No No Yes Yes No . Boolean searching Yes No Yes Yes Yes . Related Search Yes No No Yes No . Different Views No No No Yes (Related searches Wonder wheel Timeline) No . Search in results No No No Yes No . Limit by date No (advanced is down) Yes (limited though) No Yes (extensive) Yes (limited though) . Collections to search Web Audio Dictionary Songs Islam Forums Celebrities Web Images Video News Dictionary Blog Local Religion Web Web Images Videos News Blogs Updates Books Forums Social Web . Translate pages/sites No No No Yes No . Search in Results No No No Yes No . Advanced Results Sorting/Clustering No No No Yes No

Anyways I decided to go “smart” a bit and search for:

• “Weather Cairo/ احوال الطقس في القاهرة”. All engines failed (note that in English it works perfectly on Google and Bing)
• “Cafe in Dubai/مقهى في دبي “. All engines failed (again in English it shows Google maps with Local Business Results, I was expecting Ayna to show some results since they have maps in Arabic and boast about it)

The only “unusable” features that Araby and Ayna have is the Arabic keyboard (note the “unusable”) Google added transliteration service in their lab but it’s not as good as Yamli’s (it ROCKS!) and not available on the search engine directly…yet.

Anyways here are few screen-shots