Video and photo sharing craze hits Arabia with ikbis.com

Amman, Dubai. Marking the arrival of the video and photo sharing revolution to the Arab region, tootcorp today announced the launch of ikbis (www.ikbis.com), the first Arab video and photo sharing web site.

With its state-of-the-art-technology platform, fully bilingual (Arabic/English) user friendly interface and attractive Arabic brand, ikbis (which means ‘click’ in Arabic) is set to become the No.1 destination for people across the region who want to store, organize, share and talk about their favourite video clips and photos online.

Through a friendly user interface, members of ikbis can, using their regular browser, easily upload, annotate and tag their videos and photos, create albums and share their shots by email. ikbis supports a wide variety of media types captured using digital cameras, camcorders or cameraphones. Viewing video content on ikbis does not require the presence of any browser plug-in or special software, which means that ikbis content can reach virtually all internet users in a hassle-free, enjoyable experience.

For photo viewing, ikbis features a slideshow function, which elegantly streams user’s photos on the screen on an uncluttered backdrop.

While many users opt to share their videos and photos with the whole world, users can also set the privacy level for each shot so that it becomes viewable only to their close family, their wider circle of relatives or their friends, making it perfect for sharing social events and family photos and videos.

ikbis allows members of its community to rate and comment other member’s videos and photos. These online conversations and interactions add a new dimension of interactivity to the content shared. Every ikbis member has an online profile to which friends and family members can be added, making ikbis not only the first social media sharing site in the Arab region but also the first Arab social networking hub with a popular appeal potential.

“We decided to launch ikbis as we witnessed the accelerating rates of internet penetration across Arab markets and the increasing number of people who can access the net through broadband connections. We’re also seeing the amazing proliferation of digital cameras and cameraphones across the region, so we figured that people would probably would like to do more with the media they’re producing” said Ahmad Humeid tootcorp’s cofounder. “It is clear that audiences are spending more time online and starting to enjoy a video-on-demand experience, which has become possible with broadband connections and new video delivery technologies. But ikbis is more than that. It is about people in our region creating their own content, be it funny, serious, educational or simply personal and sharing it in the context of a global Arab web community. This is the essence of the user-generated media revolution,” Humeid added.

While ikbis is easy to use for regular internet users, advanced users, like the region’s growing community of bloggers, will be happy to learn that ikbis features RSS feeds of its content and makes it possible for its video player to be embedded into blogs and personal home pages. Developers of portals and other web applications will also soon be able to connect with ikbis using a set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that enable the close integration of the ikbis platform with their applications and products.

ikbis is tootcorp’s 2nd major product. Less that a year ago tootcorp has launched toot: the first Arab blog network (www.itoot.net) which has grown to include 150 of the best Arab and Arab region oriented bloggers. The toot ad network (TAN) offers marketers the possibility of utilizing prominent blogs to reach a highly active internet audience of early adopters and trendsetters. Toot has already signed up major advertisers for the official launch of its ad network.

“The launch of ikbis is part of our strategy of focusing on opportunities created by the user-generated content trend. Our aim is not only to be regional leaders in what can be loosely called ‘web 2.0’, but to also to develop new web platforms that have a global appeal. Our next innovations are already in the development or prototyping phases,” explained Humeid.

For more information:

George Akra
george{at}itoot.net

Or

Karim Arafat
karim{at}itoot.net

Telephone +962 6 5650 466

toot blogger Jar Il Kamar has won the best Arabic Blog Award on DW-world.de’s The Bobs,

“An example of citizen journalism, Jar el Kamar has been able to cover incidents in his local city of Alexandria more bravely than your typical media outlet. He was on the front line of dangerous situations including violence happening around parliamentary elections and church attacks. He blogs also about culture, social issues and other topics.”

Mabrook from the toot team!

Cartoon by Cairo Freeze

Rambling Hal from Jordan:
I hope he is sentenced to death again and again and again, and I hope, when they carry it out, he is made to suffer like the cockroach he is. How do I kill the cockroaches I come across, unfortunately, every now and then? First, I spray them with poison. Again and again and again. I spray them endlessly as they twitch and convulse. Then I step on them, hard. And I crush my foot into the ground, over and over again, to make sure they are as flattened and as dead as possible.

EMoodz from Bahrain: Is anyone else disturbed by this? If anything, he should have been turned over to an international court. The court he was tried under is a sham. It’s a U.S. puppet. This verdict and sentence is the result of George Bush’s 15 year long wet dream.

Batir Wardam from Jordan: محاكمة صدام تحولت في معظم مجرياتها إلى مسرحية هزلية وأحيانا محزنة، فلم تكن تتوفر فيها أدنى درجات العدالة والمصداقية، وبالرغم من أن غالبية الشعب العراقي الذين تعرضوا للقمع والذبح وضياع أجيال كثيرة في الحروب العبثية سيجدون أن الحكم بالإعدام على صدام كان عادلا فإن التاريخ سوف يبقى يذكر أن الإجراءات لم تكن عادلة.للأسف ستكون الأيام القادمة مليئة بحملات تأييد ودعم لدكتاتور روع آلاف الناس في العراق، وسيستمر احتلال العراق وقتل مواطنيه والصراع الطائفي والعنف الانتقامي من التنظيمات البعثية، وفي النهاية سوف يدفع المواطن العراقي وحده الثمن. المواطن العراقي العادي هو الذي دفع ثمن سكوت العالم العربي على جرائم صدام وهو الذي يدفع الآن ثمن الاحتلال الأميركي ووحشية التنظيمات الطائفية، والعراق الذي هو أهم مليون مرة من صدام حسين معرض هو الآخر للإعدام فهل يمكن لأحد أن ينق

Healing Iraq from Iraq: So the tyrant will be hanged. A moment that Iraqis awaited for years, but now that it’s here, it seems to be tasteless. Not that it will fail to bring a much-deserved sense of justice to the families of his victims, but because of the unprofessional and highly politicised manner with which it was handled.

The exiles who returned to Iraq after the war and proclaimed themselves as victors and new rulers also came with a strong desire for revenge. Starting from the disbanding of the Iraqi army, de-Ba’athification, and a long series of developments, ending with Maliki’s pressure on the U.S. to lift the siege on Sadr City, the U.S. has, knowingly or unknowingly, catered to that revenge.
The death sentence against Saddam Sunday - even though no one denies that Saddam deserves the most gruesome death - is the latest chapter in that series.

Subzero Blue from Tunisia: Anyway, personally, I think it was very clear from the beginning that a death sentence awaited Saddam at the end of the line, and that this eleven month trial was more or less an act. Saddam is a criminal, and many innocent lives were lost at his orders, so he deserves whatever he gets, but let’s not forget that much more innocent Iraqi people died because of George W. Bush’s orders than his.

Iraq the Model from Iraq: The Day of Justice. Now, Saddam is officially going down the toilet!

Sandmonkey from Egypt: Saddam is finally sentenced to death, alongside his brother and the head of the revolutionary court. Wohooooooooooooooo……… Now excuse me while I do my little “Saddam is going to die” dance.

The Sundanese Thinker from Sudan: The bastard will get what he deserved. YES!! BUT… by hanging ONLY! This guy at minimum deserves death by shooting squad. They should skin him alive, chop his genitals into pieces, spill acid on him, hang him by his legs, whip him a million times and finally stick a bullet into his head. Okay that’s harsh. Is it? Bleh whatever but you get the idea.

Raed in the Middle: At the same time that millions of Iraqis were and are still being killed, injured, and displaced because of the U.S. interventions, at the same time that the Iraqi social fabric is being destroyed and turned into fragments, at the same time that Iraq as a state is being “wiped off the map” and cut apart, at the same time that everyday in Iraq is worse than the day before, and at the same time that tens of thousand of U.S. solders are being killed, injured, and traumatized for the rest of their lives and trillions of the U.S. taxpayers money wasted, the one and only victory that the bush administration can claim is hanging the former dictator. This will be yet another favor Saddam will be doing to the U.S. foreign policy, yet another reason given to the bush administration to justify more illegal interventions, mass murder and destruction in Iraq. Saddam Hussein was one of the major disasters in the region.

I am truly humbled by the tremendous support and love you have demonstrated to me. This now places even more of a burden on my shoulders to be more responsible in my approach to this blog, and these feeling have also demonstrated to me how much bigger than a single person this Den has become which has grown to be a large community of friends and colleagues which I am truly privileged to belong to.

Mahmood of Mahmood’s Den