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In this Blogosphere piece, ArabAd addresses the founders of four top tech blogs from the Arab region for an insider peek at their work.
Recently launched by computer and communication engineering student Frederic Eid, FredericTech provides full coverage of the major tech news and updates in Lebanon.
How would you describe the evolution of your blog?
FredericTech.com is a newly launched blog. All reading material is directed to Lebanese audience, the youth specifically, and written in a very simple way to reach all those who are interested in the subjects discussed. Design-wise, it is shaped to match the Material Design Guidelines set by the ANDROID ecosystem, which is the most popular among all mobile operating systems, to make it appeal to the readers.
What motivated you to launch “FredericTech”?
The Tech world has always been of great interest to me. Technology is my passion. I spend hours searching the web and exploring my favourite websites to expand my knowledge and feed my curiosity. I decided to share a bit of this knowledge with the world through my blog FredericTech.com, but I only share what is directly related to Lebanon, or has great influence on it. Lebanese Tech blogs are rare, but seeing that a large portion of the Lebanese youth are interested and fascinated by what’s new on the market and all emerging technologies made me more enthusiastic to launch FredericTech.com.
What makes your content unique in your opinion?
My main Topics focus on telecommunication and consumer technology; two topics a large portion of our youth can relate to, such as Smartphone technology and advancement, or maybe how to ship your favourite electronics from abroad. I disfavour discussing narrow topics that only concern a small audience, such as networking and programming.
Although Eid’s blog is still in its early stages, he is fully determined to make it one of the best tech blogs in Lebanon, through reporting more news, live events and personal experiences.
Launched in 2011 by Microsoft evangelist and published author Rami Sarieddine, Code4Word offers valuable insights on topics of interest to web developers and tech enthusiasts in general, mostly covering Microsoft technologies.
How would you describe the evolution of your blog?
I started this blog on August 2011 writing about HTML5, and then the content gradually extended to cover other topics in the developers’ realm. I kept a steady pace of blogging for a year or two and then had to lay low for a while because I was overwhelmed with working and writing books.
What motivated you to start “Code4Word”?
Back then in summer of 2011, I started speaking at Microsoft events on web technologies, namely HTML5, and the idea of a blog became more and more appealing as a way for me to communicate and engage with the tech community in Lebanon and around the world.
What makes your content unique in your opinion?
I write about the latest updates in development, so my posts always present new content for developers to stay up-to-date with the latest advancements, especially that they are swarmed with daily work and are mostly missing out on these new stuff. Something new might drastically change the way developers do things and might increase their productivity and make life easier.
Sarieddine plans is to increase both the frequency of his blog posts and their reach as to cover a wider array of topics and not just ‘development-oriented’ topics. He also looks forward to having guest contributors on the blog in the near future.
Founded by tech savvies Samer Chami, Khaled Akbik and Kinan Jarjous, AbsoluteGeeks is a Dubai-based tech news site featuring consumer technology news, gadgets and reviews.
How would you describe the evolution of your blog?
A few years ago, local arms of international companies such as Samsung and HTC began to seek out digital influencers who would talk about their new phones and products. Kinan had his own personal blog which he used as a platform to write reviews every now and then. Khaled ran a blog called Gadget Camel, where he would also review some phones as a digital influencer. Samer independently set up his tech-oriented website, The BigSam.com, around the same time.
After one of the events we attended, we had discussions on combining our efforts into one website, instead of each of us running things independently. We were friends in real life, with different set of skills, contacts, and expertise, and thought it best to combine our different talents into one. We brainstormed through many names, themes, ideas, and direction to take the new website to, and hence Absolute Geeks was born.
What motivated you to launch “AbsoluteGeeks”?
In the beginning, Khaled and Kinan stopped writing reviews on their own sites and instead contributed to The BigSam.com, since it was the most professional-looking and it started to gain quick traction. However, we knew we needed a stronger brand name and image to resonate with our readers. That's where Rawan, our fourth co-founder and Creative Director, joined us in a number brainstorming sessions which culminated in the creation of Absolute Geeks, the name and the logo. A name and logo we grew very fond and proud of.
What makes your content unique in your opinion?
What makes us unique is our approach with people. We understand there exists a lot of talent and a lot of people in the region have become tech-savvy, or are interested in all sorts of technologies. We do what we can to be their mouthpiece, and let their voices and ideas be heard. We have the usual news sections, but we try and focus on our markets wherever possible, bring in exclusives, and welcome people to contribute with their opinion pieces on our website.
The AbsoluteGeeks team is currently experimenting with new ways to enhance the quality of the blog’s content in a way to make it more diverse and relevant to the region. Their future plans also include adding a layer of Arabic content in order to increase readership and reach out to the Arabic-speaking geeks in the region.
TFOUR
Initiated in 2012 by Digital Marketer Kapil Bhatia, TFour is a Dubai-based tech blog covering everything from technology to startups and from social media to the latest digital trends.
How did you decide to launch “TFour”?
I had been looking for digital and social insights about the Middle East and was struggling to find this information four years ago. So I started gathering information about these topics and sharing it with many other people. To my surprise, many people were interested to know more about startups, social media and the digital industry based in the Middle East. There were also many good startups in the region that were not getting exposure from the mainstream media. That's when I created the blog tfour.me to share information and support many startups by spreading news about them.
What makes your content unique in your opinion?
The blog is about digital trends, social media, startups and the clean tech industry based in the Middle East. The blog gives insights, stats and trends about these fields. The content is exclusively focused on the region and not just talking about tech devices and tech reviews in general. We also list digital job opportunities.
The TFour team hopes to extend its coverage to the Asia-Pacific market, in particular Australia, where the digital and startup scene is growing. They also plan to collaborate and partner with companies that are interested in the online publishing business.
