Posted on 28 March 2010
Written by Sohaib
Arabnet 2010 was indeed one of the largest internet related events that took place in the region, with more than 600+ attendees and 10,000+ tweets which made the event trend globally on Twitter in the 4th place.
The event took place on the 25th and the 26th of March, 10 startups were highlighted in the event and 10 of them were appraoched by angel investors and VC’s, I am very excited that events such as this are now taking place in the region giving entrepreneurs a great venue to present their ideas and startup companies to investors on a large scale.
There were a number of panels in the event, day 2 included the gaming panel where Wizards Productions was part of that panel represented by my colleague Afif Toukan, I was supposed to attend the event but sadly I caught a bad case of flue before the event.
Speakers at the event included Wael Ghonim, Head of Marketing – MENA at Google, Ghassan Haddad, Director of Internationalization, Facebook, Rabea Ataya, CEO, Bayt.com, Essam Al-Zamel, CEO, Remal IT, Rashid Al Ballaa, CEO of N2Ventures and many others, you can check out the full list at the speaker page.
I should be adding some photos of the event later on when Afif or Hussam get to the office, meanwhile you should follow @arabnetme on Twitter to stay updated about the future events.
Posted on 21 March 2010
Written by Sohaib
We’ve been working in the past 2 weeks on the new design for WizardsProductions website, the change comes to reflect the new vision that has evolved over the past weeks and months, the focus on social gaming will be reflected in the new website and a proper look for our company is the main driver behind this change.
The new website will also be available in Arabic, the website will showcase both the Arabic and English games that the network has after the merger with Go3 (a press release will be posted about the merger soon).
Below is a preview of the new website, we will be developing a simple CMS for the website to manage it, been thinking of using WordPress or Joomla, but neither give us exactly what we need and customizing them will take more time than developing a simple custom solution.
Posted on 09 March 2010
Written by Sohaib
WizardsProductions attended the Jordan Web Awards 2009 that took place a couple of weeks ago, we submitted Sa7ara our browser based game for the competition on the games and entertainment category in the awards, we were all hoping and pretty much sure we will be taking home the gold, sadly though we ended up in the 3rd place and got the bronze award, not what we hoped for but thats fine, were all determined to get the gold next year.
Surprisingly there were not gaming websites competing with us, we originally thought that there is going to be a category for the games as we heard that there are other gaming websites that submitted for the award, sadly though there wasnt the organizers had to merge the gaming category with the entertainment category.
The silver award went for Shoofeetv and the Gold award went for a music related website that i dont remember.
Below are images from the event.
Posted on 12 January 2010
Written by Sohaib
Its time for another speed linking post where I share the top articles and blog posts that caught my attention, hope you find them useful as I did.
The Big List: 2010 Marketing Predictions & Resolutions – Search Engine Land
Grasping This Concept Will Massively Impact Your Life – PluginID
30 Fast Life SEO Tactics/Techniques for 2010 – Seoptimise
AOL and Mashable in Talks? Rumor Says Mashable May Be Bought – Rev2
What’s Working for Social Media Marketers? – Emarketer
Facebook’s Zuckerberg Says The Age of Privacy is Over – Readwriteweb
Posted on 20 December 2009
Written by Sohaib
Time for another speed linking post, I remembered to post this today after reading a bunch of good articles this week, hope you find them useful.
- What Is the Outlook for Paid Video Content? Emarketer
- Is SEO Dead? 1997 Prediction, Meet 2009 Reality, Search Engine Land
- The Top 50 SEO Posts of the Year – 2009 Edition, Evancarmichael
- Why SEO is Easier than Social Media Marketing, Techipedia
- Facebook’s Latest Controversy – New Privacy Changes Violate Policy?, Rev2
- Linkable Asset Inventory: A Starting Point For New Link Building Campaigns, Search Engine Land
Enjoy!
Posted on 16 November 2009
Written by Sohaib
Yesterday was the 1st day in a week full of activities here in Amman, yesterday’s launch was very good, I attended for about 3 hours then I had to bail out, sadly i forgot to take my camera so I wont be sharing any photos, I would have loved to record Sami Shalabi’s speech which I found very interesting and useful. He explained how he started his latest business Zingku which was later acquired by Google.
Reid Hoffman CEO of LinkedIn, Joi Ito from Creative Commons, Mitchell Baker From Firefox and Habib Haddad from Yamli are also among the people attending the event.
Yesterday was a great networking opportunity as well, I met some old friends and was able to talk about some potential partnerships for Wizards with other companies in the gaming field in the US.
More events are coming up starting today with the Entrepreneurship Forum which I am going to try my best to attend. You can RSVP here. Other events include a speed networking event tomorrow and Souq Tijartina.
You can learn more about this week on Unleashing Designs as well.
Posted on 16 October 2009
Written by Sohaib
Hey everyone, its time for another speed linking post, here are a few articles that I found interesting and hopefully you’ll find them beneficial and interesting as well.
How I Operate Online (A.K.A My First Video) – PluginID
101 Advanced Tips For The Next Time You Buy Text Link Ads – Search Engine Journal
Quickly Find out Which SERPS Page You Are Ranked – Search Engine Journal
Why Companies Shouldn’t Block Social Media in the Workplace - 10e20
Real-Life Lessons in Using Google AdWords – New York Times
If your going to pick one and read, I highly recommend the 101 advanced tips from SEJ
Posted on 12 September 2009
Written by Sohaib
Great news today, Arabcrunch one of the biggest blogs covering Arabic related tech news has reviewed WizardsProductions the company I co-founded 8 months ago, the review covers a breif history about the company as well the current project of the company, I am very excited about this review as it wil definitely help the company get more exposure.
Arabcrunch recently broke the news of Yahoo’s acquisition of Maktoob.com and was mentioned in Reuters for breaking it, the blog also had a video interview with Yahoo’s VP for emerging markets and Samit Toukan Maktoob’s co-founder.
You can find our review here!
Posted on 08 September 2009
Written by Sohaib
Its been a LONG time since i posted a speed linking post, so here it goes, the top list of this week’s favorite posts:
On another note, you can check out a preview of one of the new buildings were adding to MedievilWars on this post. This is one of two new buildings that will be added to the game on both servers.
Posted on 07 September 2009
Written by Sohaib
Anyone that has dealt with hackers know how frustrating it is, especially when you talk to them, I’ve dealt with a couple of I talked to one guy once, this morning we’ve been dealing with a hacker on one of the Arabic games under WizardsProductions, I think we’ve pinned down the issue, anyways here are some stuff anyone with an active website should do:
1- Setup a daily backup system for your files and database, if you have a really active website I would recommend you setup hourly backups for your databases at least, its never a bad idea to backup the database on two locations, for example make one copy on your hard disk and another copy to a remote server.
2- Enable mysql logs on your server, its a good idea to have it enabled to catch any foul play, in one hacking issue, the only way we caught the hacker was through reading the logs and finding the query he was running.
Here are a some online backup services that I quickly researched:
1- http://www.bqbackup.com
A service I used previously, very good and fast, good prices as well, they provide simple FTP backup space, nothing fancy but gets the job done.
2- http://mozy.com
They have a number of backup plans, they offer both server backup solutions as well as desktop backup solutions so you can also backup your PC’s files.
3- http://www.drivehq.com/
These guys have a bigger number of offerings although its a bit distracting…
