Last week, I came accross an intriguing article with the title : HALAL Search Engine Launched….and I kept on reading.

The Search Engine targets the muslim e-community that surfs the World Wide Web and would come accross ‘haram content’, hence the [...]]]> Last week, I came accross an intriguing article with the title : HALAL Search Engine Launched….and I kept on reading.

The Search Engine targets the muslim e-community that surfs the World Wide Web and would come accross ‘haram content’, hence the name of ‘halal’. To clarify both terms, Halal is anything accepted by Shariah Islamic Law, while Haram is anything that is forbidden.

How is that possible ? The Search keywords and the search results have ‘haram levels‘ and would prompt you in advance if you are about to view content against Islamic Law. Words and phrases that may have sexual connotations, alcohol, drugs, or related to certain actors and actresses are flagged up to the user . (For instance, a search for ‘red wine’ will be flagged).

To explain it better, I quote the founder Reza Sardeha, explaining how the Search engine works: “First of all, we have blocked all sexually explicit content. We are also in talks with Imams to determine what might be considered haram, and therefore, be blocked”.

He then adds: “Imhalal is not a dictatorial or censorship website, we want people to be able to continue their online search. We use a two-layer system, first of all the search engine analyses the content fetched by Imhalal.com and all websites that contain explicit material will be filtered out. Some websites will still be fetched and there the secondary, more aggressive and progressive filter kicks in and that is when you will see the haram level”.

The website was launched on the 1st September 2009, called: Imhala.com . There is a strong muslim feel about it, and offers you 4 types of Search: Home, Images, News and Website. I strongly recommend you try it yourself, and make see what you thin.

One thing springs to mind, why do we have to ‘restrict’ the Search in such a way where you have to be told whether your search is haram? Saying that it is not a censorship is a small contradiction in itself. Furthernore, why do we have to let other people decide on what should or should not appear on the Search Result Page ? Or even ‘determine’ what is hallal and what is not ? Surely the muslim community would not make ‘haram’ searches’ in the first place ?

Whether the muslim community will adopt this as the main source for their Searches …time will tell.However, it will be very hard to dishelve the monopoly of the major Search Engines.

(Read similar posts by Maktoob and the Daily Telegraph)

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Yahoo has announced it is to acquire Maktoob.com, the leading online community in the Arab world with more than 16.5 million unique users. This also means that Yahoo will acquire control of the original Arabic search engine – Al [...]]]> Yahoo has announced it is to acquire Maktoob.com, the leading online community in the Arab world with more than 16.5 million unique users. This also means that Yahoo will acquire control of the original Arabic search engine – Al Araby.com. in their release, Yahoo gives various statistics justifying the acquisition. What they don’t say is that Yahoo has also been relatively successful in the region – but didn’t have an operational advertising platform in that part of the world.

The Africa-Middle East region is one of the very fastest growing regions for internet use and with 300 million speakers, Arabic is a very important language looking forwards into the future. Google has also been very keen to capture the Arabic world.

Maktoob’s version of the announcement

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According to The White African Blog, a new Ad network has been launched called Pamoja Media. Started by Joshua Wanyama (of AfricanPath) and Benin Mwangi (of Cheetah Index), it’s an ad network created to serve advertisers [...]]]> According to The White African Blog, a new Ad network has been launched called Pamoja Media. Started by Joshua Wanyama (of AfricanPath) and Benin Mwangi (of Cheetah Index), it’s an ad network created to serve advertisers trying looking for a one-stop-shop for publishers in Africa, or that reach Africans in the diaspora.

Publisher requirements are quite high. Among other factors sites must have an Alexa ranking of 250,000 or better and a minimum of 2,000 pageviews per day. This looks like an interesting option for advertisers targeting the continent or publishers looking to monetize though.

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Appfrica, web portal offering news related to African innovation, education and entrepreneurship [...]]]>  

Appfrica, web portal offering news related to African innovation, education and entrepreneurship in technology, published information and statistics on the current state of Internet penetration in Africa.

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