Yamli

Yamli Press Releases

February 25th, 2008

Yamli.com Founder Habib Haddad on World economic forum’s 2009 Young global leader list.

World Economic Forum selects young Arab entrepreneur among 200 leaders from the world.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. February 25th, 2008 -- Habib Haddad joins today a list of 200 outstanding young leaders from around the world. Habib founded Yamli.com in 2007 with the vision of empowering the Arabic language and users on the web. He has also been involved in philanthropic activities, such as starting Relief Lebanon, a grass roots effort to support the relief operations in Lebanon during the July 2006 war. He co-founded INLET (International Network of Lebanese Entrepreneurs and Technologists), an organization geared towards promoting entrepreneurship and leadership for the Arab world in general and Lebanon in particular.

"I am honored to be selected as a Young Global Leader and I am eager to engage with the YGL community. I have always been passionate about entrepreneurship and hope that along with fellow YGLs, we will be able to help foster entrepreneurship activities in the Middle East and North Africa. I am also excited to continue to promote the Arabic web, which I believe has a bright future lying ahead." said Habib Haddad.

The honor, bestowed each year by the Forum, recognizes and acknowledges between 200 and 300 outstanding young leaders from around the world for their professional accomplishments, commitment to society and potential to contribute to shaping the future of the world. The Forum has nominated Young Global Leaders from 71 countries in 2009, including business leaders, as well as leaders from government, academia, non-profit organizations, media and society.

According to one of the early ex-Googlers Georges Harik, "The web is universal, and speakers of every language should get equal access to information. Yamli continues to do a great job of extending access to information to all Arabic speakers," concluded Georges Harik who is also an investor in Yamli.

The list of honorees this year include people like F1 star Michael Schumacher, Mark Zuckerberg Founder and CEO of Facebook, ; golf legend Tiger Woods; Ghobash, Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to the Russian Federation, So-Yeon Yi the first Korean woman astronaut. Previous honorees include, Sergey Brin and Larry Page Founders of Google, Jimmy Wales Founder and CEO of Wikipedia, Anderson Cooper CNN.

Drawn from a pool of almost 5,000 candidates, the Young Global Leaders 2009 were chosen by a selection committee, chaired by H.M. Queen Rania Al Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, comprising 31 eminent international media leaders.

About Yamli.com

Yamli is an Internet start-up focused on addressing the problems specific to the Arabic web. Yamli currently offers two main products: the Smart Arabic Keyboard, a real-time transliteration engine for Arabic; and Yamli Arabic Search, a search engine focused on providing a better experience and more relevant results for Arabic search queries. For more information, visit our website, at www.yamli.com/about/.

About The Forum of Young Global Leaders

Established in 2004 by Professor Klaus Schwab, The Forum of Young Global Leaders (www.younggloballeaders.org) is a unique, multistakeholder community of the world’s most extraordinary young leaders who dedicate a part of their time to jointly address global challenges and who are committed to devote part of their knowledge and energy to collectively work towards a better future. Together the Young Global Leaders work to discover innovative solutions to today’s most pressing problems through various initiatives and workstreams as well as catalysing the next generation of leaders.
The World Economic Forum is an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging leaders in partnerships to shape global, regional and industry agendas. Incorporated as a foundation in 1971 and based in Geneva, Switzerland, the World Economic Forum is impartial and not-for-profit; it is tied to no political, partisan or national interests http://www.weforum.org.

December 15, 2008

Startup Yamli.com Raises the Bar for Arabic Web Search.

Funded by Ex-Googlers, Yamli.com is First to Introduce Expanded Search Engine Technology

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. December 15, 2008 -- Yamli.com, a startup targeting the Arabic Web, unveiled its new search engine that allows users to easily search Arabic content in all its forms. Various studies show that transliterated Arabic content is ubiquitous due to a large portion of Arabic internet users choosing to write Arabic phonetically using Latin characters in an ad-hoc and informal fashion. Yamli automatically expands Arabic keyword searches to include all of their transliterated variations and returns results for both Arabic and transliterated content. This feature is a breakthrough for Arabic Internet users who are frustrated with having to repeatedly search different variations of their query when searching for music, news or videos.

According to co-founder Habib Haddad, "The challenge with Arabic content is that it’s hard to reach all of it. For example, a simple search for 'Umm Khulthum', the famous Egyptian signer, has over 90 transliterated variations – Om Kaltoum, Oum Kalsoum, etc…. Yamli will take an Arabic search term and expand it to include all transliterated variations, returning the maximum number of relevant search results, regardless of whether Arabic or Latin characters were used to write the content. Prior to Yamli, that kind of search was not possible," concluded Haddad.

Yamli Search comes with a rich and easy-to-use interface that has been optimized for slower connections. Under the hood, it uses APIs from search engines such as Google, Microsoft Live Search and YouTube. Yamli Search also includes Yamli’s award-winning Smart Arabic keyboard that allows users to type Arabic without an Arabic keyboard.

According to one of the early ex-Googlers Georges Harik, "The web is universal, and speakers of every language should get equal access to information. Yamli continues to do a great job of extending access to information to all Arabic speakers," concluded Georges Harik who is also an investor in Yamli.

Yamli’s new search engine was first announced at Harvard Business School’s MENA Conference on Saturday, December 4th during a panel discussion on Entrepreneurship in the MENA region in which co-founder Habib Haddad participated.

You can try Yamli Search for yourself at https://www.yamli.com/

About Yamli.com

Yamli is an Internet start-up focused on addressing the problems specific to the Arabic web. Yamli currently offers two main products: the Smart Arabic Keyboard, a real-time transliteration engine for Arabic; and Yamli Arabic Search, a search engine focused on providing a better experience and more relevant results for Arabic search queries. For more information, visit our website, at www.yamli.com/about/.

October 8, 2008

Yamli.com Takes on Major Challenge to Arabic Content on the Web

Real-Time Transliteration of Arabic Language now Available for any Website

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. October 8, 2008 -- Yamli.com released a free API that allows the easy integration of its award-winning Arabic transliteration technology into any website. Yamli’s Smart Arabic Keyboard allows users to type Arabic using Latin characters by converting their words in real time into Arabic text. Third-party websites using the API can reach a larger group of Arabic speaking visitors who would otherwise find typing Arabic difficult.

According to co-founder Habib Haddad, "We are very excited about making this technology available to any website for free. We hope it will encourage every user to be more engaged with the Arabic language not only on Yamli.com but on all Arabic sites and blogs. Our approach makes a significant contribution to the Arabic web by actually reducing the proliferation of transliterated Arabic words and converting them into real Arabic words," concluded Haddad.

Various studies show that a large portion of Arabic internet users shy away from typing Arabic, choosing instead to write Arabic phonetically using Latin characters in an ad-hoc and informal fashion. The transliteration of Arabic words and the limited availability of Arabic keyboards have stymied the use of Arabic on the web. By making it easy for everyone to type in Arabic, Yamli.com is making the Arabic language more accessible for every day users, and helping to promote Arabic content on the web.

According to George Akra, Co-founder of Ikbis.com, "I think Yamli is one of the most innovative and useful services in the region, plugging the API to our site was easy and lead to the increase of Arabic comments on Ikbis.com. The simplicity and accuracy of the service is just remarkable," concluded Akra.

The technology allows users to fully engage with Arabic content on blogs, e-commerce, social networking, education, government, video and music websites. The API, which has been undergoing testing since March with selected partners, such as Maktoob, Annahar, Moheet, ART TV, 3alarasi, and Babnet, has already been used by hundreds of thousands of users already.

Bassem Hefny, co-founder of elCinema.com says "Yamli is the most powerful feature a website owner can dream of and the idea of having Yamli as a free, easy to add API is simply brilliant"

Yamli has also released a setup tool that allows the integration of the API with no technical knowledge. This makes it easy for every owner of a site or blog to offer Yamli’s Smart Arabic Keyboard to his users.

Sami Tueni, the General Manager of Naharnet.com, "Yamli is the best contribution to the Arab web. So easy to implement, it was the long awaited tool to help the Arabic language flourish online," concluded Tueni.

You can get more info about the API at www.yamli.com/api.

About Yamli.com

Yamli is an Internet start-up focused on addressing the problems specific to the Arabic web. Yamli currently offers two main products: the Smart Arabic Keyboard, a real-time transliteration engine for Arabic; and Yamli Arabic Search, a search engine focused on providing a better experience and more relevant results for Arabic search queries. For more information, visit our website, at www.yamli.com/about/.

About Ikbis.com

Launched in late November 2006, Ikbis is Arabia’s first and leading video and photo sharing service. With Ikbis users can upload, organize and share their videos and photos with their families, friends or the rest of the world. Users can also interact with other Ikbis users by commenting on their shots and adding them as friends. Ikbis is a service from TootCorp. www.ikbis.com

About Naharnet.com

Naharnet is a leading Lebanese portal providing "up to the minute" news and services in Arabic and English. Naharnet attracts millions of Lebanese visitors from over 200 countries around the world. A new version of Naharnet will soon be launched as a next generation portal with exciting and innovating features such as Yamli. www.naharnet.com

May 14, 2008

Online Tool That Enables The Transliteration of Arabic Using English Characters Wins Prestigious Web Award

Yamli.com Wins “Best Web Technology Award” Within Year Of Launch

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. May 14, 2008 -- Language Analytics, LLC, a software startup, has won “Best Web Technology Award” during the 4th Year Pan Arab Web Awards 2008 for its flagship website, Yamli.com . Yamli allows users to convert transliterated text back into Arabic characters, facilitating access to and the development of Arabic content.

The Pan Arab Web Awards aim to promote the innovative spirit of the web while recognizing the accomplishments of its community members. The competition received an unprecedented number of registrants from the Middle East region, including new entrants from Bahrain, Kuwait, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. The awards ceremony was held on 26 April 2008 at Burj Al Arab, Dubai.

According to co-founder Imad Jureidini, "We are very honored to receive this year’s Best Web Technology Award. This is a recognition, not only of the technological breakthrough that Yamli represents, but also of the Arabic web’s need for such technology."

Yamli’s patent-pending solution converts the user’s input into Arabic as the user types. To maximize usability, Yamli accepts a variety of phonetic spellings and generates a list of suggested matches. Over time, Yamli will recognize popular patterns of spelling and word selection, increasing its accuracy.

Co-founder Habib Haddad says: "Today, the Arabic language represents less than 0.5% of the content on the Internet. Our mission at Yamli is to empower the Arabic language on the web. We are going to continue to increase that percentage to a much higher number."

You can view Yamli at http://www.yamli.com.

About Yamli.com

Yamli is an Internet start-up focused on addressing the problems specific to the Arabic web. Yamli currently offers two main products: the Smart Arabic Keyboard, a real-time transliteration engine for Arabic; and Yamli Arabic Search, a search engine focused on providing a better experience and more relevant results for Arabic search queries. For more information, visit our website, at www.yamli.com/about/.

November 15, 2007

Yamli.com Allows Arabic Speakers to Write Arabic Using English Alphabet

Tool Seeks to Ease Use of the Arabic Language Online

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. November 15, 2007 -- Language Analytics LLC, an internet startup, unveiled Yamli.com, a web-based tool that empowers users to easily use and access the Arabic web.

The Arab world has one of the highest internet usage growth rates. Yet, access to and development of Arabic content has been difficult, mainly because of the complexity of typing Arabic. Although Arabic keyboards are available, the vast majority of Arabic-speaking Internet users are accustomed to an English keyboard. Users often resort to spelling Arabic words out phonetically using English characters, a process known as transliteration. Yamli allows users to convert these English characters into Arabic words.

Co-founder Habib Haddad explains: "I would often experience frustration trying to find Arabic news on the web. Like millions of users, I could easily express my Arabic words using English letters, but I had difficulty typing them in Arabic. The need for a technology that efficiently converted those phonetic spellings into meaningful Arabic words seemed natural to me. It would have to be so seamless that users would be able to write Arabic text and forget they were using English characters. This is how Yamli was born."

Yamli’s patent-pending solution converts the user’s input into Arabic as he or she types. To maximize usability, Yamli accepts a variety of phonetic spellings and generates a list of suggested matches. Over time, Yamli will recognize popular patterns of spelling and word selection, increasing its accuracy.

Co-founder Imad Jureidini says: "The Arabic web will truly take off when people can do two things easily: find and write Arabic content. While there are many applications for our technology, we sought to address these two fundamental needs immediately."

Yamli’s initial release encompasses two tools: Yamli Search and Yamli Editor. Yamli Search allows users to search the web using Arabic keywords with Google. Users can search for general web content, videos, news, images and blogs. Yamli Editor allows users to write Arabic text that can then be copied into any electronic medium.

Yamli can be found at http://www.yamli.com.

About Yamli.com

Yamli is an Internet start-up focused on addressing the problems specific to the Arabic web. Yamli currently offers two main products: the Smart Arabic Keyboard, a real-time transliteration engine for Arabic; and Yamli Arabic Search, a search engine focused on providing a better experience and more relevant results for Arabic search queries. For more information, visit our website, at www.yamli.com/about/.

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