Google Arabia announced that it was adding new mapping domains for 11 countries across the Middle East/North Africa region, including all six countries in the GCC. Users will be able to add local businesses and create their own personalized maps. Surprisingly, Egypt is one of these countries. Shouldn’t Cairo, one of the most populated cities in the world and huge tourist hub, have been an earlier priority?

Still it’s better late than never. This is good, and necessary, news. Having detailed maps of places like Cairo could have assisted protestors in organizing themselves as well as aiding journalists unfamiliar with Bahrain to cover the unrest there. Being able to pinpoint WiFi hotspots, first aid stations or even bathrooms would have helped get information out more quickly and accurately.

Keeping an updated GPS here in Oman is expensive and there is one local map that makes any sort of sense. (Unlike Manhattan, Muscat is not designed in a grid system.) Directions are often based on commercial landmarks: take a right at the Pizza Hut roundabout, pass the Starbucks and make a left at the KFC. I’ve gotten so lost I’ve had to park my car and let friends find me.  I now consult my local paper map and save a Google map onto my iPad before leaving the house. Along with some directions, I can now usually cobble together a route. But I’ve been waiting for a better Google map to become available.

The new Google maps will be particularly useful to businesses. They can post their map online and it will synch up with their Google Review page. Or the review page can serve as a website for small businesses– like small coffee shop down my street– that don’t have the capital to invest in their own website.

I’m curious to watch Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s mapping system going forward. Google Arabia said it was opening up the Google Map Maker for communities in these two countries to start editing their own maps. (Google also said it’s a strategy that has worked in Algeria, Libya, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar.) Yalla, y’all! I’d like to start editing the maps here in Oman.

I’m also hoping that Google Arabia will bring Google Street View to the region. I’m sure you’d find plenty of volunteers to drive the van.

Right now, it is still unconfirmed who his abductors were but Egyptian liberal blogger and human rights activist Dalia Ziada reported his release via Twitter about three hours ago.

We’ll let you in more details as soon as we get more information.

Kareem Amer, notoriously known for his anti-Islamic rhetoric blog posts which focused on Egypt’s primary source of Islamic education Al-Azhar University, that in addition to his open criticism of the Egyptian regime’s oppressive security measures.

The fact his controversial posts affected so many, it’s hard to say who would be the most likeliest party responsible for his disappearance. But considering the regime’s track record, all eyes fall on Egyptian security forces.

Initial reports of him going missing began to emerge Monday, Feb 7th on Twitter which were confirmed by Cyberdissidents.org an organization dedicated to supporting human liberty Kareem is an active member of.

This could sadly mean Kareem’s old website administrators, the appropriately controversial organization MidEast Youth, might have to dust off the domain and start updating Egypt’s latest missing activist.

We’ve learned a lesson over the past two months: What happens on Facebook, never stays on Facebook. Or so reality has grimly showed us, where Arab authorities have time and again tried to make the voice of their people go away by deleting accounts on Facebook. The same is being attempted on a terrifying, physical level. And the victims have yet to be found.

Wael Ghonim Google’s Head of Marketing for Middle East and North Africa flew in to Cairo from Qatar after attending an event on electronic journalism in Doha. Opposing advice from friends and family, to take part in protests he said in a tweet “A government that is scared from #Facebook and #Twitter should govern a city in Farmville, but not a country like #Egypt”.

Being one among hundreds of thousands of protesters, Wael Ghonim has gone missing. He was last heard from on January 28th on Twitter “Pray for #Egypt. Very worried as it seems that government is planning a war crime tomorrow against people. We are all ready to die” on January the 28th.

We share Wael’s concern for Egypt, and worry for Wael himself, as well as others who have gone out to protest and never returned. If you have any information on Wael or are looking for a missing protester in Egypt yourself, please update this wiki sheet.

Plug and Play venture is a business that gathers entrepreneurs from around the world, and has decided that since not everyone can go to Silicon Valley to start the next big thing, that it’s going to go to them. Well, to those in Cairo, Egypt for now.

‘Plug and Play Egypt’ a Silicon Valley startup accelerator (now Egyptian too) that provides everything from incubation to mentor and funding to young entrepreneurs in Cairo and has already accepted 5 startups for incubation.

The accelerator provides three main services for regional startups: acceleration, mentorship, and most importantly funding.

Office space and the required infrastructure for rapid growth is part of it’s core value, PnP Egypt promises world class experience to regional startups drawing from it’s success in Silicon Valley, alongside $250 million fund Rising Tide.

The first startups rounded up for the launch are:

1. Offerna.com: Egypt’s first E-commerce Group Buying daily deal website [find our coverage here].
2. Bebasata.com: E-commerce website focused on retailing consumer electronics online
3. Books.com.eg: E-commerce website focused on selling online books
4. DNA: Egypt-based digital-advertising agency
5. EME International: Is a developer of mobile-based middleware providing solutions to major problems in the education, payment, and enterprise verticals. Well known for mParent, a mobile app to help parents oversee their children’s academic progress.
6. Wireless Stars: A developer of cloud-based and location-based mobile software solutions services for various mobile platforms

With an obvious preference of mobile software development along with e-commerce, opportunities in the region seem to be diversifying by the minute with funds flowing steadily into e-commerce & mobile, as well as online social gaming.

Rising Tide Fund, is the investment arm of Global Technology and Innovation Partners (GTIP), plans on investing in Jordan, Lebanon, Malaysia and Turkey also. Which will mean more local branches of Plug and Play throughout the region in attempt to drive economic growth by investing in regional SMEs.

Cairo based Vimov adds new features to their already popular ‘Weather HD’ iPad app  providing a graphically rich weather forecasting experience on the iPad, yet Arabic still not one of them.

The app’s rich graphical user interface is impressive, providing video backdrops to Weather forecasts to feast your eyes on, and they’ve added some new ones to the existing 70MB of high definition video in this latest update. Additionally a clock was added which seemed like an obvious feature they should have added to begin with, and Night Mode for evening weather.

As for Vimov’s Arab speaking user-base, they’ll have to wait for Arabic interfaces and support due to the fact ” the user-base from Arabic speaking countries is very small compared to other countries like France or Germany” according to Islam El Muezzin, VP of Product Development at Vimov, which is understandable due to the iPad market size difference between Europe and MENA, but having support for Arabic from Arab developers would seem like the logical way to go right?

After trying out the application it’s obvious it was built with beauty in mind, as appose to a rich set of features like the many available iTunes app store contains, and apparently 100,000 others share that opinion and have downloaded the application so far according to Vimov.

If you’re looking to show off your new iPad to your friends, this $0.99 priced app is a wise purchase by all standards. But if having location-aware features the average geek adores it might be a bit underwhelming.

The application has  an iPhone version coming out pretty soon says El Muezzin, but we’ll have to see how the rich GUI success factor does on the significantly smaller iPhone screen.

Check out the video preview of the app to get an idea of what it looks like, or just spend the buck on some eye candy from the iTunes store instead.