A unit of France’s defence electronics group Thales, Thales Emarat Technologies, and Abu Dhabi’s Hub71 are joining forces. The two have joined teams to support innovation in the Emirates. According to AbuDhabuStartup.com: Hub71 is community of founders, investors and business enablers that form a unique technology ecosystem strategically located in Abu Dhabi. Named after the UAE’s formation in 1971, Hub71 is creating the optimal environment for transformative tech companies looking to maximize success, produce outstanding tech innovations and scale globally.

Given the recent news with startups in Abu Dhabi, we thought now would be a good time to highlight one of the programs the Abu Dhabi government has launched. The Hub71 program is an incentive program for startups that offers startups housing, office space, and health insurance. This startup incentives program does not take equity, something that is a rarity in the startup space. Launched recently, they aim to have more than 100 startups at Hub71 by 2023.

2020 has been a year that tested the human civilization. This year has brought about much change in ways many would not have imagined. It’s accelerated the growth of ecommerce and made businesses that could not adapt quick enough shut the their doors forever. If anything, 2020 has been the year of technology startups leading the world. “Software is eating the world.” Marc Andreessen Countries like China are a nearly cashless society.

Here are the latest global trends! In this issue, the UAE trends are mentioned in 3 sections – social media, technology & digital and culture. The third edition of The Quarterly is the JCPR report covering the latest trends from around the globe including social media, technology & digital, brand & marketing, culture, good purpose, fashion & luxury, retail, food & drink, health & beauty and travel. These reports come from colleagues from across the world including UK, Germany, USA, Canada, Mexico, Africa, Belgium, Netherlands, UAE, India, Singapore, China and Australia.

A dirty QWERTY, regional social TV, Facebook postcards and top-Tweeting cities? It must be time for our weekly wrap-up! Social TV UAE based companies Arabi on TV and SkyGrid have collaborated to develop Touch TV – the first free application to watch TV shows on Facebook, according to a report in Gulf News. The app, which works on all major operating systems, is designed to tap into the way people in the region access social networking sites for entertainment.

Following a recent Arabian Bytes post looking at Facebook use in the Arab world, we have come across this rather nice infographic by Shusmo looking at Twitter use in the region: Image source: Mashable Created in March 2012 using data from a Dubai School of Government report on Arab Social Media, the infographic shows that there is total of 1,311,882 active Twitter users in the Arab world. KSA is the country with the highest proportion of Twitter users with 393,000 marked as active, followed by Kuwait with 235,000 and Egypt with 215,000 users.

Does everybody know what time it is? For my American friends it is not Home Improvement’s ‘tool time’, but it’s our favorite TWTW time! This week’s TWTW has a particular theme and I am sure has been a popular talking piece – it’s Mark Zuckerberg and everyone’s guilty pleasure Facebook. Facebook CEO rings opening bell on IPO day On Friday May 18thMark Zuckerberg became a billionaire from the Facebook IPO. In the early hours of the IPO day, Mark rang the opening Nasdaq bell from Facebook’s HQ in Menlo Park, California.

Yet another week is done and dusted, so let’s close it out in style with some of the week’s craziest, coolest and hottest stories. After sifting through some of the wildest content to cross my desk in a while, I was faced with a dilemma—there’s just too much awesome material to post for just one “…Week that Was.” However, I’ve done my best to narrow it down to a few finalists.

“You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their frickin’ heads! Now evidently my cycloptic colleague informs me that that cannot be done. Ah, would you remind me what I pay you people for, honestly? Throw me a bone here!” Dr Evil may not the greatest role model one could have but I absolutely share his passion for toys. I love technology and always have.

This week has been an eventful Facebook week, “coincidentally” following on from the release of new social network Google+ last week. The main highlights of the week; Arabic to overtake English as number 1 language in Middle East Following a recent study commissioned by Middle Eastern PR agency Spot On PR, results have indicated that within a year, users in the Middle East will be using Facebook in Arabic more than any other language.

Oh, such a dramatic week. First, Manchester United footballer Ryan Giggs – now known to have had an affair with Welsh model Imogen Thomas – put his foot in it by attempting to sue Twitter after some of its users posted his name despite the fact he had taken out an injunction preventing UK media from naming him. The only problem is that it caused so much outrage that Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming used parliamentary priveleges to name him anyway.

Last Saturday, May 7 I was one of the lucky attendees of TedxAlAin which took place at the Municipality Theatre in Al Ain. When I first heard about the event I was immediately intrigued. I’ve never been to Al Ain, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. As soon as the bus pulled in to the city I knew I was in for a great experience. I was taken aback by the aesthetics of the city – in complete contrast to the fast paced lifestyle of cities like Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Al Ain is scenic, green and relaxed.

Hot off the launch of Facebook for Journalists, Facebook has moved on to a different constituent, this time advertisers. The company is now hoping to create a better and more lucrative relationship with advertisers via a brand new stand alone community site called “Facebook Studio“. This new channel on Facebook allows advertisers and users to view advertisements by a variety of big-name brands, and interact with them through the traditional Facebook features (i.

So I would like to start off by making two statements. Number one: Yes, Facebook is a company that you can actually work for. And two: No, I was not featured in the Social Network movie – I joined quite a while after those alleged events took place. Abu Dhabi was, however, somewhere I never expected to be this time last year when I was getting ready for my first day at Facebook.

The week that was: Another week; another fresh face. I am one of the newest members to the ever-expanding Digital team here in Dubai. When I’m not being an uber nerd and soaking up anything and everything social-media and technology-related, I’m probably out with friends checking in somewhere on foursquare or break-dancing. Or both. Zuckerberg hosts Obama This week, Facebook hosted America’s one-and-only Barack Obama in an interview at the Paulo Alto Facebook headquarters.

We recently came over to the UAE to attend the 2011 Abu Dhabi Media Summit. Here’s what he had to say: Abu Dhabi played host to a clutch of media and telecomms executives from around the world at its second annual media summit last week. It’s a sign of a rapidly developing media environment in the Middle East that James Murdoch, Tom Glocer from Thomson Reuters, Jean-Bernard Levy of Vivendi and Hollywood luminaries like director James Cameron and Jim Gianopulos, Chairman and CEO of Fox were there.

Living in a country where the sun shines pretty much 360 days of the year I’m often surprised at the waste of this super (and dependable) resource. When half the homes in Wiltshire in the UK (authors exaggeration of the truth) are laden with solar panels (trying to warm a kettle the two times a year the sun comes out to play) it seems insane that no-one really bothers out here.

My favorite piece of technology at the moment, by a country mile, has to be Evernote – which I use on both my laptop and tablet. It’s a simple, but highly effective, piece of note-taking software that has made my working life so much easier. So why do I like it so much: No more notepad. This is “finally” the one-stop piece of software that now means I work almost paper-less.

The internet of things or the outer web has been much talked about already, and from my perspective, is an intriguing future. The idea that objects will all have an IP address is a powerful and exciting image for someone working in the field of technology marketing – the possibilities for application are almost limitless. I can see a real race of innovation taken place around this – indeed reading the BBC Tech section today I saw this story about RFID application in clothing as a bootlegging deterrent.

An interesting study has just been released by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development arguing that the potential risk for a cyber war is over-hyped. This study, which was reported by theBBC is evidently the first in a series of reports that look at incidents that could cause global disruption. This jumped out to me as a story, as I currently live in a region where tensions run high in some countries, and and indeed the recent Tunisia up-rising has, by some, been referenced as the Middle East’s first cyber war.

Having just watched a fantastic TED lecture from cyborg Anthropologist (how cool is that job title?) Amber Case, it reminded me why I’m so intrigued and excited by technology and the digital world. Other than the magpie factor (I just like shiny new things), the anthropological impact of technology always excited me. In the late 1990s, my dissertation was on Designer Babies and the impact technology would have on our biology.

Less than a year ago, when Google was being forced out of China over censorship issues, US government officials and business leaders criticised the Chinese, supporting Google in moving its proxy server to Hong Kong in the name of freedom of speech. Fast forward a few months later and the US is acting just as bad as China thanks to WikiLeaks revealing the content of thousands of American diplomatic cables. Not only has it blocked the website and made companies such as PayPal and MasterCard stop process donations to it, the US Army, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department are considering criminally prosecuting WikiLeaks and Julian Assange “on grounds they encouraged the theft of government property”.

There are a few things I would like to say about Microsoft’s Kinect. Firstly, I am now the proud owner of one – yes, it was one of those impulse, suddenly-got-to-have-it, Christmas presents for the family. Secondly – and surprisingly – it wasn’t me that led the charge here. It was my wife. Note: I was a big gamer in the past, but I haven’t really touched a console for a good few years.