All you have to do is log in (it can be via Facebook Connect) and select “Vote” on the sidebar on this page.

With CrowdVoice, we aim to multiply voices of dissent by crowdsourcing footage and information from activists and journalists worldwide. A vote for CrowdVoice will help further a platform that amplifies these crucial voices and make information for diverse social causes accessible.

Please help us by voting and sharing this widely! We could really use your help!

We started the year with the March 18 Movement.

This year, we also launched two of our most ambitious projects: CrowdVoice and Mideast Tunes.

CrowdVoice Homepage

“This is the purpose for which social media was truly born for” – Bill Liao, co-founder of Xing.com

“An incredibly powerful tool for discovering voices of dissent” – Reza Aslan

“Awesome site. The best part? You can subscribe to/follow any article or voice that piques your interest, which means one less excuse that I have to fall behind in my current events” Diana Hsu, Idealist.org

Watch a brief video about CrowdVoice here. Here is also a piece about the site on Ashoka.

Mideast Tunes has also done very well, with coverage anywhere from CNN to NPR. The iPhone application remains to be one of the main distinguishable features of the site:

Mideast Tunes on your iPhone

Migrant Rights Illustration - featured on Gulf Daily News

Kurdish Rights Illustration

Baha'i Rights

We have also spent a big chunk of this year supporting other activists with their own sites. Check out a list of our services.

You may have noticed that we have also been working hard on our own site. Just last week, we launched some big improvements, including a new donation page and a podcasting page that are pretty unique! We have also integrated Mideast Tunes in the sidebar of our site. You can now listen to some of the featured music by clicking on the “Music” tab on the side.

There is so much that I neglected to add here, and so much more in the works. We are expecting to make two big launches in February and April of next year. We basically never stop working, but it doesn’t mean that we don’t get tired, and for this reason we are always in dire need of your support. Please consider helping us with a contribution to help improve our efforts!

What do they do?

For each topic on CrowdVoice, you will now have the option of staying aware of incoming news by copying the code of the widget that is found on the sidebar of each page and pasting it into your website or blog. Take a look here for example. Simply click on: “Grab Blog Widget” and adjust the size that you’d want:

It will look like this:

Here is another example of what the widget can look like on the page (remember that you can easily adjust the size and select it with or without a description):

So what are you waiting for?

If you have a topic on CrowdVoice that interests you, go ahead and check this out! Try it on your blog and let us know what you think. If there isn’t a voice for your cause yet, suggest it by clicking on “Request a Voice” on the frontpage or anywhere via the sidebar.

Mideastyouth is hoping to upgrade our hosting service that powers all of our projects including Mideastunes.

We rely on contributions of money and effort from generous volunteers, and need to collect $500 to cover the costs of this upgrade. Even a small amount will help. You can contribute here at Chip In. Please help us continue our work in supporting human rights and arts in the Middle East.

Thank you!
Peace,
MideastYouth Crew

We felt this is a really nice way to explore images from the region, instead of just limiting it to our own membership. Hopefully, we will be adding more photo-sharing services in the future.

Tell us what you think!

Screenshot of the gallery application

We have an awesome team of tireless, fearless activists and students who volunteer every single day in order to achieve stuff like this (a list of our 2009 accomplishments.) We don’t and won’t stop, because we know that our own future tomorrow depends on our efforts today.

Pulling off another successful year is a goal we must achieve, but we’re not sure we can do it without you. Aside from our tough work which requires a lot of our time, attention and energy, we also voluntarily support other initiatives and websites in the Middle East and North Africa by hosting (and occasionally designing/developing) their sites for free. That doesn’t only require time, which we’re happy to volunteer, but it also requires money. Servers, unfortunately, aren’t free. And the more we and the partners whom we host grow, the more expensive it gets – and we need your help to ensure that our services to them will remain free and that hosting our own sites will always be affordable.

In short: We need your help. If you like our work, appreciate our efforts, find our information useful or otherwise just think we generally rock, please take a minute to help out by donating. Every dollar counts.

We figured if Jimmy Wales could raise 7 million dollars on Wikipedia, we could at least meet our 5 thousand dollar limit considering the hard work and many sacrifices we make to make our work possible and accessible. We know a lot of people rely on our websites, and we need to keep running! You can help us.

Please forward this message to your family and friends and let them know that we need them.

Whether your mobile supports Java™, Symbian™, or Windows Mobile™. Or even if you own one of the Smartphones, this is the Edition for you!

Our developers worked around the clock to make this Edition possible at last. And it’s time to be revealed.

If you’ve ever browsed our full website from your mobile in the past, you’d have noticed that it had RSS for mobile. And if you’ve ever subscribed to it, you should have appreciated its simple interface, that suited every mobile phone.

Today our new Mobile Lite Edition resembles the RSS Feed of the past! I’ve blogged about our RSS Service for mobile sets on the Arabic website before, check it out here.

The new MEY Mobile Edition shows excerpts of our latest blogs on its front page, with the featured blog on head. On clicking any of the blogs, it opens the full article, with comments and trackbacks. MEY Mobile Edition is simple, fast, easy-to-use, and comes in an elegant smooth grey interface.

Is that Mideast Youth in your pocket?

This update comes amidst many mobile updates we’re working on at the moment. Our main goal, as always, is reaching every reader in the Middle East and North Africa, and outside. And to make that happen, we tackle every innovative way available to stay always, proudly, in the lead.

All you have to do is to browse our English or Arabic website on the go, and you’ll be redirected automatically to our wap Lite Edition. And of course with the ability to exit the Mobile Edition at any time, and view the standard browser version.

Worthy to mention, that we already have an application for iPhone™. You can download it from here.

For any suggestions, comments, or tips on our new Mideast Youth Mobile Edition. Kindly, contact us here!

* The picture is licensed under CC License. The source is here.

Let us know what you think in the comment section.

The update includes improved design and functionality, and having “MideastYouth” be a source for any tweets being made from within the application, such as in this screenshot below:

Overall the application has had some really nice reviews, but some complained of the fact that the app crashes once used excessively, or in the case of this latest build, once any feed is opened at all. Everything should be fixed and improved with the new build coming up.

Thanks to everyone who downloaded the app and many thanks for all your encouragement.

As for news about our Symbian phone application, we stopped its development due to the fact that we couldn’t figure out a way for it not to use an excess amount of data, making the app very expensive to use if not connected to a wireless connection. Many helped us test it and we all came to the conclusion that it wasn’t exactly necessary or usable. It was a failed experiment but one that needed to be explored anyways, so we don’t regret the time and effort we put into it (11 tough months, to be exact.)

However, due to popular demand, we now started developing for the BlackBerry device instead. It will be more or less a BlackBerry version of the iPhone one.

The Mideast Youth Organization proudly announces the launching of its new official Facebook group of the Arabic version of the website here.

The brand new group comes after a series of updates to the Arabic website, so that it could proceed to hold the precious name of the organization.

Whether you’re an Arabic native, or even if Arabic is your second language, support the new group by joining, contributing, and inviting all your Facebook list. Henceforth, we can carry on our long struggle, by all means and all languages possible, for free speech on the long winding road of freedom in the Middle East.

Check out the Arabic website here! And the official Facebook group here! You can also post in Arabic by sending a small application to us here.

Mideast Youth: Thinking Ahead!