We went on a little web hunt for World Wide Web sites for Egyptian children and found… very little.

There are many web sites about Egypt, even more web sites made in Egypt and lots of sites for kids, but virtually no web sites made in Egypt for Egyptian kids.

One notable exception is the "Little Horus" web site (http://www.horus.ics.org.eg). Little Horus was the first Egyptian web site developed just for kids, and it is not really designed for Egyptian children but rather for children everywhere. But it is a very nicely done site and is great for Egyptian youngsters using the Internet to explore and learn about their own country.

Make a Friend

Little Horus is fun. It's colorful and most pages are, with a few surprising exceptions, quick to load - children don't have a lot of patience waiting for web pages to show up. The site is also designed to draw visitors back at least every month, with puzzles, and a contest quiz with a prize, usually a book, sent to the winner.

One nice touch is the voice guide, the enthusiastic voice of a young Egyptian boy welcoming you on each page.

Little Horus was developed by RITSEC for the Integrated Care Society (ICS). ICS, founded in 1977 by Chairwoman H.E. Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak, has a mission of "enhancing children's cultural awareness in Egypt."

Wide Variety of Content

Little Horus has full text content and voices in both English and Arabic. It has sections that describe the Egyptian government, culture and even the economy. But it is mostly about having a good time.

There is an extensive entertainment section with puzzles and a page that lets you see what your name looks like translated into hieroglyphics. The monthly Tour feature offers a look at interesting sites in Egypt with a new one promised every month, the latest one is a nice overview of the National Museum.

Uh-Ohs

Little Horus was developed using some high tech web page development tools including NetFusion Objects web development software. There are many features including a guest book and an interactive discussion group and shockwave sound technology support. Some people will be a little put off by the large files that you have to wait for occasionally - some of the voice-over files like the one on the "Where To Go" page which is over 370K, probably need shrunken or compressed to speed up their loading.

We want more sites like Little Horus

This work is by all measures a great success and has had over 28,000 visitors recorded so far. It is a nice example of what can be done with the Internet. The site was mentioned by Bill Gates, though not by name, in one of the Microsoft president's presentations about the Internet he made to the U.S. Congress. Even though the target of Little Horus is not specifically Egyptian children, it is a site they should not miss when they start exploring the Internet.

And coming soon …Sindbad

InTouch Communications Services, S.A.E. has developed a package called Sindbad, which exploits Internet publishing technologies and presents culturally rich entertainment for children. Mohamed A. El-Nawawy, Managing Director of InTouch envisioned the need for Sindbad when he was unable to find any Internet content for his own 3-year-old daughter that was relevant to her age and the Egyptian culture.

Sindbad, which is narrated by enthusiastic supporter Mrs. Randa of the Middle East Broadcasting Company, is done completely in Arabic. Users can turn on or off the text and voice-over features at any time using on-screen graphics buttons that resemble those on a video cassette recorder (VCR). InTouch also presented an early Beta test release of Sindbad to First Lady H.E. Suzanne Mubarak.

Sindbad is available for purchase on CD-ROM and is experienced using a Web browser but no Internet connection is required. No other Arabic software is required for that matter, just a web browser. The Sindbad beta release CD we reviewed included a copy of Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 which is required to experience all of the multimedia features. Intouch does plan to publish Sindbad onto the Internet in some form later in 1998.

Did we miss some great sites? If you know of any more Egyptian made web sites for Egyptian children let us know we'll make sure the word gets out.