Fikrah

We started off 2010, offline.

Why? We had launched on January 1st 2009 with a promising Beta site under Reqa Pte Ltd. It was developed by me, an open source advocate, and written using my own invention, PHP on Racks, an alpha-phase MVC framework in PHP. Its mobile app, the Solat Time, was written by Nasral, my colleague and mentor.

Around March 2009, I left Reqa, amicably. It was time. I needed to do my thing. But iAlif.com, I feared, wouldn’t be maintained, because I was the only one who understood the code! =P

I then went on to run my business proper, Verbeter Group, an Internet Experience company. I wanted to Improve Internet Experiences. That was my goal. And iAlif.com had a lot of my personal philosophy of how Islamic web experiences should be.

But it was still then a property of Reqa, and we managed to agree to a joint-venture on iAlif.com (we only just launched mah).

We all saw its potential, and figured that the best way forward was to create a new company, under the name iAlif.com of course.

It took months, and I headhunted for suitable people to lead, and I found Rozmail, a friend of mine since adolescence when I used to be active at Masjid En-Naeem as a youth leader, who is now a Computer Science undergrad at NUS.

Weeks towards a more concrete resolution to form this new company, our friends from Reqa decided to part ways. They had a different idea of how things should work, particularly with the mobile app. We retained the name, but the rights to the Java based app is theirs. However, we continue to support them by linking their app on the iAlif.com Facebook page.

So now, after getting the administrative side of things done, registering the business, $$ matters, and commitment, we’re starting anew. A fresh, clean, start. The first. The Alif. The Beginning. So you, my dear readers, check our blog regularly (at least bi-weekly) as we update you on our new look site and our new iPhone app.

What is to be of iAlif.com on the mobile sphere? We won’t be doing J2ME apps. For now, we’re focusing all our attention on iPhone, iPod Touch and possibly the iPad apps, and a pipeline of Android and Blackberry versions as well. We’ll be posting some proof-of-concepts screenshots as well as progress of our web and mobile apps. So stay tuned.

And I ask all our friends, supporters and fans, pray for us and our success. Because our success, is your success; the success of the Muslim community.