Category: Apps

The Ministry of Public Works have updated their complaints app with a brand new interface. The new app looks much nicer but also makes it easier to submit a complaint. The app is called “MPW Emergency 150” and it allows you to submit complaints related to public infrastructure like street or sewage issues. The app is available for both Android and iOS devices.

Now if only the Ministry of Interior can release a similar app…

Thanks Zaydoun

The Public Authority for Civil Information recently updated their app with some new interesting features. The app is now a phone-based Civil ID for identity verification. It will also be used for authenticating government and non-government eservices and serve as a trusted digital signature for electronic documents and transactions. That’s basically how it’s described in the app store but I don’t think you can use it yet for anything, at least not that I’m aware of.

I think we will start using it soon for online services as a means to authenticate ourselves as we are moving everything to a digital platform which is why I installed it and set it up. Set up is a fairly straight forward process if you have the newer smart Civil ID’s with the chips). Once you input your Civil ID number and serial number (from the back of your Civil ID) into the app, it will automatically pull all your information including address, photo, nationality, and other details. I’m actually looking forward to seeing what I can eventually use it for.

If you want to download it here are the links:
Apple iOS Version
Google Android Version

Last week Carriage and Talabat announced they were joining forces and that there were major improvements coming soon. Yesterday the first change arrived.

If you update your Carriage app to the latest version you’ll now see a bunch of major changes from a new updated interface, to the fact there are now over 2,000 restaurants listed. My first impression isn’t that great but only because it’s a pretty big change to an app I use on a daily basis. One of the first things I did after launching the updated app was going into my account settings and shutting off the options to receive Newsletter and SMS subscriptions. With this new update, the settings are turned on by default so if you don’t want to get spam, turn them off.

With this new update, Talabat has killed off some sections like Electronics and Flowers but left the Grocery section. The biggest change though is the increase in the number of restaurants available through the app since they’ve now added all the Talabat restaurants to the Carriage app. The new total is around 2,200 restaurants which is pretty crazy and means Carriage users now have access to some previously Talabat exclusive restaurants like PICK. Another major change is the fact there are restaurant ratings now so once your order is completed, you can now rate the restaurant you ordered from. Carriage Black still works since I see the discount being applied when I’m checking out, but other than on the checkout page, I can’t seem to find any info on it anywhere in the app which leads me to believe this might be something Talabat will be killing very soon (I hope not).

There are also changes happening behind the scenes. Talabat’s drivers will now start handling all the Carriage deliveries and Talabat will also be handling all the Carriage payments and customer support. The delivery radius has also decreased so some places that used to deliver to my place no longer deliver.

I’m curious to see how this new Carriage and Talabat partnership continues to develop. Hopefully, it means better overall service and experience since that was one of the major complaints people had about Carriage. Right now I care more about Carriage Black than better customer service so hopefully, they don’t phase it out.

There is this app called FaceApp which allows you to change your age, hair color, hairstyle and other features, but unlike other apps that do similar effects, this one is actually incredibly realistic. Like scary realistic. Been having fun with it all morning so if you haven’t tried it out yet it’s available on both iOS and Android devices. Link

If you want to get plants but don’t feel like going to the nurseries, the Mashatel app is a good alternative.

The Mashatel app allows you to buy plants and gardening gear from the nurseries in the same way Carriage allows you to buy food from restaurants. The app divides the plants into indoor and outdoor categories, you choose which you want and then browse through the available plants. When you click on one it will give you more details on the kind of plant it is, and how to maintain it. Pretty helpful if say you’re looking for something that doesn’t require a lot of watering for example.

Delivery prices vary depending on where you live but they start at KD2 and go up to KD10 if you want to deliver to Khiran. The app is available for both iOS and Android devices and you can download it from here.

I posted about the ReQueue app last year, it’s an app that allows you to add yourself to a restaurants waiting list before getting to the restaurant. When I posted about ReQueue the only restaurant on it that interested me was Table Otto, but I’ve stopped going there so I stopped using the app.

But, recently a friend made me aware you could reserve a table at one of my favorite breakfast places, Lunch Room. Lunch Room is small and always busy on weekends, and unlike Cocoa Room, I can’t call in ahead to add myself to their waiting list. Now with ReQueue, that issue is sorted.

There are more restaurants on ReQueue now so might be worth checking it out again. It’s available for both [iOS] and [Android] devices.

The Kuwait Maps app is a new mapping app that is integrated to Google Maps but has one big advantage over it, the app allows you to search for an address in the format we’re used to here in Kuwait:

Area, Block Number, Street Number/Name, House Number.

The way the app works is very simple and fast. When you first run it you choose which area you’re in, then what block number you’re looking for followed by what street and finally what house number. The app will then find the location for you and allow you to navigate to it using Google Maps.

Right now the app is only available for iOS but will be available for Android phones in the future. The app is free and if you want to try it out you can find the app download link on their website [Here]

Carriage updated their app today bringing with it two major changes:

1) The app no longer plays a video on launch
2) The app now saves your credit card details

The video on launch was super annoying so glad they got rid of it. The second update, on the other hand, is a pretty big one. If you go to your profile settings you can now add your credit card to the app. This also works with Knet even though the app will treat it as a Visa card. You add your Knet card to the app and when checking out, choose credit card as your payment method. If you added your card correctly, you should get a small pop up asking you to select the card you want to use to place your order. No more having to type out your card number again.

With Deliveroo launching really soon I’m guessing we’ll be seeing a bunch of new features and possibly promotions and an updated pricing system from Carriage. Should be fun!

Can you please remove the super annoying video that plays every time I launch your app? Your app now shuts off my music and podcasts whenever I open it, and the fact that I have to wait 6+ seconds for the video to finish before the app starts loading is even more annoying.

Thank you!

Update: Carriage just informed me they’ll be removing the video next week!

I’m thinking about getting a Pelican case for my camera gear and so the first place I checked was at Al-Sabih. But, not only did they not have the sizes I was looking for, what they did have was expensive, like double Amazon prices expensive. For example:

Pelican 1520 Case with Foam
Al-Sabih = KD73
Amazon = KD34

Then I remembered someone once mentioned a store called FITCO Systems once that also sold Pelican cases. So I googled FITCO and found pictures of what looked like a stationary store / hardware store / electronics store. I asked the guys in one of my WhatsApp groups about the store and a friend told me its a very weird place, so weird that he couldn’t explain what the store sold and that I had to go see it for myself.

FITCO Systems is located in Kuwait City right next to Tatami and behind Solo Pizza. When I first walked in I asked about Pelican cases and they have them. Their prices were also pretty reasonable:

Pelican 1400 Case with Foam
FITCO = KD32
Amazon = KD30

Pelican 1500 Case with Foam
FITCO = KD48
Amazon = KD43

Pelican 1600 Case with Foam
FITCO = KD65
Amazon = KD48

Anyway here is the interesting part. I started walking around the store to see what they sold exactly and they had so much random stuff all over the place. The store has been around since 1986 and I think they deal with businesses and wholesale (B2B) more than with consumers. So the store isn’t really in tip-top condition which is why I kept digging up so much vintage stuff.

The store has a ton of items still on the shelves from when they had opened back in 1986, items that are no longer useful but they’re still selling. The place is like a time capsule and I think I spent an hour flipping through their shelves taking photos of everything from Palm Pilot modems to storage cases for 5 1/4 Floppy Disks. They had brand new Windows 98 boxes as well as Microsoft Plus! 98. They had discontinued FujiFilm FP-100C instant film, old Nikon 35mm film scanners, a whole bunch of 8mm backup tapes and cartridges, old webcams, and just a huge amount of random items piled up everywhere. I shared a bunch of photos on my instagram story @mark248am if you want to take a look.

If you want to check the place out yourself, here is their location on [Google Maps].
They also have a website but like the store, it also looks like it hasn’t been updated since the 90s [Link].

We launched our PantryBee iOS app yesterday and Mark asked me to write about why we made that decision for our business. As a small business with limited cash reserves, it’s always hard to make the decision to invest in a new platform, and it was a year of back and forth before we decided to finally go ahead.

Why did we do it? Well, it’s obvious to everyone that mobile usage is super high in Kuwait, and that a lot of purchases are done through mobile. We knew that, but we also wanted to verify against our own traffic. So after a year of data collection, we did find that most of our users were indeed purchasing PantryBee meal kits from their phone and that the majority of those were iPhone users. Armed with that info we decided to go for it. The biggest hurdle, of course, was cost. We didn’t have thousands of KD to throw on something that might not be useful, so we went about it as economically as we could with the goal of making our customers experience better.

The first step to creating an app is setting up an account with the Apple Developer Program. This honestly wasn’t that difficult of a process, there’s just a bit of waiting time in order to be verified as a legitimate business. The second step for us was finding an appropriate third party to assist with the App creation process. Seeing as we already had an existing e-commerce backend (Shopify), we searched for companies that had an app that would integrate with the Shopify platform. The whole process from A-Z took about 3 months to get to the current app we have out right now.

Though our site is already mobile friendly, our new app allows a more seamless navigation of our offerings, including app-specific promos, notifications and more. It has all the info and products available on our site, just better suited to a mobile experience. So head to the app store and tell us what you think! You can download our app from this [Link]

If you have any specific comments or want to know more about the process for your own business, feel free to email us at [email protected] and we’ll try and help as much as we can.

Post by Hind
CoFounder of PantryBee where home cooking is made easy.

A friend of mine who lives in Dubai is signed up to this gym membership where she pays a set fee every month, and then has access to a number of gyms. She loves it because she gets to go to one gym for spinning, another for boxing, another for crossfit etc.. all with just one membership. Turns out we now have something similar in Kuwait called AllympiaPass.

AllympiaPass is a gym pass that gives you access to over 40 gyms in Kuwait. The way it works is simple (kinda), you sign up to one of their packages, then you launch the app and see what options you have available today or on a specific date. So you might be interested in pool access, or you might be interested in crossfit, you select what you want and you book it. That’s it. The app even allows you to filter between mixed classes or same sex classes and also by the area the gym is located in or by the kind of classes you’re interested in.

The only thing that makes the process a bit complicated is understanding how the membership plans work. Here are the packages available:

3 Passes / 14 Days
Visit any gym once
KD6

8 Passes / 30 Days
Visit any gym up to 3 times
KD28

12 Passes / 30 Days
Visit any gym up to 4 times
KD35

Unlimited Passes / 1 Month
Visit any gym up to 6 times
KD52

Unlimited Passes / 3 Months
Visit any gym up to 6 times
KD140

So, the complicated part here is with the wording of unlimited pass. Even though it’s called unlimited, it’s not really unlimited. The unlimited pass allows you to visit every one of the gyms they’ve partnered up with, but you can visit each gym up to 6 times only. For example, say you enjoy the crossfit classes at Flare Fitness, you can only visit them 6 times per month with their unlimited plan. This way you are forced to explore and visit multiple gyms which is the whole aim of the pass. At KD52 a month it’s actually not that bad of a deal.

If you’re interested in downloading the app and exploring it, here is the [Link]

ReQueue is a local app that allows you to add yourself to a restaurants waiting list. I found out about it a couple of days ago so I haven’t been able to try it out yet, but going through the list of restaurants in the app, I don’t think you need to wait for most of them. The only reason I got the app is because Table Otto is on it, and they do get crazy busy on Saturday for brunches.

The app seems fairly simple to use and even lets you know if a place has a waiting list or if you can just walk in and get a table. It’s available for both [iOS] and [Android] devices.

If you’ve used ReQueue before, let me know how it worked out for you.

Although we don’t have Uber in Kuwait yet, we do have various other apps that pretty much do the same thing. Over the years I’ve posted about a few but never in one concise post, and since some have stopped working over the years, this list is of current active ones.

Q8 Grand Limo
This is my favorite app/service right now, and the one I’ve been using constantly. It’s really made my cabbing experience in Kuwait great, the cars are super clean and fancy, the drivers are very polite and tidy, and I haven’t had any issues with them since I started using them back in May. Costwise, they’re more expensive than regular street cabs but the experience really makes up for the price. Plus, they gave me a 20% promo code when I posted about them back in May so for me, trips don’t cost that much more than regular street cabs. They’ve got around 30 cabs in operation including a Mercedes S400 in case you want to splurge. I actually got picked up by the S400 a few weeks back when they were super busy and didn’t have their regular cars available. Let’s just say I forgave them for being late and they can always pick me up late if they’re gonna do so in the S400. You can also book a cab ahead of time which I’ve done when I needed a middle of the night ride to the airport. [Link]

Careem
Probably the closest thing to Uber in Kuwait right now since they’re Uber’s main competitor in the region. I’ve never used them but I’ve got friends who swear by them. Like Grand Limo, they also have a ride later option which many people use to schedule airport rides and they also have their own fleet of cars. [Link]

Q8 Taxi
This is an app I posted about a few years ago and were one of the early ones to launch in Kuwait. I tried using them back then a few times and had a fairly average experience and then one day, it just stopped working. Now it seems they’re back since they’ve been advertising their app pretty heavily. Haven’t tried them and don’t think I will, but they’re the cheapest option in this list since they use regular street cabs to pick you up. [Link]

If there are any other apps I’ve missed let me know in the comments.

The Kuwait Municipality have launched a campaign asking citizens to take photos of violations and send it to their social media accounts so they can fix the issues. They don’t mention the kinds of violations to report, but based on their instagram it looks like garbage related issues, abandoned cars, illegal banners and food related violations. To report an issue you’ll have to photograph the violation and then send it to their instagram or twitter accounts @kuwmun.

It’s a pretty great crowdsourcing initiative, but I just wish the process wasn’t so clumsy. A better solution would be a dedicated app like Deera. The Deera app allows you take photos, share the GPS location, mention what kind of issue you’re reporting and it doesn’t require you to have a social media account allowing you to remain anonymous. It would also make the municipality’s life easier since managing instagram messages isn’t the most practical thing in the world and instagram messaging lacks basic features such as flagging.

What I’d really love is an app like Metrash2 which allows citizens in Qatar to report traffic violations. Now that’s an app I’d have a lot of fun with.