Articles
Stories behind the products and tools I build: what they do, why they exist, and how they work.
Products
Product story
Shfli: a Syrian online marketplace for cars, real estate, auctions, bazaars and jobs
Shfli is an online marketplace for Syria that brings buyers and sellers together in one place: cars, real estate, live auctions, bazaars, jobs and more. Emad Alhamou was its technical lead and co-founder, and built the backend systems behind the platform and the app. · 2 min read
Product story
Arab Solutions: Arabic-first AI customer support that answers from your own knowledge
Arab Solutions is the AI customer support platform our team at Alhamou builds for businesses in the Arab world. It turns a company's documents into an assistant that answers customers in Arabic, shows where each answer comes from, and hands the conversation to a person when it should. · 4 min read
Product story
TakeCar: a Syrian app for ride sharing between cities, city rides and delivery
TakeCar is the Syrian mobility app our team builds at Alhamou. Drivers fill the empty seats on trips they already make, passengers travel between governorates for less, and the same app covers rides inside the city and delivery. · 3 min read
Product story
Nadhif: clean your Mac with developer tools and protect your website and server from hackers
Nadhif is the Mac app our team is building at Alhamou. It cleans your Mac and explains every file before it touches it, gives developers tools for the gigabytes Xcode, Node and Docker leave behind, and tests your websites and servers for vulnerabilities, so you can close them before anyone uses them. · 3 min readOpen source tools
Open source tool
OpenBlock: an open-source ad blocker for Safari on Mac, with no tracking
OpenBlock blocks ads and trackers in Safari on your Mac. It downloads real filter lists, converts them into Safari's own rule format and lets Safari enforce them, so nothing sits between you and the web. The code is open under the GPL-3.0 license. · 4 min read
Open source tool
RemoteDesk: an open-source Mac-to-Mac remote desktop for your local network
RemoteDesk shares one Mac's screen and lets you control it from another Mac over your local network. It captures the screen with ScreenCaptureKit, compresses it with hardware H.264 and sends it over TCP. It has no encryption or login, so it is meant for trusted private networks only. The code is open under the MIT license. · 5 min read
Open source tool
pinFiy: colored sticky notes for the Mac, with a small pin in the menu bar
pinFiy gives your Mac colored sticky notes that live behind a small pin in the menu bar. Each note is its own window, Arabic text runs right to left and English left to right, and a pinned note stays above your other windows. There is no account, no cloud sync and no network access. The code is open under the MIT license. · 4 min read
Open source tool
closeAll: force-quit every Dock app from one menu-bar button on Mac
closeAll force-quits every normal Dock app from one button in the menu bar. You review the list first, uncheck what should stay open and press Force Quit. Force Quit does not ask apps to save, so unsaved work is lost. The code is open under the MIT license. · 5 min read
Open source tool
SafeShare: hide private apps while you share your Mac screen in Teams, Zoom or Meet
SafeShare solves a screen-sharing dilemma: share the whole screen and risk leaking private chats and notifications, or share one window and lose multitasking. It builds a filtered Safe View window that leaves out the apps you protect. You share that window in Teams, Zoom or Meet and keep working on your real desktop. The code is open under the MIT license. · 5 min read
Open source tool
TopMovies: a native Mac app to discover movies and TV series, with a local library
TopMovies helps you decide what to watch on your Mac. It has curated discovery feeds such as For You, Tonight and Hidden Gems, filters across type, country, year, score and runtime, and a local library for favorites, a watchlist and your own ratings. It works offline in a demo mode and connects to TMDB for real data. It is built with SwiftUI and open under the MIT license. · 4 min read
Open source tool
moveMouse: a Mac menu-bar app that helps keep your RDP connection from dropping
moveMouse helps keep a remote desktop (RDP) connection open. It moves the pointer at an interval you choose and stops the Mac from sleeping while it runs, so a quiet session is less likely to be cut off. It lives in the menu bar and its code is open under the MIT license. · 5 min read
Open source tool