Searching Arabic websites can be tricky if you don't have an Arabic keyboard. But now a new search engine called Linguos claims to have overcome that problem. You just type the words phonetically in the Roman alphabet.

When Linguos is unsure what you mean it displays various similar-sounding words in the Arabic script and you click to indicate the correct one.

I tried it with "al ra'is salih" ("President Salih") and a second time spelling "saalih" with a double "a". The two searches gave slightly different results but both listed the Yemeni president's official website as the first item.

Based on just a few experiments it seemed a bit clunky but with increasing familiarity it may well become easier to use. I can certainly imagine situations where it would be useful. Readers' opinions are welcome.