What newsworthy events came from Israel in May? Enough for a special May headline sum up. The biggest stories of the month, of course, were the Presidential Conference, Project Better Place’s unveiling its electric car prototype and VMware’s acquisition of B-hive Networks. Other exciting news that received less international coverage, but are also noteworthy, included the Israel Venture Association’s Annual Hi-Tech Conference and that OpTier, a business service management software provider, is currently raising funds to make an acquisition. For these stories and the rest of the major headlines from May 2008 check out the 30 Israel-related technology headlines below:

Israel at 60
Israel Presidential Conference

Yahoo’s Susan Decker: Content is king

Remarks by President Bush, President Peres of Israel and Prime Minister Olmert of Israel

Israel at 60: 10 historic quotes and 1 joke

Google co-founder lauds Israeli innovation in tech, environment

Cleantech
Project Better Place presents electric car prototype

Techwatch: Solel closes second major contract

N-trig and Its Supply Chain Go “Green” to Help Protect the Environment

Information Technology
Shunra Software Announces New Chief Technology Officer as Company Expands Application Performance and Analysis Portfolio

Voltaire and LSI to Cross-Certify InfiniBand Storage Products

Sicap and Red Bend Sign Agreement for Interoperable Device Management

Aternity Named as 2008 American Business Awards Finalist

XMPie Steps Up Web-Enabled Automation with Enhanced uStore

Information Security
Commtouch and Scalix Collaboration Brings Real Time Messaging
Security to Linux-based E-mail Servers

Zones to Resell Applicure Web Application Firewall Technology

Check Point Pushes Virtualized Browser Protection

Info Security Products Guide Names Safend Winner of the 2008 Best
Deployment Scenario Awards

Investments and M&A
Wanaka closes first fund at $50 million

Lightspeed Venture Partners Closes $800 Million Fund VIII

BTM co OpTier raising funds for acquisition

VMware to Acquire B-hive Networks to Further Enhance Virtualization Platform With Application Performance Management

Telecommunications
MobileMax in cellular-to-VoIP deal

modu in talks on handset launch

Israeli company aims to speed up the Internet

Miscellaneous
Israel Venture Association’s Annual Hi-Tech
Conference 2008 Hits the Road

Touchwall: Microsoft’s Inexpensive Wall-Based Multi-Touch Interface

High Tech Puts Israel in the Black

Israel’s Garage Geeks Gather to Hear Google’s Brin

Aniboom and I-play Partner to Create Animated Series Based on Popular
Casual Games for Distribution Across Mobile, Online and Television
Platforms

Copenda’s New Features Ease Communication
Across Social Networking and Dating Sites

(Picture of me at the 2008 Presidential Conference playing with a modu – one of the world’s smallest cell phones. Thanks Oren for taking this! Get to know Oren and modu better by checking out the modu blog.)

About the author: Lisa Damast is the Membership
Manager of ebizQ.net and currently resides in Israel. Any questions or
inquiries regarding this blog or ebizQ membership services can be
directed to her via email at ldamast (at) ebizq (dot) net. She can also be followed on Twitter, where she covers additional Israeli technology companies and Israel-related headlines and topics.

In recounting Yahoo! President, Susan Decker’s remarks in my last post, a few things made me think about the role that Israel will have in the future of the Internet. As mentioned in that post, the topic of the panel that Decker, Sergey Brin, Rupert Murdoch, among others participated on, was, “What is the future of the new Internet media?”

Included in Decker’s response to this was a reflection that while Yahoo! currently covers the “breadth” of the
Internet, the future is in its “depth,” such as processing speed, low
costs storage, mass media distribution – three areas in which companies in Israel are constantly innovating.

For processing speed, one only has to think of the Intel chips that have been released in recent years and their original development here in Israel. Since Intel first opened an R&D lab in Haifa in the 1990s, Israeli researchers have developed the Dual-Core Intel Xeon Processor 5100 series, the first PC
processor with a 8-bit 8088 bus, Intel Pentium MMX and Intel Centrino. Although the Haifa lab didn’t develop the latest Penryn chip, it did play a part in determining how the “new chip micro-architecture could be manufactured on a commercial scale.”
 

The commercial success of Intel’s chips have enabled not just more digital activity and productivity, but have also increased demand for low cost storage – several innovations of which, have also come from Israel. In the portable storage realm, Walletex has added a new dimension to USB drive storage devices with its credit card-styled and -sized 4GB and 8GB storage devices. Its devices also have the technology to receive automatic updates from the Internet when plugged in and connected to the Internet. G.ho.st, a web-based operating system that acts as a virtual desktop, provides users with 5 GB of free storage that can be uploaded to the virtual desktop.

Storage on a virtual desktop isn’t the only free online storage idea coming from Israel though – eSnips, the multimedia and storage social network, allows its users to not just upload up to 5 GB of data for free, but to also utilize its mass media distribution features, such as document and media file storing and handling, for other users to access and share. While this is a hybrid of low cost storage and mass media distribution, pure mass media distribution websites in Israel include MetaCafe and AniBoom. Both sites rely on user-generated and -submitted short film content, regular and animated, respectively and active participation in their communities.

It is the active participants of these communities that make it likely that these three mass media sites leaders in the present Internet media will continue to play a crucial part in shaping the future of the Internet and Internet media. The social networking aspects of these sites help inspire innovation here in Israel in ways that almost guarantee that these sites will reach and maintain the “depth” of the new Internet that Decker was talking about and which Yahoo! is still seeking.

About the author: Lisa Damast is the Membership
Manager of ebizQ.net and currently resides in Israel. Any questions or
inquiries regarding this blog or ebizQ membership services can be
directed to her via email at ldamast (at) ebizq (dot) net. She can also be followed on Twitter, where she covers additional Israeli technology companies and Israel-related headlines and topics. 

As mentioned in my previous post, I attended the Presidential Conference in Jerusalem this past Thursday. One of the sessions that I attended was a panel discussion entitled, “The Revolution of the Internet and the New Media.” The panel was moderated by Yossi Vardi and the panelists included, Yahoo! President, Susan Decker; Google Co-founder, Sergey Brin; Publicis Groupe Chairman and CEO, Maurice Levy; News Corporation Chairman and CEO, Rupert Murdoch; and Windsor Media Chairman and CEO, Terry Semel. The question posed to the panelists was “What is the future of the new Internet media?”

While the panelists were able to paint an overall picture of what the relationship between the Internet and media will probably look like in the future, only Susan Decker’s comments really stood out. She began by mentioning that “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” She discussed the importance of the Internet for essentials and mentioned that while Yahoo! currently covers the “breadth” of the Internet, the future is in the “depth,” such as processing speed, low costs storage, mass media distribution.

In relation to mass media distribution and the role that it will play, she emphasized the personal connection that will be widespread in the future, and how it will affect news and TV in the future. This new media, dubbed “we” media, will allow individuals to define news and entertainment and receive it for themselves based on their own personal interests and then to share it with their entire social graph. What role Yahoo! will play in this, is still a major question. In reference to that, Decker concluded by stating that with over 500 million users, Yahoo! is both the largest social network and the least useful, and that the social graph will be used in the future to prioritize one’s information and interactions with others through it.

The means of attaining this in the future are what IT professionals should keep an eye on and try to really understand:
1. Creating open experience – figuring out the how and where.
2. Highly personal filters that are user generated and customized.
3. The connection of the online and off-line worlds and the digitization of everything.

(Note: Picture is of the stage before the panelists arrived.)

During the week of May 4, 2008, Israel turned 60 and a few technology companies announced that they will be featured “Enterprises of Tomorrow” during the Israeli Presidential Conference Facing Tomorrow taking place on May 13 to May 15, 2008. The Conference has been organized by Israeli President Shimon Peres and, as the title implies, will focus on the future.

Twenty-seven dignitaries including President Bush and former Prime Minister of England, Tony Blair, will be on hand for the event, as will several tech luminaries, including Google Co-founder, Sergey Brin; and Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. Yossi Vardi, perhaps Israel’s greatest entrepreneur, is the Director of Science and Technology Track for the Conference and will lead one of the panels.

In anticipation for the Conference, which I will be attending on May 15th, this post as well as others to come this week will be in relation to the Conference, Israel’s 60th and technology, and the 60 “Enterprises of Tomorrow.” To get started, here are 10 headlines, mainly from the past week of May 4, 2008, that relate to some of Israel’s “Enterprises of Tomorrow.”

modu at the Presidential Conference

STMicroelectronics and Mobileye Deliver Second-Generation System-on-Chip for Vision-Based Driver Assistance Systems

AqWise Launches the Next Generation Remote N’ Control(TM) Solution for
Total Nitrogen Removal and Introduces Its AGAR® Process at IFAT 2008

Israel Cleantech Ventures closes $75m debut fund

Project Better Place debuts electric car

Comsys Selected as ‘Enterprise of Tomorrow’
to Feature at Israeli Presidential Conference

Updated fring version for iPhone (pre-release v. 0.9785)

Israel startup developing software system to identify terrorists

Camero Launches Handheld “Through-Wall Vision” Product

C-true Imaging – “Your Face is your key”

About the author: Lisa Damast is the Membership
Manager of ebizQ.net and currently resides in Israel. Any questions or
inquiries regarding this blog or ebizQ membership services can be
directed to her via email at ldamast (at) ebizq (dot) net. She can also be followed on Twitter, where she covers additional Israeli technology companies and Israel-related headlines and topics.