During the week of August 8, 2010, it was revealed that SupersonicAds, an internet company that has developed a virtual goods monetization platform, has raised $2 million. The round was led by former Skype CEO Michael van Swaaij. Qoof launched a platform-independent video advertising app and OpTier launched the first educational business transaction management portal. For these stories and more, see this week’s headlines below.

Cleantech
1. Ernst & Young: Israeli Government Must Pick Up CleanTech Glove

2. Is Desalination The Answer

Investment
3. Clean Tech Dominates Q2 Funding at $130M

4. Former Skype CEO leads $2M investment in online games offer firm SupersonicAds

Information Technology
5. Qoof Launches Platform-Independent In-Video Advertising App Technology

6. OpTier Launches First Educational Business Transaction Management Portal

Miscellaneous
7. Israel aims to be space superpower

8. Exclusive: PM set to okay space R&D program

During the week of August 1, 2010, DroidSecurity revealed that its Android security app has been downloaded by 2.5 million users. Ad targeting company eXelate announced it raised $15 million and Israel’s first tidal plant was completed in Jaffa. For these stories and more, see this week’s headlines below.

Cleantech
1. Israel’s First Tidal Power Plant Completed In Jaffa

2. Israeli-Palestinian team for clean water

3. As It Shrinks, the Dead Sea Nourishes Promises of an Economic Bloom

Investment
4. eXelate Secures $15M; Educates Consumers On Ad Targeting

5. ScaleMP Experiences Record Growth in Q2

Information Technology
6. Dapper Dives Into The Display DR Dream

7. DroidSecurity Hits 2.5M Milestone

Miscellaneous
8. Business Strategy, Israeli female entrepreneurs and Facebook IPO rumors

When TheFacebook.com launched in the spring semester of my freshman year of college it immediately became all the rage on campus. It was a new way for us to keep in touch with friends from class, the dorms and various clubs and was great for organizing groups and sending messages related to classwork.

It was a closed system open to only a few universities and made us feel special to be part of its exclusiveness. Facebook had a clean design and few features and didn’t seem like a startup that had its sights set high.

Six-and-a-half years later, Facebook is a platform that is open to everyone, has over 500 million active users and is estimated to be worth over $24 billion.

The latest rumors are about when the company will go public, which will probably be in 2012, after the company has acquired more users and CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg gains more experience.

While it is impressive that Zuckerberg, who is only 26, has been able to grow the company over the years, it is even more impressive that he was able to do so during its most critical early stages without having a business strategy.

Facebook’s success despite its lacking a strategy, along with the successes and failures of other startups, was part of a discussion that took place last night when 40-plus Israeli female entrepreneurs met to discuss how startups can avoid strategic mistakes in the early stages. The event was the latest one organized by Yazamiyot, a business networking forum for Israeli female entrepreneurs, and was led by Yair Snir, a lecturer at the joint MBA program of the Wharton School of Business and the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC).

Yazamiyot members discuss business strategy.

Snir went through the different steps that go into a good strategy (summed up as “Where do we want to get to and how do we want to get there”) and gave examples of successful companies ranging from McDonald’s to Lego. He concluded his presentation by stating that no strategy can guarantee success, to which a stunned participant asked if there’s any conclusive evidence out there for finding out what works.

The answer given last night was no, but one only has to look at Facebook to see that the answer should be yes. In a way. Although the business strategy lays out the long-term plans of a company it is not a one-time thing that you figure out and then lock away in some file cabinet never to return to. As with the rest of the business plan, it is dynamic and needs to be constantly updated based on changes in the industry and market trends. It is a guide to follow but not to the “T”.

To support this, when asked in an interview last year what advice he had for entrepreneurs, Bob Rosenschein, the founder and CEO of Answers.com, responded that entrepreneurs should be flexible. By being flexible, Rosenschein has been able to keep Answers.com afloat through the hard times and to grow it into the successful Top 20 website that it is today.

In the case of Facebook, by morphing over the years and staying attuned to what users want, it has been able to grow at a phenomenal rate.

Even though there is no way to guarantee success from the onset, by constantly doing research and being flexible, entrepreneurs can better ensure the success of their companies.

During the week of July 25, 2010, web security firm Commtouch acquired Authentium’s antivirus unit. The sale is likely to be the first of several Commtouch will make in the upcoming months and next few years. Israel’s VoIP site ooVoo is gaining ground on rival and market leader Skype and issues Israel’s government and tech industry need to discuss continue to be brought to light. For these stories and the rest of this week’s headlines, see below.

Cleantech
1. Green hi-rise to hit Tel Aviv

2. 8 Ways Israel and China Intersect in Clean Energy

Investment and Economy
3. Israel tries to lure major banks to expand its R&D

4. IBM buys Storwize for $140 million

Information Technology
5. ooVoo vs. Skype: Tech firm gaining ground on larger rival

6. AT&T, Amdocs launch Israel innovation center

7. Commtouch Security Platform Boosted by Acquisition

Miscellaneous
8. Start-Down: Israeli Start-ups in crisis

9. ‘Sniffing’ Technology Helps Disabled Move, Communicate

During the week of July 18, 2010, Amdocs and AT&T launched a new development center. Israeli scientists claim that they can increase computer memory capabilities using protein from poplar trees and the Jerusalem Post implemented SemantiNet’s Headup application on its website. The app lets visitors discover new content and enables the Jerusalem Post to automatically generate a comprehensive web resource on Israel and the Middle East. For these stories and more, see this week’s headlines below.

Cleantech
1. 4 Israeli Car Technologies Volkswagen Should Buy

2. The History of Clean Tech Business Between Texas and Israel

Investment and Economy
3. Ten Takeaways from Deloitte’s 2010 Israel VC Indicator Survey

4. Colo. accords with Israel could generate jobs

Information Technology
5. Amdocs, AT&T launch Israel center

6. Red Hat SPICE protocol advances but release could be a year away

7. Israeli Scientists Increase Computer Memory Capabilities

8. What SemantiNet’s Headup application means for the JPost and other publishers

Miscellaneous
9. The real pillars of the Israeli economy

10. The Hummus Manifesto – Part 1

11. The Hummus Manifesto – Part 2

Volkswagon Group, the world’s third largest car manufacturer is looking to Israel for cutting-edge technologies for its cars. Here’s a look at four technologies Volkswagon should consider. Image via Mike Babcock.

Ynet is reporting that the Volkswagon Group, made up of SEAT, Skoda and Lamborghini and others, has hired an Israeli company founded by former minister Yossi Beilin to assist it in its search for Israeli tech companies to work with.

According to the article, Volkswagon, which is the third largest car manufacturer in the world after General Motors and Toyota, is presumably looking at Israeli companies that can help it develop an electric car: “One of the areas in which the technology industries in Israel could aid The Volkswagen Group is in developing the electric car. On Tuesday, Volkswagen announced plans to launch sites around the world to develop electric cars, at an investment of five billion euro.”

Here’s four Israeli technologies that can help Volkswagon with its electric car and other green efforts:

1. Z5

Developed by Zion Badash when he was just 16, the the $208 Z5 is a small device that, once connected to a car’s engine, can reduce gas consumption by 40% and give the car more power. The z5 has attracted the attention of several large car manufacturers around the world that are interested in adding it directly to their vehicles, including Ford and Mazda. The device is currently available online through the Z5 website.

2. ETV

ETV has created a new jet turbine engine that generates electricity that can recharge the battery pack. Different from other hybrid cars,

“it’s always electric power that powers the wheels, whereas with the Prius, sometimes it’s electric power, sometimes it’s the energy generated by the pistons,” says Arnold Roth, COO of ETV.

The company is made up of several engineers from the former Soviet Union who played a significant role in the Russian jet turbine industry.

3. Silicon-powered Battery

A professor at the Technion-Israel Institute of Science published last year his research on a new portable electrochemical battery that can generate thousands of hours of electricity using silicon, an environment-friendly fuel source. The technology is currently several years away, but can eventually be used in the batteries of electric cars.

4. Piston-less turbine engine

Agam Energy Systems has developed a piston-less turbine engine. Using a new kind of compressor, the liquid gas turbine-like engine consumes 1/5 of the fuel while releasing only a tenth of the emissions.

::Ynet

This article was originally posted on Green Prophet.

The Jerusalem Post, the main daily English Israeli newspaper, has implemented SemantiNet’s Headup application and is currently running a pilot with it. At first glance, Headup, which has been added to this blog too, seems to be potentially another annoying widget that will underline certain keywords (that may or may not be relevant) and include a pop up when the word is clicked on.

Offering three different linking options – tabs, snippet, and link – SemantiNet takes the idea of information gathering to a different level though. The tab option, includes, when it pops up, a description of the word or phrase from Wikipedia, along with other tabs for news related to that word from that site and other sites, photos, videos, Tweets and anything else that is relevant to the link, giving viewers the chance to see the word in real-time.

The snippet includes a description, a picture and related articles, while the link option is just a link to a page. Not just any page though. It is a page that gathers all the information that was in the tab option and displays it on one page (see below). When the settings are set to link, viewers who would click on a highlighted word are taken to a page on the Headup domain with all that information, plus a way to see what friends are interested in via Facebook Connect and an advertisement on the side.

In the case of the JPost, the topic pages stay on the JPost domain. Called the JPostPedia, the JPost’s intention is to create the ultimate source of information related to Israel and the Middle East using these pages.

The “authoritative source of information on a wide variety of topics relating to Israel and the Middle East” as Shai Tsur of Giza Venture Capital, which is invested in the company, puts it in his post on this. Such a source signifies a change in the content generation, aggregation and distribution game.

By utilizing Headup, news sites provide their readers with a more complete context as well as an easy way to consume additional content. By creating topic pages, publishers can essentially unearth archived material that users would not generally think to look for and present it to their users within a particular and more complete context. Users get more information about the articles they are reading and sites get more pageviews and provide a better user experience.”

It also gives publishers more pages to monetize. In the case of blogs, such as this one, it can offer visitors a chance to find/discover additional relevant content on this site and other sites. In addition, there is an option to have publisher content syndicated.

All this related to the topic pages leads to the question, except for wikipedia, are most wikis about to become obsolete? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

::BloGiza

Related Posts:
Web 2.0, the Live Web and SemantiNet
Conduit conveys your information to viewers
Thoughts on TechAviv and Outbrain’s recent $12 million B round

During the week of July 11, 2010, Fring, a mobile VoIP network that lets users make video calls over 3G and other things, unveiled its new app for the iPhone 4 and set off a heated debate with Skype. Motorized bicycling is taking off in Israel and Conduit is continuing to report big numbers. For these stories and more, see this week’s headlines below.

Cleantech
1. Israel is catching on to motorized bikes as the next best urban solution

2. MST becomes 1st Israeli technology firm to connect to grid

3. BGU receives first US – Israel energy independence grant for light water reactor research

Investment
4. Vocaltec shares shoot up 150% after merger agreement with magicJack maker Ymax

5. Ormat Tech raising NIS 600m in unrated bonds

Information Technology
6. Self-healing software is on its way

7. Fring Unveils 3G Video Calls

8. Conduit Reports Big Numbers: 250,000 App Publishers, 170 Million Users

9. Tufin Technologies Wins International Stevie(R) Award in Seventh Annual International Business Awards(SM)

10. Promisec: Securing Networks from Within

Miscellaneous
11. Modu 1 modular phone hits UK, touchscreen Modu T to come: Android Modu-like?

12. Record number of tourists visit Israel

IDF treats Haitian girl

The Israel Defense Forces’s ongoing efforts to embrace the Internet continues. A few days before IDF representatives explained to 140Conf participants how the army used social media to update the public about its efforts in Haiti and to help save lives there, the army announced that it created and is using a website modeled after eBay for the purpose of selling and buying surplus equipment.

The new site, called The Arena, is the army’s new effort to keep better track of inventory while potentially saving itself millions of shekels on “duplicate and wasteful equipment”. It is also partially a response to the poor capabilities it had in moving around equipment and materials that soldiers needed during the Lebanon War in 2006.

According to Bloomberg, Brigadier-General Maran Prozenfer, financial adviser to the chief of staff, explained,

“Every unit in the Israel Defense Forces will be able to put up for sale any equipment that it doesn’t need, so that other units can see and bid on it.”

Prozenfer expects the new site to significantly reduce equipment costs, which according to him currently accounts for nearly 40 percent of the army’s NIS 50 billion shekel ($12.9 billion) annual budget.

::Haaretz

Image via IDF Spokesperson Blog.

During the week of July 4, 2010, Venrock, the venture capital arm of the Rockefeller family, raised $350 million. The Silicon Valley-based fund has invested in several Israeli companies over the years including Check Point, Bhive Ltd., P-cube, and Imperva. IBM Israel and the EU will be partnering open source and cloud technologies to improve the efficiency of EU governments and Amdocs and OpTier are partnering to make OpTier’s business transaction management (BTM) more widely available. For these stories and more, see this week’s headlines below.

Cleantech
1. Evogene Castor Oil Demonstrates Suitability as Biojet Feedstock

2. TaKaDu has VCs buzzing about smart water monitoring

Investment and Economy
3. Venrock showcases VC trend, raises small $350M fund

4. Crisis Shmisis: Q2 2010 Closes with 40 deals and more than $400 million raised in Israel (Deal Summary)

5. Soho OS Lands $1M, Opens Business Management Suite To All Small Businesses

Information Technology
6. IBM, EU partner on open source projects

7. Amdocs Teams Up with OpTier

8. MiniFrame Introduces New SoftXpand Product for the Consumer Market

Miscellaneous
9. Palestinians, Israelis Come Together Through Entrepreneurship

10. Empeeric To Unleash Social Media Box For Sites

11. Israeli Army Takes EBay as Inspiration to Cut Inventory Waste

12. State of Israel? There’s an app for that