During the week of December 27, 2009, Israel’s airport security method was looked upon as a better solution to the current system used at airports in the States. Viewfinity announced that it had raised $8.6 million in funding and 5min was selected Best Startup at the TechAviv Peer Awards. For these stories and more, see this week’s 8 headlines below.

Cleantech
1. Shimon Tal: Facts and Personal Opinions on Water from Israel’s Former Water Commissioner

2. Sunshine year for cleantech

Investment
3. Viewfinity raises $8.6 million in Series B round of funding

4. Can Public-Funded Entrepreneurship Work? A Q&A With the Author of Boulevard of Broken Dreams

Information Technology
5. 5min Wins Top Spot in TechAviv’s Peer Awards

6. Web content under the microscope

Miscellaneous
7. What Israel can teach us about security

8. Israel set to become major golf destination

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During the week of December 20, 2009, O2 confirmed that it is buying Israel-based Internet phone company, Jajah. Facial recognition security company C-True announced that Brinks is its latest customer and oil was found in Israel. For these stories and more, check out this week’s headlines below.

Cleantech
1. Michigan Looks to Israel to Rev Up Automotive Battery Business

2. SunPower and SolarPower Ltd. Dedicate 50-Kilowatt Solar Power System for HP in Israel

Investments and Economy
3. O2: Yes, we’re acquiring Internet phone company Jajah

4. Israel May Beat Growth and Deficit Estimates, Steinitz Says

Information Technology
5. Israeli company to beta cost-reducing content delivery technology

6. C-TRUE Provide Face Recognition Security Solutions to Brinks

7. All Quiet in the Data Center

8. Israel’s fastest growing software companies of 2009

9. Web Host Datapipe Teams with Applicure for Website Security

10. 2009: Sarah Lacy and the Israeli Web Revisited

Miscellaneous
11. Tourism Ministry presents three-year plan

12. Amazon’s Kindle has copyright protection hacked

13. Oil well with potential found in Israel

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At the time Lacy wasn’t completely off. It had been a while since an Israeli Web startup had a big exit or received a large investment or a lot of media attention. Combining this with the poor economy and the rise of Israel’s cleantech sector (which continues to grow), it seemed that Israeli innovation in the Web space had peaked when Shopping.com was purchased by eBay in 2005.

By September of this year though it became clear that 2009 was actually the resurrection of Israel’s Web industry and that Israeli entrepreneurs did not lose their mojo as Lacy had suggested they did. At TechCrunch50 in San Francisco Israeli startups Trollim, Red Beacon and AnyClip received the three top prizes for their promising technologies. A few weeks later in October, it was revealed that Answers.com, perhaps the most memorable Israeli site to have survived the dot.com bust and to thrive, was the 13th most visited Website in September.

In addition to these sites, the second half of 2009 saw the rise of another part of Israel’s Web industry, Facebook and mobile applications. In November the Facebook facial-recognition application Face.com went live and in December the community-generated traffic tracking mobile application Waze started to make headway in the U.S. market, among other regions.

While most of these companies still need to prove themselves (with growth, revenue and exits…) it is clear that there is a new drive among Israeli Web entrepreneurs and Israel’s Web industry is reemerging. 2010 will be an interesting year to see what happens to these startups and if the newfound mojo will reverse the investment decline of recent years in the sector.

Editor’s note: This was originally posted on TechAviv.com.

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Red Bend software

Red Bend Software is considered to be a market leader in Mobile Software Management and Firmware Over-the-Air (FOTA) update solutions. Founded in 1999, Red Bend Software offers solutions that give phone users more control over what software components they want on their phones while also increasing the data service revenues of phone carriers. The main solutions include firmware updates, software component updates and data management.

Imperva

Imperva is an application data security company that was founded in 2002 by Amichai Shulman and Check Point Software co-founder Shlomo Kramer. The company was named to Red Herring’s Top 100 in 2007 (link to video) and grew by more than 80% in 2008.  Its success during the recession has been attributed to its software helping customers cut costs. Imperva’s products include the SecureSphere Data Security Suite, SecureSphere Web Application Firewall and Database Activity Monitoring.

InfoGin

InfoGin was founded in 2000 by Eran Wyler after he foresaw the “need for surfing the real Internet on any mobile device.” Over the years, InfoGin has become a leader in “Web-to-mobile content adaptation, enabling mobile users to access any Web site they desire, optimized to their mobile device.” The company’s Internet Mobile Platform (IMP) technology is currently being implemented by several major companies, including Virgin Mobile (UK) and MapQuest.

Safend

Israeli data protection company, Safend offers products for data encryption and port and device control. Founded in 2003, Safend in 2009 was also named to Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Mobile Data Protection. The company also rounded out its suite adding Safend Inspector and Discoverer to Safend Reporter, Safend Encryptor and Safend Protector.

PineApp

PineApp is an e-mail and content systems security provider. Founded in 2002 by Gabriel Mizrahi and headquartered in Israel, PineApp’s products enhances email security by protecting against email-based spam and virus attacks. Its products include Mail-SeCure, Surf-SeCure and Secure SoHo. Earlier this month the company introduced two new products to its line, Mail-Encryption and Archive-SeCure.

Commtouch Software

Founded in 1991, Commtouch develops software to protect e-mail by offering spam and Zero-Hour™ virus outbreak protection. Its anti-spam solutions feature its Recurrent Pattern Detection (RPD) technology and have been licensed by over 80 security and messaging vendors and providers including Aladdin, Check Point, Fujitsu and LG N-Sys.

Zend

Zend offers products and services for developing, deploying, and managing business-critical PHP applications. The company was founded by Andi Gutmans and Zeev Surask and its customers include McAfee, UPI and IBM. In September 2009, Zend along with its partners, IBM and Microsoft, announced a new initiative for PHP developers who are working on cloud-focused apps. Its products include Zend Server, Zend Platform and Zend Core.

IDIT I.D.I. Technologies

IDIT Technologies was founded in 1998 and offers SOA-based software solutions for the insurance industry. In July 2009 Forrester Research named the company among the hot insurance tech companies to watch in 2009, mainly for its multi-language and currency support innovations. The IDIT software suite addresses the specific end-to-end needs of general insurance for the insurance and financial markets including Business Intelligence, Workflow Management and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). IDIT’s R&D center is headed by Lilia Waserman and its customers include Alfa Insurance and RAC Insurance.

PNMSoft

PNMSoft is a Business Process Management (BPM) and workflow software provider. Founded in 1996, PNMSoft provides customers, such as Amdocs, Microsoft and Philips, with solutions to better manage content and businesses from start to finish. PNMSoft’s poducts include SEQUENCE BPM workflow software based on Microsoft’s Windows Workflow Foundation platform. The company currently has an R&D center currently in Israel and was a Microsoft 2009 SOA and Business Process Partner of the Year Finalist.

VIZrt

VIZrt offers content production tools for the digital media industry. It was founded in 2000 and some of its clients include Fox, CBS and The Globe and Mail. Along with its products Viz Content Pilot and Viz Artist, VIZrt also offers mobile solutions. In 2008, Vizrt acquired Escenic.

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A few weeks ago Maurice Picow of Green Prophet posted about the Jewish Response to the Energy Challenge (JREC) conference in San Francisco. The conference, which was organized by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and took place this Sunday, brought together Jewish leaders in the clean tech and environmental fields to discuss ending oil-dependency for Israeli national security and the importance of future cleantech projects between the US and Israel.

The conference included a Jerusalem satellite event in which Isaac Berzin, the Director of the Institute for Renewable Energy Policy and one of Time Magazine’s Top 100 Most Influential People of 2008, spoke about his vision for alternative liquid fuel, specifically algae. Berzin made the point that Israel will be more secure when countries such as China and India turn to alternative fuels and stop buying oil from Iran which funds terrorism.

Berzin’s keynote (which can be viewed above) was followed by a diverse panel that discussed viable alternative energy solutions to oil and the own challenges they hold from the political, environmental and health perspectives. In addition, the panel discussed the importance of US-Israel partnerships for funding start-ups.

Making up the panel were Berzin; Hezi Kugler, Israeli Clean Energy Alliance; Astorre Modena, General Partner at Terra Venture Partners; Dr. Gal Loft, Executive Director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security; Richard Laster, Professor of Environmental Law at Hebrew University. The discussion was moderated by Z’ev Gross, Head of Infrastructure Resources Management Division in the Ministry of National Infrastructures.

Perhaps the most interesting discussion of the evening took place during the Q&A session at the end when suggestions for Israel going green were passionately discussed among audience members and panelists. When it comes to how to get more Israelis to embrace alternative energy and the use of money to get people to become energy efficient, several members of the audience disagreed with the panelists and explained that a carbon tax like the one France recently implemented is the only viable option.

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I’ve been waiting for a good time to post the follow up, and was going to post it back in June after Roi Carthy of TechCrunch mentioned, but didn’t cover, the question in his post about three of Israel’s most-promising female entrepreneurs and then again last month after Ada Yonath won the Nobel Prize in chemistry, thus becoming the first Israeli woman to win a Nobel Prize and the first woman since 1964 to win one in chemistry, but wasn’t able to either of those times.

Fortunately, Boris’s post “What is keeping women out of technology?“ on The Next Web today has given me another opportunity to post this. He suggests that considering the 50/50 male/female attendance he recently saw at a networking event and the 44% women who read The Next Web but how few of them comment, fewer women are in tech compared to men because women miss important phone calls and never bring their business cards with them.

These are interesting points that can perhaps take women out of technology but they are not the main factors. How many of the women at the networking event or who read The Next Web are actually on the tech side of technology and not just the marketing or journalism side? How many of them have backgrounds in science, math, computers or engineering?

The problem is that women first need to be interested in technology and pursue that path. Even if they are interested in math, science, technology when they are younger, women face a lot of social pressures as they grow older that challenge their pursuit and ultimately result in many abandoning these areas.

In her dissertation “Women in the Land of Milk, Honey and Hi-Technology: The Israeli Case,” Ronit Kark takes an in-depth look at Israeli society and the underlying dynamics that are preventing more women from going into technology, engineering and science in Israel.

The reasons that Kark gives for why women are being kept out of technology in Israel include: the high school education and military service of women, familialism and motherhood in Israel and the role of the Hebrew language.

Taking this further, based on my first post and Boris’s, while Boris is planning to teach his two daughters PHP when they are old enough, he should also make sure that they gain the self-confidence to go along with those skills. Real encouragement is also one of the things we can all do to get more women in technology.

Note: Major thanks to Guy Tessler of the American Israel Chamber of Commerce in the Southeast Region who pointed out Kark’s study to me.

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LooKATOR uses Augmented Reality to enable users to find the best WiFi signals by opening the app and holding up the phone, which will show the signals around you with their relative strength and direction.

According to the site, “LooKATOR uses vector-based models that continously update as the user moves around to calculate where WiFi signals are coming from – so you’ll always know where to go for better reception.”

Shein’s team is currently working on new features for it including click-to-connect and password security, as well as a version of the app for the iPhone.

Here’s a look at the LooKATOR for Android in action.

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The conference had more than $20 billion in capital represented and brought together over 50 Israel-facing companies for a day full of presentations and advice from some of Israel’s most well-known investors (Jeff Pulver and Yossi Vardi) and most successful startups (i.e., Check Point, Tigo Energy, Answers.com, etc.).

Bob Rosenschein

Answers.com is one of the most interesting websites coming out of Israel. It was founded by current CEO, Bob Rosenchein in 1999 as GuruNet and struggled as a desktop software company before its reincarnation as the Web-based answers service, Answers.com in January 2005.

The site which used to dub itself an “encyclodictionalmanacapedia” started out licensing content from encyclopedias and dictionary companies, such as Barron’s, Miriam-Webster and Wikipedia among over 250 others. In November 2006, the company acquired the user-generated Q&A site, FAQ Farm and renamed it WikiAnswers.com.

WikiAnswers has since fueled Answers.com’s current growth, which, in a recent interview I had with Bob Rosenschein, he attributes to a successful cycle of “Traffic. Questions. Answers”- traffic leads to questions being asked which leads to questions being answered on a continuous basis.

WikiAnswers

The increased traffic has led Answers.com to become one of the top 20 fastest growing websites in 2009 and the site to become profitable.

“The biggest news of 2008 for us was that in the second half of 2008 Answers.com turned profitable,” Rosenschein explains.

Answers.com’s profitability isn’t just from an increase in traffic though. As it has shown from its GuruNet days, it isn’t afraid to make changes and tweaks to anything. To increase profitability, the company changed its revenue model in 2008 moving from direct ads to display ads and performance ads, “the performance ads being the most profitable.”

Among the constant tweaks the company is making, we can expect to see in the next year “improvements in search, more functionality and internationalism.” The site will be made available in the languages of non-English countries that currently provide significant traffic to the site.

Rosenschein’s advice to startups is, “Be flexible. Roll with the punches, hold onto cash and be able to adapt. The most important thing is perseverance- don’t give up too quickly.”

Update June 15, 2009 Globes reported today that Answers.com has raised an additional $7 million from Redpoint Ventures.

(Disclaimer: As part of a work experience program in the summer of 2006,  I interned at Answers.com in Jerusalem for six weeks.)

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During the week of May 31, 2009, Sunday Energy, SolarEdge and Ormat all had major announcements related to providing alternative energy in Israel, while GameGround and The Box successfully raised funds. In IT, Discretix explained the threat of bank accounts being hacked on mobile phones and Trusteer signed a contract with PSECU in England. For these stories and the rest of this week’s 15 Israel-related headlines, check below.

Cleantech
1. Sunday Energy forges new ground in Israel with Ormat

2. Israeli firm boosts performance of photovoltaic solar array

3. Exploiting Limited Resources

Investments
4. GameGround snags $4.1 million from Sequoia for gamer services

5. Investment in Green Energy Quadruples in 4 Years

6. Israel’s The Box Secures Funding from Greylock Partners to Target US and Other International Markets

Information Technology
7. PC Touch-Screen Technology Moving Beyond Curiosity

8. How much serious is the threat of hacking bank accounts via mobile phones? (Discretix)

9. PSECU Secures Web Channel with Trusteer

10. Virtualize Your Internet Connection with BufferZone

11. WatchDox Makes Document Security Simple

Miscellaneous
12. Central Park’s Tel Aviv ‘beach party’

13. Video: Microsoft’s Project Natal in action

14. Nestle producing new breakfast cereal in Sderot

15. Brain research center to be built at Hebrew University

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Despite the economic downturn, Israel’s startup scene is as strong and vibrant as ever. Just as the innovation hasn’t stopped, neither has the need for outside funding to develop these exciting technologies. Several conferences and forums have been organized in the past few weeks to maximize the access of Israeli startups to the funding they need. One that hasn’t happened yet, but will on June 4th in LA, is the The Israel Conference.

Considered the first of its kind, The Israel Conference will have more than $20 billion in capital represented when it brings together over 50 Israel-facing companies to showcase Israeli excellence in technology and products and to expand business and investment opportunities between Israel and California. 

Presenters and panelists include Yossi Vardi (”the Father of Israeli Hi-Tech”), Erel Margalit (founder of Jerusalem Venture Partners, a venture capital fund) and Jeff Pulver (social media guru and VoIP pioneer) . The presentations will cover a wide range of topics from a look at VCs and the CEOs they back (why they were funded and the results today) to green tehcnology (how innovation in that field is helping the earth and changing our lives) and sales opportunities in a slow economy (where the money is, what the current market is like and how Israeli companies are maintaining a competitive edge). 

Some of Israel’s overall edge and Caifrornia’s role in it can be attributed to the following:

• Israel has over 8,000 patents from a population of just 7 million. 
• Within the past 15 years, major companies have risen that were developed in Israel and have their corporate office in California with job creation in the hundreds of thousands, world-wide. A number of these are Fortune 500 today with corporate offices in California such as Check Point, Zoran, and Amdocs.
• Israel has the largest number of scientists in the world per capita at 145/10,000 compared to the US with 85/10,000.
• In 2008, over $2B in capital was invested over 480 Israeli high-tech companies, an increase of 18% over prior year with 50% coming from funds outside of Israel, mostly from the US.
• Over the past 3 years, Israeli firms raised $2.3Billion in IPOs on exchanges around the world while over $18B was spent on acquisitions of Israeli High Tech companies.

The conference will also feature a presentation by Bob Rosenschein, the CEO and Founder of Answers.com, one of the Top 20 fastest growing Websites. I recently had the chance to interview  Rosenschein and will post about that next in this series.

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