Israel Innovation 2.0

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

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.

Emblaze Mobile, a subsidiary of Emblaze Ltd., announced yesterday that it was ending its efforts to bring the First Else, its linux-based smartphone, to market.

The announcement had been expected for quite a few months, especially when it failed to meet its Q2 goal of partnering with a wireless carrier. The phone, which debuted in London last November, was hailed for its user-interface which made it easy to access all of the phones functions and features with just the scroll of the thumb. The quality of the device, from the phone to the camera and everything else, wowed those who got to play with it. In fact, it was named the First Else, because it wasn’t just a smartphone, it was something else.

Perhaps the most disappointing thing about its failure is that it was a completely Israeli device. All the hardware and software was developed in Israel. Had it taken off, it had the potential to create lots of jobs in different sectors and to revive Israel’s long-lost manufacturing industry. There’s so many things it could have done for Israel’s tech sector and the Israeli economy overall. On a personal level, I was looking forward to the day when I could sport the First Else and show it off to friends and acquaintances here and abroad.

Instead, it’s failure is a reminder of the poor condition Israel’s tech industry is in. When I first read Emblaze’s announcement yesterday, I, of course, went on to Twitter and shared the article. I noticed afterward that a few friends had already shared the news with me, and one’s response was “add it to the list of magic tricks coming from Eli Reifman’s sleeves. Now you see it, now you don’t.”

Eli Reifman, the current President of Emblaze, co-founded the company in 1994, and is the one mainly responsible for growing it into a publicly traded company. At its height, the company came close to breaking into the FTSE 100. The company’s glory days didn’t last long though due to many factors.

One reason for its most recent failure with the Else is the approach the company took with developing it. In 2009, Emblaze shareholders tried to take control away from Reifman in protest of the Monolith project that he envisioned would “transform the world of mobile phones” when it launched in 2010. While a visionary with seemingly the right ideas, Reifman’s role in the management and execution of the project was less than stellar.

Unfortunately this isn’t the only such story and is connected to the performance of the rest of the industry. For all the success that Israel has had in innovation on the startup level and for multinationals (R&D for them), it is not sustainable. All of the conferences that I attended this past May and June reflected that in the discussions that took place. The solution is to try to grow big FTSE 100 companies but to do so requires good managers who can transform their startups into large companies and then lead these companies. Emblaze’s story reflects the current and past failures of the industry, and, if things stay the same,  the future of the Israeli tech industry.

It’s been a busy month for Trusteer. The company, which offers secure browsing services, was named a Red Herring Europe 100 winner last week and Amit Klein was named CTO of the Year by InfoWorld Magazine recently.

The criteria for the Red Herring award included financial performance, technology innovation and execution of strategy. According to the company, its solutions are used by more than 60 leading financial organizations in North America and Europe and by more than 6.8 million of their customers.

Regarding innovation, Amit Klein was recently honored by InfoWorld for his “discoveries of new attack techniques and for his leadership in improving the security of online banking and commerce.”

Under Klein’s leadership,

“Trusteer recently launched `Flashlight` a new remote fraud investigation and mitigation service which identifies the attack source on a customer’s machine, gathers samples, and can reverse engineer the mechanism used by the malware to commit fraud. Findings enable banks and other organizations to prevent future losses, block subsequent attacks, and takedown command/control servers.”

Trusteer CEO Mickey Boodaei has been very outspoken in recent weeks about allegations that Google is planning to drop the Microsoft operating system for security reasons. Boodaei has stressed that other companies shouldn’t follow since going to other browsers doesn’t solve the problem and could actually cause more problems on less targeted machines.

Trusteer is one of eight Israeli companies named Red Herring 100 winners this year.

Over the past few years there’s been significant increase in trade, investments and R&D partnerships between Israel and China. Except for during the recession, trade has increased steadily and is expected to grow even more as a result of the Israel pavilion at the Shanghai Expo and new initiatives among business organizations in both countries.

Recent heightened business activity between the two include a plan from NDS, a digital pay-TV solution provider, to “augment its investment in the China market”; an R&D cooperation agreement that supports collaboration between Israeli and Chinese manufacturers; and an investment in a Chinese water company by Israel’s Infinity I-China investment fund.

According to Media Mughals, NDS‘s move comes after it,

“Identified a key growth opportunity through partnerships with Chinese companies in the consumer electronics space, semiconductors, systems integration, and digital-TV applications markets… According to Media Partners Asia, China is the largest market worldwide with over 66 million digital pay-TV subscribers. By 2014 this is predicted to reach 198 million subscribers. In parallel, cable TV revenues will increase from $9 billion in 2009 to $17 billion in 2014.”

NDS is tripling its investments to more fully immerse itself in all aspects of its business in China and is relocating part of its R&D resources from India and Israel there so that it can hire more locals as part of the efforts.

Benchmark Capital Partner Michael Eisenberg recently spoke with Erin Burnett on CNBC’s Street Signs about what he thinks the next best thing is and discussed social search as the main trend and the different social tools that are out there to enable content discovery and engagement. One company he spoke about is Benchmark portfolio startup Conduit.

Founded in early 2005, Conduit provides publishers with a tool to create applications and toolbars using their content that enables easy sharing. It has over 220,000 publishers signed up and 100 million active views and is used on popular sites such as TechCrunch, eBay and Amazon.com. According to Eisenberg 19 new users install Conduit every second and has helped major brands, such as Coke, engage with users on a large scale (in the millions).

It faces competition from another Israeli startup Wibiya, along with Myspace, Yahoo and others.

Earlier this week, Interlude.fm, an interactive video platform from popular Israeli musician, Yoni Bloch, excited the industry with its presentation (and victory) at the second annual Techonomy conference outside of Tel Aviv. The company’s technology, similar to the “choose-your-own-adventure” stories that were popular in the early 1980s, offers viewers the opportunity to decide the actions of people in the video they are watching. In the sample music video Bloch showed, which was created in one night, there were 29 scenes and over 250 combinations.

Bloch also demoed sample videos of other ways Interlude’s technology could be applied, including to commercials and television shows (think American Idol). He explained that Interlude plans to make money by licensing the technology to the companies behind these and in other areas as well as by revenue sharing partnerships. The partnership opportunities and numerous fields it can enter make Interlude not only one of the most promising startups in Israel this year but also a possible platform from which the future of home entertainment can be based- from its current offerings, such as music videos and commercials, to possible future partnerships with companies, such as MySpace.

The future of home entertainment, which Microsoft is currently trying to shape with Project Natal (using Israel’s PrimeSense motion-sensing technology), is likely to be one in which people will be able to control the movie they are watching, music they are listening to or game that they are playing through hand and body movements and/or one’s voice using gesture-based systems. A partnership between Interlude and another Techonomy presenter, Omek Interactive, an impressive competitor of PrimeSense in motion-sensing technology, can take Microsoft’s idea to a whole new level and offer a true social experience that involves direct interactivity and engagement.

For example, imagine that you are sitting on a couch in a living room with some friends watching television. You and your friends are watching a brand new car on the screen zoom through the streets of a busy city. The color of the car is silver. You say “red” and the color changes. Your friend to your right says “hills”, and the setting, which had been urban, is now rural. Someone else puts his or her hands out as if holding a steering wheel and motions to the right and the car turns. Another friend lifts his foot and slams it and the car stops. Another friend says something and another change happens and so on, this goes on for two minutes. In the end everything is back to the original settings and some fine print appears on the screen and the next thing that appears is the television you were watching. It had been a commercial before.

Such an interactive experience can also be applied to music videos and television shows. In the direction of music videos, as Robert Scoble - one of the judges at the competition – said, Interlude can save MySpace. The floundering social network that has turned its focus to music can implement this technology to further engage its users and keep them coming back and staying on pages longer. According to Bloch, a recent test of the technology found that its interactive elements was able to triple time spent on a page.

Interestingly, the CTO of MySpace, Alex Maghen, was in Israel earlier this week looking for strategic technologies. Whether or not he heard of Bloch or Interlude before, it’s certainly on his radar screen now, and in one form or another will probably be on our television, computer and iPhone screens soon as well.

Yoni Bloch presents Interlude.fm:

Founder and CEO of Omek Interactive presents the company:

During the week of April 18, 2010, Wibiya announced that it raised $2 million for its customizable web-based toolbars. Forbes magazine named Israel’s Shari Arison, founder of Miya, one of the world’s greenest billionaires and Testuff released a Mac version of its test management software. For these stories and more, see this week’s 11 Israel-related headlines below.

Cleantech
1. 10 reasons Israel is a cleantech leader

2. Israeli researchers develop small, lightweight hydrogen storage tech

3. Israel’s greenest billionaire

4. Israel’s TaKaDu Goes After the Other Grid: Water

Investment and Economy
5. ‘The idea was to use the crisis to strengthen the economy’

6. Trade pact with Israel to give foothold in West Asia

7. Wibiya Raises $2 Million For Customizable Web-Based Toolbars

Information Technology
8. Testuff Launches a Mac Version of its On-Demand Test Management Service

9. Trusteer detects new Zeus (Zbot) password stealing Trojan

Miscellaneous
10. TAU professor tips off US over security flaw in e-passports

11. Israel Reverses iPad Ban

During the week of April 11, 2010, Arava Power announced a major investment plan for 15 Israeli solar fields. Israeli start-ups are still facing a hard time raising funds in Israel and Israeli researchers have developed a way to secure online data using laser technology. For these stories and more, check below for this week’s headlines.

Cleantech
1. Charged Environment

2. Arava Power Will Invest $535 Million in 15 Israeli Solar Fields

Investment
3. Bitesize Friday – Israeli Funding Recap

4. Israel’s Infinity expanding China investment fund

5. Israeli start-ups face funding crunch at home, turn to US and European investors

Information Technology
6. Total security for online data

7. Clarizen Growing SaaS Work, Project Management Channel

8. WeFi for Android Gets Enhanced Maps and Location Support

Miscellaneous
9. Israeli Team Snags Top Robotics Award for Second Consecutive Year

10. Where hi-tech startups meet the economy

During the week of March 21, 2010, a plan for Eilat to have Israel’s largest wind farm was revealed. LucidLogix raised $8 million to boost game graphics chips and Wanova’s desktop virtualization software was released. For these stories and more, see this week’s 14 Israel-related headlines below.

Cleantech
1. South Korea Looks to Collaborate With Israel on Renewable Energy

2. Experts to discuss Israel’s leadership in water resource management and conservation

3. Eilat to have Israel’s largest wind farm

Investment
4. LucidLogix raises $8M for boosting game graphics chips

5. Mentor Graphics Acquires Valor Computerized Systems, Ltd.

6. S&P affirms Israel’s A rating, outlook stable

Information Technology
7. uTest Finds 908 Bugs In Web And Mobile Apps Of Major U.S. TV Networks

8. Wanova’s desktop virtualization software now available

9. AnyClip Launches: Aggregates and Syndicates Clips from Films

10. Commtouch Goes On Attack With Outbound Spam Protection

Miscellaneous
11. CCTV to cover Israeli towns

12. A first look at the Simpsons’ upcoming visit to Israel

13. Israel Steps Up Efforts to Bring Back Expat Scientists

14. The World’s Oldest Man (lives in Israel)