During the week of of January 4, 2008, aside from the escalation of Israel’s operation in Gaza and more attacks on Israeli websites, one of the biggest stories in the tech world was the launch of Israel-based Ctera’s new storage device. Another was that Israel issued its first solar licenses for solar power plants. Despite the poor economic and VC investment outlooks, at least three Israeli companies (including Ctera) announced they raised funds. There was also news of an imminent Aladdin sale that sent its stocks rocketing. For these stories and more, you can view this week’s 15 Israel-related headlines below.

Israel-Hamas Conflict (Technology side)

1. Israel-Gaza Conflict Spills Over Into Twitter

2. Hackers Take the Fight Over Gaza Online

3. Digital World: How to beat anti-Israel hackers at their own game

4. Spam poses as CNN story about Israel-Hamas conflict

Cleantech

5. Israel issues first solar licenses

6. Cleantech Investment Slowdown Predicted in 2009

Investments

7. SundaySky Secures First Institutional Round of $8 million from Carmel Ventures and Globespan Capital Partners

8. TraderTools Raises $7.5 Million

Information Technology

9. Aladdin shares surge on report company sale is near

10. Start-up Ctera will offer cloud storage through carriers

11. Save Mart Supermarkets Deploys Integrated Retalix Supply Chain Software

12. Gigya: December 23rd Was Biggest Day For Our Widgets, Ever

Miscellaneous

13. Freeverse Announces Slot Car Racing Game for IPhone

14. Eyes in the sky

15. Fish memories underestimated

Top posts on Israel Innovation 2.0 from the past week

G.ho.st: A real model for coexistence

Why TechAviv and technology in general lacks women (Part 1)

As if reading the news the past few months hasn’t been depressing enough with the worldwide economic downturn, the current conflict going on in Gaza had to happen to bring the news down to a whole new level of sadness. With each passing day it seems less likely that there will ever be a real peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and yet, as the current conflict unravels, one company, with an office in the Israeli city of Modi’in and another in the West Bank city of Ramallah seems to have found a solution.

That company, G.ho.st,  is the only joint venture between Israelis and Palestinians and is defying the odds and difficulties that have arisen from strong sentiments on both sides. Founded in 2006, G.ho.st is short for Global Hosting Operating Systems and provides its 100,000 and growing users with a free vitual desktop that allows them to store items from their desktops and files and to access them from any computer connected to the Internet. G.ho.st calls it a virtual computer or VC.

The company is made up of 35 Palestinians who do software programming and are led by Director, Tareq Maayah and 6 Israelis, including CEO, Zvi Schreiber. Though the offices are relatively close to each other (under 6 miles away), because of restrictions, workers usually have to communicate via video conference and don’t have leisurely access to visiting each other. While the Palestinians are paid less than their Israeli counterparts (because the cost of living is less), both the Palestinians and Israelis have equal shares in the company.

According to correspondence I had with Schreiber this week, this model worked well and thrived during the relative peace that took place from the time G.ho.st was founded and, even now, is continuing to.

(Picture on left: Zvi Schreiber with Israeli President Shumon Peres. Picture on right: Ghost team.)

Schreiber explained that despite everyone’s concerns about the current conflict, in which employees on both sides have family and/or friends who are affected, work is still going on as usual and that the team, which includes people who worked through a previous conflict at their last job,  is prepared to continue to work even if the situation were to spread to the West Bank.

Perhaps the secret to G.ho.st’s success and resilience of its employees so far has been the care that’s been taken to keep and maintain the common ground between employees in both offices. Prior to the latest conflict, the company would manage to get permits to bring everyone together in Israel for valuable team activities, meals, business updates etc. Because of the conflict though, Schreiber said that everyone is now (understandably) worried about the safety of their families and friends on both sides and there’s only so much the company can do about it. His hope however, is that “in some small way our team, working peacefully together, can be an example of what a different reality could look like.”

It’s not just the employees in the company working peacefully together though that can change reality. G.ho.st also has a foundation that is helping lay the groundwork for future joint ventures by creating community computer centers in Ramallah and in mixed Jewish-Arab towns in Israel. Perhaps if more companies were to use G.ho.st’s model in business and in the community, Schreiber’s hope will not only become a reality where the two sides co-exist knowing no borders and,  in line with the G.ho.st slogan, no walls.

Much attention in the news was paid to Israel’s operation in Gaza during the week of December 28, 2009, including to online technology related to it. Different Israeli government branches, from the IDF to Israeli Consulates in the U.S., began to leverage popular social media tools, such as blogs, YouTube and Twitter, to explain the purpose of Israel’s operation and its objectives, while supporters around the world used the same mediums and others, such as Facebook, to show their support for Israel and its troops. During the week it also became clear that the conflict wouldn’t be bound to physical operations as several Israeli sites became the targets of cyberterrorism.

Despite the conflict, there was plenty of news of unrelated innovations coming from Israel. Funds were raised and contracts were signed in Israel’s IT and cleantech sectors and announcements of foreign companies opening R&D offices were made. Not all the news that wasn’t related to the conflict was good though. For all these stories and more, check out this week’s special edition of Israel-related headlines from the week of December 28, 2008 below.

Israel-Hamas Conflict (Technology side)

1. Israeli news site down, blames cyber attack

2. Muslim hackers attack Israeli websites as Gaza strikes continue

3. Israel Backed by Army of Cyber-Soldiers

4. War sickens me, but I stand with Israel (HelpUsWin*)

5. The Big War You Never Hear Much About

6. Israeli Consulate to tweet about Gaza war

Cleantech

7. Israel’s SolarEdge Raises $23M to Crush Shady Solar

8. BrightSource Energy signs contract with Siemens for solar-powered generator

Investments and deals

9. 2009: Year of the survival of the fittest

10. Bluephoenix Announces Multi-Million Dollar Modernization Contract With a Large Scandinavian Bank

11. Intrinsyc Signs Soleus Licensing Agreement With ODM for Industrial PDA and LBS Phone
12. Oy Vey! Israeli VCs Exceptionally Gloomy on 2009

Information Technology

13. HCL opens office in Israel

14. Invention: Software research assistant

15. EMC continues to move forward

Miscellaneous

16. The American Idol for blogging superstars

17. One to Watch: Tvinci

18. Israeli’s documentary is drawing wide acclaim

19. MyHeritage Makes Family History Research Easier With Launch Of Family Tree Builder 3

20. Crude oil rises after Israeli attacks on Gaza roil Middle East

Israel Innovation 2.0 content related to Israel-Hamas conflict

21. Direct from the streets of Gaza… and Israel. How TechCrunch UK’s post could have read regarding UGC

22. Cyberterrorism against Israeli and American sites: How to Stay Secure

Video from IDF Spokeperson’s Unit TouTube Channel (Capt. Benjamin Rutland on the ground forces entering Gaza on 3 Jan. 2009)

*HelpUsWin is an online grassroots campaign helping to ensure that international coverage of the Campaign Against Hamas is balanced. To learn more about it or how you can become involved, please check out the HelpUsWin website.

Official numbers aren’t out yet, but it looks like Metacafe, an Israeli user-generated content (UGC) video-sharing site focused on short film that receives over 30 million unique viewers each month, will end 2008 ranked 119 in traffic on Alexa.com. Although in the past year Metacafe introduced new features such as the Metacafe Music Channel, community-based metadate tagging monitoring and editing and personalized creativity toolkits from PlyMedia, it seems that its biggest innovation will be its services helping users get out their videos in in relation to current events, such as Israel’s current operation in Gaza.

Often compared to video-sharing sites such as YouTube and the Daily Motion for being a user-generated video content provider, Metacafe has positioned itself as the leading exclusively short-film sharing site and is the only video site that requires new content submissions to be approved by members of its community before it is posted to the site and where program creators of the most popular content get paid.

It’s the site’s relevant recent content from anywhere that’s probably going to increase hits and the amount of new program creators in the next few days or weeks though. In a politically-charged article about the “UGC photo agency” start up, Demotix, Mike Butcher of TechCrunch UK states that the Demotix is picking up traction for its user-generated pictures from what’s been happening in Gaza because it is newsworthy. If that is the case, Metacafe should also see an increase of hits, as well as embedding by other new media outlets, as it’s another broadcast channel for what’s going on in Israel and Gaza.

Along with the increased traffic, Metacafe will also face competition from Demotix, which has plans to add the ability for users to upload videos in the near future and “[shares] 50 percent of the revenue from each sale with the person who contributed the content.”

Applying  Butcher’s idea of  these sites being citizen journalism, here are examples of how Metacafe has been a news source the past few days by users on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in reaction to Israel’s operation in Gaza.

Protests to Gaza operation

Precision of Israeli attacks to avoid or reduce casualties