Israel Innovation 2.0

During the week of August 30, 2009, bids from multiple companies for Israeli solar company, Solel were made. Nice Systems announced that it bought Fortent and N-Trig continues to be the leader in touchscreen technology in various devices. For these stories and more, check out this week’s 9 Israel-related headlines below.

Cleantech
1. Israel’s BPT Raises $12M For Clean Water Technology

2. Siemens, Areva, Alstom Said to Bid for Israeli Solar Firm Solel

Investments and Economy
3. Nice Systems buys Fortent, plans more purchases

4. Signs of recovery showing up at Israeli companies on Wall Street

Information Technology
5. Touchscreen popularity fuels lots of startups

6. SiSense’s PrismCubed Brings Enterprise-Class Business Intelligence To SMBs At A Fraction Of The Cost

7. NDS Announces Granular Audience Measurement

Miscellaneous
8. EMC founder Richard Egan dead at 73

9. FlyScreen Makes The Lock Screen Of Your Android Phone Useful

During the week of July 5, 2009, it was announced that NASA and Israel’s Seambiotic will be researching and developing algae for use as a possible aviation fuel. Discussion continued on N-Trig’s planned 2010 IPO and the company’s latest developments and IBM Haifa researchers revealed new data-masking technology that filters sensitive data from unauthorized viewers on the fly. For these stories and more, check below for the full 10 Israel-related headlines from this past week.

Cleantech
1. How Terra Venture Partners Accelerate Clean Technology

2. Israel’s Bright Sparks Invent ‘Electric’ Road

3. Israeli company, NASA to work together on bio-fuel project

Investment
4. Israel’s N-trig: New touch technology bolsters IPO

5. Investing in Israel

Information Technology
6. International TechneGroup acquires software firm

7. IBM To Patent Data Mask

8. RADVISION Receives 2008 Communications Solutions Product of the Year Award from TMC

Miscellaneous
9. ‘Degradable’ plastic bags are no such thing, claim experts

10. The oldest hotel in Tel Aviv [video]

Two big deals were announced during the week of February 8, 2009. Solar energy company BrightSource inked the largest solar energy deal ever that will help power Southern California, while Web 2.0 news and blog recommendation engine, Outbrain raised an impressive $12 million. Google Israel announced that it will be restructuring and Dell introduced the Latitude XT2 Multitouch Tablet, its latest laptop to use N-Trig’s multitouch technology. For these stories and more, check out this week’s 16 Israel-related headlines below.

Cleantech
1. BrightSource Inks 1.3GW SoCal Edison Deal

2. Lamar Testing Solar-Powered Digital Billboards

3. Crisis Bodes Well For Electric Cars

4. Israeli Solar Company AORA Raises $5 Million

Investments
5. Israel’s Pontis gets $19.65 mln in equity financing

6. Outbrain, the news story recommendation service, gets $12M

Information Technology
7. Dell Intros Latitude XT2 Multitouch Tablet

8. Google Israel restructures

9. Startup Neocleus building bare-metal desktop hypervisor 

10. Industry’s Only Clientless Endpoint Security Management Solution

11. Acronova’s Entry Level DVD-R Duplication System Now Shipped with TrusCont Copy Protection System

Telecom/Mobile
12. Modu unveil modular cellphone jackets, promise big MWC launch news

13. Apps the new battlefield for mobile industry (Nexperience)  

14. Having Text? Cell Phone Users Are Cheating on Their Partners

Miscellaneous
15. How Social Media War Was Waged in Gaza-Israel Conflict

16. ‘Waltz with Bashir’ named WGA’s ‘best documentary’

During the week of January 11, 2009, the war in Gaza escalated and news about Israeli tech companies continued. The biggest news of the week was that multi-touch technology company, N-Trig raised $24 million in its latest round of funding, the majority coming from Microsoft. Better Place announced its partnership to bring electric cars to Canada while Aladdin agreed to be acquired after months of talks with Vector Capital. Other information security companies, Trusteer and Commtouch also made headlines with important security threat findings. For links to these stories and more, check out the complete 12 Israel-related headlines from the week of January 11, 2009 below. 

Cleantech

1. Better Place Partners with Ontario to Bring ‘Car 2.0’ Electric Car Infrastructure to Canada

2. Eilat to host major international energy conference

Investments and M&A

3. Information security provider Aladdin is to be acquired by Vector Capital for $160 million

4. Microsoft leads $24m round for touch screen co N-trig

Information Technology

5. Phishing attack uses pop-up message on bank sites

6. Shunra Software Joins Microsoft Visual Studio Industry Partners Program 

7. IDV Solutions and Eternix Announce Technology Integration for Innovative Geospatial Solutions for the Defense & Intelligence Industry

8. RiT Technologies launches Paladin environment and security management suite

9. User Generated Content Sites Breeding Ground for New Internet Security Threats Says Commtouch Trend Report 

N-Trig

10. N-trig Secures $24 Million of New Funding to Fuel Hands-on computing™ Growth in Global PC Market

11. Microsoft Betting Big on ‘Touch’

12. CyberLink and N-Trig Introduce Next-Generation Multi-Touch Enabled Applications at CES

The breaking news that Steve Jobs of Apple  is taking a medical leave of absence for several months makes the news from earlier this week of Microsoft investing in Israel- and Texas-based N-Trig gets even more interesting.

Earlier this week, N-Trig, the sole provider of DuoSense™ technology which combines pen, touch and multi-touch into one device, announced  it successfully raised $24 million in its latest round of funding for the purpose of funding ongoing strategic partnerships with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to develop multi-touch notebooks that will reach a wider market.

Investors in the round included Canaan Partners, Evergreen Venture Partners, Aurum Ventures and Challenger Ltd. In addition to these venture capital firms, none other than Microsoft Corp. also invested. The investment comes as part of its efforts to build more pen and touch applications into its next-generation Windows 7 operating system and as part of its racing Apple to multi-touch. 

To date, N-Trig’s DuoSense Technology is already used in Dell’s Latitude XT and Hewlett-Packard’s TouchSmart x2 and the company announced last week with CyberLink Corporation that they are developing multi-touch-enabled solutions for PCs worldwide together to increase that amount. Though it’s unlikely, it will be interesting if Apple’s plans will be in any way hindered while Jobs is away.

N-Trig was founded by Dr. Meir Morag in 1999 after he previously co-founded e-Sim. The company is lead by CEO Amihai Ben-David and has raised some raised some $73 million while growing to over 100 employees over the years. Last year, “Globes” rated N-trig as one of Israel’s most promising start-up companies.

How does multitouch technology work? Lenny Engelhardt, VP of Business Development at N-Trig explains in this video: 

The week of November 2, 2008 was filled with conferences and awards. Deloitte announced the 50 fastest-growing high-tech companies in Israel for the year 2008 with Runcom taking the top honor and last year’s top company, Voltiare coming in second place. On Monday, at the Globes and Ernst & Young Israel Journey ’08, Amobee was named Globes “Start-up of the Year.” Companies in the Top 10 that have been covered in Israel Innovation 2.0 in the past include, Aternity, Inforgin and N-Trig. Also making headlines was SportVu, which provided the hologram technology that CNN used on Election Day in the United States and iSkoot, which raised $19 million. For the links to these stories and the rest of this week’s 14 Israel-related technology headlines, scroll down.

Cleantech
1. Electric cars of the future at the Web 2.0 Summit

Investments and the Economy
2. Downturn-Busting Venture Round For iSkoot: $19 Million

3. Pawlenty’s Israel trade trip takes shape

4. Central bank chief says Israeli economy resilient

5. Top 8 Creative Ideas For Startups To Triumph Over the Current Economic Downturn

Information Technology
6. Red Bend Software Earns MobileVillage’s Mobile Star Award

7. Runcom Technologies Ranked First Place in the Deloitte “Fast 50″ Program for Fast-Growing High-Tech Companies

8. Tufin Technologies Moves Beyond Firewall Auditing to Support Cisco Routers and Switches

9. Aternity Named To Annual Top 10 List of Most Promising Startups

10. N-trig Offers Suite of Multi-Touch Solutions for Windows 7

Miscellaneous
11. XIV head Yanai named most influential figure in high tech

12. CNN’s ‘Hologram’ Shows How Far TV Has Come

13. Agent Vi Announces Launch of Video Content Analysis for Digital Media Processors Based on DaVinci(TM) Technology

14. ANALYSIS / Obama will star in Israel’s election campaigns

Caption: Panel discussion at the Ernst and Young and Globes Israel Journey ’08, titled “Digital media – trends, developments and future outlook,” with moderator, Michael Eisenberg (far right). Panelists from right to left after Michael Eisenberg: Shmil Levy (Sequoia Capital), Tomer Ben-Kiki (Oberon Media), Guy Bauman (Pelephone Communication)Uri Shinar (aniBoom), Peter Hirshberg (Technorati).

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.

*About
the Weekly Headlines image: The Star of David in the image was found on
Flickr and is used under the Creative Commons license. It was
originally uploaded by Flickr member, zeevveez. The overall Weekly Headlines image was designed by Lisa Damast.

The 12th annual Israel Journey took place earlier today in Tel Aviv. During the conference, which is organized by Ernst & Young Israel and Israeli business newspaper, Globes, Globes announced its top 10 Israeli companies for 2008-2009 as follows:

YCD Multimedia Ltd.
Tulip Medical Ltd.
Dune Networks, Ltd.
Aternity Inc.
Payoneer, Inc.
N-Trig, Ltd.
Altair Semiconductor Ltd.
Vascular Biogenics (3rd Place)
InfoGin, Ltd. (2nd Place, picture on right is of CEO and Founder, Eran Wyler)
Amobee, Ltd. (“Start-up of the Year”)

Congratulations to the top 10 start-ups!

More on the conference to come tomorrow.

About the author: Lisa Damast currently resides in Israel. Any questions or inquiries regarding this blog can be directed to her via email at lisa (at) israelinnovation20 (dot) com. She can also be followed on Twitter, where she covers additional Israeli technology companies and headlines among other topics.

Israeli company, N-trig has successfully raised $28 million from venture capitalist firms, Canaan Partners and Evergreen
Venture Partners, among other investors, in its latest fund-raising round and will use part of it to further develop its advanced pen and touch technology.

N-trig is best known as the provider of DuoSense™
technology that “combines pen and zero-pressure touch for mobile computers
into a single device.” According to the N-trig website,

N-trig provides a
true hands-on computing^TM experience, by enabling OEMs and ODMs to provide innovative
new technology for the next generation of mobility by making notebook
PCs more mobile, productive, user-friendly, natural, and intuitive to
use. DuoSense is easily integratable and supports any type of LCD,
giving OEMs and ODMs more flexibility.

N-trig’s DuoSense is also “enabling new market opportunities in gaming and
multimedia.”

N-trig is currently working very closely with computer and mobile manufacturers on developing new products that utilize DuoSense technology. IT professionals who make laptop purchase recommendations and decisions in their companies and have demands for such technology can consider Dell’s recently launched Latitude XT Tablet PC for now and keep an eye out for similar products with N-trig’s DuoSense technology in the future.

Company Facts

Founded in 1999.

Dr. Meir Morag, Founder and President.

Amihai Ben-David, CEO.

Products: Touch and Pen Digitizer.

Website: www.n-trig.com.

Related entries:
Companies in brief: 26 Israel-related technology headlines from the week of December 9, 2007

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.

The week of December 9, 2007, was good for Israel’s cleantech sector with the announcements of the Oasis Investment Fund being a new VC fund investing in the Negev and the creation of a new energy tower by Technion researchers that could provide enough energy for entire regions. Also, HP announced its plans to buy NUR Macroprinters and Wall Street Journalist Technology Columnist, Walt Mossberg admitted his surprise at how technologically advanced Israel has become. Israelis abandonment of the U.S. dollar for rent and other purposes continued to prevail. Check out these and the rest of this week’s 26 Israel-related technology headlines below.

Cleantech:
Hebrew U. tech transfer co focuses on cleantech projects

New proposals for competitive energy market

Energy Tower: Power for 15 Earths?

Oasis Investment Fund — new VC investing in the Negev

MK tries to advance major environmental law reform

Investments and M&A:
HP to buy Israel’s NUR Macroprinters

Wound management co Polyheal raises $1m

OptimalTest raises $16m.

Chief Scientist to fund 8 new companies

Tactical UAV co Bluebird Aero Systems raises $7m

International:
India next goal for free-trade agreement

Yahoo! to start Internet Program for Technology Investors

Clyde Prestowitz: Israel should join the EU

Walt Mossberg: I’m amazed how Israel has changed

UN adopts Israeli-sponsored resolution on “Agricultural Technology for Development”

Telecommunications:
Breaking News: Kwiry launches viral platform, connects offline world with online

WiMAX Woes Weaken Alvarion

012 Smile.Communications: Competition in Israeli Telecom

Miscellaneous:
Social networks in Israel?

Aternity to collaborate with Oracle

Oracle and Israel’s Chief Scientist form joint venture with Aternity

Dan Dankner: Israel can be an investor’s paradise

Israelis start to abandon dollar linkage

ISRAEL – N-trig makes an online presentation of DuoSense next generation technology

New 3D Camera Makes a Hand a Joystick

Hi-tech output slides for fourth straight quarter