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 4, 2010, Israeli startup Qlipso announced it bought the assets of video web site Veoh Networks. Israeli biofuel company HCL CleanTech is set to open its U.S. headquarters in North Carolina and Autodesk is looking to expand its R&D operations in Israel. For these stories and more, check out this week’s 10 Israel-related headlines below as well as a video of Qlipso’s presentation at Twiistup 7 this past February.

Cleantech
1. HCL CleanTech, an Israeli biofuel company to open U.S. headquarters in Triangle area

2. Test Driving The Better Place Electric Car

Investments and Economy
3. Our economic success story

4. Start-up Qlipso buys Web video service Veoh

5. US giant Autodesk looks to Israeli R&D

Information Technology
6. Doe Run Shortens Downtime With iSolve Virtual Knowledge Manager

7. 3 promising Israeli Startups to look for on MS ThinkNext 2010

Miscellaneous
8. Israel Aid Pays U.S. Dividends That Exceed Cost: Steve Rothman

9. AOL Finally Finds Someone To Buy ICQ (In Russia Or China)

10. Nouriel Roubini – The Economist Who Foresaw the Global Financial Crisis

During the week of December 6, 2009, Israeli President Shimon Peres launched his own YouTube channel to encourage peaceful dialogue and announced that he will be going to the Copenhagen climate conference representing Israel. Information security company, Promisec thrived during the recession and Israel as a startup nation was looked at in a different light. For these stories and more, check below for this week’s 11 headlines.

Cleantech
1. Israeli Cleantech Heats Up

2. Peres to represent Israel at Copenhagen climate negotiations

Investments
3. BIRD to invest $4.2m. in six new projects

4. Playtech buys GTS

Information Technology
5. Harris: Pageonce shows you don’t need to be big to be global

6. Information security co Promisec shines in dark times: Internet threats can overwhelm regular antivirus solutions

7. How to sift through Twitter’s noise? MyTweetSense, FriendBinder give it a go

8. Cyber hacking could be a thing of the past

Miscellaneous
9. Peres gets viral, dives into social media with presidential YouTube channel

10. Home cooking

11. Fail Factors – Why Startups Die: The Israeli Illusion

Amobee Media Systems and Innovid have been named Technology Pioneers 2010 by the World Economic Forum. The two startups along with 24 others, including Twitter and Amiando, were identified for developing new technology that can “change and improve the way business and society operate.”

Here’s a little more about the startups:

Led by CEO Zohar Levkovitz and Gary Schofield, Amobee has developed advertising server technology for mobile operators that dynamically “inserts relevant ads into different mobile entertainment and communication channels” that users can interact with.

Founded in 2006 by Tal Chalozin and CEO Zvika Netter, Innovid provides publishers and advertisers with the ability to monetize online video by integrating brand advertising into relevant video content. Innovids technology enables advertisers “to insert 3D objects into videos post-production” that blend into the rest of the video but still attracts the user to click and interact with it.

As Technology Pioneers, Amobee and Innovid will have access to the World Economic Forum’s elite network of members and can attend the annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, among other events.

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

During the week of November 1, 2009, financial software company, Finjan was acquired by M86. The Cleantech Group ranked Israel number 5 in its list of top10 cleantech countries of 2009 and Start-up Nation, Saul Singer and Dan Senor’s analysis of Israel’s economic success, was released (headlines below video).

Cleantech
1. The top 10 cleantech countries of 2009

2. The 2010 Eilat Eilot Renewable Energy Conference Looks To Carbon-Free Energy

3. Israeli firms aim to plug world’s water leaks

Investment
4. M86 Security Buys Finjan

5. We Are The Startup Nation

6. Local VCs cut investment in start-ups

Information Technology
7. How Cloud Computing Has Transformed Small Business Software (SAManage)

8. Global from Day One: MoodBase knows what the web is feeling

Miscellaneous
9. Israeli film ‘Ajami’ wins at Montpellier festival

10. JNF aims to turn Israel diamonds from rough to ready

A few months ago I had the opportunity to meet Daniel Shein of IDC’s Media Innovation Lab (MiLAB) and to hear about the project he was working on then. Shein has since started LoFT with two miLAB friends and released its first  project, LooKATOR, an application for Google Android phones.

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.

Israeli companies Kaltura and Clarizen have been included in IDC’s top 10 innovative applications companies under $100M to watch.

According to IDC chosen companies were identified based on whether they exemplified one or more of three key trends in applications today, which the company cited in January 2009 to be:

• Acceleration of software as a service (SaaS), business process outsourcing (BPO), and open source over traditional on-premise software
• New business models for software use by service providers (software-within-a-service)
• Web 2.0-like functionality moves into the enterprise (e2.0).

Clarizen is a project management software company that allows contributors to edit at the same time and for the changes to be visible immediately to anyone involved on the project. Last week it reported that it gained over 100 new customers in Q3. Clarizen is headquartered in Israel with its US headquarters in Menlo Park, California.

Kaltura, according to its site, is “the first open source video platform for online video management, creation, interaction & collaboration.”  Earlier today it was listed as one of 49 hot new open source applications on Earthweb.com as a video tool.  The company has an R&D center in Israel.

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]

Tufin Technologies, which provides Security Lifecycle Management solutions, has really picked up steam since the beginning of the year. The company, which is five years old, has won three awards in recent weeks and recently attended the RSA conference (the largest infosec conference of its kind) in San Francisco, where the above video was recorded.

Last week it announced that its flagship product, SecureTrack, was named Best Enterprise Security Solution by SC Magazine UK, and received an honorable mention as the Best Security Management Solution.

According to Tufin’s Website, 

“Tufin’s Security Lifecycle Management solutions automate policy management for leading firewall and networking vendors including Check Point Software, Juniper, Cisco, Fortinet, F5 and BlueCoat, resulting in more manageable, efficient and cost effective security operations. Its flagship product SecureTrack, helps security operations teams to control and manage policy changes, analyze risks, and ensure business continuity. With SecureTrack, managers easily understand the big picture and align operations with corporate and Government security standards.”

 Tufin also made InformationWeek’s Startup 50 list of young companies recognized for delivering innovative, high value, enterprise ready solutions and was named best Security Lifecycle Management Solution by InfoSecurity Products Guide.

In addition to SecureTrack, the company offers SecureChange Workflow and the newly-released (at the RSA conference), Tufin Open Platform (TOP).

Sentrigo, an Israel-based database security software company, announced last week that it has become the sole distributor of Repscan by Red-Database-Security, “the only 360-degree database vulnerability assessment and security scanning software available for Oracle databases.”

The move helps Sentrigo solidify its hold on the database security market by complementing its Hedgehog database activity monitoring software with software that monitors and identifies Oracle database weaknesses and vulnerablities. In specific, Repscan can “detect insecure PL/SQL code and forensic traces; database modifications; insecure system configuration settings; and weak, shared and default passwords.”

Some main Repscan features include: 

• Report-driven penetration testing
• Altered data detection (privileged and user tables)
• Forensic trace discovery from common security and hacker tools
• Automatic conversion of the weaknesses found by Repscan into protection rules and policies in the Sentrigo Hedgehog Database Security Suite

According to Sentrigo’s website, Hedgehog Enterprise

“is for organizations that require breach prevention, end-user identification, virtual patching, integration with your existing security infrastructure, IT governance and operate with enterprise-wide database deployment.”

The software also

“provides full visibility into all database activity including local privileged access, protects the database in real-time with actionable alerts and prevention capabilities, and allows enterprises to enforce security policy and comply with regulatory requirements, such as PCI DSS, Sarbanes-Oxley, SAS 70 and HIPAA.”

As an aside, Oracle is currently in talks to purchase Sun Microsystems for over $7 billion and enter the hardware market.