Israel Innovation 2.0

During the past week, 8 Israeli companies made the “Global Cleantech 100″ Guardian List, including Emefcy, GreenRoad and TaKaDu. VC funding of Israeli companies was up in Q3, though not in early stage companies and not from Israeli VCs, and Qualcomm announced it bought iSkoot. For these stories and more, see this week’s headlines below.

Cleantech
1. 8 Israeli Companies Make “Global Cleantech 100″ Guardian List

2. Israeli solar water heater producer enters US market

Investment
3. More venture capital flows to Israeli cos

4. Israel’s Internet Scene Comes of Age

5. MySuperMarket Raises $7.4 Million, Won’t Be The New WebVan

6. Qualcomm Subsidiary Buys iSkoot, Which “Mobilizes Internet Services”

7. Italy now Israel’s 2nd largest trading partner in sci-tech

Information Technology
8. NYTimes.com Implements Taboola’s Video Ranking System

9. Wibiya launches a platform and API for their popular toolbar

10. Qualcomm buys iSkoot. Three points to take away from it.

11. Seeking Alpha launches investment app store

Miscellaneous
12. Training girls to narrow the gender gap

Cleantech and Environment

1. ‘Israel has no plan for water economy past 2010′

2. Better Place Raises Financing for Denmark Electric Car Project

3. BrightView Secures $6 Million From Israel Cleantech Ventures and Hasso Plattner Ventures

Investments, M&A and Economy

4. Number of laid-off Israelis set new high in December

5. SAP cuts likely to reach Israel

6. MyThings Acquires ViewScore

Information Technology

7. Safend Achieves Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level 2 for Sensitive Data Protection and Reaches Key Stage in FIPS 140-2 Certification Process

8. Waterfall Security Solutions to Attend the 2009 DistribuTECH Conference

9. Cordys Award-Winning Process Factory(TM) Now Available as Community Platform Free of Charge

10. IBM to expand Israeli XIV production facilities

11. How flash is changing storage (Axxana)

12. SIMCom Licenses Red Bend Software’s vCurrent(R) Mobile for Remote Software Management of M2M Wireless Devices

Web 2.0

13. Peer39 matches online content to advertiser’s message

14.  Time to Headup

15.  Interview : HYPick – hype a topic

16. Email: 2Pad Grabs Media Attachments from Your Webmail Accounts

17.  MocoSpace a Global Top 10 Social Network on Mobile

Miscellaneous

18. Mobile TV chip co Siano wins major Chinese deal

19. Free Internet-Calling Services for Cellphones (Fring)

Bonus: HYPick.com

If you want to know what the hype is– the real hype and not just what people vote on by clicking–check out HYPick.com. Founded by Oren Todoros, HYPick is the anti-Digg-type site that determines the top content based on user comments and views and not ranking, like Digg. Todoros recently sat down with Ezra Butler of LuckyStartups to discuss  HYPick. See what the hype is for yourself with this video.

You can add to Israel’s technology hype, by joining in on Israel Innovation 2.0 HYPick.com discussions, such as this one.

A news release on PRNewswire has announced that Runcom Technologies Ltd. has jointly developed a VoIP portable telephone with Japanese companies NetIndex Inc. and Kaga Electronics Co., Ltd. using the company’s WiMAX (IEEE802.16e) data communications module. The phone was first unveiled at the 2008 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week.

According to Runcom’s website, the Israel-based company is a WiMAX chipset manufacturer that

“develops superior technological standards and
products that target the emerging Beyond 3G market, enabling the
delivery of enhanced communications services to cellular phones and
other mobile devices.”

While the company has focused on the Digital Interactive TV and Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) markets in the past, its entrance into mobile Wireless MAN services will allow it to play a role in the cellular
market which is the

“fastest growing segment in the communications arena, with
over 400 million new phones being sold per annum.”

Additionally, as the demand for mobile devices that deliver voice, video and data continues to increase and the technology changes, products and solutions, such as Runcom’s OFDMA^®  technology will “make the importance of Beyond 3G markets in the future more apparent.”

IT professionals should be on the lookout for more news on this and a possible partnership between NetIndex and Kaga Electronics to

“jointly develop a mobile broadband portable telephone for business enterprises, using next-generation communications technology.”

Company Facts

Founded in 1997.

Dr. Zion Hadad, CEO and Founder.

Dr. Doron Ezri, CTO.

Products: System-On-Chip (SOC) and Base Station System-On-Board (SOB)

Website: www.runcom.com.
 

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 VON Israel telecommunications conference was held this past Sunday and Monday in Tel Aviv. Although I was unable to attend it, I have been following it in some blogs and have watched some of the speeches on PulverTV. In his keynote address, Jeff Pulver, the conference’s founder, mentioned that VoIP is the future of communications on the Internet and now is the time for companies to find the right innovations and solutions for VoIP.

In the spirit of what he said, here are examples of how I think social media areas can integrate these technologies:

Facebook- Have a special application that will let friends voice chat or video chat with each other. This would also be good for the marketplace section, especially for job seekers and potential employers, and for sales, similar to eBay having the call buttons.

MySpace- Musicians can hold special “conference calls,” or interviews, with their fans, similar to the idea of how companies have quarterly conference calls with their investors. Also, musicians can create their own TV networks and broadcast fan mail by embedding it on their MySpace page.

Flickr- While looking at pictures, you can chat with the friend or family who posted them using an application on Flickr.

For more on VON Israel, check out Jeff Pulver’s blog and if you want to view some of the speakers from VON Israel, including Pulver’s keynote, check out PulverTV. Also, if you have any ideas of your own on how social media can integrate VoIP technology, feel free to add a comment below.

UPDATE: Skype and MySpace have announced that they will integrate their chat services to add Internet voice chat to MySpace’s instant messenger and allow Skype users to contact MySpace friends through its service.