ITGumbo: spicing IT up

WorldMate Hires Vice President of Marketing and Appoints Former Lastminute.com CEO to Advisory Board
WorldMate, Inc., a provider of travel services for business people on the go, announced that Jonathan Michaeli has joined the company as vice president of marketing and that Brent Hoberman has been appointed to the company’s advisory board. WorldMate, a subsidiary of MobiMate, lets business travelers manage their complete itineraries, including travel arrangements and business meetings. Recent upgrades now provide both travel providers and travelers with the ability to change itineraries directly on their devices through WorldMate Live. 


Jacada to Present At B. Riley & Co. 9th Annual Las Vegas Investor Conference
Paul O'Callaghan, CEO of Jacada Ltd., will present at the B. Riley & Co. 9^th Annual Las Vegas Investor Conference at the Palms Casino Resort on April 4, 2008. According to the website,

"Jacada provides a unified desktop and process optimizations solutions that simplify, automate, and optimize work processes across disparate business systems, elimination inefficiencies and boosting productivity."

Rim Semiconductor Company Acquires Multi-Carrier Communications, Inc. from UTEK Corporation
Rim Semiconductor, a company that develops technology for telecommunications service providers, has acquired Multi-Carrier Communications, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of UTEK. According to the news release,

"The acquisition includes an exclusive worldwide license and research program for a unique signal processing technology for copper line based applications."

According to the Rim website, the company,

"Develops technology for telecommunications companies to deliver demanding new video and data services with lower network costs and offering a better end-user experience."

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.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that the popularity and excitement surrounding the iPhone and Google-lead Open Handset Alliance would be indirectly beneficial to Israel's Infogin, a company whose Internet Mobile Platform provides users with a better mobile web experience without their buying a new phone or upgrading any firmware on a phone. A service that might work well with it is mobile "seamless messaging" service, Tjat.

Mobile Marketing Magazine reports (via Startup Israel) that Tjat's service has launched on Vodafone Live! and will be providing Vodafone in the Czech Republic its full range of services. According to the Tjat website, its services include:

tCHAT:

"The TJAT mobile IM solution, mobile operators can offer their subscribers quick and affordable access to the world’s most popular IM services from ICQ®, MSN®, Yahoo®, AIM®, Chikka®, and Google Talk®."

tMAIL:

"The TJAT mobile email solution allows customers direct, efficient, connectivity to any portal/ISP email service, including popular ones like Google®, AOL®, Hotmail® and Yahoo® or any other POP3 subscriber mailbox."

tSPACE:

"A full remote media and file library that can guarantee availability and management from any device with access to TJAT services (mobile handsets, landline phones, desktops, set top boxes). Available handset memory is no longer a constraint when on the go."

Of course, the Israel R&D-based all-inclusive mobile messaging service is also working on adding more social networking sharing abilities to its mix. Until then, stay tuned and here is a link to diagram from the site that maps the services visually: http://www.tjat.com/innerData/images/dia01.jpg

News
An article in the New York Times last week pointed out the failures of the mobile web in attracting more users over the years. Recently though, several companies and initiatives, including Israeli-based InfoGin Ltd., have been created to drive more people to use the mobile web and to improve the mobile web experience.

Background
InfoGin was founded in 2000 by Eran Wyler after he foresaw the "need for surfing the real Internet on any mobile device." Over the years, InfoGin has become a leader in "Web-to-mobile content adaptation, enabling mobile users to access any Web site they desire, optimized to their mobile device." According to a company description,

"InfoGin's patented technology offers a range of solutions, from a fully automatic intelligent conversion engine to professional content-editing and marketing tools that enable full control over the delivered information."

The company's most recent technology is the Internet Mobile Platform (IMP) that is currently being implemented by several major companies, from Virgin Mobile (UK) to MapQuest.

Major Customers
Virgin Mobile (UK)
Cellcom & Pelephone (Israel)
AOL
MapQuest
InfoSpace

Analysis
Despite the increasing popularity of mobile phones with Internet access and various initiatives, the mobile web is a mess. Very few users pay for data services in their cell phone plans and those who do, are faced with difficult navigation tasks and limited data available to them.

The recent popularity of Apple's iPhone and the Google-lead Open Handset Alliance (OHA) promise to increase mobile web access in the United States and to give more order and direction to mobile platforms by improving the mobile web access experience. However, while that might be the intention, the iPhone's glitz and glamor only goes so far when people want to view rich media content on the Internet and it is unlikely that the OHA will be able to meaningfully impact mobile search navigation and the more complicated demands of web access in the near future.

InfoGin's services, primarily its Internet Mobile Platform, offers anyone who has a web-accessible phone -- with a participating carrier -- a better Internet experience without the hassle of buying a newer phone or the obligation of upgrading a phone's firmware. InfoGin's service automatically changes any website that a user goes to on the phone.

Compared to a service such as Yahoo! Go, InfoGin is a lot easier and doesn't require users to download anything. However, while InfoGin services provide a better user experience, it is not enough to overshadow the additional need for phones to be able to handle rich media requests and streaming -- something that in the end, for InfoGin's services and the future of mobile web, should be of great concern.

However, considering that 32 cell phones are sold every second and InfoGin's current customer reports of its solutions "doubling web site traffic" and decreasing operational costs of "creating and handling web content" by 80%, InfoGin should be able to continue to expand its current reach of 20 million cell phones unhindered for the foreseeable future.

Additional Resources
InfoGin has record year
InfoGin takes on iPhone with Intellient Mobile Platform
Overview of industry's future
Mobile Web University Trial
InfoGin Press Release