ITGumbo: spicing IT up

In recounting Yahoo! President, Susan Decker's remarks in my last post, a few things made me think about the role that Israel will have in the future of the Internet. As mentioned in that post, the topic of the panel that Decker, Sergey Brin, Rupert Murdoch, among others participated on, was, "What is the future of the new Internet media?"

Included in Decker's response to this was a reflection that while Yahoo! currently covers the "breadth" of the Internet, the future is in its "depth," such as processing speed, low costs storage, mass media distribution - three areas in which companies in Israel are constantly innovating.

For processing speed, one only has to think of the Intel chips that have been released in recent years and their original development here in Israel. Since Intel first opened an R&D lab in Haifa in the 1990s, Israeli researchers have developed the Dual-Core Intel Xeon Processor 5100 series, the first PC processor with a 8-bit 8088 bus, Intel Pentium MMX and Intel Centrino. Although the Haifa lab didn't develop the latest Penryn chip, it did play a part in determining how the "new chip micro-architecture could be manufactured on a commercial scale."  

The commercial success of Intel's chips have enabled not just more digital activity and productivity, but have also increased demand for low cost storage - several innovations of which, have also come from Israel. In the portable storage realm, Walletex has added a new dimension to USB drive storage devices with its credit card-styled and -sized 4GB and 8GB storage devices. Its devices also have the technology to receive automatic updates from the Internet when plugged in and connected to the Internet. G.ho.st, a web-based operating system that acts as a virtual desktop, provides users with 5 GB of free storage that can be uploaded to the virtual desktop.

Storage on a virtual desktop isn't the only free online storage idea coming from Israel though - eSnips, the multimedia and storage social network, allows its users to not just upload up to 5 GB of data for free, but to also utilize its mass media distribution features, such as document and media file storing and handling, for other users to access and share. While this is a hybrid of low cost storage and mass media distribution, pure mass media distribution websites in Israel include MetaCafe and AniBoom. Both sites rely on user-generated and -submitted short film content, regular and animated, respectively and active participation in their communities.

It is the active participants of these communities that make it likely that these three mass media sites leaders in the present Internet media will continue to play a crucial part in shaping the future of the Internet and Internet media. The social networking aspects of these sites help inspire innovation here in Israel in ways that almost guarantee that these sites will reach and maintain the "depth" of the new Internet that Decker was talking about and which Yahoo! is still seeking.


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. 

As mentioned in my previous post, I attended the Presidential Conference in Jerusalem this past Thursday. One of the sessions that I attended was a panel discussion entitled, "The Revolution of the Internet and the New Media." The panel was moderated by Yossi Vardi and the panelists included, Yahoo! President, Susan Decker; Google Co-founder, Sergey Brin; Publicis Groupe Chairman and CEO, Maurice Levy; News Corporation Chairman and CEO, Rupert Murdoch; and Windsor Media Chairman and CEO, Terry Semel. The question posed to the panelists was "What is the future of the new Internet media?"

While the panelists were able to paint an overall picture of what the relationship between the Internet and media will probably look like in the future, only Susan Decker's comments really stood out. She began by mentioning that "the more things change, the more they stay the same." She discussed the importance of the Internet for essentials and mentioned that while Yahoo! currently covers the "breadth" of the Internet, the future is in the "depth," such as processing speed, low costs storage, mass media distribution.

In relation to mass media distribution and the role that it will play, she emphasized the personal connection that will be widespread in the future, and how it will affect news and TV in the future. This new media, dubbed "we" media, will allow individuals to define news and entertainment and receive it for themselves based on their own personal interests and then to share it with their entire social graph. What role Yahoo! will play in this, is still a major question. In reference to that, Decker concluded by stating that with over 500 million users, Yahoo! is both the largest social network and the least useful, and that the social graph will be used in the future to prioritize one's information and interactions with others through it.

The means of attaining this in the future are what IT professionals should keep an eye on and try to really understand:
1. Creating open experience - figuring out the how and where.
2. Highly personal filters that are user generated and customized.
3. The connection of the online and off-line worlds and the digitization of everything.

(Note: Picture is of the stage before the panelists arrived.)

Your next memory card upgrade for your camera won't just be about getting more memory, but also about making the process of sharing the pictures you store on it easier. The Eye-Fi Wireless 2GB SD Card caught the attention of the media at the CES conference last week for its ability to wirelessly upload your pictures directly to your PC or photo-sharing sites on the Web, rendering the previous hassle of camera cables and USB drives obsolete.

Eye-Fi CEO, Jef Holove explains the memory card's technology and convenience in the video below.

Eye-Fi was founded in 2005 and 2 of its four founders, Yuval Koren and Ziv Gillat, are Israeli. Check out the company blog for the interesting story of what inspired them to come up with this idea. The card is currently available on Amazon.com.

When you go to the doctor's office, ever wish that your doctor actually had your full medical history, including what medications can and can't be prescribed to you?

The Med-O-Card, an impressive USB card the size of a credit card, intends to make that wish come true. Created by Israeli health management company, CEPCO Holding Ltd., the Med-O-Card is an alternative to having a centralized medical information system for patients histories. Cepco, short for CEntral Patient COmmunication, is already providing this technology to the NAV Virchow Bund, a major doctors' association in Germany, and is in talks with other health care groups around the world, including the U.S., to make this technology available to everyone.

I recently had the chance to ask Cepco founder and Chairman, Gil (Gunter) Pollanz, a few questions about this revolutionary new technology that's coming to you soon.

Can you give a brief background about what your company does?
The company was started seven years ago to collect data in structured form so that individuals could have access to the same information and software quality as hospitals and medical practices have. We originally created web-based patient portals to hold this information. Today, our Med-O-Card allows for the storage of not just data that would be in a file usually, but also the installation of an entire operating system with software that can act on a hospital information system and will be offered to health care providers for their patients.

You have an interesting story about how you came up with the idea for this company, can you explain?
I am an economist and lawyer by profession and consider myself pretty active in sports. I didn't think health was an issue for me because I was active. However, 11 years ago doctors found cancer in my lymph nodes. I was given a few weeks to survive and the option of taking a medicine that would destroy 99% of my immune system and would give me a 30% chance of surviving only. After doing my own research, I decided to reject hospital treatment and managed to survive.

About a year after the diagnosis, when I realized I was still here, I decided to create a firm which deals exclusively with providing a technical way to have data and information available at the moment when catastrophe strikes, if it is needed. That's when I created this company.

Are you solely based in Israel?
We are based in Hod HaSharon, but part of our team is in Germany as well.

What's the background of Cepco's funding?
I started this company using $1 million from my family business. Now that we are working with health funds in Switzerland and the United States, any production costs is beyond our financial means though.

What type of funding are you currently looking for?
We're currently looking for two stages. The first stage is seed money to finance the trials and tests in Germany and the second stage we need money for the launch. For the first stage we need about 1.5 million euro and for the second stage we need about 3 million euro. Once we've proven the need for this product, there's a good chance investors can exit with 10 times the amount that was put in.

What's the Med-O-Card's advantage over other solutions?
Using Walletex's USB storage card technology, the Med-O-Card has a technical unique advantage over other solutions. It looks like a credit card or any other card you might have in your wallet and can have ID information on it like but it also functions as a storage card that can hold one to 8 gigabyte of data and can have an entire operating system on it like a computer.

Using this technology, we rewrote the entire software for the Web portal system that we created, and the card is able to act on hospital information system. For a patient it allows input of data in a structured form. It provides a diagnostic health database for any country in the world and can combine different information to create on the card an instant high-tech risk analysis of a patient, including what prescription medications conflict with each other.

What are some other benefits of having the card?
The card has three major benefits. The first is that it is a storage card and not just a "smart card." As such, this allows for the storage of all the necessary data, and instant access to vital information for the doctor and/or patient. The second is that most medical data is on large servers that make it hard for patients and doctors to easily access or meaningfully analyze and the information is vulnerable to serious security breaches. This card was designed to prevent any security breaches and as a decentralized method, it decreases those risks as well. The third benefit is that with the card in your wallet, it makes the patient an active knowledgeable partner to the health care system and gives the patient more control over their health care.

How much should individuals expect to pay for the card once it is on the market?
In Germany, patients on participating plans should expect to pay 4 euro a month for the card.

For more information on the Med-O-Card, check the Cepco Homepage.

Here's a bit of news that I missed when I was going through headlines last week. Last Wednesday, Israel-based Natural Speech Communication Ltd. (NSC), announced in a news release that it "will be launching a multimedia search engine, designed with the capability to recognize spoken words in online multimedia files, as the firm seeks to develop partnerships with content providers." The engine is due out in 2008.

According to the website, NSC is a privately owned company, backed by AudioCodes, Corex Israel Industries, Telrad, and Polar Communication. Lead by its SpeechBlade Server, the company's products are used by such companies as, Cellcom, Bank HaPoalim and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The announcement of a multimedia search engine with voice recognition technology will make it significantly easier for users to find the content they are looking for and will provide media companies with another opportunity to improve their search rankings. This technology also has the ability to give smaller web-based productions more visibility that can provide yet another disruption to the rapidly evolving broadcast world.

The latest addition to your magnet collection on your refrigerator door may not be a magnet from your trip to San Diego or a magnet from the cable company. It might not just be a plain picture, either. According to Reuters, Winbond Electronics Corp.'s Israeli branch "has developed prototypes of devices that transmit data from a computer to a portable screen, which can be easily attached to your refrigerator using a magnet." One product using this technology will be an electronic version of "sticky notes," called the Scribbler. According to Israel21c, the Scribbler's technology comes from combining Bluetooth and Microsoft's SideShow together. Refrigerator magnets and the kitchen culture may never be the same.

Here's a video of the Scribbler in action from Reuters.

Kibbutz Lotan, located in southern Israel, is part of the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) and is leading Israel's development in Green Architecture. It is also featured this week in a Jerusalem Post article on green architecture in Israel.

Below is a quick demonstration from the Kibbutz blog on how to build an eco-friendly straw bale geodesic dome:

For those fans of Nintendo Wii and Dance Dance Revolution (DDR), the next stage of reality gaming is already in the works. IsraGood reports that Tel-Aviv startup, Extreme Reality, is making it possible for computers to read human movements without a human having to hold a remote control. The video below shows how this technology isn't just going to be part of the next gaming revolution but the general computing experience for doing business and every-day things as well. Check it out.

In a very well-written piece that I hope persuades several detractors of the One Laptop Per Child initiative, David Pogue's column in the New York Times today discusses that the $200 laptop will be sold in the United States and Canada for $400 for two weeks. The idea of this campaign is that for $400, the purchaser will receive one laptop and the extra $200 will ensure that a child from a developing country also gets one.

Although these laptops have a low price, they are highly efficient with high-resolution screens, wireless Internet, and long battery life. They are intended to provide underprivileged children with a means to learn about computers and technology and to become more educated, in general. While this only briefly sums up the idea, Pogue's article is really worth reading.

So, how does this relate to Israel, a country that has been thriving on being high-tech? While there are several well-off areas in Israel with technology centers, there are also several poor areas with not much industry -- such as developing towns in the south and, of course, several areas in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel and the Palestinian Authority definitely have a need for these computers and yet, the only information I can find on efforts to bring these laptops to Israel is from the spring of this year, and it only mentions how the Peres Center for Peace was designated as the organization to investigate what benefits this could bring and if it would be a good investment for Israel to make.

As I am having difficulty finding more information on the final decision, I will offer my opinion in brief: I think these computers have a lot of potential and that giving them to Israeli and Palestinian youth could really help them connect, learn about each other and even work together on a whole new level and I hope the Peres Center for Peace also came to this conclusion. What are your thoughts on this? Agree? Disagree?

Also, check out fellow ITGumbo blogger, Arnold Zafra's thoughts on the laptop in this entry from this past April.