The guys at Rusty Brick now their Torah and know their iPhone. Bellow is a quick selection of apps from people who are not afraid to mix religion and technology.
Watching this video is cool just for the casual way the guy switches from reading ancient Hebrew blessings to scrolling the iPhone. This is a Siddur app demo – allowing you to carry at entire legacy of Jewish traditions on your lovable mobile device.
Have a craving for Gefilteh Fish, or just some kosher salad – yet stuck in a foreign place. Have no fear! this little handy app converses with your GPS and finds you the closest Kosher restaurant. You can even filter from dairy and meat venues, and also select different types of cuisine.
Mikvah – a Jewish ritual bath site – is an integral part of Jewish religious life. Being a very touchy subject, we kinda felt sorry for the obviously religious narrator in the next video, trying to deal with the less “clean” aspects of Jewish life.
Jewish radio links you into the great aether of Jewish radio. The funny thing about this video is the first two stations were quite pop-y rather than Jewish-y. Get your kosher waves today!
This one is not from Rusty Brick, but it will fill your hearts with joy, bringing your own Jewish grandmother to you iPhone. iGavolt –
NoCamels.com is giving away 5000 shekels to the creator of the most watched video (Rules In Hebrew)
NoCamels.com, a division of The Asper institute at Communications School, IDC is proud to present the 2009 ‘Israeli innovation video competition’.
Directors, writers, creators! We know that you have so much to show and tell the world about Israel and we welcome you to participate in a unique competition where you get to show the world “Israel behind the headlines”.
Dr. Noam Lemelshtrich-Latar, Dean of the Sammy Ofer School of Communications at IDC, Herzliya said: “The Asper institute for new media diplomacy not only teaches the most advanced methods for content production, management and promotion but gives the students opportunities to practice positive activities, giving them tangible experience in the field of interactive content and digital new media.”
Dr. Oren Zuckerman, Interactive Specialty Head of the Sammy Ofer School of Communications at IDC, Herzliya said “Leading schools around the world, including ourselves, are focusing on active research performed by the students, by initiating real content activities – not in theory but amidst real audiences. The Israeli innovation project NoCamels is a good example of content activity that involves all aspects in the activities of leading world media corporations – content creation, marketing and using advance media for promoting exposure.”
The rules:
1.Anyone is invited to submit a video and be entered into the competition.
2.Shoot and edit a short video (2 to 5 minutes).
3.The video content has to deal with Israeli innovation: Anything new, positive, different and interesting which relates to Israel in some way or another. It can be about company, music group, factory, exhibition or anything else – there are no boundaries.
4.The video must be in English. If not in English directly, then the use of subtitles is possible.
5.The video must be submitted by June 30st, 2009 but it is recommended that you submit yours as soon as possible in order to have enough time to build up views.
6.Digital file submission only (Mpeg4, avi, mov etc. but not flash) using one of the following:
a.Email, as an attachment. Please note size restrictions on different mail servers. Email to NoCamels.com@gmail.com
b.File transfer service such as yousendit or an FTP server.
c.CD sent via mail (snail-mail) to:
Dean’s Office,
Sammy Ofer School of Communications
Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya
P.O.Box 167
Herzliya, 46150, Israel
7.Along with each video please provide your name, email address, phone number, video’s title and a short, informative 1-2 paragraph description of your choice of topic for the video. All information must be sent in English.
8.We (the NoCamels team) will add the closing and opening credits, and upload the video to different sites (youtube, veoh, etc ) ; promote via social networks (such as facebook and twitter) and social book marking sites (dig, stumbleupom and the likes) and even send you the links to the videos so you can promote yours to your own contacts.
9.The winning of the competition is based on the combined number of views each video gets on all the platforms until June 30th, 2009. It’s simple, the video with most views wins!
10.The competition will end with a concluding event where a panel of judges, including high ranking researchers of media and innovation, media company managers, bloggers and hedge funds executives, will view and comment on the videos.
11.At the event, each judge will be able to give a bonus of 5000 views (or 10% of the original views, the biggest between the two) to a favorite video.
12.The creators of the 10 most viewed videos will receive a diploma from the IDC Communications School.
13.IDC Herzliya, The Asper Institute and No Camels reserves the right to not publish or refuse publication of any video for any reason, including low quality and derogatory content.
14.IDC Herzliya, The Asper Institute and No Camels reserves the right to use any of the videos or any selected part of them, along with the cited names of the creators. This does not include the use of these videos for commercial purposes.
Don’t:
1.Upload the video to your own site choices and then send us the link. Only videos that we upload to the sites will be counted among the entries. Don’t worry though, we’ll send you the links so you can send them to your friends.
2.Important! Don’t include materials (music, video, pictures) which you don’t have copyrights for.
3.No harmful messages such as sex or violence. No swearing please.
4.No slandering of Israel will be permitted. Although, as an academic institution we believe that everyone has the right to free speech and criticism, this project is for positive public diplomacy of Israel online. We are giving you the chance to show the world why Israel is the place to be and we ask that all entrants kindly act accordingly.
Guest Post By Yarin Hochman
In the last couple of weeks there were many tech conferences events here in Israel, after attending most of them, I must say that more then ever I’m convinced that early stage startups should focus most of their attention in the products themselves and not so much in their business model and revenue generation, even as the economic atmosphere pressures.
Ev Williams Twitter CEO & co-founder was asked last week at web 2.0 expo, what advice would he give today to someone trying to build their own startup? His answer:
The core thing would be just do something awesome. Try not to get caught up in the echo chamber.
That is probably the toughest thing when you are trying to break out and do something original.
I think that Yossi Vardi’s famous saying that revenues are distraction is still very much relevant even at this economic climate, I believe young companies should always aim for the best user experience possible by building products that people will fall in love in, and want to use.
In my opinion that is 10 times harder to build than some sophisticated business model, additionally, I believe once you actually get the eye balls, the loyal users who use your product on a daily basis it is getting much simpler to start thinking business and how monetize-generate revenue off these users.
Now I’m not a VC, or anything, but I’d like to share with you the way I evaluate startup’s products (including those I work on) :
-Beneath all the fancy technology, core ideas, and even vision What’s the benefit for the end user?
(what do they get out of it?)
-Would I want to use the service?
-Would my parents (i.e older people) use it, could understand it?
Now obviously there’s much more to evaluating a company’s product, but for me these are the high order of bytes, the benefit to the end user and the “WOW” factor of the product are the things that are often the difference between a business’ failure and a runaway success stories.
Until recently it was common for startups not to think about the business side of their projects, and their plan was basically aiming to make an exit, sell the company for millions of dollars, and that was fine for then but today unless you somehow reinvent the wheel which let’s be honest most of us probably will not, it just wont happen in the near future.
Now don’t get all pessimistic, good news is that the costs of both starting and running a web based startup has dropped dramatically over the past couple of years, and if history is any evident the best companies are built during down times, and those who will survive it will most likely make a killing in the long run and will kick ass.
Two weeks ago I attended a wonderful tech event called: Techonomy, it was an excellent event organized by well known Israeli blogger Orli Yakuel of GO2WEB20, the event was a real treat, well organized and the startups which presented had been carefully chosen, and did great.
Image credit: ilan peer
The presentations were really good and the panel of experts tried to push the discussion around their business model, and about their ability to become profitable.(It was called Techonomy) But I want to focus on something else here, with equal if not greater importance.
In the last couple of events here in Israel we started this new thing of placing a screen on stage next to the presenters with realtime tweets that simply carry the #Hashtag of the event, In Techonomy’s case (#Techonomy) more then 600 tweets were sent in over 4 hours, and it quickly even became a trending topic on Twitter.com
My point here is that we are witnessing a major shift here in terms of the end benefit to the users, and users satisfaction; after each appearance, the lights were up and the panelists gave their thoughts on the startup, but most of the audience didn’t really paid much attention. Why? Because they were all Twittering away giving their thoughts on the product, hashtagging everything neatly, and even replying directly to the founders on stage to check out the feedback.
I personally enjoyed the panelists’ thoughts and input, but I think what were seeing here is something quite extraordinary, where basically anyone can participate, share and receive info in realtime-live events.
Now for the startups presenting, I’m 100% sure that the exposure and the twitter feedback they received was much more valuable than the panelists thoughts, and for that matter even more valuable than most typical feedback companies receive, these guys couldn’t have gotten any other way.
Let’s play with the numbers, say an average tech savvy attendee has about 150 followers on twitter, and there were about 300 sits in the audience, that’s 45,000 twitter users, who will check the product and if they find it awesome and love it, pass it on and so forth. (and we never even mentioned Facebook here 
)
I think we’re getting to a stage when people are becoming much more demanding, expecting higher standards than ever, and the companies that will not have an awesome solution that will make us all go WOW, and play smart with social media just aren’t going to make it.
Now before I get many backlashes here, of course a founders should know their numbers well and have a revenue model down the road, I just think that focusing on the products themselves is much more important and valuable in building something long term, and more rewording even in this day and age.
Tweegee.com is a pioneering destination site that empowers Tweens to express themselves creatively and safely in an innovative and customized online environment.
Tweegee integrates social networking, digital content, and interactive tools to offer a complete online platform for Tweens.
Tweegee provides Tweens with the ability to take full ownership of their online activities, to create their full personal web sites, communicate via web based email, organizer, and more , engage in rich multiplayer games, interact with a webcam games and application, read news most relevant to them, and author their own articles and much more, all at one destination.
All communications are protected with technologically advanced safeguards.
This is a genuine web 2.0 experience that gives teens all they need in this mad digital world they live in today! .
Source: http://www.crunchbase.com/
iamnews
iamnews is a global open newsroom powered by you.
With iamnews anyone can assign news tasks and everyone can participate.
for whom???? It is for independent reporters, photographers, media moguls and anyone who wants to connect with reporters from the world and collaborate in the creation of news.
We really believe that videos are better than 1000000 words,so…ENJOY the videos! .
or
Source: http://www.crunchbase.com/
http://www.youtube.com/
Kontera, which has offices in both the US and Israel, offers advertisers and publishers in-text advertising solutions. After placing Kontera’s JavaScript in your code, their system will automatically create in-text ads throughout your site.
Kontera
How it works? Kontera’s ContentLink service dynamically finds “contextually relevant keywords” on publishers’ web pages, which are then automatically turned into links.When a user mouses-over a link, an ad displays on the page.
There are five different ContentLink ad formats – text only, text with an image, banner, video, and flash.
Important tip: many of Kontera’s publishers use the service as a compliment to AdSense.
Kontera claims that their technology produces better relevancy & ROI.
Established in 2006, PLYmedia Inc. specializes in the development, design, manufacturing and deployment of an interactive, multi-dimensional web video platform – PLYplatform. PLYmedia delivers a range of applications focused on delivering personalized, enhanced and interactive web video technology by bringing new context and meaning to video.
PLYmedia
PLYmedia gives publishers the tools to convert viewers from passive to active viewers, to turn videos from one-dimensional pieces of content to interactive, personalized and informative sources of engagement, and to effectively monetize their users and videos to full potential.
The company was founded in Israel, and is one of fifteen startups selected to attended the Israel Web Tour in the Silicon Valley in 2008.
PLYmedia Products:
BubblePLY-BubblePLY gives users the ability for users to add pop-up bubbles to their websites and videos.
PLYplatform- PLYplatform is a suite of applications that gives broadcast and video publishers and their viewers an opportunity to create professional or user-generated interactive content layers. These applications transform standard web videos into interactive, multi-dimensional and personalized user experiences. PLYplatform is also an open system, allowing content developers the freedom to customize material that suits the needs of individuals.
Applications include:
SubPLY, which allows users to add subtitles and captions in any language to any type of web video.
BubblePLY, which allows users to easily add pop-up bubbles, text, images, clipart and subtitles to videos.
InfoPLY, which allows items or objects in videos to be defined with smart tagged bubbles which can be professionally or custom enhanced with user-defined information and commercial links.
AdPLY, which gives publishers and advertisers the ability to insert and manage relevant text or banner ads onto any web video.
Source: http://www.crunchbase.com/
http://www.youtube.com/
Tunewiki delivers social media player including song lyrics synchronized to the music playing, a one-click music video link, music maps and charts based on actual playback count, and deliver new playback experience on PC, Google Android phone (won 1st prize in the ADC competition), an Apple iPhone/iTouch, Intel MID and a variety of other music-enabled mobile devices.
A collaborative community of users enters or corrects lyrics and synchronization information that can be shared by all, a process similar to sites such as Wikipedia.
The site launched in late December 2007 and is wildly successful, supporting more than 1.5 million downloads of is software.
Cool fact: The main TuneWiki website is powered by “MediaWiki” wiki software.
Just sexy media product? no! much more than that…
Tunewiki
It is a consumer media product that allows people to experience music with others in their social network.
TuneWiki’s social media player is the first to integrate music and video with legal, synchronized lyrics and a social network.
The lyrics, data and synchronization are contributed by the community, using wiki technology and are been licensed from the publishers.
TuneWiki MusicMap displays the approximate geographic location of people listening to specific songs and artists.
LiveCharts allows consumers to access a real-time music popularity list by country or state, and listen to music from other cultures with lyrics translation to their preferred language.
9/25/08 — Won the first prize – Google Android Competition
Source: http://www.crunchbase.com/
Better Place is a mobility operator that aims to reduce oil dependence by delivering personal transportation as a sustainable service.
Launched in 2007 with $200 million of venture funding, the company builds electric-vehicle networks powered by renewable energy to give consumers an affordable, sustainable alternative for personal mobility.
Better Place is working with partners to build its first standards-based networks in Israel, Denmark, Australia, California and Hawaii. Better Place will activate networks on a country-by-country basis with initial deployments beginning in 2010.Israel as Primary R&D Center…want to read more? go to:http://www.betterplace.com/press-room/press-releases-detail/project-better-place-appoints-israel-ceo-declares-israel-as-primary-rd-cent/
Well…let’s find out how it works! So what does an electric car infrastructure look like?
The batteries of a zero-emission vehicle need three things in place in for optimum functionality: charging spots, battery switching stations, and software that automates the experience.
The charging spots will keep the batteries topped off with power so that they always have 100 miles of driving capacity. They are located where you work, live, shop and dine in parking lots so that an electric car will have the ability to recharge when the software instructs it to top off.
For trips longer than 100 miles (161 km), battery switching stations will be available roadside. Stations are completely automated, and the driver’s subscription takes care of everything. The driver pulls in, and the depleted battery is quickly replaced with a fresh one, without anyone having to leave the vehicle. The process takes less time than it does to fill a tank of liquid fuel.
Because most electric vehicles will be charging during the evenings while at home, the batteries become distributed storage for clean electricity.
Want more? http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/13306938/c_13307190?f=home_todayinfinance
Source: http://www.betterplace.com
What is the buzz word around NuConomy? NuConomy is helping companies better assess and understand website and social marketing performance with its free, next generation web analytics and optimization platform.
NuConomy
NuConomy was specifically built to go beyond standard metrics and measure the rich interactions and social features of websites. Through NuConomy’s unique engagement module, websites can understand each individual user’s behaviors and engagement across content, brands and site features. Then, these insights are used to dynamically optimize their online presence, including advertising, and create 1:1 conversational marketing opportunities.
NuConomy was founded in 2006 in Tel Aviv, Israel and is now headquartered in San Francisco, California. Its executive team is comprised of former Microsoft and Google leaders. NuConomy completed its A Round financing in 2008 from WPP Group, one of the world’s leading communications services groups.
NuConomy: http://www.nuconomy.com/
In other words…With NuConomy Studio, businesses can discover new and exciting insights about their online presence.
By using the NuConomy platform, businesses will not only receive better insights about their business, but will also be able to dynamically optimize their business based on those insights, resulting in much higher monetization.
More info? no prob… http://www.nuconomy.com/Content/Press/ProActiveAnalytics.aspx
http://www.nuconomy.com/Content/Press/NuConomyFederatedMedia.aspx
http://profy.com/2008/10/28/nuconomy-helps-online-publishers-see-people-behind-pageviews/
Source: http://www.nuconomy.com/Default.aspx , www.crunchbase.com .
Nocamels also on