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Sitting is the new smoking: best selling hybrid desk comes to Israel

Brian Blum — Sun, 03 Jul 2016 16:07:10 +0000

â€œSitting is the new smoking,â€ says South African physical therapist and entrepreneur Gary Arenson. Heâ€s quoting an expression originally coined by researchers at the Mayo Clinic to describe the serious health risks â€“ including heart disease, diabetes, arthritis and osteoporosis â€“ connected with prolonged sitting, whether in front of the television or, in particular, at an office desk hunched over the computer.

The data coming in is shocking. A study by the American Cancer Society which tracked 123,000 Americans over a 14-year period found that women who sat for 6 or more hours a day were 40 percent more likely to die within the study period compared with women who sat for less than 3 hours. For men it was â€œjustâ€ 20 percent more.

Another study from the Kaiser Permanente HMO in California following 80,000 men aged 45 and above revealed that those who spent the most time sitting were more than twice as likely to develop heart disease as those who sat the least.

Exercise doesnâ€t seem to reverse the effects, either.

The dangers associated with excessive sitting have led increasing numbers of office workers to buy or build their own standing desks â€“ raised platforms for their computer screens and keyboards. But standing only desks are quickly abandoned â€“ workers get tired of being on their feet all day and go back to their original sitting situation.

As a result, sitting-standing hybrid desks that can be raised or lowered with the flip of a switch and a quick tug have become increasingly popular. Some are entire standalone pieces of furniture; others sit on top of oneâ€s existing desk.

Now, the leading manufacturer of the hybrid approach, Varidesk, is making aliyah, courtesy of Arenson and his business partner Issy Zimmerman who have obtained the distribution rights to sell Varidesk in Israel.

For Arenson and Zimmerman, itâ€s a kind of immigration by proxy. While both are staunch Zionists, they have built their professional and personal lives in South Africa and are staying put. â€œSo, as a religious Jew, the opportunity to invest in Israel and at the same time do something incredible health-wise for the Israeli market really motivated me,â€ Arenson tells The Jerusalem Post.

Arenson will also be selling Varidesk in South Africa, through his company Ergotherapy, which develops and sells its own line or ergonomic chairs and is built off of Arensonâ€s medical experience helping people with some serious aches and pains.

â€œStatistically, 80 percent of people will suffer from back pain at some point in their lives,â€ Arenson says. â€œItâ€s far more prevalent than people realize, and not just with older people. The average age of an office worker using a Varidesk is 40-55.â€

Varidesk, whose motto is â€œWork elevated,â€ isnâ€t the first sitting-standing hybrid desk to enter the Israeli market, but itâ€s the easiest to use, which is a big selling point. The units â€“ which come in a variety of sizes from 30 to 48 inches â€“ come fully assembled. You just hoist them onto your desk and youâ€re ready to go.

Each Varidesk unit has two tiers â€“ one for your keyboard and another for the monitor. The design eliminates the need to place the screen on a pile of books or a ream of paper, although itâ€s not ideal for all-in-one computer systems like Appleâ€s iMac which has a built-in stand leading to neck strain. A smaller Varidesk version is designed for laptops. In all units, a simple quick release grip moves both tiers smoothly into one of a dozen positions in seconds.

The desks are heavy â€“ the 36-inch version we tried weighs 35 pounds â€“ which makes them feel sturdy, an important quality (you donâ€t want to feel like your expensive computer could topple over at any second if you lean on the desk the wrong way).

Arenson says the Varideskâ€s user-friendly design is critical to ensuring â€œpatientâ€ compliance. â€œIf you have to move your computer to one side, then put something on your desk, then move your monitor on top of that, your compliance will be less,â€ he says. It was something he learned from his 15 years as a physical therapist. â€œIt doesnâ€t do any good if I tell people to do all these fancy stretches that they wonâ€t do. People donâ€t want to change their work habits and patterns too much.â€

Another key is â€œbalance,â€ Arenson says. You want to split your day half and half between sitting and standing. People who work mostly out of the office probably donâ€t need a sitting-standing desk.

Not everyone will take to a Varidesk, Arenson concedes, which is why the company offers a 30-day trial with a money back guarantee. Since Arenson and Zimmerman arenâ€t relocating, their local representative, another South African Stanley Behrman, will be making house and office calls to make sure new Varidesk owners are comfortable and setting their desks at the right height.

Offices with many workers will be able to get a few units to try out at no cost, giving employees a chance to test drive the sitting-standing experience, before deciding if they want their own.

The first Israeli Varidesks are â€œon their way to port of Ashdod now,â€ Arenson says and he will keep with Varideskâ€s U.S. policy of always having enough in stock so thereâ€s never a waiting list.

One thing that wonâ€t be the same as the U.S. â€“ the price. The starting price for a Varidesk in Israel is NIS 2,500. Thatâ€s at least 40 percent more than it would be in North America.

Thereâ€s no way around it: the cost of shipping, VAT and customs all take their toll. â€œItâ€s the same price we sell them for in South Africa,â€ Arenson says, trying to blunt the sticker shock. And itâ€s less than the NIS 3,400 starting price for competitor Ergotronâ€s Workfit, which is currently the leader in the Israeli market.

Is Arenson worried that Israelis will balk at the price? Not at all, he says. In fact he expects typical Israeli negotiation. â€œWeâ€ll need to work hard to substantiate both our product and our price point.â€ That said, there will certainly be volume discounts for offices buying more than one Varidesk at once.

Arenson and his team plan to sell in Israel exclusively via the web and through direct face-to-face sales, so donâ€t expect to pick one up at your local office supplies store. (Although if they do, Arensonâ€s partner Zimmerman should be able to offer some expertise: he ran the Toys R Us franchise in South Africa for many years before going into business with Arenson.)

Standing desks are gaining popularity in the U.S. and Europe, particularly in Scandinavia. Slingsby, a U.K.-based workplace equipment provider, estimated that 80 percent of office workers in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland now have adjustable desks.

â€œRecommendations suggest that workers should aim to stand for at least two hours each day which they can increase once theyâ€re used to it,â€ says Lee Wright, group sales and marketing director at Slingsby. â€œStanding on a soft floor surface is [also] more preferable than a hard floor.â€

â€œSitting is more dangerous than smoking, kills more people than HIV and is more treacherous than parachuting,â€ says Dr. James Levine, director of the Mayo Clinic-Arizona State University Obesity Solutions Initiative. â€œWe are sitting ourselves to death.â€

Standing desks have a couple more advantages â€“ both somewhat surprising. People who suffer from ADHD have reported that they find it easier to focus while standing than sitting, Arenson says. And if you stand a few hours every day while you power through those PowerPoint presentations, youâ€ll burn an extra 600-700 calories a week, Arenson says.

It may not be enough to quit the gym, but itâ€s still a nice bonus to the already demonstrated health benefits of getting off your tush while you work.

I originally wrote about Varidesk for The Jerusalem Post.

The Best iPhone and iPad Apps from Israel

Brian Blum — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 15:35:12 +0000

Whether you’re looking for something healthy to eat or trying to plot the best way home through rush-hour traffic, there’s an application for that on your iPhone or iPad. And if you look under the hood, you might just discover it’s made in Israel.

With its expertise in cellular technologies, a love affair with the cell phone, and a fast national adoption rate for the iPhone – despite the fact Israelis pay some of the highest prices in the world for the privilege – it’s not surprising that Israelis have plunged into development of iPhone applications.

ISRAEL21c combed through some of the best Israeli apps to come up with our top 10 blue-and-white list for the iPhone.

1. Fooducate

With a recent positive write-up in The New York Times, Fooducate is the latest darling of the Israeli iPhone app scene. And it’s healthy to boot. The concept is simple: before you buy a product at the grocery store, check out what’s really in it. If its bite is worse than its crunch, Fooducate will suggest an alternative that’s better for your body (if not for your pocketbook).

The app uses the iPhone’s built-in camera to scan a product’s bar code. Using its own proprietary algorithm, Fooducate counts up the nutrients and assigns a letter grade from A to D. The app is smart enough to spot cleverly disguised additives – did you know that “autolyzed plant protein” is just another way to say MSG?

Fooducate is primarily for products manufactured in the United States, and its database isn’t yet complete (the company encourages users to snap pictures of items they’d like to see covered and send them in).

2. FiddMe

FiddMe is also a food app, but it takes a very different approach than Fooducate. Rather than aiming to educate, FiddMe wants to turn eating into a worldwide social game – a kind of FourSquare for foodies.

FiddMe allows users to take pictures of great meals they’re eating (in real time) and post the snapshot and information about the restaurant to the cloud. Other FiddMe users can tap into the growing database of yummy recommendations. The service is integrated with other location-aware apps like FourSquare and Facebook. You can also post to Twitter or to the FiddMe website.

FiddMe is not competing directly with user-generated recommendation services like Yelp. Those focus on restaurants as a whole, while FiddMe drills down to the quality of the fettuccini. Not surprising from an app created by a bunch of self-described Israeli “foodies.”

3. Waze

Waze has tackled a problem we’ve all experienced – getting stuck in traffic and not knowing the best alternative routes – and crowd-sourced it. Users automatically add information about traffic tie-ups in real time – without having to do a thing. Waze tracks where drivers are via GPS. If there are more drivers than expected in a certain stretch of road, the Waze map will turn red.

So if Highway 101 is backed up coming into San JosÃ©, Waze will instantly tell you if Interstate 280 is the better bet. That’s a whole lot faster than waiting for the radio to report the latest jams every 15 minutes. And it’s one of the reasons the service has proved incredibly popular, with more than two million drivers signed up.

The automated aspect to Waze is particularly welcome, since texting while driving is a big no-no. But users stopped at a red light can more proactively input traffic information. And to really keep things safe, Waze turns off the keyboard when the car is in motion – neat!

Waze has other features – such as allowing drivers to build maps together, create private groups to share tips, and even play interactive social games.

Waze is free, in keeping with its 2006 roots as an open-source project called FreeMaps. The service began in Israel but is available all over the world.

4. Viber

Within three days of Viber’s launch in December 2010, some one million people had downloaded it. Two months later, the number is up to an overwhelming 10 million. What’s all the fuss about? Viber, a free app, aims to be the Skype-killer, a voice-over-IP phone service that integrates seamlessly into your iPhone’s contact list and allows you to make free calls to other Viber users anywhere in the world.

The app is drop-dead simple: Install it, and any other Viber users in your contact list show a Viber icon. Since the Viber app runs in the background (and the company claims it doesn’t drain the phone’s battery like Skype does), calling that contact for free is a single tap away.

Viber also doesn’t require any registration (another step saved) and uses your phone number as your ID. Contrast that with Skype, where you have to sign up for a unique ID and use only the Skype app to make calls. Viber “officially” only supports the iPhone, but savvy callers claim it works on the iPad and iPod Touch as well. Android and BlackBerry versions are coming soon.

5. Fring

Fring is another made-in-Israel app that allows free phone calls. Unlike Viber, Fring piggybacks on existing phone networks like Google Talk, ICQ, Twitter, Facebook and more, acting as a universal communications center for voice, chat and even video calls. You open the Fring app and get a separate contact list; you can then call any friends on the list at no cost.

For friends not on the list, “Fring Out” calls start at one cent per minute (although that can jump to as high as 44 cents per minute for far-flung locations like Samoa and Zimbabwe).

Fring got a big boost when the iPhone 4 with its front-facing camera came out last year, making video calls a major attraction (the upcoming iPad 2 is rumored to have the same feature).

The app also has a “Fring Stream” that consolidates all your Twitter tweets and Facebook updates (plus, of course, any Fring chats and calls) in one place.

There’s one service that’s noticeably missing from the Fring roster: Skype. Fring used Skype’s network to enable video calls for several years until December 2010, when they parted ways. Fring claims Skype blocked its service; Skype says Fring had been misusing its software and decided to pull out on its own. Either way, Fring is slightly less useful than it was six months ago.

6. Babller

Babller is a simple iPhone app that was an obvious product to be developed in multilingual, multicultural Israel. The app allows you to post status updates to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn in your preferred language and have it automatically translated into a variety of other lingos. The app works the other way around, too, translating posts you receive.

Babller is essentially Google Translate with built-in social networking integration. It’s not likely to be around for long – as soon as Google does its own Facebook translation mash-up, Babller will be out of here.

7. My6Sense

Owning an iPhone can quickly result in serious information overload. With your email, social network updates, tweets and RSS feeds all coming at you a mile a minute, you may find yourself sifting through hundreds (if not thousands) of messages and articles every day.

My6Sense aims to reduce the clutter by learning what you’re interested in and filtering the stream so that’s what you see. Focusing primarily on updates via RSS, My6Sense “learns” what you like by monitoring which articles you choose and which links you forward. You may view your subscriptions by most recent posts or by My6Sense recommendations.

What’s particularly cool is you don’t have to do anything – no tapping buttons to give a thumbs up or down to a particular piece of content, for example. The company calls its service “digital intuition” and it seems to be on to something. My6Sense has received media accolades including a “Best of 2010” award from ReadWriteWeb.

8. Libox

Consuming media on an iPhone or iPad is perhaps as popular as actually making a call. Despite its tiny screen, users love to watch video, show off pictures and, of course, listen to music. But how do you get your media content from your desktop computer or laptop onto your phone?

Apple’s answer is to synch via iTunes. But that requires plugging your mobile device into your computer. And you have to physically move files onto your phone, which means you can quickly bump up against your iPhone’s memory limit.

Israeli startup Libox lets you stream your media from home. There are two parts to the app – one that goes on your computer and scans your hard drives to find media, and a second that you download to your phone, which then streams the media from your computer via your regular cell service or WiFi. Libox also allows sharing media with friends, although that might put the company in hot water with copyright holders.

One downside: the app requires that your home computer be turned on with Libox running. That may not work for people whose laptops are their primary machine.

The company’s pedigree suggests that Libox will continue to innovate in future versions: The company’s founder is Erez Pilosof, who also founded Walla!, the Israeli equivalent to Yahoo and still an uber-popular Hebrew language site.

9. Touchoo

Buying your toddler an iPhone or iPod Touch is not as wacky an idea as it seems with Israeli startup Touchoo’s vision of creating interactive “touch” books for tykes. The company, which calls itself a publisher rather than a development house, has assembled a team of writers, illustrators, animators and programmers (all from Israel, for now) to create their touch books, and the company emphasizes that all book apps are made under the supervision of a developmental psychologist.

Featured first books include Benny the Cat and the touch-screen appropriate Thumbelina (based on the original classic from Hans Christian Andersen). Some of the books are available in multiple languages. Touching not only changes pages but triggers interactive fun (an animated character may jump out and sing).

Touchoo’s concept has already been proven … 20 years ago. When the first round of interactive multimedia products was being released on CD-ROM, one of the most popular genres was animated storybooks that both entertained and taught. Touchoo has simply updated a proven concept to the 21st century, where a click of the mouse has been replaced by a tap of a finger.

10. Appsfire

Appsfire is an app that lets you find other apps. Sure, you can always go searching in the Apple App Store or visit an app review site. But Appsfire uses the power of the crowd to recommend the best apps. As an Israeli company, its roster of “VIP” experts making recommendations is mostly culled from the Israeli tech scene; that will change as the app gains traction around the world. And there are plenty of “regular” users adding their favorite apps.

There’s also a separate iPad version called Appstream that, as its name suggests, has a moving stream of apps. You can tap on an app to preview it, and tap again to share a recommendation with friends or to buy the app. You can filter by just iPad apps or by free apps.

Appsfire and Appstream, by the way, are both free. Appsfire takes a cut of sales from app developers via an affiliate model.

This post originally appeared in March 2011 on the Israel21c website.

A New Patch Promises to Knock Out Acne

Brian Blum — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 20:10:57 +0000

Teenagers suffering from acne will try anything to make the redness and infection go away, but current treatments have mixed results and numerous applications are usually necessary.

Now, Oplon, a three-year-old medical materials company in Rehovot in central Israel has come up with a unique â€œpatchâ€ that radiates an â€œenergy fieldâ€ that can knock out acne for good.

Beyond acne, Oplon, has high hopes for its technology which can also keep milk from spoiling, wipe out bacteria inside juice boxes, and even reduce the number of infections associated with hospital catheters.

Oplon works its magic by manufacturing polymers – a type of plastic – that have a very specific function: They disable microorganisms such as bacteria, fungi and viruses. The polymers create an energy field “that can kill every microbe ever heard of,” says Omer Gonen, Oplon’s CFO. The energy field is safe: “It doesn’t radiate, it doesn’t heat and it doesn’t chill.”

Rather, it’s a chemical adaptation of a mechanism that has long existed in nature to help animals and plants defend against similar attackers. Indeed, these energy fields are “all around us,” Gonen says. “They’re in the air, in the room, and it’s much more energy than we create with a polymer.”

Oplon’s acne treatment consists of a patch with the polymers inside which the acne sufferer applies overnight. Within six hours, the redness, pus and pain associated with the acne will be significantly reduced, Gonen says. “After 24 hours, the spot will be practically fully healed.” Best of all, “In most cases, it’s a one-time treatment,” he adds.

However, parents shouldn’t be too quick to rejoice, Gonen quips, “We don’t solve all the teenagers’ problems. Just the acne.” The acne patch, considered a ‘medical device’ and not a drug, will be on Israeli pharmacy shelves early next year, sold over-the-counter, with no need for a prescription.

Marketing to the US and Europe will come only after the patch has been thoroughly tested in Israel. In that sense, the country will be a sort of national guinea pig. “Israel is a controlled environment. We’re a relatively small country,” Gonen explains. “After a year or so, we’ll have a better sense of customers’ reactions.”

The price has yet to be determined, but Gonen is confident that it “won’t be a big barrier.” And if Oplon can break in, there’s a very large piece of pie waiting to be gobbled up – the market for acne solutions is estimated at $60 billion, he says.

A cure for acne is just the start. The same material in the polymer patch can be applied to the inside of milk and juice cartons to zap bacteria. That would represent a sea change for food manufacturers who today have two main options for keeping their products fresh. They can add preservatives or ‘hot fill’ the carton with a beverage heated to 70 degrees Celsius.

Both of those solutions have serious downsides. Preservatives may lead to health problems while hot filling destroys much of the nutritional benefit. Both affect taste. Hot filling also requires thicker plastic to hold the liquid while it’s cooling, which costs manufacturers more and causes additional damage to the environment.

Conceivably, a milk carton with Oplon’s polymers wouldn’t even have to be refrigerated after opening, Gonen suggests.

While the acne patch is essentially a stand-alone product, advancing fairly quickly, Oplon’s progress with the beverage-makers is somewhat slower. While it offers them many benefits, it also requires serious buy-in. Manufacturers would have to purchase new carton material, since you can’t just ‘spray’ the microbe-eating polymers on existing cardboard boxes. Nevertheless, Gonen is optimistic that Oplon can “correctly engineer the prototypes to fit a production line of a major company.”

A third application in the Oplon pipeline involves urinary catheters which, Gonen claims, are responsible for a full 50 percent of hospital-acquired infections (affecting some 90,000 Americans a year), resulting in more days away from home, greater expense, extra antibiotics and, of course, increased discomfort for the patient.

Gonen says that Oplon’s material can even kill “super bugs” – those microbes resistant to all current antibiotics – like MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and VRE (Vancomycin-resistant enterococcus). Oplon is just beginning clinical studies with catheters, so we’ll have to wait a little longer for that application.

As is often the case, Oplon’s polymer product line was discovered entirely by accident. The company was founded by a number of scientists – both chemists and physicists (key among them was Uriel Halavee who founded printed circuit board maker Opal which was sold in 1996 to Applied Materials). The scientists were working on an intra-cellular drug delivery system but the experiment went wrong.

“If it was me, I would have thrown it all in the garbage can,” Gonen smiles. But the scientists reviewed their formulas and realized they were on to something even bigger. “It really was a mistake,” Gonen says modestly. “Like the discovery of penicillin.”

Oplon is headed by Avi Shani, a 42-year-old father of five who’s a physician by training. The company has 15 staff members and is looking to triple in size in the coming year. While Gonen wouldn’t reveal the source of the funds for that growth, he allowed that Oplon is “in contact with some huge potential partners.” The company previously raised $5 million from Wanaka Capital Partners in 2008.

Oplon’s products represent a “huge platform that will enable us to continue developing products for many years to come. Each product has a market in the billions,” Gonen concludes.

We’ll have to wait and see whether Oplon achieves all of its ambitious goals, but in the meantime the teenagers can break out the bubbly – acne relief is on its way.

This article appeared originally on the Israel21 website.

New Product Deflects Cell Phone Radiation Away from Your Body

Brian Blum — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 10:51:17 +0000

Does radiation from cell phones cause cancer? The jury is still out, with a recently released 10-year study organized by the World Health Organization saying no, and advocacy groups arguing that the research methodology was flawed.

Cell La Vie - peel on protection for your iPhone

Regardless of the controversy, a small Israeli startup isn’t taking any chances. In July, Wise Environment began selling a do-it-yourself kit to protect iPhone owners from radiation. The company claims that its product, dubbed Cell La Vie, reduces electromagnetic exposure from the phone by 98 percent.

The Wise Environment founders are on a mission. “Parents are driving their young kids to use cell phones, to keep in contact,” explains Ronny Gorlicki, Wise Environment’s vice president of business development. “But at the same time, they want to protect them from future problems,” even if it’s not certain that those problems really exist.

At only NIS 179 ($47), Gorlicki feels his product is a worthwhile investment “to defuse the question of what will happen 30 years down the road.”

Cell La Vie can be a bit daunting to install – it’s not a one-click software app, but a physical product – a thin film you apply to the front, back and sides of your iPhone with adhesive. The Cell La Vie kit also includes a spray and pump to make sure your phone is totally clean before you get started. “People are reticent in the beginning, fearful that they’ll screw things up,” Gorlicki says. “But it’s no problem to take it off and do it again. We’ll even send a replacement if necessary.”

Once affixed, the film acts to redirect radiation away from the body. “Inside the phone is an antenna,” Gorlicki explains. “The signal goes in all directions. We had to figure out how we can cover up the points where the radiation would penetrate the phone in the direction of the body while maintaining the quality of the transmission.”

Wise has so far focused only on the iPhone because of the extensive media buzz surrounding the device. “Even people who haven’t bought it are talking about it,” Gorlicki says, noting the “huge awareness in the market of ‘green’ in general and phone radiation in particular. We hear from people ‘I’d held back from buying an iPhone from concern about radiation. Now I just made the order because of your product.’ ”

Since every phone has its antenna in a different place, Wise will have to develop separate films for every type of phone – and for every version. For example, Cell La Vie doesn’t yet work with the iPhone 4, which has an entirely different type of antenna (one that has caused users no end of frustration due to inadvertently dropped calls).

Cell La Vie's Ronny Gorlicki

Wise is also focusing initially on smart phones. “They’re the ones with the higher price tag,” Gorlicki explains, “So people are more ready to invest in safeguarding themselves from radiation.” Smart phones, ironically, can increase their radiation levels as they detect signal strength. The lower the strength, the more the phone has to work to maintain a minimum quality of service, and as a result the radiation increases.

Wise Environment has other radiation-protection products in the pipeline (including one that may actually reduce radiation, not just guard against it) but is progressing slowly. That’s in no small part because the company is entirely bootstrapped; it’s relying now on sales from its iPhone product, which is available in Israel at iDigital’s Apple Stores and the stationary chain Kravitz, to finance future production. Gorlicki is optimistic and says sales are going well, pointing out that “There have already been reorders.”

However, given the company’s scarce cash situation, sales beyond Israel will have to rely on distributors. Gorlicki doesn’t anticipate opening a US or European office in the near future. And even if the patent pending Cell La Vie is as successful as anticipated, Gorlicki says that raising venture capital money will be tough.

He likens the Cell La Vie product to a mezuzah: “You don’t know if it has prevented some hardships or brought good things to you,” he quips. “There’s no immediate gratification in that sense.” He says that the problem is with the VCs, who want to see immediate results.

This is not Gorlicki’s first outing with a product that doesn’t deliver satisfaction on first use. In a previous position at Wizcom, he was in charge of marketing the ‘Quicktionary’ – a digital pen that you run over printed text to translate it into multiple languages. “There was a real learning curve,” Gorlicki recounts, “You had to hold the pen correctly, to start and end it in the right place.”

Cell La Vie is not alone in the market; one of its better-funded competitors is Pong Research, which has been reviewed widely, including in Wired Magazine and The New York Times. But Pong, by its own estimates, only reduces radiation by 60 percent and only from the front of the phone, Gorlicki points out. Both Pong and Wise have had their results verified, in Cell La Vie’s case at MET Labs, a California testing and certification company.

Gorlicki is proud that his product is entirely made in Israel and hopes that even as production ramps up in the future, the company will be able to resist the pressure to export manufacturing to China or another less-expensive location.

He says he would be delighted to cooperate with Tawkon, a company whose product indicates to smart phone users when their radiation levels are too high. They would be a good match because Tawkon detects the radiation and prompts users to take simple actions like “put the phone on speaker,” while Cell La Vie actually does something about the radiation emanating from the unit itself.

Regarding the WHO study, Gorlicki draws attention to the fact that the research was in part funded by the phone companies themselves. The study followed thousands of phone users in 13 countries to see whether people who had brain tumors reported spending more time on cell phones during the previous decade than other people did. The researchers reported that they couldn’t find any cancer correlation with cell phone use.

The study’s main purpose, Gorlicki claims, was to give federal agencies a benchmark of when radiation levels are too high. If the companies stay within those levels, they’re considered ‘kosher.’ But, he says, “we really don’t know how much and how long it would take for someone to reach proportions so high that he or she will get cancer.” Researchers are now considering a new, even longer study of up to 20 years.

Not to mention that cell phone usage has increased dramatically and phones have advanced technologically in the 10 years since the study was started. What might have been considered ‘average’ use in 2000 would pale in comparison with teenage cell phone use in 2010.

Perhaps the ideal scenario for Cell La Vie would be cooperation with, or acquisition by a cell phone manufacturer or operator. But Gorlicki isn’t optimistic: “They don’t want to have anything to do with it,’ he says, explaining that involvement could be construed as an admission that cell phone use might not be 100% safe.

Even with Cell La Vie’s protective film in place, cell phones still pose a danger – to your neighbor. Gorlicki compares phone radiation to secondhand smoke. “You could be getting secondhand radiation from the guy sitting next to you in a restaurant talking on his cell phone,” he warns. Will there eventually be cell phone-free environments, he wonders.

Beyond being potentially dangerous to bystanders, Gorlicki reminds us that cell phone use requires “good hygiene.” Even if you’re using a corded headset, you don’t want to stuff your phone in your pocket while you talk. The phone still emits the same amount of radiation. Holding it away from your body or placing it on a table is the safest bet.

Gorlicki is doing his best to live in his own ‘wise’ environment – the company’s headquarters are in his home just off of the HaBonim beach south of Haifa, in northern Israel. “I wake up and take the dogs on a walk near the shore,” he says. “What a way to start the day when you’re working for an environmentally conscious company.”

This article appeared last week on Israel21c, a great site for exploring Israel “beyond the conflict.” Check it out!

Social Media Finds a Home in Wibiyaâ€™s New Toolbar

Brian Blum — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 16:55:50 +0000

From ‘Facebook-like’ buttons to embedded YouTube videos and interactive chat, it’s rare to find a website these days that doesn’t beckon you to share your thoughts with everyone you’re connected to.

But for website owners, adding all that social interaction takes time and, if you’re not a programmer, copying and pasting esoteric HTML and JavaScript code into your site’s header or widget boxes can be a technically daunting task.

Wibiya from Israel is a hot start-up that aims to streamline the process. The company, which raised $2 million a few months back from Primera Capital and counts as one of its seed investors the ubiquitous Israeli angel and Internet guru Yossi Vardi, has built a popular toolbar that consolidates dozens of social media functions into a single space-saving strip at the bottom of your website. Wibiya’s aim is to make adding new apps and functionality as easy as a one-click install.

Among the useful Web functions that Wibiya incorporates are the ability to instantly “like” a company’s fan page on Facebook and write on its Wall without leaving the website you’re looking at; see how many other people are online and looking at the same page you are; translate the site into one of more than 40 languages; and chat with your social media friends directly from within the Wibiya bar.

Taking a cue from Apple, Wibiya has created its own app ecosystem, allowing third party developers to add their Web products to the toolbar at no cost. This has led to an eclectic range of functionality built by enthusiastic supporters that Wibiya co-founder and CEO Dror Cedar never expected.

For example, there’s an app that allows website owners to pop-up targeted messages filtered to the specific person visiting. This could be based on the page a visitor is currently viewing (say, a message about the Middle East peace process) or could kick in only after a user has been on at least five pages of the site.

Another popular app automatically turns all links on a website into “affiliate ads.” If a visitor to the site buys a product via that link, the website publisher keeps 70 percent of the revenue. Amazon is one of 25,000 merchants included in the program.

Want to raise money? Wibiya has apps for that, too. One puts a link on the toolbar to your organization’s Causes page on Facebook; another allows visitors to use PayPal to make donations a snap.

Wibiya is on the verge of releasing a developer website with an open API (Application Programming Interface) to make it even easier for developers to build Wibiya-compatible apps, Cedar says.

For publishers, Wibiya provides detailed analytics showing, for example, how many clicks the toolbar is receiving or how many Twitter updates have been tweeted via the Wibiya service. The toolbar itself is tiny – only 17K. And it plays nicely with all the leading blogging platforms, including WordPress, Blogger and Ning.

Since the toolbar is free to both third party developers and publishers, how does Wibiya intend to make money? “We work with high end publishers including Philly.com, Playboy and even the (confectionery vendor) Jellybelly.com on either a revenue-share model or one that’s based on performance,” Cedar explains. “We deal with them directly to build a tailor-made solution.”

For everyone else – the so-called “long tail” of web publishers, as Cedar describes them – Wibiya will soon introduce premium paid packages with “for example, the ability to integrate your own advertisements into the toolbar.”

Cedar didn’t start out with the intention to build Wibiya. He and his co-founders Daniel Tal and Avi Smila were working on a travel-related product called Joongle. “If you wanted to search for a flight from Tel Aviv to New York, our toolbar would give you the top 10 websites, like Kayak and Priceline, with flights to that country,” Cedar says. “Then each time you clicked, it would do the search for you.”

But when the team showed the product, potential clients kept saying “wouldn’t it be great to have another button that would show my most recent posts, or one that displays photos,” Cedar recounts. Realizing that there was an even bigger market beyond travel, the company quickly switched gears. “After the 10th time, we said okay. The demand came from the publishers themselves. People really wanted it.”

One concern we had was whether creating yet another way to share information across the Web would cause alarm, much in the way that Facebook has taken a drumming recently for its fungible privacy policies. Moreover, will users be paranoid that Wibiya may follow them around, tracking what they’re doing on the Web?

Cedar assures us that Wibiya is just “an enabler. We don’t do anything automatically and we don’t save your information. We’re completely transparent.” Still, Wibiya may have to be more proactive in spelling things out to put visitors at their ease.

As for the name Wibiya, it’s a play on words – a “wib” is a widget bar. “We didn’t like ‘widget,’ ” Cedar says.”That implies a static component.”

Indeed, with Wibiya’s functionality, financing and future prospects, the company is anything but static.

This article originally appeared on the Israel21c website.

Software: Heal Thyself

Brian Blum — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 05:41:11 +0000

IBM research facility in Haifa

If your computer gets sick, would you rather give it a full system overhaul or the equivalent of a digital Advil to relieve the symptoms? Onn Shehory and his team at Israel’s IBM Haifa research facility have developed much more than a computerized analgesic. Say hello to the world’s first self-healing software.

The project – called SHADOWS for “a Self Healing Approach for Developing cOmplex softWare Systems” – was proposed by Shehory and funded by the European Union’s 6th Framework Program, a technology initiative that invests in promising international endeavors. The idea was to emulate how the human body behaves and apply it to software.

“When you develop some sort of dysfunction, the body senses this and reacts automatically,” Shehory says. “It is essentially self-monitoring.” SHADOWS does the same for computer systems. “It recognizes specific misbehaviors, classifies them into possible types of problems, and then for the serious ones, makes the appropriate adjustments,” he says. This may include inserting new lines of codes before a program runs or moving around memory resources, to prevent the most common reasons for system crashes.

In the case of memory, for example, Shehory explains that “we can manipulate the usage of memory without actually knowing where the problem is coming from. We don’t have to find the bug, just to know that something is wrong.”

That’s the same way that a pain and fever medication acts on the body. “Instead of a week of fever, you might just have a half an hour at the end of the week,” he says. “It doesn’t remove the root cause – the virus – but it will prevent the fever from coming back for a long time.

“In order to continue benefiting from the advances and innovations becoming available in the IT landscape, software developers and architects must begin to design software… to incorporate internal safeguards that can both identify and repair problems,” adds Yaron Wolfsthal, head of the Reliable Systems Technologies group at the IBM Haifa lab.

The need for self-healing software is clear: Computer systems are now ubiquitous, a part of everything from dishwashers to managing a countrywide electricity grid. The problem is that software systems are inherently buggy. Even utilizing software testing, reviews and other protective measures, “with millions of lines of code, it’s too difficult to identify all the problems in advance,” Shehory says.

Traditional approaches to fixing software have meant calling on engineers to sift through the code, locate the bug and repair it – a process that’s akin to searching for a needle in a digital haystack. And yet, “we can’t afford for systems to fail on critical missions… or even non-critical missions,” exhorts Shehory.

SHADOWS doesn’t go so far as to create self-aware artificial intelligence – no worries about a Terminator-style SkyNet attacking the planet. Nor is it specifically targeted at preventing terrorists from bringing down global networks. “It’s not about security, it’s about the robustness of the code,” Shehory explains, although he suggests that since SHADOWS can identify problems as they start to brew, it may allow programmers to jump into action if they sense a cyber-attack is imminent.

SHADOWS is sophisticated but doesn’t require any changes to existing legacy computer systems – it can sit alongside those programs monitoring their action and only start working its magic when it detects something awry. Shehory hopes, however, that programmers will speed things up by manually inserting “comments” when they write the software that can direct SHADOWS to look at, say, only 10,000 rather than a million lines of code.

The genesis of SHADOWS was a proposal IBM in Israel made to a European Union program that promotes collaboration in research and technology across Europe. Eight other partners joined IBM in the three-year, $5 million project – major universities including the University of Potsdam in Germany and the Brno University of Technology in the Czech Republic, and technology heavyweights such as Phillips Electronics of the Netherlands and the Spanish phone carrier Telefonica, which provided a case study on the use of the SHADOWS technology. The EU pays for 50 percent of the project with the IBM lab responsible for the other half.

Despite the innovation, SHADOWS is not yet ready for prime time – it’s more a general research-oriented framework than an actual, saleable product – although parts of it may be commercialized. Each partner in the project owns its own intellectual property should a marketable solution ultimately be developed.

In the meantime, Shehory is considering applying for a second stage grant to address the technology’s biggest limitation: The resistance of the people who write the computer systems that need SHADOWS to inserting machine-generated code automatically into their babies.

“The psychological effect is very strong,” Shehory admits. “If SHADOWS writes some new code, the programmer might be hesitant, thinking ‘can I trust this, will it work properly?’ “The solution may be as simple as adding a feature that “recommends” the change, allowing the engineer to decide whether or not to accept it.

Still, Shehory says, “we’re trying to find technical ways to address this difficulty without human intervention.” Software – heal thyself.

This article originally appeared on Israel21c.

My Day with the iPad

Brian Blum — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 14:37:15 +0000

Last week, I hired a team to design and build a cool new iPad app for me (more on that in the coming weeks). The problem was that, at the time, Iâ€d never actually held or used an iPad. So I was truly delighted when my friend Mitch Simon, who runs a successful coaching business in San Diego and was visiting us over the weekend, offered to leave his iPad with me for a day while he went out to tour the country.

Here, then, are ten comments from my day with the iPad.

1. First of all, itâ€s totally drool-worthy. I donâ€t know why, but when you pick it up and start to play with it, you immediately fall in love. Especially kids. I had a gaggle of children, ages 13 and under, begging to touch it, swipe it, shake it and turn it around so the screen reformats this way and that. I wanted it for business reasons; they were all about the fun. And Steve Jobs is right: it really is the best way to interact with the web.

2. I can touch type on it. Unlike the iPhone, where Iâ€m all thumbs (literally), the virtual keyboard on the iPad in landscape mode is just big enough to let me type normally. That makes the iPad an ideal device to take to a lecture or conference. I found Appleâ€s Pages word processing program easy-to-use and intuitive (if not as powerful as Word on my Mac). Add in the long-life battery and the iPad is, as some controversial pundits have already claimed, a NetBook killer. And for all the naysayers who say you need to â€œfeelâ€ the click of a real keyboard, I say â€“ get over it. You will get used to it.

3. Typing on the iPad has one big disadvantage over a laptop: unless youâ€ve attached an external keyboard, the iPad has to lie flat on a table or desk. That makes it hard to fully take advantage of the benefit of the screen â€“ itâ€s angled away from you. It works OK if you have your feet on the couch, but didnâ€t your mother teach you never to do that?

4. As print newspapers begin to be phased out, reading the paper over breakfast is something the iPad will be great at. Although Iâ€m not a regular reader of USA Today, the app version is superb and immediately intuitive. The fonts were big enough for even my middle-aged eyes. One disadvantage: if your fingers get dirty or sticky (eating pancakes or anything with syrup), thatâ€s going to muck up your screen much more than a smudge on a printed paper.

5. Itâ€s still too heavy for reading in bed. I want a device thatâ€s as light as a paperback that I can hold in one hand (you know, like a Kindle). The iPad is somewhere between that and a hard cover book. But otherwise, the screen is brilliant and some of the tricks â€“ like highlighting text and taking notes â€“ are really helpful. And I know itâ€s just a â€œgimmick,â€ but the animation for flipping the pages really is fun

6. Despite the weight in bed, walking around with the iPad is a pleasure. My friend Mitch put his iPad in a leather case and it feels like one of those â€œold fashionedâ€ diary books that I used to carry so long ago. Think of it as a slightly hefty yellow note pad. I found myself bringing the iPad everywhere with me.

7. The bathroom test â€“ come on, you know at some point youâ€re going to want (or need) to hold the iPad while on the toilet instead of a newspaper or book. So, to be comprehensive, I gave it a spin. Here it works better than reading a book in bed: I don’t mind using both hands to hold it and itâ€s great having a variety of reading material in case your stay in the washroom is, um, a bit lengthy.

The kids can't get enough

8. Pictures look fantastic on the iPad â€“ so much so that I canâ€t imagine ever printing out photos and placing them in an album again. Before the iPad, it was a bit awkward having to pull out a laptop or ask friends and family to crowd around my desktop screen to see snapshots from our latest vacation. The iPad takes it to the couch. And itâ€s a whole lot more convenient than carting over 17 albums worth of photos (of course, digitizing all those albums will be a major undertaking).

9. Ditto for video â€“ itâ€s like having one of those dedicated DVD players they used to give out in business class in airplanes before the built-in TVs came out â€“ except a whole lot smaller. And itâ€s just big enough to share â€“ at least a couple people at once (I wouldnâ€t try to watch Date Night on an iPad with the gang).

10. Biggest pet peeve â€“ no front facing camera. Come on Apple, we know youâ€re just holding back until next year so you can generate more sales, but I want to be able to video Skype or FaceTime with my family when Iâ€m on the road (or in bed â€“ what is it that makes me want to snuggle up with the iPad). This may be the killer appâ€¦why do we have to wait?

So, did I add anything new to the discussion? What do you think? Please leave your comments below.

Free Phone Calls: a PokeTalk Update

Brian Blum — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 07:25:50 +0000

Do blondes have more fun on PokeTalk?

In January 2009, I wrote an article for Israel21c about PokeTalk, a then new startup offering free VoIP calls using regular phone lines. I bumped into the company’s founders Shai Genish and Boaz Bahar Wednesday night at a meeting of the TechAviv Founder’s Forum and I thought I’d share the original article with you here on the Blum Interactive Media along with some company updates.

The 2009 article was topical, coming in the midst of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead operation in Gaza. Since then, the company has expanded its offerings to include paid calls that can last longer than the free service’s maximum 10 minutes duration, along with many other cool features such as web callback and analytics.

But I also heard some disturbing news: PokeTalk has been hit by a significant amount of fraud where unscrupulous hackers have redirected calls, resulting in tens of thousands of dollars in charges for PokeTalk. The situation has gotten so bad that the company is now investing in building its own security software which will also be available to other VoIP services and not just PokeTalk.

Shai and Boaz are both very sincere and enthusiastic Israel entrepreneurs who I like a lot. So, here’s the original article without changes.

—————————————–

Residents of the southern part of Israel in range of missiles from Gaza can now make phone calls up to 30 minutes to their friends and relatives entirely for free, thanks to a new Israeli startup called PokeTalk. The service, which is already operational in 60 countries around the world, is good for any calls between two phone numbers in Israelâ€s 08 area code.

PokeTalk has been flying high since its launch three months ago. The company, founded by two 25-year-olds in Tel Aviv â€“ Shai Genish and Boaz Bahar â€“ has signed up 70,000 users nearly entirely on word of mouth and viral marketing alone.

The service, like fellow Israeli-founded company Jajah, uses voice-over-IP to connect regular phones, not just two computers.

As with any good idea, though, thereâ€s a catch: calls are limited to 10 minutes. The promotion on Israelâ€s front lines triples that amount.

Ten minutes (or even 30) may seem like a deal breaker but, says Genish, the average call placed is only two minutes and 40 seconds. And 70 percent of calls from a mobile phone are a mere 80 seconds. â€œOther than for business calls, 10 minutes is usually more than enough.â€

PokeTalk is essentially an automated version of the call back systems that were once popular in Israel as a way of saving money. But rather than calling a certain phone number, with PokeTalk you enter your number and the number you want to call on the PokeTalk site. A few seconds later, your phone rings. You pick up and PokeTalk places the call.

I took a test drive and the quality is quite good â€“ certainly on a par with other voice-over-IP systems like Vonage, Gizmo5 or even Skype.

So how can PokeTalk offer even 10 minutes of talk time for free? On-site advertising. Since youâ€re required to initiate your call from the web, PokeTalk can show you advertisements on screen. Thatâ€s a whole lot less annoying than some other free phone systems that put 10-second audio ads before a call is connected.

After only three months in operation, PokeTalk is far from profitable â€“ only 50 percent of calls are covered by ad revenue â€“ but the small eight-person company has raised $1.25 million from Maayan Ventures and private investors. Genish says he hopes to be in the black by the end of 2009.

PokeTalk calls can originate from 13 countries â€“ including Israel, the US, Canada and Germany, though notably not the UK â€“ and can be connected to 60 nations, from Kazakhstan to New Zealand. Mobile phones are supported in nine countries.

Of PokeTalkâ€s 70,000 users, 40,000 are in Israel. A viral â€œrefer a friendâ€ program has been successful at recruiting new users too (if your friend signs up, you receive an extra 10 minutes on your next call).

On an average day, up to 7,000 users login and make close to 18,000 calls.

The company has been featured on Israelâ€s Channel 10 news and in The Marker and Globes business supplements. Genish estimates that a series of interviews that appeared in the “VoIP Guides” online publication led to some 10,000 new users.

The companyâ€s current promotion in the south of Israel probably wonâ€t generate a significant number of new customers, but itâ€s a noble gesture that helps local residents in tough times.

LabPixies Investors Share Insights into Companyâ€™s Acquisition by Google

Brian Blum — Mon, 24 May 2010 10:42:36 +0000

Yaron Carni, lead investor

Google’s announcement last month that it was acquiring Tel Aviv-based LabPixies for a rumored $25 million caught some Israeli analysts by surprise. That’s a tidy sum for a small startup with just 12 employees that has raised less than $2 million over its four years of operation.

Yaron Carni, LabPixies’ lead investor wasn’t caught out, however. “I immediately loved the company’s products, their vitality and, of course, the team,” he said. Speaking on behalf of a handpicked group of angels including Auren Hoffman and Fabrice Grinda, Carni added “we were all deeply impressed with the character, commitment, talent and forthrightness of the founders.”

LabPixies was particularly attractive to Google due to the company’s role in developing some of the first and subsequently leading ‘gadgets’ for the iGoogle platform, Google’s alternative interactive home page. LabPixies products have garnered as many as one billion impressions a month while signing up 40 million users. One of its most popular products is ‘Flood-It,’ a game that involves dragging colored balls around the screen. “It’s very addictive,” admitted Carni.

LabPixies also builds translating programs, news and weather reports, calculators and calendars that run on other social network services including Facebook, Hi5, Yahoo and MySpace, as well as Google’s own Android mobile operating system.

However, LabPixies doesn’t make its money from the Web, but by selling mobile apps, primarily for the iPhone. Company CEO Ran Ben-Yair won’t divulge financial information, but he did tell the Israeli business journal The Marker several months back that the company has “millions of dollars in revenues.” Carni added that the company has kept costs down by staying “lean.”

Despite Google’s increasing competition with Apple in the mobile space, there’s no indication that the search engine giant will drop its support for LabPixies’ iPhone products.

Google plans to merge LabPixies into its Tel Aviv office, which according to a press release “will anchor our iGoogle efforts across Europe, the Middle East and Africa,” leveraging LabPixies’ “knowledge and expertise to help developers and improve the ecosystem overall.”

The big winners, of course, are the investors and LabPixies founders – CEO Ben-Yair, VP R&D Oded Poncz, VP business development Nir Tzemah, and creative director Udi Graff.

Investor Fabrice Grinda wrote on his blog that he was “seduced by the company. They had crazy amounts of traffic in the right countries (Western Europe and the US). Their users loved them. Moreover, their products fell squarely in a rapidly growing ecosystem: Social networks and mobile applications.”

If anything, Grinda was sorry to “sell so early. The company and team are great and the category is only becoming bigger.”

Google Israel’s managing director, Prof. Yossi Matias, is understandably bullish on high-tech in the country. “Google believes in Israeli innovation and creativity and we’ll continue to strive for collaborations with local companies and startups in the future,” hesaid .

Carni, in turn, is a big believer in Google. The deal to buy LabPixies spanned a number of months, Carni said, during which time Google was “a pleasure to work with… from the product people to the human resources professionals. They were always direct, honest and comprehensive.”

LabPixies is Google’s first acquisition in Israel. The company joins other international Internet heavyweights such as AOL, Microsoft and eBay who have invested in the local Silicon Wadi high-tech scene. Google has been active in Israel since 2005 but has never bought a company until now.

This post originally appeared on the Israel21c website.

Tawkon Helps Reduce Radiation Danger from Your Cell Phone

Brian Blum — Wed, 05 May 2010 09:03:22 +0000

Gil Friedlander, Tawkon

What do you do when you suspect something’s bad for you but you just can’t stop doing it? That’s a question many cellular phone users have been asking themselves, with reports of radiation emissions from their mobile devices raising serious questions about the safety of our increasingly un-tethered society. A new Israeli startup may have the solution.

Tawkon has entered the fray with an inexpensive application for the iPhone that warns users when radiation levels have inched up too high and provides advice on how to counter the potentially negative effects.

The company says that its solution gives users the information and tools to avoid mobile phone radiation as much as possible by “mapping” their homes or offices so they’ll know where they’re exposed to significant levels of mobile phone radiation. It also supplies simple precautionary measures to minimize radiation, based on a user’s location and phone usage.

However, you won’t find this app on your iPhone any time soon, because Apple has banned it. Apple says that Tawkon is a diagnostic tool that would create confusion for iPhone owners from a usability perspective. Tawkon believes that Apple doesn’t want its customers to install an app that appears to advise them to talk less – even though its stated aim is to make it safe for them to “talk on.”

Tawkon founder and CEO Gil Friedlander is taking it in his stride. He says that his company is in discussions with Apple and that he is “optimistic and hopeful that the issue will be solved soon.” He insists that he’s not an anti-cell phone zealot. “We love our phones, too,” he says of the Tawkon team. “We won’t give them up. But we can help people use them more responsibly.”

In the meantime, the company is pressing forward with porting the application to other devices, starting with the Blackberry then expanding in the coming year to cover Google’s Android operating system and the Symbian OS used by Nokia phones.

Friedlander describes the Tawkon app as “like infrared goggles – suddenly you can see at night. We view ourselves the same way. We give users the ability to see and feel non-ionizing radiation. Once you know whether you’re in a red, orange or green zone, you have the information you need to take action.”

That action might be to move to a different location until the radiation levels drop, or to plug in a headset or use a speakerphone in your car.

Tawkon can’t actually measure a phone’s radiation – it’s just software after all – so the app relies on processing a dizzying array of factors, including your location, environmental factors such as the weather, Bluetooth functionality, how close your phone is to your body (utilizing the iPhone’s proximity sensors), antenna orientation (are you holding the phone vertically or horizontally), GPS and even the phone’s built-in compass. The app then prompts users with a vibration or tone when the radiation levels reach a dangerous threshold.

Some of the worst places to talk in terms of radiation are a room with thick concrete walls (a basement, elevator or, in Israel, the sealed room mandated from the time of the first Gulf War), and a moving vehicle (such as a train, car or bus) when the phone is switching off between cellular broadcast towers. In all these cases, the phone has to work harder to connect to a signal, hence the radiation goes up.

In some cases, the locations where radiation is highest can be surprising. “In my apartment, radiation in the washroom is high,” Friedlander says, “while the rest of the house is decent.” In 80 to 85 percent of cases, there’s “good coverage and radiation is pretty low, especially in an urban area,” reassures Friedlander.

No one knows exactly how – or even whether or not – radiation will cause serious medical problems in another 10 years, but the government isn’t taking any chances. Israel’s health ministry has recommended that children under the age of 18 shouldn’t use mobile phones at all – young people’s brain tissue is still developing. In the US and Europe, however, similar precautionary warnings have not been issued.

Friedlander and his staff of six in the Tel Aviv suburb of Herzliya have been working on the Tawkon technology for 18 months now, going live with the still unclear iPhone version earlier this month. The app will be marketed direct to consumers via the various hardware manufacturers’ app stores for just under $10 a download.

Down the road, Friedlander says, he would be “delighted to partner with cellular phone operators,” where he believes that a tool to bring real value and safety to customers would be an absolute win/win. “We are aware that it’s challenging for them,” Friedlander admits. “For many years, they’ve just not addressed the issue.”

Friedlander is originally from Canada and studied at McGill University in Montreal. Tawkon has raised money from private investors in Canada, the US and Israel. Is he looking for larger investors? Probably not. “I don’t see the company as a big venture capital play,” he says. “It’s not a very capital intensive business. We don’t require tens of millions of dollars.”

If the app sells well – and Friedlander reports that the company has received thousands of inquiries since the TechCrunch blog about technology startups broke the story of the Apple ban – a small company like Tawkon could do quite well for its owners, partners and employees. The press is certainly interested. Tawkon has been inundated with press requests, from the Washington Post in the US to Channel 2 and The Marker business and technology print and online newspaper in Israel.

With the total number of cell phones in use said to be some four billion, and of these half a billion smart phones, Friedlander is optimistic that “it’s almost like an endless market.”

Ultimately, Tawkon is not all about the money. “Most of the time, you develop and sell a technology that reduces costs for a phone operator,” Friedlander says. “We were looking for something that can make an impact on the well-being of our friends, family and community. Being able to help the user is very important. We saw a real opportunity.”

This story on Tawkon first appeared on Israel21c and has since been written about by a number of top international newspapers and magazines.

A Neat Trick for Scheduling Meetings

Brian Blum — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 05:38:31 +0000

New startups have the best shot at success when they address a “pain point” – an issue that causes discomfort, annoyance or even loss of business.

Tel Aviv-based Neatcall targets just such a situation, one that will be immediately familiar to anyone who’s ever tried to schedule a meeting with two or more participants: Seemingly endless phone or email tag.

Neatcall’s solution is to marry mobile technology with a seemingly simple voting system. But as with any good start up, there’s a lot more under the hood.

“On average, setting up a meeting with more than two participants is a process that can take between half to a whole working day,” Neatcall CEO Dan Benger says.

We’ve all been there. A meeting initiator calls or sends out a message to the people who are required to attend. The respondents reply with their availability and the initiator then tries to find a time that works for everyone. Automated services, such as Microsoft Exchange, can speed things up, but they don’t eliminate the essential “trial and error” nature of a task that often seems to stretch on forever, especially if not all the participants are sitting at their computers at the moment the message is sent.

This is how it works: The initiator selects several free time slots from his or her calendar. A message is sent out to all attendees who then vote on which slots work best for them, in their order of preference. The Neatcall system tallies up the votes and shoots back the optimal time. If all agree, Neatcall books the meeting, sends out a confirmation notice, and follows up closer to the meeting’s actual time.

So far, the system is neat, so to speak, but not a major breakthrough. But Neatcall has another trick up its digital sleeve. It sends out its messages via multiple mobile formats – email, SMS, WAP, instant message or via the browser to a smart device like the iPhone or Palm Pre. Even on a basic phone, people can vote by simply responding to an SMS – “send S to select the first date, T for the second date” and so on.

Neatcall also offers location management so that scheduling requests are sent to attendees in the appropriate time zone. For iPhone users, there’s an app available from the Apple App Store.

It’s no surprise that Benger was the man to recognize the need for Neatcall, seeing as he previously served as VP of international marketing and business development at web and video conference call solutions company Interwise. Customers were satisfied with the quality of the conference calls, he says, but they frequently complained about how difficult it was to set up those calls. Interwise was purchased by AT&T in 2007 for $121 million.

In addition to its innovative approach to scheduling meetings, Neatcall also offers to conduct your meetings for you, with a package that comprises chat, audio and video conferencing from a single unified site.

While Neatcall’s basic innovation should help to solve an existing problem, it may be difficult for the company to make headway with the rest of its package, given that the market is already saturated with conferencing companies such as Webex and GoToMeeting which lead the space.

Benger is hoping that the fact that Neatcall’s service is entirely browser-based, unlike competing software which requires users to download an application, will make the difference.

Neatcall sells its service directly to companies – Benger says there are several deals in the pipeline but won’t reveal their names – for up to $12 per user per month, with the price depending on whether Neatcall is handling just the scheduling or total conferencing delivery. About 200 corporate users in Israel, Europe, Australia and the US have already tried the system.

With only four employees, a few contractors and an investment of $500,000 from the Netanya-based incubator Targetech and Israel’s Chief Scientist’s Office, Neatcall is small, but looking to grow.

When I set up my interview with Benger, he used Neatcall to handle the scheduling. I received confirmation and reminders via both email SMS. And that was just, well (wait for it)… really neat.

I wrote this article last year for Israel21c – here’s the link.

Israel’s Top Ten Must-Have Gadgets

Brian Blum — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:48:13 +0000

Israelis love technology. They are early adapters, and relentless innovators, always looking for ways to improve their lives in every possible area.

With the country’s talent for development, it’s no surprise that some of the world’s top gadgets were designed and developed in Israel. Israel21c asked me to put together a list of the ten best. Here’s my take:

1. DiskOnKey

Dov Moran, founder of Modu (see below), previously hit the big time with his company M-Systems, which developed the very first DiskOnKey (or DiskOnChip as M-Systems originally dubbed it).

The concept is simple enough: Jam up to 64 gigabytes of data onto a tiny gadget no larger than a house key. The latest versions actually look like a key and can hook onto your key chain.

DiskOnKeys were part of the “one-two sucker punch” that killed the venerable floppy disk (the other being cheap recordable CD-ROMs and later DVDs). Aside from being a reliable way to transfer data from computer to computer, disk-on-keys are now finding new life, expanding the storage space of the latest portable craze, the NetBook.

In 2005, PC World named the DiskOnKey one of the world’s top 10 gadgets in the last 50 years. In 2006, international powerhouse SanDisk purchased M-Systems for $1.6 billion.

2. Powermat

How many power cables do you have running under your office desk for all your computers, hard drives, modems, routers, etc.? How about those kitchen appliances and their connections to the sockets? Wouldn’t it be great to get rid of the clutter?

That’s what Powermat promises to do. The Israeli company’s technology lets you embed a power grid in just about anything – from a desk to a kitchen counter. Then, with a wireless receiver hidden inside a device, there’s no need for plugs anymore. Just position the device or appliance near a power “hotspot” and away it goes.

In a demo on the company’s website, a salesperson goes so far as to pour water all over a “Powermatted” kitchen counter – with no burn-outs or electrocutions. Other demonstrations show iPods and Blackberries charging when simply placed on a table.

The company is a joint venture between Michigan-based HoMedics and Israel’s Powermat. The first products will be available in time for this winter’s shopping season.

3. Epilady

The story of this gadget is fraught with intrigue. We’re talking about a hair removal product invented in Israel that now has copycat versions worldwide. The original Epilady “epilator” was released in 1986. It had a rotating spring that worked by catching hair and pulling it out. It isn’t pleasant but, according to women, it works.

Newer versions have more of a tweezer action. Either way, the result is not unlike a waxing treatment, except that you can do it yourself at home, for a fraction of the cost. An Epilady treatment lasts up to four weeks.

Epilady was the first but has been surpassed by international brands including Braun and Remington (Epilady sued Remington over patent infringement but lost). Still, the company has sold 28 million units over a 23-year career and now sports 13 different models from the “Traveler” to the youth-marketed “Epigirl.”

Ironically, when the first Epilady came out in Israel it was given the “American” sounding name “Nice and Easy” while the company used the “Epilady” moniker overseas.

4. Modu

Modu looks something like a cell phone and something like an MP3 player, but isn’t really like anything you’ve ever seen before. Essentially, Modu is a tiny device with cellular capabilities that can be slipped into any number of “jackets” to give it a specific functionality. One jacket transforms Modu into a full MP3 player, in another it’s a camera. The plan is to create a mini-economy around Modu accessories.

Our favorite Modu jackets: Modu Executive (looks like a Blackberry); Modu Love (a stylish cell phone with a big heart); Modu Kids (imagine a cute green Nintendo DS); Modu Boombox (a little phone with big, built-in bass-enhanced speakers); and the Modu Bicycle Mate (that snaps onto your handlebars).

The company is facing increasing competition from Apple, Nokia, Palm and others, which may be why, despite raising nearly $130 million since its launch in 2007, Modu recently laid off 80 employees. Still, the news isn’t all bad. Just a week before the layoffs Modu announced the launch of a touch screen jacket using Google’s Android mobile operating system.

5. Boxee

Boxee isn’t exactly a gadget. It’s software that’s intended to be integrated into other companies’ gadgets as their Internet media operating system. If it were just a TV playback system, Boxee wouldn’t be so hot; after all Microsoft and Apple have similar solutions. But Boxee excels at playing all types of video, audio and even image files. YouTube, NetFlix, Flickr and Pandora are all built in. And Boxee also plays well on the Xbox.

There are also a bunch of nifty social networking features that allow you to share what you’re watching with friends or tweet in real time.

Boxee announced recently that it is coming out with its own standalone hardware – the “Boxee Box.” In the meantime, you can install it on any computer you have – absolutely free. We installed Boxee on the laptop we have connected to our television and we love it.

6. Eye-Fi

Here’s an idea that’s so obvious it’s a wonder no one else thought of it. You’re at a family event, your child says his or her first words and you have the good fortune to capture the moment with your digital camera. You want to share it with the world but to do that you’d have to get back to your house, plug the camera into your computer via a USB cord, upload it, and then post it to Facebook or your blog.

With Eye-Fi you can upload those photos wirelessly from anywhere. The company sells a standard SD card (that you need to run your camera, anyway) that has built-in WiFi connectivity. That means that anywhere there’s a hotspot (which these days is just about everywhere) you can upload your photos to one of 25 sites that you specify in advance through the Eye-Fi software.

The Eye-Fi works with all the top cameras, from Canon to Kodak. The company was founded in 2005 and two of its four founders, Yuval Koren and Ziv Gillat, are Israeli.

But we have to ask: Is there still a market for a wireless SD card? Anyone with an iPhone already has the ability to wirelessly upload pictures – and even video – immediately. The answer: Standalone cameras with higher resolution than a phone-cum-camera haven’t gone the way of the dinosaurs yet, nor is there any reason to think that they will, which means Eye-Fi has plenty of visibility ahead.

7. MobileEye

Speaking of visibility, another Israeli high-tech company, MobileEye, combines a tiny digital camera with sophisticated algorithms to help drivers navigate their vehicles more safely.

Consider the lane departure warning system. When a driver starts drifting out of a lane or doesn’t use the turn signals, the system rings an alert. The MobileEye application is so sophisticated that it can even sense when a driver is “about” to change lanes inadvertently.

Fused with the car’s steering system, MobileEye takes the camera that much further. Other applications include a forward collision warning, traffic sign recognition and pedestrian detection.

MobileEye has been around since 1999 and has deals with GM, BMW and Volvo, among others. The company maintains R&D in Jerusalem but is now headquartered in The Netherlands.

8. Ctera

Israeli company Ctera makes a small gadget that connects to a USB hard drive, transforming it into a cloud-based offsite storage system.

It’s a two-step process. First, data is backed up from your main computer to the external drive. Next, it’s sent to servers “in the cloud.” The result is that your computer isn’t constantly sending data to the Internet and slowing down processing speed. With this gadget multiple computers can now be connected to a USB drive that used to be tethered to just a single machine.

Ctera’s “Cloud Plug” is small enough to fit in an envelope which can be mailed from an ISP (Internet Service Provider) to its customers. ISPs like the device because it gives them a way to monetize all the online backup traffic they’re losing to third party services. Ctera also sells the gadget direct to the public for $199. Given that it’s not a question of if, but when, your hard disk will die, cloud storage has a rosy future. Ctera aims to be in the thick of it.

9. Easy-2-Pick

Airplane travel is stressful. There are the security checks, uncomfortable seats, tasteless meals and then, of course, there’s the fact that you’re hurtling through the air at breakneck speeds in a tin box. But perhaps the worst party of all is waiting for your luggage. You never know when it’s coming up the conveyor belt. You grab a bag only to discover that it belongs to someone else. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just sit back and wait for your luggage to alert you when it’s arrives?

That’s the idea behind a simple device from Easy-2-Pick, a small Israeli company founded by two American Express travel agents. The gadget has two components. One piece attaches to the luggage, the other fits in your pocket. The range between the two pieces is only 15 meters, so the alert only sounds (it also lights up and vibrates) when your luggage is close by.

The Easy-2-Pick system was red hot when we first wrote about it last year. It seems to have floundered since then as the inventors search for distributors. Still, it’s a wonderful idea and we hope it succeeds. Imagine the same technology being applied to your keys… or your car, when you can’t remember where you parked.

10. Medical imaging via cell phone

In the Western world, we take for granted high-tech tools for physicians and hospitals such as the hand held ultrasound wand that displays the heartbeat of a fetus or detects a tumor. But how would you use that same device in a remote village in Africa where there isnâ€t even any electricity?

Boris Rubinsky, a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, has come up with a novel concept: blend the wand with a cell phone. The phone powers the medical imaging device, then transmits the resulting data to a central processing facility â€“ perhaps even in Israel – where itâ€s turned into an image which can then be messaged back to the village physicianâ€s phone

The entire process is not unlike the trend in medicine in recent years where X-rays taken in the US are sent to Israeli radiologists for review and then returned via the Internet â€“ saving money and time (itâ€s daytime in Israel, while itâ€s still night in the US when radiologists may not be so readily available).

Rubinskyâ€s life saving gadget is still just in the prototype stage but it has a promising future (and Rubinsky has the patents to back it up). Next in line: Rubinsky is working on a gadget that will extract small amounts of electricity from potatoes â€“ just enough to charge a cell phone in those same far flung third world villages.

Great Deals or Hidden Scam?

Brian Blum — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 11:41:31 +0000

The courts have ruled that the service is legal, but it still leaves a muddled taste in my mouth. Iâ€m talking about Free.co.il, a popular Israeli auction site that works more like the Lotto than eBay.

You canâ€t help but be drawn in by Free.co.ilâ€s home page which promises a Sony Playstation for NIS 99 ($26), a MacBook Air for NIS 299 ($79), and even a brand new Mazda 3 for a steal at only NIS 899 ($237). Who wouldnâ€t want to play with deals like these?

At first, it would be hard to distinguish Free.co.il from a traditional eBay-style auction site: you place your bids on items for sale and the highest bidder within the auctionâ€s time frame wins. Unlike eBay, though, you have to pay for your bids. The cost of each bid varies; for the MacBook, itâ€s NIS 20 (about $5). Itâ€s higher for bigger ticket items.

So, letâ€s say you bid 20 times to win that MacBook. Youâ€ll pay NIS 20 x 20 or NIS 400 ($105). Then you pay the price of the unit, plus shipping of NIS 75 ($20) – written in tiny letters on a separate page you have to click to see. Your total cost: NIS 774 ($206). Thatâ€s still way less than the retail price of NIS 8,899 ($2,400) at Appleâ€s Tel Aviv outlet, but itâ€s not the NIS 299 that was initially advertised.

And what if you donâ€t win? Then you lose the NIS 400 entirely. Thatâ€s how Free.co.il can offer such low prices.

Still, if you place your bids right (and there is a whole section on â€œbidding strategiesâ€ on the site), and youâ€re willing to stick with it and spend hours aggressively placing last minute bets, you will win eventually (hopefully for an item you actually want). So, even if you wind up spending NIS 2,000 bidding on several items before winning one thatâ€s valued at NIS 10,000, youâ€re still getting the product at an 80% discount.

Thereâ€s one other trick Free.co.il has up its digital sleeve. If two people bid the same amount, both bids are canceled. That means that the highest â€œuniqueâ€ bid wins. You can see whoâ€s placing what bids, their initials and even where they live, but not the amount theyâ€re spending. So you never really know if your bid is being burned or not.

Free.co.il is entirely in Hebrew, but thereâ€s a thriving market of overseas competitors. Is this a good business? Investors seem to think so. One of Free.co.ilâ€s rivals, Swoopo, has raised an astonishing $14 million. Another – BigDeal – has a $4 million war chest and some Silicon Valley luminaries at the helm.

Itâ€s certainly compelling â€“ who wouldnâ€t want an iPhone at a tenth of the retail price â€“ though I donâ€t think Iâ€d have the stomach for it (I usually chicken out and click the â€œBuy it Nowâ€ button on eBay). And it peeves me that Free.co.il buries those hefty shipping fees in hard-to-find small print â€“ it makes me wonder what else are they hiding.

But if youâ€re willing to play by the rules, and you enjoy the thrill of the game, Free.co.il could be the 21st century version of â€œThe Price is Right.â€ All we need now is our own Israeli version of Bob Barker.

This article originally appeared on the Israelity blog.

Why the iPod Nano is Not a Game Changer After All

Brian Blum — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 07:52:25 +0000

Not quite a game changer

With the much rumored and insanely anticipated Apple iSlate, due to be announced later this month, being referred to as a potential â€œgame changer,â€ as momentous as the original iPod and its big cousin the iPhone, I thought Iâ€d take a look back at a post I wrote in September in which I called the new iPod Nano a game changer itself.

At the time, I hadnâ€t actually gotten my hands on one. That finally happened last week. And Iâ€m sorry to report that my prediction now seems premature.

My enthusiasm for the Nano was that it was the absolute smallest, decent quality video camcorder on the market, and it had a built in iPod to boot (or maybe itâ€s the other way around). It would be a boon to bloggers and media publishers of all sizes, not to mention consumers shooting silly cat tricks, I wrote.

And indeed, that potential is readily apparent. I have a client that works with communities in far flung places such as India, China and Burma. Why not arm its constituents with Nanos to document lifecycle events and send them back to us to edit and post on YouTube or Facebook.

When I finally tried out the Nano itself â€“ at a rock concert where I needed a clip to accompany an article I was writing â€“ the Nano neatly delivered on its promise: the device is so tiny I was able to keep it stowed safely in my shirt pocket, and it warms up fast so I was ready at the beginning of each song to grab the shots I wanted. The video quality was entirely acceptable; the audio less so.

So whatâ€s the problem? It doesnâ€t have a camera; itâ€s just video. That might seem a bit nit picky, but the market today is all about convergence – reducing the number of devices you need to carry. The iPhone does this perfectly: it packs a phone, camera, video recorder, MP3 player and web browser all-in-one shiny black package.

But the iPhone (like most smart phones) is relatively hefty. It doesnâ€t fit into a pocket, itâ€s too bulky to wear on an armband while exercising and, frankly, it does more â€“ and costs more – than many people need.

The Nano has the price and form factor I want, but without a camera for stills, if I want to be ready at any time and any place to shoot a photo and a video, I have to carry both my Nano and my digital camera. My cell phone doesnâ€t take pictures at high enough quality to make it a worthy alternative.

Why didnâ€t Apple include a camera in the iPod Nano? Probably to prevent cannibalization of sales of its higher end i-products (although the official rumored reason is that they couldnâ€t get the optics small enough to work). Perhaps the camera will be a part of the package in the future â€“ along with a tiny wireless receiver, now wouldnâ€t that be cool! – but before then, the business buzz will have already moved on to the iSlate as the next game changer.

————————

In case you were wondering how that video I shot at the rock concert came out, here’s a short clip I took with the iPod Nano. The audio is a bit muffled, but I think that’s more due to where we were sitting (in the front row, where the instrument amps were closer) than the iPod’s functionality.

Challenging the “Release Fast and Iterate” Gospel

Brian Blum — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 14:49:29 +0000

When I spoke with Amit Elisha of OutBrain a few weeks ago, we discussed the companyâ€s software release strategy.

OutBrain operates under whatâ€s considered the new Gospel of product development: get a basic version out there with a minimum number of features and maybe even a few known bugs, make it free, then let your users flood you with feedback so you can iterate and build your next version better.

Continue this process until you climb out of alpha into beta and eventually to a fully functional product (which, to follow Googleâ€s prolonged beta label example, could take many years).

Jason Cohen

An interesting article by Jason Cohen, the founder of Smart Bear Software, on the On Startups blog challenges this methodology. Releasing too early and relying on the power of the crowd, he suggests, can potentially harm your reputation and potentially kill your product.

He uses the iPod as an example. Apple designed its game changing music device far away from the public eye. If it had been part of a release-and-iterate cycle, he says, could Apple possibly have gotten away with building a battery-powered device where you canâ€t change the battery! Or one without an FM radio (which was already included in many early iPod competitors â€“ itâ€s finally been added to the new iPod Nano years later).

â€œDisruptive products by definition cannot be built by consensus,â€ he writes. â€œâ€â€Design by committeeâ€ is a sure-fire way to get mediocre design.â€

Cohen presents additional points to back up his hypothesis.

Startups often invoke the 80/20 rule that says you can implement just 20% of your features because thatâ€s what 80% of your users want anyway. But Cohen says that doesnâ€t apply the way you think it does. The truth is that 80% of your customers use a different 20% from each other. So you need to push out more features, not less, to satisfy a larger cross-section.
Twitter is often trotted out as a classic example of â€œget it out fast,â€ but itâ€s a bad one. While the service quickly gained a large and rabid following, it has been suffering from backend scalability problems ever since. Twitter has sufficient capital and some super-smart engineers who can work around the clock to fix what ails it, but your two-person startup may not be so lucky if you release before youâ€re ready.
Customers donâ€t actually know what they want. â€œTheyâ€re much better at describing whatâ€s difficult in their life, what frustrates them, or what takes up a lot of their time,â€ Cohen writes. But did anyone ever say â€œgee, I wish that I could send a video ringtone to my friendsâ€ (this is an idea that only a couple of smart entrepreneurs could think up).

Over the last 20 years, Iâ€ve built or been a part of a team building a number of products. When I was working at CD-ROM developer Mindscape, I got into a huge fight with my boss over when to release a product that I had been toiling over for the better part of a year. The company had sales orders from its distributors, but I knew the product was still buggy and wasnâ€t ready.

Even worse, this was in the pre-Internet days; once the CD was shipped, it would take a new budget allocation to fix it, which I knew would be hard to obtain. When I was essentially given a choice – ship the product or pack your bags â€“ I opted for prudence.

More recently, though, I fell victim to my own emotional involvement with a product that would have done better to release early and iterate. I got so caught up in getting it right, I didnâ€t realize that the business model was wrong, something that would have become apparent if users had a chance to kick the tires.

Two other examples from opposite poles:

1) Craigslist â€“ if ever there was a bottom up, build it fast and they will come approach to web development, Craigslist would be the poster child. Of course, Craigslist got stuck after the first round of iteration â€“ the site hasnâ€t been functionally updated for years, but it works and no oneâ€s complaining.

2) The Apple Newton – this is not so much an example of slapped together product development, but it nevertheless demonstrates how a bad start can sink a product. The worldâ€s first PDA came out in the early 1990s. It was a revolutionary product but â€œthe handwriting recognition sucked and there werenâ€t a lot of apps,â€ Cohen explains. The publicâ€s response: â€œit doesnâ€t do a lot and what it does do doesnâ€t work well.â€ By the time Apple addressed its myriad problems, it was too late.

Ultimately, thereâ€s no clear-cut approach. I tend to lean towards the â€œyouâ€ve got only one chance to make a first impressionâ€ direction but, as a number of comments on Cohenâ€s blog post argued, not every company is Apple.

â€œThey have the money and market control needed to focus on building a complete product at the expense of time to market,â€ writes Paul May. â€œFew startups have this luxury.â€

What do you think? Which direction is more likely to lead to successâ€¦or kill a company? Iâ€d love to hear from you in the comments to this post.

Ginipic: Image Search on Steroids

Brian Blum — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 07:26:39 +0000

Itâ€s happened to all of us at least once or twice in our careers. Weâ€re writing a school paper or updating a website and we need a photo or graphic image to illustrate a point.

That usually entails searching a number of different photo sharing sites such as Google Images, Flickr, TwitPic, PhotoBucket, and others. Once youâ€ve found the picture you want, you have to click through to see the full size image, right click to download it, then choose Import to paste it into your Word document. And thatâ€s assuming youâ€ve received the copyright clearance to use it.

What if you could do all this in 2 steps? Thatâ€s the idea behind Ginipic, a small Israeli startup with a big idea. Enter a search term and the Ginipic application crawls 15 different web-based photo sharing application. The software then presents the results on a single screen.

Thatâ€s already a big improvement from Googleâ€s image search, which only displays a maximum of 25 photos on a page, requiring users to click the â€œNext Pageâ€ button repeatedly.

Ginipic will even search your own computer.

Once you find the image you want, simply drag and drop it into the application youâ€re using â€“ whether thatâ€s Word, PowerPoint or an email program. The Ginipic application is designed to work â€œside by sideâ€ with other programs to help eliminate switching back and forth between screens.

Ginipic shows copyright details and a photoâ€s Creative Commons status to keep you from inadvertently infringing (a dollar sign and a large â€œBuy Nowâ€ button appear when an image isnâ€t free).

Other goodies include the ability to instantly share images on social networks, set an image as your desktop background, and save it to a built-in â€œlightboxâ€ that contains only those pictures youâ€ve selected to view.

The service is the brainchild of three young Israeli entrepreneurs and childhood friends from Even Yehuda: Lior Weinstein, Noam Finger and Orr Sellah (who, not coincidentally, are also the only employees in the company). Ginipic has taken on no investment to date but is currently looking.

Ginipic is entirely free right now and, unlike other web services that pitch a paid premium version, the companyâ€s business model is to cut â€œwhite labelâ€ deals that will give an existing photo sharing site Ginipicâ€s functionality but with the partnerâ€s branding. Ginipic is also in talks with several advertising agencies to update their aging interfaces for image search.

CEO Weinstein told me that Ginipic is looking for deals in the $10-30,000 range rather than with big players who might pay in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. We asked him why. â€œWe wanted to bring the product to market as fast as possible,â€ he said. â€œWith a $100,000 deal, there are endless meetings. And for that price, a big company will always consider building it in-house. At $10,000, itâ€s not a problem.â€

Weinstein said the idea for Ginipic actually came to him in a dream. â€œI was working on a big paper in a classical studies courseâ€ at Tel Aviv University, he said and needed pictures of ancient Greek and Roman statues.

Exhausted, he fell asleep one night and dreamed of dragging pictures directly from the photo sharing websites he visited into a Word document. Two weeks later, a mock up was done and the company was on the fast track to development.

Ginipic is not a web application but a download and it works on Windows only (bad news for all the creative types and increasing numbers of students who use Macs). Why the download? we asked Weinstein, aware that this is often a barrier to usability for many wary web denizens.

That was the only way to enable the drag and drop functionality. You canâ€t go direct from web to Word, nor can you search your own computer, Weinstein explained. Fortunately, the software itself is small â€“ only 4 MB â€“ making for a relatively painless installation.

I asked Weinstein about Ginipicâ€s product management process. There wasnâ€t much, he said. The team just jumped in and started coding. After about a month, â€œwe did a proper product plan,â€ Weinstein said, with a feature roadmap and competitive analysis.

As with many self-funded startups, the â€œgo for itâ€ approach can be effective. Weinstein warned against â€œfeature freezeâ€ where you plan too much and never get the product out the door because thereâ€s always one more feature to add.

Ginipic also used an interesting tool for soliciting customer feedback. UserVoice puts a small tab on the left side of every screen on the site. Clicking allows users to vote on which features theyâ€d most like to see (a Mac version leads the list). The service is free for 100 votes per month. It ramps up rapidly from there to a max of $589/month for all the bells and whistles.

Weinstein said that after all the feedback was in, the team was pleased that there were no additional features they hadnâ€t originally thought of. UserVoice helped mainly in ranking what functionality should be rolled out first.

Ginipic is not without competitors. Meta-search services like Copernic have been around for years, and Microsoft Officeâ€s Clip Art tool is already built into Word (â€œalthough no one uses it,â€ Weinstein mused). Other sites, such as CoolIris, are more about enjoying images online than searching them, Weinstein pointed out.

So far, in the 9 months since Ginipic launched, itâ€s signed up over 100,000 users â€œon $0 advertising,â€ Weinstein said. Approximately 25 percent of those are active users.

Among the services with which Ginipic works are DeviantArt, Flickr, Picasa, Google, Fotolia, Bing, PhotoBucket, SmugMug, Yahoo, Dreamstime and Crestock.

I use a Mac, so I personally wonâ€t be able to give Ginipic a spin anytime soon but Iâ€ll recommend it to my PC-using friends.

A version of this story originally appeared on Israel21c.

$10 for Crying Out Loud

Brian Blum — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:24:20 +0000

Outbrain is a company I like a lot. It has a seemingly simple product that provides some very useful functionality: content rating and recommendations for blogs.

Follow the easy installation instructions and Outbrain will allow your readers to give your latest post a 1-5 score. Then, based on Outbrainâ€s massive database of reader tastes and web content, the Outbrain widget that displays on your blog will point visitors to related articles that Outbrain has determined they might find interesting.

Yes, it directs visitors away from your blog, but it also has the potential to turn your site a mini-destination site. (You can see Outbrain at work on this blog â€“ scroll to the end of any post.)

When the company raised a sizable second round of financing earlier this year, a lot of brows were furrowed: $12 million for a blog plug-in? Investors must have had a sneak preview of the companyâ€s latest feature, launched earlier this month: an enhancement that allows publishers to pay for premium placement of their content.

The new goodie is called OutLoud and it costs $10 per URL. Featured content appears at the top of the Outbrain recommendations list and is clearly labeled. Without OutLoud, Outbrain uses its own algorithms to suggest content.

OutLoud can be used in two ways. A publisher can let Outbrain control which sponsored recommendations appear; Outbrain will then split revenue with the blog publisher.

Alternatively, a publisher can set up the OutLoud service to work as an internal referral engine: only URLs from the publisher will appear. This can be used to generate more traffic within a single property or on a network of sites owned by the same publisher.

At first glance, $10 might seem like a no brainer for a small to medium sized online publisher, but it quickly adds up. And the $10 fee per URL is only for a month. You have to pay up if you want the sponsored link to keep going.

Outbrain says that the service is aimed at a number of target clients:

Marketers who want to drive word-of-mouth by amplifying positive reviews about their company.
Individual bloggers who want to promote their most brilliant posts.
Public relations professionals looking for new ways to distribute releases
Social media gurus who can push out articles from a corporate blog to drive traffic.

With such a cool product, I wondered what product management is like at Outbrain. Amit Elisha, who directs the process, says that the days of long and involved specs with accompanying Photoshop images are long gone. â€œWe were work on a very fast 3-4 week release cycle,â€ Elisha said. â€œWe prefer UI (user interface) mock ups over technical documentation, which we keep very brief.â€

Elishaâ€s tool of choice is Balsamiq Mockups which makes it incredibly easy to create a wireframe. I tried it out and it lives up to the hype with a truly drag and drop interface. Thanks Amit for the tip!

Elisha has been with the company since August of last year and moved from Israel, where Outbrain started, to New York for the job. I asked him my favorite question about what parts of product management could be outsourced. None, he said. Outsourced people donâ€t have the same stake in the company. â€œWe hire people with a certain DNA,â€ he added.

For publishers looking to generate additional revenue, OutLoud certainly looks promising, although it will take some time before the service has the critical mass to add up to more than just some extra change. On the other hand, itâ€s free to install and Outbrain doesnâ€t add its own branding or links back to the Outbrain site.

Outbrain was founded by Yaron Galai and Ori Lahav. The 25-person company has headquarters in New York with R&D in Israel. The latest round was led by Carmel Ventures with previous investors Gemini, Lightspeed and GlenRock Israel filling out the round. Total raised to date: just over $18 million.

Casinos, Behavioral Tracking and You

Brian Blum — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:27:12 +0000

I was listening to an old episode of one of my favorite NPR shows and podcasts, Radio Lab. The topic was how we choose and it featured a fascinating and highly disturbing story that has relevance to anyone involved in the Internet today.

It turns out that in the world of gambling, the casino chain Harrahâ€s is the undisputed leader. The reason? All visitors must first join a â€œloyaltyâ€ program. Since signing up grants the gambler a nice credit of a few bucks, no one says no. Once you get your card, you have to insert it in the slot machine whenever you want to play.

What happens next is that Harrahâ€s tracks everything you do at the slots – how long you stay, what machines you play, how much you spend. By crunching the numbers, Harrahâ€s knows your specific pain threshold and at what point youâ€ll have lost enough to quit.

Harrahâ€s staff in the back room tracks everything and when the computer flags someone coming close to their limit, a member of Harrahâ€s floor staff approaches the soon-to-give-up gambler and intervenes, offering a free steak dinner, or another $15 credit or even tickets to a show that evening. The result: the gambler keeps gambling.

When I first heard this, I was appalled. How could a casino be so manipulative? (Well, theyâ€re already manipulative, but this seemed over the top.) And how could gamblers be so gullible as to give the casino access to their personal behaviors.

But then I realized that what Harrahâ€s is doing is really no different than whatâ€s happening online today. Advertisers using behavioral targeting are tracking your every move on the web â€“ which sites you linger on, how long you stay in one place, what links you click on. The advertiser then knows to serve up the right ad at the right time and place.

Letâ€s say you just left Cars.com and are now at The New York Times. If the two companies both use the same tracking service, itâ€s easy for The Times to serve up an auto ad even though youâ€ve long since left Cars.com.

And how about mobile GPS services? We give up our privacy so that we can receive customized ads and coupons for restaurants in the vicinity of where weâ€re walking or driving. We see that as valuable â€“ hey, I just got 10% off â€“ but arenâ€t you being manipulated in exactly the same way as at the casino? Minority Report isnâ€t so far away.

Iâ€m not saying that we should turn off our cookies â€“ often times those ads can be valuable â€“ and in any case, itâ€s largely impractical given the way the Internet operates. But we should be aware of whatâ€s happening around us and make sure that we know when weâ€ve given our permission to be manipulated.

Why the New iPod Nano is a Game Changer

Brian Blum — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 08:58:54 +0000

Video capabilities are a game changer

There was lots to like in yesterdayâ€s iPod announcements from Apple. But the most important was the addition of a camera and video functionality to the venerable iPod Nano. Apple practically invented the MP3 market and continues to dominate player sales. The iPhone changed consumerâ€s perceptions about what a fully-featured smart phone must include.

Now Apple is expanding its reach into video, directly taking on the popular Flip as an in-your-pocket always there live motion recording device. Whatâ€s significant is that itâ€s a completely new market for Apple and if the company applies its usual business savvy, it could grab significant market share.

Yes, itâ€s true that the iPhone already allows you to take video, but that device is much larger â€“ too big, for me at least, to comfortably fit in a pocket. And with the required phone contract, itâ€s nowhere near as cheap as a Nano – $150 for an 8 GB unit that records in 640×480 quality (that’s twice the memory as the Flip, by the way).

Itâ€s also true that nearly every cell phone sold today can take video, but if youâ€ve ever seen the quality of the resulting clips, youâ€ll be underwhelmed.

I canâ€t tell you how many times Iâ€ve wanted to snap some video but didnâ€t want to lug around my Canon camcorder, which itself was much smaller than my previous Hi8 machine. On our recent vacation, I brought the Canon but never took it out of my backpack. Not once.

The video quality of the new Nano should be about that of the original Flip and the pricing is identical. Thatâ€s not quite what Iâ€d want â€“ the $199 Flip HD takes much better video, and Iâ€m sure Apple will release a Nano HD, though we may have to wait awhile. Apple has given the Nano a few special effects, but not the fancy video editing that the iPhone has.

One downside (and itâ€s a biggie): the Nano ONLY takes video. You canâ€t use it as a still camera. That means Iâ€ll have to lug around a regular digital camera. And thereâ€s no wireless (not that I expected that) like the iPhone where you can post those candid videos online immediately.

Why no stills? Steve Jobs told The New York Times that adding high pixel resolution including autofocus would have bulked up the device too much.

All told, if Apple executes well on this one, it could definitely be a game changer in the pocket video space, meaning even more YouTube videos of cats flushing toilets and fat kids waving light sabers. But for businesses it will also mean faster product demos, shots from conferences, interviews, home video tours (great for Realtors), and even documentation of in-house meetings.

Two other new features of note in the improved Nano:

FM radio tuner

A number of years ago, I bemoaned the fact that no iPod could pick up radio stations. When I visit a country outside of Israel, I enjoy listening to the local radio stations. It gives me a feel for a cityâ€s vibe. But now I rarely listen to terrestrial radio, preferring Internet-only stations like Radio Paradise and WOXY.

The iPod Nano’s radio tuner has some cool features â€“ like the ability to pause your broadcast up to 15 minutes and to see which song is playing, then click to buy it later from iTunes â€“ but for the most part this feature seems too little too late.

Pedometer

The Nano has long been Appleâ€s iPod of choice for joggers like me who primarily want a small device that you can strap on your arm. So the addition of a pedometer is a welcome feature. How many kilometers is that one-hour jog? Now Iâ€ll know without having to carry a second device.

There are other goodies in the new Nano too that bring it closer to the app-centric Touch and iPhone without sacrificing its sleek form factor. Now, what Iâ€d really like? A tiny iPhone, the size of a Nano. No rumors yet, but knowing Apple, anything is possible.

Amazon vs. Barnes and Noble in the Battle of the E-Readers

Brian Blum — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 14:58:10 +0000

The battle of the e-readers is heating up. Barnes and Noble has announced it has entered into an exclusive agreement to sell the upcoming device from Plastic Logic. The unit competes directly with the Amazon Kindle DX â€“ both are about the same size â€“ although the Plastic Logic device is spiffier in our opinion â€“ all touch screen, no controls at all. It weight about 13 ounces.

Both the Kindle DX and Plastic Logic devices are highly anticipated to become large size useful digital newspaper readers.

Plastic Logic also announced that AT&T will be providing the wireless backbone for its machine. The Kindle uses Sprint and provides it for free to Kindle owners. Will Plastic Logic do the same?

The AT&T deal is a bit strange since Appleâ€s uber-popular iPhone runs on the same network. If both get big, AT&T may have trouble keeping up.

Plastic Logic will also build WiFi into the device, another feature the Kindle doesnâ€t have. A third device â€“ the Sony Reader â€“ doesnâ€t have WiFi at all (although it does have a touch screen).

Plastic Logic talked up its deal with Barnes and Noble on Fox Business. Video here. The Plastic Reader device will launch in â€œearly 2010,â€ the companyâ€s VP of biz dev said on Fox Business.

Barnes and Noble, which is looking for any corner to cut these days, seems to be betting on e-books. Their newly announced e-book store has 700,000 titles (with plans to increase to a million by next year) vs. 300,000 at Amazon. Of those, however, half a million are public domain books from Google. Barnes and Nobleâ€s titles wonâ€t be exclusive to Plastic Logic reading â€“ theyâ€ll be open format and will work on the iPhone and iPod Touch a well as BlackBerrys and most laptops and desktops.

As a result, Amazon may be forced to embrace more formats (and we hope lower the ridiculously high prices on its Kindles).

One other cool thing announced during Barnes and Nobleâ€s Monday conference call â€“ a free iPod app that lets users snap a picture of a book (presumably in a Barnes and Noble store) and use that to get product details, editorial reviews, and customer ratings via their mobile device. Neat.

For more articles on newspapers and classified advertising, visit the industry experts: AIMGroup.com.