Yedda raise $2.5 million

Yedda announces a $2.5 million financial round.
Congratulations Yedda!!!
see more on globes.

Technorati Tags: yedda israel

Israeli Gymalaya sold for 217 million USD

Four of Gymalaya's co-owners managed to fulfill the Israeli dream. They sold their startup company to an American corporate for 217 million dollars. Now they can make all their fantasies come true.
This is the story of the new comic drama "Mesudarim" ("financially secure" in Hebrew) on channel 2, about four buddies. Playing the roles of CEO (Asaf Harel), VP Marketing (Asi Cohen), Chief programmer (Erez Kliener) & Designer (Maor Cohen).

Watch the first episode here. Even if you aren't a Hebrew speaker watch the first minute and a half as they get the dramatic phone call.

Indeed the ultimate dream!

Technorati Tags: channel 2 hebrew israel mesudarim startup tv

New: Internationalized Metacafe

Now you can watch videos from your own country and in your own language. Metacafe has become more personalized and internationalized.

• Select the country you want to see items from (default is your country).
• Select the language (Local,English or Both).
• Select the items' description and title language you prefer watching.
  

You can also search for videos in your chosen language, including foreign characters, such as Japanese, Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, etc.
So on your next video upload you can select the language and location of the video.

Technorati Tags: international metacafe

Snap dilemma...?

My feelings are mixed when it comes to Snap and their Snap Preview Anywhere (SPA) product. I think that in general the product is genius and that it has many advantages. I do agree with snap that "all parties win" - the user gets a better experience, the publisher keeps the user on their site longer and they get an incremental monetization opportunity. And Snap get more exposure and awareness of its search engine.
On the other hand and mostly what bothers me is the "pop-up" effect. Nothing to do about it - I can't ignore the feeling of a small window popping up and covering a part of the reading area. It's a bit annoying to me.
I do have two suggestions for Snap. First, I would consider widgetizing the bubble. What I would like to see is a dedicated window frame on the blog sidebar for example, showing me the previews on the side and not the way it pops up now. There is a problem with my suggestion when the Snap widget isn't seen when the page is scrolled down.
My second suggestion may solve this problem and is related to the first one. As part of the options given to the end-user in the bubble why not let the user determine where on the page would he like the bubble to pop-up. Or even better, why not make the Snap bubble dragable - is this doable??

By adding Snap icon trigger as part of their new features I think they came very close to perfect and convinced me to add SPA to Web2Spot. Last week a few other enhancements were released:
You can customize the bubble color theme and logo and add a SPA on/off badge to your blog allowing the end-user to turn on or off the previews.

Now you're asking yourself why I'm covering Snap on Web2Spot when my blog is dedicated to Web 2.0 companies that are made in Israel? So, actually there is a relation because Snaps vice president of product Jay Maydad is originally from Israel and before moving to the US Jay worked for ICQ. This one's for you Jay. :-)

Technorati Tags: image search snap spa

JAJAH Beta program: Cool dynamic buttons

Jajah are introducing the dynamic buttons and are inviting to join the beta.
Jajah Dynamic Buttons are a revolutionary new way to make contact and stay in touch with people that you meet (or want to meet) on the internet. They let people reach each other in a variety of ways, without revealing private information such as their name, phone number or email address.



The key benefits:

• Your phone numbers and Emails address are not visible to anyone. if you change number or location all your buttons simply auto-update.
• You can dynamically set your availability for each channel (call, voice mail,text message, Email)
• You can create multiple buttons that behave differently to perfectly fit your needs in a specific situation.
• You can spread your JAJAH Dynamic Buttons not only by placing HTML code snippets but also by using a specific URL that leads directly to the respective button.

Technorati Tags: button jajah jajah dynamic buttons voip

eSnips side project

Movers 2.0 is another sort of Web 2.0 directory that tracks the traffic trends by using the alexa API. In addition graphs are extracted from compete and other data is extracted from Google and Google blog search. The Web 2.0 tracker was developed by Eran Arkin a member of the eSnips team in his spare time. They do have a minor bug when more than one graph is opened together (see below). I really like the site it's a nice toy but I would be happy to see a compare feature that allows to select a number of sites and compare them side by side.
(via Techcrunch)

Technorati Tags: esnips movers 2.0

Go2Web20 2.0

I come back home after a few days vacation from where I had no Internet access to discover Go2Web20.net relaunched. Thats definitely great news!
After reading the somewhat hallucinatory Techcruch thread and Orli's post I'm a bit frustrated to find the service is unavailable (a few hours now). I'm positive the new features are a great upgrade to the directory, especially the slow loading issues that are claimed to be fixed.
Waiting to see it in action.

Join SupportSpace Supporters' Cafe

SupportSpace open their beta program and the supporters' cafe to tech support pros.
SupportSpace is planned to go live in mid 2007 offering an easy-to-use online tech support platform.
If you're a tech pro and like to help people solve technology problems, if you want to network with other pros go join the supporters cafe.

Think of the Supporters' Café as a social network for tech support pros. A place you can go to learn and expand your knowledge base. Where you can meet other people like you and share ideas. And where you can actively participate in building and making the SupportSpace platform, services and supporter community the very best that it can be.

WorkLight - Enterprise 2.0 product

Serendipity introduces its premier product offering, WorkLight, at the DEMO 07 conference. Worklight is a secure and scalable server-based software product that provides information workers and customers with customized and personalized "Web 2.0-Style" access to corporate data that resides in enterprise applications. For the first time, application data are available via data services and technologies such as RSS, Ajax, desktop and web-based gadet/widgets, social bookmarks, application mashups and more.
Serendipity was selected to be a part of DEMO, a semi-annual conference that gives attendees a sneak peek at emerging technologies and new products.


With Worklight:

• Enterprise application data become just like web content; accessible in the same form as web content and by means of the same web technologies. Furthermore, application data and web content can be freely mixed.

• People at work will use the same services familiar to them at home to access enterprise data: personalized homepages such as Google, Yahoo or Microsoft Live, RSS aggregators, desktop and web-based gadgets and widgets, social bookmarking, etc.

• Information workers define their own user experience – at work as well as at home. Mini-applications are created by end-users themselves and are shared with colleagues and peers.

• User-created applications conform to strictest IT compliance and data security policies.

Most RSS vulnerabilities arise from the fact that RSS was intended to be used to syndicate and deliver public data. As such, little attention was given to securing the different facets of data retrieval, delivery, and presentation.



One of the main features is the WorkLight secure reader.The reader supports the following key functionality:

• Multiple means of authentication are supported, including basic HTTP and form-based authentication.

• Encryption of all data using SSL.

• The creation of a secure channel with the WorkLight server, so that sensitive corporate data never pass through the home page provider (e.g. Google) and are never cached on their servers.

• Protection from a variety of potential attacks, such as cross-site or cross-gadget scripting

Read more about the Secure RSS Reader here.

This is revolutionary!!

Beshutaf brings social networking to life

Beshutaf is another local Israeli social network that's seems to be in stealth mode. Unfortunately I don't have an invitation but this is what their login page says after translating it from Hebrew.

Sharing starts at childhood, sharing cards, sharing cloth, sharing bicycles.Thats the all time childhood wisdom. The simple wisdom that says, sharing talent, energy and resources eases life and connects between people. The wisdom that most of us abandon later when growing up.

We want to create a real human community that will gather groups of friends and individuals that will enable them to collaborate on day to day basis while having fun and in a trusted atmosphere, not only virtually but significantly in our daily reality.

Sounds good but how do we do this? Someone signs up and creates his profile, invites his friends that create their profiles and so on, in no time all your groups of friends can be members on the site.

and then what? Friends easily communicate within the community, group or individually. The site is our "home" and anyone can be invited. Parties and events can be organized, want to look for an apartment, want to buy an old couch, get recommendation for trustworthy professionals, to screen a movie, to play a song, write a column,fight for justified purposes, volunteer, ask for a ride or just take a peek at some photos from a trip you took together.
We really believe that a big part of things you want to do can be done in a more fun way, efficient,wiser - beshutaf (shared, together)

Bringing the online social networking out to the real world is a great idea. I really think this could succeed in a place like Israel where everyone is relatively close and where distance isn't an obstacle.
Sources say Beshutaf are about to launch in the near future with a big event. So stay tuned!

Bona - Social network for high school students

Lately I'm seeing first signs of how local social networks are emerging and are penetrating Israel's web sphere. One of them is bona. Bona is the first verified social network in Israel for high school students. There are two ways of joining, one is by invitation and the other a bit strange is by a hidden code located in the high school student phone book supplied to each student by the school. Bona are aiming at making their network more intimate and safer by this precaution. The approach is a bit naive in my opinion considering the high school phone books to be accessible by any person.
Bona is a kind of MySpace Facebook combo focusing only on high schools, my estimation is a population of 200 thousand in Israel.
The bona user profile page reminds me of the MySpace layout. You've got your photos, tags, friends, classmates and of course you can play around with the page layout and background.
I'm not sure if the Israeli internet users are ready for the online socializing yet but who knows it might catch fire.

Oh ya, bona in Hebrew means 'come on'.