iMedix invites for you!

iMedix the medical search engine which I covered two month ago has begun alpha stage. The service is currently available by invitation only and is gaining members very quickly according to the founders.

iMedix search results combine health information from top sources across the web and from peoples health blogs. The interesting part about iMedix is the health blogs results which are posts written by people with similar conditions you searched. Each member gets a blog to share thoughts and health experiences.
The Blog Lobby is where you manage your posts and once you're ready to publish you can decide which communities will benefit from your post the most. So lets say you suffer from Chronic Urticaria God forbid!, the best community to share your stories with would be the Allergies community.

I think that once users begin to actively build the communities and heavily participate in the blogging, the search results will be enriched and the posts will significantly add value.

I've got 50 exclusive alpha invitations to give out. So if you want to join and be one of the testers just email me or leave a comment with your email address and I'll send you one.

Photo of the proud and healthy iMedix team.

Technorati Tags: health imedix medical israel web 2.0 search engine

Think you know football? Join playSPEX!

Last November bp Interactive closed an investment from LGiLab for their first project and now the playSPEX site is open for early registration! playSPEX - "The sports exchange" are operating in the fantasy sports area where others are playing, others like Yahoo, CBS, ESPN and Fanball.

Fantasy sports are very popular in the US with over 16 million players, so by the heavy British accent of the playSPEX flash video announcer I can only assume playSPEX are targeting the European/English market which are know to be sports fanatics.

In the meantime if you're a fantasizer sign up and get ready for the upcoming season. playSPEX promise to send real cash to your credit and then you can use your cash credit in order to purchase your favorite players from the sports exchange, build your virtual dream team and join the challenge or sell your free players to others and earn real cash profits.

playSPEX is expected to launch in 2007. See you on the court.

Technorati Tags: playspex bp interactive lgilab fantasy sports web 2.0 israel

Video, Photo & RSS Snap Shots

Since I last covered Snap - the visual interactive search engine, they've added many enhancements to their preview bubble and also improved their search engine visualization. Here are a couple of the most recent Snap shots available:

Snap Web Classic - Is the traditional search engine result page (10 blue links) but with Snap Shots enabled. Now you can decide how you prefer viewing the search results. If you like preview and find them useful you could switch to Web Enhanced which is more innovative in terms of previewing results and which also supports keyboard up and down arrows etc.

RSS Shot – When a link to a site has a RSS feed, instead of a PreviewShot it will show the headlines & excerpts of the latest stories. This should increase the engagement of your readers. The RSS Shot feature isn't enabled yet for all Snap users but it should be fully released in the near future. I noticed this on some blogs and it's very useful but now there isn't a way to have a quick PreviewShot. Maybe they should add a PreviewShot tab in the bubble.

Video Shot and Photo Shot - Now supports all major video and photo sharing sites (YouTube, Metacafe, Google Video, Xanga Video, Revver, PhotoBucket, Flickr, PicasaWeb…)

A zoom feature was added-look for the little magnifier glass at the top right corner of the bubble.

Related Searches - Those will be displayed instead of the search box and should provide users with suggestions to searches that are related to the site being previewed. The "related searches" feature is not fully released and can be spotted on some blogs.

According to VP Product Jay Meydad, additional types of Snap Shots will be released soon. Stay tuned.

Technorati Tags: photo shot rss shot snap snap shot web 2.0 video shot

blogTV - broadcast yourself!

With a slick design and an extremely easy to remember domain name blogTV is live! blogTV is a great place to broadcast yourself just by plugging in a webcam and starting your own TV show. Some of the features included are online interaction between the broadcasters and the viewers, recording and archiving broadcasted shows. blogTV allows the viewers to bookmark, email, subscribe, embed and rate the videos. The .com joins the two previously launched sites. Canadian blogTV - a social network destination developed specifically for Canadians to showcase their talents and the Israeli blogTV powered by Tapuz, Israels leading portal. Tapuz are the creators behind the blogTV project.
So, if you want to create live reality shows or watch other people offering their reality shows go to blogTV.

Is blogTV going to become a vlogging platform by providing the members with a blogTV sub domain name and by allowing the vlogger to fully control his own vlog space? just like blogging...

Technorati Tags: blog blogtv israel tapuz web 2.0 vlog

iMedix - Health belongs to the people

I can't think of more crucial topics that require knowledge sharing than health and medicine. This is definitely a space where many people have many questions and fears. Naturally, they are seeking answers from the community.
iMedix are soon launching a medical search engine based on user generated content.

Iri Amirav tells me today about iMedix (formally Remedix). Iri Amirav and Amir Leitersdorf, founders of iMedix are both experienced entrepreneurs. Iri previously served as Marketing Director at Metacafe and Amir as CTO at Movota which was acquired by Arvato mobile and prior to that as CTO at Tapuz search engine.
He says they plan on revealing a new user experience to medical search. The search engines dynamic learning algorithm provides the user with information relevant to him/herself and this is determined by the users ranking.

Two types of results are provided:

1. Reliable health information from the top sources across the web
   
2. Information from people who share health experiences similar to the person searching

Iri explains that currently only 16-18% of users searching for medical information are satisfied with the results and that their solution will increase these results by creating a social network that enables people to share health issues.

In the future I think leveraging these strong capabilities by allowing users to recommend and rank doctors specializing in a related medical area would provide the users with an added value in the real world. This way users would benefit from the community's medical treatment experience.

iMedix is in alpha and is soon to launch. Sign up for their launch alert.

Technorati Tags: health imedix medical israel web 2.0 search engine social knowledge social network

Coming soon...

Three more Israeli based super stealthy Internet startups I bumped into lately are Remedix, Kitchenbug and Digital Blonde. I don't have allot of details but they all look interesting.

Remedix is a community oriented health search engine, enabling consumers to easily find, contribute and share information with other people. The companys proprietary search algorithms and learning system technologies allows people to make better health-related decisions and provide them with information regarding their health.

Digital Blonde are creating an online music production school. They want to teach musicians how to produce music, help them promote it and give them the knowledge. Head over to the website and watch how former MTV Star Becky Griffin pitches the company.


Kitchenbug is in private alpha and it involves food obviously. Just looking at the photos from the landing page made me hungry.Sounds tasty.
I hope it's not too early but all three are launching soon. Stay tuned.

Technorati Tags: beta alpha stealth mode israel web 2.0 kitchenbug digital-blonde remedix

5min, Sharing your knowledge by video

Another user generated video site joins the crowd.
5min are creating a place for users to find and post short how-to videos in any field, a place to share your knowledge. They plan to create a Videopedia. Their approach is similar to videojug that have been around and aim at targeting the same niche.

There is one very attractive feature that 5min have and the others don't - a Smart Player! The smart player enables the viewer to watch the video in slow motion by controlling the speed, zoom in and out, view the video frame-by-frame, smoothen the video quality and other functionalities. The smart player is flash based and gives the feeling of a video editing dashboard. During upload the creator can enhance his how-to video by adding a textual storyboard to the video.

5min can stand out from all the other video sites and compete so why are they limiting to explanatory videos?
They have something unique. There are many times I want to slow motion or zoom in to the strange youtube or metacafe videos I get and they are not how-tos.
The site is still in beta, therefore the embed code for the 5min player isn't enabled yet. So here's the link to the most viewed video.

Technorati Tags: 5min video knowledge israel

SemantiNet - Connecting the dots...

After reading the article published in TheMarker
about the new Israeli startup by Yossi Vardi I rushed to
see what its about. Ya, you guessed right it's in stealth
mode and there's nothing really to see except for an
opening blog post describing a futuristic universe from the day it was created till the days Semantic technologies were evolved. The Semantic Web - Actually quite an interesting bit. You can only imagine onCharm the first product to be released by SemantiNet.

Semantinet develops a semantic framework solution that allows for rapid deployment of web-mashups, applications and services.

According to TheMarker, Tal Muskal the person behind the idea approached Vardi 6 month ago and presented the technology he's been developing for a couple of years. Tal says it wasn't difficult convincing Vardi to invest after showing him a prototype of something that was kind of working. He also said that they soon plan on getting more funds.
Keep an eye out and if you hear anything let us know.

Technorati Tags: semantinet yossi vardi semantic web oncharm israel

Social knowledge by Velingo

"Social Knowledge means taking the results from the larger community of Internet users based on an instant analysis"
That's what Velingo are doing, they have developed a Web 2.0 solution which enhances search dramatically. It's called Social Knowledge and it plugs in to any search engine. The Velingo search engine system relies on users search results for optimizing future search results, in other words its performing social searches and eventually producing more accurate results .

This is how it works:

1. The user initiates a search by sending a query to the regular search server.
2. The search server sends a request to the Velingo Server that
3. sends a response. This response contains the additional data that is embedded into the Search result page
4. and is sent back to the user.

The page tags are created by the Velingo server and describe a set of tags for the whole result page. Document tags are related to each document.

Technorati Tags: search engine social knowledge velingo

Vote for Web2Spot on Snap contest !!!

Snap came out with the "Extreme makeover contest" for improving their Snap preview widget. They're giving away cash for the best ideas that are submitted. The contest ends on March 15, 2007. First prize takes $2500, second prize $1000 and third prize $500 plus the two best comments will receive $500.

Right now my idea has 5 votes which isn't that bad and I really think its a good idea. Go check it out, add your own ideas and vote for me. Thanks.

Technorati Tags: contest snap web2spot

Spotback launches awesome rating widget

Spotback just announced their new widget. Its currently in closed beta but you can get a glimpse of how it works on the Spotback blog posts footer. You can also sign up for the beta here.The widget lets you rate anything using the cool slider just like on Spotback news.
In addition they're releasing a few other tools that let you expose your blog content.

So if you're a blogger go get it, I have.

Technorati Tags: spotback widget

FMS vs. ZMS

After Zlango and their icon-based language (ZMS), now comes Fontip with MyFont - a font messaging service (FMS). Both are offering a next generation text messaging enhancement to the heavy sms users as a downloadable java application to the mobile device.
Both products are similar in essence and are targeting the same market but are also different obviously. One has created an unusual icon language and the other has created a collection of designed fonts.
I couldn't help noticing the similarities when first reading about Fontip on De Gardener.

Both companies are based in Israel. Is this becoming an Israeli niche and where else is text messaging headed?

Technorati Tags: fms fontip israel mobile zlango zms