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The Israeli Export Institute, New Media Branch, is organizing a delegation to News Corp and Time Warner. Israeli companies participating in the delegation will meet decision makers in these leading media companies. Key technologies of interest include Internet TV, innovative user interfaces,  multi platform solutions and location based services.

The good news is that it is an affordable business development event. The bad news is that last application date is TOMORROW.

More details here.

Michael Eisenberg, an Israeli VC, wrote two thought provoking posts about the way the government  invest properly in Israeli High Tech. From Microsoft and .Net monopoly through iPad banning, to poor distribution of CSO funds, our government neglects the important aspects of maintaining Israel's technological leadership.
Though not a VC, I've worked in several industries, from mobile to internet to media, and I meet a lot of startups in different stages. And I think that though Michael is right in his claims, there is another angle to this story - the core competencies of the Israeli industry is not as important as in the past.

Origins of Israeli High Tech
Israel's High Tech originated, broadly speaking, from 4 sources:
1. Technological army units such as 8200, Air force and Mamram
2. Universities such as Technion
3. Russian immigration
4. ECI/Comverse RAD group and other major companies, whose employees who jumped ship and opened their own startups.

The strong points of these sources were electrical engineering and telecom oriented know how.

The Best Beta Site
Israel has one of the highest mobile and broadband penetration rates. Therefore, a mobile startup could easily sign a deal with a local mobile operator and make it a beta site. The local mobile industry was at the same level as  European mobile markets, so Israeli companies could launch products in that huge market relatively easily, as it was close to what they had locally. I was a part of such process when working with Flash Networks. First we sold our product to Orange, and then to T-Mobile. We knew what was needed in order to build and deploy a product in such an environment.

Media and Internet are Winning. Pipes are losing.
However, the market changed. World wide innovation lies more and more in internet companies. Hulu is more innovative then Motorola. Google is more innovative (and profitable) then Nokia. Mobile operators are not as important in the value chain as they were before. And Apple is changing the game again and again with innovative hardware and software.

Failure in  Growing the Business
Most Israeli companies are just not big enough, or maybe not with the right culture and financial resources to win over the mobile and telecom market and create the next Nokia or even next iPhone. The last guys who tried it failed and closed shop, not to mention their founder's financial trouble. Yes, I am talking about Else Mobile and Eli Reifman's troubles. So in that area we are basically, well, screwed.

No Longer a Beta Site
So let's look at the Israeli internet industry. Unlike the mobile market, there is a huge difference between local internet industry to international or American one. While video is growing drastically in the US, and major media companies experimenting with new business models, our market is just too small, too centralized, to make companies feel their bread and butter is at risk. With 3-4 major media players (Hot, Yes, Reshet, Keshet), and two major portals (Walla, Ynet) no one has the incentive to innovate. They are making enough money as is, and digital cents are not even on their map, as no one buys content here.
We don't have an Israeli iTunes. We don't have an Israeli Hulu. We don't have an Israeli Huffington Post. We don't have an Israeli ereader market (Sorry E-vrit, not enough units sold yet). Come on, iPhone, one of the biggest media innovations, landed here less than a year ago.
Amazingly, there is a huge gap between Startup innovation and portals' adoption of technology.
So the Israeli media and internet is like Shakshuka - some great cutting edge media technology (eggs) floating in a sea of not extremely innovative portals (tomato sauce).

Culture
With technology less of an issue and winning product is the focus in the online and media industry - culture and media consumption habits become the key for creating a winning company. And, we don't have the visibility of neither. Cause our local market is so different.

Is This The End?
Is this the end of Israeli startup industry? No. There are several amazing content and media companies here in Israel such as Innovid, Outbrain and many more.
But we need to start think differently. It is not like 8200 will start to create cool video players so Israeli innovation won't die. But it might be that in the future these units won't be as important in Israeli High Tech as in the past.

Possible Solution
We need a simple plan - and do the so unIsraeli thing to do- actually follow it. We should encourage Hot, Yes and the major portals to invest in innovation. It might be through tax incentives or other ways, but we should give them a reason to do so, cause they don't have one now.
We should create special incubators for media companies with international media veterans. I have couple of names in mind.
And we should take into consideration that the market is going to change to the worse for us. As Michael said, we are definitely not competitive in price. If the current situation will continue, we will lose our technological edge as well.

What's Wrong with this  Post?
If you know me you know that I love well established facts. Unfortunately I don't have the numbers to back the claims here. It is based on personal experience and being in the industry for 10 years.
Would love to hear your opinion.

Last week I was invited to speak at Digital Innovation Summit in Berlin, organized by VDZ, the German Magazine Publishing association. In this series of posts I'll cover some of the topics discussed.

Susanne Kunz, media and communications director, Procter & Gamble, Germany, spoke at Digital innovators summit in Berlin last week, and had some very direct words to say to publishers. She stressed the fact that magazines are facing competition for ad money - and they aren't necessarily delivering premium value.
First she explained that magazine publishers in Germany are missing the most important value they could provide - customer insight. Publishers are not investing enough in knowing their customers and provide valuable information to advertiser.
Second, she believed that companies and brands should be present on all platforms, cause their customers are on every platform too.
Third, she stressed the fact that with content becoming more and more open and free, magazines should focus on bringing truly unique content to customers.
And last but not least, she mentioned mobile as more than a content distribution platform - but also could be used for virtual goods and product delivery.

The session was meant to be a wake up call to publishers - it seems that at least in some cases it worked...

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How wrong can a YouTube competition get  http://bit.ly/cNKdd

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How can I share video on Twitter?   http://bit.ly/Jecii

Concrete news about Hulu's international expansion  http://bit.ly/18u7Aw

New York Times released a slick new new version of its  Adobe Air application called Times Reader. The innovative application allows readers to read and subscribe to NYT rich content, including articles, images and videos.

New York Times are fairly advanced in the US journalism field. I use their iPhone Application regularly, and enjoy their well produced videos.

But their new application won't change a thing.

Unlike Serege Jespers, who in his post announced that this application is the future of journalism, it is still based on the idea that people will subscribe to NYT content, and pay for it. And this is yet to be seen. Ok, I am way too kind - IT DOESN'T WORK.

Why should I pay for their content if so much of it is free? And does the NYT really believe that a well developed application change the fundamental flaw in their industry?

I hope, for them, that this isn't the case.

Why ... do I take the time to use social media like Twitter and Facebook? .... Because there is no better way to engage the various audiences that are important in my professional and personal life.

...Your involvement in social media will grow your brand, strengthen the connection between you and your company's key audiences, and keep you aware of what's really happening with your business. It's well worth the time investment....

No, these are not the quotes of a social media consultant. Refreshingly, these are the words of a CMO of a well known company.

When I came across the interview of Jeffery Hayzlett, Kodak's CMO I was excited to see a top executive who is actually using social web for his work on a daily basis, without the usual huha around it. When asked about the root of his involvement in social media he said:

I first started using social media to keep in touch with family. I soon realized the benefits of updating my fellow employees, our customers, even the media and anyone else who wants to keep updated on what's happening with Kodak marketing.

When asked about authenticity of his online persona:

it's important that people hear from the real me. I've had people ask me if I do my own posts (I do -- you can't fake it with social media). I'm just a guy from South Dakota with a really cool job, so I can't help getting excited at some of the great things we do.

Many of my customers are asking about ROI. His answer:

We have seen very tangible returns from our participation in social media, including traditional media coverage, sales leads, increased customer consideration and direct product purchase.

And when talking about integration of social tools in their marketing operation:

Of course, social media is a part of Kodak's integrated-marketing approach and much of it is managed by employees like me with other full-time jobs

Not everyone were happy as I am when they read it. One commenter wrote:

Mr. Hayzlett might be better off spending less time twittering and blogging and working on comprehensive marketing plans aimed at addressing the critical failures of the past few years. Twitter is a tool, Jeff.

Though I agree with Jeffery in almost everything he wrote, his closing argument is a bit tricky:

Your involvement in social media will grow your brand, strengthen the connection between you and your company's key audiences, and keep you aware of what's really happening with your business. It's well worth the time investment.

I completely agree - but it works only if done right, as an integral part of overall marketing and company activities, by enthusiastic employees who love the social web and use it in their private life as well.

You can read the full article here.

Follow Jeffery Hayzlett and me on Twitter

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In the first post in this series I've reviewed the basic considerations in buying a camera for online video production. This post will cover advanced camera features, for savvy buyers (or latent video geeks like me). Understanding them can help you make better choices when buying your next video camera. Just like the previous post, I will focus on sub $1,000 cameras, as an entry level for most videographers. So let's start:

Interlaced vs. Progressive Formats

Many of the cameras you've seen state that they support 60i or 30p formats (or other combinations of this type). The letters P and I refer to  progressive and interlaced formats. I won't go into too much technical details about what is each format. The important points are the following:

1. Interlaced formats originated in the broadcast world, where basically each frame was chopped to lines that were interlaced with other images. This format is aimed at older TV sets.

2. Progressive formats are based on progressive scanning of images - the way that computer screen and flat panel TVs are analyzing images.

Why should you care? Because your videos will be watched, in 99% of cases, on progressive screens. So, if you'd like to get the best video quality, you should output your file in progressive format. Which means, that if you shoot in interlace format, you need to do a process called De-interlacing, before sending your clip to YouTube, Vimeo and such. It is not rocket science - every editing system has this feature as a video filter or encoding option. It just means that you need to spend time and resources to do it.

So, if possible, choose a camera that supports progressive formats - less work for you in post production.

You can find more information about interlacing here.

White Balance

White balance is a simple feature - the camera automatically identifies white objects, and correlates its image parameters to that definition of white. All cameras do it automatically, but there are cases you'd like to do it on your own. In some cases because you'd like to give the image an artistic look, or because you believe that the camera doesn't calibrate automatically well enough, or because you want to fool it to think that there is more or less light than its sensors indicate. Most sub $1,000 cameras do not support manual white balance but some do. If you can, choose one of those. This flexibility is important for your production value, and is not complicated to manually white balance your camera if it supports it.

Zebra Stripes

We all love Zebras. They are cool animals, with funny stripes. But in the video world they have another important role - they tell us when our video is over exposed. Video, just like film, can be "burned" by too much light. Every camera has its own sensitivity to light, and you will see many videos where the skies are white, or bright elements look completely white. These elements are over exposed. Some cameras have a function called Zebra, that shows you in the camera's viewer which areas are over exposed.

If your camera has manual exposure control, you can reduce the exposure to the right level. In other cases (for example if you'd like to get the Apple ads look of white space) you'd like to do just the opposite - over expose parts of the shot. Zebra lines can help you light and configure your camera properly to get this look.

Frame Rate

in every camera spec you will see parameters such as supports 30p, 60i, etc. We reviewed the difference between the i and p, but frame rate has its own importance. First of all make sure that your camera supports either 30 or 60 fps (the cool way to say frames per second). The reason is that most online video sites reduce video frame rates in multiples of 15. This way, if your video is for example in 50 fps, it would look choppy a bit when uploaded to YouTube.

Now, there is a holy grail of frame rates, the El Dorado of video makers, the most coveted frame rate ever (you got the picture) - 24fps. Why people are so hot for that frame rate? Because many videographers really want their video to look like film (what the cool kids call cinematic look). I am one of those guys. And film frame rate is 24 frames per second.

But things get a bit more complicated. Most cameras in the $1,000 price range don't support 24fps at all, but not all of those who claim they do, do it in the same way. Some are supporting it natively, meaning, they really shoot in 24p. But some require an additional step in the way before this 24p material could be edited, that is called Pulldown. We won't go into to many details on why this process is needed, but it is important to remember that if your camera requires this step in 24p formats, it means you need to do another encoding process, that takes time.

Digital and Optical zoom

You know those cameras that have X40 digital zoom, and tons of people buy cause this number is huge? Well, don't be one of them. Digital zoom is just a manipulation of the captured images, which, in short, sucks. Optical zoom is king. Most cameras have X10 optical zoom - which is great for most use cases.

Shoe

A shoe is a slot on the external body of the camera, used to attach accessories to it, such as external lights, microphone and so on.

Like in any industry, some of the camera companies have their own shoe, while other use a standard shoe. If you are planing to use accessories, especially external mike as I've recommended in my previous post, make sure your camera has either a standard shoe, or buy a mike that fits it.

Manual Controls

The more manual control you have, the better. However, most sub $1,000 cameras don't have a lot of those, and they are not as easy to reach and use as in pro cameras. Look for the following manual controls: Focus, Zoom, Exposure, Shutter, and Aperture.

Sensors

Digital camera sensors are capturing images, instead of the traditional film. There are two sensor technologies - CCD and CMOS. Comparing sensors between cameras is not that straight forward, but the following thumb rules can help:

1. The bigger the sensor is, the better low light performance the camera will have.

2. CCD cameras with one sensor are inferior to cameras with 3 sensors (labeled as 3CCD in the specs)

3. Some say the CMOS sensor is less battery intensive, though I take this fact with a grain of salt.

Note that bigger sensor doesn't mean that the image would look better. . Each company has its own image analysis algorithm, that improves the overall video look,

What isn't important

All camera vendors cram their low end cameras with tons of features that look great on paper but are either useless, or the same effect can be achieved easily in post production. These are the features I couldn't care less about when evaluating a camera:

1. Digital zoom

2. Digital transition effects

3. Digital image effects such as Sepia and black and white

4. Quality or features of onboard microphone

Summary

This way too long post provided a bit more in depth view on camera features, and adds some more insight to the first post in this series. In the next post we will review some of the popular cameras today.

After long negotiations, ABC are becoming a stake holder in Hulu, the Internet TV company funded by NBC, Fox and Providence Equity Partners. This deal further strengthens Hulu's position as the leading premium online TV provider, with 27 partners, and newly extended 2 years exclusivity of the main players' content.

Hulu is proving that great content is king. The site, that was launched a little more than a year ago, has shown meteoric growth and is the third largest online video site in the US. However, as Jeff Zucker, NBC's President,  mentioned in his NYC Media Summit interview, the site is still not profitable.

This deal has a profound effect on YouTube, the queen of video UGC. The site, which is losing hundreds of millions of dollars annually, is facing a huge challenge, that puts it in a collision course with the TV networks' prodigy.

UGC videos are less attractive to advertisers, as many of them do not wish to associate themselves with acts of stupidity caught on video. This leads to lower CPM in these sites. However, video streaming is still an expensive operation. This is why I believe that UGC is not a viable business model in the video world, and this equation is the biggest challenge to YouTube today.

YouTube is trying to change the equation, by introducing premium content on its platform. Some of the first moves in this direction was the introduction of HD player, and hosting videos longer than 10 minutes. The company also announced a deal with MGM, a major move in this direction.

After creating the online video revolution, and empowering users across the globe to broadcast themselves, YouTube has to play the big media game.

And in this game it is facing the biggest challenge of all - beating the TV networks in the online market.

Would they succeed to leverage their huge user base? Time would tell...

Last week I attended the New York Media Summit, done by Digital Hollywood. The event, featuring keynote speakers such as NBC's CEO Jeff Zucker and Microsoft's CEO Balmer, had a somewhat depressing message: We are all going to die.

Well, I might be a bit too dramatic. But the conversion of analog dollars to digital cents is still a major challenge to the industry.

Jeff Zucker, besides bashing Jon Stuart, expressed his concern of lack of effective multi-platform audience measurement, and said that media companies must experiment, as traditional models didn't work anymore:

Vanity Fair's Michael Wolff, AP's Michael Oreskes, Kevin Young from YouTube and Ellen Weiss from NPR discussed the way that technology effects the media business - and basically killing the newspaper industry. Clay Shirky's words were in many aspects the underlying theme, even if not intended:

Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.

Jeff Jarvis, who attended the event, was given as an example of the future journalist, as well as contributed a lot to the discussion itself.

In another panel, I asked Richard Jalichandra, the CEO of Technorati, how do advertisers utilize social media in their activities, as there are no social media campaigns, only slow relationship building and got the following answer:

Well, they ask for the whole social media stuff, but at the end, when they realize that it doesn't have an immediate impact, they go back to the usual media buying behavior.

Janet Eden-Harris, VP Marketing of Umbria, was a ray of hope in the room, when she described some best practices of social media analysis for marketers.

As the world of media is changing, it seems that there are still more questions than answers.

Michael Rosenblum is the godfather of video journalism. He was a one man band video crew back at the 80's and since then he trained and taught generations of video journalists this craft.

Though poorly shot, here is a great presentation he did to UK journalists where he describes the history and reality of video journalists :

Michael Rosenblum @ Society of Editors 08 from Paul Bradshaw on Vimeo.

Michael Rosenblum @ Society of Editors 08 pt2 from Paul Bradshaw on Vimeo.
Michael Rosenblum @ Society of Editors pt.3 from Paul Bradshaw on Vimeo.

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