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.

Image by Yang and Yun's Album via Flickr

Last night I had a wonderful dinner with good friends. Between the wine and the steaks, we started talking about technology and gadgets. One of my friends was boasting about how his Nexus One is awesome, and I have to admit that I admired this slick phone. But I was puzzled with his comparison to the iPhone. He was talking about pixels, resolution, camera capabilites and so on and so forth.

And I ask you - who cares?

Call me strange but I don't buy a bunch of features. I don't buy screen resultion. I don't buy camera's pixel number.

I am one fo those strange guys who buys A PRODUCT.

You know, the whole thing. The packaged synergy between different technical abilities that create a user experience, coupled with UI and brand. I buy the ability to be a part of an ecosystem that makes my life easier, more productive, and more fun. I couldn't care less about the technical details.

GPS is useless without maps application or location based applications. Camera is just a hole in the back of my device without a good picture gallery and the ability to easily share these pictures with my friends and family.

Or maybe I'm missing something here....

An amazing video shot with a prototype of Canon 1D Mark IV. This camera is so sensitive to light that it shoots in light levels that consider extremely dark for the human eye. The whole video was shot with available light only, and was done by Stu Maschwitz and Vincent Laforet

More information about the production could be found here

Thanks to @Ronenk for helping with embedding the video player here.

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IMTC Forum, meeting place for experts in video communication and collaboration, is doing this year a virtual conference, as a part of its years long commitment to bring the best thought leaders and technology experts together.  The event, called 2025, Technology, Standards, Work, Life, will discuss the ways video technology and collaboration will change the way we work an live in the year 2025. We expect thought leaders from different industries to share their views on these amazing topic and help us all retool our business and life for the future.

We also decided to do our whole planning process as transparent as possible, empowering the community by sharing our thoughts , decisions, vendors that we've reviewed and  lessons we've learned.

But, as always, we need the technology to support this event. This is what we are looking for:

1. Ability to have up to 4 video streams (moderator + 3 speakers), with minimum video requirement of a webcam
2. Ability to show slides per presenter
3. Ability to mix video feeds  (meaning, one video player only, but the feed is switched between speakers' feeds)
4. Authenticated Chat section per session (including Facebook connect and Twitter API)
5. Display Official and hash tag Twitter stream in the sidebar
6. Ability to record all sessions and chats for re-runs and VOD access
7. Simple to use registration page for participants

Are we missing anything? Let us know. Also, we don't necessarily need one product with all features - mesh-ups are acceptable.

As a non profit organization we have a shoestring budget - but the event will expose technologies to the right audience - and what is better than seeing a technology in action?

Beyond these requirements, we will ask each vendor to write a short post about the value of virtual events, the way that technology is changing business, and their view on the needs of the industry. We will add our own commentary on each post, as well as write about our decision making process regarding this solution.

Interested? Email us at kfir AT pravdam DOT com with 2025 in the subject line.
Please send us your proposals by September 15th.

How can you create an engaging, interactive, virtual conference, that will keep people interested, even though they are hundreds of miles away? This is the challenge that we at IMTC is facing this year, while planning its annual event.

IMTC's Annual event is a meeting point of industry experts in the fields of video communication and interoperability. This year we decided to do a full day conference virtually, using available technologies. We are doing it because of three reasons:

1. This is the conference of the future: Though nothing can replace a handshake, virtual conferences are appealing from economic and efficiency perspective

2. This is what we do: IMTC is all about collaboration, unified communication, and content delivery. Virtual conference is best way to practice what we preach. We also would like to support our members by letting them showcase their technology in real life scenarios, and not only in booths and exhibitions.

3. This is the right thing in the current economic climate: With companies cutting their travel budgets, we should, as an industry organization, enable as many people possible to be a part of the experience. Virtual conference is a great solution for those who can't travel, but still interested in the content or participants of the event. Also, in times when companies invest a lot in order to reduce their carbon footprint, virtual events are the way to go to help our planet a bit.

So what is the biggest challenge?

For me, the biggest challenge is not technical, but the experience :How can we prevent the conference from turning into a string of webinars or a list of audio presentations?How can we encourage people in the "audience" to interact with speakers and with each other?What should be the role of social platforms in the event?And how to make an extraordinary event, that pushes the boundaries of virtual conferences, with a shoe string budget?

Luckily, I am a part of a great team that is trying to make this project a reality, including Anatoli Levine from Radvision, Andrea Basso from AT&T, Shantanu Sarkar from Cisco, and many other volunteers.

Want to be a part of the effort to create the conference of the future? have a relevant technology? Consider this as an open call for the industry and drop me an email at kfir AT Pravdam DOT com

Published originally at IMTC's Blog

At start I thought it was just me, but when I asked my Twitter and Facebook friends about it I got a lot of similar experiences: Gmail and Google Apps are slow in the recent week

Many business functions in my company are based on Google's products. However, their recent service failures, and the service issues now, make me think that cloud is good, but maybe not good enough...

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Pinch Media, iPhone applications analytic company, published this amazing presentation about what works and what doesn't in the app store, including pricing strategy and usage

Here it is:

Seesmic, the video conversation company, is one of the most interesting players in the online video world today. It is lead by Loic Le Meur, a French serial entrepreneur, who is committed to transparency, openness and video. This is how he described his company to Vator.TV:

Loic is practicing what he preaching, to the extent that he asked his community directly what should be the future of Seesmic:

As well as being extremely open about closing Seesmic's $6M financial round.

Seesmic Beyond Video Comments
However, not everything is bright in Seesmic Nation.

One of the major directions of the company, video comments, didn't prove to be popular with users. Even though there is a WordPress plugin for it, it is integrate with Diqus comments plugin, and used by more than 300 blogs including Techcrunch, Usage is slim. It seems that video blog comments are not as simple to use as text. My own push to my blog readers, asking them to leave video comments, was not successful at all. In a conversation with Loic (video chat over Skype) he sounded very positive about the future:

I have time - we are a small team, and we just raised money. As such we have enough time to find out what is working and what is not. We thought that video comments will be the right thing, but it didn't succeed as expected - so we are looking for the next thing.

Seesmic is planning on strengthening community features by creating closed and moderated video conversation groups. Users would be able to open a group, invite people to it and moderate the video conversation in it. This could be a very valuable feature, as it will enable new use cases:

- Events could create a pre and post event discussions (see my post about this topic)

- With enhanced privacy settings, study groups, classes and teachers could interact in a moderated and safe environment

- BBC were the first network that used Seesmic to collect viewers' feedback, edit it and broadcast it. It will be easier to do it with moderated groups

- Businesses could create a video based user community

I talked with Loic in January, and the community features are planned  to be released during February.
Loic is an extraordinary man, with an intriguing vision. I wonder what  the future holds for Seesmic. What's your opinion?

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A good friend of mine asked me for a list of cool apps that I am using on my Mac. And because sharing is caring, here are some of the applications I love and use the most. Some of them provide a unique user experience that isn't matched by Windows applications as well. Some of them are free and some requires a payment - but those which aren't free are worth the money.

Comic life - An amazing, fun to use, comic book creation software. You can add pictures to a comic book style outline, add writings and apply amazing filters on images. Really cool stuff. ($24.95)

App Zapper - The ultimate application removal application (try to repeat this sentence as fast as you can three times)... ($12.95)

Fairmount - A cool little Mac software that takes any DVD and mount it as a drive on your Mac. Neat way to bypass region protection. (Free)

iShowU HD - screencast redording application, with HD support and easy import to Final Cut Pro. ($29.95-$59.95)

iStopmotion - a stop motion animation application that enables you to use iSight or any other capture device to create amazing stop animation films. ($49.95)

Livestation - my number one application for watching streaming live TV channels (Free)

Loader - if you are a FCP editor, you know how annoying it is to keep projects organized. This little application was made in heaven, as it replaces FCP import function, and creates media specific folders in each project, and converts some of the audio files to editable format. ($49)

Mpeg Streamclip - the magic video conversion applicaiton. Converts almost any video file to any format. (Free)

Timeline 3D - an AWESOME time line creation tool. Yep, timelines never looked so amazing before, including export keynote, video files, and pdf. ($65)

Widemail - Apple mail plugin that adds an Outlook like preview pane (Free)

Enjoy!

The Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard did two great pieces about the philosophy, workflow and tools that digital journalists, usually a one man show out on the field. If you are suckers of neat kits that allow you to basically do everything on your own, as well as interested in learning more about the best way to be a one man gang kind of producer, check these videos out:

NBC's Mara Schiavocampo: Her digital workflow from Nieman Journalism Lab on Vimeo.

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NBC's Mara Schiavocampo: Inside her digital toolkit from Nieman Journalism Lab on Vimeo.

Schiavocampo is a digital journalist with NBC News.

According to this great post her kit includes:

— A Sony HVR-V1U HDV camcorder (about $4,000). This camcorder is standard-issue at NBC; she describes it as “halfway between DV and HD” and capable of producing visuals suitable for broadcast as well as the web. The camcorder has two add-ons: A Rode AA-battery-powered shotgun microphone ($250), and a Sony wide-angle conversion lens (about $500) that threads on the front of the camcorder.

— A lightweight Libec video tripod (7 pounds), as well as a monopod ($300 total).

— A Litepanels MiniPlus camera-mountable LED light, daylight balanced ($800).

— An Apple MacBook Pro laptop with Final Cut Pro, and an extra charged MacBook battery ($3,000).

— An external hard drive for the laptop ($200).

— Apple earbuds.

— A Fujipoint-and-shoot camera (”I almost never use it anymore”) as a backup ($300).

— XLR cables, and XLR adapters that can input into a small audio jack on her laptop for voice-over (”I always have spares”).

— Two wireless lavalier microphone sets (about $500).

— An array of white-balance cards in blues and green, to either heighten the warmth of skin tones or adjust for fluorescent light.

— Bags of spare connectors and cables.

— Lots of spare tapes, in HD Mini-DV format.

— Plug converters (”You need them if you’re in another country on assignment”).

— And, though every ounce matters, the manual for every piece of equipment she has in the bag (”Never leave them at home”).

Pretty cool isn't it?