Israel Innovation 2.0

Inside Israeli Technology

Browsing Posts published by Lisa Damast

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During the week of November 29, 2009 the biggest headline was IBM’s acquisition of database security and compliance company, Guardium. Dune was purchased by Broadcom and VMware is planning to double its workforce in Israel. For these stories and more, check below for this week’s 9 Israel-related headlines.

Cleantech
1. Capstone and Israel’s HelioFocus Get Grants To Fire Up Solar Powered Micro-Turbines

Investment
2. Broadcom To Acquire Dune For $178 Million

3. IBM buys database security firm Guardium

Information Technology
4. Thanks to Israel, ‘the Cloud’ will be safer

5. VMware doubles Israeli R&D workforce

5. Red Bend Software Named One of the Most Important Companies in M2M for 2010

Miscellaneous
7. Israeli firm Emblaze sues Apple claiming iPhone streaming ‘patent infringement’

8. Israeli tech firms are coming back home

9. Twitter, Amiando, Obopay, And Playfish Are Named Technology Pioneers By The World Economic Forum (Amobee and Innovid)

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During the week of November 22, 2009, Else, formerly Emblaze Mobile, revealed the first Linux-based smartphone. A possible iPhone killer, the device focuses on the user-experience first. SupportSpace announced it raised $10 million in funding and IBM acquired database security start-up, Guardium.For these stories and more, check below.

Cleantech
1. Preparing for Copenhagen: What can Israel expect?

2. US-Israel $3.3 m. energy cooperation

Investments and M&A
3. IBM to buy start-up Guardium for $225 million: report

4. SupportSpace Raises $10 Million Series B

Information Technology
5. Emblaze Mobile launch First Else Linux-based phone

6. Check Point Software focuses on virtualization and data centres

Miscellaneous
7. Six cities that beat the Big Apple?

8. Tonight in Tel Aviv: Twitter’s Biz Stone talks about the triumph of humanity

9. IBM wooed Guardium for almost a year

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During the week of November 15, 2009, data storage and protection company, Axxana announced it had raised $9 million. Gil Schwed discussed the future of Check Point and Tufin Technologies is expanding from security into network management. For these stories and the rest of this week’s 11 headlines, check below.

Cleantech
1. Israel water tech thrives in weakened economy

2. Catching the sunshine

3. After boom and bust, global solar energy market ready to mature, analyst says

Investments and M&A
4. Motorola acquiring Israeli company

5. Axxana Raises $9 Million

6. ClickSoftware closes AiPoint asset acquisition

Information Technology
7. Check Point looks to ‘consolidation’

8. Tufin Expands from Security into Network Management

9. Trojan Hacked Secret Data of Syrian Nuclear Reactor

Miscellaneous
10. The future of Israeli high-tech: Jewish brains aren’t enough

11. Israel top patent producer in Western world

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During the week of November 8, 2009, Motorola made its first Israeli acquisition by buying Bitband. Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) invested in XtremIO and Navajo Systems and Face.com went live with its facial-recognition tagger on Facebook. For these stories and the rest of this week’s 11 headlines, check below.

Cleantech
1. Jewish Israelis and Jewish Americans Look to US-Israel Cooperation To Break Oil Dependence

2. Deep sea aquaculture startup prepares for harvest

Investments and Economy
3. High-tech drives huge leap in exports

4. JVP and Giza Announce A-Round Investment in Early-Stage Startup XtremIO

5. Motorola in first Israeli acquisition: Bitband

Information Technology and Web 2.0
6. Facebook Facial-Recognition Tagger Goes Live

7. Windows 7 could hasten touch-screen computers (N-trig)

8. JVP Media Studio Invests Seed Round in Navajo Systems

Miscellaneous
9. Your cell phone can save you from a Dead Sea flash flood

10. The Twenty-Five Most Valuable Blogs In America

11. Israel’s lively start-up culture keeps economy thriving

A few weeks ago Maurice Picow of Green Prophet posted about the Jewish Response to the Energy Challenge (JREC) conference in San Francisco. The conference, which was organized by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and took place this Sunday, brought together Jewish leaders in the clean tech and environmental fields to discuss ending oil-dependency for Israeli national security and the importance of future cleantech projects between the US and Israel.

The conference included a Jerusalem satellite event in which Isaac Berzin, the Director of the Institute for Renewable Energy Policy and one of Time Magazine’s Top 100 Most Influential People of 2008, spoke about his vision for alternative liquid fuel, specifically algae. Berzin made the point that Israel will be more secure when countries such as China and India turn to alternative fuels and stop buying oil from Iran which funds terrorism.

Berzin’s keynote (which can be viewed above) was followed by a diverse panel that discussed viable alternative energy solutions to oil and the own challenges they hold from the political, environmental and health perspectives. In addition, the panel discussed the importance of US-Israel partnerships for funding start-ups.

Making up the panel were Berzin; Hezi Kugler, Israeli Clean Energy Alliance; Astorre Modena, General Partner at Terra Venture Partners; Dr. Gal Loft, Executive Director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security; Richard Laster, Professor of Environmental Law at Hebrew University. The discussion was moderated by Z’ev Gross, Head of Infrastructure Resources Management Division in the Ministry of National Infrastructures.

Perhaps the most interesting discussion of the evening took place during the Q&A session at the end when suggestions for Israel going green were passionately discussed among audience members and panelists. When it comes to how to get more Israelis to embrace alternative energy and the use of money to get people to become energy efficient, several members of the audience disagreed with the panelists and explained that a carbon tax like the one France recently implemented is the only viable option.

Earlier this year I posted an entry about the lack of women in technology that included some of the famous women who contributed to technology and some of the causes that prevent women from studying fields related to technology or having a career in technology and connected all this to Israel.

I’ve been waiting for a good time to post the follow up, and was going to post it back in June after Roi Carthy of TechCrunch mentioned, but didn’t cover, the question in his post about three of Israel’s most-promising female entrepreneurs and then again last month after Ada Yonath won the Nobel Prize in chemistry, thus becoming the first Israeli woman to win a Nobel Prize and the first woman since 1964 to win one in chemistry, but wasn’t able to either of those times.

Fortunately, Boris’s post “What is keeping women out of technology?” on The Next Web today has given me another opportunity to post this. He suggests that considering the 50/50 male/female attendance he recently saw at a networking event and the 44% women who read The Next Web but how few of them comment, fewer women are in tech compared to men because women miss important phone calls and never bring their business cards with them.

These are interesting points that can perhaps take women out of technology but they are not the main factors. How many of the women at the networking event or who read The Next Web are actually on the tech side of technology and not just the marketing or journalism side? How many of them have backgrounds in science, math, computers or engineering?

The problem is that women first need to be interested in technology and pursue that path. Even if they are interested in math, science, technology when they are younger, women face a lot of social pressures as they grow older that challenge their pursuit and ultimately result in many abandoning these areas.

In her dissertation “Women in the Land of Milk, Honey and Hi-Technology: The Israeli Case,” Ronit Kark takes an in-depth look at Israeli society and the underlying dynamics that are preventing more women from going into technology, engineering and science in Israel.

The reasons that Kark gives for why women are being kept out of technology in Israel include: the high school education and military service of women, familialism and motherhood in Israel and the role of the Hebrew language.

Taking this further, based on my first post and Boris’s, while Boris is planning to teach his two daughters PHP when they are old enough, he should also make sure that they gain the self-confidence to go along with those skills. Real encouragement is also one of the things we can all do to get more women in technology.

Note: Major thanks to Guy Tessler of the American Israel Chamber of Commerce in the Southeast Region who pointed out Kark’s study to me.

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During the week of November 1, 2009, financial software company, Finjan was acquired by M86. The Cleantech Group ranked Israel number 5 in its list of top10 cleantech countries of 2009 and Start-up Nation, Saul Singer and Dan Senor’s analysis of Israel’s economic success, was released (headlines below video).

Cleantech
1. The top 10 cleantech countries of 2009

2. The 2010 Eilat Eilot Renewable Energy Conference Looks To Carbon-Free Energy

3. Israeli firms aim to plug world’s water leaks

Investment
4. M86 Security Buys Finjan

5. We Are The Startup Nation

6. Local VCs cut investment in start-ups

Information Technology
7. How Cloud Computing Has Transformed Small Business Software (SAManage)

8. Global from Day One: MoodBase knows what the web is feeling

Miscellaneous
9. Israeli film ‘Ajami’ wins at Montpellier festival

10. JNF aims to turn Israel diamonds from rough to ready

A few months ago I had the opportunity to meet Daniel Shein of IDC’s Media Innovation Lab (MiLAB) and to hear about the project he was working on then. Shein has since started LoFT with two miLAB friends and released its first  project, LooKATOR, an application for Google Android phones.

LooKATOR uses Augmented Reality to enable users to find the best WiFi signals by opening the app and holding up the phone, which will show the signals around you with their relative strength and direction.

According to the site, “LooKATOR uses vector-based models that continously update as the user moves around to calculate where WiFi signals are coming from – so you’ll always know where to go for better reception.”

Shein’s team is currently working on new features for it including click-to-connect and password security, as well as a version of the app for the iPhone.

Here’s a look at the LooKATOR for Android in action.

Using their own independent studies, VeriSign and Israel-based Discertix both recently released the smartphone security trends they expect to see in 2010.

According to VeriSign CTO, Kenneth Silva, who recently spoke in Seoul about the likely mobile device threats in 2010,

“An attack on the mobile device operating system will affect the phone contacts, mobile banking log-ins and passwords and any other valuable information stored on the device”

Smartphone sales are expected to beat PC sales for the first time in 2011.

Smartphone sales are expected to beat PC sales for the first time in 2011.

The opportunities for cyber criminals to penetrate mobile devices are the results of:

  • More phone applications needing updates which can pose an opening for phishing scams
  • An increase in jail broken phones, which compromises the operating system as an example.

Silva explains that these vulnerabilities can lead to “deliberate Denial of Service attacks, extortion, and corporate espionage as threats for 2010” and has as such become a national priority for several countries including Israel, the U.S. and the U.K

Research by Discretix, an embedded security solutions company, indicates that smartphones already make up 25% of the market and might reach 40% market share in the next 5 years.

In addition to finding the same threats posed by applications and an open OS that VeriSign did, Discretix has also listed:

  • Some of the new OSs (e.g. Android) are open source, missing the traditional safeguards and closed environment of other real time operating systems
  • Also the devices are multi-use with massive storage capacity, moving data and applications freely between the enterprise and the home

Despite the seriousness of these threats, a survey conducted by security software firm Trend Micro that was released in August 2009 indicated that 44% of mobile phone users considered Web surfing on a smartphone to be “as safe, if not safer, than doing so on their PC” and “only 23 percent of smartphone owners use security software already installed on their smartphones.”

Discretix was one of the fastest growing Israeli companies in 2008 and 2009 according to Deloitte Brightman Almagor Zohar and will deliver Open Mobile Alliance DRM capabilities to HTC Windows Mobile and Google Android handsets.

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During the week of October 25, 2009, Deloitte named its Fast 50 for the Israel region, listing PicScout #4 with a growth rate the past year of 3277%. 15 UK-Israeli science projects received research grants from The British Council totaling £365,000 and cyber crimes, which have become a national priority for Israel, the U.S. and the U.K. among other, will likely target mobile devices in 2010. For these stories and more, check out this week’s technology headlines below.

Cleantech
1. 7 Solar Innovators From Israel That Could Fuel Our Planet

2. Eilat-Eilot region seeks to become center for renewable energy

3. ‘Going Green’ would boost economy – environment minister

Investments
4. International venture capital investment recovers after second quarter slump

5. 15 UK-Israeli Science Projects Get Funded by The British Council

Information Technology
6. PicScout Recognized Among Fastest Growing Companies

7. Cyber criminals to target mobile devices

8. Secure computers aren’t so secure

9. Digital World: The hackers of tomorrow – today

Miscellaneous
10. Chief Scientist: Israel leads in research investment

11. Red Bend sues Google over patent dispute