Can’t believe it has been a year since the previous visit of the Israeli New Media Delegation to Los Angeles. Next week it will happen again and I will participate in it for the 3rd year in a row (see my post about the 2007 visit).
The delegation is organized by Yossi Vardi and Arnon Milchen and its purpose is to give young Israeli start ups the opportunity to meet with potential investors and executives from large media companies and pitch their companies and products in a speed dating format (participants — make sure you practice on your elevator pitch).
I will take part in a breakfast panel where the participating companies will meet a few Los Angeles based Israeli executives for tips and advise, Q&A and some networking. Together with me the panel will also include Alex Sirota from Yahoo/FoxyTunes, Roy Bahat from IGN Ent., Yair Landa ex President of Sony Digital and Leor Stern from Google. After two years of sitting together on this panel, I will miss my friend Nimrod Lev who recently packed his staff and family, left Fox/MySpace and moved back to Israel.
In addition to days full of meetings, the participating companies will also enjoy some fancy cocktails and dinners, LaLaLand style. So if you happen to be at the BetaSouth event next week in Santa Monica, you will have a chance to meet them over there.
Finally, here is more information about the visiting companies as provided to my by the organizers.
- AnyClip enables consumers as well as professionals to find any moment from any film ever made. AnyClip seeks to create a new revenue model for Hollywood based on our core belief that clips have value as standalone content. With scale and efficiency, AnyClip will bring three nascent business models to the movie industry.
- BloggersBase is a platform for discovery and delivery of premium user generated content, targeting newspapers, media companies, bloggers and readers. We aim to solve the problem of user-generated content overflow, of uncontrolled (usually low) quality. BloggersBase offers its solution as a white-label platform (B2B) and as a target site (B2C).
- Dopa Music operates a background music service customized for each website and context that brings a whole new sense to online content. Dopa Music service is based on a sophisticated algorithm (patent-pending) that selects the best tracks in real-time based on more than 100 parameters. Site owners can pay monthly subscription or enjoy service for free and receive commissions on audio ads played at their site. Dopa Music secured seed funding from Israel’s Chief Scientist. Erez Perlmutter, Founder, former VP BizDev at Kasamba sold to LivePerson.
- Funtactix combines the best of AAA game and web technologies to bring console-quality, multiplayer gaming to the browser. The studio’s end-to-end, white-label solution turns popular franchises into profitable online gaming communities through avatar-based, high-end game content and microtransactions.
- IPgallery is a privately held company with more than 40 deployments. Its solutions deliver highly scalable, flexible and reliable solutions enabling SPs to deploy new revenue generating services.
- MAGYX develops “Smart Content™” – unique interactive solutions combining high-end technology and content, powerful marketing platforms empowering the communication between end-users, media platforms and advertisers.
- P-Kama operates Rummikub.com, an online platform for family style entertainment based on the world’s 3rd bestselling board game. The game attracts players of every age, including Baby Boomers and young teens. It connects to family values which are enhanced by social media features. An average of 15 minutes playing each game makes Rummikub a powerful tool for promotion and customer retention.
- PicScout – With 85% of the images detected by PicScout on commercial web sites being used non-legitimately, there exists a vast opportunity to track, protect and monetize images on the internet. PicScout™, through its proprietary image recognition technology created a new era in image copyright protection, is now leading the way to authorize the image marketplace to become a legitimate internet economy.
- Tweegee.com is a pioneering destination site designed exclusively for kids. The site empowers children and pre-teens ages 7 to 13 to express themselves creatively and safely through an innovative and customized online environment. Tweegee integrates social networking, digital content and interactive tools offering kids a complete web platform. All the online communication is protected with technologically advanced safeguards including the patent pending “wordup!”, giving the parents the reassurance they need to protect their children. Tweegee was recently reviewed and qualified for meeting the standards of the CARU kid’s privacy safe harbor program in the USA.
- Qlipso is your den and your favorite sports bar all rolled into one. It’s an impromptu online party with your best friends from FaceBook, your favorite media from video, game or music sites – all synched up and live! Avatars, webcams, voice and text chat – Qlipso brings it all together!
- XSIGHTS service allows consumers using their cameraphone to transform any static objects, (products, newspapers, magazines, wall-posters, books…) to an interactive multi-media experience. XSIGHTS is the only company capable to identify many links within the same image. The links may be, as small as, a “single-word” in a text document or a “street crossing” on a map, thus activating classified listings, product catalogues, advertisements and street maps. The user can navigate and view different links within the same session. XSIGHTS mature and field proven solution is operational with or without the need to download an application to the phone.
Photo credit: Menetnashté (On Vacation)
Later this week a delegation of selected Israeli digital media start ups will hit Los Angeles.
The event is organized by Yossi Vardi and Arnon Milchan with the purpose of introducing Israeli entrepreneurs to some of the world’s largest media companies.
In addition to those meetings, there will be a panel of Israelis who work for US media companies. I will be one of the panelists together with Nimrod Lev (Fox Interactive/KSolo), Shaul Olmert (MTV Networks), Roy Bahat (IGN Newscorp), Itzik Ben-Bassat (formerly Blizzard) and others.
I look forward to meeting old friends & colleagues as well as getting to know some of Isreal’s most creative minds. In case you will be in the event, please come by and say hello.
Categories: Entrepreneurship, Technology, events Tags: Arnon Milchan, Blizzard, delegation, Fox Interactive/KSolo, IGN, Israeli Digital Media, Itzik Ben Bassat, Los Angeles, MTV Networks, Newscorp, Nimrod Lev, Roy Bahat, Shaul Olmert, Yossi Vardi
..and they are doing it Big Time!
They just released a new single, “The Pretender”, the first from their upcoming album called “Echoes, Silence, Patience And Grace” (out on Sep 25).
“The Pretender” starts with a mellow 30 seconds guitar intro (anyone said Led-Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven?) which then explodes into a typical Foo Fighters smash hit. (Another) powerful drumming performance by their wonderful Taylor Hawkins, Tight and rough guitars and a shining vocal performance by one of the greatest rock artists ever, Dave Grohl.
If the rest of the album will be as powerful as this single, then this is going to be the best alt-rock album of 2007 (and maybe one of the band’s best albums).
The song is available on the band’s myspace page or as a single on Amazon.
(Eitan – we are going to one together…either in LA or Chicago…whichever comes first…right?)
40 years ago:
- People physically gathered in rock concerts and not virtually in chat rooms, social networks and virtual worlds
- People enjoyed the sound of dust, scratches & subtle sounds when they played their vinyl records and not a limited and narrow spectrum of compressed MP3 file
- A team from Liverpool actually made it all the way
- A masterpiece called Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released by the Beatles and completely changed the music world
To celebrate the event I am planning to dive deep into Wikipedia, refresh my memory and learn some new facts. From a short glimpse, it’s just amazing how detailed the album and songs pages are.
BTW, when searching for the original I came accross American Idol’s cover versions. Oy Vey. I will stick to the originals.
Technorati Tags: Beatles, Sergeant Pepper, Wikipedia
Great post on Mashable:
“From navigating the Web in entirely new ways to seeing where in the world twitters are coming from, data visualization tools are changing the way we view content. We found the following 16 apps both visually stunning and delightfully useful”
Too bad Snap was not included under the search category where we should be. We at Snap believe visualization is the way to find information faster on the web whether you are searching or surfing the web looking for a cool video clip.
A few days ago Mike Arrington made a post about AOL’s new home page and its similarity to Yahoo’s. Now its Yahoo’s turn to strike back.
Today they released a new web version of their Instant Messenger service built using Flash. I played around with it (although it was difficult for me to find online buddies – they all switched to Skype) and noticed strange similarity to Meebo – The color & gradient background, the layout of the buddy list and even some of the interaction is very much alike the successful web IM aggregation service. Kudos for the meebo team for creating a service that inspires others.
BTW, if you are looking for A/V capabilities you will have to head south toward Santa Monica and look for Mike and company.
Ideacodes (Emily Chang) released a new project called Twitterverse. It lets you explore what people twitter about in a time frame (1, 5, 10, 24 hours) and display a tag cloud of the most interesting words. Once you see the list you could zoom in and see the full context inside the messages and the members who sent them.
Twitter is an amazing social phenomenon. It is also a business that I can not really figure out (how are they planning to make money if they have to buy huge amounts of bulk text messages?).
I find the Twitterverse mashup interesting as it provides a unique point of view on the lives of those who use the service especially on thier language:
- Vocabulary is fairly limited. Only 1049 words were used by the community in the last 24 hours. One caveat – not all words sent are added to the index.
- “Twitter”, “Going” and “Work” were the most popular in the last 24 hours. Does it mean people twitter a lot when they are going to work?!
- Twitter is more than just a site/product/brand. It is at the point that it turned to a verb (embody verb potential) and have spawned words like: tweet, tweets, twit, twitter, twittering, twitterrific, twitters, twittervision
I am sure one day someone will make this the topic of his Linguistic thesis.
It really does not matter which team you cheer for or whether you even like football (aka soccer). You just can’t ignore Leo Messi’s spectacular goal scored in the Spanish Cap Semi-Final game between Barcelona and Getafe (5-2). What’s even more amazing are two things:
- The similarity to the one Diego scored in 1986 in Argentina’s victory over England
- The timing considering Diego’s health situation. It’s like Leo is trying to make the legendary #10 recover.
I collected a few clips showing Messi’s amazing dribble, each in a different language. But regardless of the language you speak, you can pick the excitement from the commentary. My skin still shivers even after watching it at least 20 times.
and my favorite one: Ya Salam Ya Messi
Oh, man….It is such a great feeling to wear the Barcelona jersey’s these days…
Lionel Messi ” Messidona “ – Click here for more amazing videos
I will be in SF later this week attending Web 2.0 Expo. Come and say hi if you are there. Snap booth is #326 and I will be there Mon till Tue. There will be cool swags…
And it took Apple and it’s amazing marketing machine 5 1/2 years to reach this milestone…in other words one ipod every 1.7 seconds…(18,181,818 per year = 1,515,152 per month = 49,8001 per day = 2,044 per hour = 35 per minute)
Another impressive achievement is the sale of 2.5 billion songs on iTunes….more
But, and here’s the but…The fact most songs these days come at 196 kbps makes songs sound quality just horrible, with no decent depth & spectrum. Will the next generation have any ability to distinguish subtle sounds or appreciate the mix of music, dust and scratches on a vinyl record?
Photo: by jbl_nyc.
