FlyScreen is a new startup out of Israel that launched last month. FlyScreen brings updates to your mobile phone from social networks including Facebook, weather, sports news and RSS feeds. There are plenty of tools that do this already but FlyScreen works when your phone is asleep. Basically they have found a way to use the screen of the mobile even when it’s not being used.

The company says it actually uses very little battery to generate the updates and it uses less battery than running a full app when the phone is "awake". Currently the service only works on Nokia Symbian phones (E71, N95, etc.).

I assume that advertising will be their business model. The app looks great but I wonder… when my phone is asleep, I am not using it. Will this make me use it more? 

Here’s a quick overview from the company on how the service works (there’s no sound):

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2Pad is an Israeli company that is attempting to make finding and sharing photos and videos stuck inside your email easier. 2Pad searches through your email, finds the photos and videos and then adds them to your 2Pad gallery. Inside of the 2Pad gallery, you can share the media with others.

Their business model consists of two pieces. First images can be printed into tshirts, hats, etc. and 2Pad gets a percentage of the sale. Second the larger your gallery, the more you pay for the hosting.

2Pad uses Amazon S3 and EC2 for storage and server processing. Here’s 2Pad cofounder Aaron Boublil explaining how 2Pad works:

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A year ago we interviewed MeeMix CEO Gilad Shlang to learn more about his personalized music service. We’ve just learned that MeeMix plans to launch a Facebook application early next week. MeeVideo is a Facebook application that allows users to choose their favorite artist and get their own personalized music video channel.

The videos will be streamed via YouTube and MeeMix notes, the unique MeeMix taste prediction algorithm analyzes song parameters, member profile and behavior traits to determine each user’s personalized playlist as they watch and listen."

What would be great is if the application pulled in music and videos to keep the playlist fresh. This is certainly an application that can seriously increase the time on site metric for Facebook if they can get a strong userbase.

The application will also be available in Hi5, Bebo, Orkut and MySpace. Here’s a sample of what the MeeVideo Facebook application:

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There’s a social network for just about anything you can imagine these days, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that there are services centered around quotations and famous words. Increasingly, these sites are offering more ways to collect and share your favorite quotes with widgets and plugins. Some are even making connections with other services such as pageflakes, igoogle, netvibes and many others. Here’s a rundown of the best sites for word lovers, some old and some new.

QuotationsBook

QuotationsBook aims to become the Facebook of quotes by incorporating some of the cool features that we’ve come to expect from our online services such as our own RSS feed of our favorite quotes which we can share with others. For example, you can add your quote feed to your FriendFeed account and your friends can then see any new quotes that you’ve added to your collection. Here’s Paisano’s quote feed. Another feature that’ll be appreciated is a customizable badge widget which lets you embed your collection on your own site. There’s also a firefox extension that lets you search for quotes from its search box, a gadget for Vista, and a widget for the Mac dashboard.

QuotationsBook has made some impressive connections with Web 3.0/Semantic services like Freebase, which has begun to include quotes from quotationsbook in its articles. Here’s an example from an entry about Mark Twain (look at the bottom for the attribution for quotes used).

One of the things missing from QuotationsBook is the option to contribute and save your very own quotations and sayings. However, Amit Kothari, the founder of QuotationsBook, has stated that they are planning to add that much requested feature in the future. Amit has also launched a service called Moonrise, which is referred to as “Twitter for emotions” (long before anyone had the urge to Plurk). While you cannot share your own original quotes there either, you can express your feelings or mood along with a photo, video and yes, you guessed it, a quote from its sister-site QuotationsBook.

QuotesDaddy

QuoteDaddy is another quote service with some cool social media features like QuotationsBook. They also have a customizable widget and provide an RSS feed of your favorite quotes but there are some differences worth mentioning. QuotesDaddy has a slicker interface and allows you to enter your own original quotes, not just from famous folk. I think this is a critical feature for any quotation service, especially in the looming semantic Web 3.0 era.

You can setup Gmail to automatically insert your favorite quotes randomly by following these quick steps. (The same process will work with your Quote RSS feed from QuotationsBook).

The Best of the Rest

The following quotation sites don’t have all of the Web 2.0 bells and whistles but they can provide that special quote that you’ve been searching for thanks to massive collections accumulated over time. Many sites provide specialized categories for every imaginable type of quote you could ever want or need.

- WikiQuote is a growing wiki (duh) with approximately 16,000 quotes at this time. Much like Wikipedia, anyone can contribute to the open library of quotes.

- QuotationsPage doesn’t have much pizzazz but it’s been around the longest. Launched in 1994, it has over 26,000 quotations online from over 3,100 authors.

- Bartleby includes over 87,000 quotes featuring impressive collections such as Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, The Columbia World of Quotations,Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations, and Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations.

- QuoteDB is a popular site because of its simplicity, but it doesn’t have a large collection of quotes at this time. It does have a nice random quote generator widget though for your blog.

- About.com has a quotations section with a vast collection of different types of quotes.

Just for grins and giggles

- The Best Stuff from the mouth of Steve Jobs (Wired Magazine)

- The most visionary (and Funniest) things that Bill Gates has ever said!

- Famous last words

- Play the MovieQuotes Game

Conclusion

No matter what kind of quotes you’re looking for, they’re out there on the Web. Whether from a movie, TV show, athlete or even the bible, you can find them online in no time at all. Thanks to social media and social networking, it will continue to become increasingly easier to collect and share your favorite quotes, including your own original sayings. It will be interesting to see how far all this goes. Will we be able to pull any quote from our collection online and insert it in any email, blog post or comment or even a tweet on twitter? I have no doubt that we will and you can quote me on that.

[Image credit: umjanedoan (attribution)]

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Time Magazine’s Simple Facebook AppQuotationsBook Launches Network for Finding QuotesNo, Digg Isn’t Digging Its Own GraveIndonesia Removes YouTube Ban, Brazil Bans Wordpress.comideAjax Launches SaneBull WidgetsIs Creative Reporter Insane?First iPhone Reviews Don’t Reveal the Crucial Thing: GPS Reception Quality

Source:Mashable!

Company Name: Gemini

Founded in: 1992

Location: Herzliya Pituach, Israel

I had the pleasure of speaking with Daniel Cohen, General Partner at Gemini, an Israeli VC fund founded in 1992 by Ed Mlavsky, that invests in Israeli companies all over the world. Since 1992, Gemini has raised four funds and is currently in the middle of raising their fifth. Gemini began as a part of the Israeli Government program “Yozma” (”Initiative” in Hebrew), which offered to match funds for every Israeli VC that received investments outside of Israel. Gemini, the first and largest fund of the Yozma program, makes mostly seed and early stage investments.

Most recently the fund invested in Outbrain as part of its Internet Lab joint venture with Lightspeed, as well as XJet and Modu last year. The Internet Lab provides a great example of global Israeli reach. Through the lab, Gemini has backed six Israeli companies, with a true global presence (Israel, London, Silicon Valley, New York, Boston and Australia).

I asked Cohen what makes certain investments more attractive to Gemini than others. He replied: “At Gemini, we strongly believe that abnormal returns from venture capital can only come from large companies (even very large companies). Both XJet and Modu fall exactly in that category. We try to back great entrepreneurs that are going after unique market opportunities.”

I questioned Cohen about the advantages of being an Israeli startup. He replied that Israeli startups have the advantage of a global viewpoint, a much better understanding of mobile technology, and the ability to change and reposition themselves quickly and efficiently. Israeli startups are also cost effective. “Take for example mobile advertising,” said Cohen. “Israeli companies are dominating this space, with companies like Amobee, Pudding and others. We have backed an Israeli company called Massive Impact that is offering mobile advertising solutions in Asia. Massive provides a great example for a company that identifies global opportunities (beyond the US).”

In regards to the downsides of being an Israeli startup, Cohen mentioned that startups located in Israel often do not have as strong of an understanding of the average US consumer when compared to US-based startups. However, he believes that Israeli startups are only getting better. Israelis now have role models to look up to like Shy Agassi and Dov Moran, just as Mark Zuckerberg had role models like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

Cohen also added that Israelis understand that in order to survive in the technology sector, they must create the “Facebooks” of the future. This gives Israeli startups the drive to succeed. He added; “I am confident that Israel can and will produce great companies in the next five to ten years.” I tend to agree with him and hope that after reading the Israel Media Tour series, most of you do as well.

Ayelet Noff, also known as blogger Blonde 2.0, is a social marketing strategist and consultant who has been an influential force in the Israeli tech scene for many years. Noff specializes in helping companies strategically market their brands online.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Building Successful Startups in Israel: An Interview with LightSpeed Venture Partners [Israel Media Tour]GoogleDrive.com: Future Home of GDrive?Adap.tv Lands $10M in Series A FundingHigh-End Fashion Designed By You On StyleShakeHear Steve Wozniak Speak at the Social Networking ConferenceZimbra: Google Apps Not Ready for the EnterpriseEuropean Social Network Bahu Raises $1M in Series A Round

There are tons of reminder services online today. Found via Orli’s blog, Resnooze is a new startup out of Israel that has created what might be the most simple and useful reminder service yet. Resnooze emails you reminders on the dates and frequencies you set.

To setup a reminder, you enter the email address to send the reminder to, the text of the reminder and the frequency that the reminder email should be sent. When you create the first reminder, an account is setup on Resnooze using your email address. This will allow you to manage all of the reminders in your account.

When the reminder arrives in your mailbox, you can adjust the reminder (change frequency, time, or delete) directly from the email making it easy to keep the reminders accurate. The site is supported by ads but I could see a simple freemium model working very well for Resnooze. A simple widget to display reminders in iGoogle, MyYahoo, MyAOL, etc. would also be a strong addition to the Resnooze product.

The other side of Resnooze is a Web site or blog embed option which allows site visitors to receive a reminder email to visit your blog or site at a later date. It’s like the most simple email marketing program ever.

Here’s a screenshot of the reminder setup screen:

Here’s what the Web embed option looks like (this could use some work):

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During the TWS2008 startup conference in Israel, one of the interesting segments of the day featured three venture capitalists attempting to pitch the audience on a product. The product was not shared with them ahead of time and all they had to work from was the live powerpoint slides on the screen. What resulted was a bit of improv comedy that has a few funny bits.

From this first video, I will share the following line, "It’s the long tail of chickens"

From this second video which offers two improv pieces, "What about people that you don’t know or that you don’t know but think you know that you don’t know." and "Look at this photo of Girls Aloud"

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For all of you looking for a triple-word score, rejoice! Scrabble is now officially on Facebook in the U.S. and in Canada. SCRABBLE from EA on Facebook Platform will be the first EA Hasbro-licensed property to go live on a social networking site. Scrabble is a very complicated game - not just on the board but with regards to the property rights as well.

Jordan over at Marketing Pilgrim has a look from April into who owns what. Basically Mattel owns the Scrabble rights outside the U.S. and Canada and they launched a Facebook version in April. Today’s announcement brings Scrabble to the worldwide Facebook audience. What’s silly is that two development teams built the same game - what a waste of company resources.

Back in January, Erick looked at Scrabulous and how the Facebook community came together to attempt to save the game. He noted that the  “Save Scrabulous” group has over 46,000 Facebook members.

Amit has a good look at how Scrabulous developers Jayant Agarwalla and Rajat Agarwalla, monetize their casual game using Google AdSense to the tune of $20,000 a month. Today’s announcement certainly will hurt - to what extent is still unknown.

EA and Mattel have also announced that Scrabble is available on the Pogo games network. The Pogo version will have additional hidden features that aren’t available in the Facebook version.

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Microsoft and Internet Gold have decided to break up and go their separate ways. The companies had been operating the msn.co.il portal under a cooperative agreement - they established MSN Israel Ltd. in 2000. MSN Israel Ltd is 50.1% owned by the Internet Gold Group and 49.9% owned by Microsoft Corporation.

Both companies have announced this morning that the msn.co.il portal site will become an independent property of Microsoft. Microsoft operates portal sites in 44 countries around the world. Most of the 44 sites are directly owned by Microsoft, sometimes (like in Israel) Microsoft partners with a local Internet company to grow adoption and usage.

Internet Gold has been changing their Internet strategy and they report that in 2007, MSN Israel accounted for less than 3% of Internet Gold’s total revenues.

It looks like there might be some employee and advertiser transition into the new structure.

Editor’s note: I was asked by Yaron Orenstein to participate as a judge on the TWS2008 startup competition. Below is the winners announcement direct from Yaron’s office. It was a pleasure to participate this year as a judge and hopefully next year I will be there in person. Om Malik from GigaOm is there and I can’t wait to read his reports and view his conference and winner announcement photos and videos.

Europe’s new Internet conference - TWS2008, is an exciting conference that takes place today in Tel Aviv, Israel. The conference is organized by the Israeli popular blog the.co.ils and aims to find and present the 10 most promising Internet startups in Israel.

10 startups were chosen out of 100 that applied. The startups were selected by an impressive list of judges. Amongst them: Guy Kawasaki, Pete Cashmore, Om Malik, Deborah Schultz, Brian Solis, Allen Stern, Chris Brogan, Yair Goldfinger and Emily Chang. Today the spotlight is on these 10 startups that were able to convince our judges that they have a unique offering to the world.

Here are the 10 winners:

Wix is an authoring platform that allows users to create striking and easy-to-build web content in flash (web sites, widgets, blogs etc), and publish it anywhere they want online. Users can create content without coding in flash/html or being constrained by templates. At the heart of the product is the drag & drop editor that allows users to pull in any content from the web or from their own media files (video, audio, animation, text etc) and create web content.

WorkLight develops and markets a line of server products that allow organizations to do more business securely using popular consumer Web 2.0 tools and technologies, like iGoogle, Windows Live, Netvibes, Facebook, and others. Through WorkLight, employees, channels, partners, and consumers connect to protected enterprise data (and to each other) using Web 2.0 services.

HiveSight helps marketers discover new facts about consumers. Our technology sifts through and analyzes millions of social media profiles and blogs to construct consumer profiles. Our customers use our online application to write simple queries that define consumer panels, and get instant reports on demographics, consumer interests, trends and more. It’s the fastest, easiest and most affordable way to explore consumer markets and discover new insights.

Qoof is the video commerce platform that bridges the world of Online Shopping, Internet Video, and Direct Response TV to create a distributed, targeted, and ersonalized video commerce network. Think QVC for the internet. The most powerful way to sell a product online is with video and as more merchants are looking for video solutions, the Qoof Platform is their answer. Companies currently using our platform include Dell, Ice.com, & DrugStore.com. Qoof plans a major product release further converging the worlds of DRTV and e-commerce this September.

WikiAnswers gives you useful answers about anything by harnessing people’s collective knowledge, but with a wiki-twist. Our mission is to grow a collaborative answers resource; anyone can ask, answer or edit questions, building a global Q&A database covering all topics.

Dapper’s vision is to allow people to consume the web where, when and in whatever format they choose. Dapper users point and click on the content they want from a website, and Dapper turns this content into a live semantic feed that can be used in a variety of formats (RSS, widget, XML). Dapper is leveraging its core technology to create live content-based ads (MashupAds) that combine publisher and advertiser content within an interactive ad — creating the world’s first content ad network.

Mo’Minis is a revolutionary platform for the development and publishing of mobile games. The platform allows advanced as well as non-skilled developers to rapidly create original games from scratch and have them seamlessly supported on a wide range of handsets. Furthermore, developers can collaborate and share game assets on Mo’Minis developers’ community and enjoy distribution and monetization services through various on\off-deck channels.

Kaltura provides the first open-source video management platform, empowering any site with online video. With Kaltura, web publishers can seamlessly and cost-effectively integrate interactive and collaborative rich-media functionalities, including uploading, importing, editing, remixing, and sharing. Kaltura also offers its global network of publishers content hosting, transcoding, advertising, merchandising, and syndication.

MocoSpace is a mobile social network that allows anybody with a web-enabled phone to have a full social networking experience on their most trusted device, the mobile phone, whenever and wherever they want. Members Users enjoy expressing themselves and staying connected to friends by setting up a profile page, sharing photos and video, chatting, inboxing, instant messaging, blogging, debating in forums, sending mobile cards and playing games.

Nuconomy Studio is the world’s first "performance insight platform," built from the ground up to provide completely new ways to measure today’s interactive Web. Go beyond the old page view model and start to measure the new metrics of the web - your users and site engagement and contribution metrics.

We are honored to give the stage today to these promising startups and show the world how much Israeli technology has to offer. In 2009, we plan to open the event to all European startups and become the official European launch pad for Internet startups in the region.

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