Made in Israel
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, design, education, Entertainment, Environment, General, health, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Medical Breakthroughs, Music, Science, Social Justice, Technology
It’s getting to be that time of year again – where the national holidays come fast and furious. Holocaust Remembrance Day just passed and this week we have Memorial Day and Independence Day right on top of each other as Israel prepares to celebrate its 64th birthday.
While there’s no shortage of subjects to be worried, fearful, skeptical or angry about, I would say that overall, the country’s in pretty good shape. But if the Iranian threat, the political situation, the social welfare crisis and the glut of TV reality shows are getting you down, take a couple minutes and check out this clip that ISRAEL21c’s Nicky Blackburn and Viva Sara Press have put together.
In addition to providing some surprising information about just what Israel has achieved in the past 63 years, it will undoubtedly raise your morale and have you whistling a happy tune going into the coming eventful week. Happy Independence Day Israel! We’re proud of you.
Foto Friday – A street view of Israel with Google StreetView
Filed under: A New Reality, education, Entertainment, Foto Friday, General, Israeliness, Life, Movies, Picture of the Week, Pop Culture, Sports, Technology, Travel, tv
Earlier this week, Google let it be known that it would be launching the long-awaited StreetView application for Israel. The official launch date is this Sunday, April 22, but the soft launch apparently happened yesterday and seems to be working on Google Maps Netherlands at this point.
StreetView, which is part of Google Maps, lets users explore places around the world through 360-degree panoramic 3D imagery of city streets, public spaces, museums, national parks and more. (Here’s a quick video on how to use it).
Google accomplishes this by deploying a fleet of cars topped by a 15 lens camera taking 360 degrees of photos as it drives along. The car also also has motion sensors to track its position, a hard drive to store data, a small computer running the system, and lasers to capture 3D data to determine distances within the Street View imagery.
Google provides a nice explanation of how its done. And last year, this fellow posted a video of himself following the Google car down Tel Aviv’s Ben Yehuda street, writing “Look how lucky I am to capture the car that is capturing me.”
Given that Israel is a major R&D center for Google, the launch took longer than expected. This was due to concerns over security — not unjustified as Palestinian militants have stated that Google Earth satellite images have been used to identify targets in rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip on Israel. Similarly, there were concerns about Google StreetView possibly being used by terrorists to attack critical locations and/or important personages. Privacy concerns were less of an issue — in Israel, security trumps privacy every time. Plus, we are the kind of people who feel “lucky” if we’re captured by a Google cam!
The Google Map of Israel…
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So far, StreetView has covered neighborhoods, universities and museums in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Be’er Sheva, plus a few smaller towns and tourist sites around the country.
The Jerusalem Theater…
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The Harp Bridge at the entrance to Jerusalem…
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The Knesset…
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Western Wall…
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And here’s where my running group, the Holyland Hash House Harriers, will be meeting tomorrow afternoon at 4:00 PM, right in the Valley of the Cross. All are invited and beer will be served.
Israeli startup gets in on ‘Hunger Games’
Filed under: A New Reality, Blogging, Business, Entertainment, General, Movies, Pop Culture, Technology
The Hunger Games may be breaking all the box office records in the US since its theater release last month, but its Facebook game is not far behind.
Developed by Israeli company Funtactix, the online game has become a big hit since being launched last week. Which should not be too surprising since the Jerusalem startup is apparently so talented that Lionsgate Films signed an agreement with them to develop the official ‘Hunger Games’ game – two months after it launched the Facebook game for Mission Impossible 4.
The Hunger Games online app enables fans of the film and the book dynasty to play with virtual friends based on the characters from the books and film.
“Even though we knew in advance that the movie would be a huge hit with teens we were still very excited when we saw the initial statistics, and we hope they will continue to grow and increase,” said Funtactix founder Yaron Leifenberg in a press release.
The (JVP) Erel Margalit-financed company was founded in 2006 and has developed a reputation in web-based gaming since its 2008 introduction of connected 3D multiplayer action gaming to the browser. Based in New York, with development teams centered in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Funtactix is another example of the burgeoning Hollywood-Israel connection in full bloom.
Foto Friday – The Innovators Way
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, education, Environment, Foto Friday, General, health, Medical Breakthroughs, News, Picture of the Week, Profiles, Science, Technology, tv
The Innovators Way is a new photo exhibition showcasing 27 researchers whose innovations, developed at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, improve quality of life and human welfare worldwide in fields such as health, safety, environment and nutrition.
The exhibition celebrates the work of those researchers whose initiatives have led to commercial products on the market today.
These creative initiatives came about as the result of intensive and wide-ranging scientific research, followed by patent registration, commercialization and finally marketing by Israeli and international companies.
None of this would have been possible without Yissum – the Technology Transfer Company of the Hebrew University. Yissum is solely responsible for the commercialization of innovations and technologies originating at the university. The company was among the first of its kind in the world when it was established in 1964, and is today ranked among the world’s 15 leading companies in this field.
To date, Yissum has registered more than 7,000 patents on more than 2,000 inventions, and has established 72 spin-off companies.
The scientists and innovations documented in the new exhibition include:
Prof. Haim D. Rabinowitch (right) and Prof. Nachum Kedar established the foundations for the introduction of genes for extended fruit shelf-life into standard tomato cultivars, turned cherry tomatoes into a global commodity, and developed the cluster tomatoes. (The original research was conducted jointly with Prof. Yosef Mizrahi of Ben Gurion University and Dr. Ehud Kopeliovitch. The seeds are produced and manufactured by Vilmorin (France), Monsanto (USA), Syngenta (Switzerland) and Bayer (Germany).
Prof. Marta Weinstock-Rosin who developed Exelon, a medicine prescribed for people with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease. Exelon can slow the progression of the disease in a significant proportion of patients and improve cognitive function in some subjects. Exelon is manufactured by Novartis (Switzerland).
Professor of Chemistry David Avnir, developer of Sol-Gel Technology for the formation of new materials which combine the properties of glasses or ceramics with the properties of organic and biological compounds. Applications of Sol-Gel Technology have been developed in the fields of optics, catalysis, sensing, polymers, biochemistry and pharmacy. Many researchers at the Hebrew University have participated in the various developments. Sol-Gel Technologies, Inc. (Israel) was established to commercialize products based on these newly invented materials, and is active especially in the fields of dermatology and agriculture.
Prof. Alexander Vainstein, the Wolfson Family Professor of Floriculture, who developed the MemoGenetechnology which enables the creation of new traits in plants and the enhancement of agricultural crops through genetic modification. MemoGene is a groundbreaking process for targeted and site-specific plant genetic modification, using highly innovative novel tools for genomic modification. The technology, which was patented jointly by Yissum and Danziger Innovations (Israel), is applicable to all plants.
Prof. Shmuel Peleg has developed technologies upon which two Israeli startups were founded. One technology creates panoramic stereo images from photographs taken by an ordinary camera, which has been commercialized by HumanEyes Technologies (Israel). The second is a technique for video synopsis, which enables hours of video surveillance footage to be viewed in minutes, and which has been commercialized by BriefCam. [Full disclosure: I work for BriefCam and know Prof. Peleg personally. I also thought the photo really captured his spirit.]
The exhibition’s photographer, Nati Shohat, is the founder of Flash 90, a photographic agency that supplies images to newspapers, magazines and other customers in Israel and abroad. Shohat’s news photography and artistic and portrait work have been exhibited in many venues and in publications such as Stern Magazine, Paris Match, Le Monde, Time and others.
Hebrew University has about 1,000 senior faculty members and a student body of approximately 23,000. To date, it has conferred over 120,000 degress. The University has some100 research centers and more than 4,000 research projects. Faculty members and alumni have been awarded 8 Nobel Prizes, 1 Fields Medal, 269 Israel Prizes, 12 Wolf Prizes, 18 EMET Prizes and 41 Rothschild Prizes. Founders include Chaim Weizmann, Albert Einstein, Martin Buber, Chaim Nachman Bialik.
Parent apps
Filed under: Business, design, General, health, Life, Technology
They’re not just new parents, nor are they merely a couple, one of whom is a physicist/amateur computer programmer and the other a Arabic literature and comparative religion university lecturer.
Jerusalemites Miriam Goldstein and Michael Feigenson are now app developers, having created two apps that will appeal to the new parent set, all part of Parents2ParentsApps, their “mom and pop, family business that creates mobile applications for parents. We build apps that answer our own needs as parents, and strive to make them useful to others and as user-friendly as possible,” writes Michael on their website.
Perfect Timing was their first app, using FAM, the Fertility Awareness Method, to help learn about and identify and chart natural family planning. They found the method helped them get pregnant easily, and the app is an easy way to keep all the information in one place.
Once their son was born, they came up with Sound Sleeper, a white noise app that can identify when a baby wakes and play a selected white noise — ocean, rain, car ride, even the sounds of Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda market — to lull the baby back to sleep.
As I always say, whatever works. And now I know why they always seem so happy and rested. Smart.
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