Great deals or hidden scam?
The courts have ruled that the service is legal, but it still leaves a muddled taste in my mouth. I’m talking about Free.co.il, a popular Israeli auction site that works more like the Lotto than eBay.
You can’t help but be drawn in by Free.co.il’s home page which promises a Sony Playstation for NIS 99, a MacBook Air for NIS 299, and even a brand new Mazda 3 for a steal at only NIS 899. Who wouldn’t want to play with deals like these?
At first, it would be hard to distinguish Free.co.il from a traditional eBay-style auction site: you place your bids on items for sale and the highest bidder within the auction’s time frame wins. Unlike eBay, though, you have to pay for your bids. The cost of each bid varies; for the MacBook, it’s NIS 20 (about $5). It’s higher for bigger ticket items.
So, let’s say you bid 20 times to win that MacBook. You’ll pay NIS 20 x 20 or NIS 400 ($105). Then you pay the price of the unit (NIS 299 or $80), plus shipping of NIS 75 ($20) written in tiny letters on a separate page you have to click to see). Your total cost: NIS 774 ($206). That’s still way less than the retail price of NIS 8,899 ($2,400) at Apple’s Tel Aviv outlet, but it’s not the NIS 299 that was initially advertised.
And what if you don’t win? Then you lose the NIS 400 entirely. That’s how Free.co.il can offer such low prices.
Still, if you place your bids right (and there is a whole section on “bidding strategies” on the site), and you’re willing to stick with it and spend hours aggressively placing last minute bets, you will win eventually (hopefully for an item you actually want). So, even if you wind up spending NIS 2,000 bidding on several items before winning one that’s valued at NIS 10,000, you’re still getting the product at an 80% discount.
There’s one other trick Free.co.il has up its digital sleeve. If two people bid the same amount, both bids are canceled. That means that the highest “unique” bid wins. You can see who’s placing what bids, their initials and even where they live, but not the amount they’re spending. So you never really know if your bid is being burned or not.
Free.co.il is entirely in Hebrew, but there’s a thriving market of overseas competitors. Is this a good business? Investors seem to think so. One of Free.co.il’s rivals, Swoopo, has raised an astonishing $14 million.
It’s certainly compelling – who wouldn’t want an iPhone at a tenth of the retail price – though I don’t think I’d have the stomach for it (I usually chicken out and click the “Buy it Now” button on eBay). And it peeves me that Free.co.il buries those hefty shipping fees in hard-to-find small print – it makes me wonder what else are they hiding.
But if you’re willing to play by the rules, and you enjoy the thrill of the game, Free.co.il could the 21st century version of “The Price is Right.” All we need now is our own Israeli version of Bob Barker.
Hello Tel Aviv
Filed under: Business, General, Israeliness, Life, Medical Breakthroughs
First it was Hello Jerusalem, now it’s Hello Tel Aviv. The Gap is opening its flagship Tel Aviv store next Sunday, February 21, in the city’s Azrieli Center.
Now the company’s trademark navy blue shopping bags will be swinging from shoppers’ arms in Tel Aviv, after they roam the aisles of the quintessentially American chain, checking out Long & Lean and Real Straight jeans and hoodies spread out over 650 square meters of inventory.
They’re planning a major media blitz, but I’m not too worried about whether Tel Aviv shoppers will check out their very own Gap. After all, Jerusalem’s Mamilla store is considered a huge success, given that Israel is a great example of a small market in which the Gap can achieve “enormous successes,” which is what Ron Young, the Gap’s senior vice president of international strategic alliances, told TheMarker last summer.
After Tel Aviv comes a Herzliya marina store in March, and then Eilat in June. According to the company’s website, Banana Republic stores will follow next year. And prior to that, Jerusalem has the first Israeli H&M store opening on March 11, another banner day for the capital city.
Just to fill you in a bit more, the Gap franchise in Israel is held by Elbit Trade and Retail. Elbit Trade also holds the rights in Israel to the Spanish chain Mango. And who is Elbit? They’re a wholly owned subsidiary of Elbit Imaging Ltd., which was known for its medical imaging devices until 1998, when it was acquired by Europe-Israel Ltd., a company known for its real estate business. Now Elbit focuses on shopping and entertainment malls and venture capital investments, as well as its image guided treatment products.
It’s an interesting mix, but clearly they’re doing something right.
Safed coffee factory runs on coffee
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, Environment, General, Technology
Coffee-inspired energy is only becoming increasingly fashionable. Back in June, a team at the University of Leeds experimented with the same process used for roasting coffee beans as a method of releasing energy from a host of other crops, including wheat straw and certain types of grasses. The study concluded that this method has the potential boost the energy output of biomass power by up to 20%.
But what about using coffee itself? The concept of using coffee to obtain energy is hardly a new one, and here in Israel, where new energy sources are always an especially welcome discovery, coffee – especially the iconic Elite-brand instant – is a way of life.
Recently, Strauss Elite’s 1956-inaugurated instant coffee plant in Safed implemented a series of green measures, at an estimated expenditure of NIS 10 million, Haaretz reports. The measures include extending the height of the mill’s smokestack and upgrading filtration systems, with estimated efficiency increases resulting from the measures expected to pay for themselves within four years. But perhaps the most remarkable measure is that now the factory uses coffee regs to power itself:
At the beginning of this week, large furnaces were installed to burn the coffee beans at high temperatures to create steam. According to Strauss vice president Pini Kamari, the move will cut the factory’s shale consumption in half.
“This creates a direct connection between being ‘green’ and being efficient,” Kamari explained. “Motivation for the change came from our desire to cut costs, reducing energy costs and transportation costs for both the shale and the waste. At the same time, emissions will be much lower, both from the smokestacks and from the trucks [formerly needed to bring in fuel]. We will create less waste and need to bury less garbage. Noise will also be reduced.”
Image of Israeli coffee beans courtesy gkamin from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.
Technology for the Birds
Filed under: Business, Environment, General, Israeliness, Technology, Travel
It almost sounds like a joke – something out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon, maybe. But “bird strikes” are apparently a serious problem for pilots and planes. That’s, apparently, what happened to a U.S. Airways jet that was forced to land in the Hudson River after taking off New York’s LaGuardia Airport minutes before. Nobody was hurt – amazingly – but in the battle between birds and pilots, humans haven’t always fared so well against avians. Luckily, Israel is on the case, working on ways to keep birds and planes away from each other!
According to experts, bird strikes – where a bird gets sucked into a jet’s engine, discombobulating the avionics (check out the photo of what an engine hit by birds looks like) – is not all that rare, and has plagued planes and even rockets. While not common in civilian aviation, bird strikes appear to be a near-plague for military flyers, according to this website which lists dozens of crashes, ejections, and even deaths of pilots due to bird strikes (at least two Israeli pilot deaths are listed). 
Because Israel is on the main north-south migratory route for birds, the IDF has been very concerned with bird strikes. According to the “Bird Strike Committee Proceedings” for 2002,
the Israeli Air Force (IAF) has focused attention in bird strike prevention on collisions between aircraft and migrating birds during low-level flight operations. Only in the last 2 years has the IAF begun to tackle the problem of reducing bird-aircraft collisions at or near airfields. A dramatic shift in thinking has led the IAF to initiate complete wildlife control programs at its airbases, featuring the employment of border collies and wildlife control officers to help eliminate the risk of wildlife collisions within the control zone (CTR) of each airfield.
As a crucial component of this program, the IAF has initiated major changes in habitat management at airfields, eliminating agricultural initiatives and undergoing large-scale modifications in airfield maintenance practices. Additionally, the IAF has altered flight and ground operations where possible to attenuate the risk imposed by birds and has coordinated efforts within various departments at each airbase to address bird strike control issues. Awareness and the resolve to eliminate wildlife hazards at its airfields are key features to the IAF’s new directive on bird strike prevention. Though still in its infancy, the IAF’s new wildlife control program has already shown dramatic improvements in the reduction of bird strike hazards at airbases.
My friends at the Fisher Institute in Herzliya have been on this problem as well, and have developed some new technology to ensure that both planes and birds can share the skies, that I hope to be able to report more about soon.
Hope for Israeli Startups
Filed under: Business, General, Medical Breakthroughs, Technology, design
Tivo, Skype, Java, and other technologies that we now wonder how we did without – all of them were first displayed and demonstrated at the world’s premier hi-tech show, DEMO. Being able to present at DEMO is a prestigious accomplishment, and in order to get in, you’ve got to have something special.
This year, there are ten slots for Israeli companies at DEMO ‘09, and the lucky companies chosen to present this year – out of 300 applicants! – will be announced this Monday in Tel Aviv (yours truly has been invited to check it out). Those going on to the show (this year being held in Palm Springs, March 1-3) are practically guaranteed a shot at the big time (over the past four years, DEMO presenters have raised well over $2.5 billion dollars after the show). Previous Israeli entrants have included, among others, G.ho.st, which gives users a “personal computer” of their own from any terminal in the world, with it’s own operating system and software, and Vringo, which pioneered the business of video ringtones. Attending the show are dozens of computer businesses pros and journalists, as well as angels and VC’s.
Click to see video about DEMO \'09
Speaking of money: Is there any out there for startups anymore? Haven’t all the investors been scared off, after losing their shirts on the stock market and almost every other investment vehicle? Some have, sure. But in recent conversations with a whole raft of entrepreneurs, I’m hearing that there is money out there – and that because of the crisis, they may even have an easier time getting some. With stocks now considered suspect, investors are looking for places to put their money – and startups with good ideas and a good model are more attractive than ever, because they’re seen as a better bet than speculative stocks right now. Of course, that could just be the “happy face” talk they’re putting on to impress me (or reassure themselves) – but there’s a definite logic there. Besides, there’s this company, which just a couple of months ago netted $19 million in VC money. Not a bad take during a recession – or a boom, for that matter!
Foto Friday – Israel Then and Now
Filed under: A New Reality, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life
In honor of Israel’s 60th anniversary, the World Zionist Organization put together a traveling exhibition of holographic panels about Israeli achievements, past and future.
ISRAEL21c animated the images into a slide show, and while we can’t hope to reproduce the holograms (produced by Israeli innovator MagInk), the overlaid images still convey the powerful message about six decades of Israeli advancements in technology, healthcare, education and democracy.
Game On!
Intense, heated arguments, where opponents vociferously defend their preferred choice; hats, t-shirts, stickers, and buttons announcing to the world whose side you’re on; anthems, loyalty oaths, and in-depth analyses in the paper, on TV, the web, and “talking heads” who get paid to blather on incessantly, trying to figure out who’s going to win. And, finally, the big showdown, the final battle in which one contender tastes the thrill of victory – or the agony of the feet (I m
ean defeat!).
It could be only one of two things: Sports – or politics. Both inspire feelings of glory, contempt, anger, and, of course, hope. The correlation between the two is an interesting example of how opposites meet. Politics are in the front of the newspaper and sports in the back, so you could essentially read the paper from right to left and get the same information – which is good for us Hebrew readers. But that’s another subject.
Here’s another example of the correlation between sports and politics – with a Hebrew (Israeli) connection, no less. On election night, a hologram of CNN political correspondent Jessica Yellin was beamed into the network’s New York newsroom, making it seem as if she were standing there giving her report. But she wasn’t in New York – she was in Chicago covering the celebration of Barack Obama’s election by residents of his hometown. And the technology that made this possible was developed by a company based in Kfar Saba, called SportVU – which designed the technology for broadcasters of sporting events!
According to CNN, network officials saw the system in action at soccer games in Europe, and decided it would work for them on election night. SportVu has been used extensively in Germany, Spain and Italy, company marketing director Shimon Katzubes told me in a recent interview. It’s easy to run, too, Katzubes says. “All we need are three stationary cameras – no panning is necessary – to take in the live action, and the SportVU applications do the rest.” The fact that a system developed for sporting events could be deployed so easily to broadcast an election may just be coincidental – technology is supposed to be multitaskable. But what does the correlation between sports and politics mean for voters? That we should be looking at elections as spectator sports? Something to think about for 2012, I guess.
Googling for Flu
Fewer Americans may get the flu this year – thanks to technology developed in Israel. Notice I didn’t say “medicine” or “vaccine,” but technology – in the form of Google Flu Trends (http://www.google.org/flutrends/), developed at the Google research and development center in Tel Aviv.
Google Trends lets you see how often a search term is entered into the Google “omnibox” across various regions of the world, and in various languages. The idea behind Flu Trends is to give people in specific regions a heads up on whether their area is set to be invaded by flu bugs. An uptick in searches for flu-related information, like symptoms and medications, would indicate that the disease is beginning to take hold in a particular area, according to Google’s blog (http://tinyurl.com/5lxh9v).
“Our team found that certain aggregated search queries tend to be very common during flu season each year. We compared these aggregated queries against data provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and we found that there’s a very close relationship between the frequency of these search queries and the number of people who are experiencing flu-like symptoms each week. As a result, if we tally each day’s flu-related search queries, we can estimate how many people have a flu-like illness,” the blog says.
While most people don’t even realize that Google has a presence in Israel, the fact is the company has two development centers here – one of the few countries in the world to be graced with such an honor, and an indication of how highly Google values Israeli researchers and engineers. Yoelle Mark, heado of Google’s Haifa R&D center (the other one is in Tel Aviv), who spoke at a recent Google conference here. Trends was largely developed in Haifa.
But it turns out that Google has been not only using made in Israel tech – its whole identity could be considered to have been created here, according to this article in Haaretz. Artist Ruth Kedar designed the famous Google logo ten years ago while she was at Stanford in California. According to Kedar, the logo’s simple look is deceptive, hiding its complex layers. “Someone who sees the logo for the first time doesn’t necessarily need to absorb all the layers and considerations behind every decision – it’s better for him to discover something new every time,” the article quotes here as saying.
“It somewhat amuses me to turn on the computer and look at the logo I designed. But it also fills me with pride,” she said. “When you say Google to people today, they immediately see the colorful logo.”
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