SOMEWHAT FRANK

IsraelWebTour 2009: This Week in Silicon Valley

It's true, SOMEWHAT FRANK was once named a "must know" blog for any Israeli startup as I have covered a number of them in the past. Every year a dozen or so, of these startups tour Silicon Valley as part of the IsraelWebTour, an event organized by the California Israel Chamber of Commerce.

Last year, I was able to attend the demo day and I was impressed with a number of the Israeli companies and shared this video. It's that time of the year again and I wanted to highlight the 10 Israeli Web startups participating in the 2009 tour (listed in alphabetical order) below:

Conduit
Conduit provides website syndication solutions for web publishers by creating a direct, always-on connection between publishers and subscribers. More than 180,000 publishers have joined the Conduit network worldwide, including Fox News, Lufthansa, Major League Baseball, Greenpeace, TechCrunch, Softonic and organizations in 180 countries around the globe.

ContextIn
ContextIn's proven proprietary multi-lingual semantic algorithms significantly increase relevancy and targeting to deliver the most valuable, targeted advertising inventory and traffic quality. Our algorithms have been proven to maximize both relevancy and monetization for Ad Networks, Advertisers and Publishers alike for increased ROI.

EyeView Digital,
EyeView is transforming online conversion through the use of rich-media content combining compelling rich-media content with a world-first rich-media conversion platform. The result is a proven and significant increase your website’s conversion rates. EyeView’s solution is ideal for a wide variety of websites and online industries such as: Gaming, Online Forex, Travel, Credit Cards, community, Software and eCommerce

Footbo
Footbo is the place for football/soccer lovers world-wide. Headquartered in London, UK, Footbo is the leading international social media platform with an exclusive focus on soccer. It combines the concept of social networking with the world of soccer to provide fans with a one-stop platform for all their soccer needs.

SemantiNet
Semantinet is pioneering the development of “Top Down” Semantic Web technologies. SemantiNet’s Headup Semantic Web plugin, currently available as an addon for Mozilla's Firefox browser, presents you with textual and rich media content related to the objects and terms it identifies on the pages you browse. Headup not only identifies these objects but has a basic understanding of the relationships between them.

SundaySky
SundaySky enables publishers to quickly, easily and cost-effectively infuse their website with video clips. SundaySky’s DynamicVideo™ Platform allows mass generation of always up-to-date video content, while leveraging existing content repositories. Videos are personalized for each user, interactive, and are intricately linked the site the user is viewing, even if that site is totally dynamic.

Superfish
Superfish has developed a unique, first of it’s kind, 3D object recognition engine to bring high-accuracy visual matching, browsing, and comparison into the world of search engines. The company’s unique IP puts together machine vision, machine learning and advanced search algorithms to allow for users to intuitively find similar objects visually.

SweetIM
SweetIM is focused on delivering fun content and self-expression tools. SweetIM products are intended to allow users to upgrade their social engagement, by offering fun content and an add-on for IM, webmail, and social networks that is easy to use. Through these tools users are sending daily over 6M flash animations, games and video to each other.

Triond
Triond offers a new approach for user generated content. Triond publishes, distributes and monetizes users' content over a network of niche websites. This way users get to focus on the content creating process, while leveraging the service in order to get more readership, recognition and revenue than they would if they were to publish individually.

WorkLight
WorkLight enables businesses to reach customers, employees and partners securely in the places they frequent. The flagship product, WorkLight Application Platform, securely syndicates enterprise applications in a multitude of consumer online channels, such as widgets, social networks, personalized homepages, iPhone applications, blogs and RSS feeds.

This year I will not be in attendance but it looks like another great set of startups. Good luck, safe travels and enjoy the tour!

Glue Connects You With Friends On Sites Visited

Conversations are being sparked in a number of places on the Web these days from Twitter to Facebook to blogs. AdaptiveBlue's product called Glue takes a different approach by enabling conversations and sharing on sites that you visit via the browser. Glue is an browser plugin that appears on your current page to show you friends who looked at the same things and what they thought. It brings your social network to the content pages that you visit rather than integrating directly into various web sites.

Glue 4.2 Overview from AdaptiveBlue on Vimeo.

Check out the quick video (above) and GetGlue to try it out if you haven't already as it just launched a new release. The new release contains the following (as described by Glue):

1. Connected Conversations: Glue enables web wide contextual conversations around books, movies, music and other everyday things. Now users can discuss the things they like with their friends regardless of which sites they all visit.
2. Smart Recommendations: Glue automatically aggregates friends activity from across the web so that users can instantly see what books, music, and movies their friends like the most. Simply by using Glue, users implicitly recommend things to their friends and benefit from friends recommendations.
3. Web Wide Top Lists: Glue features web wide top lists of popular books, music, movies and other everyday things. These lists are calculated based on the aggregate weekly activity of all Glue users. The lists reveal what things users are paying attention to as they browse the web.

Also you can connect and spread the Glue love a number of different ways on the Web.

SocialVibe: Get Sponsors For Your Cause

SocialVibe allows you to "Get Sponsored" by your favorite brands on your social profiles while earning points for the reward of your choice. Though based in Los Angeles but I got a chance to talk with Sarah Townsend from SocialVibe for a quick impromptu interview at South By Southwest Interactive. Check out episode 74 of SOMEWHAT FRANK as we talk about SocialVibe and how it can be used for social good.

Exploring Tsavo Media

Exploring Tsavo Media from Frank Gruber on Vimeo.

I was in Santa Monica last month so I decided to stop by new startup called Tsavo Media. Tsavo Media was founded by former AOL colleague and Userplane founder and CEO, Mike Jones. He assembled a super team including Mike Macadaan (Twiistup founder and former AOL colleague), Sean Percival, Ryan Sit and Steve Schepke, among others. Tsavo Media has been funded by American Capital and has been gobbling up a number of niche content sites including NibbleDish along with creating niche sites like KidGlue, Manolith and Twirlit. With the launch of Daymix, a search experience which creates the "perfect page" for any given search term, we may be seeing the beginning of a relevancy engine. So what are they trying to do? According to Tsavo:

"These are blogs that get to know you.  Entertain, inform and serve you. They’re good for consumers, and great for advertisers."

Curious to find out more details about these blog that appear to learn from your actions to better entertain you, I recently talked to Mike Jones and Mike Macadaan as I toured the Tsavo Media office space in Santa Monica, California. Check out SOMEWHAT FRANK video episode 68 (above) as go behind the scenes at Tsavo Media. 

Web 2.0 Not Quite Dead: Go2Web20.net Re-Launches

The Web 2.0 era was quite the Renaissance of the online world as human powered sites and services flocked online. Many have tried to define Web 2.0 through videos, blog posts and photos and techmemes. Keeping track of the Web 2.0 explosion of startup products and services is like a full-time addiction and one of the best company directory resources on the Web is Go2Web20.net. Go2Web20.net, was created by my friends Orli Yakuel and Eyal Shahar, and offers a visually stimulating logo driven interface to search and discover the companies of the Web 2.0 era. Check out the latest and greatest as Go2Web20.net just revamped and relaunched.