Israel Archives - Page 2 of 2

Israeli Startup: Summer Lets You Easily Look Up Anyone On A Web Page

Summer, a new Israeli startup, has designed a way to easily look up the people who’s names you come across on web pages. Using their Google Chrome extension (coming soon to Safari & Firefox), Summer uses a semantic web engine that crawls the web site you’re on and then allows you to look up those mentioned by name on the page through over 70 different sources.

For example let’s take Mark Cuban for instance. Now we realize a lot of websites may link key figures names’ to previously published articles on their site, however when you use Summer, the plugin will quickly check ESPN, the New York Times and several other sources for information about Mark Cuban. When you click on Cuban’s name in an article on nibletz.com a side wall will pop up giving you information on Mark Cuban in a biography format, other story links and links to people that Cuban is somehow connected with. As the startup continues to grow, more and more information will be added.

Ohad Frankfurt, Lior Degani, Shlomi Babluki and Oz Katz have been friends for nine years and they are all co-founders of this unique new startup.

We got a chance to talk with Summer. Check out our interview below:

Israeli Startup: Managed For Mimi Provides Content Solutions For Your Company Brand INTERVIEW

So you’ve got your own company and everyone around you has a blog. This isn’t a new situation for today’s business owner. More and more businesses are adding blogs with actual content as part of their web presence. Content can be anything from a CEO’s daily ramblings, to content related to their business type.

More often then not, you’ll find great travel blog entries on hotel and airfare booking sites. If your favorite insurance agency has a blog they may talk about events they are going to sponsor and insurance needs. If you run a hunting and fishing store your blog may contain your personal hunting and fishing exploits or tips on the best gear to buy.

No matter what your business is, blogging and social media are some of the best ways to market yourself and your company.

The problem faced by most business owners though is that they are too busy to write a blog every week or every month, much less everyday. That’s where startups like “Managed For Mimi” come in. This Israeli startup helps provide, aggregate and churn out branded content for others’ sites.

We got a chance to find out all about this lucrative new startup, growing up in the Startup Nation. Check out our interview with “Managed For Mimi” below, and no we didn’t find out who Mimi is.

Israeli Startup: GetTaxi Plans New York Expansion

New York City has reached out to all of the “mobile hailing” applications like Uber, Haillo and GetTaxi to submit proposals to become the official taxi cab hailing app for New Yorks millions of taxi cab users per week.

New York has an enormous amount of taxi cabs that are all sanctioned and controlled by New York’s Taxi and Limousine Commission. If you’ve been to New York you may have noted that the only cabs you see (and there are thousands of them) are yellow, they all run the same fares and have the same features.

Until now there was only one way to get a taxi cab in New York and that’s by going out on the side of the street and flagging one down. You can’t call the New York TLC and request a cab at a certain address. If you want to do that you need to use a sedan or car service, which can cost a lot more.

GetTaxi told nibletz.com in an email that the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission is specifically soliciting proposals for a mobile hailing app. They will only select one, and GetTaxi plans to be that app.

“The smartphone revolution is about to change the way we travel as profoundly as it has changed the way we communicate,” said Jing Wang Herman, CEO of GetTaxi USA and the proud holder of a New York City taxi license. “GetTaxi will take the guesswork out of the NYC taxi experience, making it easier to find a cab, share a ride and pay the fare. We are excited to help New York City improve mobility by better integrating taxis into the transportation ecosystem.”

Here’s how GetTaxi works:

· Find a cab: The GetTaxi App will provide a snapshot of transportation options, helping passengers see if their best option is a street hail, digital hail or booking a car.

· Pay any way you want: GetTaxi will be payment agnostic, enabling passengers to pay in any and every way possible, from a stored credit card to a digital wallet, through a monthly family plan to a direct company account, or even through alternative payment networks such as Dwolla or PayPal.

· Share a ride and split the fare: GetTaxi will introduce a simple ride-sharing feature that allows passengers to identify and join a shared ride, using GetTaxi to easily split the bill at the conclusion of the ride.

· Find an accessible or hybrid vehicle: With GetTaxi, New Yorkers will be able to track the location of special vehicles, making it easier to find the one you need.

· Earn loyalty points: Earn points every time you use GetTaxi that are redeemable for free rides and merchandise.

· Choose your language: GetTaxi will be available in New York in 16 languages, catering to the city’s diverse population and ensuring that it’s easy for tourists to get around as well.

· Rate your driver: Let your driver know they provided good service with a 5 rating.

· Find lost property: Because GetTaxi knows exactly which car you were in, we can quickly alert the driver that the passenger has left an item in the taxi.

GetTaxi has announced exciting partnerships with Des Moines Iowa based Dwolla for payment processing, and with HopStop which will allow GetTaxi users to combine their commute with more than one transportation method. Using HopStop users will be able to coordinate their cab ride with buses, subways and other transportation available in New York.

Linkage:

Find out more about GetTaxi here at gettaxi.com

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Israeli Startup: Drippler A Must Have App For All Android Users VIDEO INTERVIEW

We got to talk to the team behind the must have Android app called Drippler. Drippler has already seen 1.5 million downloads in the Google Play Store and has a 4.8 rating.

Drippler is a unique mobile app that provides all kinds of information about your Android phone. Once you download the free app from the Google Play Store it detects which Android phone or tablet that you have. From there it aggregates all the information about your phone.

Drippler finds information from manufacturer websites, blogs, app review sites, tech sites and forums and consolidates it into one easy readable stream for you. Now you’ll never be behind when a firmware update comes out or a new app comes out that works better on your device. You can cut through the clutter of the 8 million Android blogs out there (ok there’s not really 800 Android blogs out there, but there’s a lot).

Drippler blends a unique mix of all the relevant information about the phone or tablet that you have the app installed on. If you have multiple Android devices, Drippler will show you just the information for the device you have the app on. So say you have a Samsung Galaxy S II and an Asus Transformer Prime. Drippler on your Galaxy S II will give you Galaxy S II information and Drippler on your Asus Transformer Prime will given you info on that particular tablet.

Check out our interview with the founder below:

Linkage:

Download Drippler from the Google Play Store here:

See more of our coverage from TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012

Nibletz is on a nationwide sneaker-strapped startup road show, find out more here

Plan Incredible Dates With Israeli Startup Dateini

Now you can plan incredible dates by using Israeli startup Dateini.

Dateini allows you to create an account. From there you select the kind of date you want to go on, is it movies, entertainment, wild or romantic? There are several different options for your date.

Dateini than finds three components of your date, dinner, an activity and an after activity place for a drink. If you’re looking for a subdued, intimate evening it may recommend a nice candle lit dinner, walk in the park and then a night cap at a soft piano bar.

One of the best parts of Dateini is after it selects the date for you, it plans out a walking route so you don’t even need to drive from place to place.

You can save your date settings for future use and if you would like you can share your dates as well.

Dateini solves a big problem that many couples have and that is “what to do”. The UI is intuitive and sharp looking and the aggregation is quick. You can also select to have your dates include coupons, deals and discounts to look like a rockstar and stay on a budget.

Dateini was showing off their app at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 this week as part of the Israel Pavillion.

Check out our video with Dateini, below:

Israeli Startup: YouHoo Location Based Social Networking For Friends And Strangers

(photo: pcmag)

An Israeli startup called YouHoo was in the Israeli pavilion at startup alley at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012. They have a new spin on social networking, and in particular,location based or proximity based social networking.

As you’ll see in the video below, YouHoo takes your location and polls the people closest to you. It then turns around and shows them to you on your Android powered smartphone. Your actual friends are in pink, your mutual friends are in blue and strangers are in white.

Founder Ohad Assoulin talked to us for a while about his new social network and how he hopes to turn groups of strangers into groups of friends.

YouHoo would make a great icebreaker for trips to the beach, and other locations where a lot of young people are congregating.

Israel is becoming a hotspot for social networking startups, earlier this week we featured a 15 year old named Tal Hoffman from Israel and his new social network based on interests called iTimdi.

Take YouHoo for a spin, sign up for their beta below and watch the video:

Linkage:

More of our TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 coverage here

We’re on a sneaker-strapped, nationwide startup road trip please check it out here

Israeli Startup: iTimdi A Social Network For Interests Founded By A 15 Year Old

15 year old Tal Hoffman is the Israeli founder of new social network iTimdi

Last month we brought you the story of 15 year old Jackson Gariety who’s startup #hashtraffic debuted at Startup Weekend Portland.

Now we’ve got the story of another 15 year old entrepreneur, Tal Hoffmen thousand of miles away in Israel. In his own words he describes his startup as: “iTimdi is an interests based social network. That means it lets you both create new social connections based on your interests & keep your previous ones”.

This is actually Hoffman’s second startup. His first was a new media reviews site which he did “just for fun”.

We got a few minutes between classes, and building his startup to talk with Hoffman about an interest focused social network and how a 15 year old launches a startup.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

Unfortunately, I’m the only founder, though I’m looking for one more technical co-founder. My name is Tal Hoffman, 15 y/o from Haifa, Israel. I’m a WEB programmer in PHP, and know a bit ASP & C sharp.

So you’re 15 years old? How does a 15 year old up and decide to start a social network?

Well, as a tech lover and programmer I thought about new ideas for new possible big websites. The fact I started to get bored of Facebook just accelerated all of this. At this point, I started to think about gaps Facebook and its competitors don’t cover and came up with this.

What do your parents think of this startup of yours?

My parents support my, though they aren’t really tech guys. The costs aren’t big so far, and the fact I do programming work for someone gives me some money to cover these little costs.

Is this your first startup?

This is my first startup, though I once built a reviews site from zero for fun matters.

So describe for our readers how an interest based social network works?

Well, interests based social network, specifically – iTimdi – lets you choose your interests.
Then, you’ll be able to post updates, share collections, create events, search for friends, etc on each interest’s page. This way, you’ll get the best opportunity to make new connections & manage them successfully.

You’re based in Israel, will itimdi come out in Israel first or are you targeting the US first?

Even though I’m based in Israel, iTimdi, from the very first day, targets to the international market, specifically, to the US. With Israel being the “startup nation”, it has some of the world’s best startups and entrepreneurship scene. The problem is that Israel is a very small country with only 7 million citizens. Therefore, iTimdi is targeted to the international community.

What problem does iTimdi solve?

Although the main social networks today provide their users ways to preserve their general connections, they don’t offer any efficient ways to get to know new ones. iTimdi does both due to a simple interface.

What is your secret sauce?

iTimdi’s secret sauce is the combination of meeting new friends, preserving old-general connections & customizable privacy preferences.

What other interests do you have outside of developing itimdi?

Besides programming I love rock music (including the best: RHCP, Eric Clapton & Led Zeppelin), drums (I’m a drummer…) and playing basketball.

What’s your plan for after high school?

My biggest plan is to keep being involved in iTimdi and making it to one of the biggest social websites players in the field.

What’s next for itimdi?

Hopefully, after releasing the Beta – release the final version to the public and work on making it the leader in helping people really manage great, interesting social life.

How can people find out more about you and itimdi?

At the official website: http://www.itimdi.com.
For any more questions feel free to email to contact@itimdi.com.

Linkage:

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Israeli Startup: Brayola All Bras Are Not Created Equally Video Interview

Here’s something you probably didn’t think I would say, I learned a lot about boobies at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012. Well, not so much boobies as bras. See as a dude, I’ve been wearing the same Starter brand ankle socks and Hanes brand boxers since high school (now a whopping 20 years), no not the same actual pairs but those are the brands I get. Women don’t have it quite as easy.

Now if you’ve ever been with the lady in your life on a trip to Victoria’s Secret you probably thought, man there are a lot of bras and panties in here. Well there are, but there are even more bras out in the world. How many? Well Brayola’s database of bras has over 5000 different bras in it.

I know, you’re probably thinking database of bras? Well Brayola founder Orit Hashay probably knows more about bras than Victoria herself. Hashay explained that she was in the mall in Israel looking for some really nice bras. She found two that she liked that were about $60 USD a piece, so she bought them. Well after wearing them a couple of times each they started to stretch and expand. She had to stop wearing these expensive bras. This got her frustrated.

Harshay didn’t understand why it had to be so hard to find bras. Well her startup Brayola, solves that problem.

In the video at the bottom of the post, she takes us on a step by step walk through of how Brayola works.

To summarize: A woman signs up for a free Brayola account. Once the account is established she enters in the brand, type and size of her favorite bras. Harshay is quick to point out that the user needs to enter the size of the bras not her bras size. As Harshay found out, all bras are not created equally. A 34D at Victoria’s Secret could be a totally different size at Fredericks of Hollywood, or any of the other hundred or more bras vendors out there.

Through data base information and crowd sourcing Harshay and Brayola have created a database that can account for different bras sizes and tell you what your size would be in another brand at another store, based on the size of your favorite bras.

There are several options for women and their bras and Brayola accounts for them all. It helps the woman select new bras based on her preferences. She can then store here favorite bras in her virtual door under categories for example sexy, sports bras, wire bras etc. You can choose to buy one at a time, or empty out your entire set of drawers.

When you’re ready to buy, Brayola takes you to the vendor that has that particular bras and voila, new bras on the way in the mail and you didn’t even need to get fitted.

Check out the video below. Harshay is very enthusiastic about Brayola and she knows a lot about bras. She taught me a lot today about bras (not boobies).

See more of our TechCrunch Disrupt coverage here

We’re on a sneaker strapped nationwide startup road trip, find out more here!

Israeli Startup: Jinni Is Powering Big National Sites With Pandora Like Movie Engine

You may not have heard of Yosi Glick, the founder of Israeli startup Jinni, but one things for sure you will probably agree with his fundamental principles behind video discovery.

Glick talks in this story with Bloombgerg’s Cliff Edwards about how most video (movie) discovery/recommendation sites have things all wrong. Edwards uses the example of the movie The Usual Suspects. When you watch The Usual Suspects on most video platforms it’s going to recommend Se7en. While both could be characterized as crime thrillers, the audience for Usual Suspects is hardly the audience for Se7en.

Glick’s startup Jinni has put a lot more into discovery when it comes to movies. They provide in-depth algorithms and matching, making it more like a Pandora for movies. Jinni has created an “entertainment genome” that weighs thousands of different parameters to serve up like minded suggestions for movie viewers.

In addition to offering a much more thorough recommendation engine for movie viewers, LG Electronics invested $5 million into Jinni for voice recognition software. The voice recognition software taps into the platform where a user could say “I want to watch a Harrison Ford action movie” and it would serve up Indiana Jones or Star Wars.

LG and Jinni are mum on whether the technology has gone into this next round of smart tvs that the Korean manufacturer is putting out.

They must be doing something right because some of the top companies in the world have employed Jinni’s technology. Best Buy’s movie rental site uses Jinni and Microsoft entered into a deal last September to incorporate Jinni’s software into the Xbox 360 service.

Linkage:

Put Jinni to your own test here at their website

Source: Bloomberg

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else”

“Appreciate” Is Your Personal Android App Store

An Israeli startup called Triapodi has introduced a new kind of Android app store into the Google Play Store. Appreciate is part app discovery app, part aggregator, and also your personal Android app store.

Appreciate has already seen hundreds of thousands of downloads. People are loving the fact that Appreciate can make app recommendations based on the apps you currently have downloaded as well as apps that your friends have downloaded. To achieve this, Appreciate syncs with your Facebook account and other like users across the Appreciate network.

The app, launched in February, has garnered a lot of downloads and a lot of users because of the relevance in their app recommendations. This is due to their “Appreciate Relevance Engine” technology that scores apps on relevance to the user at a number of different levels.

“As we evolved Appreciate as a platform and improved the AI, we were able to make a complete departure from how other marketplace apps delivered recommendations to their users,” said Amir Maor, CEO of Triapodi. “We know our customer. We understand that generic lists of the market’s most popular apps do not meet the needs of the Android community, and we designed our latest version of Appreciate specifically to give our users 100% personalized and relevant app discovery for the first time. It is all about giving our customers exactly what they need.”

The current version of appreciate has these features:

* Connect to Facebook and see what apps your friends discover
* Get personal application recommendations based on what YOU like
* View for every app how well it fits with your personal taste
* Send applications directly to your friends’ device to install

* Get community updates on hot apps people discovered
* Manage your apps
* Gain quick access through app lists
* Share your favorite apps with other users and Facebook friends
* Widget with quick access to daily recommendations

It’s no secret, the despite the fact that Google’s primary business is search, discovery in the Google Play store is like searching for a needle in a haystack. That’s where you’ll come to appreciate, appreciate (see what we did there). Unlike some third party app stores, Appreciate functions within it’s own app and has it’s unique functionality to deliver the best possible app choices from the Google Play Store.

Try it out today.

Download Link at Google Play

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Israeli Startup: “Pops” Makes Android Notifications Pop

Remember when downloading ringtones was the hottest thing on the planet? Then after that ringback tones became popular. Well at one time Ringtones was a $7 billion dollar industry world wide. Now, it’s less than a billion. They just went out of style I guess.

Israeli startups have been really good at harnessing the power of the mobile device. Recently we featured SellARing which is an Israeli company that is selling the ringback tone as advertising. Rather than listen to 10 seconds of ringing, you get to hear an ad, get a discount and engage.

This Israeli startup called “Pops” is making notifications more interesting by bringing all kinds of customizable content to notifications. Pops allows you to customize any kind of Android notification that you could possibly have and use content you like to pop up, wake your phone up and alert you of your new message, Gtalk, Text, email or a host of other notifications.

When we talked with the co-founder he told us in addition to major brands like Rovio Mobile’s “Angry Birds”, they are in negotiations with record companies to produce customized “Pops” from users favorite artists.

Pops is free in the Google Play store. Their monetization is through a customized app store where you pick your pops content. A lot of the “pops” are free but there are some premium “pops” available now.

Check out the video below:

Linkage:

Find Pops in the Google Play Store here

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Israel Startup: SellARing Delivers Ads Over Ringback Tones INTERVIEW

While some may shrug at the thought of another ad network, an Israeli startup has created a way of advertising that some may find less obtrusive than push ads in notification bars and even banner ads on their favorite free apps. Sellaring utilizes the time that you’re waiting for another party to answer the phone to deliver up to a 10 second ad.

Now before you write it off, think about it for a second, that time you’re waiting for your party to answer the phone you can’t do anything else on your phone. If you do you’re multitasking and the ad would be reduced to background noise anyway so it’s really a better place to deliver an advertising message. There are over 300 advertisers who definitely think this is a good idea.

When you put SellAring next to other alternative forms of advertising you may not think it’s such a bad idea. SellAring also features a call to action at the end of the call so if you hear about a great deal in the ad while you’re waiting for your other party to answer, you can quickly act on that ad, or choose to ignore it. The choice is yours.

SellARing’s founder found out some interesting things about the ringback tone experience before creating SellARing. First off he found that the actual time the phone rings on the callers end isn’t an actual reflection of how long it takes for the other person to answer. You can actually test this theory at home by calling yourself from another phone. You’ll notice that in some cases even 5 seconds is wasted before the call initiates, even if the caller is available to answer on the first ring.

More after the break
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Israeli Startup Story About QT Recruit A Bad April Fool’s Joke

An Israeli startup called QTRecruit is looking to put job recruiters out of business, or at least obsolete. QTRecruit was founded by Nir Atsman and Yaron Cohen and evolved from a military project they implemented as part of the Israeli Defense Forces, 8200 unit.

The military project that was the backbone for QTRecruit was designed to automatically decide where in the Israeli army they should place new recruits.

“but the system spiders the Internet, like Google, gathering information about relevant candidates for a client’s open positions. In parallel, the client continuously feeds criteria into the system about the best kinds of candidates. Using some soon-to-be-patented artificial intelligence technologies and machine learning algorithms that we developed, the system learns over time how to find better candidates.” Yaron told website jobmob.co.il about how QTRecruit works.

More after the break
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