Here is the short film documenting the event, created by Yaron Yarkoni. Enjoy.

Last week saw the close of the selection phase for IBM’s SmartCamp competition, and the ten start-ups that will move on to the semi-finals have been selected. The semi-final will be held on June 24^th, and the five start-ups most fitting IBM’s SmartPlanet initiative will compete for the right to represent Israel in the finals in November.

Joining the already announced Gnrgy and Panoramic Power are the following 8 start-ups:

TruMedia specializes in analyzing videos of human crowds, and transmitting multimedia content which fit the analyzed footage. Applications can include displaying commercials which address a particular audience, marketing networks who identify specific parameters for potential buyers, or information kiosks.

Greenlet Technologies is a start-up which specializes in energy consumption solutions for electrical products. Greenlet’s solution, which makes use of hardware which easily plugs into the electrical grid and various electrical products, combines analysis features of the amount of energy consumed by each product, the ability to control electrical flow into that device and a web-based application and dedicated databases which can be used to determine the correct energy consumption profiles for each device.

The fifth entry in the Israeli semi-finals is Joliper, a start-up which sets out to turn the cell phone into a mobile security center, and provides the ability to connect, through the mobile device, to cameras located anywhere in the world, and view their feed, no matter where you are, all through the cellular carrier network.

Xsights, is a start-up which provides image analysis technology and prides itself on its ability to identify any static object a cell phone camera is pointed at. That is, assuming one of Xsights users has already taken a picture of that object before and created a database link between that object (such as a url for a cinema) and the object picture he or she inputer (such as the façade of that cinema).

Blabbers is a company which provides a service that adds an extra layer of data linked to standard web-page addresses. Users will be able to add annotations, charts and even dedicated applications that will be linked to specific web-pages, and these add-ons will be available to other Blabbers users who surf to the same URL.

The start-up Fooducate offers an iPhone application which scans bar-codes on food products, connects to an external database which contains alternative information to that which the manufacturer provides on the packaging. The information provided includes alternative suggestions, which, according to Fooducate personnel, provide a healthier alternative.

eViglio is a start-up which provides a platform for emergency information dispersion. eViglio specializes in mass messaging a large crowd with urgent messages, according to geographic and demographic sects, and make use of a plethora of communication methods such as SMS, the internet and other mass communication channels.

Lastly, Way Better, is dedicating its efforts to improve modern cities’ transportation. Through a unique algorithm, the entrepreneurs promise to analyze the need for passenger transport and the transportation options available in the field, and identify the most efficient, and cheapest options available at any given moment. The company’s products, which are aimed at large public and private organization, large transport services and private clients who require transport services, strive to locate efficient and cheap “rides” from one location to another, all the while finding the most suitable driver and vehicle for the situation at hand, and connecting them with the passanger who will make the best use of the route.

If you’re involved in the start-up field, and active in work in the Israeli start-up relam, or working with a promising Israeli start-up, you are hereby invited to register to the upcoming SmarCamp event, where you will get some networking done, experience the five finalists’ presentations and hear lectures by IBM guests.

Translated by Itai Rosenbaum

Google has decided to host a series of developer events around the world, and the developers in Israel were selected to be among the first to be invited to the search giant’s

The Israeli DevFest event will be held on June 29^th, and will focus on web development technologies relating to Google Chrom – extensions and HTML5 applications.

The event will be opened by Brian Rakowski, Google Chrome’s chieft product manager, and Prof. Yossi Matias, CEO of the Israeli R&D center. Amongst the lecturers at the event, attendees will be able to hear Chrome development experts such as Pavel Feldman, Alex Russel and Ian Fette – all Google engineers and product managers, who presented lectures at Google’s last I/O convention in London.

A special segment will be dedicated towards webpage developers and will delve deep into topics relating to HTML5 compatibility and more. This series of lectures will be spearheaded by Jeremy Moskovich, a software engineer on the Chrome team from the Israeli R&D center who specializes in website compatability.

The event’s close will see a Hackthon led by Andrei Popescu, a senior engineer from Google’s London Chrome team, where participants will be able to get hands on experience working with Google’s new web-development technologies – so don’t forget your laptops.

The event is free to attend, but spots are limited – so sign up quickly.

Translated by Itai Rosenbaum

I believe most of you have heard of Start-Up Nation, the American best seller which describes the economic miracle Israel has caused in the world, and tells the story the local high-tech industry and start-ups.

Start-Up Nation, which was written by Dan Sensor and Saul Singer tries to explain how Israel has managed – with only a few million residents, without any natural resources, immense diplomatic difficulties, and a history rife with military problems – to start more successful start-ups than established financial empires such as China, Japan, Canada or the U.K.

When we began planning the SmartCamp Israel event, Start-Up Nation was always in the background. The immense success of the book in the US served to elevate the bar for us, and for the Israeli start-ups who will make it to the final.

The winning start-up is a representative of all of us in Ireland, and must try and defeat all the start-ups from all around the world, in the spirit of Start-Up Nation. We need to continue and show that our entrepreneurs are better than the English, the French and the rest of the world.

I am happy to announce that Saul Singer has decided to assist us, and agreed to speak in SmarCamp’s final event, to be held on June 24^th, at the IBM House in Petach Tikva.

In this special event, where the judges will witness short presentations by the fiva finalists, there will also be held a special lecture by Dr. Guruduth Banavar, VP and CTO of IBM’s Global Public Sector.

If you’re involved in the start-up field, and active in work in the Israeli start-up relam, or working with a promising Israeli start-up, you are hereby invited to register to the upcoming SmarCamp event, where you will get some networking done, experience the five finalists’ presentations and hear lectures by IBM Israel’s CEO Meir Neissenson, Dr. Banaar and Mr. Singer.

Translated by Itai Rosenbaum

IBM’s SmartCamp’s initial elimination phase is set to end this week, and over the next couple of weeks I will publish the 10 Israeli start-ups who were found fitting to move on to the next stage in the international competition.

To remind you, the competition’s semi-final will be held in Israel, on June 24^th, where 5 start-ups will be selected at those who most fit with IBM’s SmartPlanet Vision. The five finalists will earn a string of meetings with 25 Israeli mentors, and one of those will represent Israel in the global SmartCamp competition in November. There, the start-up will compete for the world title against the winning start-ups from Boston, London, Stockholm, San Francisco, Dublin and more.

We’ve already announced Panoramic Power as one of the select companies, and now I am proud to present to you Tel-Aviv’s Gnrgy, which develops hardware and software products for central self-management of the home and business electric grid.

The company offers “smart” outlets which allow savings in existing product’s energy use, charging stations for electric vehicles as well as software solutions for managing conventional and alternative energy sources. All this works as an additive solution to Smart Grid – the future electric grid proposed by the energy and infrastructure companies.

According to Gnrgy personnel, the company already offers five products, and that’s after being founded only six months ago. Today, the company employs over ten employees, and is conducting first activity in Israel, the US, China and Mexico. It’s already declared sale of thousands of units. Likewise, Gnrgy has announced field tests at several big electric companies around the world, and several large-scale organizations.

Gnrgy’s energy management grid is “plug and play” and is composed of a wireless grid management unit and a collection of smart outlets who communicate wirelessly. The network allows parallel management of all the local energy sources by both an end user and the electric companu.

According to Gnrgy, the system allows full shut down of all energy consumers during the night, or ad-hoc, use of alternative energy sources during heavy-load times, charging electric vehicles in preferred times, adjusting energy consumption programs based on the consumers habits, routing energy from various sources, real time analytics and more.

Translated by Itai Rosenbaum

Dr. Guruth Banavar

Dr. Guruduth Banavar, VP and CTO of IBM’s Global Public Sector, is set to be the guest of honor and keynote speaker in SmartCamp Israel’s final event. Part of Dr. Banavar’s job at IBM includes looking over the most advanced technologies IBM can supply public organizations around the world, and he focuses mainly on IBM’s Smarter Cities Initiatives.

I cannot think of a more important man in the technological realm to meet with the five finalists who are working on their own Smarter Planet solutions.

Those who manage to come to SmarCamp’s final event, as well as the mentors, judges, venture capital personnel and other guests, could learn from Dr. Banavar how the blue giants operated against the world’s largest organizations, who whish to build SmartPlanet and Smarter Cities-compatible computer solutions, and how a small Israeli start-up solution can fit in the giant framework set to affect millions of people around the world.

It would do well to mention that before he was appointed VP and CTO of the Global Public Sector, Dr. Banacar was IBM Research’s Indian branch’s Director of Development, and founded IBM’s research lab in Bangalore.

In the coming days we will continue to publish the names of those start-ups who have moved on to the next stage of SmartCamp, out of which the five finalists will be selected.

In the meanwhile, we have opened registration for the event, for guests who are not competing. If you planning on attending on June 24^th, hear the experts, watch the presentations and do some networking – we invite you to sign up. Just remember to write STARTUPMANIA coupon in the application form.

Translated by Itai Rosenbaum

I am proud to

We are officially revealing two of the tracks, which are finalized, and in the next couple of days we will reveal a third, with 5 more lectures, which promises to be very interesting.

In light of the massive demand, we have moved the convention, for the third time, and it is now scheduled to take place at the Intercontinental Hotel in Tel Aviv, open source is definitely getting its dues.

The general assembly will be visited by minister Miki Eitan, the politician most associated with open source, and in particular with the computing transition processes the Israeli government is going through at the moment. Recently, minister Eitan was appointed chairman of steering committee of the “Mimshal Zamin” initiative, so the future of open source in the Israeli public realm will be very much affected by his future actions.

Following minister Eitan’s opening statements, we will host Benny Schneider, one of the founders of ComRant, who will present Red Hat’s new virtualization solution, based on ComRant technology. I know that nearly every single technology-oriented person arriving at the convention is interested in Schneider’s new RHEV solution.

We will also be holding a panel in the general assembly, in which computing managers, infrastructure managers, development managers and content providers will participate and we will focus on one of the most important issues for organizations which use open source in Israel – the question of support. Who in Israel provides support for open source products? Which products? What is the level of support one can get? And how each IT manager improvises a right solution for themselves.

Following the assembly we will split into three tracks, and I believe each of the conference attendees will be able to find the most interesting lecture for him or herself. We will have lectures on development for Android, Ruby on Rails, Django, Red Hat Optimization, working with noSQL, PostgreSQL, free firewall for MySQL, open source web-video solutions, legal issues with open source and even cloud-based open source solutions.

For those of you who are interested in the OPEN convention, I suggest you sign up to the convention’s RSS Feed, so you can hear the latest news, as they come in.

Translated by Itai Rosenbaum

I am pleased to reveal the first ten mentors that have joined the SmartCamp Israel project, and would like to thank all the venture capital executives who volunteered to help the project and provide advice to those start-up founders that reach the finals.

The list of mentors can be found here, and is updated almost daily.

The mentor locating process is still not finished, and the finished list will include 25 experienced mentors, who can assist the start-ups in a wide range of topics from raising capital, technological development, business development, legal advice and international marketing.

We will also recruit 5 mentors who represent large companies who work in the same sect as the one the final five start-ups work in, and can explain to the start-up personnel customer requirements in those fields.

I’m sure each of the five Israeli finalists will present his or her future project before many of the key people in Israel that will help them reach their goal as a company.

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If you are working on a technological start-up that makes use of a sensor and can be incorporated into IBM’s SmartPlanet agenda and don’t want to miss out on the opurtunity to be a part of SmartCamp, we are still interviewing potential candidates.

The next set of interviews will be held next wednesday, May 5th, at People & Computers. If you wish to take part in it, please fill out the “Contact Us” form at the SmartCamp website.

Translated by Itai Rosenbaum

I am proud to announce that IBM has chosen the People & Computers group, StartUpMania and the chief science office as its Israeli partners in its IBM Global Entrepreneur Initiative – a program to locate new, brilliant start-ups who wish to patcitipate in the Smarter Planet initiative. The initiative is a global one, in which IBM strives to make life on Earth more convenient, cleaner, healthier and less costly, all through usage of countless data-mining technologies, data analysis and applications that will integrate into all major computing solutions that run our lives.

Within the Smarter Planet initiative, IBM will run a start-up competition called SmartCamp in seven major cities around the world: Tel Aviv, Boston, London, San Francisco, Paris, Dublin and Stockholm. Through this contest we will try and locate the Israeli start-ups most fitting to join the larger framework of Smarter Planet solutions IBM will offer around the world.

Which start-up solutions fit this program?

The simple answer is – lots. It doesn’t matter if you’re developing photo identification technologies, water saving, electricity consumption, location-based applications or special sensors which are installed under sidewalks to measure pedestrian traffic. Any information applications that can add to the general picture fits within the Smarter Planet framework.

Take into account that every year, consumers waste over 170 billion kilowatts an hour due to inadequate information on global electricity consumption, or that traffic jams in the US are costing the American economy about $78 billion, and this last bit of information does not include costs resulting from air pollution damages. Any technology which thinks outside the box can ease the problem or possibly even fix it.

IBM believes that a piece of software that can collect all this information from all over the planet, and use this information for analysis, improvement and directing both consumers and providers in real time, can make a significant change to the global landscape in how the world is run, as well as many other fields.

If you have an idea, technology or product that can help this large-scoped initiative, or integrate in one of the points on the way, and are a young company (under 3 years) you are eligible to compete within SmartCamp.

Click here to view the embedded video.

When is all of this happening?

Sign-ups for the Israeli phase of SmartCamp are now underway, and you are welcomed to make contact with IBM Israel’s GTU to see if you are indeed eligible for the competition.

The Israeli finals will be held on June 24^th, in a special event attended by stand-out investors, potential strategic partners, managers at IBM, and senior managers of the organizations which require the Smarter Planet solutions.

If you are sensor-developing start-up, or one with advanced analytical capabilities or applications based on real-time information – these are your potential customers: ranging from large government organization, to large companies in the transportation industry, medicine, energy, TelCo and countless other sects. The five companies that will reach the finals will work with 25 senior mentors IBM has recruited to help as much as humanely possible.

On the day of the event, and after the finalists’ presentation, the winning start-up will be crowned, and they will enter an 3-month work period with IBM experts towards the global phase of the competition to be held in Dublin on November. There, the Israeli winner will compete against the winning start-ups from the six other cities chosen for the program.

The company who will win the final in Dublin will be crowned “World’s Smartest Start-Up”. Of course, my end-goal in all this is to have the company who wins the gloabl title be an Israeli start-up. The competition may be stiff, but I believe we have a pretty good shot.

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So, if you are technological entrepreneurs, and think you may have something to offer the program, now or in the future, we are all set to do this. if you run or are set to run to operate an environmental information gathering sensor (video, sound, location, temperature and more) or preform advanced analysis on data with innovative application possibilities on existing software products then you most likely fit the bill.

Please input your prelimanery contact information if you are interested in hearing more details and entering the program, and we will get you in touch with IBM’s start-up locating team.

It should be noted that the collaboration is completely free and will provide plenty of exposure and business opportunities.

I hope to see you on that finalist stage in June 24^th, and may the best Israeli start-up win.

These days, in addition to working on SmartPilot2, I’m working on OPEN2010, a convention on open-source applications for organizations.

When working on such a convention, one must focus on attributes such as cluster control and operation, virtualization solutions, open telco solutions, development environments and various infrastructure products. These are the topics that are most interesting to IT managers in large organizations, and each will receive it’s own dedicated program.

This time, however, I’ve opened two additional tracks: OPEN GOV, which will deal with open-source solutions in the public sect; and another, which may be very interesting to our readers, called OPEN STARTUP. This last one will focus on those special scenarios that go along with start-ups based on open-source and are aimed at the open source world.

There is an abundance of open-source start-ups, in Israel as well as around the world. Some of our local examples include Cultura, Tersus and Boxee which are doing very well, as well as Comranet which was sold to Redhat. Redhat itself, as well as JBoss, MySQL and even Magento (which just raised about $20 million) were all once open-source start-ups. The commercial destinations of many of these start-ups are very similar to regular start-ups, but the operational method of these start-ups, and their relationship with the community, clientele, potential buyers and even investors is very unique.

In the OPEN STARTUP assembly, I will try and give a platform to venture capital investors who invest in open-source start-ups, and tell of their willingness to invest in a project that offers a solution using someone else’s code, as well as release its own, probably expensive, code to others. We’ll also be talking with start-up founders who are not afraid of opening their code to the competition, even if some malevolent agency is willing to copy their product and rerelease it under a different name. Lastly, we’ll be hearing from a legal expert that will explain the legal and future ramification of basing a start-up on open source. Naturally, we’ll also be hearing from a development managers of successful start-ups that will relate the pros and cons of basing development resources on open and free software products.

Personally, I’m having a hard time understanding how you can even start a new start-up without using some form of existing open source models. But I also can’t wrap my head around what exactly is allowed and what it isn’t. Especially seeing how my start-up is using open-source technologies and then selling a closed service through the cloud. It must be mentioned that the large gallery of licensing options that has developed around the open-source world isn’t really helping me make heads and tails of things.

I can only assume the OPEN STARTUP lectures will be very interesting for entrepreneurs, investors and development personnel who want to get a new product off the ground. If you happen to have an offer for an amazing twenty minute lecture and wish to be granted a stage – I’d be happy to hear about it.

Translated by Itai Rosenbaum