Archive for 'Israel'
Zoran Enriches Our Digital World
We’re currently at Zoran’s headquarters in Haifi, roughly an hour and a half from Tel Aviv. Zoran develop chips. They’re not as well known in the states even though they have offices in Boston and Sunnyvale. English to Armenian . Global offices include Taiwan, China, India, Japan, Korea, Germany, England and Canada.
The name is intriguing. Zoran means silicon in Hebrew, but it is also means excellence in Chinese and is a common male’s name in Yugoslavia.
Zoron’s VP of Business Development Isaac Shenberg talks to us about Zoran’s history, its current markets and where they’re heading in the future. Their revenue exceeded 700 million in 2007.
He claims Zoran was the oldest start up that went public (13 years). In 1992, 100% of their market was in digital cameras, then they moved into digital imaging and home theatre in a box by 2003. They’re now starting to integrate into mobile devices.
Today, the red laser DVD market is a $170 million market worldwide. Zoran owns 26% of that market and is currently #2 in the world. Zoran remains the number provider of chips in digital cameras — they do everything except for censors. Other growing markets for them include laser printing, mobile phones, blue laser DVD, digital TV and cameras.
We saw a prototype of a chip that they’re working on that can bring consumers HDTV quality movies inside a tiny box, a box you’d be able to stream high quality videos to at a price everyone can afford. Blueray. Think of it as a mini slingbox on steroids.
We were also introduced to COACH, their real-time lens distortion correction process. They sell this to OEMs who can decide which feature to use depending on their market and need. Most camera manufacturers are integrating this, except for Canon who is the ‘last fortress to get on board,’ says Shenberg with a laugh.
In digital photography, there are issues with images that have strong contrast. Zoran is apparently the only player who can perform Zlight in real-time. COACH can restore natural details in shadows and recover highlights in the bright areas of an image. They’re also doing things with noise distortion and facial recognition.
Israel: Start up energy to spare
In some ways, spending this week in israel is overwhelming; there’s just so much to absorb and assimilate, and I have so little context for it all. Sephardic traditions, Arab traditions, European traditions–I have no sense how they bump up against one another and how the big dose of American culture mixes it all up.
On another level, the tech world here–especially the web 2.0 corner–seems amazingly familiar.The passionate entrepreneurs, problem-solving engineers, and thoughtful VCs I’m meeting are all familar with Silicon Valley culture and building applications on a global scale (have to, Israel is such a small country).
Some of the start-ups teams that I’ve met that have me particularly energized include Pandora competitor and personalized music service meemix, where CEO Gil Shlang, Chief Scientist Dr. Ricardo Tarrasch and some kick ass musicologists/editors seem to be going at it the right way
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Also impressed with the folks at Work Light, where marketing guy Yonni Harif is building interest in a lightweight and secure application layer that can manage document access and security from within the Facebook environment (and all sorts of other cool things, including secure RSS).
And of course my friend and mobile entrepreneur Eran Ahronson is inspiring..nothing like building one company after another..inspiring to see someone stay the course and be smart about it.
In other words, there is great start up energy here, with lots of eager developers, free floating VCs and all the talent to support that. (And are there many women-owned companies, especially technical ones? Hate to say it, but the answers seems to be…not.)
Note: Coming from Silicon Valley, it is interesting to see how knowledgeable everyone is
about our little bubble and how much the geeks we’re meeting adore and respect Scoble. For them, he’s both what the aspire to be and the man on the street–and he’s just as gracious and engaged as can be, another inspiring lesson in focus. domain owner dns information . where is domain hosted . domain dns server . ip tech info i cloud web archive . website down . apache web server word cloud . English to Armenian . Brasov Restosundsecge . peta dunia satelit
Travelling Geeks: Visiting Zoran, Haifa
Our geeky roadshow is at Zoran, a Haifa/Sunnyvale company that does digital media chips and processing worldwide. They’re moving into mobile co-processors, laster printing processors, etc.
This company has been at the forefront, they say, of multimedia processing…with everything. I am pretty hardwade indifferent, but the new chip they just showed us that can be used to download movies o to USB sticks and then play anywhere look pretty impressive….
As Craig says, these devices will allow streaming over the net to the box and the chip and stream right into the TV–The chip/system is a prototype, they say, but going into release by 2009 (watch for CES!
Susan sez: Yeah, this is kind of geeky for my tastes, but it’s another step toward streaming video over the next from a home or centralized server..and that is cool (think Slingbox).
Zoran is also showing some other cool tools…Coach 10 DCP Zlight is a new technology that helps correct for light distortion; it’s in the market with camera partners…cool stuff…And of course every geek in the room is drooling over the amazing tools this company is building–correctors for blurry photos, new sources for HD within cameras, all sorts of emablers… cote d’ivoire . politika . domain owner . where is domain hosted . domain dns server . ip tech info . i cloud web archive . website down apache web server word cloud Brasov .
Off to Israel…
I’m off to Israel to interview a bunch of companies and geeks there. Sorry for the slow blogging, I’ve been having too much fun on Twitter and on FriendFeed. A lot of you have been writing saying that you miss the longer, more thoughtful Scoble so I’ll work on that this next week from Israel. My blog’s redesign will turn on the week I get back, too, on the 21st or so. Over on FastCompany.tv we’ll have the first part of an interesting look into Rackspace up today. Watch my Qik channel for video dispatches from Israel when I can get on wifi. First stop in Israel? The Kinnernet event which is hosted by Yossi Vardi.
Some things I’m thinking about?
1. The Friend Divide. Much of the new Web 2.0 software really is lame until you get at least 50 friends onto it. air distance calculator What does that mean and how do we make the first experience people have much better (it really sucks, you should sign up for all these new services with a clean account and compare to when you have a bunch of friends). Have we created a new, nasty, world where if you don’t have friends you simply won’t have access to interesting experiences or, even, news?
2. “The 250.” Valleywag derides the early adopter world, saying that only 250 people care about all this new stuff that gets reported on TechMeme. Even if Valleywag’s numbers are off (millions read TechCrunch, for instance) they do have a point. I just spoke to my dad’s Kiwanis Club and many of the people there hadn’t heard of Twitter, Qik, Flickr, or even, gasp, blogs. Most of the world is even further behind — there are five billion people who’ve never owned a computer, for instance. I’m thinking about what that all means and what it means I should do with my blog going forward.
3. Flickr video. Too short. Or long enough? Discuss in 90 seconds or less. 
Anyway, have fun. I’ll see you in economy squished into a seat trying to do my email. word cloud . Brasov Restosundsecge .
