Archive for 'Uncategorized'
Le Web: Jack Dorsey says he’ll give away Square devices for free
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Jack Dorsey, the creator of Twitter and co-founder of a new payments startup called Square, said the company will give away its credit card-swiping devices for free at the Le Web conference in Paris today. (See a Q&A with Dorsey here.) It’s a move that should help overcome the biggest hurdle for the startup, and probably help make its money back if it can take a small share of all payments it manages. (more…)
GarageGeeks & Tel Aviv Technology Night Life
Shots below are from the GarageGeeks party last night in the Holon Industrial Zone and post tech bash festivities in Tel Aviv (we headed to Whiskey Go Go’s, a hot spot in the city for late night clubbing). Two other Bay Area technology exec spottings on-site.
GarargeGeeks is a physical and virtual space for innovative and creative people to introduce, network, expose, create, brainstorm, innovate and build. People that take part in the activities come from different disciplines such as electronics, software, mechanical, art, design, music, hacking and gaming.
They meet monthly, exchange creative ideas, listen to music and ‘hang out.’ The setting? A garage. Rock music plays. Video games light up a screen on the wall. An old fashioned grill is lit and people throw chicken and burgers on and eat in the midst of barbecue smoke. They have a DJ when someone doesn’t bring an instrument or two. There’s even an old old tractor outside.
In addition to the latest and greatest technology execs and techies in greater Tel Aviv, a handful of Americans who are in town from Kinnernet and the Marker conference showed up: Robert Goldberg, Steve Katz, Gary Bolles, Barak Berkowitz, Peter Hirshberg, Dan Dubno, Jeff Pulver, etc.
I met the CTO of British Telecom who was a hoot. The group was eclectic. In addition to meeting the founder of a competitor to Pandora, I also met the head of Israel’s national broadcasting and someone who specializes in technology for bad breath.
Israel’s Marker Conference
I’m just outside Tel Aviv at the annual Marker Conference, hosted and produced by Israeli legend Yossi Vardi.
It’s a two day event, but only one is in English. Some say that the event comprises the second tier companies who didn’t make the DEMO cut. A sarcastic and highly American-centric view, and after being here for a couple of hours, I disagree. The hallway conversations and panel discussion is equally interesting to American technology conferences and if anything, the perspective is more global. Thankfully.
And the music and coffee is much better.
Aside from the blogging team I’m here with (Scoble, Lacy, Newmark, Brooks, Shultz, Mernit, Lasica, Redderson, Saperstein, etc), I ran into a number of industry buds from the states, including Robert Scoble and Peter Hirshberg. I also heard that Barak Berkowitz is here although I haven’t seen him yet.
Yossi interviews Eastman Kodak’s VP of Business Development Eliezer Lubitch, Robert Scoble, Microsoft’s Moshe Lichtman, and Wunderman’s David Sable.
Yossi asks the panel, “where is the industry going from a product and a revenue perspective?”
Eliezer Lubitch thinks it will all be IP home based entertainment. He says, “today, we have digital content coming to our house, but we are not yet on an IP-based network. In 2008, we’ll see homes moving to an IP network. When your flat panel TV is going to be attached to an IP network, this is where you’ll start to see a huge viral effect happen and new models will evolve. The consumer will be in the driver’s seat. You will start to see more digital displays in your house that will all be interconnected. Your surround sound will also be connected this way.”
Robert thinks it will all be about mobile. He gives us examples of how he uses his mobile devices to upload video and audio in real time as he travels both in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. He also talks about how his son accesses information that he needs for a school report in real time from his handheld device, a revolution in only one generation.
Corporate VP of Microsoft and head of the Israel R&D Group’s Moshe Lichtman speaks up. He looks at the behavior of business, consumers and advertisers. “Starting with consumers, let’s look at some stats from 2006. There were 450 billion watching television and only 60 billion on the Internet. In Israel, its twice as high. One thing we can take away from this kind of statistic, is that we’re visually driven.”
The panel also talks about the growth of gaming, HDTV and where digital is going. Yossi asks about the proportion of the digital business to the non-digital business. Says Lichtman, “between 70+% of people who make a purchase on the web go to the web to look first. 60% of the traffic going to the web to find out more about credit cards comes from direct mail.
This is a multi-channel environment. It’s very clear that nothing is going away tomorrow. Magazines, mail and TV are not going away – they’re just changing. It’s more about changing the way they work together for maximum efficiency.”
David Sable, Vice Chairman and COO of Wunderman says, “in the beginning of search, you went to a portal because that’s all we knew how to do. We had this linear progression to find the information that we needed. Today, we’re moving away from a linear model. Finding it is not the issue anymore. The question is: have I optimized the place where you end up? Our job is to optimize the experience once you get to the place you want to be and to make your transactions as easy as possible.”
There will be a revolution. Ultimately we’ll get to a place where we’ll get paid to be contacted. At the end of the day, the bulk should come to us.
The Three Hour Tour
I’m in a crowded van with nine other Bay Area bloggers doing the technology tour – visionary to visionary, company to company.
Anytime you’re in a bus or van for too long, you start to feel like its a journey into the deep dark hole rather than the hour or two drive that it really is. Craig Newmark says, “we’re on board for the three hour tour, the three hour tour.” Only would it really feel like the “three hour tour” if we were actually singing Giligan’s theme song, no?
And so I downloaded it using the Sierra Wireless AirCard 875U and minutes later, we had the theme song playing from my HP laptop. Yet, blogging this is really a bit outdated, no? No doubt Robert Scoble has already twittered this ten minutes ago. domain owner parental blocker . dns information domain dns server . ip tech info . i cloud . web archive . website down apache web server . word cloud
Quick pix: Conference land in Israel
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Israel: Be here now
Should I worry that I can’t really remember yesterday that well, and that today passed in a blur?
Israel is a country that in some ways seems so familiar to me (that NY Jewish thing) and in other ways so completely mysterious and new (an amazing melting pot of different backgrounds, cultures, histories, agendas). I find myself trying to make sense of it all, but not really having enough context to feel like any of my assumptions are true.
What I do know so far: There is something about both the landscape and the people that is compelling. For a place that is basically hot, dry and arid, there is much beauty. The sea, the desert, the cities have amazing visual richness.JD and I walked through Jaffa yesterday and it was beautiful–broken in some places, refurbished in others, and very interesting and diverse.
And the people here are compelling as well. I’ve been meeting tons of amazingly smart high tech folks, entrepreneurs, and bloggers–but also people from outside my little trans-continental bubble, like Ish Khalidi , a Bedouin and former shepard who is the Vice Consult in San Francisco at the Israeli consulate, who is also on this trip, and the student activists from One Voice who met with me, Craig and JD today (more on that later).
Today was The Marker COM.Vention, then back to the hotel, then falafels and soda at the Garage Geek party in Holon, again thanks to Yossi Vardi.
Some pictures of what I’ve seen so far: politika . domain owner parental blocker . dns information . where is domain hosted . domain dns server . ip analysis . i cloud . web archive website down . apache web server . word cloud
TravelingGeeks: Israel through the eyes of first timers
This weeks has been a whirlwind of interesting, absurd and hysterical moments as the TravelingGeeks have bumped around the country and the tech scene in Israel. It has been exhausting and amazing to watch these two worlds that I live in come together in such a unique fashion. politika cote d’ivoire . I definitely have more thoughtful posts rolling around in my brain – for now here are some Snackbytes to whet your appetite:
- Picture a mini van with all of us smushed together three across with laptops open, evdo cards humming while twitters ricocheted amongst ourselves and folks and around the world
- Craig’s intro to twitter by Scoble- perfect medium for a guy with the coolest driest sense of humor of anyone I know
- Lunch with local women bloggers at Nanoushka -gossiping about the difference between Israeli geek guys and SF geek guys – yeah – I know you are dieing to hear all about it – but this Lunch was strictly off the record
- Amazing afternoon coffee stop with Ishmael Khaldi’s family – where I got to be an interpreter between Jeff’s wife Eileen and Ish’s mother and sister that was both touching and endearing.
- The graciousness of Scoble – he has an amazing ability to focus and listen for hours – and always knows just the right questions to ask – never get to really see him in action till now
- The sheer enthusiasm of Sarah, not to mention our all too brief shopping trip in Neveh Zedek [tel aviv’s hip little Soho-esque neighborhood] Glad it was not longer or more pocketbook damage would have ensued.
- The photography skills of Renee, Cathy’s wit and Susan’s joy at meeting Israeli women bloggers
Just got word that the day in Jerusalem was, as expected – amazing and emotional. I am sure there will be some heartfelt posts to come. One more day to go..tomorrow should bring some more interesting experiences – including a meeting at Rogozin HS and the Peres Center for Peace. parental blocker . where is domain hosted domain dns server ip analysis i cloud . web archive website down apache web server . word cloud
Completely Lame
exhaustion from three countries in a week’s time and too late of a saturday night conspired to make me feel lousy today. fever, pukey. apache web server . website down . i cloud where is domain hosted air distance calculator it wasn’t pretty. so my apologies for no brilliant post about the day’s events. because my day events, well, you just don’t want to read about them- trust me!
big day tomorrow so i’m hoping a day of rest helps!
btw- one cultural observation: no one in this hotel has heard of ginger ale and soda crackers!
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My Israel transition day
You know that whole thing about six degrees of separation?
Well, here in Israel that’s more like .025 degrees.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I awoke this morning to a rather startling discovery. I had lost my voice.
But this wasn’t one of those raspy, Lauren Bacall-sounding vocal issues, this was a flat out, phone rang, I picked it up, tried to speak and nothing came out. Not even a squeak. This was most distressing because I was due to speak on a panel at The Marker COM.vention in a few hours time.
What does this have to do with degrees of separation?
On further thought it’s more like one degree of separation meets a strange game of telephone.
I called Brad Reddersen, the key point person for the TravelingGeek squad, to tell him of my dilemma and say that I’d be arriving at the conference a bit late as I wanted to try and salvage some voice for the panel.
He offered words of comfort, said I should call if I needed him to do anything, and that he’d see me later.
Thanks to a lengthy steam in the shower, buckets of hot tea with honey and a half pack of throat lozenges, I regained enough vocal capacity to head for the conference. And after a 20 minute taxi drive through the muggy morning I arrived.
That’s when it began. parental blocker dns information . where is domain hosted domain dns server ip analysis i cloud web archive website down . apache web server . word cloud .
My new roommate: Craig Newmark
When I got into the Kinnernet conference in Israel I found out that we were all going to have roommates so that everyone could fit into the lake-side resort here. I was a little disappointed, after all I had just spent the last few trips rooming with Rocky Barbanica and I was looking forward to having a room all to myself.
But when I opened the door and found Craig Newmark, founder of Craig’s List, sitting there on his computer I knew that this would be an interesting weekend. Craig’s List is the top classified ad site on the Internet and is how I got my job at NEC.
And interesting it has remained. I’m at the Kinnernet camp which is a small, exclusive, elitist, by invitation only, affair that’s just been a thrill a minute (it’s done by Yossi Vardi, the investor who’s kids started ICQ back in 1996). How did I get invited? Yossi proudly shows me around and says “this is the guy who had the first ICQ Web site.”
At Kinnernet there are robots running around, people flying weird contraptions (one of the world’s top remote control helicopter pilots is here), weird devices of all kinds, and TONS of geeks and entrepreneurs.
But back to Craig. He’s got such a great sense of humor. cote d’ivoire . His business card reads “customer service representative.”
I’ve been giving him heck for not being on Twitter. He joined this morning and said “now everyone can see how boring I am.”
Valleywag, last night, asked me to ask him if he’s gotten rich yet. He answered “if I really had a lot of money would I be rooming with Scoble?”
Hey!
Anyway, some of our fun here at Kinnernet is up on my Qik account. The wifi here is very shaky.
For more info on Kinnernet, there are quite a few people blogging and stuff. Check out Google’s Blog Search for Kinnernet. ip tech info . i cloud . domain abuse website down . apache web server word cloud
