DLD06: Tech from Israel

Jan 24, 2006 Second session of day 2 of DLD06. Running notes: With investor and entrepreneur Yossi Vardi co-hosting the conference, the program could not lack a session on tech from Israel (and rightly so: some of the hottest Internet technologies of today, such as IM and VoIP, came out of there - anyone remembers ICQ and Vocaltec?).

First up is Yanir Farber, president of Browzwear, who has developed a real-time 3D system targeted at teenage girls to design their own clothes and accessories and share them with their friends (still in beta).

Then Oded Vardi (Yossi's son) of Superna Systems, a digital-home-solution company - they aim at creating one single interface to control various appliances and systems in the home. Of course he has harsh words about the existing approaches to "smart homes" (proprietary solutions, expensive and complex technologies, hence penetration close to zero). Why is Superna's approach different? "There are new lifestyles that require new paradigms: more consumer electronics in the house; more networking; standardization - WiFi, Zigbee, etc". The Superna approach is to use a hardware bridge (a "control box") controlling all the devices; standard wireless/LAN networks to connect them; and simpler software (through wizards) and interface.

Noam Levavi is the CEO of YCD Multimedia. He demos the "first virtual SMS juke-box": send an SMS message to a specific number with the code of the song you want to listen, and the song starts to play on the juke-box screen. Operator Orange in Israel is already selling this service (the "juke-boxes" are located in coffee shops etc, and the fee will show up as an additional line on the cell phone bill). So what YCD does is develop tech for targeted delivery of media. He gives another example where the YCD system allows the management of audio and video content broadcast in bank branches or in clothes shops.

The founder of Gizmoz Eyal Gever talks about avatars: Gizmoz has developed animated 3D "talking headz" that can be plugged into instant messengers (the most widely used are supported, including Yahoo's, AIM, MSN, GoogleTalk and Skype) or videogames "to add emotions to the communication". The "headz" are quite funny, and are animated by text-to-speech or VoIP. The avatars work in real time, as the user talks or writes. And "headz" can be created based on a user's picture. Eyal also shows how they could be applied to television, to create for example satyrical programs in real-time or avatar-hosted newscasts. And of course headz will show up in cell-phone messaging and video-podcasts. Neat.