We are not nearly as innovative as we think we are. That, at least, is the view of Tyler Cowen, a professor of economics at George Mason university and the author of The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All The Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History,Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better, a book which argues that we are failing to invent technology (like flushing toilets) that radically changes the world. → Read More
Appsfire, the startup behind the eponymous mobile app discovery and sharing platform, is today launching a totally new website and iPhone app, vastly improving its usefulness. Because Apple’s iTunes ratings and Genius recommendations only travel so far, really.
The company, which has recently raised a seed round from a number of French angel investors, makes it a lot easier for iPhone owners to browse, discover and share great apps, not an easy feat anymore if you consider that there’s more than 200,000 of those little software programs on sale in the App Store nowadays. → Read More
Apparently musician Yoni Bloch is, besides a really nice guy, something of a celebrity here in Israel. He’s also very much a geek, and the combination of both passions led to a startup called Interlude. The central part of the business can be essentially summarized as ‘choose your own adventure’ technology for online videos.
During an interview I had with Bloch and his partner yesterday, and today at Techonomy, they showed off what the technology is capable of by way of a custom-produced interactive music video. Unfortunately, it isn’t online yet, so you’ll have to take my word for it: very impressive stuff. → Read More
Fiddme, publicly launching in beta today, is a social network for foodies that love to share their ‘food experiences’ with the world, which I think is code for notably good or bad dishes. The service, which comes in the form of both a Web and an iPhone application, lets people share their favorite dishes in restaurants or other places by taking a picture of said food and adding a short caption, where it is being consumed and even recipes.
This can prove to be a fun and valuable service for documenting and sharing specific food recommendations rather than suggestions or reviews of local eateries as a whole. → Read More
Questions about the meaning of life? Stuck with an overweight dilemma? Sure, you could reach out to the masses who are following you on Twitter or Facebook, but what are the chances of getting answers only from the few people whose opinions you actually care about? And what if it concerns a private matter?
Emailing a specific group of people could do the trick … but then again, it could make the problem-solving process even more complex and long-winded.
Enter SircleIt, which lets you group your Facebook contacts into lists of people based on pre- or self-defined categories (e.g. ‘beer buddies’, ‘Giants fans’, ‘male chauvinist pigs’, etc.) and enables you to address your questions or share your problems with those people and those people only, which is especially useful if you wanna get few but relevant answers from your subsets of your social graph, or if it concerns a delicate matter that can’t be thrown out into the open just like that. → Read More
Such a silly name for such an amazing product. Those were my thoughts after interviewing the founder and CEO of Zbang, an Israeli startup that is building the communication platform I’ve been genuinely longing for. Think of it as a universal social media inbox, like Threadsy, Inbox2 or MailSuite but an inch closer to perfection.
Zbang is a desktop application that enables users to aggregate updates from their email inboxes and social networking accounts into a single, well-designed interface that reminds a lot of Microsoft Outlook. More than simply aggregating messages, Zbang is also capable of managing and sharing a variety of files through a number of cloud sharing services, and lets you collaborate and communicate with people the way you desire, provided you connect to apps like Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, LinkedIn … you get the drill. → Read More
Israeli entrepreneurs and VCs, I’ll be happy to meet as many of you as humanly possible in the span of 3-4 days while I’m spending some time in Tel Aviv in a few weeks. I’ll be heading down there – first time ever – on the 3rd of May and stick around until the 6th of May around noon.
I’m traveling to Israel for Techonomy 2010, a must-attend event for anyone professionally involved with the Web and technology in general. → Read More
Israeli entrepreneurs and VCs, I’ll be happy to meet as many of you as humanly possible in the span of 3-4 days while I’m spending some time in Tel Aviv in a few weeks. I’ll be heading down there – first time ever – on the 3rd of May and stick around until the 6th of May around noon.
I’m traveling to Israel for Techonomy 2010, a must-attend event for anyone professionally involved with the Web and technology in general. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
