Spring – especially the latter part of it, in May and June, when the weather starts turning warm – is one of the nicest times of year in Israel. It’s close enough to winter that we haven’t forgotten February’s chill, and it’s still not hot enough to make us wish for February’s return, like we do when August rolls around.

But in recent years, Spring in Israel has been about more than inspirational weather; it’s been an inspirational time for anyone who appreciates Israel’s contributions to making the world a more interesting, more efficient, more healthy – and more fun – place. Two recent exhibitions portrayed Israel’s great contributions to making the world a better place – and the progress yet to come.

First on the agenda was the High-Tech Industry Association (formerly the Israel Ventures Association) Conference, held in Jerusalem in early June. The annual conference (first held in 2007) brings together heads of Israeli tech firms, venture capitalists, bankers, investors, and (for now) small companies seeking funding for their “big idea.” Sessions deal with marketing strategy, technology trends, and, of course, financing and investment issues. And this year, there were special sessions dedicated to expanding Israel’s hi-tech reach to partners in India and China, with special sessions held specifically for delegations from those countries.

Represented at the conference are all the major players in Israeli hi-tech – venture capital firms (Carmel, Gemini, Genesis, JVP, and many others.), top corporations (IBM, Microsoft – both sponsors – as well as Nice, ECI, Checkpoint, and others), along with startups that have “made it” – LiveU, PageOnce, Axxana, and others (many of which I have written about – clearly there’s a connection here!). The conference is just what you’d expect; a little geeky (it was at a presentation by Amdocs that I heard an exposition of the “Terra Play” – more about that next week), a little glamorous (there were some very big “big shots” there), but mostly lots of fun. And educational!

Not to take away anything from the HTIA, but the follow-up show about a week after the Jerusalem conference – the Israel Life Sciences Industry BioMed show – is in a class unto itself. Said to be the largest medical industry trade and technology show outside the United States, BioMed in Tel Aviv attracted thousands of visitors (some 7,000, according to show organizers), with sessions discussing the latest advances in medical devices, pharmaceuticals,  biotechnology, government approval issues, patent issues, ethical issues, and much more.  According to ILSI, first 2010 quarter exports of the Israeli life sciences industry in 2010 totaled $ 1.7 billion, an increase of about 14% over Q1 2009.

Here, too, top players from Israel – and around the world – were in attendance, sponsoring events and giving presentations. At least four U.S. cities and states and half a dozen European governments were also at the event, looking to make deals with Israeli partners or venture capitalists, who were also on the scene. Israeli universities and venture capital accelerators, where many of tomorrow’s innovations are being created right now, were also well represented.  As far as companies making presentations or sponsoring booths – name a big pharma or medical device player, and they were probably there.

It’s heartwarming to see industries celebrating themselves, but I’m a bit coldhearted – I tend to shy away from the glamor and glitz. When I go to these shows, I don’t seek out the “fat cats,” who can afford fully-staffed PR agencies and inundate you with press releases; I’m interested in the sleek, skinny “alley cats” – the outsiders looking in, the ones who struggle for a piece of the pie, trying to sell themselves to an angel. Companies with a great idea, but without the connections – the ones who, with a little luck, could become the big players at next year’s conferences. That’s the kind of story you buy a newspaper for!

Those are the kinds of companies I sought out at both conferences, and fortunately for me, the organizers made it easy, with the newest startups occupying areas on the fringes of the shows. Naturally, the snacks weren’t as good in these outlying areas, but that’s to be expected, I suppose. But what they lacked in materialism – lacking the “good” chocolate croissants, as well as major funding – they made up for in spunk, gumption and moxie, presenting the ideas and products that may become tomorrow’s must-have technology.

Ideas like these: a product that takes even lo-res cellphone camera pictures and turns them into high-resolution, high-definition beauties (HTIA); a cellphone app that lets you get personalized coupons and offers, and lets you connect with other users, when you walk into a store or a mall (HTIA);  a matchmaker service that lets startups easily find angels and VC’s interested in investing with them (HTIA); a product that will keep track of every piece of equipment in a huge hospital complex, so that a stretcher, bed, or defibrillator can always be found when it’s needed (BioMed); a device to treat wounds using ultrasound (BioMed); and a revolutionary and inexpensive device that promises to put laser dental technology in the hands of every dentists – with the device 15 times more accurate than those already on the market (BioMed). It’s appropriate these two conferences are in the Spring, the season of hope; considering the innovations presented by these and many other companies at the shows, Israeli hi-tech and life sciences has a lot to be hopeful about!

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Like the sprouting of poisonous mushrooms after a heavy rain, the latest international “mugging” of Israel in the world media has been followed by a concerted cyber-attack on Israeli websites by hackers, crackers, and (mostly) script kiddies from around the world. Taking advantage of programming loopholes left open by oblivious system administrators, the hackers were able to reach hundreds of sites, marking them up with anti-Israel graffiti, or just leaving their “calling cards,” mostly in the form of expletive deleteds.

Fortunately, most of the pages that were hacked were front pages for businesses, organizations, etc. – nothing that couldn’t be fixed without a little effort by web programmers. But what if the sites that were attacked weren’t just front pages – but e-commerce sites, databases, government or corporate sites with sensitive information? As experience has shown us, even the most secure sites aren’t always so secure; couldn’t a dedicated group of hackers pooling their resources cause a major problem for the Israeli economy, at least temporarily? What if they made a major effort to bring down a major banking site, a government database, or the Bank of Israel? I think it would be safe to assume that some of the more sophisticated anti-Israel hackers out there are working just such a plan.

And unfortunately, the models of security used by most sites – even the most secure ones – lend themselves to hacking, says Ittai Weissberg, founder and CEO of Israel’s Otenti. “Most authentication for secure websites is not dynamic, but static, meaning that the user must identify him or herself when challenged by a server using a password or token (such as a smartcard). While there may be several security layers that try to ensure the authenticity of the response, passwords and smartcards are not changed all that often, so hackers have time to work on cracking them. Even the most sophisticated security systems are, in essence, sitting ducks,” Weissberg says.

Otenti’s Access product is one of the most advanced implementations of “out-of-band” authentication – a system that presents the challenge and accepts the response on a medium other than the object of authentication. For example, subscribers of several Israeli cellphone companies, like Orange, use out-of-band authentication when they want to retrieve their account statements. You get an e-mail telling you your bill is ready; you click on the link and log onto the company’s secure server. Then you are sent an SMS with a secret code you are supposed to type on the site, and you can then download your bill. It’s a lot more secure than “in-band” authentication, where all challenge and authentication is done using the same channel.

But why stop at SMS messages, asks Weissberg. “What the cellphone companies do is fine, but they, of course, make use of their own phones to do the authentication. While that makes sense for them, it doesn’t always make sense for many other sites. Sites not associated with cellphone service providers can’t be sure that users have phones they can use to send their messages out on, or that users even have cellphones at all. Other sites and organizations use things like smartcards, USB tokens, etc. But all those things can be lost, stolen, or even hacked as well.” Once again, the time factor comes into play; the more time hackers have to work on an authentication system, the more likely they are to figure out a way to hack it, regardless of how secure it is. And if you need to authenticate yourself at more than two or three sites, you need to either carry multiple cards and tokens, or remember all sorts of complicated passwords. Other organizations use biometrics for authentication, but even biometrics isn’t foolproof, as fans of many TV spy shows are probably aware.

Far better, says Weissberg, to use Otenti’s authentication system, which makes it far more difficult for hackers to get hold of the data they can use to invade secure systems. Instead of using specific objects as authentication devices, Otenti’s system uses just about anything – any device, hardware or software, that you can communicate with – to send temporary out-of-band authentication codes. Hackers who want to invade a system using an individual’s account have to figure out what device the user has chosen for this round of authentication.

Will customers use the web, cellphone, landline, Facebook account, or plain old PC for authentication? While hackers have they ability to tap into any of these devices, it’s a lot of work – too much for even a sophisticated hacker team to handle. Unless they’re willing to dedicate all their resources to hacking into all these devices all the time, performing analyses on all the data going through all the pipes – and are able to analyze the information and figure out the security codes in a matter of seconds, and use them to invade the system during the short window that the authentication process is active – they will not be able to find their way into the sensitive security sites they seek to crash or compromise. “While I can’t say that it’s impossible that a site won’t get hacked using Otenti security, it’s safe to say that such an outcome would be virtually impossible,” says Weissberg.

Otenti’s system is currently installed in several Israeli medical centers, and on a major government website and database – and the company is set for a major campaign to promote its products both here and abroad in the coming months. One attractive feature of Otenti is its low cost, says Weissberg – since there is no hardware purchase involved (several of the biggest security companies providing authentication make most of their money from hardware, smartcards, etc., Weissberg says), the costs are low – “for organizations of 5 to 5 million,” he says. “Otenti’s solution is also perfect for the cloud, enabling users to securely access their data on servers on remote servers,” says Weissberg. “Wherever you are, what ever you do, you can be confident that your identity can be verified safely and securely.” With Otenti, the anti-Israel crowd will have one less way to attack us.

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At first glance, Zlango appears to be one of those “fun” cellphone apps. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; all of us deserve a little fun, and Zlango currently provides users with the ability to substitute icons for text, in a fun way. For example, if you want to send an SMS to a friend saying “let’s meet for coffee,” you’ll be presented with an icon for “us,” “meet,” and “coffee.” The icons are pretty much what you would expect (a cup of coffee, two cartoon people approaching each other for “meet,” etc.), but each icon is accompanied by the text it represents as a caption, so the message is accessible even to users who aren’t icon-savvy.

Users who don’t have Zlango installed have the opportunity to download it when they get a message, and Zlango messages can be received as regular text messages by any phone, even hopelessly outdated ones that can’t handle MMS messages (Zlango strips the icon out of the message, leaving the text). All messages are sent in a standard manner, and require no adjustments in the cell phone operators’ services.

The Zlango application integrates itself into your phone’s SMS interface, so you can easily call up icons when typing. Currently, Zlango is available for users in Ukraine, Portugal, Albania, Poland, Philippines, Germany, Malaysia and Jamaica, and in the coming weeks it will be available in Cambodia, Vietnam, and Hong Kong. Users in other countries can send messages to Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking applications, as well as download a version of ICQ with Zlango built in. The company is currently working on expanding its reach into other markets, Haim says.

Behind the fun icons, however, lies a platform that could one day change phone messaging as we know it. While many of Zlango’s users are kids, adults use it too, taking advantage of its icon selection process to save themselves the trouble of having to type words. “Zlango lets you choose icons in two ways,” says Haim. “When you type letters and words, you can choose an icon that represents what you’re typing, or you can just grab icons off the application’s library.”

And that latter feature has attracted attention from numerous groups whose interest in icon messaging is far more serious than that of the teens sending fun messages. “While right now we are concentrating on our mainstream application, we have received suggestions from various organizations, including social service groups in India and Africa, who work with illiterate people, and from a group in Canada that works with ADHD children.” The groups see Zlango’s technology as one that can enable their clients to communicate more easily.

Which shows that the Tel Aviv-based company has come up with an idea that’s much more than a “fun app” for cellphones. In fact, says Haim, Zlango is more like a platform, upon which different communication applications can be built. “For example, it could be used for advertising purposes,” Haim says; that coffee cup icon could just as easily be a Starbuck’s icon, and with some API mashing-up work, a tap on the icon could open up a Google Mobile Map showing the location of the nearest coffee shops.

Working on Zlango has put sharpened the company’s sense of the problems inherent in international communication – problems that sometimes lead to major international misunderstandings. “We localize the icons for each market, in order to ensure that they are acceptable to the target audiences. For example, an icon we use of an eskimo in Spain for the term “cool,” where it is considered cute, but that symbol is taken far differently in Ukraine” – as an insult, says Haim. In order to ensure that everyone is on the same page, Zlango encourages suggestions and comments from users, and is constantly honing its icon libraries in each country to reflect the youth culture in each society.

Zlango, in fact, didn’t start out life as an icon messaging application. The developers, says Haim, were working on a “universal web language, sort of like Esperanto for the internet.” The project was too much for a small startup to take on, he says, but the technology remained, and turned into Zlango. Behind those icons lie some dramatic ideas – and with the numbers of SMS messages sent annually 4 trillion and growing, the Zlango platform will continue to grow as well.

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You probably wouldn’t – but then again you just might, if you are one of the legion of modern “brand lovers” who have found a home on the web site of a new Israeli startup, MyBrandz.

Tattooing a logo seems a bit radical, but MyBrandz CEO Eran Gefen – who knows brands, having founded and operated for seven years Israel’s top web ad agency – says that it’s more common than you think. “Brands today are not just names of products – they’re part of popular culture, and people connect to the brands that they like far more intensively than they did in the past,” he says.

At this past year’s Nevada “Burning Man” festival (think Woodstock without the music) the MyBrandz team offered temporary brand tattoos to all comers, in order to see just how much people love their brands. “The reactions showed just how deeply people identify with their brands,” Gefen says. “One woman tattooed the Vespa brand name on her body, because she thought it was romantic – her first boyfriend gave her a ride on a Vespa – and another man tattooed the Lego logo on his body, because he sees Lego as a symbol of creativity.” The fact that participants in Burning Man – which is as counterculture as you can get – showed such enthusiasm for corporate boosterism indicates that MyBrandz has tapped an interesting vein. And a recent “tattoo festival” MyBrandz held in San Francisco – where nearly 150 people let the company pay for real, permanent tattoos of their favorite brand – shows that love of logo is a deep-rooted thing, among some at least.

But you don’t have to get a tattoo if you want to identify with your brand, says Gefen; just join the appropriate brand page on the MyBrandz site, where you’ll join a community of people who think the way same as you do – a bit like what goes on at corporate “fan sites,” except that the MyBrandz page operates outside the aegis of the company that owns the logo. “Just like MP3 downloads moved authority in music from the record companies to music lovers, and just like Youtube lets anyone run their own virtual TV station, there is a movement afoot today to bring the power of the brand into the hands of the public. That’s the stream MyBrandz taps into,” says Gefen.

MyBrandz is about far more than being a “fanboy” of a certain product, Gefen says. “MyBrandz is the only site that looks at brands as content. Users bring their enthusiasm, knowledge, and experience with a brand to the site, and a community is built around users.” Users post ideas, comments, assistance, etc., and those who are most “into” a brand can strive for “brand freak” status, making them as much an expert on a particular brand as the people running the company that makes the brand are. Apple fans, for example, have posted designs of what they want the much-rumored Apple Tablet to look like, and Harley Davidson fans help each other with bike tips.

Criticism of a brand is also welcome; “we don’t edit anything, and users are free to post what they want,” Gefen says, meaning that old rivalries, like Mac vs. Windows, can show up on the site as well. “But most people will gravitate to the communities of the brands they like, we have found. There are plenty of complaint sites, and the people who come to MyBrandz are looking for a different experience,” he says.

In case you’re thinking that MyBrandz is some elaborate scam to recruit advertising automatons for corporate America, Europe, or Asia, think again – the companies represented have absolutely nothing to do with the “brand clubs” on the MyBrandz site. “We have received requests from corporations to allow them to have input in the brand communities, and their representatives are certainly welcome to sign up – but they receive no special privileges, and are users like everyone else,” Gefen says, adding that the company prefers to keep things strictly in the hands of the community – at least for now.

And there is plenty reason for a corporate brand to want to take a more active role in their fans’ site. “We have a unique ‘approval matrix’ which ranks brands that are rising and waning in popularity, based on 28 different factors, including such things as the number of tweets or Facebook mentions a brand gets”  – sort of like “Google PageRank, but for brands,” Gefen says. While the site doesn’t keep stats on who joins (indeed, it prefers to keep things as anonymous as possible,” Gefen knows that corporate representatives check out what is being said about them. “We got a message from Corona Beer, which wanted to know why there was no page dedicated to their brand. I answered that it was because nobody had gotten around to starting the page yet, but they were welcome to do so” – which they did, he said, but according to the rules of the site, which puts brand fans, not the company, in charge of the nature of the page.

Not everybody “gets” MyBrandz – but there are plenty of people that do, most of them young. “It’s a fact that the Coca Cola fan page on Facebook has 5 million members,” says Gefen, adding that a recent study done by Microsoft shows that teens mention well-known brands as part of their regular conversation with friends an average of a dozen times a day. “Clearly brand consciousness today is much greater than it has been in the past,” says Gefen, and any company that wants to survive in this increasingly competitive world needs to understand how to tap into that consciousness.

“The days of the corporations dictating fashion, style, or usage are gone,” Gefen says. “Today it’s all about the brand, and how it connects with consumers. Anybody can make anything in China today, so products have become commodities. Some companies, such as Harley Davidson, which was absorbing input from fans long before the internet, know how to connect with consumers, but others don’t – and those are the companies that are going to have a hard time in the coming years.” In fact, in conversations with corporate bigwigs, Gefen says, many have expressed excitement – coupled with  nervousness over the MyBrandz concept. “They’re excited about being able to tap directly into ‘brand freaks’ to give them guidance about what people want, but they have to get used to the idea that the process is no longer in their hands,” Gefen says.

And where will consumers take that process? There’s no telling – tattoos, temporary or otherwise (such as the one a Youtube fan made in honor of Youtube CEO Chad Hurley’s visit to Israel last month) are one way, but MyBrandz latest promotion will definitely open up the wellsprings of brand fan creativity. The site will give each brand’s biggest fan a share in the company they love, based on the “awesomeness” of posts users put up on fan pages. Just how “awesome?” Whatever it is, it’s going to have to beat tattooing; corporate logos on the body are just not that unique anymore!

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Of course, that’s not to say there haven’t been any changes; nowadays you can load up your messages with doodads, gewgaws, and chupchiks, like little smiley faces, laughing yuksters, and beating hearts (for the romantically inclined). There are applications that let you choose stationery for your message. And, of course, there’s the e-mail storage revolution engineered by Google, whose Gmail service gives you gigs and gigs of storage space, allowing you to search your message history in an instant, and obviating the need to ever click on the delete button.

But those are just appurtenances – extras that just gussy up what is essentially a last-century technology. Which is probably why the communications connoisseurs have move on to other communication methods, which can boast the cool apps that lets you digitally connect the pieces of your life – like Twitter does, by streaming your consciousness to the whole world in 140 characters (are any more really necessary?), complete with links to the web pages you think the hundreds or thousands of your followers ought to read. That’s a lot better than email, which shoots off a single message to a single person – and nothing else.

But don’t count email out just yet; the folks at Israeli startup WiseStamp have found a way to propel email into the modern communication world – by building an application that lets you add a signature to your online email!

Of course, signatures have been a staple of email messages for a long time. But WiseStamp’s signatures are different, says Tzvika (Josh) Avnery, CEO and CMO of WiseStamp. “Our application brings the web into the inbox,” says Avnery. “You can share streaming information directly with people you communicate with, thereby promoting your ideas, your blogs, or your online presence.” That’s because the signatures you create with  WiseStamp allow you to stream your blog posts, Twitter or Facebook messages, music, video, or just about any other online activity you’re involved with, directly in your Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, and other web mail accounts. For the first time, says Avnery, “you can use email to direct the people you communicate with to the elements of your online presence, thus promoting your blog, webpage, etc.”

WiseStamp is free and easy to install; just surf to http://www.wisestamp.com/ and install it as a Firefox or Thunderbird add-on (other browsers, including Chrome, will be supported in the near future, and the company is working on a version for email clients, like Outlook Express). Once installed, you’ll be able to open the WiseStamp preferences in the Firefox add-on menu selection; here you can add your basic information, like contact numbers, website links, etc. But the interesting part of WiseStamp is those three tabs in the middle – Social, IM, and RSS – where you can feed your social network messages (Twitter, Facebook), instant messaging posts (AIM, ICQ) or freeform RSS (like Feedburner blog feed titles and links) as part of your signature.

With nearly 50 services supported, anyone who uses the web nowadays has the opportunity to expand their online presence through an until now inert channel, says Avnery. “We get many messages from users who tell us that WiseStamp has enhanced their communications abilities significantly by introducing a whole new audience to their blog, their eBay product page, or cause.” For example, Orly Itzchaki, WiseStamp’s Product VP,  recently posted links to a “Free Gilad Shalit” page in her signature, and many users responded, saying that they, too, were inspired to include similar links in their signatures, Avnery says (rounding out the four partners who run WiseStamp along with Avenery and Yitzchaki are Sasha Gimelsthein, VP of Technology, and Tom Piamenta, VP of Business Development).

And not only do you get an html signature with streaming capabilities when you install WiseStamp, says Avnery; you get two! “We provide users with the ability to author a business and personal signature, since what works for personal messages may not work for business-oriented messages, and vice versa,” he says. And while two identities would seem like more than enough, the company is preparing to expand that feature, as well as simplify the whole system. “I want this to be as easy for my mother as it is for a seasoned blogger,” says Avnery. “In the future, we plan to offer a gallery with streams of data – news articles, blog posts, etc. – based on user interests, that users will be able to add to their messages with a couple of clicks.”

WiseStamp is planning these, and other changes, not just because they like developing new stuff, but because the users are interested in them. “We are moving in on 400,000 users now, thanks to the fact that we got recommended as a Firefox add-on,” Avnery says, as the company, which was self funded until now, is actively seeking to add investors. “We appreciate our users and we realize they are the reason we’re here at all. So, we make it our business to pay attention to their needs.”

Which could be one reason why WiseStamp just recently won a “Webby,” the Mashable Open Web Award, where it was voted Best Social Media Gadget of 2009, winning over several other venerable applications and services. But they won not for lack of trying to lose, says Avnery. “We of course used our product to promote ourselves in email, urging people we sent messages to to vote for us for the Webby Award. But to be fair, we also told our competitors in the contest that we would help them set up a signature urging people to vote for them. For some reason, they didn’t take us up on our offer,” says Avnery, “which I guess worked out for us!”

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But “technology gap” doesn’t just mean third world children unable to compete in an increasingly cyber-world; there are other gaps that have kept even some “first world” people from moving forward. Take the blind, for example. In a world where more of society’s information sources are being stored in computer hard drives, databases, and the internet, those who are unable to see computer screens are at a significant disadvantage – and are in danger of being left far behind as the computer revolution moves forward.

While there are methods for the blind to interact with computers, most of them are old and extremely expensive, designed for static screens, not the dynamic (and often graphical) content in today’s internet. What’s needed is a cheap, easy and up to date method of connecting the blind to the modern online world.

And that is exactly what Matthew Wohl, chairman of Tactile World, has come up with. Wohl’s researchers have developed the Tactile Explorer, a mouse that lets blind users interact with their computer screen much more easily and cheaply than they could with the alternatives.

The Tactile Explorer ingeniously uses braille principles to allow blind people to “read” the contents of the screen. The heart of the mouse are two tactile pads on top that with pins that go up and down. The combination of pins indicate letters – either braille or regular English – as well as graphics, making the Tactile Explorer the only system in the world that allows the blind to “see” graphs, charts, and even regular photos. “The graphic reading system enables blind people to understand charts and graphics using Braille, in a manner that they’re used to,” says Wohl. And, in addition to its text detection capabilities, the Tactile Explorer even has a built in screen reader, allowing the blind to hear the contents of the screen.

Besides graphics reading, the Tactile Explorer’s other major breakthrough is in navigation, enabling the blind to follow links on the internet. The mouse has two modes – reading and navigation – and in navigation mode, the mouse can winnow down elements on the screen, presenting users with links (differentiated from other elements on the screen) that they can “read,” deciding which ones to click on, as well as making moving between links and pages easier. Language isn’t a problem for the Tactile Explorer, either; researchers at the company are working on language packs, which will be included, along with all of the software needed to run the system, together with the mouse.

Currently, the most popular computer interaction system for the blind is the Refreshable Braille display, which allows users to read text on a computer screen using braille. But those systems are difficult to navigate with, very weighty (ie non-portable), very expensive (upwards of $5,000 for most models, not including software) – and can’t do graphics at all. The Tactile Explorer, on the other hand, is easy to navigate with, light (the size, weight and dimensions of a mouse), does graphics – and is far cheaper.

Although the product is still in development, Wohl estimates that it would cost $695 if produced today., “we expect the price to go down significantly when we begin mass producing it.” That could take place within a year of the company’s getting funding to complete development, Wohl says.

Wohl has been showing the Tactile Explorer to investors, many of whom have raved over it, he says – but with last year’s economic shocks still on the minds of VC’s and angels, Wohl is still looking to close an investment deal. But although nothing is a “sure thing,” the Tactile Explorer has many fans in the Israeli government – from Industry, Trade and Labor Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who was impressed with the possibility that the device could help provide jobs for the blind, 85% of whom are unemployed, to the Office of the Chief Scientist, which just this month invested matching funds in the Tactile Explorer.

In fact, providing job opportunities for the blind is one major reason the government is interested in the Tactile Explorer. Wohl’s team is adapting the Tactile Explorer for use with the most popular CRM software packages to enable the blind to work as service reps and telemarketers. And, there is interest from several Israeli government organizations to purchase the mice for their offices when production begins.

Meanwhile, the device is being tested by students and adults at some of the country’s major educational centers for the blind, including Keren Or, the Hebrew University Center for the Blind, and the Weizmann Institute is using the mouse technology in a couple of research projects. “We have been developing other specific applications as well, and we are working to ensure that the mouse works perfectly with the programs commonly in use today, such as Microsoft Office, Outlook, and Internet Explorer,” says Wohl.

Although he’s had some exposure to working with blind people himself, Wohl says he bought the company that produces the Tactile Explorer because he knew a good thing when he saw it. The company had been producing educational games for blind children using its patented technology, but was unable to make a go of it. Wohl bought the basic technology and expanded it to develop the hardware and software system making up the Tactile Explorer; today the company has five  patents, all of which have gone into developing the first significant update to computer interaction technology for the blind in 25 years. “I have no doubt this is going to be the biggest innovation for the blind in decades,” says Wohl. “The blind are no different than you or I – they, too, want products that are better and cheaper, and that’s exactly what the Tactile Explorer does.”

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Eternal questions, these – dating back to the early days of human history. And other than swallowing a mind-reading pill, there’s really been no way to answer such questions- not that people throughout history haven’t tried.

Itay Rauch of Profiler1 believes he’s got those answers – and he wants to share them with the rest of the world. And no miracle pills are necessary, either; All he needs is for you to upload a photo to the world’s first online Personology clinic – and within hours, you’ll get back a full personality profile that Rauch says is the next best thing to being inside the head of the person in the photo.

Personology is a technique – Rauch, among many others, would call it a science, while others have less charitable names for it – which analyzes the features of the human face in order to determine personality traits. The technique was developed over many years based on the observations of California judge Edward Vincent Jones, who began noticing a correlation between looks and personality traits among those who passed through his courtroom, to the extent that he had already guessed what defendants who appeared before him were being accused of, before hearing the charges.

Based on those observations, Jones developed a full range of face features that correlated with personality traits – creating the field of Personology. It’s those techniques that the team managed by Rauch, along with company co-founders Shirley Aharon and Gideon Dror, use to analyze photos that are uploaded to the Profiler1 site. Users who send in a photo – of themselves, or of anyone they want to have analyzed – receive back a full personality analysis, with emphasis on traits related to interpersonal relations, how good of an employee the person in question would be, whether a nanny you’re considering hiring can be trusted with your kids, etc.

“Many studies show Personology to be extremely accurate,” Rauch says, dismissing accusations that Personology is a pseudoscience at best. “The correlation between facial features and personality traits has been determined by extensive studies, and subsequent field tests show an accuracy of over 90% in determining personality traits when using Personology techniques.” The techniques, Rauch says, are used in a wide variety of settings, including law enforcement and national security agencies in various parts of the world, as well as by HR agencies, in jury selection, etc.

Profiler1’s innovation is to bring this technique to the web-surfing public – enabling users throughout the world to upload photos and receive an analysis within a few hours. “Until now, you would have to go to a Personology counselor for a one on one consultation, costing upwards of $100 a session. Because we do the work on-line, we’re able to offer the service for a lot less – an average of $8 per session.” Photos are checked by a custom computer application, and the results are hand-checked by a highly qualified staff of psychologists and criminologists, all of them MA’s or PhD’s. The average turn-around time for a photo analysis is several hours, and the result is e-mailed to you.

Profiler1’s newly revamped website has links to dozens of articles and studies, and even has a handy graphic chart showing what part of the face corresponds to which personality traits. According to Rauch, the more “symmetrical” your face, the better adjusted you are (want to know if the person you’re looking it is really as straight-laced as s/he seems, or is really a wild and crazy guy/gal? Check out their cheekbones!)

Profiler1 has sites in Hebrew and English, aiming for the Israel and U.S. market, but the company has plans to expand to Europe as well, and is setting up German, Spanish, and French sites. The Israeli site has been up barely a month, but so far hundreds of people have uploaded photos, paying the NIS 29-45 for an online analysis. A Facebook application based on Profiler1’s Personology analysis is due soon, and Rauch says that the company also welcomes partnerships with web sites and services where photos are important – dating sites, employment sites, etc.

Rauch can tick off stories of satisfied clients whom he says the technique has really helped – the single mother who had trouble finding a day care worker for her young children, or the young lady who managed to get out of a relationship with a man who eventually turned out to be a true lowlife. In fact, he says, four out of five customers tell him that they are more than satisfied with the service. “For those who don’t believe, I say give it a try. It only costs $8 to find out, and I am positive they will come away with a different perspective on Personology.”

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For many, the worktime lunch hour is more than a meal – it’s a refuge, a saving ritual that helps them refocus, take a breather, and perhaps even salvage their sanity. So, seen from that perspective, the online menu system at Bite2Eat isn’t just a way to cut down ordering frustration and confusion at lunch time; by enhancing the lunch experience, Bite2Eat may just make for happier, more productive workers – and give a boost to the restaurant industry as well, with eating establishments getting a new, low-cost way to market themselves and pick up business.

In fact, says Bite2Eat CEO Jay Bailey, it was after a typical round of “office lunchtime menu bingo” that he realized the idea presented by his partner, CTO Marc Fischman, would work. “We were doing the usual thing, trying to round up who would order what, and trying to coordinate the orders, the payment, etc. I realized that if we had a system like Bite2Eat, it would have solved everything.”

Bite2Eat eliminates the frustrating footwork involved in getting office takeout orders together, says Bailey.  Bite2Eat consists of a social networking application that enables co-workers (or students, neighbors, or even parents who want to order dinner in for the kids) to choose a restaurant that has signed up with the site, and place online orders.

In most offices, ordering in lunch works like this: One or two people take the initiative and begin an order, and go around the office to see if anyone else is interested, jogging between offices to recruit orders.  Instead of taking a hike, says Bailey, the person whose job it is to organize lunch on a particular day stays at his or her desk and chooses what they want from an online menu post at the Bite2Eat site.

Using their address book, they send colleagues a message about the impending order, with a link to the menu, where they can choose their own items. “Everyone who is interested in ordering can click on the menu and get what they want, and when the last person has ordered, the entire order is called into the restaurant by our system. Instead of running around with a dog-eared menu and chasing down ‘customers,’ the whole thing is done in one click, allowing users of the system to enjoy their food without the hassle,” he says. The food then gets delivered (or picked up) as a single order, with the order placer divvying up the goodies – the fun part!

Bailey and Fischman aim to make things easier not only for the people ordering lunch, but for the people filling those orders. With statistics and experience showing that restaurants are not ready for hi-tech computer ordering systems, the pair decided to integrate the Bite2Eat system as closely as possible with the workflow of a typical restaurant. “We found that few restaurants even in the U.S. bother with computers, and only 15% take orders by fax,” says Bailey. What restaurants do know how to do well, however, is take orders by phone – and Bite2Eat accommodates them.

“When an order is placed, our system, using text to voice technology, calls the order into the restaurant, where it joins the establishment’s regular order workflow,” Bailey says. “The only change is that we have the restaurant call the customer just to confirm the order, enabling both customer and restauranteur to make contact, adding the human element to the transaction” – and allowing last minute substitutes for items that the eatery has run out of. Thus customers get an easy way to order food, while restaurants get an additional ordering channel, grabbing customers they might not have had that day, without requiring workers to interrupt their regular workflow or adapt to new technology.  An additional bonus for the restaurant is that it doesn’t cost anything to sign up; Bite2Eat doesn’t charge membership or startup fees, but gets paid only when the restaurant gets an order. They bill the client once a month, making it easy for restaurants to integrate the commissions with their regular budgets.

“We are trying to enhance the customer’s experience and the restaurant’s workflow with technology, enhancing both,” says CTO Fischman. “Restaurants have been very open to our ideas and the technology, because it allows them to continue working in the way they’re used to, but more efficiently and quickly.” While some restaurants do have web sites, the vast majority don’t – and only a relative handful have any online ordering mechanism, having learned with experience that such systems are more trouble – and more expensive – than they’re worth. “Bite2Eat solves those problems for them with our specially designed software, enhancing and tweaking the ordering process for both customers and proprietors, with no charge to consumers and a minimal expense for restaurants, which they pay only for orders that are actually placed,” says Fischman.

While starting a new web service for restaurant orders during a recession might seem like a bad idea, Bailey says that Bite2Eat is tailor made for recessionary times. “With restaurants pulling money out of advertising and marketing, we’re giving them an essentially free method they can use to market themselves.” Their ideas were good enough to make an impression on startup legend Jeff Pulver, who gave them some seed money, which they used to set up an impressive pilot program. That program has proven to be a rousing success, Bailey says. The company is ready to expand beyond the 750 member establishments it has signed up in its first three months of operation, and is actively seeking more investment money.

And while there are several other online services working in this space, there’s enough business for everyone. “Out of the 900,000 or so restaurants in the U.S., fewer than 1% have any online ordering system whatsoever – and almost all of those are in places like New York and San Francisco,” says Bailey. There’s plenty of good eating in mid-size cities all across the country, and it’s there Bite2Eat hopes to have the most impact.

Working during a recession has also helped Bite2Eat to develop its technology and hone its corporate structure. Restaurant menus are malleable, and Bite2Eat wants to ensure that offerings and prices remain up-to-date – and the company has taken upon itself the data entry, along with the back-end ordering system. The software takes care of the combinations and options (of which there can be dozens) automatically, but what about getting the information into the system – a very time-consuming task? In order to save money, Bailey and Fischman have outsourced almost all the data entry, programming, and sales work (much of it done by Anglo immigrants here in Israel), and as a result have spent far less of their angel money than they anticipated, Bailey says.

“Our tools can update the menus in minutes, ensuring that the information on the site is relevant, and we’ve saved as much as two thirds of our projected outlay by outsourcing the data entry, menu conversion, and marketing,” says Bailey. And while the recession may slow growth, Bailey is optimistic that Bite2Eat can grow, even now, since eating out or ordering in is a “second tier” luxury that people continue to enjoy even during recessions, says Bailey.  “Bottom line – people still have to eat, and Bite2Eat helps make it easier for customers to order food, while giving restaurants new marketing tools that can help them survive, and even thrive.”

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