At the same time, I have a new design, put in place by my boss, Rob La Gesse. He bought me a new theme for WordPress and put in place new Twitter widgets from Publitweet (nicer than the ones from Twitter themselves) and also put in place the Wibiya bar at the bottom which lets you see a variety of things I’ve done around the Internet (Google Buzz coming soon) and also adds those Facebook like buttons.
One of the things I’ve tried to do is keep my blog simple and easy to read. That’s one reason we went with the Genesis WordPress theme.
Anyway, hope you like it, although, like I said over on Google Buzz most of my readers probably won’t even notice because they can read me over there or on an RSS aggregator.
Last week Rocky Barbanica and I visited Israel and we videoed many companies (some of those interviews are still to come after we edit them). But while going through all the videos, I wondered what Silicon Valley could learn from these companies? After all, Silicon Valley is undergoing another major transformation. One from a place that makes Silicon chips to one that makes Social Networks (Google Buzz, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook are all headquartered within 45 miles of Silicon Valley, all grown in the past few years while Intel turned off its last fab here).
Why should Silicon Valley look to Israel for good ideas? Well, because, simply, this small country has more than its fair share of great ideas, especially when it comes to social networks.
1. 6Rounds — what happens when you mate Chatroulette (which has 20 million unique visitors a month) with Zynga (popular casual game producer)? 6Rounds. Look to companies like these to find new ways to addict millions of people to both video and gaming. Watch the video with 6Rounds’ founders.
2. Waze — shows that a small company can kick Google’s ass at mapping, but only if they get enough users. This company uses crowds to bring better data onto maps than anyone else. We drive around Tel Aviv to get a look, but Silicon Valley would do well to learn what has made Waze popular around the world and, what, could even disrupt Google Maps on its home turf. Watch the video with Waze’s head of business development.
4. Genieo and My6sense — these two companies are trying to solve the information overload problem by picking out only the best news from your streams to show you. What can Silicon Valley learn from these two companies? Well, Google Buzz has no filtering yet and it needs it. Facebook has filtering, but it could be better. These two companies have different approaches to reduce noise and get news that interests you. Watch the video with Genieo’s CEO. Watch a video from My6sense about My6sense.
6. Springo — what Yahoo started about 15 years ago is continued by Springo, which is a new kind of directory and search engine for the new social world. Shows visually the most popular websites too, which makes the web more useful than Google or Yahoo is for many searches, like Jobs. Watch the video with Springo’s CEO.
8. Fiddme — shows what happens when you hook up a great mobile app with Foursquare. Why hasn’t Yelp or Google’s mobile apps done this yet? Oh, yeah, protect their business interests. Silicon Valley would do well to learn the story telling skills of founder Yosi Taguri, too. Watch the video presentation by Fiddme’s founder at the Techonomy conference in Tel Aviv, thanks to NewsGeek for filming that.
9. Omek Interactive — this company has a cool new gaming system that will compete with Microsoft’s Xbox Natal, which will come later this year. But this company shows that you can develop great new user experiences and we don’t have to wait for big companies to do it. Watch the video with Omek’s CEO here.
10. Soluto — this company is going to announce soon. What can Silicon Valley learn from it? Well, for one, they aim to show there’s still a great business in helping Microsoft Windows users improve their computers. Unfortunately I can’t say more until after they launch. Video coming soon to building43.
11. Mainsoft — they integrate Sharepoint and Outlook with Google Docs, what does this teach Silicon Valley? That a pure Web play might not be the best way to go, most users dont want to jump completely into the new world and want to stick with what has worked for them for 10 years or more, so this company is looking to bridge Google Docs into Lotus, Microsoft, and Rational environments. Video coming soon to building43.
12. Hacktics — these guys are helping developers make their code safer from attacks with a new product called Seeker (Techcrunch just wrote about them). This is still something Silicon Valley needs to improve. Even Facebook and Twitter, this week, had some attacks from hackers that showed weaknesses in coding. Video coming soon to building43.
13. Pageonce — this company shows how you can morph yourself from one business (helping travelers) to another (helping bill payers). Lots of Silicon Valley companies need to shift directions faster and Pageonce shows how to do it successfully. But Pageonce is also showing how to be a successful mobile app developer, and has raised $10 million in capital to do just that. Watch the video with Pageonce’s head of engineering.
14. Conduit — professional publishers are always looking for ways to get more engagement from their readers and Conduit’s browser apps show us how to do that. Techcrunch even uses them to help their readers. Watch the video with Conduit.
15. Starling.tv — this isn’t an Israeli company, but I met them in Kinneret, Israel, at Yossi Vardi’s camp. Lots of people see them as the pioneers in a new social TV field. Already Twitter and Facebook are highly integrated with TV — during the Oscars, for instance, thousands of users were discussing that TV show in live time. Starling is hoping to make a social experience that focuses only on TV and could, in the process, show Silicon Valley how to make tons of money off of TV. Watch the video with Starling’s founder.
Scobleizer 