OurielOhayon

Israel response might not be the best, but it's the only one that makes sense

Unless you live in an igloo in the antartic sea you won't have missed the news of this week end: Israel strike on hamas. What looks like a disproportional response is i believe close to the only option left to Israel digesting 2000 rockets launched blindly at its citizen for 3 years.

• Can Israel negotiate? no. Hamas does not want. They do not want to recognize israel, They do not want a truce. They do not want peace.
• Can Israel put pressure on the international community?no. No one really cares. Everyone talks. But no one dares to pressure Iran seriously, the only reason why Hamas has still financial ressources to maintain its power
• Can Israel involve arab governments in the process? they tried with Egypt, but that was a vain effort. And honestly looking back i think that beyond street demonstrations and media declaration arab countries don t give a damn about palestinians. They never did actually. But they need to show otherwise. This is good for image
• Can Israel stop the rockets? no. there is no technology able to do that. if you do let us know.
  
• Can Israel stay quiet? no. If your country was in the same situation there would be demonstrations in favour of a war.

So what is left? War. The worst answer possible. But probably the only one given the context. Until hamas stops ruling in Gaza there won't be peace with Israel. Fatah, the other party, is trying to take the power back but it does not manage. At this day peace would only be possible with the Fatah.

Maybe this will actively motivate the international community and arab leader to put pressure on Iran and stop and support to Hamas and give to palestinian a chance for peace. Honestly i doubt it. I think those extremists are ready to sacrifice any of their citizen and children: they already put all their militar infrastructures in the heart of civilian zones. On purpose. Why would they care?

Martin thinks Israel attack is immoral
and could lead to worse. i disagree on the first part (immoral is when
you have a choice) but agree on the second. I am worried about where
this could lead. I am worried about where this could lead.

Technorati Tags: israel gaza

Where are the good webdesigners in Israel?

Israel might have tones of startups there is one thing i am always disappointed by: the quality of the web design of a site. I am not even referring to the local pre historical internet sites, not even optimized mostly for firefox and most of the time purely ugly. I am referring to startups turning to international consumers facing competition from startups all over the world

Each time the subject comes in a conversation and that i am asked for an advice who to work with i can't think of a name i could recommand (actually there is one in Israel but he s just been hired...). So i am forced to recommand someone abroad.

I am looking for people that are able to design amazing sites: like the Skype.com site or Gigaom blog or Last.fm and many others. If you are interested in the subject btw i strongly recommand the Smashing Magazine. you ll undersand what i mean by great design

it could be that i don't know enough israeli web designers. But this subject is coming back so much that i can't believe this is just me. I would be happy to be proven wrong. If you know any good web designer that has a great sense of ergonomy user interface or graphics and graphical identify then please contact me. I garantee i have business for you.

update: This is how the web is done, this post was published here but the majority of the conversation takes place on facebook as it replicates my content. you should check out the comments over there, i wish i could take them back here

@Qassamcount

I was intrigued when i saw the account twitter.com/Qassamcount was following me. I subscribed to the account and immediately understood its purpose: report in near real time when a Qassam is shot by terrorists from Gaza. For those who ignore the situation. A Qassam is a missile big enough to destroy a house and kill. They are shot blindly and cowardly by terrorists from Gaza hoping to kill any target.

Those are reported everyday in the news, but because, like millions, right now my attention is on Twitter more than any other news site: this is where the information counts. I feel closer to the reality and believe it helps realizing better how terrible this is.

If this was happening in an another country in the world the whole international community who condemn immediately. But in Israel it does not look that bad. I hope this account on twitter will be very popular and will raise the awareness and urgency of the situation

Whoever is behind this had a great idea.

Technorati Tags: twitter qassam qassamcount

Outlook deconstructed

I have been a big fan of outlook for years and used all the versions up until 2008. However by switching to Mac i was stuck with the poor parent: Entourage. This forced me to look for alternatives to Outlook. in Parallel i found myself looking for more ways to access my data online no matter where i am connected from (Work, home, hotel, public access, iphone).

Those two background elements lead me to consider that what used to be a one stop shop for mail/calendar/note/todo list was out dated.

• For email> Gmail is the killer app. There is no better online email today. It syncs everywhere, it is fast and it is free.
  
• For Todos> Remember the milk is the killer App
• For Notes> Evernote is the Killer App
• For Calendar> Google Calendar is the killer App

The current generation of entreprise user are still stuck with outlook for internal policy reasons and mainly because they hang to their internal exchange servers: but i believe that the switch for private users and SMBs is a no brainer. It will take some more time until this extends to big corporation. But i believe the age of Outlook as we know it is over.

Microsoft has to come with a powerful online version of its software and i not referring to the crappy online version of outlook we all know. Zimbra has showed the way but it is on Microsoft shoulders that this trend should be taken further

update: i just had a good exchange on Twitter on this post. Someone asked me whether i was not missing the "all in one place". I answered i still have everything in one place: in my browser. My Browser is my new Outlook

Technorati Tags: outlook zimbra gmail office entreprise

Little Santa Claus swings big time

Stunning piece of solo piano by my friend Pierre Alain Goualch. You ll obviously recognize the theme. The rest will surprise you, like it surprised me

Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.io

Don't know why

We all know this song by Norah Jones, but this version i just discovered on YouTube rocks. Why? Don't know why...

And if you want an even better version try this one by Guitar master Pat Metheny. Stunning

Eyeview reaches 1 million videos viewed

Eyeview is our latest investment. They are currently doing a great job at providing rich  media video to big (and less big) companies like Yahoo, HP and more to increase their conversion rate on their site (registration, download, purchase, virality,...). They just passed the bar of 1 million videos viewed and the curve is looking in the right direction. If you need to better understand what they can do for you just read their post about how they collect feedback from the video and see the Yahoo example.

On a side note i am also happy to see how they are using their corporate blog, publishing at a regular pace and increasing the level of visibility and transparency with existing or potential new customers. All companies should blog.

Israel going to Hollywood

This is a theme i like to track and cover on this blog: the Israeli movie industry, although not world class, is slowly getting recognition in Hollywood. 2 recent facts i observed

• Body of lies, the new Ridley Scott movie (btw i do not recommend this movie) on islamist terror in the middle east with Leonardo Di Caprio features an Israeli Actor, Alon AbutBul,...as the head of the islamist terrorist organization (mmmm)
• Waltz with Bashir just won a golden globes academy awards

I expect this trend to happen more and more in the coming years

The day Europe will stop being America's supermarket

I wrote this morning a long post on TechCrunch France about the fact that, for many reasons, Startups created in Europe are unfortunately very rarely designed to stay independant and that when successful, are acquired by American Giants. One of the main reasons is that Europeans are bad in timing and implementing international strategies. Another one is that most European startups are still local versions of services created in America. But this tend to be less and less the case. A lot of innovation is going on in Europe and we see more US VCs taking positions in Europe (like union square ventures).

This trend could lead you to think that American are very knowledgeable about what is going on in Europe. And i believe this is the opposite. Americans don't have a clue about what's happening outside the US. When something starts to become big at scale they get interested. Explaining the acquisition of Skype or Last.fm. There is a cultural factor that explains this form of arrogancy or lazyness: the domestic market size. There is already enough to get informed about in the USA. The rest comes after. In Europe we are by nature a sum of small countries in proportion and tend to have a more international culture. We are educated to learn about what's going on beyond our frontiers.

I am french, lived in several countries in Europe, travel quite often speak 5 languages and work a lot with Americans. I have a couple of observations.

I am most of the time disappointed by the conversation i have with americans when it comes to something that is not about america. Europe is just considered as a great supermaket in the web industry: a place where you can find great acquisitions helping you getting bigger or better. They ignore most of the great activity happening there and loic is right to point this out. But mostly i think they do not understand Europeans and their culture. They make easy pre conceived ideas, think that having lived in the UK is enough to justify knowing a little about Europeans and that their tourist activity is a good basis to understand what's going on. And that what i felt when i read Michael Arrington's post, on which i totally disagree: we have a different lifestyle based on enjoying contacts and taking time, and we are not obsessed about money as a religion. This does not make europeans lazy.

Europe has very strong players and local activity which does not get the deserved attention. I could draw an endless list of company's that do not get any blog coverage and that make many americans ashamed they ignored them so far. Just take Russia for example which is a stunning market with tons of web giants people have never heard of (ozon and others).

The new generation of entrepreneurs are aware that you don't build a business in your frontiers anymore. Things are changing, Netvibes, Deezer and Dailymotion were built out of France. Meetic also. And so many more. This trend will accelerate over time specially as cultural gaps are getting smaller and as people are living more and more outside their frontiers.

It is about time that america stops considering europe, as america's supermarket.

ps: i ll write another post about Israel that has a similar problem but for very different reasons

Bonjour StyleShake

I am happy to announce that StyleShake (a lgilab portfolio company) is launching in France in partnership with one of the largest fashion and mail order retailer 3Suisses under the cobranded URL 3Suisses Couture, allowing users to create and order their customized fashion item. The integration is really well done and i think this is a nice way to start the operation.



We saw a strong interest from foreign consumers (the company is based in the UK()) for StyleShake and this has been the opportunity to launch and test a great local partnership giving our little startup access to millions of paying customers!

Congratulation to both teams for this and look forward to great sales results!