Had the pleasure of meeting Orli this afternoon at Caffe Henrietta, one of the many coffee houses in Tel Aviv area. Shortly before arriving I saw the picture Orli took (embed below), which I believe is the 1st long-term partnership a local business is doing with Foursquare (correct me if I’m wrong).

Caffe Henrietta and Foursquare: Join our social club (credit: Orli Yakuel)

The first 5 minutes of the meeting both Orli and I spent facing our iPad/iPhone, respectively, registering for the partnership, at Caffe Henrietta’s website (He). The process is fairly simple, 3-4 steps, to connect you to Caffe Henrietta’s social club (facebook, foursquare, cellphone). Shortly after we received 3 text messages – including a free drink coupon for the current visit!

The text messages I received from Caffe Henrietta

I’m happy to see location based services (He) are kicking off in Israel, with various models in place – campaign based, specials, partnerships, exploring what works and what not. Although Caffe Henrietta saw only $5 from the 3 of us (+ tip), the long term exposure and buzz is much bigger, not to mention customer loyalty – next time I’m meeting someone in that area, it will probably be at Henrietta.

On the last day of February I’ll be attending FONSI – The Future of Nonprofit Summit Israel conference, at Nalaga’at Center, Jaffa port. The Future of Nonprofit Summit Israel [FONSI] is designed to showcase the best tools, latest trends, and best practices in order to advance the third sector in Israel.

I’ll be on the ‘Is Social Media Overrated‘ panel (scheduled for 16:30 – so please stay , along with Olivier, Kfir, Hadassah and Florence, speaking about the status of social media, specifically how (and if) nonprofits can leverage the tools and services to their advantage. Will share best practices from my own experience, like Alfa Romeo, Nokia World 2010, and others.

Register here, sponsors here. See you Feb. 28th !

Thursday, Dec. 2nd, will be declared a National Day of Mourning in Israel, to commemorate one of the toughest disasters in our country’s history – The Carmel Wildfire (still raging). Emergency forces are describing the fire using war terms, and many agree that, excluding the wars – this disaster is the biggest and most complicated Israel has ever faced.

Carmel Fire, Thursday night (Dec. 2nd), at Tirat Hacarmel. By Niv Calderon

Starting small near the Village of Nucleus (also see Google Map below) on Thursday at 10:45am, the wildfire picked up with the winds, changed direction west to road 721, and trapped a bus conveying 40 Prison Guards on route to evacuate a nearby detention facility. 37 died on the bus, 3 escaped, presumed dead.

The remains of the prison guards' bus, Carmel Fire. By Niv Calderon

Pictures by Niv Calderon. Additional pictures from the disaster area at facebook.com/nowIamHere.

View שריפה בכרמל – חדשות 2 באינטרנט in a larger map

The fire burst on the 2nd day of Hannuka, a Jewish holiday celebrating the victory of the Maccabees over the Seleucid Empire, marking the rededicating of the Temple in Jerusalem (Second Temple). The olive oil in the temple’s eternal fire was enough for one day, but miraculously it burned for 8 days – exactly the time needed to prepare fresh olive oil.

Carmel Fire, captured by The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. Click image for original

My heart goes out to the families who have lost their loved ones and to the emergency forces working around the clock to extinguish the fire. Special thanks to Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Britain and Russia for sending their fire-fighting aircrafts to assist.

Season 8 of Israel’s leading comedy/late-night show, Eretz Nehederet (A Wonderful Country), starts shooting soon, and in the meantime they started publishing short clips online.

The latest one is a parody on the world’s famous mobile game – Angry Birds, with a Middle-eastern twist The English version was published 4 days after the Hebrew one and already surpassed it by # of views. Even received a share from Jeremiah Owyang on facebook.

Enjoy!

Back in July I wrote here about the 1st foursquare campaign in Israel, Club Seat, a bold activity at the time, and even now. 4 months later, and thanks to Lindsay for reminding me, here is best practices for launching a foursquare campaign post. The post is based on data I collected on facebook and foursquare, along with personal insights, from my experience and my understanding of the digital marketing space in Israel. The charts comparing the ‘official’ venue vs. Club Seat venue are a visual aid, based on actual foursquare data collected October 26th.

1. Confusing rules

I’ll start at the end of the contest, a status update (see screenshot below) from a participant wondering why he hasn’t won 1st prize. Before you say anything (sour looser, etc) – the dude has a valid point: the winner should be the Mayor of the venue (Galina) that received the most check-ins during the contest. The response from Club Seat, although agreeing with the participant, doesn’t help clear the air (4th comment in the screenshot below): “The club that had the most check-ins by August 31st was Gazoz, 2nd was Galina, 3rd was Sublet. OK, say we believe it (stats anyone?). But wait, it gets better: The Mayor at both Gazoz and Galina, as of August 31st was Michal Y., who declined accepting the prize. Hence, the Mayor of the 3rd venue, Sublet, is the winner”. WTF?!?! How did they deduce that?? Who is Michal Y. and why did she decline a flight+vacation to Ibiza? Where are the check-in stats for August 31st to support the decision? But the most awkward thing is the logic they used for picking an alternate winner. Just so we’re clear, Runner-up refers to an actual human. Not venue. Confusing, but even more, something’s fishy. And that’s not a term one wants associated with one’s brand.

Club Seat post-contest discussion

2. Duplicate venues

Google’s mission is to ‘Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful‘. Foursquare, as any other User-Generated-Content service (youtube, twitter, go-walla, facebook places, etc) are working hard on eliminating duplicate and triple content, in order to minimize storage space – and make it easier for us, consumers, to find what we need. I understand it was important ‘branding’ the club with ‘Club Seat‘, making it unique to the contest – but I think that’s wrong. There are plenty of methods to measure traffic and check-ins to existing venues, no need to create duplicates. Plus, by using the existing venue already on foursquare (Gazoz, Galina and Sublet) you give incentive to the current Mayor to ‘keep his chair’, by increasing his/her visits – basically ‘using’ the Mayor’s own need to remain, well, the Mayor.

Foursquare stats: Galina vs. Galina Club Seat

3. Leverage evangelists

As I wrote back in July, this campaign will be interesting to watch, as foursquare is considered early-early stage in Israel, around 1,000 active users (who checked-in in the past 30 days) in my opinion. Any digital marketing campaign must include early adopters of the technology in question and community hubs – people that have 1000+ facebook friends, 2000+ twitter followers, 300+ foursquare friends – that will act as a powerful magnet, bringing more traffic, making some noise. Maybe Grey Interactive had such evangelists, but even if they had, I haven’t heard about it – and I’m pretty out there, socially speaking.

4. People, not venue, oriented

CEOs, CFOs, CMOs, CIOs – it’s all about the consumer. When doing a location based contest, people count, because tracking their movement and analyzing the data will bring you added value. Premiere value. To strengthen my first point (confusing rules), when the winner (Mayor) of a venue declines a free vacation to Ibiza, give it to the person Runner-up, not the venue. Now, the charts – although Gazoz and Galina (Club Seat) have more check-ins than the official venue, people-wise – they loose. Twice. Because those 114 and 203 people (respectively) could have joined the contest, boosting all metrics, simply by seeing all those other Seat clubbers checking-in.

Foursquare stats: Gazoz vs. Gazoz Club Seat

5. Bring the business on-board

In my opinion, the #1 reason this campaign didn’t go as planned – minimal business involvement. There are hundreds of clubs/bars in Tel Aviv, all striving to survive, 60% will close within 24 months (actual stat). If Club Seat would have worked with Galina, Gazoz and Sublet, offering an incentive to those checking-in (free keg to parties of 4+, 1st beer on the house, etc), this contest could have taken another route altogether, increasing awareness, boosting sales and helping both Seat and the clubs win the crowd.

Foursquare stats: Sublet vs. Sublet Club Seat

After more than 16 years of playing basketball – in elementary school, hi-school, semi-professional league, workplace league and for leisure/cardio, I finally have (great) pics to show off. Thank to Dafna Talmon for taking them @ #Tweetball. The full set can be viewed at Dafna’s Flickr.

Jumpshot. Photo by Dafna Talmon

'Driving' to the basket. Photo by Dafna Talmon

I’ll be attending Nokia World 2010 next week, Sep. 14-15, at London, UK, the first Israeli blogger to attend this yearly Nokia conference. I, along with several journalists, are flying to London as guests of Eurocom-Nokia (Nokia Israel), who are covering our expenses.

I’m arriving to London on Monday noon (the 13th) and will be leaving Wednesday night (the 15th). Not much time, and plenty of things to do (scroll down to my agenda), but I’d love to meet fellow Nokia World attendees,  facebook/twitter/LinkedIn friends in the area, or colleagues, for a beer (or burger, depending on the time).

Nokia World will take place at ICC London ExCel, located at the center of London Docklands. The 2-day event is packed with keynote speakers, including Olli-Pekka Kallasvou, President & CEO, Nokia, Anssi Vanjokl, EVP Mobile Solutions, Nokia, Vittorio Colao, Group CEO, Vodafone, Sir Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the world-wide-web), Paco Contreras, Group Product Manager, Microsoft, Kevin Thau, VP Mobile, Twitter, Michael Gartenberg, Altimeter Group, Adam Medros, VP, TripAdvisor, and many more.

The Experience Lounge will feature pretty much everything Nokia and its business partners are offering, including latest products, offerings, services and applications, as well as a networking platform for mobile experts.

Here’s my agenda so far – if you have any suggestions, do add them in the comments and I’ll do my best to attend. You can follow me on twitter and foursquare for the latest updates, announcements, pictures, videos and check-ins.

Monday, Sep. 13th

• 3pm-7pm - Nokia User Meetup @ 1000Heads HQ. Details and registration at NokiaDNA (#nokiameet)
• 6pm-10pm – MoMo London Developers and Demo Meetup @ CBI Conference Center (requires reg.)
• 8pm-10pm – Informal Dinner for Journalists (closed event), with Greig Williams, Managing Director Nokia Alps and SE Europe

Tuesday, Sep. 14th

• 8am-5pm – Nokia World 2010 @ ICC London ExCeL
• 7.30pm – Nokia Party @ Debut London

Wednesday, Sep. 15th

• 8am-5pm – Nokia World 2010 @ ICC London ExCeL
• 8.30pm – Depart for airport

See you in London !!

The Coca-Cola Village is an Israeli summer tradition.

Every year, in July-August, thousands of kids in their summer break attend ‘The Village’, a 5-day camp, organized by Coca-Cola Israel, with fun activities, pool, social games and Coca Cola drinks of course. This year, e-dologic, the interactive agency working with Coca-Cola Israel, has developed a very cool solution for connecting the offline world with the online – facebook.

The real life life button - coca-cola village

Each kid upon entering the village received an RFID bracelet, with his/her facebook profile saved, securely, in that chip. In turn, the kid was able to ‘Like’ each activity he/she performed at the village, showing up on their facebook profile as a 15sec video, outlining the activity, which was pre-recorded.

The ‘Real life facebook like button’ was a huge success (Hebrew), with tens of thousands #LIKES, for a total of under 1,000 participants! Facebook sent over Mark Cowan, VP Operationsת Europe, to visit the village and experience ‘The Like Machine‘ first-hand, after Mark Zukerberg heard about it at Cannes Lions by Enon Landenberg, e-dologic CEO.

Update on privacy: in a related post (Hebrew) by Jonathan Klinger, it was suggested that the RFID tag stores the username and password details of each participant, thus making it easy to steal the credentials using a simple RFID reader (or in the event of lost/stolen tag). I double-checked with e-dologic the info I had: The RFID tag only stores a unique id number, worthless on its own. When a participant moves his hand near the RFID reader in the village, the on-site server (protected both physically and virtually) receives the participant location and unique id number, to match against its own DB. Every cycle (Coca-Cola Village has 5-7 cycles, each one 3 days) the DB is formatted, for security reasons. On top of that, participants pay a 15US$ fee to receive the RFID tag, refundable upon return of the tag.

The Real Life LIKE Butoon – Case Study – Coca-Cola Village:

Over the past 2 months at Inkod-Hypera I learned a lot about the importance of user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) in the process of making web (or mobile) products. First off, those 2 expressions are not the same, in fact, UX govern UI (in web-lingo: UX is the parent, UI is the child). Secondly, user experience (UX) is based on social and cultural trends whereas user interface (UI) is more based on technology – multi-touch, touch, mouse, command-line, speech, etc. The direct result of the latter is that user experience is both subjective in nature and dynamic, because it relates to an individual’s performance, feelings and thoughts about the system – that can change, over a period of time.

Google.com in 1999

Over at Inkod-Hypera we developed a proven methodology that puts great emphasis on UX, before Photoshop is even launched. We do product concept, benchmarking, usability testing, user interface planning (mockups/wireframes), functional specification and only then – guiding our in-house studio for the design aspect. During my time here, I’ve met with dozens of customers, 3rd party vendors, entrepreneurs, ad agencies, and more to get a feeling of how they perceive the field of UX and design. Unfortunately, especially with start-ups and 1st time entrepreneurs – the focus is still on the what, instead of the why/who/how.

Met this week a good friend, developer since the age of 12, ex-CTO, co-founder of 2 start-ups and CEO of a 3rd one, that told me ‘UX is the new semi-God‘. Not CTO, not the code, not the product (what) – but the business (why/who/how). And he said it took him 2 years to realize that, and outsource the work to an expert. It doesn’t matter if you’re writing the code in PHP, Java, .Net, or Rubi – the software will work. But if you haven’t figured out the user (who), the problem that needs solving (why), and the right way to solve it (how) – that’s not good.

I’m not saying ‘Hire us’, this is not a sales pitch (ok, ok –  half sales-pitch). I do say ‘work with experts‘ – you have developers, right? Hire UX experts, or outsource the work.

Google.com in 2010

As the internet evolves, and mobile becomes a larger aspect of our lives, I hope people will pay more attention to user experience, and understand its importance from day 1, not launch + day 1.

Had an interesting discussion this week at Globes event with Ahuvah, a very wise and internet-savvy friend, about foursquare. She asked me – Why? A simple question, complicated answer. Once, not so long ago, people were asking the same WH-question about Twitter, and look were we are now.

But back to me. I check-in at places of interest, usually business-oriented – meaning if I’m at a the Finance District of Tel Aviv, or the Hi-Tech district – where I’m more likely to meet people. But so far, as Ahuvah was clever to ask, those check-ins resulted in fewer random meetings than I expected. So again, Why? I guess convenience has something to do with it, meaning a proper application – Gravity. I’ve previewed Gravity before, saying it’s the main reason for my increased use of foursquare – a flick of the navbar, and I’m Here! Nevertheless, I believe foursquare is much more than just a contest for who’s got more Mayorships. It’s a valuable database of knowledge about people habitts – and knowledge is power. Much like twitter that crossed the chasm, foursquare too needs the same things: celebrity, business, media coverage.

Club Seat - 1st Israeli foursquare-based campaign

Celebrity we have (not many though), media coverage still lagging, but now we have a business. Seat become the 1st business in Israel (Hebrew) to use foursquare in a digital campaign (Hebrew, again), Club Seat, along with 3 known clubs in Tel Aviv – Gazoz, Galina, and Sublet. People are encouraged to create an account in foursqaure, download the app of their choice and visit the clubs. The campaign is three-fold:

• The club that receives the most entries by August 30th (end of summer break) is crowned ‘Best Club in Town’;
• Top 20 people with the  highest number of check-ins at any of the 3 clubs will receive concert tickets;
• The mayor of each club will receive a plane ticket (round trip I hope)

Personally I was hoping the 1st business will originate from the restaurant/cafe/bar industry, much like Starbucks is doing in the US, or FT.com’s deal to attract youngsters in London. Seat, along with Grey Interactive, have taken a leap into un-charted waters in Israeli advertising, as foursquare is still in early-early adopter stage here. Facebook has transformed the digital space in Israel – more than 3 million people connected (about 60% of internet-connected homes), #2 fastest growing country in the Middle East (7%, monthly), top 10 countries in terms of average time spent (globally!), and more. No campaign is complete here without a facebook presence. Twitter and foursquare are still considered ‘geek-only territory‘, although twitter is gaining momentum in celebrities and media.

Club Seat was only launched this week, so the stats are obviously low (Gazoz 9 check-ins, Galina 3 check-ins, and Sublet 4 check-ins), but it will be interesting to see how this pilot evolves and what impact will it have on the advertising industry. Stay tuned.

Soluto, an Israeli-based start-up, won TechCrunch Disrupt 2010 earlier this week. Soluto develops an anti-frustration software, that monitors the Kernel of Windows and along with the power of cloud-computing (crowd-sourcing), suggests a solution – a service to end, a program to close, etc.

Soluto’s PC Genome is a knowledgebase of PC frustration data built automatically through the usage of Soluto software. Its objective and statistical information, gathered and analyzed by Soluto, is also editable by the community.

Roee, Dvir, on stage at TC Disrupt, and the entire Soluto team – huge Kudos guys!!! You helped continue the dynasty – Israel is truly a Start-Up Nation!

Soluto – Anti Frustration Software from Soluto on Vimeo.

Techonomy 2010

Although Techonomy is only in its 2nd year, it’s shaping up to be THE technology/entrepreneur event in Israel, giving 6 (7 this year) start-ups a prominent stage to present their product/service, before a panel of distinguished judges and a loving crowd. Techonomy is organized and produced by Orli Yakuel and Eddie Resnick.

7 companies presented yesterday at Techonomy 2010: AppsFire (video), Bulloonz (video), Fiddme (video), Interlude (video), Omek Interactive (video), SircleIt (video), and ZBang (video). Each presenter is allocated 10min, followed by a Q&A section from judges (and crowd). Voting is done by audience, text messaging their winner (SMS). Videos courtesy of Geek Media.

Interlude.fm

Interlude.fm took 1st place, after a brilliant demo by founder, Israeli musician Yoni Bloch. Interlude developed an interactive platform for video, that allows users to interact with the video, choosing various paths, thus altering the original timeline of the clip. Each selection impacts both audio and video, but Yoni explained that you can put restrictions, such as pre-defined opening and closing scenes, director’s cut, and more. According to Robert Scoble, interlude could save MySpace and is a really cool tech for musicians. In a recent project featuring a 3min video, interlude technology tripled the average time on site, to 9min (!) with 1m unique visitors. Yoni’s demo (video below) at Techonomy was shot at his house in Tel Aviv and offers 256 options, complied of 38 different scenes shot on-location.

Fiddme

In 2nd place, very close to interlude.fm, came Fiddme, a social network for foodies, from founders Yosi Taguri, Eran Kampf, Naor Suki, and Udi Milo. Fiddme allows foodies to share their food, by taking a picture and uploading it to fiddme community, using iPhone app or the web. I’ve known Yosi and Eran for some time now, and their passion for the product (started capturing food roughly 2 years ago), along with a beautiful user experience, and the location-based buzz (@foursquare integration coming very-very soon), will make Fiddme one of the best viral apps out there.

Update [April 27th, 5pm GMT+3]:

Thank you all for commenting and participating. The winners have been notified by email an hour ago. Hope to see you all Sunday.

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TheMarker Com.Vention is the prominent internet event in Israel, with known figures from the SU, VC, Marketing, Content and TV, Advertising and Internet industries (local and global) – and I have 10 complimentary tickets (worth ~$100 each) to share with you!

In the spirit of networking and sharing, I’ve decided to do a ‘Pay It Forward‘ kind of thing, and give each ‘winner’ 2 tickets: one for you and the other for someone from your network, whom you met via a social network (facebook/twitter/LinkedIn/Foursquare/etc), that haven’t attended Com.Vention before. So basically, you get to pick a ticket winner.

Here’s what you need to do in order to win a ticket to TheMarker Com.Vention:

1. Explore your wall/stream and find someone that hasn’t attended Com.Vention yet.
2. Post a comment to this post (name, email – not public, website), with your name, your friend-from-the-web name and the social match-maker name.
3. That’s it!

Then, I will cross-reference the names with TheMarker (to verify your friend-from-the-web didn’t attend previously) and research the social network in question (to assess the relationship). First 5 ‘couples’ that will get it right – met via a social network and friend-from-the-web hasn’t attended before, will receive the tickets. Last date to submit entries is Thursday, April 29th at 18:00 Israel time (GMT+3). Winners will be announced here and contacted via email for the logistics, so please watch your typing.

This year there are very interesting panels and sessions: ‘Mobile Internet – Who’s going to benefit most from the boom?’, ‘Life on demand – how consumers are changing the life of E-commerce’, ‘Who will control the content’ and more. Full agenda is available here, speakers list here, twitter tag is #com2010, and facebook page.

See you Sunday!

TED requires no introduction. Technology, Entertainment, Design has been synonymous with THE EVENT, to which everyone wants to attend. At $2,000 per ticket it’s out of reach for most, and the waiting list is long. Very long.

TEDx Tel Aviv

TEDx Tel Aviv is an independently organized TED event, and tomorrow (Monday, April 26th) it’s coming to Tel Aviv, Israel, for the very first time. Over 1,200 people (including myself) submitted the registration form to the event, 300 (excluding myself) will attend TEDx Tel Aviv in person tomorrow.

For the thousands who want to watch the lectures there will be several Simulcast locations across the country, most of them in universities and businesses. Full list is available here. All lectures will be available at TEDx website following the event. You can also follow Lior Zoref and Yosi Taguri of Shidurey (Hebrew), who’ll be filming a clip at the event, as well as TEDxTelAviv themselves.

Seen it at Mizbala, at Room404, tweeted about it, so why not spread the word around with a blog post?

Moran Lavie took her iPhone love to the next step with this ‘I know you want me’ spoof (by Pitbull). Although the lyrics are in Hebrew, I’m sure you’ll be able to enjoy it..

And, in case you’re not one of the 449,116 people who’ve seen this already, here is NYTimes‘s David Pogue, with his own iPhone love song, from 2007: