The New York Sun ran an excellent article about the problem facing the Israel hi-tech industry. Basically, it has one major problem - the Israeli government.

Many of Israels best and brightest prefer to study abroad and/or work abroad in the high tech sector because the Israeli education system is in decline, the high costs for higher education and the bureaucratic controls on the high tech industry - all dependent upon the decision making of the Israeli government.

As the NY Sun article summarizes so succinctly:

"To help high-tech thrive, Israel must continue with radical reforms like the immensely successful financial market reforms that reduced costs and enhanced competitiveness and that were implemented by the former minister of finance, Benjamin Netanyahu. Markets can create prosperity in Israel, as they have done elsewhere, provided that the government will be cut from involvement in high-tech as well as elsewhere in the economy."

I hope some influential Israeli politicians read the New York Sun.

With all of our lives being run more and more online (ok - my life), I always have the concern in the back of my head of "the day" when all information online will be wiped out. Maybe I'm just paranoid.

Anyway, I have started looking for hard drive solutions to be able to back up as much information as possible.

I just read about an Israeli company called mempile that is developing a 1 terabyte disc that has the ability to store the equivalent of 212 DVD-quality movies, 250,000 MP3 files, and 1,000,000 large Word documents on one CD/DVD like device.

Personally, I would love it. I just bought a 500gb hard drive that I use to back up all the digital files from my home computer and laptop. If I had a very portable disc to back up 1 terabyte of information without the need for hookups, rebooting ro installing software, that would be great.


Well, if mempile accomplishes what it wants to, then this will be possible. They already announced in March, 2007 that the technology works and now they are developing the prototype to be ready to reach market in 2010. After that the terabyte sky is the limit - the company predicts that with future optimization and the jump to blue laser technology, it will be able to follow the TeraDisc up with a blue-laser version that could store up to 5TB.

All us paranoid data-backer-uppers can't wait to see.

It seems like an Israeli company has developed a scent detection technology that can compete with the best detection technologies already used in the security market. While Smiths Detection seems to cover all the security bases by offering a range of technologies to deal with different threats, Scent Detection Technologies proclaims to have a generic technology that can be "trained" to deal with all types of vulnerable industries. I'm very intrigued to learn about its learning technology that allows it to learn about dealing effectively with all different types of threats in one device.

Here is the recent article that introduces SDT's new handheld device that uses its scent detection technology.

Globes newspaper reports that Yamaha director Hirokazu Kato was one of the prominent guests at the Lightspeed Conference held in Israel recently.

Hirokazu is responsible for Yamaha's technology vision as well as the company’s R&D center. He supposedly met with a number of executives of Israeli start-up companies during his visit.

Even though this headline has nothing to do with Israeli technology (Jeff is one of the major movers and shakers behind this Jerusalem Rocks music festival), the following comment made by Jeff (in an interview about his involvement with the music festival) has everything to do with Israeli technology:

"Whenever I invest in an Israeli start-up I know it will become a global company!"

Not bad support for Israeli technology and start-ups.

(I apologize to all the English readers - the original article with this quote is in Hebrew - you just have to trust me on this.)