Archive for October, 2008

Twitter in Israel

With twitter gaining momentum, I’m starting to see more Israelies followers – GO Israel! Although the enterprise adoption of twitter in Israel not as the US or European one, there are plenty of people out there twitting, who are working for Israeli companies, ranging from Hi-Tech, Advertising, Consumer Products, Retail and others.

Lev Cinema is one of the veteran chains of cinemas in Israel (25 years), doing its best to succeed in todays world, with broadband internet aceess, DVD, LCDs and video streaming. It recently opened it twitter account, @lev_cinema, and its first action of business was to gather as many followers as possible – # of users is the key indicator when it comes to any web 2.0 business.

I was very happy to see they opted for a unique marketing activity, that has a high cost vs. benefit value – free screening of Coen Brothers‘ latest film, Burn After Reading. It was also an opportunity to meet almost 70 Israeli twitters, most of whom I haven’t met in person.
The screening was super, movie was funny – too bad I arrived late (I was counting on commercials to make it on time, which surprisingly enough, there were none) and missed the gathering.. 🙁 Fortunately, Israel was there to take some pictures, so there’s a proof I was there.
As I (and others) commented in the post (Hebrew), I kind of hoped there would be a more formal gathering, before the movie started. People seating at the cinema, lights on, 15-20min discussion on social media in Israel, ROIs, best practices, ideas and feedback, something like that. I mean, you already have 70 twitters at one place – why not make the most of it? Nevertheless, it was an excellent activity, leveraging the use of social media, specifically social media in businesses.

Guess I’ll meet you guys (and gals) at one of Jeff‘s social gatherings this week.

My Lotus Community links

With all the different technologies and platform out there, it’s difficult to keep track of what and where everything is located. Whenever I read something of interest, that’s worth keeping, I have this flow of browser buttons, like a a process (hey, I work for Big Blue, we invented processes) – del.icio.us, dogear, twitter, facebook.

Ed has talked about the importance of collaboration within the Lotus Community, not only because Lotus strategy = collaboration, but also because it’s in our DNA – we’re here to share and spread the knowledge.

In the spirit of spreading the word, I tried to assemble a list of Lotus resources I use frequently – being formal websites with business and technical documents or social sites as blogs and wikis. If you have any additions, use the comments sections. I will definitely expand this post as time (and contributions) progresses.

Lotus Software:
ibm.com/lotus
planetlotus.org
Lotus Forums and community
Lotus and WebSphere Portal wikis
Lotus videos on youtube
IBM Collaboration solutions
Notes/Domino Infocenter
WebSphere Portal Infocenter
Lotus Quickr Infocenter
Lotus Connections Infocenter
Lotus Forms Infocenter
Lotus RedBooks and RedPapers
Lotus Webcasts
Products documentation
WebSphere Portal Zone – developerWorks

Comic courtesy of Geek and Poke

Pelephone goes Mobile with IBM WebSphere Portal

Always glad to post success stories and best practices, especially when there’s press involved. Pelephone Communications, one of Israel’s top 3 cellular operators, has launched its new cellular portal (for a small portion of its customers), running IBM WebSphere Portal. This is a great win for IBM Israel, and some of you are more familiar with the details. Pelephone’s 2.1 millions customers are already reaping the benefits of the upgraded portal, with a wealth of content and information, such as TV, Music Videos, Sports, Entertainment and News. C-Soft, an IBM Business Partner, was our partner for this great project, estimated at $250k.

Since the original article is in Hebrew, some highlights:
The new portal performs full adaptation of the content based on the device’s screen size and browsing capabilities. The new cellular portal consumes content from a mobile content management system, that handles the content for both of Pelephone’s networks (CDMA and EV-DO).

Ilan Alter, Mgr. of Cellular Applications, Pelephone:
The new cellular portal is a more stable and efficient platform, that allows us to introduce innovative services for our customers, in shorter development cycles.

Ofer Friedman, Pelephone Communications Account Exec, IBM:
Pelephone’s approach is to supply the customers’ needs, by creating an accessible world of content. We simply delivered the right platform to accomplish that.

Daniel Melka, Telco Executive, IBM:
IBM WebSphere Portal provides an optimal solution in terms of operating flexibility and future growth, that are required from Pelephone, in managing the wealth of information and content they provide.

Links:
Pelephone Communications
The People – Pelephone launches new cellular portal based on IBM WebSphere Portal technology
Web Portal Software from IBM – ibm.com

VOI – Video On the Internet

The local internet scene is humming and buzzing for the last few months now, with new portal designs and the annual TV/Internet festival.
Only yesterday I read several posts and comments about Channel 2 latest announcement – mako.co.il, which was suppose to be the new face of Channel 2 online and instead reduced to ‘just another news portal‘.

The internet has definitely changed the way we consume content – my single source for information is definitely the web, being internal or external. Thanks to bandwidth and UGC I can now watch complete episodes/sketches of The Colbert Report, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, SNL and others anytime I want to.

Why this intro? Well, I’ve been following Gal Mor‘s blog, Holes in the Net, for some time. He’s a savvy internet producer/consumer, and although (or maybe bacause) managing the Dev. dept. of Ynet.co.il, his insights into the space of content, internet and UGC is a must read. The new mako.co.il got low reviews from Gal, who put together an excellent post, disecting the different parts of the site. One might say that Gal is a bit biased, as mako.co.il competes with Ynet.co.il, but as Gal (and the comments) concludes, mako.co.il should be more focused on video, rather than ‘plain’ content. We want Video On the Internet.

What interest me is the fact that Channel 2 already has a video presence online – it launched IsraelNews at YouTube a month ago, with some clips on the ‘behind-the-scene’ action at a news room (and watching Yonit Levy up close and personal for 2:16min can’t hurt either.. 😉
That’s the kind of VOI I’m talking about. Even Yonit is saying that the internet provides the extra screen time they need, putting the full 15min interview instead of the 4min cut for the news item.

Bottomline – nice to see Channel 2 are taking risks, leaping into the VOI space, but they need to walk carefully. Already there’s some confusion between mako.co.il, israelnews, ch2news2, reshet.tv – some strategy and direction may be needed.

Danny Koshmaro welcomes YouTube viewers:

Why IsraelNews at YouTube is important (Yonit Levy):

Videoblog with Aharon Barnea at the US Elections:

Lotus Notes in the Clouds

It’s been around for at least 36 hours now, so you’re no strangers to the news, but still:

Using a hosting service, there is no need to purchase, house or supply energy to new hardware needed to run the software. Customers of Lotus Notes messaging software can instead focus their IT resources on other strategic business projects.

The solution includes servers, storage, monitoring, networks, security and 24 x 7 support.
Did I mention it starts from $8 per user, per month?

Key benefits are:

  • Fully managed, scalable enterprise e-mail application platform hosted at an IBM data center
  • 1 GB mailbox
  • Comprehensive service-level agreements for e-mail application and infrastructure (99.5% and 99.9% availability)
  • Support for the regulatory requirements of the government and various industries
  • Anti-spam and antivirus protection to support data privacy and security
  • Backup and restore

Links:
Announcement letter: IBM Lotus Notes Hosted Messaging
Press release: IBM extends Lotus Notes software to new markets with on-line hosted service
Ed Brill: Lotus Notes Hosted Messaging announced today
PlanetLotus.org: IBM Lotus Notes Hosted Messaging
InformationWeek: IBM releases SaaS version of Lotus Notes Domino
InternetNews: IBM takes Notes in the clouds
eWeek: IBM SaaS version of Lotus Notes Domino goes on sale
PC World: IBM to roll out $8-per-month hosted Lotus
The Burton Group (Bill Pray): IBM announces Lotus Notes Hosted Messaging
Lotus Notes Hosted Messaging website at ibm.com

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