Archive for December, 2008

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CRN: The 10 Coolest Open Source Products of 2008

Published December 26, 2008 Uncategorized Closed
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CRN are continuing with their ‘Top 10‘ series to wrap up 2008 with this list of ‘The 10 Coolest Open Source Products of 2008‘. This time the focus is at the open source community, that has much more to offer than (just) Linux OS. Open source products will grow bigger in market share in 2009, as companies and individuals alike are looking for ways to cut down costs. Obviously, IBM’s own Lotus Symphony, which is based on OpenOffice.org, is included in this list, coming in at #3, just after Linux OS and OpenOffice 3.0. Here’s what CRN had to say about Symphony:

IBM has taken great pains to position itself as more of a middleware company than a desktop productivity software company, but diverged from that path a bit in 2008. By launching and upgrading its IBM Lotus Symphony suite of productivity apps based on OpenOffice.org, IBM is once again using the Lotus brand to take aim against Microsoft on the desktop.

Link:
CRN – The 10 Coolest Open Source Products of 2008

Amidar Housing picked IBM WebSphere Portal

Published December 25, 2008 Uncategorized Closed
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Amidar Housing, the government agency responsible for housing in Israel, has just launched its redesigned website, developed over IBM WebSphere Portal Express software. Excellent gift for the holidays!
During the 2nd stage of the project, Amidar – along with Web-Tech Innovation, IBM BP specializing in portal and KM solutions – will launch a new intranet website, that would connect Amidar’s 500 employees spread at 50 locations across the country.

Amidar picked IBM in July 2008, with a definite roadmap to launch the redesigned site by the end of the year. The solution, WebSphere Portal Express V6.0 (packaged for small-medium businesses), along with WebSphere Dashboard Framework, provides the perfect platform for Adimar, and cost-effective one, to develop and deploy 2 portals over a single infrastructure – exploiting the solution’s capability of ‘Virtual Portal’.


Amidar also took advantage of some innovative web 2.0 technologies embeded in the solution, by deploying the map you see above, of the various locations across Israel. The launch of the redesigned site, as well as the internal portal (to be launched soon), are part of Amidar’s 2009 approach of focusing on the customer’s needs.

Yaacov Brosh, Amidar CEO:

Access to public housing and learning the rights every citizen entitles to, demand first of all – access to information. The redesigned website provides just that.

Amir Belferman, Amidar CIO:

Building over WebSphere Portal technology enabled us flexibility in content management, easy setup of the different pages/categories and operational efficiency, under a very short time frame. We plan to maximize the platform in the future, by enhancing the services and information we provide to our customers online.

Links:
Amidar website
Amidar improves customer care by launching a redesigned website built over IBM technology
IBM web portal software
WebSphere Portal Express software

How was the tweetup last night?

Published December 25, 2008 Uncategorized Closed
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Excellent!!! Thanks for asking 😉

Last night couple of socially connected friends gathered at Cafe Greg, for the 1st official Israeli Twitter Meeting, or tweetup. It was planned in under a week, and I was definitely impressed with the attendance level, especially given the winter weather that Israel is experiencing – 18 people showed up, and I was very pleased.

So, I’d like to thank those who showed up (and if I left someone out, please shout and I’ll amend):
Niv Calderon, Shira Abel, Ezra Butler, Ayelet Noff, Naor Mark, Tal Ater, Israel Blechman, Didi Chanuch, Alex De Carvalho, Vera Sachs, Binyamin Netanyahu, Ahuva Berger, Lior Sion, Sarah Peguine, Dan Peguine, and QassamCount.

Niv already wrote a post about the tweetup and Tal uploaded some photos to fb.

See you at the next tweetup! and Merry Christmas 🙂

Israeli Hanuka Tweetup

Published December 23, 2008 Uncategorized Closed
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If you’re following me you know there’s an Israeli Tweetup (Twitter + Meetup) this Wed (or Thu). Everything is outlined at the FB event, no point repeating it here in length, so just a quick summary:
One of my good friends across the pond said this dude is coming to Israel, and is very much into social media and collaboration – worth meeting with. Quick look at his credentials and I already commented on his Israel Visit post to start the discussion. I wanted to suggest we’ll meet over beer and burger, but what’s the point without the community?!

In just 36 hours, only social, no email/phone/sms, we managed to organize this tweetup, with 20 people attending and 36 maybe’s. We dubbed this meeting as Israeli tweetup, since we’ve been talking about doing something like this for some time now.

The details, which more of are available at fb:
Date & time: Wed., Dec. 24th, 20:30 (3rd candle of Hanuka)
Where: Tel Aviv. Aroma Namal at the moment, but probably will change to TLV University
Who: anyone who wants to come

See you there :-))

Photo: Alex De Carvalho’s blog
Twitter Israel: SeoVice

Twitter made us $1M

Published December 19, 2008 Uncategorized Closed
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Yoav from Blink caught this VentureBeat story some days ago, and wrote a subsequent post (in Hebrew) titled ‘What’s in it for me?‘. In his post, Yoav talks about the thing that’s in the heart of any discussion about social media – ROI. From VentureBeat article:

Dell says Twitter has produced $1 million in revenue over the past year and a half through sale alerts. People who sign up to follow Dell on Twitter receive messages when discounted products are available the company’s Home Outlet Store. They can click over to purchase the product or forward the information to others.

Yoav quotes Seth Godin by categorizing twitter more as a reach tool than a sales tool – a claim I totally agree with. Nevertheless, when we discuss about social media, monetization, business value – we cannot overlook the bottom line, which is money.

As a social media evangelist, I want more people and more companies on board, not because they have to but because there are results and value. Making $1M in revenues will certainly bring more people and businesses into the social media space – because they’ll see both the value and the return.

Links:
Yoav Farhi – What’s in it for me? (Hebrew)
VentureBeat – Twitter has made Dell $1M in revenues

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