Techonomy3 - The Rundown

(Photo by Yaniv Feldman - Newsgeek)

This is a repost of an article that I originally wrote for Technorati and was published there.

The startup scene in Israel is booming, and a(nother) testament to that is the Techonomy3 conference, which just wrapped up not long ago.
The format is simple: 6 startups presented to about 400 attendees in the room (and probably a few thousand viewing via the live video stream from around the world).
A panel of respected, well-known judges gave their comments after each presentation, and the audience voted on the winner, American Idol style.

America (well, Israel actually), here are your top 6:

• Hitpad - an iPad app that automatically gives you highlights of what's going on today by analyzing different online sources and giving you trending topics with drill downs of topics you're interested in. Very cool.
• Dapsem - an iPhone app to give your friends virtual fist bumps as a sign of appreciation. The concept of giving recognition to people you know is great and has huge potential.
  From what I've seen, Props are the ones to keep your eyes on in that space.
• Magisto - a web app (remember those? :) that automatically detects interesting content in your videos for creating professional looking edits of your videos. Like Animoto but with zero effort.
• Tingiz - a platform for creating mobile microsites for products. Manufacturers of physical products can create a mobile microsite for their products and connect them via a QR code. The product microsites will show things like product videos, information, Facebook page, etc...
• Jumboard - a large plastic PC keyboard with big red, yellow, blue, and green buttons that let little kids easily interact with Flash apps on Jumboard.com. This gives young kids an interface they can easily use to start interacting with games/applications and parents get feedback on the progress of their kids. Kinda like a modern incarnation of the Comfy keyboard.
• TVtak - an iPhone app for easily getting information about TV shows. All you do is take a picture of your TV while watching a show and TVtak will recognize what you are watching and give you information about that show (and let you share it with your friends). Very much like Shazam does for music.

Based on the reactions of the crowd and the live Twitter board (which was on fire during the event), Techonomy was a huge success for everybody involved.

And without any further ado... the winner of Techonomy 3 is.....
Magisto!

Congrats to the winners and to the organizers of this conference, they put on a great show.
And to the losers: "it's an honor just being nominated", or in this case, just being on stage.