This post was originally posted on TechCrunch.com where I cover the Israeli startup scene.

New Israeli startup IRSeek is indexing public Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channels at the rate of 6 million conversations a day. 300 million conversations have now been indexed by the company. The most popular networks, including EFnet, DALnet, Freenode and QuakeNetUndernet, are all being monitored - IRSeeK is now “listening” to 2000+ channels across 10 networks.

There are few IRC search engines today, and most focus on specific niches or single networks, the Company says. Nearly two decades worth of data contained on IRC servers has effectively been lost. IRSeek wants to make sure that future conversations are properly indexed and and searchable. It’s a huge untapped knowledge-base.

So if you want to see what people are saying on IRC about, say, iPhone unlocks, now you can. The most popular search terms populate a query could on the front page of the site.

The company was founded by Eran Cohen (CEO), and Ariel Berkman (CTO). Development began in mid-2006.

The company says a channel is dropped when file sharing activity is detected and private conversations are not eavesdropped in anyway. Still, some IRC users, who have a possibly unreasonable expectation of privacy, may be troubled by IRSeeK. Personal information is often revealed in IRC chats. That information is now indexed and searchable. Searches can also be conducted by IRC nicknames, and all conversations involving that nickname (or even if they were just in the room) are linked. Of course, nicknames aren’t unique and many users may choose the same nickname over time. But even so, the knowledge that everything being typed can be later found by others may have a chilling effect on users.

This post was originally posted on TechCrunch.com where I cover the Israeli startup scene.

Israeli eToro is taking a novel approach in simplifying Foreign Exchange (Forex) trading by packaging the complicated concepts involved in trading one currency against another, in fun non-threatening wrappers.

Just how big is Forex trading? Try an estimated $3.2 trillion in daily turnover—that’s ~35 times the average turnover of the NYSE. However, unlike stock trading which has been generally adopted by the mainstream, Forex trading to date has been mostly marginalized to professional traders. eToro wants to change all that.

I spoke to eToro’s CEO, Johnathan Assia, who explained that the real challenge for eToro is finding ways to present Forex data in a simplified and user-friendly manner that makes it accessible to ordinary users. To appreciate the challenge, take a look at the screenshot on the right depicting a typical Forex trading app interface. Now take a look at the screenshots below of eToro’s offering. Talk about a picture being worth a 1000 US Dollars Vs. the Japanese Yen…

Requiring a client download, eToro lets users practice play, or deposit funds for real money trading. The currencies available to trade are the US Dollar, British Pound, Australian Dollar, the Euro and the Japanese Yen. This is where it gets fun… There are four games to choose from:

• Forex Marathon – You pick the currency you think will go up and have it compete in a foot race against the currencies you think will go down.
  
• Dollar Trend – Race the US Dollar against other currencies, choosing whether it will rise or fall.
• Globe Trader – Manage your Forex trading portfolio by forging relations with other currencies on the map of the world.
• Forex Match – Choose the currency you think will go up and have it go one-on-one in a tug of rope against a currency you think will go down.
  

I was supplied with a real money account by eToro and managed to lose $17 in an hour’s-worth of play =(When a user registers for a real money account, that account is actually opened at one of two foreign exchange trading brokers, RetailFX or IFX Markets. eToro decides which broker based on where it expects to make the most commissions on trades the user makes.

The one thing I found odd about eToro is its rigid insistence on the lack of parallels when comparing it to online gaming operators. This is a rather naïve point-of-view for several reasons: First, one of the company’s co-founders and its CTO is David Ring who was a key R&D leader at Israeli-based 888.com (a major online casino and poker room operator). Second, eToro’s client application is strikingly similar to gambling apps, and this cannot be a pure coincidence. Third, eToro is a BVI company, (a.k.a., a British Virgin Islands company)—classic tax strategy by gambling operators. Fourth, the company’s affiliate marketing offering is extremely reminiscent of gaming operators, “Receive 25% of eToro’s Revenues or Get $2 per every free registered user.”

It’s important to note that will all the similarities, eToro is in fact not a gaming operator. Forex trading is not considered gambling and therefore does not fall under the scope of H.R. 4777, the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act.

In January 2007 eToro raised a first round of financing to the tune of $1.7M from by private investors. In an interesting side note, one of these investors is Chemi Peres, who heads Pitango Venture Capital and also happens to be the son of statesman and current president of Israel, Shimon Peres.

This post was originally posted on TechCrunch.com where I cover the Israeli startup scene.

A few months ago Duncan gave instructional video aggregator SuTree an overall positive review, but did point out that “navigation is very much old school and doesn’t jump out and hit the casual visitor with a flurry of Ajax and DHTML goodness”.

SuTree recently launched a new version of its site that takes into consideration not only Duncan’s feedback but that of many other users as well. Particular attention has been placed on the site’s look & feel which was generally characterized as plain, and the addition of new community-building features, such as:

• Courses: A set of videos about a specific subject. The course creator sets the order of the videos, add comments and guidelines to each video, and can even manage a forum for the members of the course.
• Wrap & Send: Users can “package” a bunch of videos together and send to others. For example, if your friend is taking a bartending class, you can send him or her a package of cocktail instructional videos.

While these features are not by any means cutting edge, I believe they fit the type of “mainstream +1? audience SuTree is catering and will be well accepted by their growing community.

However, the big question is whether an instructional video aggregator can be a viable business. SuTree believes the answer is ‘yes’. To this end, the site is planning on integrating the usual assortment of ads (banners, text, video, etc.), as well as selling relevant products and advice to knowledge seekers.

The crux of this business model is traffic of course and SuTree is claiming 100K unique users per month and 600K page views. They’ll need much more than that to truly monetize. Their plan to do so is twofold: First, dedicate funds to marketing (which they have yet to do), and second, rollout more community-building features.

The company has a full plate for the upcoming year as they are planning on closing a round financing, indexing at least 100,000 videos (they are now at 11K), creating more business partnerships and enhancing the community through knowledge sharing channels and features.

Will all this be enough, or will SuTree join the deadpool? We’ll likely get an answer in 2008.

The California Israel Chamber of Commerce has just announced the return of their highly successful IsraelWebTour competition and roadshow. Current returning sponsors include Google, Yahoo and Adobe. The Tour will kick off on February 4th, 2008 when fifteen chosen CEO’s from Israel’s most exciting startups will arrive in Silicon Valley for a week of activities. The companies will meet with investors, strategic partners, customers, entrepreneurs and industry leaders in a mix of private one-on-one meetings, roundtable discussions and ad-hoc networking events . The highlight of the week will be a public showcase on Wednesday, February 5th where each start-up will present their business to the industry and press . The Tour will end with a closing night party in San Francisco on Thursday February 7th.The CICC is now soliciting applications for participating companies and sponsors. If you want to participate in this year’s IsraelWebTour, submit an application to CICC by Monday, December 3rd at 5:00 PM PST. Conference organizers & Steering Committee will select 15 companies to participate in the tour.

The 2008 IsraelWebTour Steering Committee:

• Dr. Yossi Vardi, Chairman, International Technologies
• Gil Ben-Artzi, Corporate Development, Yahoo!
• Jacques Benkoski, USVP
• Daniel Cohen, Partner, Gemini Israel Funds
• Etay Gafni, Sr. Director, User Experience and Web 2.0, SAP Labs
• Jason Harinstein, Corporate Development, Google
• Eyal Keren, VP, Business Development, The Pudding Inc.
• Jeff Pulver, Technology anthropoligist, Pulver.com
  
• Ido Sarig, Partner, Tomas Weisel Partners
• Deborah Schultz, Social Software Strategist, P&G Global Advisor
• Yaniv Vakrat, Director of Corporate Development, Adobe

Additional Information: For more information visit www.israelwebtour.com or contact info@israelwebtour.com

Yaron Galai, founder of Outbrain and all-around nice-guy, is looking for a few good souls to help Outbrain internationalize their rating widget. Check it out:

With the outbrain rating widget catching fire with bloggers in so many countries, we’re going to try and make it work well with as many languages as possible.

The outbrain magicians engineers are going to handle the technical side, but we need your help on the language side. We’ve setup a section on our wiki where anyone who’s fluent with a language can help us translate and tweak the wording on our widget. It’s really simple to contribute - follow the contribution instructions on the page to make changes or to add more languages.

Click here to access our language wiki and help us make our ratings work well in any language.

Thanks, Merci and Toda Raba!