A stellar company I’m advising is seeking a Community Manager.

The ideal candidate needs a contemporary understanding of the Web (social networks, widgets, blogs, etc). Seeing as there will be significance correspondence with users (email, blog, etc.) English on a mother-tongue level is a must.

This is a great opportunity in one of the most exciting startups I’ve seen!

Need more info or want to apply? Contact me at: roi.carthy@gmail.com

In another clear indication that the Israeli startup scene is at the forefront of Web innovation, no less than 4 companies have been announced as Crucnhies finalists.

Spread the word and let’s help these great companies take first place!

• iMedix for Best new start-up of 2007:
  http://vote.crunchies.techcrunch.com/category/view/new2007

• Fring for Best mobile start-up:
  http://vote.crunchies.techcrunch.com/category/view/mobile

• Gizmoz for Best international start-up:
  http://vote.crunchies.techcrunch.com/category/view/international

• aniBoom for Best video site:
  http://vote.crunchies.techcrunch.com/category/view/video

Don’t forget to spread the word and get people to vote!

Boston-based uTest has raised $1.7M to bring to market a crowd-sourced quality assurance (QA) marketplace and community. The service has begun recruiting testers in anticipation of its official launch, expected in early 2008.

No fuzzy logic here; uTest presents clear and communicable value propositions: For companies in need of QA, uTest is providing an on-demand environment for the management of full testing cycles. For testers, uTest is providing an oDesk-like marketplace through which they can be hired and paid on a Pay-per-Bug basis.

The company’s founders recognized that QA and usability testing solutions are inefficient. QA departments are either under-utilized when waiting for versions to test, or over-extended when a new version comes out. To most SMBs, QA outsourcing is neither cost effective nor available “on-demand”. Then, of course, there are cost-cutting measures that leave companies unable to sufficiently fund QA efforts, ultimately shipping buggy applications to users like us.

The uTest testing platform itself is entirely Web-based and provides the management of complete QA cycles, from creating/loading test scripts, to selecting the target community (profile and environment) of testers required. The platform also provides test case management tools, real-time information on bugs and defects logged, statistical information on release maturity level, as well as QA coverage and market readiness. Support for bug tracking systems includes Bugzilla, Jira, FogBugs and will be expanded over time.

In a smart business move, uTest will not charge companies to use their platform to manage testing and QA cycles—this will be entirely free of charge. uTest will only charge for the services provided by the community of testers.

The uTest offering makes a lot of sense to me and I expect it will be warmly embraced for several reasons. First, consider for a moment that for many SMBs, QA management solutions such as those offered by Mercury or IBM-Rational are beyond their reach. Speaking from personal experience, the majority of the testing cycles I’ve seen have been “managed” on Word or Excel. The “on-demand” model which has been proven time and time again on the Web from CRM to ERP, should work just as well for QA. The fact that the platform will be offered free of charge, pushes the offering to “no-brainer land”.

Second, beyond the manageability aspects of uTest’s service, companies will obviously enjoy the cost saving aspects of paying testers by the bug. It’s this aspect that in my opinion will make uTest’s offering relevant not only to SMBs but to large organizations as well. Logic would dictate that if they embraced off-shoring and near-shoring, crowd-sourced QA shouldn’t be too jagged of a pill to swallow.

Third, recruiting a userbase of testers should not be difficult. There are droves of potential testers in countries such as India, China, Russia, Bulgaria, Estonia, etc. Also, getting hired through sites like oDesk, Elance and RentACoder is becoming increasingly difficult due to the growing number of service providers. These same individuals can theoretically provide testing services instead of programming.

All-in-all uTest sounds quite promising and has earned a place on my companies to watch in 2008 list.

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

Live video streaming on the desktop may be just taking off in the U.S., but overseas this is already becoming a mobile phenomenon. Yesterday Mike Butcher of TechCrunch UK posted on Qik and its live video streaming service. Well it looks like Qik will be able to enjoy few precious moments of blogosphere sunshine because a young Israeli company named FlixWagon is hot on its heals.Let’s start with the bad… FlixWagon has a terrible name, and has an equally ineffective logo to boot. Neither name nor logo help in communicating the company’s true offering: Allowing anyone with a 3G/WiFi mobile phone to broadcast live video directly to the Web. No wagons are involved in the process.

The good news is that FlixWagon’s technology is far superior to its branding. The most important aspect of a cell-to-web offering is wide support of mobile handsets. FlixWagon supports most Nokia and Sony Ericsson handsets. The mobile client application, which users must download, is 76Kb for Symbian and 218Kb for J2ME phones. FlixWagon executives are confident this covers the gross majority of GSM handsets.

The mobile app is designed simply but effectively in order to provide users the shortest path to broadcast. It’s not mandatory, but users can edit video properties from their phone, such as title, tags, category, and access rights (public or private). The mobile app also provides live feedback from viewers (see the screenshot on the left).

Second to handset support in importance is video quality. I had a chance to see FlixWagon in action on a few occasions and was impressed by video that came out on the Web clearer than I expected. I also saw videos uploaded using the same mobile handset to both Qik and FlixWagon. Subjectively speaking, I felt that FlixWagon was superior. This was true both in video clarity and its ability to deal with movement—quality was degraded substantially on Qik when the handset was moved even slightly. FlixWagon is claiming that this is due to the emphasis it places on ensuring that a user never loses a second of broadcast, even in the most challenging conditions inherent to mobile environments. For example, if a user goes into an elevator, basement, or loses reception for any reason, the broadcast will resume when reception is back and the full video will be stored and available for later viewing.

FlixWagon.com acts as the service’s portal, allowing site visitors to browse through live and stored broadcasts. Social aspects include broadcast alerts to friends and family and auto-uploading to video and social sites like YouTube and Facebook.

FlixWagon has partnered with MTV Israel to enable reporters and subscribers to broadcast live video from their mobile phones directly into a social network to be launched within mtv.co.il. (See also what MTV Israel is doing with regular Web video). I wouldn’t be surprised to see FlixWagon integrated across MTV’s global Websites sooner rather than later.

FlixWagon will be giving TechCrunch readers priority access when it launches its Alpha in January. Sign-up here.

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

I’m dying to change my blog design… ;) If anyone knows someone that can help me create a WordPress theme, I’d really appreciate it….!

Contact me at: roi.carthy@gmail.com

Thanks!

Back in the summer of 2006 I had the pleasure of working with the wonderful folks over at iMedix. The company has just launched their service into Beta… Here’s some info on a startup we should all keep an eye one:

iMedix is the first community-powered health search engine. It’s a community platform for real-time patient-to-patient interaction. By combining advanced search with community features, iMedix helps people to find and share health information in order to make better health-related decisions.

iMedix uses an ‘evolutionary’ search engine that analyzes users’ feedback against millions of medical articles, pictures and videos in order to provide the best answers for health related questions and concerns. The system ranks Web pages based on those that have proven to be most useful and relevant to other users searching for the same information. iMedix also shows users whether pages are from sources certified by HON (Health On the Net Foundation), URAC (Utilization Review Accreditation Commission) and other organizations.

Using iMedix, patients can easily connect with others who suffer from similar conditions and exchange information about symptoms, prevention and treatment through real-time chat – all in a single click. They can also build their own communities around specific health interests by creating friends lists and adding new friends.

Here’s co-founder and CMO, Iri Amirav’s take:

“We saw a tremendous opportunity to create a patient-powered service that gave users everything they need to make better health-related decisions. Our goal was to allow patients to harness the real-life experiences of others. We’ve done that on iMedix by allowing patients to find each other and communicate in real-time.”

Several months ago I posted about iMedix on CenterNetworks.com. You can read it here.

Knocka.tv ends speculation today by alpha launching an Internet television network.

The concept is a multi-channel Internet broadcast network that features both professional and user generated content. Knocka packages the content prior to broadcast with promos, branding, transitions, credits, etc. The participatory angle comes into play by having users determine the playlist and in the future actually take part in live shows.

By no means is Knocka inventing a new category. Similarities can be found in offline Current TV, and in online maniaTV.com. In much the same way that news is democratized by Digg, Knocka is attempting to empower users to create and determine television broadcasting on the Net.

Knocka describes itself as a “professional internet television network for user generated content.” I feel that “participatory internet television” is in fact both a more befitting description, and it’s also five words shorter.

This leads to what I view to be Knocka’s main problem. While the offering is indeed compelling, at the same time it’s also complicated to the point that users will have a problem comprehending its nature, let alone explaining it to others. There are many moving parts to Knocka, so do your best to follow:

Professionals and amateurs upload videos that enter a pre-screening pool where they are rated by users. The top rated ones are broadcasted, but not before Knocka packages them up and creates the actual playlists, which is done 24 hours in advance. Once broadcasted, users can again rate the individual videos, or shows. Individual videos can then be selected to be seen independently of their original show. While all this is happening, users can communicate with each other through chat rooms, private text messaging, and by webcams. Got that?

Basically, instead of focusing its appeal to a single group, Knocka is trying a bowling alley approach by attempting to appeal to the entire food-chain: Producers, influencers, communities and viewers (passive and participatory).

Knocka is kicking-off with 8000 videos by 600 producers, including Break a leg, aniBoom, Ministry of Sound, and Fashion TV. The three debut channels are:

• Knocka One – A general channel featuring “the best of the best” from Knocka’s channels.
• Kilowatt – Knocka’s very own music channel featuring independent artists.
• Kandy – A “sexy” channel featuring scantly clad women (amateurs & pro’s). The raciest I caught was a coed in a thong.

Knocka is 100% browser based and there will be no embedding. On the cosmetics front, Knocka scores high marks with me. The frontend was done in Flex and while the interface requires some fine-tuning, all-in-all it looks good. I also really enjoyed the packaging which took me back to when MTV defined “cool” and actually played videos.

An interesting tidbit about Knocka is that it marks the return of ICQ co-founder Sefi Visiger back to the startup scene. He took a major leave of absence since the big exit back in day.

It’s fairly obvious that massive participatory events around video will happen sooner or later. Knocka still has work to do, but it comes out of its corner for round one with potential.

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