Israel Active

"It was only natural that when we started to think about where we'd might locate a new research institute that we'd want to look at Israel," said Justin Rattner, Intel's Chief Technology Officer. The Israel Technion and Hebrew University will collaborate on the project.

Israeli religious high school students won third place out of 1,500 candidates – in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Pittsburgh. Nerya Stroh and Gal Oren, designed AquaStop - a user-friendly computerized device that detects and stops water leaks in buildings.

Israel-based Macadamia Apps, have developed StillShot that analyses videos taken on an iPhone and extracts each frame as an individual photo.

Big article in ComputerWorld magazine publicising Israel as the land where the USB flash drive was invented and where innovative companies such as Anobit and XtremIO are drawing American companies to their shores in droves to get a piece of the intellectual property pie.

(thanks to Israel21c and Globes) A new Israeli app called Zappix takes the frustration out of automated customer-service call centres, by putting menu choices into a visual screen on your phone. No elevator music or wasted time; just press the menu option to get straight through to the department you want.

(thanks to NoCamels) The Israeli National Center for Electrochemical Propulsion was founded one month ago, with the sole purpose to research and develop new technologies that can store electricity more effectively.

The Israeli pavilion at Korea’s Expo 2012 captures Israel's unique marine offering as characterized across technology, science, education, culture and environment. Visitors will be able to re-live their visit with the Israel Pavilion 2012 app, available to smartphone and tablet users.

The male sea turtle only visits Israeli shores once in ten years. So when one was caught in Israeli fishing nets last week, it was returned quickly to the ocean, with the addition of a tracking transmitter, specially flown in.

The Department for Homeland Security has turned to Israel’s National Information Security Authority and Motorola’s ACE-3600 to protect its water and energy infrastructure.

In Israel the place to learn Hebrew is at ulpan – an intensive school. But a similar method is being used to help budding entrepreneurs learn how to succeed at running a hi-tech business. I featured Google’s R&D incubator previously; here you can also read about Haifa’s hiCentre.