75% Megatron

Just saw Guy Burstein has taken the Transformers quiz and decided to check it too. I am 75% Megatron!

Take the Transformers Quiz

Which transformer are you?


P.S.
this is a following of Mike's example...

Predicting the Next Decade of Enterprise Software

Using my Google Reader I am connected to many blogs. One of them is Tim O'Reilly. (Yes the one that wrote some of the programmers books your read...)
O'Reilly writes so much that I can not read him often. In on month he wrote about 80 posts. I guess he takes it very seriously, and it is part of his job...

Anyway, couple of days ago he published an interesting post titled: "Predicting the Next Decade of Enterprise Software". It is about a survey results that was done by Sandhill.com. These are some of their results that I find more interesting:

• Individuals that influenced the most on the last decade: Linus Torvalds (the creator of Linux, see wiki-link)  and  Marc Benioff (salesforce.com - CRM on demand... see wiki-link). Bill Gates got only 17%.
• Not surprising - 62% thought that Google was the company with the greatest likelihood of affecting enterprise software in the next ten years.
  But surprising - IBM wasn't even one of the choices ?!
• 73% think SaaS (Software as a Service, see wiki-link) will be viewed as a success in ten years, while only 7% think that of Web 2.0. Tim disagrees with the second part, because He says that "SaaS is part of Web2.0 concept".

Personally, I think that it is only an illusion that "SaaS is part of Web2.0 concept". I believe the opposite: "Web2.0 is part of SaaS concept", because talking about Web2.0 is like talking about The New Economy - it is quite meaningless but very risky (I talked about it in my previous post - Internet 2.0? Internet 20.0!). But SaaS is a real business model that can, and in some places do, actually work.

Here is a link to the original post with some additional info: http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/08/predicting_the.html.

Funny thing, Tim calls this survey an "info-porn" but with still interesting results..

Vladi

Internet 2.0? Internet 20.0!

"Japan working to replace the Internet"

For a long time I have been hearing some talks about the next generation of the Internet. And I don't count a movement from asp to .net, from standard to Ajax'd web-sites as a real generation step. All this cool technologies, like Flesh, Flex, Silverlight, Ajax, Asp.Net 1/2/3.. - all of them a really part of this current generation. This time I heard something tangible. But first of all, I have to explain myself about this generation thing.

Opposing to all customary belief, I believe that the lifetime of a internet generation is 20+- years, like in everything else in life. Of course, in the internet age there are so many changes in life that it is hard for us to compare it to what was before. Still, in my opinion, the belief that an internet generation lasts 2-3 years is wrong for the same reasons it was wrong to think that "The Old economy is Dead. Long live the New Economy" (a term that was invented in the mid 90's and caused a bankruptcy of millions - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_economy). Yes, it looks that the world is changing much faster then before - and it really does. But what it is changing into - we will know only after a couple of decades.

Back to the next generation of the internet, every couple of months i hear about some new developments on Http-NG (Next generation), IPv6 and some other stuff. But today is the first time I read about a real government (Japan) plan for the next generation of the internet, that should be activated in the year 2020. Here it is in a couple of words:

The Japan Minister of Communication announced, that an organization for developing and promoting the next generation network will be set up this fall with cooperation from businesses, academia and government offices. The envisaged network is expected to ensure faster and more reliable data transmission, and have more resilience against computer virus attacks and breakdowns.

I like science and science-fiction a lot! The common denominator between them is the imagination of the future. And when I see a stable government like Japan begin to plan the future I get excited. It is the same as when Pr. Bush announced 2 years ago about creating a permanent base on the Moon in 2020(see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6208456.stm).

so cool... I realy wonder, How will the world look like in 2020? 2040? 2100?
Hope to be there to see it...

Here is a link to the full story: http://www.newlaunches.com/archives/japan_working_to_replace_the_internet.php

Turn a flashlight into a handheld burning laser

If you have an extra CD-Rom that you don't really nead  you can do something useful of it:

Turn a flashlight into a handheld burning laser

Here is how you do it:

Hope this helps ... :)

Capital Rising - Tnufa fund from Bureau of Chief Scientist

The first question a new, green, entrepreneur thould think of is this:
    Is there any chance for me and my startup to get money grant from the government?
    Wouldn't that be the coolest? To get some money so the startup can takeoff more easily?
    Yeaa.. But if there is such thing the chances to get the money are probably so small so maybe I should not bother..

That answer is not the right one. The right one is: Yes there is, it's called Tnufa and you should bother!

Under the Ministry of Industry, Trade & Labour, the Bureau of Chief Scientist, there are these options of funding/grant:

1. Tnufa
2. Technological Incubators
3. Seed Fund - Heznek Program

http://www.moit.gov.il/NR/exeres/52CCC0D9-98A0-4A31-A3C4-0A7CEDF5944C.htm
http://www.moital.gov.il/NR/exeres/2F9931BD-7695-4FAD-9A54-950A1E99B3F8.htm

Today I'll give some details about "Tnufa".
Tnufa is a great program that is designed to give the opportunity for a new entrepreneur (or a new company) to get started.
The grant for this program is 85% of the approved costs up to a maximum of 210,000 NIS (Approx. $47,000).
It has to be in the initial stage of the company:

• For entrepreneur that has not even started a company
• For company that was just founded

This money supposed to go to:

• Patenting (ususaly this costs 10,000$)
• Creating a business plan
• Creating the product prototype
• Some marketing maybe
• An Exhibition

The cool thing about it that (besides the fact that there is a good chance to get it) is that It is pretty easy to apply and they should return their answer in 60 days!
They say, it is the easiest money a startup can get. I don't know about that, but the first thing I done was to applying for this grant.

It took me quite a while to fill the forms - about 2.5 months (by the way, here they are: link).
Tip: To fill the forms in the best way you can is extremely important: they will probably be the primary factor for the decision. Use advisors from MATI, they know what they are doing.
A week after dropping the documents in their office I have already got an invitation for an interview with a professional inspector. So last Tuesday I attended a meeting with this inspector. We talked about 2 hours. At the end I got a homework to do: some questions to answer. It took me another week to write a proper answer and now it is, as some say, in gods hands...

A small tip: They don't write it, but when they approve your request they usually give you only at start 100,000 NIS. After you spend the 85% of it you can apply for the rest. There are 2 key factors:

1. You should show and prove your progress according to the road map you gave the Tnufa committee.
2. You have to prove them that their money is crucial for the firm's success.

Hope this helps,
Vladi