The Grass is "Greener"

Water Savings

This one came in from Brazil...

I guess you can call it clean - tech (?)

 

Technorati Tags: Water Technology,water conservation,Brazil

Gemini at Rosh Pina TV & Film Festival פסטיבל טלוויזיה וקולנוע ראש פינה

Those of you who have been following my blog might remember a year ago I wrote about the great experience I had at the Rosh Pina Film Festival.

The Event is taking place again this weekend (time flies...)

Following the positive experience last year and my funds focus on New Media, Gemini will be sponsoring this year's event. I'm really glad about this, since:

• There is great talent in Israel with knowledge in Media and Consumer - that is applicable for the investments we make in New Media
• This is another first for my fund - we'll be the only VC at the event (I managed to find this one piece in English)
• I had no small part in making this happen ;)

If you are interested in the future of media - or just want a great weekend up north with the "Branja"* (and a us VCs) you should plan to drive up north this weekend.

* Branja = Hebrew slang  for media Celebes

Technorati Tags: Israel, Rosh Pina, Film, TV, Festival, 2007

Transformers - More than meets the eyes

If you read the title of this post, and started humming the song... I'll bet I can guess your age (~28-38?...)

As a response to Ouriel's post - I just had to share the clip below... Its another great example of the "transformation" that animation technology has gone through over the last 23 years (since 1984).

This is 1984:

And this is today:

(BTW - If any of you still have an action figure - I'm sure prices will be going up!)

Tags: Transformers, 1984 cartoon, 2007 movie, animation

A great startup CEO comparable

A great comment came up in one of my meetings today - which I just had to share:

It seems that the CEO of a startup lives in a constant state of emergency, and insufficient resources... To exemplify great execution of leadership and crisis management, one of my partners pointed to a timeless scene from Pulp Fiction.

It's the scene in which Winston Wolf, the "Problem Solver", is called in to solve the body situation... Its really amazing to see time management, people management, situation analysis, assertiveness, attention to details, delegation, and more... All packed into a 3 minute script.

I really recommend watching this (or  the whole movie) again...

Back to the future - We're almost there

I just remembered one of the all time best movies (of the 80s): Back to the Future
This was following several companies I've been hearing about that are into BioMass - Basically, turning junk into energy.

In the movie, there's a great scene in which Marty McFly (Michael J Fox) needs to power his car (in the future) - so he dumps his garbage into Mr. Fusion, and gets energy...

In the movie it was 2015... It seems that this will be (almost) our reality very soon... Quite exciting to see the future come to life.

So here's a short tribute to the movie (for those of us that grew up in the 80s)

BTW... Great soundtrack!

Original Animation - AniBoom

Aniboom just mentioned in TechCrunch... I think AniBoom has collected some really great projects. Will be interesting to see how the Techcrunch post will impact the results of the user rated animation competition that's running there (Since Mike posted a specific animation in his post, I'm willing to bet who the winner in the competition is going to be) So Just to help even it out:

Here are two favorites from the site:

The first was created by Eric, a young  Israeli animator, who created this clip as part of his final project at the Betzalel Academy)

The second is a 3D Music clip for Ivri Leader (top Israeli artist) - the 3D characters will be included in Ivri's upcoming concerts - in Hologram technology (I'll mention that it was created by HandsUp, a company founded by my brother)

Gemini - Microsoft Future of TV Event - Presentations

Here you can now view the full presentations and video clips from the Gemini-Microsoft event.

(Sorry for all the English speakers - most of the event was in Hebrew)...

Rosh Pina Film Festival - The Speaker Presentations

One final post on this event:

Here you can watch all the speaker presentations. A few I attended, addressing the future of TV:

• Uri Shinar's presentation (Hebrew) - Talking about how mainstream media is reacting to the "Net threat"...
• Yossi Vardi's Panel (Hebrew) - I recommend waiting (or skipping) to the 26th minute - and watching Yossi's promotion for channel 33 (I'm sure you'll agree - this guy has guts!)
• I couldn't find Pulver's presentation (The only one in English). It might be posted soon, in the meanwhile, he shares the slides here

Tags: Rosh Pina, Film, TV, Festival, Israel, 2006

Rosh Pina TV Fest - Some photos

Jeff Pulver posted some additional photos from the Rosh Pina event. If you're from the area, you'll be able to spot some local celebes, and more importantly celeb Startup entrepreneurs amongst them (including Metacafe, GooMe, and BestTv)

Great shots, and they give a good sense of what was going on there...

BTW I'm looking forward to a party Jeff is hosting tonight - at the Galina bar, in the Namal.

(PS - I gave out no signatures)

Free episodes of Simpsons, Seinfeld, and more

It seems that all the web sites listing the free episodes of Simpsons that I mentioned previously have been shut down (Someone is after these guys, and I wouldn't be surprised if Fox has something to do with this)

But new ones pop up like "mushrooms after the rain". I can already bet on who's going to lose this battle...

So here goes, an update:

Free Simpsons episodes (and now Seinfeld as well) can be found here (for now at least)!

Enjoy!

Tags: Free, Simpsons, Episodes, TV,  Seinfeld