Sarah Lacy is a busy lady. She co-hosts the Web video show Yahoo! Tech Ticker, writes and edits for TechCrunch and is a columnist for BusinessWeek. As if that wasn’t enough, she has written a book: Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good which is about the rise of Web 2.0 and is now working on her second book which will be about global entrepreneurship. How she finds the time for all this is beyond me, but we’ve been very lucky to have her in Israel for the past week-and-a-half and she has been a constant presence at events like Garage Geeks and Kinernet. She has also been quite candid about her thoughts on the condition of the venture capital/ start-up ecosystem in Israel.

Last week at the Innovation Luncheon we had Sarah to ourselves and she graciously gave us a short talk about the current state of state of affairs in Silicon Valley and the wider tech industry. As promised here is the video of Sarah’s talk:

[photo by Yaniv Golan]

You’ve probably heard about this thing called cloud computing– the convergence of virtualization, utility computing and software-as-a-service (SaaS)on a massive scale.  If you want to learn more about cloud computing and the kinds of amazing services that Amazon is offering, you will definitely want to be at the Amazon Web Services Meetup in Tel Aviv. The event is organized by Yossi Vardi and hosted by Tel Aviv University Professor of Microbiology Mel Rosenberg and Martin Buhr, European Business director for Amazon Web Services.

Cloud computing is a concept which refers to SaaS, Web 2.0 and the emergence of new online technologies and services.  In other words, it is a type of computing in which software and resources are provided to users over the Internet as a service.  Instead of purchasing software and installing it and caring for it themselves, users of cloud computing rely on the Internet for their computing needs.  Sound confusing?  I’ve found that this video from rPath, Cloud Computing in Plain English, helps to clear up the confusion.

Amazon Web Services is at the forefront of cloud computing technologies, offering new levels of operational flexibility, scalability and costs savings.  Therefore, it will be very interesting to hear what they have to say about the technologies and future of cloud computing.  The Amazon Web Services Meetup in Tel Aviv will begin on Tuesday at 5pm at the the Bar-Shira Auditorium at Tel Aviv University.  The schedule is as follows:

5:00 – 5:30  Networking
5:30 – 5:45  Opening remarks, Prof. Mel Rosenberg
5:45 – 6:15  Amazon Web Services Overview, Martin Buhr
6:15 – 7:00  Customer Panel
7:00 – 7:15  Open question and answer session
7:15 – 7:30  Closing Remarks, Martin Buhr
7:30 – 8:00  Networking

For more information and to register, visit Amazon Web Services Meetup Tel Aviv

I’ve been receiving a lot of gifts lately as my birthday and the holidays just passed, but one of the coolest things that I’ve received lately was the new Sumsung Omnia i900 phone, which Samsung was kind enough to give me as part of their marketing campaign with McCann Digital.  McCann Digital is turning to social media with this campaign and is actually giving the phone to bloggers to use in their daily lives and share their experiences with their followers/friends.  The phone is pretty neat so I thought I’d share some of its best features with you.

Like the iPhone, the Samsung Omnia has a large touch screen and is based on applications and widgets.  The phone includes a main screen that you can customize with widgets of your choice, including the time in multiple time zones, games and more.  The phone also comes with a variety of useful applications, including FM radio, the “Touch Player” mp3 and video player, enhanced GPS, full Microsoft Office including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote so you can view all of your Office files on the go, the Opera mobile browser and more.  Additionally, the camera on the Samsung Omnia has a really simple interface and shoots nice photos and videos.  One of my favorite features of the Omnia is the RSS reader that updates all my feeds throughout the day to bring me content from my favorite bloggers and friends around the world, as well as a podcast player that I can use to watch all of my friends’ recent podcasts. Thank you Samsung for this very lovely gift.

Company Name: Sun Microsystems Israel
Founded in: 1994
Location: Hertzeliya Pituach, Israel

I had the chance to interview Edward Resnick, Sun Microsystems‘ Regional Segment Manager in Israel. Resnick was the second employee hired for the Israel office, which has now grown to over 180 employees. In my video interview below, Resnick and I discuss Sun’s history in the country as well as the company’s shift in strategy from Web 1.0 to 2.0.

This post was originally posted July 14th on Mashable.com

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple,  unveils iPhone 3G today, the App Store, MobileMe, and more in his Worldwide Developers Conference keynote address. the iPhone 3G will be released July 11th. It will be twice as fast as the current iPhone, have a longer battery life, GPS, and will cost only $199 in the US, with a $200 subsidy from AT&T.  According to Gizmodo:

“Apple has accepted that the new iPhone should be subsidised in the US and western Europe by the mobile operators who sell it to consumers, according to people familiar with the matter.”

To watch the keynote address, click here.

Thursday night Garage Geeks hosted Sergey Brin, founder of Google, who was nice enough to answer many of our questions about Google’s past, future, and his view of the Israeli startup scene . So many questions were answered actually that my camera’s battery died at a certain point so I apologize for this video not showing the full Q & A session (though it shows most of it). Thank you to Yossi Vardi and Garage Geeks for making this event happen. Here is the video from the event:

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Do you have a small startup with insufficient funds for a QA department? Or perhaps you work in a large hi tech company with an under-utilized QA staff when waiting for versions to test or over-extended when a new version comes? A new service called uTest can provide you with a solution.

uTest introduces the first global marketplace for software application testing. uTest enables companies in need of software QA testing to access professional testers on-demand whenever/wherever they need them. The platform is all Web-based, therefore it is accessible anywhere, anytime from any computer screen by customers and testers alike.

Other advantages uTest offers to companies include:

1) Pay Per Bug model - companies only pay for actual bugs found by the uTest testers. This helps companies greatly reduce their QA costs.

2) Releasing a quality product from the start - companies don’t get a second chance in releasing products to market. Poor releases (as we saw with Vista) often result in a large percentage of defects being found by users first. This in turn leads to poor user satisfaction and a ”buggy” reputation which may never be repaired.

3) Ability to organize all your QA activity with uTest’s unique management tools – companies are able to manage QA cycles, projects, and processes on the platform with a very clean, easy to use interface. uTest is able to easily integrate into all major bug tracking systems for internal bug track management.

Application vendors can load or link their applications to the uTest testing platform, define target testers profile, and get information quickly regarding bugs and usability from the types of testers they have specifically chosen. The uTest system can also automatically alert duplicate bugs with its own proprietary (and patentable) technology.

uTest essentially provides companies with access to a lower cost workforce via a platform that enables management of full QA cycles without them having to commit to long-term contracts.

In conclusion, uTest helps companies reduce time to market, release higher quality products, receive real market feedback and usability reports, eliminate under-utilized testers, handle peak QA periods effectively, and increase user satisfaction.

uTest has recently started recruiting testers and is expected to launch in February 2008. For testers this is a professional opportunity to gain great and diverse professional experience, become part of a groundbreaking social network of people in their field, and earn a significant income based on their performance. The more actual bugs they find, the more they earn and the higher they are ranked.

Roy Solomon and Doron Reuveni, the founders of uTest, tell me that a few very exciting companies have already signed on with them, including GroupGain, a new marketplace that gives you the ability to join together with other shoppers to buy a product at the lowest price possible through bulk buying.

I believe that uTest answers a real need in the market and will better enable technology companies, however large or small, to come out with improved products for us, the users. 

Here’s a demo by Rodney Rumford from Face Reviews, showing how Facebook works on iPhone. As you can see, the design and performance of the application are simply amazing.

With the iPhone Facebook application you can access: News feed, events, friend requests, profile, info, walls, photos, friends, email (sent, delete, send), friend status, friends online, friends photos, search for friends, etc. You can quickly drill down into almost every area effortlessly. There is also a red box in the upper right side that displays the number of unopened emails.

The 2 main drawbacks of this application currently: You cannot access groups or applications. Hopefully this will change very soon.

 Enjoy!