Wix Teams with Kung Fu Panda for Super Bowl Ad
Sunday was Game Day and that means the best brands are set to tackle one another for the title of Best Commercial at Super Bowl. Israel’s do-it-yourself website builder platform, Wix.com, is hoping to score another touchdown with its new 30-second ad. This year’s Super Bowl commercial is actually in collaboration with DreamWorks Animation. The commercial – which is being promoted under the hashtag #StartStunning — promotes the recent release of Kung Fu Panda 3 and uses its characters to show how easy it is for businesses to create a beautiful website using the Wix platform.
Israeli Microsoft Accelerator Start-Up Gets $3.5m Graduation Gift
OwnBackup, an Israeli start-up that helps ensure that companies can back up data they generate using online applications, celebrated a double win Thursday. The company said it had raised $3.5 million in a Series A financing round led by Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors with participation from Oryzn Capital. The company will use the investment to accelerate its global growth, drive continued product innovation and significantly expand its engineering, development, sales and marketing teams, it said.
And, in a second triumph, the company, along with 12 “classmates,” graduated from the Microsoft Ventures Israel’s Accelerator, a program invented in Israel that has now spread to the rest of the world, most recently to Seattle, Microsoft’s stomping grounds.
US, Israeli Experts Meet to Advance Disability Services
An inclusive society is a better and stronger society, said Avital Sandler-Loeff, director of Israel Unlimited, ahead of a conference held in Ma’aleh Hahamisha, west of Jerusalem, last week, promoting cutting- edge innovation in the field of disabilities.
Israel Unlimited, a partnership between the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the government and the Ruderman Family Foundation – in collaboration with the Ted Arison Family Foundation and the United States Embassy in Israel – brought a renowned delegation from the National Leadership Consortium at the University of Delaware to address a seminar tackling the most pressing issues in the field of disabilities today.
New Search Engine to Target Anti-Semitism
The World Zionist Organization (WZO) is expected to launch its Sniper app, which it says is a search engine for anti-Semitic content. The Sniper system is set up to scan the internet using an algorithm that will identify certain keywords in different languages. A crew of WZO members will scan the results, confirm the cases that actually show real anti-Semitism, and respond with direct replies or contact authorities in the offending party's country.
WZO emphasizes the fact that the app will be monitored and supervised, so that its use will be proper, and not aimed at shaming individuals or groups without proper evidence.
Israel, Netherlands Strive for High-Tech Cooperation
The pastoral, scenic Netherlands is not the first country that comes to mind when discussing innovation, startups, or cyber warfare. The quiet country has been diligently building a high-tech scene, with the goal of becoming a prominent player on the European stage. Still, the Netherlands remains a small figure in the high-tech world. Local enterprises raised a mere €169 million in 2014 a drop in the bucket compared to Israeli high-tech, which raised $4.4 billion in 2015.
But the Dutch startup story has an Israeli touch…
