If there is one thing Gmail (an email service by Google) is known for it is its archiving and anti spam features. While gmail is great and dandy (note: this author loves Gmail) some companies may want something similar to handle mail on their own servers instead of Google’s.

PineApp, which is located in Nesher (which is right underneath Haifa) has created some interesting hardware/software combo to help companies “defend the gates” against the ever annoying spammers (who need to be destroyed).

(Israel 21st Century) Protecting and archiving e-mail is PineApp’s business. What firewalls have done for computer networks, PineApp aims to do for e-mail. The company’s first appliance, Mail-SeCure, is a separate piece of hardwire that isolates bad messages in a safe zone and prevents them from contaminating the rest of the system, ensuring maximum security for organizations and users.

PineApp’s ArchiveSeCure keeps a record of corporate e-mail activity, allowing managers to reproduce records when required to by government or courts. And SurfSeCure protects organizations from the hazards of web-based e-mail, as well as other online web threats. [...]

“The PineApp appliance is attached to the mail server, and evaluates each message that comes in,” Michaeli explains. “Messages are scanned for suspect attachments, and are ‘killed’ before they make it onto the mail server or into a user’s inbox. And any messages that don’t have a valid destination are also eliminated before making it onto the server,” thus preventing hackers from performing a DOS attack.

The appliances, which are designed for small and medium sized companies, are built on a custom Linux platform that is encrypted on several levels and cannot be easily compromised. This makes it hard for hackers to write viruses or Trojans.

PineApp seems to be gaining ground around the globe, as they already have offices in New York, Florida, England, Russia and Germany–not to mention Israel as well (which they dominate with a 40% market share according to Israel 21st Century).

Time will only tell whether PineApp will be able to challenge the tech giants in the US of A, although if their technology is as good as a lot of people are saying, we may find their company assimilated by Microsoft (who  is currently in talks to purchase yet another Israeli company).

For those of you who read TechCrunch, you may remember Alfabetic from the TechCrunch50 event two months ago.

Originating from Israel, Alfabetic’s goal is to make it easier for blogs and websites to have their content published in other languages where the vast majority of users are not familiar with the English language.

(Israel 21^st Century) If you are a content owner of a news website or blog monetizing your content through ads, millions of hits will never reach your site simply because potential readers can’t read it. A new Israeli company Alfabetic, is taking a major leap towards changing the way the non-English world consumes content, creating new business opportunities for content owners, while making the Internet a truly democratic forum. [...]

Broshi explains that a new breakthrough in the academic world in statistical machine translations, has enabled superior machine learning of languages recently. These algorithms from the academic world paired with Alfabetic’s own technology, and an international team of translators, creates top-notch translated content, as though it were produced by the world’s best translators. But without the high costs, of course.

Even though the reception among the bigger blogs out there was not as warm (as many of them have international writers in various markets), Alfabetic’s technology and services may suite smaller blogs who would probably be willing to pay a small fee to have a human review a post translation (hint: like IsraGood!!!).

The site is currently in beta right now, although users can sign up in order to be informed when the site launches towards the public.

(Globes Online) The company hopes to recruit an initial 1,000 subscribers, and will later expand the service both domestically and internationally. New subscribers must be nominated by existing ones. Each subscriber receives the company’s SpikkoPhone software and an Israeli telephone number, which is used to make calls and accumulate airtime, allowing for the placing of calls for free anywhere in the world. The service also offers video and chat services, and will soon also offer e-mail and instant messaging.

While I have yet to test Spikko for myself, they may find competition against Skype to be pretty tough, especially with the VoIP giant embracing Israel within their global calling plan and Google jumping in via GrandCentral.

It will be interesting to see how well Spikko performs on the global stage (although I would not be surprised if they attracted millions of users with the words “free international calling”).

Adobe, a software company best known for creating (or at least responsible over) Acrobat reader, Photoshop and Flash (note: which I am hoping that they will bring over towards the iPhone) is now looking towards the Jewish state to help them create even more beautiful software.

(Globes Online) “We’d like to develop our market in Israel, but we have no concrete plans at the moment,” Adobe Systems director of corporate development Yaniv Vakrat told “Globes” during his visit to Israel last week. “Our acquisitions or collaborations aim to complement the company’s business. The technology that interests us must be related to our fields, especially on the user side.” [...]

Israel is one the few locations where Adobe has little strategic presence. It is the only top-five Wall Street technology companies – after Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq: MSFT), Oracle Corporation (Nasdaq: ORCL), SAP AG (NYSE; XETRA: SAP), and ahead of Symantec Corporation (Nasdaq: SYMC) – with no strategic activity in Israel.

Adobe already has a small presence in Israel, although they distribute most (if not all) of their software through Quicksoft (which is sort of like how Apple uses iDigital to distribute their goods Israel side).

There is no word on who Adobe is eying to purchase (or partner with) in the holy land–although they better decide soon before Microsoft gobbles up even more companies (as they have already launched a competitor to Adobe Flash called Silverlight which should give Adobe a run for their money).

When it comes to computer operating systems (or OS for short), Microsoft Windows is king. Despite the fact that it dominates the desktop space, Windows (as well as many of its user friendly OS competitors) are often expensive, making them legally unaffordable for half of the planet.

Worse, accessing ones data while away from the office could be a hassle (especially if your computer is powered off due to human error or a power outage).

A fairly young Israeli startup called G.HO.ST hopes to resolve this issue by providing a free “virtual computer” for all of its users, which is accessible where ever there is an internet connection. But what makes this company unique is the fact that they are hiring Palestinians coders and teaming them up with Israeli marketers.

(Israel 21^st Century) Zvi Schreiber’s G.ho.st (the Global Hosted Operating System, pronounced “ghost”) provides users with a virtual operating system, where they can store files, write and save documents, surf the Web, and even send instant messages to their friends. And he does it with a staff made up of residents of both Israel and the Palestinian Authority – who have to meet and collaborate virtually, through video chats and on-line conferences.

But all that virtual-ness is having a real impact on the lives of people in Israel and the PA, who for perhaps the first time are able to collaborate on high-tech projects, just like people in “normal” places, such as Silicon Valley.

In fact, the 30-strong staff at the Ramallah offices of G.ho.st, even have stock options in the company. “I’m not aware of any other company in the PA that gives out options to its employees,” Schreiber tells ISRAEL21c. 

While Israel’s G.ho.st may not appeal to the western corporate world, power users or super geeks, it may find enormous appeal for users in third world countries who may not be able to afford a personal computer and must access the web via internet cafes.

Either way, this is a good initiative by G.ho.st, and hopefully more companies will follow.

Update: Edited last text, made sure image was uploaded. Blogger’s image uploader is having problems, inserted video instead.

Update 2: Video lacked audio (this is just not my day!). Inserted image since it is functioning again.

Update (7/8): Anton has informed me that the G.HO.ST team has open sourced its light weight client for mobile phones.

(TechCrunch) Wix, the browser-based designer that lets users create Flash-based widgets and full-scale webpages, has launched in public beta. The site specializes in creating colorful Flash pages without requiring any coding[.] [...]

One of the common concerns about Flash websites is that they don’t play nice with search engines, leading to lower page traffic. Wix says it can get around this by generating an XML map for each of their sites that is SEO friendly. Since the launch of its private beta, the company says that they’ve seen a surprisingly high number of users using the designer to create full-fledged sites rather than basic widgets, which makes this search optimization especially important.

(Globes Online) Google Israel stayed the top website in May, with a weekly exposure rate of 88.7%. Walla! is in second place, at 69.6%, and ynet is in third, at 60.5%. Walla! has widened its gap over ynet and narrowed its gap with Google Israel. Nana10 took over fourth place from YouTube, with a weekly exposure rate of 33.6%. MSN Israel continues to lose ground, slipping to seventh place with a weekly exposure rate of 25.3%. NRG rose to sixth place with 25.9%.

This is good news for Walla!, which has previously aligned itself with Yahoo!, not to mention launching its own advertising network to compete against Google’s AdSense/Adwords.

Whether or not we are seeing a trend here has yet to be seen (as Google has decreased before), although its good to see Israeli grown companies taking on the internet Goliath (something Microsoft may want to take note of).

Whether it be MySpace, Facebook, Orkut or YouTube, social networks are on the rise globally.

Although newcomers entering the scene would probably be unable to generate revenue marketing their site to everyone, they may be able to grab their “slice of the pie” by creating a site for a specific group of people.

While some companies focus on developing sites based on culture or race, one site–developed by Israelis–created a site to help the disabled find friends and ultimately a lover.

(Israel 21^st Century) nterdate’s founders, Yuval Katz and Daniel Brunicki, decided to focus on the disabled community out of both entrepreneurial and social concerns. “D4D was born out of our understanding that, although they surf a great deal on the Internet, the disabled population the world over was under-attended,” Brunicki explains to ISRAEL21c.

“On the other hand, we had advanced Internet capabilities. So we decided to do a good deed. We view the site as a community service, and beyond that, there’s also a business opportunity; there are 30 million disabled persons in the US alone. Our business model is ad-based – the site is free and we don’t intend to ever charge payment – but we do intend to attract ads that are relevant to the community: services, exhibitions, etc., with a special emphasis on the US market,” he adds. [...]

“I get very close to people. I have a woman from California who’s an amputee. She met someone a month and a half ago on the site. Now she just met him in person and she called me. She had a wonderful time. Another woman wrote to tell me she just went to Sweden to meet her guy. Who knows what will happen, but it’s exciting!”

Even though the site does not boast the raw numbers of the bigger social networks, Dating 4 Disabled seems to be helping many of its members find true love, positive news one does not here very frequently from most social networks.

Note: It will be interesting to see how much this site changes in five years, not to mention if they will launch similar sites based upon users locations.

It looks as if Israel 21^st Century has created a video highlighting some of Israel’s top start ups emerging out of the country–with some of them having the potential to revolutionize our planet (at least within their respective fields).

• Oramed (which could bring about oral insulin)
• iMedix (a social network making it easier to find/share health information)
• Millenium Solar (inexpensive efficient solar technology–enough said!)
• Argo-Housing (which could help make houses greener)
• Mobileye (using digital technology to improve road safety)
• ICS Motors (fuel efficient greener motors–that may be cheaper than current models)
• Nanomaterials (producing strong material at the molecular level)
• C-True Imaging (uses your face as a secure login)

More companies can be seen over here.

Unfortunately, I was unable to find my Hebrew name (which is דארנל if you sound it out phonetically), although hopefully I’ll be able to “add it to the list” in a future version, despite its English origin (hint, hint).