Invitation to the TWS2009 - Internet, Communication and Media Conference 2009 (Israel)

The TWS2009 is about the leading figures and companies that are driving innovation in the Israeli Internet economy.

The event will take place on July 13th, 2009 at the Inter Continental Hotel in Tel Aviv. (Map)

10 innovative and promising web & mobile startups will showcase their product on stage. Along these presenters: David Sifry (Technorati), Dan Ciporin (Venture Partner Canaan Partners, Shopping.com), and Gary Vaynerchuk that will present via web-conference (WineLibrary).

Well-known professionals worldwide, such as Brian Solis, Rafe Needleman, Ron Conway, Stowe Boyd, Dave Sifry, Deborah Schultz, Marc Goldberg, Saul Klein, and more, chose the 10 winning startups.

TWS2009 is a great way to meet the most innovative startups, hottest ideas and latest trends. As well as to network with leading VCs, investors, young entrepreneurs and web lovers in general.

We're happy to join the media sponsors which include this great blogs: Techcrunch, Read Write Web, GigaOM and The next web.

You may apply for discount tickets (40% off, 199nis) here: http://zone.thecoils.com
Since there are only limited amount of such tickets, make sure you don't miss that opportunity. In case you did miss it, you may register here.

Additionally, first 3 people who'll write a comment here that they want a ticket, will get it for free (you have to be from Israel though)

The event is organized by Israeli Blog the.co.ils, who partnered with Globes to create this event.

Killer App or Twitter Killer?

I've been watching this video over and over again while trying to understand what these kind of "magic apps" are doing to Twitter. The only conclusion I came up with is that it's killing Twitter slowly now, fast in the near future.

The Traffic Machine service in the video above offers you more targeted followers to your brand. Now, your brand.. what that means? As far as I see it, everyone can be a brand today, and with a push of this service you won't have to do much in order to drive traffic to your site/blog/any other page you have on the web. Yes, I hear you: free traffic, what's your problem? Well, my problem is that sooner or later Twitter will become a spam swamp with no communication value. How can you have any communication or start a conversation when you follow thousand of people? (unless you're Scoble, you can't).

The other problem is the recognition Twitter community gives those people. Do they really worth the fame just because they use some system to generate more followers? What's next? Find one of these fake power users and ask them to submit your blog post URL? It's probably been done already.

In my opinion individual people who uses this service (or any other service alike) are just ones that manipulate twitter to gain more traffic no matter what content they submit their. Someone called it a crappy spam of a new generation, I agree.

Please answer this quick poll - Results.


Update: Find the differences

1. This is how Bill Crosby encourages you to use Twitter. and,
   
2. This is how Kevin Rose use it.

An Innovative Online Flash Game Platform

Gambolio is helping gamers to create and manage their library of Flash games. The service contains a library of 6,000 free games from which you can build up your collection. With more control of your games, you decide precisely what games go in your library. And once they are in your library, they remain there (unless you decide to remove them, of course) - so basically your online game environment built from your favorite games (you can also create individual playlist inside this library)

Additionally, Gambolio turns your library of games into a social network where you can share your games with family and friends, read other people's advice on particularly tricky bits of games, track your performance on high score tables, win trophies and badges, and more.

The gaming experience with Gambolio is fresh, fun and addictive due to its innovative layout. Some screenshots below:

Digsby Major Upgrade Is Coming Later Today!

If you're not familiar with Digsby, in short: It's a desktop client that lets you manage most of your existing IM, email, and social network accounts from a single place.

Later today a new and improved version is about to be released. The new update includes several significant improvements:

• Performance: Digsby optimized performance from the ground up, reducing overall CPU usage by about 50%
• Buddy List Search: Press Ctrl+F to easily search your buddy list or the web
• Emoticons: Added four new emoticon packs to choose from
• File Transfers: Improved the reliability of AIM, ICQ, and MSN file transfers
• Over 100 other bug fixes and enhancements.

I guess the major news is the software optimization. Lots of desktop clients are cool to have but when it comes to CPU usage, some of them are unbearable and if you don't have powerful RAM in your computer, it is most likely that you won't use them anyway.

What I was hoping to see in this version actually, is a Friendfeed support, but unfortunately it looks like we need to wait to a next version for that to happen.

Online Banner Maker Platform for Brands

I can't say I like banners, but I do love Flash and for a long period of time in my life I was struggling to understand how to build stuff in Flash, so I know how hard it is!

This is why I can appreciate service like BannerSnack. If you have a brand, you can quickly create amazingly looking Banners, with no previous knowledge, that can be easily placed in your website. It contains tens of transitions, effects and filters that will enable you to easily create text and image animations. In fact, BannerSnack is so easy to function, you may consider build something your own before paying a great deal of money to a professional designer. The service also provide easy tutorials to help you make those banners.

The app is free to use, but BannerSnack attached a small watermark on the bottom of your banner. If you want it to be watermark free, you can check the premium pack offered.

In general you don't have to use this just for banners, you can also create greeting cards, Myspace comments etc, just for fun. BannerSnack gives you the ability to share your creation in social networks, via email or just a link that can be shared with anyone.

I've created a short DEMO to show how it works:

Fullscreen

A Perfect Birthday Gift for your Friends

If you're looking for a fun way to surprise your friends, you've got to try GreetBeatz! The service produce a highly personal, original song from your choice of lyrics, combined with the name of the friend you want to send it to. You don't actually have to write a whole song, you can also provide a few helpful suggestions to the artist, and the artist creatively weaves them into a song.

How does it work:

• First you need to log in to your Facebook or Twitter account (with facebook/twitter connect), and pick a friend
  
• Then you provide lyrical inspiration, and
  
• GreetBeatz produces your special song in 3-5 days.
  

After a song has been prepared, you'll receive an email notification where you'll be able to preview the song first before you send it to your friend.

Listen to this cool example | More examples.

Grab your Twitter Follow Badge

Since more and more sites and blogs are adding a twitter follow button, we thought it will be nice to have an easier way to do it, so we've created this "twitter follow badge" generator. It will allow you to simply create a nice looking twitter tab to place at your site/blog.

Just customize the design and position of the badge, and grab the code.

Please keep in mind that this is only an Alpha version of the badge so we're welcoming any feedback and suggestions. In fact we'd love to hear whatever you have to say about that :)

See examples on the site, and here on the blog.