Technically Speaking

California Israel Chamber of Commerce has announced the selection of 15 startups that will be touring Silicon Valley as part of its popular road show.

The Tour will kick off on February 4th, 2008 when CEOs from Israel’s most exciting startups arrive in Silicon Valley for a week of activities. The companies will meet with investors, strategic partners, customers, entrepreneurs and industry leaders in a mix of private one-on-one meetings, roundtable discussions and ad-hoc networking events.

The highlight of the week will be a public showcase on Wednesday, February 6h hosted at Microsoft where each start-up will present to the industry and press. The tour will end with a closing night party in San Francisco on February 7th.

Companies that will be represented this year are as follows:

5min - www.5min.com
PLYmedia - www.plymedia.com
AllofMe - www.allofme.com
NuConomy - www.nuconomy.com
ClickTale - www.clicktale.com
blogTV.com - www.blogtv.com
Sportingo - www.sportingo.com
PicScout - www.picscout.com
Qoof - www.qoof.com
8hands - www.8hands.com
Velingo - www.velingo.com
Innovid - www.innovid.com
Semingo - www.semingo.com
PageOnce - www.pageonce.com
Journeys - www.codename-journeys.com

The IsraelWebTour is an initiative spearheaded by the CICC (The California Israel Chamber of Commerce) - a non-governmental, industry supported organization. The 2008 Tour is sponsored by: Google, Yahoo, Adobe, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, Lehman Brothers, USVP, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosatti, Elron and Gemini Israel Funds and the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco.

California Israel Chamber of Commerce (CICC) is a not-for-profit, non-governmental membership supported organization dedicated to strengthening business and economic relations between California and Israel.

Technically Speaking, I’d love to see all these companies give Lookery a looksee. prohormones

One thing I learned by being a musician working the music business in the 90’s was that you don’t have to be in Los Angeles to be signed. You don’t need to move from the middle of nowhere to be signed.

Case in point, Story of the Year is from right here in St. Louis. Other bands such as Gravity Kills, Stir, Greenwheel are all Missouri bands. Just north of here up in Iowa there is a band you may have heard of called SlipKnot, and further north in Minnesota is a band called American Head Charge.

All of the above mentioned bands had some bit of success. All are not from Los Angeles or the west coast. They may live there now, but they all started in the middle of nowhere. Lessons learned from the music biz translate well to the blogging biz.

Point is that even though I’d love to be in Silicon Valley, just so I could be closer to some of these people I write about, it’s really not a necessity when it comes down to it. In fact one of TC’s more prolific writers was a man that is far north of the SV. That person is of course Marshall Kirkpatrick who is living and working for SplashCast now. Both the company and the person are not near the valley. They are located in Portland!

Yes, I would love to live on the west coast again, but I will make it in the STL just as I would out west. The west has great weather, but also higher cost of living. In order for me to live there and do what I do, I would have to make more money. That’s all good, and if I happen to land one of those six figure jobs, I’m there. In fact, I’ll jingle Mike for a beer and burger.

Technically Speaking, the money faucet has been turned on full blast in these days of Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo positioning. I think the money will flow until the end of the year at least. Then come 2008, I will say it will be the year of “re-organization“. That will be a fun year to write about, maybe not fun for some of the folks that were lured by the faucet of flowing money.

twitter explained - Nik explains it well; the new API

Siberia - That is what CNN is stating the next Silicon Valley will be. Personally speaking, I’ll move to California again before I go to Siberia!

1 million inquiries - On the new iPhone says AT&T

MySpace - By the numbers; the number of friends that each candidate with a MySpace page has. I kind of wonder about Rudy though. Profile set to private? That is definitely a GMAFB! Sign up to post his MySpace page and also to vote on other unpublished postings.

Justin - Of Justin.tv on the local CBS news in San Francisco.

Technically Speaking, catching the fast train to Paris, France for a bit.