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March 16, 2010 |
Microsoft is working on new face-recognition technology via its OneAlbum project being developed in Israel, which allows users to find photos across various social networks.
The OneAlbum project is under development by Microsoft Israel Innovation Labs. According to the project description, OneAlbum's novel, unsupervised face-recognition and event-matching technology analyzes photos in a person's album to find automatically, with no tagging required, the faces of people he or she cares about, based on the frequency of their appearance in the album.
Starting from technology developed by Microsoft Research Asia and Microsoft's Live Labs, the Israel Innovation Labs built the new face-recognition technology.
OneAlbum crawls the photo albums of the user's friends and social networks to find relevant photos. The algorithm has been tested on "real large-scale albums," the site says, including those with "tens of thousands of photos" and has achieved accuracy rates of up to 90 percent.
"This," says Eyal Krupka, principal research program manager for the Israel Innovation Labs, "includes photos of myself, my wife, and my kids, from the events I participate in, the places I like and more. OneAlbum also goes further, by organizing 'my album' - the photos from the same event are presented side-by-side, no matter where they come from." ...
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March 16, 2010 |
The Winter Paralympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, in Canada opened on March 12 and run to March 21. They follow the regular Winter Olympics that were held from February 12 to 28. Months before any athletic competition was held, another contest was held to determine which artist would design this year's medals. The winner was Jerusalem-born designer Omer Arbel.
Arbel, an architect and industrial designer, submitted his proposal nearly two years ago. In an interview with The Jerusalem Post he said that it was important to him that each medal be individual and original in the context of a cohesive theme: "Each athlete's story is unique but each athlete is connected to each through a larger Olympic ideal."
The International Olympic Committee jurors supported his idea. The finished product is an undulating surface that reflects the topography of the province of British Columbia. Super-imposed on it is a segment of a piece of artwork by local aboriginal artist Corinne Hunt. Only by putting all the medals together can the full piece be rendered.
Arbel, who moved to Canada at age 13, says that while he still dreams in Hebrew, his work "transcends language and place," and while being Israeli "is a big part of my background and identity, I'm a combination of many different things, one of which is Israeli."
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March 15, 2010 |
Oracle recently announced that it was buying Israeli start up Convergin. The price was not disclosed, but industry sources estimate that it was around $80 to 90 million. This is considered quite impressive for a company in which just $13 million has been invested.
Convergin was founded in 2000 by Dr. Ayal Itzkovitz, who is the company's president and CEO. It provides service broker and service capability interaction management telecommunications network solutions.
The link with Oracle began about a year ago with an OEM agreement, but at a certain stage Oracle decided to move ahead and offer to buy the company.
Oracle sources say Convergin has been profitable since 2002 and had sales of $15 million in 2009, plus a cash surplus. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of this year.
According to Globes, Israel's leading financial website, this is Oracle's third acquisition in Israel, and its most expensive. In September 2009, it bought HyperRoll, which develops what are known as financial reporting acceleration solutions; and in 2006 Oracle bought planning solutions company Demantra for a reported $41 million and set up a local development center.
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March 15, 2010 |
For the first time ever, a cycling competition on the scale of Tour de France was held in Israel.
The four-day Tour de Israel kicked off on the morning of March 7 in Nahariya in northern Israel, with 124 cyclists, including 44 foreigners.
The scenic route passed the Mediterranean Sea, Galilee Mountains, Mount Hermon, Sea of Galilee, Beit She'an and Nazareth. From there, the cyclists rode along the Jordan Rift Valley and the Dead Sea, through Masada to the Negev mountains to the finish line in Eilat, where they enjoyed some rest and recreation in one of the country's premier tourist resorts.
Israelis Niv Livner and Ran Margalit won the first edition of the Tour de Israel competition. After racing over the 477-mile route, the GO-PRO team duo crossed the finish line first.
Their overall time was 19:09:09.45 hours. Second place went to Tzachi Bolgan and Anton Michalov with international triathlon champions Dan and Ran Alterman finishing third.
The event, sponsored by the Tourism Ministry, was designed as a two-person team competition, featuring nine separate categories based on gender and age: Men; Women; Mixed Gender; Adults, Masters and Grand Masters.
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March 14, 2010 |
The largest-ever gay market research study is set to launch in 14 countries, from Mexico's border with Texas right across the world to Israel and to the top of Sweden. OutNow, the specialist global marketing agency that developed the study, says it will be the most comprehensive study of its kind ever undertaken.
The new study will survey lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. With an overall population of three quarters of a billion, the regions where the study will take place are home to more than 35 million lesbian and gay people living diverse lives.
The countries being surveyed in the '2010 Out Now Global LGBT Market Study' are Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the UK.
Out Now's CEO, Ian Johnson, says, "We are pleased to help gay community groups, government offices, NGOs and companies to better understand - and meet - the needs of LGBT people... this research will reveal much about their work situation, their family lives, relationships and parenting status, travel and consumer habits, people's experiences of harassment - or acceptance, incomes and expenditures, buying power, retirement plans and their future aspirations."
The study will run until the end of May and its results are to be released soon after.
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