Israeli start-up companies regularly top headlines. ISRAEL21c has written about many of Israel’s extraordinary high-tech successes for over a decade. And following the publication of Start-Up Nation, media from across the globe also turned the spotlight on the country’s high-tech specialization.

Now, Wired chose to highlight Tel Aviv as one of the world’s ‘hot digital cities.’ The list of the Top 11 start-ups in Tel Aviv is part of the magazine’s first annual guide to Europe’s rising stars.

“The entrepreneurial spirit is boosted by an intense commitment to R&D — the country reinvests about 4.5 per cent of its output in civilian research, making it number one in the world for R&D as a percentage of GDP,” reports the magazine. “In 2010, Israel’s technology exports hit $28.5 billion, 35 percent of overseas sales. Israeli companies comprise the biggest non-US block on the Nasdaq exchange. And the country is home to R&D departments of some of the world’s biggest tech companies, including Google, Microsoft, Oracle and Intel.”

Wired‘s list focused on The Gifts Project, which sells plug-ins, standalone sites and white-box software that allow people to buy a group present for a friend online. It also included Wibiya, an easy-to-install and easily customizable apps for website owners to add to their sites; Face.com, a face recognition software; Onavo, smartphone apps that cut travellers’ roaming fees; Billguard, scans customers’ online credit-card and utility bills for errors, hidden fees, scams and fraud; Snaptu, a service that turns internet enabled phones into smartphones by running apps in the cloud; Any.do, expected to launch an app that will use voice recognition and semantic analysis to translate commands into actions; Soluto, uses crowdsourcing to improve PC performance; Boxee, relays rich media from the internet and a user’s home collection to their television; Taykey, business-to-business provider that tracks internet trends in real-time, giving advertisers more accurate data about their customers’ interests; and Rank Above, search-engine optimisation for companies whose websites extend to thousands or millions of pages.