First-ever Israeli National Pavilion Set up at 2011 Computex Taipei

Israel has an ICT sector with global might. With considerable effort by the Israel Economic and Cultural Office in Taipei (ISECO), 12 Israeli companies jointly showcased their latest technologies, products in the first-ever “Israeli Pavilion” at the 2011 Taipei International Information Technology Show (Computex Taipei) held May 31-June 4, the largest information and communication technology (ICT) show in Asia and second-largest globally, themed “Inspired by Innovation” to reflect the mostly little promoted national spirit.

Simona Halperin, the representative of ISECO, urged closer cooperation between Taiwan and Israel, saying at the opening ceremony of the national pavilion that Taiwan's ICT industry has evolved from being mostly OEM/ODM (original equipment/design manufacturing) for major international brands 10 years and earlier, to OBMs where ever more firms are investing in R&D to innovate products.

The efforts of Ophir Gore, Director of Economic Affairs, ISECO, and Michael Admon, Director of Hi-Tech Department of the Technology Industries Division of Israeli Export & International Cooperation Institute have helped Israeli companies to inaugurate a national pavilion at the Computex Taipei, with Halperin adding, “It represents a shift in attitude of Israeli companies which have fully recognized the importance of the Asian market, and I'm glad that many Israeli firms are displaying advanced technologies and products.”

Halperin said she hopes more Israeli firms would return to Computex if participants respond positively. “I think more and more Israeli companies realize the importance of Taiwanese companies who also know they need new parts, technologies to confront challenges posed by new products as tablet PCs, smartphones etc.”

Rising Trade
Gore said in the first quarter of 2011 the trade between Israel and Taiwan sharply rose 30% to 40% and will likely rise to some US$1.8 billion or US$2 billion in 2011, from US$1.5 billion in 2010 that was a record high.

Taiwan is the third-largest trade partner in Asia for Israel, trailing China and India, Gore said. Taiwan exports mainly consumer-electronics to Israel, whose major exports to Taiwan include medical equipment, semiconductor, and key parts for consumer-electronics products.

Admon pointed out that an increasing number of Original Design Manufacturers (ODMs) purchase parts or solutions from Israeli partners to upgrade product competitiveness.

“Israel is a supply base of the most advanced and innovative technologies and solutions, and I'm sure that Taiwanese ODMs can develop new products according to their vision by teaming up with Israeli companies," said Admon, adding that several Israeli companies have showcased very good gesture/motion control technologies at Computex, which will likely be installed in devices in addition to game consoles. TVs or cellphones could be remote-controlled by different gesture-control technologies, he said.

Typing Out-of-Box
Grippity Inc. showcases its transparent handheld keyboards aiming to achieve ergonomic QWERTY typing anywhere, also introducing the Grippity1, a media center keyboard and the first BackTyped product, or the smallest 10-finger QWERTY keyboard.

Founded in early 2008 by an architect, a software engineer and missile scientist, Grippity pushed the envelope to develop the Backtyping technology utilizing the six or eight idle fingers at the back of hand held devices. The transparent inter-key gaps enable seeing finger placement to motivate easy back-typing. Even novices can immediately start typing with this QWERTY layout device.

Back-typing allows 10-digit typing on the front of input devices as well as on backs at once.

Grippity's patented technology achieves an innovative input device featuring many advantages: 1. Fast and ergonomic – typing with neutral palm position with all ten fingers; 2. Accurate – able to see finger tips from back of touch screen; 3. Exciting – transparent display provides new user-interface (UI) and augmented reality options; 4. Built for living room - perfectly designed for modern digital living room.

Add Another Bit
Utilizing its MSP (Memory Signal Processing) technology, Anobit provides Solid State storage solutions with significantly improved reliability, performance and cost.

Anobit's products, ranging from flash controllers to complete enterprise-class solid state drives (SSDs), are used by world leading flash manufacturers, consumer electronics vendors and storage system providers.

Anobit's MSP technology is comprised of proprietary signal processing algorithms that compensate for physical limitations of memory device, combined with advanced error correction and innovative memory management schemes, resulting in significant improvement in reliability, performance and cost. When applied to NAND flash memory products and systems, the MSP technology enables SLC (Single Level Cell) reliability and performance with MLC NAND, and MLC (Multi-Level-Cell) reliability and performance with TLC NAND, resulting in a significant reduction in cost-per-bit.

Anobit recently announced that its Genesis SSDs are ready for enterprise. Based on industry standard MLC NAND, Genesis Series SSDs deliver unprecedented performance of over 30,000 IOPS (random read/write), while meeting stringent endurance requirements of 10 complete, random disk rewrites per-day for five years. These results are in line with the expectations of highly demanding enterprise customers.

Motion Games
Side-Kick Ltd. is a leading game developer and publisher specializing in motion games that use human gestures to control games. Side-Kick was created by veteran gaming industry entrepreneurs and the team behind the first games developed for the PrimeSense technology, the main supporting force to the Xbox Kinect motion-control games.

Side-Kick claims that its close ties with motion-control technology pioneers, as well as unparalleled hands-on development experience, provide the company with unique access to faster development cycles and the ability to create ground-breaking games.

Side-Kick delivered seven games in 2010—exceeding all others in the motion-controlled game market—to Eedo China, HiSense, Haier and other leading companies, claiming to develop a total of 20 games by the end of 2011 for kids and females especially. The firm even develops motion-control games for tablet PCs, and players don't have to add more hardware.

Side-Kick wished to make contact with leading hardware manufacturers as IPTV manufacturers, Android OS, Smart TVs, new console companies and other

hardware manufacturers looking to license games that utilize gesture interfaces.

Superior Input Device
EPOS Development Ltd. is displaying its digital pen input device featuring advantages including low cost, minimal battery power, multi-lingual capacity, multi-OS capacity, fully customizable, and fast time to market.

This technology transmits ultrasonic acoustic waves between two or more devices via a transmitter and receiver. Similar in principle to sonar, the transmitter, embedded in the digital pen, sends acoustic pulses to the receiver, which uses the same pulses to measure distance to the position of the device. The transmitter sends a unique “whistle” (an ultrasonic signal with specific time, spectrum characteristics) to the receiver to constantly inform it of its position. The receiver “hears” the whistle and pinpoints the transmitter by calculating precisely the time-of-flight between the pen and receiver.

According to EPOS, the digital pen enables users to use a pen intuitively as has been done forever, a function beyond keyboard and mouse. The EPOS-enabled digital pen is ideal for home, office, on-the-move and for children, students, businesspeople, graphic artists and architects, who will be able to even record handwriting, sign names, draw, and scribble notes.

Partnering with e-reader, media tablet, smartphone and TV OEMs in addition to digital pen players, EPOS' advanced positioning technology enables a superior input experience on a wide range of devices.

3D Motion Capture Technology
Extreme Reality (XTR3D) Ltd. XTR provides real-time software based 3D Motion Capture technology using a single standard webcam. XTR's technology facilitates real time recognition of human motions and gestures, and uses this recognition to control consumer electronic devices without accessories.

Yaron Aizenbud, XTR's V.P. products, stresses that his company's leading and unique 3D human skeleton technology makes its gesture control software products the leader-of-the-pack for a smart TV, tablet PC, notebook PC, or smartphone.

Most solutions for real-time 3D gesture control capabilities are hardware based 3D cameras, which are expensive, heavy computation solutions that are limited to operating in noisy environments and long range.

The XTR controls notebook PCs or other mobile devices from 50 to 500cm, or up to eight meters away, with the company's software running on any standard camera to enable users to need only their bodies.

A hidden aspect attributable to Israeli success in the gesture-control business, according to Aizenbud, is the nation's forced role to develop defense technologies, which has bred many players with expertise in signal and image processing.

New Text/Data Entry Technology
The problem with traditional touchscreen keyboards is excessive displacement of screen surface to obscure content, which is being addressed by Snapkeys Ltd., an innovative company who has devised an "imaginary interface" called 2i that enables users to type blindly on smartphones and tablets.

The iPad has weaknesses in its data entry system. Different areas of the display house letters according to shape, with the left side featuring one button for all letters with a single point underneath as T and Y and another for all rounded letters as R and O. There is also large back and space keys on the outside edges of the display, but not more.

Greg Zaoui, directior of product management of Snapkeys, points out that the QWERTY-like keyboards no longer offer a satisfactory, comfortable mechanism for text and data entry on technology platforms that are increasingly downsized such as cellphones and tablet PCs, as well as home entertainment systems, remote controls, and fixed computing devices. Snapkeys' imaginary interface overcomes such issue to offer innovative, effective text and data entry for mobile and fixed devices.

Wireless USB
Wisair is a leading provider of a portfolio of Wireless USB and Ultra-wideband (UWB) based ecosystem of solutions for applications such as "Wireless PC to TV", "Wireless laptop docking", "Wireless laptop audio streaming" and more. Products based on Wisair's complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) single chip are already shipped in high volume in the U.S., Europe, Korea and Japan, available from a variety of OEMs.

The maker offers a variety of wireless solutions for notebook PCs. In addition, similar concept can be implemented in HDTV or Blu-ray players, enabling those devices to connect wirelessly to various content sources as notebook PCs, cellphones, external hard-drives etc.

Other Israeli companies in the national pavilion include ASOCS, Discretix Technologies Ltd., DSP Group, EyeSight Mobile, and PointGrab Ltd., who with their peers registered over 150 meetings with Taiwanese counterparts before the show opening, ISECO says.