Technology

Israeli technology a safe bet for gaming

Alex Brummer — Mon, 20 May 2013 10:33:14 +0100

A childhood memory is ever present.

Watching a breed of burly “bookies” in loud plaid suits arrive at our Brighton synagogue on High Holy Days.

The involvement of Jewish figures in horse racing — otherwise known as the “sport of kings” — is a given.

The East End-born bookmaker, philanthropist and ardent Zionist Sir Cyril Strein, transformed Ladbrokes into a global gaming giant. The late Lord Weinstock owned several thoroughbred racehorses, and today Sam Waley-Cohen is one of Britain’s bravest amateur jockeys.

The current star of the gambling world is Playtech Ltd. An Israeli-run company, listed on the London Stock Exchange, providing gaming software from online casinos to sports betting and poker rooms.

The company is credited with saving the fortune of William Hill, as the bookmakers’ online division made a 21 per cent increase in net revenue after investing in Playtech software.

But rival Ladbrokes had not done so well.

Chief executive Richard Glynn attempted to develop an independent digital platform, but it fell behind schedule and investors became increasingly impatient.

So after three years in the job Mr Glynn has finally decided to employ 40 people from Playtech’s Tel Aviv-based marketing team and will get access to 200 Playtech casino games. Playtech leaders will be incentivised through a “success fee” based on earnings from 2017 onwards.

For several years, British bookmakers sought to conquer gaming markets in the US, Australia, Italy and Spain. They were deterred by US state authorities who sought to punish online gaming by arresting overseas executives on charges of wire fraud.

That is now changing. America’s top gaming states, including Nevada and New Jersey, have legalised online gaming and therefore opened up new opportunities for British bookies.

As a result of the UK taxes imposed on machine gambling, and the drug scandal involving horseracing trainer Mahmood al-Zarooni at the Newmarket stable owned by Dubai’s Sheikh Mohammed — the search for top streams of digital income is increasingly urgent.

As is often the case — it is Israeli technology that is coming to the rescue.

Senior David Cameron aide to lead trade mission to Israel

Sandy Rashty — Tue, 14 May 2013 17:05:57 +0100

Prime Minister David Cameron’s senior policy adviser will lead a business delegation to Israel on Sunday.

Rohan Silva will head the four-day visit alongside retail British representatives from supermarket chains to luxury brands.

They will meet Israeli companies to discuss developements in retail technology. "I’m looking forward to helping forge new connections between our leading retailers and cutting-edge Israeli businesses," said Mr Silva.

Tackling terrorism with technology

Sandy Rashty — Mon, 13 May 2013 10:33:16 +0100

An Israeli company is battling terrorism with technology used by government agencies across the globe.

Cellebrite, founded in 1999, is headquartered in Petah Tikva, Israel, and more than 50 per cent of the technology company’s $200 million average annual revenue stems from its forensics division — established in 2007.

The division develops software and hardware used to prevent terror activity. The sophisticated technology can retreive deleted or lost data from mobile phones, digital tablets and PCs — but it is only available to authorised government agencies and corporate organisations such as insurers.

“We recognised the need to create software capable of satisfying law enforcement needs,” says Cellebrite co-CEO Yossi Carmil, who has worked for the Israeli Ministry of Defence.

“Our Universal Forensic Extraction Device (UFED) is able to retrieve data from a mobile phone — from the technology of a suspicious person.”

He says “someone could think that if they press delete the message is gone — but it’s not the case.”

With around 15,000 UFED devices deployed to agencies across 60 countries and with more than 50 per cent of forensic revenue stemming from the United States — the company is a recognised authority in the market. Clients have included the Indian army, West Yorkshire and Japanese police.

Cellebrite’s expertise extends to its retail division. The company’s Universal Memory Exchanger (UME) technology, targets the everyday mobile user. It facilitates back-up storage and the swift transfer of data from on device to another.

Mr Carmil explains that “the UME can access technology from a source to a target phone. You can transfer all your contacts from a Blackberry to an iPhone, from a Siemans to a Nokia and from a PC to iCloud using this device.”

It is a swift and convenient mechanism for consumers who can access the helpful facility at mobile retail stores.

In the UK, consumers access the service via the Carphone Warehouse, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodaphone stores. The global service sees 250,000 transactions each year at 145,000 stores.

“It was something that was never done before,” claims Mr Carmil. “It reduces barriers from each different phone.”

Without a doubt, Cellebrite is established in the mobile industry. But in a competitive digital market, the Israeli company faces challenges.

“Cellebrite suffers from the fact that we have to work hard not to lose our customers,” says Mr Carmil. “We have a lot of ideas but always try to keep our technology simple.

“In Hebrew we have a saying, keep it simple, even stupid.”

Mr Carmil, 46, grew up in Petah Tikva. He has worked as director of ITS Telecom and as vice president of mobile Siemens commercial division in Israel.

As part of the Cellebrite’s founding generation, he has watched it expand from five to 290 employees.

In 2007, Cellebrite was sold and is now a fully-owned subsidiary of the Japanese Sun Corporation. The sell was part of a “strategic decision to grow,” according to Mr Carmil.

He says it faciliates access to markets beyond Cellebrite’s subsidiaries in the US, Canada, Mexico, Germany, Singapore and Brazil. The company has no Middle East base outside of Israel, but Mr Carmil says “there is no reason we can’t pursue other regions”.

www.cellebrite.com

Find it hard to hear in the cinema? Forget deaf aids — try these glasses

Zoe Winograd — Fri, 10 May 2013 09:30:43 +0100

An inventor has developed a system which will allow deaf people to enjoy visits to the cinema without having to watch special screenings for the hard-of-hearing.

Jack Ezra, 56, has built the prototype for glasses that would enable deaf film-goers to read sub-titles during any movie. The sub-titles, displayed on a separate screen, would be invisible to those not wearing the glasses.

The former JFS student said: “The deaf seem to be left out of everything and this would allow them to go to the movies whenever they like.”

The former teacher, who now runs his own 3D technology company, is seeking the £135,000 funding he needs to produce and market his invention.

He said: “This would change the film industry, bringing in a whole market of people who have been forgotten about.”

Nicola Mendelsohn named Facebook Europe chief

Anna Sheinman — Wed, 08 May 2013 10:20:09 +0100

Facebook has named prominent advertising executive Nicola Mendelsohn as its new head of European operations.

Ms Mendelsohn is the owner of advertising agency Karmarama and formerly the first female president of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA).

Now living in Finchley, she was born in Manchester, where her mother, kosher caterer Celia Klein is still based.

Ms Mendelsohn studied English and drama at Leeds University. She is married to former Labour fundraiser Jon Mendelsohn, the chairman of Kinloss, Finchley United Synagoge. The pair are often to be seen at Labour Friends of Israel events.

Hacker collective fails to take a byte out of Israel

Anshel Pfeffer — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 10:00:56 +0100

The much-heralded #OpIsrael, a campaign by the hacker collective Anonymous to “wipe Israel off the face of the internet”, created a good deal of media hype but failed to cause much more than a nuisance to Israelis.

If all you had been following over the weekend were the Twitter accounts of various Anonymous activists and those of organisations such as Hamas’s Al Qassam Brigades in Gaza, you may have come under the impression that Israel was under a cybernetic siege.

Every few minutes, another list of hundreds of Israeli websites, including those of the Prime Minister’s Office and the Mossad, appeared, under the heading DOWN! or DEFACED!, along with promises of huge leaks of confidential information hacked from Israeli databases.

In reality, with the exception of two non-essential government sites which were inaccessible for a short period on Saturday night, no major Israeli site, governmental or privately owned, suffered any significant damage or was forced offline. Anonymous is not an organisation in any normal sense of the word. It is more a loose network of like-minded hackers working around the world, backed by a wider web of supporters.

Some of its “members” are skilled in the art of internet sabotage and, in the past, have taken down websites of governments and corporations that have drawn their ire.

Others are rank amateurs whose talents amount to little more than bragging about non-existent achievements. Some claimed to have revealed the private phone number of Sara Netanyahu, the Prime Minister’s wife, but it turned out to belong to a random lawyer.

The Shin Bet security agency, which is tasked also with defending Israel’s electronic infrastructure, announced on Monday morning that, while it remained vigilant, so far “no damage has been caused to government websites, and the sites which have been hit were those of private citizens with a basic level of defence”.

As the operation continued, the only prominent casualties were the websites of the national airline, El Al, which was forced offline for a short period, and the Tel Aviv stock exchange and Haaretz newspaper, which were significantly slowed down.

No major database was broken into except that of one small foreign exchange trading company, whose users’ details were published online.

The lack of success seems mainly due to the strong cyber-defence systems of most Israeli government agencies and corporations, which have faced hack-attacks for years.

In the absence of any showcase hacking, #OpIsrael will be remembered mainly for the way Anonymous activists succeeded in defacing Energy Minister Silvan Shalom’s Facebook page with a “Free Palestine” banner, only to have their own website hacked by pro-Israeli activists who planted on it hasbarah material.

Israel's new energy source under the sea

Anshel Pfeffer — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 18:00:00 +0100

Natural gas began to flow on Saturday in the pipeline under the Mediterranean from the Tamar gas field to the Israeli port of Ashdod. The first full-scale operation of the pipeline raises hopes for economic and environmental gains for Israel. But it has also revived the political controversy over the division of gas revenues and even caused a religious furore over the opening of the pipeline on Shabbat.

The gas is extracted from five undersea wells about 60 miles west of Haifa, and pumped through a 95-mile-long pipe to an offshore installation near Ashdod. From there, it goes to a coastal station for distribution to Israeli power stations as well as, in the future, to factories.

Nobel Energy, the main foreign partner in the project, claims the natural gas will save Israel’s economy more than two billion pounds annually over the next 30 years, aside from dramatically reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the environment and making local industry much more competitive.

President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were quick to announce that Israel was on the way to energy independence and praised businessman Yitzhak Teshuva who had financed the gas explorations. Labour and opposition leader Shelly Yacimovich was more critical. She recalled that “Teshuva fought an aggressive and obscene campaign for over a decade to deny the state and Israelis from benefiting fairly from this natural treasure — which we all own.”

Two government commissions were formed to resolve the controversial issues of the division of revenues from the natural gas and the amount of gas that would be reserved for national use. A compromise was reached allowing the private companies around 45 per cent of the revenue and part of the gas to be exported at higher prices, while fixing the price of gas sufficient for Israel’s energy needs over the next 25 years.

Another row followed the decision to start operating the pipeline on Shabbat. President Peres later admitted that the timing had been a “mistake.”

A larger Israeli gas field, Leviathan, is still in early stages of exploration and talks are under way with Turkey over the prospect of a new pipeline to allow Israel to export natural gas to Europe.

App launched to help Jewish charities

Jonathan Kalmus — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 23:30:00 +0000

A Jewish team has developed a charity app which donates money every time someone shops at hundreds of major retailers — and will help Jewish charities, big and small.

Give4Sure can be downloaded to any mobile device or computer from a participating charity’s website, such as Chai Cancer Care, the first charity to run the service.

A donor generates money for their charity when shopping online from over 1,400 retailers including major supermarkets, John Lewis or Amazon.

The app is estimated to generate £5.67 of donations per customer every month. Jewish charities currently running the software include Maccabi GB, Gift, One Family and Manchester Jewish Community Care.

Give4Sure chairman Ivor Levene said: “Charities don’t need to do much to sign up. We are urging Jewish charities big and small to come on board”.

French students to sue Twitter over antisemitic posts

Jennifer Lipman — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 12:49:08 +0000

Social networking site Twitter is facing a £33 million lawsuit for refusing to divulge the identities of antisemitic users.

The site, which turns seven today, is being sued by the Union of French Jewish Students for ignoring a court ruling to turn over details of the users.

Twitter was told to work to help identify the authors of a string of abusive and antisemitic tweets, posted by various users under the tag #unbonjuif (#agoodjew) in October last year.

But the January court ruling was not binding, since the company does not have an office in France, and it has so far not complied.

Jonathan Hayoun, UEJF president, criticised the site for "playing the indifference card".

He said: "In protecting the anonymity of the author of these tweets it is making itself an accomplice and offering a highway for racists and antisemites."

The group has filed a claim with a Paris tribunal and is now seeking more than £33 million in damages, which it said would be donated to the Shoah Memorial fund.

A spokesman forTwitter criticised UEJF for being "more interested in these grand gestures than in finding an adequate international procedure to obtain the requested information".

Turing Award won by Israeli second time in a row

Anna Sheinman — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:38:38 +0000

The Turing Award, known as the Nobel Prize of computing, has been won by an Israeli for the second time in a row.

Professor Shafi Goldwasser of the Weizmann Institute of Science near Tel Aviv won the 2012 prize along with Prof Silvio Micali of MIT for their work creating the foundations of internet security.

Their 1982 paper pioneered several approaches now fundamental in the field, including randomised encryption and definitions of security.

The $250,000 prize has been awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery since 1966. President Vint Cerf praised the pair, winners of the 2012 prize, for “their innovative approaches to ensuring security in the digital age.

Last year’s prize was awarded to Israeli American Judea Pearl for contributions in the field of artificial intelligence.

Prof Goldwasser is the fifth Israeli to win the prize and the third woman. The award is named after Alan Turing, the British mathematician who was a renowned codebreaker at Bletchley Park in the Second World War.