SpeedBit's Speedy Growth

Tired of staring at a motionless movie player while waiting to watch videos online?






Israeli startup SpeedBit, creator of the popular Download Accelerator, has found a way to innovate and leverage the exponential growth of videos online.

Delivering high quality videos to fast to the end-user has become a real challenge even for the big video sites such as YouTube and MetaCafe. These performance barriers slow down the adoption of the online rich media.

SpeedBit's latest product, SpeedBit Video Accelerator improves the viewing experience of streaming videos by alliviating the frustration of 'movie freezes' and buffering problems. The product claims to increase the video download speed from 400 to 1,000 percent, using patent pending multi connection technology to accelerate the caching of streaming videos.

In addition, the technology even allows users to view films on YouTube without disruption while BitTorrent is downloading at full speed - something that was technically almost impossible before the introduction of the new software. More features can be found here.

According to CEO Ariel Yarnitsky, the new product has attracted 1 million users in two weeks, and 20-30K new users are signing up every day. The product is downloadable for free and is not being monetized at the moment. However, Yarnitzky has several plans to cut the coupon by offering a premium service for the accelerated downloading of video files from iTunes. Using SpeedBit's technology, a film that normally takes three and a half hours to download from iTunes will take only 22 minutes.

Speedbit was founded in 1999 by Yerach and Idan Feigenbaum (father and son) and currently has 30 employees. Speedbit is funded by Pitango venture capital and Yossi Vardi (founder investor of ICQ).

Download the Video Accelerator here.

How does it work?

Reuters buys Israeli start-up ClearForest

ClearForest has developed text analysis solutions for business intelligence applications.

Globes and Haaretz reported that Reuters Group has acquired Israeli text analysis technology developer ClearForest Ltd. for about $25 million. The companies announced the deal today, before trading began on Nasdaq.

ClearForest was founded in 1998 by chairman and chief scientist Dr. Ronen Feldman and CTO Dr Yonatan Aumann . Aumann is the son of Nobel Prize for Economics Laureate Prof. Israel Aumann.

ClearForest, developed technology to analyse, read and understand large amounts of content originating from diverse documents. Reuters is one of the clients for its technology, which tags content by the principles of artificial intelligence. Other prominent clients include: DowJones, Boing and the FBI.

ClearForest has 31 employees and led by Barak Pridor. Headquartered in Boston, the company has a development center in Or Yehuda, Israel. Under the acquisition agreement, the company will operate under Reuters Search and Strategy Division, headed by Gary Campbell.

Its Israeli shareholders include Greylock Partners, Pitango Venture Capital, Walden Israel, Plenus, and Kadima Hi-tech. Foreign investors include ABS Ventures, Booz Allen Hamilton, Dow Venture Capital, HarbourVest and JPMorgan.

Source: Globes