Aharon Nizani

Startup Zlango received a serious boost today, in the form of $12 million funding by two leading venture capital funds, Benchmark and Accel. The company’s valuation for the purposes of its financing round could not be elucidated.

In the past Zlango, which was founded by the ExScite Yoav Lorch, raised a million and a half dollars from private and angel investors.

Founded in 2003, Zlango developed a whole new language of icons for short messaging by cellphone. The language consists of more than 200 icons, each of which stands for a word and which can together create sentences.

Zlango uses Java or small Brew, which works with most cellphones that operate on GSM or CDMA networks. ZMS (Zlango) messages are transferred over SMS or cellular Internet infrastructure using a designated server.

Lorch said the money will be used to advance use of Zlango to many environments. “We are operating along three avenues,” he said. “On the mobile avenue, we want as many people as possible to download the Zlango application and use it on their cellphone. We also want as many cellular carriers as possible to market the language. Another channel we want to develop Zlango around, is the web.” It could be customized into a private language, he adds.

Maarten Strack founds Tight Digital Marketing & Print.

After leaving STE in 1997, Maarten Strack founded Tight Digital Marketing & Print. Believe it or not, the company is already 10 years young.

The company is well known for its quality digital printing in Belgium serving the major ad-agencies in the country. Tight Digital services include digital photography, prepress layout and quality digital printing.
The image here reflects the spirit of the company as it celebrates its first decade.
The ExScite community wishes Maarten and his colleagues many more years of success.

SCITEX at Wikipedia (first entry 2006)

Since early 2006, several people have been contributing and editing the subject: SCITEX at Wikipedia.

Here are some interesting quotes from the fairly extensive article:

“…Scitex was founded in 1968 by Efraim Arazi, Scitex’s president, and CEO, Arie Rosenfeld joined the company at that time, established Scitex’s European subsidiary headquarters in Brussels in 1974, and went on to become COO (1987) and CEO (1988).

Scitex’s initial products included a computer based design system for the textile industry and various military projects.

Scitex literally stunned the printing industry in 1979 by introducing the minicomputer-based (HP1000 utilizing a proprietary OS) turnkey Response 300 color prepress system. Instantly beating it’s two main competitors (Hell Graphic Systems and Crosfield Composition Systems Inc.) to market, thereby filling an enormous need, and serving a labor-intensive, and costly niche–gathering graphic elements, correcting color separations, then preparing photographic film of the resulting page to be run on a press. The company’s sales increased and technology improved every year for the next eight and by 1984 sales reached $104 million. Scitex also developed a sister product line, the Response 280 for use by the mapping industry.

In 1995 former Scitex employees established the ExScite website- http://wwww.exscite.net…”

“…Interesting Side Notes, 1991:
Two instances of unusual and unexpected publicity arrived at Scitex’s doorstep in 1991. The first occurred amidst the Gulf War, when schools shut down throughout Israel. Although a Scud missile landed 1,000 yards from company headquarters, Scitex continued business as usual, and hired 150 teachers to set up makeshift classrooms in a sealed bomb shelter on corporate grounds so parents could still come to work. The second surfaced near the end of the year, in November, when British tycoon Robert Maxwell died mysteriously at sea. His holdings in Scitex were considerable, amounting to some 27 percent of the company stock…”

you can find much more of this by logging into: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scitex .
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, is a multilingual, Web-based, free-content encyclopedia project. Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers, allowing most of its articles to be edited by nearly anyone with access to the Web site. The name is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a type of collaborative website) and encyclopedia.Please note that the Wikipedia content is continuously being revised and updated.

Please help improve this article by editing and adding it to one or more categories.

Asher_Leshem

asher_leshem

The ExScite Asher Leshem founded VPS more than a decade ago. Prior to establishing VPS, Asher worked at Orbotech Ltd. for nine years, serving as the Chief Engineer at the company?s CCD image acquisition group.
Asher also served as Senior Engineer at Scitex Corporation’s Opto-mechanical Division (plotters and scanners), for about nine years, and was in charge of developing complicated analog electro-optic systems for Scitex’s digital printing and scanning products.
Established in 1995 by Asher Leshem, VPS of Petach Tikva Israel provides complete design solutions for complicated analog and digital electro-optical systems. The company also offers comprehensive solutions for various security systems. The VPS team designs optimal system solutions for complex applications, See sample of recent projects here.
VPS’ clientele include leading companies such as: Orbotech, Applied Materials, Indigo, Scitex, El-Op, NICE, Motorola , IAI (Israeli Aircraft Industries), Kulick & Sofa Intex, Combact, Denx, Envision, Robomatics, Elpak, Racoom, Cognitense, Fruitonics, AVT, Spectral Diagnostics, Romidot, Sagita, and numerous others.

ExScite ladies reunion

This brand new nostalgic picture of the recent “ExScite ladies reunion” at Galit Felix’s house in Raanana Israel. The surprise of the evening was Elsy Menko (who lives in Holland) visiting Israel.

Shelagh Hammer who sent us the picture wrote:
“We all had a wonderful evening – ending up in tears of laughter as we each recounted how we got hired to Scitex! Such stories!”.

In the old tradition of Scitex, the picture was “doctored” to add the photographer to the group. Now you tell me- who has been added???- click on the picture to bring the full resolution image.

In the picture From, the left:
Rochele Ephraim, Eta Portnoy, Neta Appel, Ronit Wajsman, Ruti Ran, Elsy Menko, Beth Orshalimy, Tchia Haberman, Ruth Even (Gachtan), Sarale Sassover, Diana Shem-Tov, Gita Tamari, Orly Epstein, Marcelle Havakuk, Galit Felix, Shelagh Hammer and Tami Kimmelman.

Dan_Vandsburger

Dan Vandsburger 新業務開發部門副主管 is sales manager at communication company Starhome since 2002.
From 1999 to 2002 Dan was VP Marketing & Business Development at Witcom a provider of high capacity microwave radio links operating in licensed frequency bands.
Prior to Witcom he was director of EMEA sales at NICE Systems a supplier of Computer Telephony Integrated systems
From 1990 to 1995 Dan was Sales & Marketing Manager at Scitex. He was in charge of Sales & Marketing of the Middle-East – Africa SBC.
The Israeli company Starhome delivers roaming technology and value added services that maximize roaming business potential for mobile network operators. Starhome is enabler of network inter-operability for mobile operators with convergent solutions based on mobile technology, inter-network infrastructure and roaming applications

Scientific Technology (later Scitex ) in Rehovot Israel, first laser-based product.

Before prepress, before textile, before even imaging- the young start-up Scientific Technology (what later became Scitex Corporation) in Rehovot Israel, developed several laser-based products.
This authentic picture of an optical setup with a 5mw Helium-Neon laser was shot in the optical lab, on the optical bench in 1970.
Note in the background the ancient oscilloscope (worked with vacuum tubes!!!) and the Teletype, which was the only computer terminal (don’t look for CRT terminal, those have been invented at later years….).
The product under development was a laser B&W film scanner, format 4×5″.
If you have pictures of product YOU developed at Scitex- please send me with the background story.

Bruno Serrien

Following our posting of the Dec 28 ExScite News item about the sale of the Scitex mechanical plant in Herzlia, the ExScite Bruno Serrien Emailed us this from Singapore:

Bruno Serrien is a member of the ACM Management team and a Director of the Israeli subsidiary. ACM recently completed his takeover of Kodak (ex-Scitex) Mechanical Plant.

ACM is already a supplier to Kodak since several years. ACM has companies in Malaysia, Singapore, China and Israel (Axiom Precision). ACM revenues is US$35 million /year and key customers are Kodak, HP, Xerox.
ACM Group is specialized in:
*Critical Precision Engineering Components
*Precision Optics
*Electromechanical Assemblies
*Module/Sub system Equipment Integration

Previously to ACM, Bruno was a Divisional Director within the Automotive Industry responsible for over 100mio euro revenues. Within Scitex he held several managerial positions in Sales, Finance and Logistics in Europe and the Far East.

Gidi_Benyamini

Gidi Benyamini, COO of Notal Vision.
Prior to joining Notal Vision, he was VP of Engineering and Manufacturing at LaserComm, a telecommunications company based in Dallas, Texas. Prior to that and for a period of 7 years he held various managerial positions at Scitex Corp. in Israel.

Located in Tel Aviv Israel, the medical tools company Notal Vision is developing comprehensive diagnostic solutions for the early detection and monitoring of Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of blindness in the western world today. Notal?s Preferential Hyperacuity Perimetery – Foresee PHP? platform, is designed to detect and monitor the progression of the disease in a non-invasive manner. Since its launch in 2004, the PHP has been sold eye care professionals in the US and has gained a reputation as an outstanding tool for the detection of the conversion of dry to wet AMD.

Eran_Tamir

The Exscite Eran Tamir is VP operations at Corrigent.
Prior to Corrigent Eran was VP operations for Orckit Communications. Prior to joining Orckit, he who was one of the founders of Wizcom Technologies Ltd., and served as VP operations. Eran has also previously served as Director of Worldwide Logistics of Indigo Ltd. and Director of Acquisitions of Scitex Corporation Ltd.

Corrigent leads a new class of metro-optical transport products that is revolutionary in its economics. Corrigent?s CM-100 is a packet-ADM that fuses together SONET/SDH technologies such as Virtual Concatenation, GFP, and LCAS, with packet technologies such as RPR, Ethernet and MPLS, to evolve today’s SONET/SDH-based transport infrastructure to the next generation packet-based transport network, in both a standards-based and interoperable manner. This breakthrough architecture solves the metro dilemma for service providers worldwide by allowing them to bridge their existing SONET services with next-generation data, voice and video services.
The Israeli Corrigent is based in San Jose, with an R&D center in Israel. Orckit Communications (NASDAQ: ORCT) is the parent company of Corrigent.

About Aharon Nizani