Two Israeli companies have reached the TechCrunch Crunchies Awards best in technologies finals for 2010: Boxee Inc. and Soluto Ltd., after 250,00 votes were made across all categories. The winners will be announced on January 19.
Soluto CEO Tomer Dvir and CTO Ishay Green founded the company in 2007. The anti-frustration solutions developer is a finalist in the "Best International Category" alongside Viki Inc. of South Korea, and Brazil's Crivo, and other companies. Soluto won first place in the 2009 TechCrunch Disrupt awards in May 2010. The company's technology detects when you’re frustrated by your PC and tells you which application is causing it. The company's software also harnesses the power of the crowd to learn which actions really eliminate frustrations and improve user experience, and leverages this user wisdom for the benefit of all PC users.
Dvir told "Globes", "The support we're getting in Israel is tremendous. It's local pride like when an Israeli movie becomes an Oscar nominee. But in the case of Soluto, Israeli users can influence the results. If they continue to vote via Facebook as they did in the first stage, and in even greater numbers, we and Boxee can win."
Soluto VP products Roee Adler added, "If Israeli users continue to vote and recruit more voters, Soluto and Boxee can win. This means that small companies from Israel can stand alongside Silicon Valley giants. That's enormous pride."
Boxee, a finalist in the "Best New Device" category, was founded in 2007 by CEO Avner Ronen, product manager Idan Cohen, VP business development Gidon Coussin, Tom Sella, and Roy Vulcan. The company's product, the Boxee Box is competing against Apple Inc's (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPad and iPhone and Microsoft Corporation's (Nasdaq: MSFT) Xbox Kinect new games console.
Boxee has developed open code-based media center software that enables users to control media content stored in their PC or online and bring it to TV.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on January 9, 2011
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