Israeli history is peppered with stories of small forces overcoming seemingly insurmountable challenges. One of the most famous stories told and retold is that of the Davidka. In 1948, against the massive Arab Legion forces, David Leibowitch manufactured six homemade mortars that did not do any real damage, but just created a lot of noise. The various underground groups were able to move the device quickly and simply from location to location and create the illusion of a much greater force that really existed.

In short, strategy is much more important than size.

However, not all strategy in Israel comes out of the IDF. Anshel Pfeffer, co-founder of Mobilibrium, spent the last 15 years volunteering for the local emergency service in Jerusalem. There, he learned from firsthand experience the need for quickly mobilizing scarce resources in both time- and location-critical situations.

From that necessity was borne the concept of SNAP: Send Nearest Available Person. It sounds deceiving simple. However, in order to actualize the concept, the Mobilibrium team created patent-pending algorithms that create a mashup of location, personnel, and equipment data, with minimal overhead needed, and a thin-client that sits ambiently on the mobile devices of members of the team.

Originally designed for emergency responders, SNAP is now being used by Natali, the organization that won the bid to provide health services to students in schools across Israel. Using SNAP, Natali can maintain a smaller stronger base of employees who can respond in an optimized fashion to any school within 15 minutes of a call.

For instance, there is no need to send a paramedic when a child has a fever, a nurse will suffice. But if there is an epileptic incident, a team of two people may be required: both a paramedic and a nurse. SNAP automagically finds the closest individuals who fit the description and have the necessary equipment with them.

As a SaaS run on the cloud, any company with time sensitive needs will be able to smartly optimize its resources. It could be a 10 member plumbing company to the 200 member team working a concert, event or parade, to a newspaper which needs to ensure that every relevant global breaking event has coverage.

SNAP was designed with the users in mind. For instance, not everyone wants their employer to know where they are at every moment. Mine would question how many times a day one can go to a cafe. SNAP has a mode that blocks the user’s location from the system, instead only informing the dispatcher that someone is in the desired vicinity, without any specific location or name.

From what I saw, the user experience on all sides is simple and elegant. The set-up is painless. And the potential cost-saving is high.

But I doubt that the plumbers in Des Moines or the Deadheads in St. Paul will really care about the Davidka.

When was the last time you hit the gym? Danny Aboody can’t help you there but click this link and he’ll help you exercise the most important part of body; your brain. Danny and co-founders Dr. Eran Chajut and Gil Steiner spent 2008 quietly building Mind360, a suite of brain-training games that according to the company “help people boost overall well being and maximize their potential through online well-defined, entertaining cognitive training activities.”

We’ve known for a while that certain video games can make you smarter, and amazingly researchers have found that you can actually form new brain cells by training the brain. Mind360 is making a science of it, the question is can they make a business of it. While their business model is yet to be announced, in an era of brain-numbing TV and infinite web time-sucks, any company helping us reverse the brain-drain is a welcome friend. Competitors Lumosity and Happy-Neuron offer similar web-based brain training but Mind360 hopes to set itself apart by focusing on their unique interactive user experiences and social elements.

The Mind360 game development platform also enables them to efficiently produce a wide range of interactive games, from silly to serious training. This fun Flash example was created within 6 hours of Bush’s near face-shake with a reporter’s shoe in Iraq and was played over 30,000 times. Those in the private beta are getting a first look at the more advanced cognitive games that really make your brain sweat. The company will open its Beta this March but if your brain just can’t wait add your email address to the comments section and we’ll see if we can’t get you an emergency private beta invite.

Mind360 employs 8 brain-trainers in Herzeliya Pituach and has raised $1M to date from private investors. They’ll be looking to raise their Series A financing later this year. Interested investors can reach Danny via his TechAviv profile. Danny founded and sold his first company before he turned 17 so his brain and the games it plays are worth following. Stay tuned.

We’ve been chomping at the bit to announce that stealth startup and TechAviv IL member SundaySky has completed an $8 million Series A round of funding led by Carmel Ventures and Globespan Capital Partners. Avi Zeevi, General Partner of Carmel and Jonathan Seelig, Managing Director of Globespan have joined the Company’s board of directors. This is great news for a great company and Israel hi-tech as a whole. SundaySky will be demo’ing at our February TechAviv Founders Club meetup and hopefully sharing some tips and insight on the funding process in today’s market.

SundaySky develops an innovative video authoring engine that automatically generates videos from content; text, graphics, photos, music and videos, on any web site. Even more impressive, videos can update in realtime as the content on the web site updates.

Sounds crazy but imagine signing in to Facebook and getting a realtime digest of what all your friends are doing, narrated status updates, photos, videos and all, in a professionally produced video. Imagine watching a detailed video about a hotel on Expedia, only the video has been automatically created from the metadata and photos on the site. Or comparing products on Amazon by watching a video rather than reading text. No work is done on the part of the site.

The company is targeting social, media and ecommerce sites, enabling them to generate compelling video on the fly from their websites dynamic content. The company also provides video streaming and analytics for the auto-generated videos but the real value in enabling sites to great quality+quantity videos is to increase viral traffic, time-on-site, and conversion rates of their content.

Seldomly do I see products that are truly novel. Sundaysky is one of them. Mazal tov Shmulik and Yaniv on the impressive raise and to Rami, Gilad and Jonathan on the forsight to see the long term potential of this groundbreaking technology regardless of current market conditions. We’re looking forward to seeing what you make of this opportunity.