Tech Talk: eBay Israel expands presence

The latest tech news from Israel.

By ARIEL SHAPIRA
The eBay sign (photo credit: REUTERS)
The eBay sign
(photo credit: REUTERS)
The International e-commerce giant eBay has announced the enlargement of their operations in Israel and the recruitment of 50 employees.
The company is looking for people with relevant experience in the field or those that served in technological and/ or intelligence units in their military service, as well as those that speak a foreign language (mainly German, French, Italian and Spanish) that have a technological background. The relevant positions in eBay includes Java software development engineers, data-science professionals and analysts – Algorithmically- oriented people that can work with big data.
eBay Israel currently has about 230 employees and operates in two main units located in Netanya. One is a development center that specializes in structured data for the international eBay site. Yuval Matalon, head of the development center, serves as the CEO of eBay Israel. The second is the business unit, promoting Israeli businesses and building up Israeli consumers in the trading company’s global arenas, headed by Elad Goldenberg, director of eBay’s business activities in Israel.
According to Matalon: “eBay is the world’s biggest online mall. The role of the Israeli development center is arranging and characterization 850 million items offered for sale from almost anywhere to anywhere. For this, we are focusing most of our efforts on finding ways to make our systems even more sophisticated, by developing advanced technologies in the field. The recruitment process will support the expansion in the areas of big data, data mining and structured data, all in order to offer our customers even better ways to quickly and easily find their favorite items. Today, the whole world knows that Israel has some of the most capable minds, and the best proof for that is when a huge international company like eBay decided to expand its activity in Israel and recruit new employees right here in our development center.”
IBM cloud
IBM is introducing a program to train the next generation of cloud developers, using the “Academic Initiative for Cloud,” which aims to oversee and motivate students to develop innovation through the company’s cloud technologies. The program will enable the development of applications using Bluemix, as a service for IBM’s cloud development platform in more than 200 universities around the world and in Israel, and will reach over 20,000 students in 36 countries, free of charge.
Among the academic institutions in Israel who chose to participate in the program are Ben-Gurion University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Haifa University, the Holon Institute of Technology and Afeka College of Engineering.
Academic institutions that join the program can enable professors to use Bluemix in their classrooms, organize workshops and hackathons for their students with the support of IBM and provide a platform to students for their graduation projects.
By making use of Bluemix available for these programs, IBM equips future developers with the most innovative capabilities and fosters the necessary skills to join the workforce and create corporate-level cloud applications. The friendly Bluemix catalog, based on open standards, including over 100 tools and services for open source technologies combined with IBM’s services and other third-party companies. You can find services such as Watson cognitive computing, Internet of Things, big data and analytics, and mobile devices in the catalog.
“With Bluemix we create the opportunity to cultivate a new generation of talented people in developing cloud applications,” said Dror Pearl, a leader in the cloud field and head of IBM Global Technology Israel. “Our commitment to providing deep cloud expertise and programs designed for future cloud developers from academia is essential to allow our forecast of growth in this industry.”
As of the upcoming academic year universities around the world will begin to move more than 250 courses and programs that use materials, technologies and educational methodologies by IBM with an emphasis on using Bluemix. A variety of courses are offered, ranging from computer science, information technology, analytics, cognitive computing and entrepreneurship.
Using Bluemix in class will allow the teaching staff to expand beyond theory toward a more practical side.
Brain Jr.
Following the success of the Brain app that was launched four months ago and received 350,000 downloads, the Davidson Institute of Weizmann Institute of Science introduces the next app: Brain Jr.
Brain Jr. is an interactive application that provides educational challenges through a competitive game, and this time – optimized for children in elementary school, but is suitable for all ages of family fun.
The summer vacation is in full swing and with camps coming to an end the children are getting bored at home, this is the perfect time to discover the new educational app that uses puzzles and questions about science around us. In order to find the answers the kids need to use intellectual effort, curiosity, imagination and exploration of different topics.
The free app contains dozens of levels that include puzzles and scientific questions in ascending order of difficulty using illustrations and symbols. In the Brain Jr. version a correct answer will also lead to a short description of a scientific explanation of the subject the puzzle was about.
Unlike puzzles, trivia games and other contests, Brain Jr.
poses a unique challenge: The application requires the user to understand the question and only then begin to find the answer, guessing is not an option and the transition to the next level requires a correct answer. The content is the work of researchers, scientists and content experts in various scientific fields from the Davidson Institute of Science Education.
Ariel Hyman, director of the Davidson Institute of Science Education, said: “The Brain app reached out to the masses and proved that science can be fun and accessible to the general public. In the new Brain Jr. we expose and connect this world in a delightful way to a younger age. Davidson Institute’s vision is to connect people to science, and lead nurturing science education in Israel and on the other hand promote everyone’s accessibility to all the current events in the science front. We will continue this innovative development processes in the field of communication science and education in a friendly, creative and active way.”
Translated by Maya Pelleg.