Gisha: Legal Center for Freedom of Movement , a multi-ethnic, multi-religious Israeli non-profit, has launched a game called ” Safe Passage .” [ Gisha has exceeded its bandwidth. Not sure when it will be back up. If they respond, I will let you know. Thanks to readers Plattek and Marcelo. ] The group works in Israel toward establishing freedom of movement for Palestinians. The blockade by the Israeli government of the Gaza Strip is an object lesson in what they believe is wrong with current Israeli policy. So to express the trials of impinged movement they have leveraged game dynamics to share the experience. Sponsor The recent news of ships attempting to run the blockade may give the impression that the sea is the main barrier here. But it is, according to Gisha, laws, red tape and checkpoints. In this game, specifically, the ban on commerce between Gaza and the West Bank is underscored. A user plays as a businessman, a student or a father and tries to get home. Gilad Baker, the game’s chief animator, explained the goal of the game. “We faced a challenge – how to make military documents accessible to the public. Our solution was to integrate them into the personal stories of real people in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, to help people understand the policy”. The three character types are confronted with different obstacles and required to get very creative in surmounting them. The Gazan student has to employ a flying hat to convince a military mailbox to examine her request to study at a West Bank University. The West Bank family man enters play by being catapulted from a bench beside his home in the West Bank into Gaza and has to get back. The Gazan businessman has to avoid or neutralize giant coins that threaten the ice cream factory he is trying to open in the West Bank. According to Palestine Notes , the characters were composites based on real people. “The student is based in part on the story of Berlanty Azzam, the 22-year-old Bethlehem University student from Gaza who was seized by Israeli soldiers and removed to Gaza just two months before completing her degree.” Reflecting the membership of the non-profit and the reality of the people involved in the real-world conflicts the game describes, the game can be played in Arabic, Hebrew or English. Discuss

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In the spirit of all things being not equal, ReadWriteWeb is offering a deep discount to independents, freelancers and individual consultants for the ReadWriteWeb Real-Time Web Summit , June 11 in New York City. Simply email independents@readwriteweb.com to take advantage of the discount. Richard MacManus is packing his bags in New Zealand as we speak in anticipation of meeting you in New York! Sponsor As we plan our week in New York for the conference and Internet Week, we’re looking at the attributes of the real-time Web that independents – including entrepreneurs, consultants and freelancers – should know about. Here are five use cases for the real-time Web that demonstrate its relevance for independents like yourself. 1. Real-time technologies change the user experience As the Web goes real-time, the World Wide Wait just isn’t going to cut it. Users will come to expect everything right now , and served up via instant notification. It will be interesting to see how this impacts users’ desires to actually visit websites. Or will we become so used to instant transfer of knowledge and notifications that it will change the very nature of how we use the Web? 2. Real-time technology enhances collaboration and crowdsourcing Crowdsourcing will become possible on a mass scale. Instead of you and four other collaborators to get the job done, try thousands. Imagine Mechanical Turk on steroids and think of all the work you can get done, right now, with other people. 3. Customers provide feedback in real time This phenomenon is happening now. Launch a product online and immediately you will you have five DMs in your inbox with suggestions or reports of bugs. The world becomes your test market, and iteration of your product happens in real time. 4. Conventions for real-time design are being defined now Real-time experience conventions are being created as new real-time services pop up all over the Web. It’s important to make note of what is working and what isn’t and imagine ways we can improve the experience. 5. Real-Time technologies need to be in your development plans As users come to expect information in real-time, real-time technologies need to be on your development and enhancement register. Discussion needs to happen now so we can understand how real-time might change your service delivery experience. The Summit is an Unconference Because it’s an unconference, you’re going to get tons of networking and business value from the summit. Along with the help of a professional moderator, you and your peers will make the agenda and sit alongside industry luminaries such as John Borthwick, Chris Dixon and Marshall Kirkpatrick to discuss, debate and shape what comes next for the real-time Web. It’s like your own private think-tank. That’s the nature of ReadWriteWeb summits – straight-talking, collegial settings where you get to create the future. Everyone learns. Everyone advances. You leave feeling energized and full of “next”! Discuss

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Kaiten-zushi or “conveyor belt” sushi is not new. It was developed in Japan in 1958. But over the past couple of years, the addition of RFID chips has raised the process of snatching a tuna roll off a rubber strip to space-age bachelor-pad heights. The use of microchips in the kaiten process can be sorted into four types of use by function: information, inventory control, delivery and billing. Sponsor A good example of the first comes from, of all places, Costa Rica. In 2008 in the city of San Pedro the restaurant Iwaa started using chips to make the experience more information-rich. “(E)ach plate’s cover also contains a microchip. As the plate approaches your table on the conveyor belt, the computer screen at your table, thanks to the frequency from the chip, displays a photo of the sushi that’s on its way, as well as its name and ingredients – great for people with food allergies, or just picky eaters.” Using chips to keep the rolls fresh was implemented by Hawaii’s Hanakai Sushi . “Hanakai utilizes a sophisticated scanning system and high-tech dishes embedded with a time-sensitive microchip that automatically removes plates from the conveyor belt at regular intervals.” A real estate agent friend recounted his experience at a kaiten-zushi restaurant near Osaka. Upon ordering, via the seat-side console, your fifth piece of sushi, a game launches. If you win, you get your sixth piece for free. Danny Choo, a U.K. expatriate living and working in Tokyo published a photo essay on sushi in his adopted hometown. One of the restaurants he visited uses RFID for billing. “Many kaiten sushi places will count how many dishes you have had and work out the cost from the different colors of the dishes. This place however has some sort of micro chip in the plates. The lady comes along with her scanner and places it near the dishes. The total cost is calculated immediately and a receipt automatically comes of a small printer thingy attached to her belt.” What is the future of the Internet of Sushi? Doll-like robots that can crush your bones in their merciless pinchers while scanning your Implant and then disgorging the appropriate roll from built-in sushi plants in their leathery thoraxes before you are even conscious you desired it? Probably. Top photo by Grendel Khan Bottom photo by Joi Ito Discuss

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Jive Software has a new CEO and a new home for its headquarters. Jive named Tony Zingale as its new CEO. Zingale has been the i nterim CEO for the past three months while Jive looked for someone to replace Dave Hersh, who is now the company’s chairman of the board. The company also announced it would be moving its headquarters from Portland, Or. to Palo Alto, Ca. Sponsor Zingale has considerable experience in leading technology companies. He recently served as president and CEO of Mercury Interactive, a business technology optimization company. In 2006, Hewlett Packard purchased Mercury for $5.1 billion. Jive is considered a candidate to pursue an IPO. Zingale is recognized as having the experience to lead the company to a public offering. Jive is one of the leading social business software companies. It often considered a candidate for acquisition by large technology companies looking to get a stronger position in the fast growing social business space. Analysts project the Social Business Software (SBS) market is growing in excess of 25% annually. The market is expected to reach $5 billion by 2013. Jive’s move from Portland is not a huge surprise. The company has increased its presence significantly in the Silicon Valley. In the past year, the company has increased from 4 to to 50 employees. It expects to have more than 100 employees in Palo Alto by the beginning of next year. Portland will continue to be a major hub for Jive. But it’s clear that the company is moving as the core of its operations are in Palo Alto. The move is a bit of a blow for Portland. The community is becoming a technology center in itself but it has few technology companies that have grown to the scale of Jive Software. Discuss

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Gist now is available as a Google Gadget , plugging its contact-enhancing knowledge base into the Gmail inbox. The company supports email is the center of the universe. It has integration with Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes, and increasing support for GMail. We asked the company CEO, T.A. McCann what it was like working with Google in the apps marketplace and what it takes to bring social web into the daily flow of the enterprise consumer. Sponsor People Are Agile Too By supporting Gmail and the app marketplace, the company has stated that it is going to great lengths to make it easy to keep up with the world around us. Using a cloud services architecture, Gist acts as a productivity layer inside of an inbox to bring up-to-date-ness to information about a persons contacts. From what we see, this enhanced information offering shines in places like sales or marketing where keeping up with a number of outside contacts is valuable to the process of building bonds in business and being agile as a decision maker. Agile is Uncertainty – That is a Good Thing The blog entry above mentions collaboration with the Google team, we wanted to know what it was like so we took the opportunity to ask McCann about the experience participating as a first-mover in the Google Apps Marketplace. First thing we heard was “agile” mixed with a tone of respect. Lot’s of iterations, working hard until the end to get it right. This style of development implies lots of changes until the moment of launch and rigor on the end-experience. This mindset seems to require a lot of agility – and good humor – to be thrive and deliver the best solution possible. One nice thing, is that the power of cloud computing (e.g. change all users to new versions) is a very powerful tool in the development model for Google Apps and other cloud providers. Overall, our dialog with McMann further impressed us on how much Google is doing to reset the terms of enterprise software. The company, seemingly overnight (although it has been years) is becoming an enterprise company by stating from the ground-up. The opportunity offered by being available to administrators in this context is a new paradigm worth betting on. What is The Gist Gist aggregates information from the streams of the web (twitter, facebook, blogs, news, and more) and connects those streams with an individual user. With Gist enabled the user is promised an ability to get a quick snapshot of the information surrounding a contact in the inbox without having to go outside, in essence getting “the gist” of what is up with a contact in a quick (up-to-date) snapshot. McCann suggested we imagine it as taking the best of Google (e.g. search, real-time, maps, blogger) and re-factoring those streams to be easily viewable in the context of email account. The company has optimized its learning algorithms on higher-order bits, or finding the nuggets of information that are more than just a Twitter API call away to bring unique value to the inbox experience. GMail itself has already evolved the experience of email experience – with Gist enabled the experience of the inbox goes further into being the command center for business communications without needing to leave for the web for more information. Here, we see Gist toolbar (un-opened) and how it tags along the email to bring relevant streams of the sender of an email message to the receiver. To further illustrate how it works, here is a demonstration of the new product announced today. The major change agents of social web and cloud computing once again knock on the enterprises door through email. More context, less clicks. Is Gist on your companies Google Apps list? Discuss

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