Two women have taken on the task of connecting high-return Israeli tech start-ups with the angel funding they need to take off. It’s been a challenge, despite the track record of such companies. Angel investors are beating out venture capitalists when it comes to Israeli tech companies. Between January 2011 and July 2014, nearly half of the most profitable investor exits were funded exclusively by angels, according to iAngels, an equity crowdfunding platform. Although angels invested smaller amounts of money than VCs, they reaped the high rewards that VCs crave: 10 to 30 times returns. They also did it in three years or less which is far faster than the five to seven years for U.S. companies reported by CB Insights, a data company that tracks investments in private companies. To read all of How Lucrative Israeli Tech Investments Opened Up To Global Investors go to Forbes.com. read more

In Articulate challenge #76 we were tasked to show a practical example of animation, which is an effective way to illustrate advanced processes and help learners visualize change.    As an inspiration I used my 35 seconds long animation I created in Flash and uploaded few years ago to DeviantArt, which was about creating an animated mouse. The move of the mosue was frame by frame animation (as you can see on the picture above) - every hand and leg was placed on its own layer and redraw in new

One of my favourite e-learning challenges was about to design a quiz or any activity using emoji. Isn't it a positive challenge? You already smile when you're reading about it - just imagine all that fun I had creating an entry for this one.   I wanted to design something more challenging and smart. First part of the idea was to place emoji face on...an egg as it was around Easter time. Then the question was - what should these emoji eggs do? Sing? Jump? Read? I like this point of creative

There are many ways of presenting graphics, videos and photos in e-learning. One of them is using image sliders to present any visual content. That was the Articulate's #84 e-learning challenge.   Polaroid cameras bring the old good memories back, so I decided to create an interaction around this type of camera. But I thought just showing all the polaroid-type photos would be not so fun - what if could allow the user to take the photos first and then explore the gallery? I searched for a front

Another great e-learning challenge this week (Interactive maps - where do you live?) made me design…a magic napkin! I didn’t want to use the standard approach with inserting map screenshots - I wanted something magic ! Two things inspired me to create an interaction where you can draw a London attraction by yourself on a napkin: I read "The back of the napkin" by Dan Roam nowadays. So it gave me the right format (a napkin) and a style (hand drawn images). This smart scratch-off interaction from

Create your own cool speech/thought bubbles in PowerPoint for your future e-learning course or presentation. It is: super easy - PowerPoint is really powerful tool quick to design - creating basic custom speech bubble is less than 30 seconds work time saving - you don’t have to browse stock sources for finding the right speech bubble rewarding - it’s your OWN asset just right - looks exactly how you wanted money saving - no comments needed ;)   Most useful tools in PPT while creating this 32

What a sound-tastic e-learning challenge has Articulate announced the previous week. It was all about soundboards, which usually feature funny quotes, one-liners or phrases from pop culture.   As I sentimentally remember having cassettes and a classic tape recorder I decided to create an audio interaction around this almost retro-tech devices.    (click image to launch the interaction)   I searched for a nice cassettes image, worked on it in Photsohop, added some actors’ names using handwritten

In case you need any buttons for your e-learning project or a presentation, there’s another great place to find an inspiration or download some cool free stuff. Challenge #89 was about to create/share stylish buttons, to add a nice touch to hover, selected, disabled, visited state (or whatever state your imagination can think of). I found an inspiration for my 8 button set merging design ideas from two websites: Button icons from Flat Icons  "Crisp & dramatic" color theme by Canva   (click the

I was very happy in the middle of May to hear Articulate announced 2015 Guru Contest! I was addicted to 'Escape the room' game type at that time and spent hours playing it on my phone. So it was obvious for me, the project I wanted to create and submit for the contest, was this kind of game. WARNING: if you haven’t played the game yet - try it first before you continue to read, as all the clues will be revealed and you’ll lose much fun.   The initial concept was hand drawn on some papers lying

I was one of over 2,3 million viewers of an awareness test available on YouTube. And unfortunately I didn’t notice the moonwalking bear among the basketball players. This video is very old - 7 years on the internet  - I watched it long time ago, but as it was so haunting I decided to use it somehow in one of my e-learning project. Then Articulate announced the 2015 Guru Contest, so it was a perfect opportunity to build awareness related game (the other project I created for the Guru contest was