ReadWriteWeb

Once upon a time, ICQ was synonymous with instant messaging. While ICQ doesn't have this kind of clout anymore, it is still very popular in Russia and other countries that use the Cyrillic alphabet. AOL bought ICQ in 1998 for $287 million, but the company has been trying to sell ICQ for quite a while. After a short bidding war between China's Tencent and Russia's Digital Sky Technologies and ProfMedia, AOL just announced that it has sold ICQ to Digital Sky Technologies (DST) for $187.5 million.

Israel isn't just an emerging tech hub, it's a hotbed of activity and has been for many years. Per capita, Israel has the most startup companies and spends more on research and development than any other nation in the world. Israelis lay claim to the invention of Intel's Pentium 4 microprocessor, CheckPoint's firewall, Comverse's voicemail, Amdoc's telephone billing system and a ton of VoIP technology through companies like Audiocodes and Vocaltec. Between a value for innovation and a great funding scene, Tel Aviv and Herzliya are ripe with startup entrepreneurs. ReadWriteWeb caught up with some influencers to hear their thoughts about the country's tech scene.

In its heyday, ICQ was one of the most popular instant messaging networks. Today, you will probably have a hard time finding your friends on ICQ. Nevertheless, almost two year after the release of ICQ 6, ICQ just released a new version of its IM client. ICQ 7 now integrates updates from Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Delicious, Flickr and YouTube. ICQ plans to add support for more social networks in the near future.

ICQ 7 is only available for Windows. Mac users can rest assured that they are not missing out on much.

During the 1990s and early 2000s, Israelis were considered gurus in technology, research, and innovation. While the dot-com boom infused the offices of San Francisco with color, creativity, hope, and foosball tables, Israelis were hard at work in a fairly strict environment creating and developing digital infrastructure, inventing new approaches to network security, and leading the field in hardware-oriented projects.

There was a myth that Israelis were not very good at creating consumer-facing products. Notwithstanding their creation of ICQ, Israelis were known as engineers and researchers who did well within the confines of a lab but not so well when reaching out to end consumers. Over the last couple of years, though, the high-tech industry in Israel has gone through dramatic changes.

Novatel Wireless last week announced it will release the MiFi, a portable wireless router that will deliver wireless 3G data network access to multiple users in a small area. Much the same size as a credit card, the sleek looking MiFi will let users select access to EVDO or HSPA high speed data networks.