As I copied and pasted, I kept noticing a little box on the right side of the screen, urging me to “Try a new browser with automatic translation.” Normally, I brush off exhortations such as these – if there were a better way to do it, would I not know about it already? And in fact, brush it off I did for many days – until I noticed that there was a blue button below the tag line, instructing me to “Download Google Chrome.”

Now, you’d think a button like that would be hard to miss, but to Google’s credit, they aren’t pushy about pushing the message on Chrome, now in version 9 (it’s been around since 2006) – the message and button are on the far right of the screen, and the translate box is on the left side, so you really may miss them if you’re working quickly.

On a lark, I figured – why not? It’s not like I hadn’t used Chrome before; I had, but went back to my regular use of Firefox, which, for years, was the “anti-browser,” the “young upstart” vying for its place in the sun against (grrrrr) Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Besides, Chrome wasn’t as complete as Firefox – it didn’t have many of the extensions and add-ons I’ve come to depend on. But I figured that I could use Chrome for its automatic translation feature when I’m reading foreign language web sites. No rule I couldn’t keep two browsers open on my machine (in fact, I already had IE and/or Safari open along with Firefox, depending on if I was working on a PC or Mac).

So download and install Chrome I did – and immediately a moral dilemma, perhaps one of the most serious I’ve had to deal with in my online life, showed itself. Do I dump Firefox, my loyal worker for years, and go over to the new “dark side” – Google – and switch to Chrome altogether? Because from the first minute, Chrome outclassed Firefox in almost every way!

It seems I’m not alone in “discovering” Chrome, it seems; according to the people who keep track of these things, Chrome, for the first, reached to 10% market share in January, while Firefox continued its 7 month decline (the most popular browser, FF still has a quarter of market share). And veteran FF users, who are used to the crashes, slowness, and memory waste of the program, are attracted by Chrome’s must smoother performance, and numerous features that make it easier to get work done, too numerous to go into (I suggest users just download and install Chrome – but read to the end before you do).

And the bare-bones Chrome I remember from a few years ago is gone; the Chrome extension store had a version of every one of the extensions I had come to depend on in Firefox. There’s a lot less crashing in Chrome (in fact, it hasn’t crashed once in the several weeks I’ve been using it), and my Macbook’s memory usage, according to the little extension that keeps an eye on it, has fallen dramatically. So Chrome has turned out to be a good move.

However: Using Chrome, it has occurred to me, could be hazardous to one’s privacy. After all, this is Google we’re talking about – the people who have the dibs on just about everything we think and do online these days. How does Google know us? Let me count the ways: The cookies we get when we do a web search using Google help the company zone in on the ads they should be flashing at us, based on our demographics; their textual analysis of keywords in Gmail enhance the process; and now, with Chrome, you have the opportunity to let Google know about your surfing habits even when you don’t use their search engine!

Of course, you could say that it doesn’t matter – that Google already knows more than enough about us anyway, and they haven’t abused our trust yet. We use so many Google services already – translation, Gmail, Google toolbar, Google news, etc. – that they probably already have a pretty complete consumer profile about us already. But what does it say about the morality of people like us – those who migrated from Internet Explorer in order to deny Microsoft a “monopoly,” and are now abandoning Firefox, the “outsider?” Is not Google the new Microsoft – the new “big bully” that is bent on taking over the (computing) world, as Microsoft hoped to? Are we that shallow, that we abandon our principles for a browser that works a bit (okay, a lot!) faster? Would “hypocrite” be too strong a label? Unfortunately, today, I have only questions – but no answers!?

PS: Firefox may yet be able to stage a comeback; the beta of Firefox 4 is out, and hope is running high that the final product will restore Firefox to the snappy performer it once was. Those who wish can download it and check out its performance.

Related articles

• IE, Opera, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and more – Which Browser Do You Use And Why? (lockergnome.com)
• Mozilla opens hostilities with Microsoft in new browser battle (telegraph.co.uk)
• What Google Chrome Instant Is And Why It’s Badass (makeuseof.com)
• Firewho? IE9 Only Has Eyes For Chrome (readwriteweb.com)
• Firefox Going the Way of Chrome Could be a Troubling Sign for Mozilla (thechromesource.com)
• Bulk of Browsers Found to Be at Risk of Attack (pcworld.com)

A good example is Broadcom, which is the biggest fabless semiconductor company in the world. It is also one of the biggest tech foreign investors in Israel – and those two facts go together for a reason, says Dr. Shlomo Markel, Vice-President of Broadcom and director of the company’s Israel operations. “Out of the 50 or so acquisitions Broadcom has made in recent years, seven have been of Israeli companies,” says Markel. “Israeli companies are innovative, and work on next-generation technology. Often they are just starting out, so they aren’t necessarily profitable. But it’s the technology we’re interested in, not the company balance sheet.”

It’s part of what can be broadly termed the “Broadcom way,” a different way to do business in the hi-tech world. While many hi-tech startups turned conglomerates have long given up their lean, mean startup ways, Broadcom has taken great pains to retain that culture – and Israel is a big part of the company’s story. It’s a tale of how a huge multinational gets a big added value from Israeli technology – and how Israel technology developed at small startups gets top billing on the movie marquee of a top hi-tech company.

Markel says that Broadcom, which has 8,300 employees and had a revenue of $4.49 billion in 2009, sees itself as a startup – but a well-funded one, which can afford to acquire companies that it feels will help it move forward. “We buy companies not because of their financials, but because of their technology and patents,” Markel says. “We try to keep the startup culture a constant in our company, in order to encourage innovation. One of the reasons we have acquired so many startups is to tap into that startup spirit. It’s part of our culture, our DNA.”

And oh yeah, says Markel – because it isn’t interested in the financials, Broadcom often leaves the companies it acquires alone to continue innovating, “the workers stay on and get absorbed into the broader corporate structure, but continue to work as part of their startup.” The emphasis on startup culture is one reason why Broadcom feels so comfortable in Israel, says Markel; you sort of just get inspired to innovate just by hanging around here in Israel!

Not as much of a household name as some of its hi-tech sisters, Broadcom is one of the world’s biggest sellers of telecommunication products and semiconductors. Among its more well-known products it makes are the video processor chip for Apple’s 5th generation iPod, and the WiFi+Bluetooth combo chip for Apple iPhone 3GS and iPod touch second generation. That chip was at the center of egg-on-face scandal in which the Communications Ministry banned iPads for being “incompatible with Israeli standards” ( HYPERLINK “http://tinyurl.com/6alxf8k”http://tinyurl.com/6alxf8k) – while allowing iDigital, the Apple reseller in Israel, to freely sell iPhones and iPods which contained the same chip. Altogether, Broadcom has about 14,000 patents.

Broadcom’s most recent acquisition in Israel was Percello, which makes femtocells (a femtocell is a small cellular base station that connects to a service provider’s network via broadband and can support mulitple cellphones, extending coverage indoors or in areas with weak signals). Acquiring Percello last November, Broadcom paid $86 million for the company – in cash. Before that (in late 2009), the company bought Dune Networks of Yaqum, which makes a chipset that can be used to build and manage a network fabric for large-scale computer environments, such as cloud computing centers and large scale data grids. And before that, it was Kfar Sava’s M-Stream, whose products employ advanced error correction algorithms to cell phone calls with weak signals, and reconstructs lost information to restore reception quality.

Once acquired, a new member of the Broadcom family finds itself integrated directly into the corporate division that its product specializes in, says Markel – broadband, infrastructure, wireless (bluetooth, wifi, etc.) or mobile platforms. Unlike nearly every other multinational, Broadcom does not set up its corporate structure based on geographical divisions (Europe, Middle East, etc.); divisions are based on their technology area.

While the structure issue seems like a piece of corporate trivia, Markel says it’s actually an important guidepost to Broadcom’s philosophy – staying on target as a technology-focused powerhouse. Markel himself reports to Broadcom co-founder and CTO, Dr. Henry Samueli – and at Broadcom, he says, CTO is a very, very important job. That focus on technology means that the company makes different choices than many of its corporate peers; there’s none of that “automatic downsizing” that usually takes place when a small startup is acquired by a larger shark. “Right now there are 20% more workers at Dune than there were last year, before we acquired them,” says Markel. “That’s far different than what happens at most large corporations.”

Besides his other duties at Broadcom (M&A, investments, and R&D road maps), Markel also keeps an eye on Israel operations for the company. Israel is one of Broadcom’s most important assets – and the company shows its love in all sorts of ways, big and little. “For example, Israel is one of the most frequently-visited destinations for Broadcom executives,” says Markel. “You rarely find more than one or two on a visit to any of the other countries where we have acquired companies – England, India, and others – but there always seems to be a crowd here.” Israel, the top people at Broadcom realize, has a great potential for future growth in all the areas the company is working in. It’s a symbiotic relationship, one that benefits both Israel – and the rest of the hundreds of millions of people Broadcom’s products serve.

Related articles

• Is Broadcom Shooting Itself in the Foot? (fool.com)
• Broadcom to Present at Upcoming Conferences (prnewswire.com)
• Broadcom shares tumble on expenses worries (marketwatch.com)
• Broadcom jumps more than fourfold (marketwatch.com)

Yep – they’re on the way. Discovery TV and ESPN are already on board, and about ten more players are set to begin broadcasts later this year, according to an expert in the field. And that expert, Noam Shalev of Highlight Films, is ready for the world of tomorrow with a new and better – and cheaper – way to develop content for 3D TV broadcasts. In fact, he says, his company is already working on a deal to produce a 3D TV series for a “large nature broadcaster than is going to begin 3D broadcasts. The series will be filmed underwater, showing viewers a dimension of underwater life they have never seen before,” Shalev says.

Bet you won’t think you don’t need a 3D TV when that series comes out!

While you would think that 3D technology – whether in the production of the technology or the content for broadcasts – would be an affair for Japan and Hollywood, it turns out that Israeli ingenuity has gained an important foothold in several aspects, both on the hardware, software, and even content ends -  of the coming 3D revolution. For Shalev’s Highlight Films, that foothold comes in the form of a better – and especially cheaper – way to produce 3D content.

“The rule of thumb in the industry is that the cost of 3D production is at least three times the cost of standard, 2D production,” says Shalev. “Through judicious use and unorthodox tweaking of the available tools, software and hardware, we’ve been able to reach the same professional results that large studios have, at a much higher cost.”

Shalev, who has been in the movie production business for 19 years, both inside and outside of Israel, has been working with his head of production, Aviv Peres (no relation), to develop the unique workflow that enables them to deliver 3D content for as little as half of what other major players in the field can. “We deliver by far the best quality at a price no one can touch, from what I can tell, and I know the industry well,” Shalev says. Besides the aformentioned TV series on underwater life, Shalev is also producing a full-length 3D movie on the Dead Sea – the first ever made about that body of water – which will be Israel’s entry into the New Seven Wonders of the World contest.

It’s important to note, however, that Shalev hasn’t exactly invented something new; call him a technique innovator, instead. “The cameras and software that go into making a 3D production are very complicated, and new stuff is coming out all the time,” he says. “The only way to learn how to do what we do is to work with the equipment and software.” While, in time, he expects other producers to be able to duplicate his success, Shalev says that by that time he expects to move ahead of the pack, anyway. “Filming for 3D is much different than filming for 2D, and my camera crews are top-flight, so I would imagine that it would take awhile for competitors to catch up with us.” With that, Shalev is investigating whether his production methods are patentable.

Meanwhile, Shalev has begun producing promotional films and travelogues using his methods, and response has been great, he says, with TV channels and producers around the world expressing interest. You can view some of his movies on the Highlight Films site, although, Shalev says, the standard 3D red and blue paper glasses most people will have as they watch on a small computer screen won’t do his work justice.

An Israeli company that has invented something new in the 3D arena is Elrom Studios, the people that put Hebrew subtitles at the bottom of your favorite movies and TV shows. And, says Noam Gal, Director of the Support Department in Elrom’s Development Group, the company’s already popular ELR Studio package is even more popular, thanks to the addition of support for 3D subtitles.

While there are no plans for 3D TV broadcasts in Israel anytime soon, Gal says, there are plenty of other countries that need subtitling services and software for their 3D broadcasts – and Elrom is ready with a simpler, better and cheaper solution, eliminating the problem of “sinking” subtitles in 3D content. “As the 3D image deepens, the subtitles seem to move backwards, so the viewer feels something is ‘off,’ even if they don’t know exactly what it is,” Gal says. “Our technology more precisely positions the subtitle, keeping it consistent with the video.” It may sound like a minor technical fix, but it’s actually a very significant accomplishment in the subtitle business – an accomplishment that has been generating a lot of interest, Gal says.

And if you are someone who watches TV – or uses a video or stills camera, a computer monitor, or any other device with a screen, you might as well get used to the idea of 3D, Highlight’s Shalev says. “The whole video industry is working on this, and they have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in it already. It’s not just TV,” Shalev says, “it’s the whole array of video products.” And while, for now, you really do need glasses to get the full 3D effect, within two or three years we will begin seeing the first TV sets and screens that let you experience 3D without glasses, he says. It’ll be a whole small world in – not on – the small screen, coming to a screen near you, sooner than you think!

Related articles

• Why NOW is the wrong time to buy a 3D TV (lehsys.com)
• Poll: Can You See 3D TV? (wired.com)
• Sony, Japanese Broadcasters Offer 3-D TV Series (voices.allthingsd.com)

That coup is being led by a site called Groupon, which is to shoppers what Facebook is to teenagers. Groupon is a combination coupon/deal/advertising site that helps businesses recruit new customers, while providing signifcant deals for consumers.

Each day, Groupon features deals in various categories (many of them related to food/leisure/services/travel), with the “big deal of the day” offering consumers discounts on whatever is being offered – up to 90% off, in some cases. Consumers who want the deal buy the discount coupon in advance and redeeming it at the business. The catch: Groupon offers a set number of coupons (say, 200) for the product/service. If the minimum number of people buy a coupon, the deal is “on.” If not – everyone who paid gets a refund, and the business goes back to the drawing board.

Groupon was started by in Chicago by now 29 year old entrepreneur Andrew Mason in November 2008 – at the height of the recession (first lesson of Groupon: don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t make it, even when times are tough!). Today, Groupon itself provides deals in 150 markets in the U.S., and in four other countries – and that doesn’t even include the dozens of Groupon clones, both in the U.S. and abroad. Groupon started out with $1 million in funding – and several weeks ago, the company rejected an estimated $6 billion buyout offer from Google!

A healthy percentage of those Groupon clones are to be found right here in Israel; I counted at least a dozen at DailyD, which aggregates the deals from each of the Israeli group buying sites). There’s even a site, called Groopbuy, that appeals strictly to English speakers, with most of their deals located in Jerusalem. The biggest Israeli group-buying site is Deal Hayom, which features deals in five Israeli cities – Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Rishon Lezion, and Be’ersheva.

While the internet is worldwide, and certainly national, the trick with group buying sites – including Deal Hayom and Groupon – is to give it a local flavor, says  Dr. Eyal Felstaine, CEO of Deal Hayom, with whom I discussed the whole group-buying phenomenon. Group-buying sites have to give incentives to both consumers and businesses in order to get them on board  – and the way to do that, he says, is by micro-targeting the consumer and matching his or her need to the businesses. And the way to that, he says, is by building a good, old-fashioned mailing list. “That’s my biggest asset, and I am very careful not to misuse it. Everyone who signs up gets an email a day with a deal tailored to their needs.”

When he tries to sell a business on offering a deal, Felstaine says, he tells them that it’s not a discount they’re offering; instead, they’re actually entering into an advertising campaign. “I offer them a guaranteed audience for the product or service they’re targeting,” he says. “Remember that if all the coupons aren’t sold, the deal doesn’t go through, and everyone gets a refund. Thus the businesses are getting exposure to many new potential customers who will hopefully come back again, after the coupon expires.”

That’s one reason why the deal services work on the local level. “The business or service has to be convenient to consumers, otherwise they won’t bother. We can target potential customers by several methods, the most important being address. Residents of Be’ersheva, for example, might use a coupon for a restaurant in Tel Aviv on a one-time basis, but if they get coupons for Be’ersheva, they are much more likely to return to that restaurant in the future,” Felstaine says.

The question of whether or not customers will return once the deal is over – the loyalty question – is one that is asked by many business owners, much less computer journalists. When it comes to supermarket shopping, for example, even loyalty programs where the customer signs up for a credit card issued by the market fall by the wayside unless the store keeps the deals coming; if consumers see the store as too expensive, they just won’t go.

The loyalty question is a real issue for businesses, says Felstaine – and for that reason, he says he does not work with businesses that are not going to benefit from the group-buying model. “A store that sells Levis jeans, for example, is not going to benefit from this – and we wouldn’t even try to sell them on the service. The loyalty is to the jeans, not the store.

“But it’s different for a business like a restaurant or a spa,” Felstaine says. “If you want to go out with your spouse or friends, you are more likely to go to a place you’ve been to before, or that you’ve heard about from friends. You want to know the route, more or less, what to expect, whether there is parking, etc. For a business that caters to leisure needs, group coupon buying is an excellent resource. It’s like advertising for them – and for all I know, many of the people we work with may be using their advertising budgets to pay for expenses associated with their deals,” he adds. “The return on investment per user is 100% – ie the coupons are sold in advance, so the advertiser knows it works.”

For years, internet advertising was considered effective only for big-name, national and international business; if was just to difficult to sell to small business. The best a local business could do was use Google Adwords to target users, and cross their fingers. But it seems that Groupon and company have broken the code (Groupon is said to have about 35 million users; Felstaine says that Deal Hayom sells NIS 12 million a month, and has 110,000 users). People are going to go shopping, deal or no deal; why not take advantage and save some money?

That’s been the theory until now in Israeli policy-making circles – and it’s a theory that’s proved true, at least when it comes to Iran. The regimes in the Sunni Gulf, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt are all deathly afraid of Iran’s Shi’ite tentacles, according to Wikileaks cables that have been published over the past several weeks – to the extent that some of them have even urged the U.S. to either directly attack Iran itself, or to encourage Israel to do so.

Why can’t they all just get along? The bottom line is that the Sunnis are running scared from the Shi’ite Iranians – which, it would appear, would be just another chapter in a history full of strife between the two groups. But after having thoroughly studied the TV broadcasts from the Arab world over the past months, I think I can say that it’s not the Shi’ites the Sunnis fear – it’s the Shi’ite’s fanatical resistance to modernization.

Although “fear of Shi’ism” and “fear of Shi’ite fanaticism” sounds like the same thing, it isn’t. The Egyptians, the Kuwaitis, Abu Dhabians, and Dubai-ites would certainly consider themselves to be as good Muslims as the Iranians; certainly, with a little goodwill, you’d think that the relatively small differences between Shi’ites and Sunnis could be bridged, and a united Muslim front could be established.

But they can’t – and won’t – get together. Iran and the majority of the rest of the Muslim world want two different things. If Iran ever did get control of the Muslim world, the leaders of the western-leaning states in the Gulf, Egypt, and even Jordan would find themselves on the firing line. Not because they’re Sunnis, but because they encourage a western lifestyle, at least to some extent, among their citizens. And, the more western-leaning the country, the more likely it was to speak against Iran, as quoted by American diplomats in the Wikileaks documents. It’s a package deal: The more a Muslim country seeks to modernize the more likely they are to speak out against Iran – and the more open their TV broadcasts.

Unlike in Israel or the U.S., most Arabic-speaking residents of the Middle East are treated to free TV broadcasts, via satellite. Of course, there are cable and DBS pay systems, but unlike many other places, residents of the Middle East can enjoy a rich diet of news, entertainment, movies, and TV series – both in Arabic and English. In fact, there are any number of TV stations, especially in the Gulf states, that could give YES and HOT a run for their money, broadcasting for free the same TV series and movies that Israelis have to pay to watch. The major satellites serving Arabic-speakers – Nilesat, Arabsat, etc. – carry about 600 channels, and each country’s stations have their own “personality” – with a direct correlation between the “modernity” of the broadcasts, the western-leaningness of the country, the fear of Iran by the country’s leaders, and their openness to dealing with Israel.  Here are some examples:

Dubai: Without doubt, the most Western of Middle Eastern states, Dubai is home to the MBC network, the premier free-to-air broadcaster in the region, and perhaps the world. While a private network, the fact that an ostensibly conservative regime like Dubai’s lets MBC broadcast the latest American sitcoms, dramas, and movies, with no censorship whatsoever (even rough language isn’t cut out) makes it clear where the regime stands on the question of how modern Dubai should be.

MBC channels run commercials, many for Western products like Ford cars, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Close-Up toothpaste, and a host of others.  If you turn down the sound, you will have a hard time believing you are watching commercials aimed at residents of a conservative Muslim country; none of the women are wearing veils (although some of the men are dressed in jalabiyas and the like), and there is plenty of physical contact between men and women. Dubai’s leaders have strongly advocated U.S. action in restraining Iran, and it’s “well-known” that Israel and Dubai have pursued relations on an unofficial level for years.

Egypt: Having signed a peace treaty with Israel decades ago, the Egyptians have stuck to the letter, if not the spirit, of that agreement. But despite leaving much to be desired when it comes to our relations with them, Egypt most certainly would prefer Israel’s company over Iran’s.

As the most populous and influential Arab country with a substantial fundamentalist population, Egypt treads a fine line, and comes off a bit more conservative than Dubai on TV. The country has only a couple of English-language free-to-air TV stations (one of them government-sponsored, with another dedicated to, of all things, horror movies!).

The Egyptian government runs the county’s main TV entertainment network, called Nile, which has a mix of comedies, drama, and sports, depending on the channel. Here the actors are dressed a little more conservatively, and the shows appear to be homey-type dramas with original programming (in Dubai, Kuwait, and other more modern places, many of the shows are from Turkey, dubbed in Arabic, and many are rather “racy”) that don’t fit the Nile formula. However, Egypt has several private networks as well, such as Melody Entertainment, which plays MTV-style music videos and Turkish dramas.

Saudi Arabia: You won’t find much on official Saudi Arabian TV, other than live broadcasts of services in the Mecca Masjid and Koran readings. But the largest entertainment network in the Arabic-speaking world, called Rotana, is owned by none other than Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal. A media conglomerate, Rotana broadcasts everything from western movies and TV shows (in cooperation with the News Corporation’s Fox networks, a 9% owner of Rotana) to western music videos, to religious programming. The Saudis, as we noted, were the ones that called for the U.S. to “get Iran.”

I could go on, but you get the idea. When it comes to Iran, Muslim countries like Egypt, Saudia Arabia, Dubai, and others have much in common with Israel – and when it comes to TV, they have much more in common with our western lifestyle than with the Iranian alternative. Who says you can’t learn anything from TV?

Actually, the hype preceding the actual release of the documents seemed to be greater than the sum of the several hundred of 250,000 or so documents that Wikileaks plans on eventually releasing. The first batch was released on its special “Cablegate” website on November 28th. It’s called Cablegate, of course, because the leaked documents are largely cables that were sent from U.S. embassies, consulates, and diplomats around the world to the State Department, via SIPRNet, the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, a special under-the-radar internet run by the U.S. Defense Department. Not under-the-radar enough, apparently – according to the guy who allegedly handed the documents over to Wikileaks, a U.S. soldier, it was “childishly easy” to get access to the cables (the whole leak story is documented here.

Based on the press reports so far, the Cablegate documents don’t contain any real bombshells; most of them contain information we already kind of knew (of course Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, along with Israel, want to eliminate Iran as a threat, and the U.S. had to bribe countries into taking Guantanamo detainees – why else would they take them?). But of course, things are different when you see them in print or online. On the other hand, we’re only at the beginning of the process – a mere few hundred of the promised 250,000 plus documents have been released so far. It’s possible the Wikileaks people are saving the “juicy” stuff for later.

Whether the initial fears pan out – that the Cablegate documents will cause all manner of international mischief and even endanger the lives of those named (and those suspected of being the ones not named) as sources, the cat is out of the bag, and there’s no chance of stuffing it back in. What does it all mean? Well, the news media (especially the “Chosen” outlets, like the Guardian and the New York Times) will tell you what they think you ought to know. But Cablegate is all about power to the people – and there’s no reason you shouldn’t be making your own decisions on what content is important and what isn’t.

There are several sites on the internet that have begun to try and organize the information that has been released so far, like the Guardian’s blog page, which has an index of which embassy the cables were sent from and when, the subject matter, graphics of where the data relates to, and other interesting information. But not the contents of the cables themselves. The Guardian is one of the papers chosen to disseminate the information, and in what seems to me to be a restriction completely at odds with the spirit – and fact – of Wikileaks’ releasing the data to the public, the Guardian won’t let you download the cables from their site, just information on who sent what to whom, when, and on what subject.

I would suggest downloading your own copy of the archive itself; Wikileaks offers a torrent of the full archive released so far, which you can download using an application that supports Bittorrent downloads. Remember, Wikileaks has only released a few hundred of the promised documents so far, so the archive isn’t all that big – just a few megabytes or so. You can also find alternative copies of this archive on various torrent download sites around the internet, as well as a torrent of a download of the full Wikileaks site itself, which several enterprising folk pulled when Wikileaks reported that its site was getting attacked (just do a search for “Cablegate torrent” and you’ll find plenty of hosts to download the archive from).

I’d suggest going with the latter; the unzipped torrent downloaded directly from the Wikileaks site was pretty bare-bones, and although it is in HTML format, for use with a web browser, my copy was missing an index, or home page file – meaning that I got annoying boxes instead of graphics, and not very pleasant looking pages. The archive of the full site itself I got from a third-party site was much nicer looking. With either version, you can use your operating system’s search engine to narrow down the data you want – Israel, Iran, sex (don’t bother, because it looks like they cut out all the good parts). You can also get updates on the latest releases and other useful information at the Cablegate Facebook page (the comments are quite interesting; not everyone, it appears, believes that Wikileaks is really on the peoples’ side).

Regardless, you will now have the same information the folks at the Guardian and the Times have, and you will be able to read for yourself what the brouhaha is all about. Or will you? It’s possible that the reason the documents are having a much more mellow impact than expected is because they are much more mellow than they are supposed to be. Many of the cables as published by the site contain a disclaimer: “This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.” Huh? I thought this was about no-holds-barred, out in the open, give the people what they want journalism? Did someone “get” to Wikileaks’ publisher Julian Assange? How is it that this guy is actually still walking around after revealing this sensitive data – much less the scandalous (for the U.S. government) information he released earlier this year about Iraq? This sounds like a story that needs to be investigated by a dynamic, gimme the truth no matter how bad it hurts kind of website – like Wikileaks?

First, the story, as it currently stands: Sometime last week, news reports began appearing in the Hebrew language news sites (Yediot, Nana, Mako, etc.) on a new, seemingly draconian edict: All packages arriving from abroad would be subject to new fees, due to “customs requirements.” Recipients of books and other items $50 or less in value would pay NIS 38 in “processing fees,” while items valued over $50 would be charged a processing fee, customs payments, and VAT. The move raised the ire of almost everyone, and threatened to deal a death blow to internet shopping for Israelis.

As the story developed, spokespeople for the Postal Authority said that the change was “being forced on them” by the government; the post office is the next public company in line for privatization, and as such, services it had received in the past from the government would now cost it money. One of those services that now had to be paid for, the spokespeople later said, was  Customs Authority inspection of letters and packages. Apparently in the past, Customs had stationed staff at the Postal Authority’s intake facility, conducting whatever checks they needed to on the spot (the arrangement was due to a special act of the Knesset). Now that the private Postal Company is to be in charge of the mail, it was decided that it would be unfair to provide the company with a service not given to private parcel companies, like UPS and Fedex. So, packages sent through the Postal Company would now require a payment of a “handling fee,” as the Postal Company now had to ship packages to Customs, pay them a service fee, etc. And now, all packages, not just those with a declared value of over $100 (as had been the “custom” until now) would have to be inspected.

After a week of really bad press – an editorial in the Jerusalem Post summarized the anger quite well – the post office people finally clarified/relented/surrendered. On Sunday, the deputy head of the Postal Company, Herzl Bar-Mag, told Israel Radio that “there never was a plan to charge for packages from abroad.” Actually, that wasn’t quite the case – what he meant, he said, was that 90% of packages would be exempt.

The company later that day released “corrected” information in a press statement (and, as of this moment, the stated policy on packages is as follows): Packages with a declared value of $50 or less ($70 for clothing and books) that are shipped to Israel in parcels that weigh two kilos or less, will not be charged anything – no duties, no handling fees. The fees (but not customs charges) kick in only on packages larger than 2 kilos. Packages valued at more than $50 will be subject to al customs/fees etc. According to Bar-Mag, Postal Company statistics show that 90% of the packages sent to Israel, whether from friends/relatives or from shopping sites like eBay, Amazon, and the ever-popular dealextreme.com (which ships free and has a slew of items under $2), would be exempt from any charges. And, by the way, he added, the fee is “only” NIS 35, not NIS 38. So, said Bar-Mag and the rest of the post office crew, the whole story was a tempest in a teapot, much ado about nothing.

Of course, none of us believe that. Anyone reading the talkbacks on the articles that appeared on this subject online would have been impressed at the fury normally compliant Israelis (when it comes to paying taxes and fees) displayed when their internet shopping and shipping was threatened. Petitions were signed (by tens of thousands, in a matter of days), Knesset members got into the act, and choice “expletive deleteds” were hurled at the postal people.

What got the Postal Company to back down? The question assumes that there really had been a plan to impose the charges, and that the company changed its mind after seeing the internet outrage. I rather think it was because of one particular tactic suggested by many talkbackers. If the Postal Company thought it could rake in a payday by charging NIS 35 for any and every package, a little consumer guerilla warfare was called for: Order lots of 99 cent items from DealExtreme, and “forget” to pick them up from the Post Office. By “donating” ten bucks, tens of thousands of Israelis could gum up the works in the Customs office, thus showing the “authorities” what happens when they mess with irate consumers.

That’s the story, in a nutshell – and here are the lessons (IMHO, YMMV, and all other usual disclaimers apply):

Internet Ignorance – The Postal Company claims this week that its plan all along was to exempt packages 2 kilos and under from the charge, but the stories last week, that claimed that all packages would be checked and charged, seemed to include copious comments from Postal Company officials. Like any other large business in this country, they no doubt have an official spokesperson who is supposed to stay on top of stories – or inaccuracies, if that was the case. Don’t they use Twitter over there? And if not, I think I see a job opening for a social media consultant looking for work!

Net journalism needs work – What applies to the Postal Company applies double to the news web sites that spread the story. The first story on the charges appeared on Yediot’s web site on November 7 – and it took until November 14 for a media rep (from Reshet Bet) to get one of the Postal Company’s people on the phone. For all I know, of course, the company was inundated with queries from journalists and bloggers on November 8 – but I tend to think that this was not the case.

How do I know? Because of the discrepancy in figures; it’s one thing to say a fee is being charged, but every story listed the wrong fee – NIS 38, instead of the actual fee of NIS 34.80. Notice the similarity in those numbers? I could see how a hasty conversation/copy and paste from a web site in the initial story could supply the wrong number in the first story, but for that number to still remain as the “official” fee later in the week means that nobody bothered to check with the Postal Company. Whether they backed off on imposing the fee on 2 kilo and smaller packages because of consumer protests is an open question, but I’m pretty sure the fee was NIS 34.80 from the start.

Having worked in both net and print journalism, I am pretty sure a story with an inaccurate number would never have gotten past the editor – probably even the first time, for sure the second time – in a print publication, if there had been no internet story first. The editor would have made us call up and check the information (the stories that appeared in the print media were basically reporting on the fees AND the net outrage; that actual “investigative journalism” work belonged to the websites that broke the stories).

Power of the internet, etc. – Talkbacks have an impact, the web as the new public square, yadda yadda. Those are the obvious points, of course, but perhaps a less obvious point is one on the psyche of Israelis. The fee story shows that they can quickly mobilize on an issue when they really feel pain – meaning that they haven’t felt the pain when they don’t mobilize en masse for a cause, no matter how worthy it is. That’s a lesson politicians might take to heart, and should be a source of comfort if (may it never come) we are faced with a truly serious national emergency. As for us, the real lesson is – you have until December 31 to take advantage of the old rules. Shop now!

Related articles

• A Reckoning Ahead for the U.S. Mail (businessweek.com)
• The postal services bill is bad for postal services and bad for us | Lindsay Mackie (guardian.co.uk)
• For many in Massachusetts, it’s a postal disservice (boston.com)

In Israel, we get to vote for our leaders once every few years, too, but the schedule is a lot less precise. Knesset members, too, have nice, cushy jobs, so you would expect them to want to stick it out for the full five years of their elected term. But since Israeli voters are apparently big believers in “revolving door” leadership (How long have Peres, Netanyahu, Barak, et al been at top leadership jobs?), I suppose most of the Knesset members figure they’re a shoo-in to get elected next time too – and if they play their cards right next time around, they might just win one of those “grand prizes,” ie a ministerial position. It’s always nice to have something to aspire to!

Alright, enough with the cynicism – I kid! We appreciate the hard work our leaders put in, and wish them well in their difficult work of leading Israel through these tumultuous times. But really, a little cynicism isn’t out of place on Election Day (which is today in the U.S.), considering the history of fraud in recent elections.

“Fraud” really isn’t the right word; it’s more like “allegations of fraud” that concern voters, and rightly so. We all remember the 2000 election debacle in Florida (readers of a certain age will immediately recognize the term “hanging chad”). And of course, there are always rumors in Israel following any election about that favorite pastime, ballot-box stuffing. Many Israeli politicians may not know English well, but “vote early and often” is one phrase they seem to have picked up.

With today’s advanced computers, though, there is an alternative to ballot boxes and hanging chads – electronic voting, where voters press buttons on a computer (or a touch screen) and make their choices. Computers, being the exact, efficient counting and tabulating machines there are, would seem like a good choice to ward off possible election fraud; The information remains in the machine (or is uploaded to a central server) until it’s counted – at which point there are no questions about the results. It’s a sure-fire way to eliminate any doubt as to the results of an election, no?

No, says Aviel Rubin, a Professor of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University, and one of the world’s leading experts on electronic voting. “One of the big problems with the move to electronic voting is the growth of what I call ‘wholesale fraud,’ versus the ‘retail fraud’ of paper ballots or lever voting machines,” says Rubin. “With paper ballots and levers, you have to go on-site to the polling place in order to perpetrate fraud, limiting the possibilities. But if you can corrupt the code on an electronic machine, you can implement fraud on many machines, all at once – in a wholesale manner.”

Despite the risks, electronic voting is here to stay, and after the 2000 Presidential election in Florida, where the results of voting were disputed for months, and it took a Supreme Court decision to finally allow for the election’s results to be certified. That event scared politicians, says Rubin, and they realized that something had to be done to prevent a repeat. “At the time, electronic voting systems were coming into vogue, and politicians, considering the triumph of technology in other areas of society, saw computers as an easy solution to questionable election results.”

In order to enable voting districts to step up their voting game, the government distributed $4 billion to voting districts throughout the country, so they could buy new voting systems. “Unfortunately, many districts did not spend their money wisely, and bought systems that did not guarantee proper standards of security and accountability,” says Rubin. Concerned about how the money was being spent, the National Science Foundation funded research Rubin and colleagues were doing on electronic voting systems in Maryland – and what they found wasn’t pretty.

According to Rubin’s report “Our analysis shows that [the Diebold’s AccuVote-TS] voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts. We identify several problems including unauthorized privilege escalation, incorrect use of cryptography, vulnerabilities to network threats, and poor software development processes. We show that voters, without any insider privileges, can cast unlimited votes without being detected by any mechanisms within the voting terminal software. Furthermore, we show that even the most serious of our outsider attacks could have been discovered and executed without access to the source code.” Before the 2004 Presidential election, Rubin wrote several op-ed pieces on the issue, and was later interviewed numerous times in the media – presenting his chilling analysis to the voting public.

But paper ballots and lever machines aren’t any safer, are they? Rubin agrees – and says that he sees the solution in a hybrid system, where voters make their choices on a touch-screen, which then prints out their choices on a neat paper ballot. The ballot is then submitted to an authentication scanner, which officially records the vote electronically, while keeping the paper ballot as a backup. “This way, if there are any questions, you can refer to the paper ballots for a recount, while retaining the accuracy and convenience of electronic voting.” Rubin’s ideas have begun catching on in Washington, and he now heads the NSF-funded ACCURATE (A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable, and Transparent Elections) project, which researches and recommends safe ways technology can be used to improve voting systems.

Rubin is on a one-year sabbatical, doing research at Tel Aviv University (A Fulbright scholar, Rubin is working in Israel under the auspices of the United States–Israel Educational Foundation). No elections are scheduled between now and next September, when he resumes his work at Johns Hopkins – but this being Israel, you never know. If elections do suddenly crop up, the political establishment would do well to heed his warnings on voter fraud. There’s only so much “the people” are willing to take, and no politician likes the idea that their vote is being misused. Even in Israel, those “hanging chads” might just raise the ire of the voters enough to “hang” the offenders “out to dry.” How do you say “throw the bums out” in Hebrew?

Related articles

• Physical Voting System Breach in California (flyingpenguin.com)
• An E-Voting Expert, Computer Scientist Votes on Paper in Houston and Lives to Tell the Tale (bradblog.com)
• Early Voting Irregularities Create Suspicion of Fraud (outsidethebeltway.com)

Israel’s “isolation” in this case has nothing to do with anti-Semitism; it’s because Israel’s telecommunications industry is so dynamic, chock-full of so many good ideas and technologies, it wouldn’t be fair to include us with any other international grouping; too many of the great ideas coming out of Israel would get lost in the shuffle if we didn’t have our own standing, and the other countries competing against us in the grouping wouldn’t stand a chance!

To celebrate the emergence of Israel as a world telecom development center, the Israel Export and International Cooperation Institute, together with event organizers innaMotion, will be holding Innovation Tele.com 2010 – The Israel Telecom Mobile Brokerage Event – bringing top officials of a dozen foreign telecom companies to Israel for three days of fun, food, and hopefully, dealmaking. The conference takes place next week, October 26-28.

Although Israeli companies are at the forefront of telecom development, many of the companies that develop products here have a hard time getting the attention of international players, says Roy On of the Israel Export & International Cooperation Institute. “Although the telecommunication industry is a very focused market, the limited sales and marketing expertise of many local vendors, along with getting access to the decision makers in foreign companies, makes closing deals very difficult,” On says. “Innovation Tele.com will make the experience of doing business with Israel into fun and full of value to the carrier and the vendor,” thus cementing Israel’s position as a top telecom power.

As part of the event, Israel will be hosting top officials from some of the world’s largest telecom companies in Europe and the Far East  – including from China Mobile, which has over half a billion subscribers! Other carriers set to attend include China Telecom Group, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, Jaawal, MTS, NRJ Mobile, Orange France Telecom, P4 PlayMobile, Telecom Italia (TIM), Telekom Serbia, Vivacom, and Vodafone. In a unique approach, the visitors won’t just see Israel from the inside of a stuffy hotel conference room; they’ll be traveling around to different venues, including Old Jaffa, Jerusalem, and a full-day tour of the north, seeing the sites and visiting Israeli hi-tech companies at their home bases.

Potential customers will also get a chance to meet with vendors, and evaluate their sales pitches, with a grand contest to be held on the last day, where the top products will be chosen – and, program organizers hope, purchased -  by the visitors. The Export Institute and innaMotion are working with vendors to make sure they put their best foot forward, given that they’ve got a unique chance to impress an audience with some of the deepest pockets in the telecom world.

Over 40 Israeli companies will be represented at the conference, many of which have made a name for themselves in the industry – such as Waze, which is building a social network revolving around traffic tips, along with a road mapping feature that’s much more useful and accurate than Google Maps, imho; My6Sense, which makes an excellent social media aggregator for the iPhone, letting you control your Facebook, Twitter, and other posts; Worldmate, whose application keeps travelers on top pf their itineraries; MeCanto, an innovative service that puts your music in the cloud and lets you listen to it on your phone, wherever and whenever; and many more.

According to the Export Institute, there some 600 companies in Israel’s telecom sector.  Considering Israel’s population of about 7 million, that works out to one telecom-sector company for every 11,000 people – a pretty high rate, by anyone’s criteria. And considering that Israel has one of the world’s highest penetration of cell phone use per capita, it makes sense that telecom would be a major hi-tech industry here. That, along with the defense-related nature of much telecommunications work, guarantees that Israel is going to be responsible for some amazing telecom developments. Just how well is the sector doing? In 2008, telecom companies were responsible for $12 Billion in exports – half of Israel’s high tech exports and 15% of Israel’s total exports of US$80 billion.

And the sector is only going to grow, say experts. In a recent interview with the Israel Investment Newsletter, Gemini’s Carmel Sofer said that Israel has been responsible for some of the most dramatic cellphone innovations out there. “We’re now witnessing the emergence of the mobile Internet, and this is coming from Israel,” Sofer said. “The mobile phone is no longer being looked at just for its voice capabilities, it’s being considered as a data device. Many are trying to take web applications and make them work on the phone. Those companies, and many of them are located in Israel, who can start developing mobile applications from the ground up as they look how users will interact with the Mobile Internet are going to be the winners.” With sales mobile devices – especially smartphones – really set to shoot up in the coming months (thanks to continued strong iPhone sales, and especially to the phenomenal growth of Android-platform phones), companies  in Israel’s telecom industry are in the right place, at the right time!

Related articles

• Israeli Innovation Contributes $2.4 Billion To The Massachusetts Economy According To New Study (eon.businesswire.com)

The iSrael app has a nice interface, and includes information about hotels and special events. Currently, there are a number of blank sections in the database, such as lists of restaurants, recommended tours outside the center of the country, and other details, but one can assume they will be filled in over the coming days and sent on to those who downloaded the app. Currently, you can click on a phone number or email address to make a call or send a message to a hotel, organization, or other group featured in the listing you’ve been reading; hopefully the app will in the future provide maps and driving directions to the sites included in the app, taking advantage of the tight integration of the iPhone platform.

Unfortunately, I don’t have such high hopes for most of the other Israel-oriented apps in the App Store; most of them are very basic, lacking the useful information their publishers claim for them, while other apps that look promising are very buggy, and tend to crash.

Indeed, many of the apps could have been so much better, so much more useful: The app put out by a large Israeli supermarket chain could have, for example, let you see prices on products by using the iPhone’s video camera to upload UPC codes, like some supermarket apps in the U.S. do, but in its current form, the only thing you can do is make a basic shopping list – very basic, since you can’t even choose between competing brands, like Tara and Tnuva, when you click on “add milk” to your cart! There’s the Hasbara app that in its App Store description that claims to include all of Israel’s most important documents, symbols, and biographies – but falls far short, basically swiping Wikipedia’s pages on the subject. And then there’s the the business directory put out by one of the largest dispensers of information in the country whose app crashed nine out of ten times on my device. Pathetic!

But there are some standout Israel-oriented apps for the iPhone, many of which are very popular, practically guaranteeing they will be made available for other platforms in the future. One of the reasons you got a smart phone was so you could have information at your fingertips – and these apps, which you can download in the iPhone App Store, will hopefully make that information a lot more accessible and usable.

Visit-TLV: If the Tourism Ministry is looking for pointers on how to build a successful tourist app, they  ought to set up a meeting with the folks from the Association for Tel Aviv-Jaffa Tourism, the geniuses behind the free Visit-TLV iPhone app (there are Hebrew and English versions). Heavy on easy-on-the-eye graphics, the app tells visitors all about the things you really want to know when visiting the “Big Orange” – where the cafes, restaurants, pubs, museums, and activities are, and how to get to them. The app includes all the hotels in the city, a list of free guided or unguided walking tours, photos and descriptions of public art in the city – and phone numbers, web sites, and integrated iPhone maps and directions to make sure you get where you want to go. Visit-TLV is the kind of tourist application the iPhone was made for!

Sherut.Net (Hebrew): One of the ways large corporations defend themselves from nudniks is through the “phone tree.” Of course, they would say that a drill-down phone menu that you use to make selections that will eventually get you to the person you need to speak to is just a matter of efficiency, but we know better; it’s a tactic to wear us down, to make us compliant so we won’t complain about poor service or high prices.

That’s why Sherut.net, an iPhone app based on a website of the same name, is so useful. Let’s say your YES remote control doesn’t work; who do you call? Well, YES, of course, but negotiating that phone tree is such a hassle! With Sherut.net, though, you know exactly how to get to the appropriate representative: Dial *2080 (the YES phone number), then press 1, 2, 3, 2, 1 on the menu, in that order.  Sherut.net’s got the contact info and “phone tree formula” for nearly every large company or service in the country.

Food: There are a number of Israeli restaurant apps in the App Store, the most comprehensive of which is the free app from Rest.co.il, based on the website of the same address. Just like on the website, you can choose a location (region, city, town), type of food (Italian, Chinese, coffee shop), specify whether you’re looking for a kosher place – and the app will fetch all the restaurants meeting your criteria, with details, phone numbers, and maps (no driving directions, though). The Rest.co.il app has everything you need to know if you want to dine out anywhere in Israel, and the app’s interface is easy enough to use, but some of its “features” – for example, the app doesn’t “remember” well; you have to do a new search of the database every time you leave it, like when you click on a phone number in order to speak with the restaurant – could use some work.

For sheer fun, though, the Fiddme app can’t be beat. Fiddme is a restaurant/meal review site, where you can upload photos and reviews of memorable dishes you’ve had while dining out. As a result of all the reviews, the app (many of its features are now available on the site as well) now has a solid database of restaurants, mostly in the Tel Aviv area. Fiddme gives you the facts, but it also gives you editorial opinion, based on what its users think of dining establishments and the dinners they serve, saving you from the heartbreak – and heartburn – of making a poor dining choice!

Tweet Your Prayer: Alon Nil started taking “tweeted” prayers to the Western Wall last year, letting people send in their 140 character or less requests, blessings and pleas via Twitter; he then printed out the prayers and put them in the Kotel. Now, Alon has a free iPhone app, downloadable from the App Store or from his site, where the “iPhone challenged” can also tweet prayers from. In the iPhone app, you just type in your prayer, click on the “Amen” button, and you’re set. Imagine – being able to “pray” at the Kotel anytime, from anywhere. Talk about a useful app!

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• Israel’s tourism now at the touch of an iPhone (jta.org)