In my opinion, the popularity of all Apple devices is due to a philosophical decision the company made a long time ago – and has stuck to. Apple, from Day 1, has built its products with the intent of offering a “full package” to users – hardware, operating system, and content. Of course, Apple ultimately decides what content you get – but losing that “freedom to compute” doesn’t seem to bother anyone. Just the opposite, in fact.

I’ve been with the “Apple family” since its now numerous progeny were in diapers. I started out with the infant Mac XL (if anyone remembers those) way back in the 80s, moved on to the teenager-ish Mac SE, Mac CX, and early iMacs, and eventually on to the current configuration of the family. In fact, I’m transgenerational in my Apple affiliation: I have a “big guy” (an iMac), a couple of “young bucks” (Mac Minis and Macbooks), “junior” (the iPad), and, of course, “baby” (the iPhone). So I guess that makes me as familiar as anyone with how the family is run.

It’s a well-run and tightly organized family – to the extent that some would call it dysfunctional, in some respects. One thing about iPhones and iPads that irks many people is the closed universe that Apple has built to manage the devices. The only place you can get official applications for iPads and iPhones is from the Apple App store; all applications used on these devices must be approved by Apple, the better to ensure the proper “customer experience,” says the company.

And that, it seems, is what distinguishes the Apple line from its competition. For in truth, Apple has been zealous to guard its “user experience” from the time it came out with its first Macs. The “closed environment,” which protects users from the “outside world” and is managed by the policymakers at Apple, was already greatly in evidence in the earliest versions of the Macintosh operating system. The Mac OS was (and is) even more closed than Windows, making it harder for programmers to “hook” into the operating system. Compare that system to Windows, with its wide-open Registry, where programmers were able to routinely integrate their applications – whether well-written or not – into the OS.

As a result of those differences – that philosophy – Windows and Mac users had significantly different user experiences over the years. One of the biggest complaints Mac users had back in the 80s and 90s, for example, was the lack of freeware and shareware for their computers, compared to the reams of freebies available to Windows users. As a dedicated Mac user back then, I remember combing the depths of download sites looking for free applications that did – whatever! It didn’t matter what they did, as long as they were free. And those finds were few and far between. It was like you were keeping “kosher” – you couldn’t load up the cheap stuff on your computer, and the applications that had “supervision” (ie, that were able to integrate into the Mac OS) cost more.

Even with the programs you had to pay for, the Mac versions were usually released much later, and were far more expensive. Note, however, that there was another side of the equation; by making it harder to break through the gates, Apple ensured that Macs were relatively free of bad programs – like viruses – as well.

How far we have traveled, in terms of content. There are well over 200,000 apps in the iPhone/iPad app store, many of them free. The “freemium” model – where users get a free limited version of an application, and pay to unlock more functions and features – seems to be the one most writers of cellphone applications have adopted. And most of the applications that do cost money, are quite cheap – most averaging just a couple of dollars in price.

So it would seem that Apple’s long-term philosophical bet – that keeping a tight lid on development, in order to ensure a superior user experience – has paid off. Ever since the iPhone first came out, developers have been falling over themselves to come up with apps for the device – while consumers have been falling over themselves to buy them. The same holds true for the iPad; after selling about 3 million of the things in barely three months, Apple expects some 30 million people around the world to have them by the end of next year. And while many of these untold millions may not be fully aware of the “Apple Way,” they are surely aware that their consumption of nearly all content – apps, music, videos, movies -will be tightly controlled by Apple. These people are entering into the deal voluntarily – they have no problem with Apple controlling what they can and can’t do with their devices.

And while it may be tempting to advocate for “freedom of choice,” you have to admit that Apple has a point; the reason iPhones and iPads are in such demand is because they just work. The UI is simple and elegant, the apps are available and work as promised, and the danger of getting hit with a virus is extremely low. In that sense, Apple users have traded in freedom for security, an apt comparison for our terrorized age.

As I mentioned, I, too, am “guilty” of allowing my “freedom to compute” to be compromised. I haven’t jailbroken any of my devices (ie reprogrammed them in order to install applications not carried in the App Store), meaning that I am relatively satisfied with the package I am getting with the Apple family – functionality, reliability, and safety. And that’s what the teeming millions are looking for, as well; despite all the talk about competing devices, whether phones or e-book readers, Apple has nothing to worry about. History has proven than when it comes to computers and devices, people don’t want freedom – they want to be led by a “benevolent despot,” a role Apple is more than willing to fulfill.

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And in the case of the Amdocs Innovation Camp, that word is -  “terraplay.”

But we’ll get back to that significant addition to the high-tech dictionary in a moment. First, about the camp: In what is turning into an annual tradition, the Amdocs Innovation Camp (this year marked the third one held by the company) takes Amdocs brightest and best, along with executives and guests from companies around the world, and sequesters them for a few days of camp – complete with athletics, color-war style contests, fun, sun, and relaxation. And, of course, innovating some of the ideas that the company hopes could turn into big winners.

Like that “terraplay” thing (actually a product of the 2009 camp), says Tal Givoly, Amdoc’s Chief Scientist. “You’ve heard of triple-play, for example, where you use one or more technologies or devices to deliver services to users. Well, connectivity has gone way beyond the web browsing, cellphones, and cable TV,” he says. Already, some cars already have wifi connections, and they can use wifi and gps to connect to your cell device. Imagine that kind of connectivity in your refrigerator, your oven or stove, even your electric razor (to remind you that it’s time for a cleaning)! That’s the terraplay, says Givoly – the interaction of maybe a trillion devices with each other, sending and exchanging information, keeping you on top of – everything! “It’s coming in just a few years,” says Givoly.

It’s in order to unearth that kind of gem that Amdocs holds its innovation camp. This year, says Givoly, one of the chief forces in the company behind the project, Amdocs invited outsiders for a portion of the camp, limiting attendance to a total of 110 participants (hundreds from just inside Amdocs applied for a spot). Thirty-five of those attending were Amdocs partners and customers from around the world (like a delegation from British Telecom), and special guests (like Paul Sloane, a top UK speaker on innovation, among others), “to supply a dose of reality,” Givoly says.

Since the purpose of the camp was, among other things, to get participants’ creative juices flowing, the schedule was left unstructured for the first two days – with participants responsible for getting the show going. And flow the juices did, with participants coming up with food, music, dance, magic tricks, balloons – and ideas to celebrate Pacman’s 30th birthday  – to express their creative sides. Others used their talents for more serious efforts; one of the camp’s guests, Dr. Eyal Maoz of the Ono Academic College and the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University, gave a talk on the leadership aspects of poker playing, and participants also took part in a workshop to figure out ways to fix the Gulf oil spill. “It’s an opportunity for participants to let out everything they do that they might otherwise not usually want to share,” says Givoly. “At the camp, everything is acceptable.”

But of course, all play and no work gets boring after awhile – so, participants went to work, applying those creative juices that were now starting to surge. “On the third day, the Amdocs people started working on the innovation ideas we hoped would come out of the camp. We were aiming for three projects that could get off the ground based on the ideas and solutions camp participants came up with,” says Givoly. “By the end of the day, we had 80 really good ideas, which we winnowed down to 15, with the help of the guest customers and service providers.” Proponents of each idea spent a full day preparing presentations, posters, and other material to present to the entire group – and in the end, they came up with three ready to go ideas, all of which could turn into startups in their own right, Givoly says. “And we’re definitely moving ahead with some of these ideas,” he adds.

It’s those kind of innovative ideas that have kept Amdocs ahead of the curve, even during the still-ongoing recession. “Camp participants have come up with some great ideas for Amdocs,” says Givoly. “Ideas that were generated in past camps have been implemented, and have definitely generated some growth.” That innovation is what has kept Amdocs growing, even during tough times, he says. “While our competitors were rethinking what they are doing, we were moving ahead, and now that the situation is improving, we have come out on top in most of the areas we work in.”

And this year’s ideas were better than ever, Givoly says. “In past camps, we concentrated on ideas, but this time we came up with solid ideas,that have strong market potential and fit our overall plans for the  future.” But even if Amdocs doesn’t move ahead with those projects, Givoly says he considers the camp a smashing success. “A program like our Innovation Camp helps you to think differently – to believe anything’s possible,” says Givoly – and learning that skill is one of the most important things you can hope to take home from any camp.

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In this, Israel is not unique; any American (even the ones that voted for Barack Obama) will tell you that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector. But Israel’s government inefficiency hasn’t just been a drag on economy; over the past several weeks, the government’s difficulties in explaining its case on the Gaza flotilla has cost us big-time.

Note that I said “difficulty,” not “failure,” as many others have claimed. There are those who just hate Israel (and Jews; Helen Thomas proves they go together), and nothing we can say will make them unhate us. But there are many people who are willing to give us a fair hearing – and unfortunately, these are the people we failed in the first days after the incident. It took at least 24 hours for word to get out about the violent attack on Israeli soldiers by the “terror activists,” and only three days later did Israel’s story get mainstream publicity.

Of course, hasbara has to take a back seat to real security, and sometimes you have few options; like with the Gaza flotilla’s Mavi Marmara – where IDF soldiers had no choice but to use real bullets to save the lives of their comrades, who were savagely attacked by knife and club wielding “peace activists” – you’re damned if you do or don’t. But if we know our story is right, and we’re convinced of it, why do we seem to have such trouble selling it properly – and convincingly?

Maybe what we need is a little private-sector ingenuity for our hasbara efforts. Look at the saga of the “We Con the World” video; as you’ve probably heard by now, the video, produced by Latma, which is edited by our own Caroline Glick, was pulled from Youtube, most likely because of complaints by anti-Israel viewers who were appalled that their story – of how big bad Israel attacked the innocent “activists” – was hijacked, with the world seeing the truth of the intentions of the passengers on the Marmara, because of a parody, of all things!

Of course, Youtube claimed that the reason for the video’s ban was that it was in violation of “a copyright claim by Warner/ Chappell Music, Inc.” the owners of the rights to the original USA for Africa “We Are the World” song and video, produced in the 1980s to raise money for hunger in Africa. But that can’t be right, because U.S. copyright law provides for “fair use,” meaning that existing works of art can be freely used for parody or education purposes. Just ask Lenny Solomon and “Weird Al” Yankovic, who for decades have been rewriting top pop songs for education (Solomon) and parody (Al) purposes!

The point of the story, though, is why Youtube was moved to remove the video – because it was making an impact, thanks to the 3 million plus hits it generated in barely a week. Now the genie is out of the bottle; “We Con the World” has spread too far and too wide, and is now available on all sorts of sites. In fact, doing a search for “We Con the World” at Youtube yields dozens of copies, now dubbed in all sorts of languages!

As many have said, “We Con the World” was one of the best pro-Israel hasbara pieces to emerge in a long time – and the government had nothing to do with it! The truth is, though, the marketing people at many  Israeli companies – startups and veterans – are just as talented as the people at Latma. Why not come out with a parody a week – or some other effective video, audio, or web campaign, that can tell Israel’s side of the story in a surprising, interesting – and successful – manner?

That’s exactly the question that came up when I recently interviewed an Israeli “captain of industry” (he remains anonymous for this story, in order not to mix politics and business). We met just a day after the flotilla story took over the media. By that time, the headlines worldwide castigated the IDF for boarding the Marmara and five other ships, with the resulting nine deaths. Meanwhile, nearly no one was paying attention to Israel’s side of the story.

Commenting on the seeming lack of ability of Israel to get its point across, I told this executive that it appeared that the tepid efforts by hasbara officials to explain Israel’s position was possibly the result of the game of “musical chairs” played by politicians in this country. You have the same people running different ministries and departments in various governments, while the actual day to day work is done by the bureaucrats who remain on the job, no matter who the boss is. “The minister spends years just learning the issues, while the bureaucrats have no incentive to change their ways. While that system may be acceptable for deciding on where to build a sewage treatment plant, it just doesn’t work in day to day hasbara,” we both agreed.

Then we brainstormed an idea; why not “outsource” hasbara? I don’t mean officially; no bureaucrats will be hurt in the execution of this plan. But if every successful hi-tech company, if every successful PR firm, non-profit marketing department, university information bureau, were to donate, say, an hour a week to a specific hasbara project, imagine how well Israel’s story would be told! The executive agreed; working on such projects, utilizing the amazing talent we have in this country, could be the solution we have long sought to the problem of getting the world’s attention. If “We Con the World” proves anything, it’s that good people around the world are indeed willing to give us a fair hearing. We just need to come up with something good for them to hear! The executive’s on board; how about you?

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That’s the part that concerns us today. For many people, the weather is the most important part of the news; notice how TV stations, even here in Israel, build a cult of celebrity around their weather presenters. The weather person is expected to have a bubbly personality, an ability to josh and banter, a nice, big smile – and the capacity to completely ignore the rest of the news, no matter how bad it is.

In other words, the weather exists in its own little bubble – unaffected by politics or world events. The same rule should apply on the internet, too – but unfortunately, someone forgot to tell the folks at Yahoo that you’re supposed to keep politics out of the weather forecast! And while we wouldn’t venture to argue with professional weather forecasters about troughs, inversions, and cold fronts, we do have some thoughts on the inappropriateness of dividing Jerusalem – not just the city, but the weather forecast! And, to add insult to Yahoo’s injury, even the part of Jerusalem that one would expect to be part of Israel – isn’t!

Hard to believe, but true. If you search for Jerusalem on the Yahoo weather pages, you get two choices – “Jerusalem, Yerushalayim” and “Jerusalem, West Bank.” Not a word about “Israel,” where the city, of course, is really located! That this differentiation is strictly political is evident from the contents of the pages. The weather forecast for both Jerusalems are identical – as one would expect. Meaning that there’s no reason – other than making a political statement – to have two separate pages. I can understand making a political statement, but via the weather? Two words come to mind – “petty” and “ridiculous.”

To be fair, I should point out that the “Jerusalem, Yerushalayim” entry is listed under “IL,” the international abbreviation for Israel. And where is “Jerusalem, West Bank” located? In PS, which one assumes to be the international abbreviation for “Palestine,” an entity that does not legally exist. Whether one likes it or not, the only legal entity in the areas beyond the green line are the IDF and the Palestinian Authority, as stipulated in the Oslo Accords.

Strangely, Yahoo isn’t even consistent with its politics. Both Jerusalem pages list the nearest weather station as being in “Jerusalem, Israel!” Wait, I’m confused; I thought it was “Jerusalem, Yerushalayim.” Does this mean there’s a third Jerusalem, the one with the weather station located in Israel? And those so inclined should not rejoice that Yahoo’s “PS” seems to be a tacit recognition of “Palestine,” a political entity that, for now at least, does not exist at all; according to the category menu, “Jerusalem, West Bank” is located in the “Palestinian Occupied Territories” – another legal fiction, and certainly a step down from “PS!” The inconsistencies just makes Yahoo look all the more foolish.

Unfortunately, the problem goes beyond Yahoo; it turns out that Yahoo’s politicized weather is the default forecast application for iPhones and iPod Touch devices (although I haven’t had the opportunity to check, on iPads, I would imagine that the same application is used). So, if you use an iPhone, as so many people do, you’re stuck with Yahoo’s silly, artificial – and foolishly inconsistent (they can’t even make up their minds!) weather pages.

Perhaps even more interestingly, the professional weather service that provides Yahoo with the forecasts – The Weather Channel – knows better than to play politics. On their site, and on their cellphone applications, Jerusalem – one, single united city – shows up in Israel; there are no political choices here. The Weather Channel itself is actually somewhat right-wing in its weather views, but not “radically” so; you can get the weather for Ariel, Israel, as well as Ramallah, West Bank. At least it makes sense! So it’s clear at whom the finger of blame points for the two Jerusalems; at Yahoo, and Yahoo alone.

Most other weather sites give readers what they came for, without any political baggage. Accuweather lists Jerusalem, Israel (no Ariel, though); so does AOL Weather, and Weather.org, home of the “Weather Underground.” Even the BBC – a news organization we might expect to take as left a view of the Middle East conflict as possible – avoids this problem, by eliminating country names altogether, for many places, not just in Israel, either (I couldn’t figure out the pattern, but it doesn’t appear to be political). So Jerusalem is just that – a stateless city, but a single stateless city. I suppose it’s the best we could expect from them.

Which brings us back to Yahoo. Out of all the major weather sites, Yahoo – and it’s adopted son, the iPhone – is the only one that makes political hay out of the weather forecast. Clearly, the staff at Yahoo needs to be re-educated on a couple of points; the political situation in the Middle East, the legal status of the entities in question, the meaning of the word “consistency” – and the inappropriateness of ruining the one part of the news everyone can enjoy without the headaches of politics butting in, Perhaps a few well-placed letters to the Yahoo folks to help them realize the error of their ways may help?

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“It’s like the Biblical ‘end of days,’” Ben-Zur says. “Computing power will be such that you’ll be able to have all the resources you need in one place. Transportation will be streamlined and things like power and food will be available for the same amount of money anywhere in the world. The result will be that there will be no need for countries to covet the possessions or resources of others – since there will be plenty for everyone, and there will be no need for anyone to invade the space of others. Thus, ‘nation shall not lift sword against nation.’”

It sounds fantastic, the naive vision of a facile optimist. But as chairman of a company that works with Israel’s largest software, hardware, internet, telecommunication, and software companies, Ben-Zur knows first-hand of the marvelous inventions and developments on the drawing boards, and in the workshops of hi-tech companies. And last week, Ben-Zur and Bynet treated thousands of visitors to the annual Bynet Expo, which gathers dozens of Israel’s largest tech companies under one roof to show off their wares and innovations. For those who worked in the computer industry abroad and wistfully remember the computer shows of old – with floor shows, T-shirts, keychains, “drop your business card in the box to win a laptop” contests, and a free lunch, Bynet Expo is as close as you’re going to get in Israel!

But of course, the main attraction at the show was the technology – of which there was much to see, too much for the day allocated to it. While there were numerous lectures and discussions on innovations in many areas of the computer industry, the main attraction, as it always is at such shows, were the booths set up by the biggest tech companies in Israel as well as many from abroad, including Cisco, IBM, Polycom, Audiocodes, Radware, etc.

Among the many things coming to a computer store near you is a better, faster way to do videoconferencing – in 3D! Thanks to a new generation of video transmission perfected by Radvision (a member of the RAD group, along with Bynet), called scalable video coding (SVC), which helps correct video transmission errors and enables superior forward error correction (ie anticipating when there is going to be packet loss and preparing for it) and faster transmission, with fewer bottlenecks. The transmission, coupled with superior 3D rendering software, enables users to have as realistic a video communications experience as possible, even from halfway across the world. And of course, no glasses are necessary.

According to Moshe Machline of Radvision, the system is good enough for the company that it was able to save nearly a million and a half dollars last year by enabling conferees to “meet” by video, instead of flying to meetings. “Eye contact is very important at meetings – you miss a lot the nuances on the screen, and that is one major thing that has held up adoption of videoconferencing. But with 3D videoconferencing, you can get a much better ‘read’ on everyone in the room, just as if you were actually there,” he says. The Radvision solution is sold by Bynet as part of a full videoconferencing solution.

Or take security – an area that unfortunately, in this period when the “end of days” has not quite yet arrived. Along with advances in video surveillance, Bynet partners have developed various technologies that enables the company to offer a unique solution for border patrols, police, and other law enforcement agents: a communication system capable of transmitting live, real-time video, data and voice communications via a single broadband connection, using a fast, secure, private network.

The key to the system is the high-speed wireless network, which allows fast transmission of high-resolution video and audio without any effort required on the part of the driver; the vehicle continues on its rounds or pursues a suspect, and the camera focuses, with an individual in the control center able to enhance the picture to see inside a vehicle even hundreds of meters away. Again, SVC and video correction and enhancement techniques are used, so observers get a full, uninterrupted view of the action. The network enables full transmission of the data with no bottlenecks.

And although the deployment of these technologies would seem to have little to do with the good and bountiful future Ben-Zur sees, the technologies that are being built today for prosaic and workaday needs will be the technology that supplies the future change, he says. “We’re coming into a period where there are going to be unlimited digital resources,” he says. “The bottlenecks that have prevented us from doing what we want are being eliminated, just as the problems of storage and standards were eliminated in earlier periods.

Once we get used to working with these resources, new uses for them will be developed – all of them making life easier,” Ben-Zur says. And the standardization and unlimited bandwidth that are coming won’t be used just for a faster Facebook connection; it will be used for things that really count, like delivering energy to far flung parts of the world, cheaply and safely. When that happens, he says, you’ll be able to stay where you are, and you won’t need to conquer the resources of others to fuel your economy. “When everything is available to everyone for a reasonable price and computers are doing most of the work – you have the building blocks for universal peace,” Ben-Zur says. It’s a vision even the most computer-phobic can embrace.

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But getting money out of an angel isn’t so simple; there’s an art to it, and not everyone qualifies. There are criteria to fulfill – but not necessarily the ones you’re thinking of. According to Chaim Venezia, founder and co-CEO of Proxima Israel Investments, it’s more about you than about your idea. “How many times have we come across a product or web service, and someone has told us that they thought of it a long time ago? So you can see that ideas on paper are just that,” Venezia says. “Anyone can have a great idea – the question is, can you turn it into a product?”

A good question from a man who’s been there and done that – investing in a successful startup called Onigma, an information security solution provider, which had a very positive exit, being bought out by anti-virus giant McAfee. “That exit was a little too successful, in fact,” says Venezia, because his U.S. investor partners made so much that they had short-term capital gains issues with the IRS (we should all have such problems!).

Venezia spoke at an event last week sponsored by the MIT Enterprise Forum of Israel, called “Day of the Entrepreneur,” where seminars and talks discussing the perks and pitfalls of running a hi-tech business. The Forum, says Ayla Matalon, director of the Forum, tries to educate entrepreneurs on the process of running, funding, and growing a business, with an emphasis on hi-tech (although the information presented in forum events is certainly useful in any business, she says, and many of the speakers at Forum events come from various industries). “It’s not a typical ’startup’ crowd, but a more serious group that already has years of experience in business, and already understand the issues that they need to deal with,” Matalon says.

Past speakers at forum events have included some of the top names in Israeli hi-tech and business, including Yossi Vardi, Shai Agasi, Stef Wertheimer, Dan Maydan (Applied Materials), and many others. Presenting at last week’s seminar at Tel Aviv University were, besides Venezia, Prof. Amnon Shaashua, CTO of Mobileye, Dr. Shlomo Kalish, Founder of Jerusalem Global Ventures grad, Dalia Prasher, Co-Founder, New Dimension (which was sold to BMC for $620 million), and several newly successful web and tech entrepreneurs. A number of the presenters, in fact, were MIT graduates; the Forum is one of 26 started by MIT alumni around the world (the Israeli branch, the first outside the US, was started 15 years ago).

The Forum encourages entrepreneurs at all stages of business experience to attend events. “The session we held last week at Tel Aviv University, under the partial sponsorship of the Recanati School of Business (among the other sponsors were Carmel Ventures, Canaan Partners, Ramot, Erlich and Fenster Patent Attorneys – and the Golan Winery, which threw a smashing wine and cheese party!), included presentations on how to get funding, how to grow companies, technology transfer from academia to hi-tech, and much more,” Matalon says.

Including a session on the care and feeding of angels, given by Venezia – specifically, what entrepreneurs can do to find favor in their eyes. As mentioned, having a great business plan isn’t a guarantee of anything, Venezia says, except of having a great business plan. “There are so many factors involved in the way the world works that no business plan can anticipate,” he says. Not that ideas aren’t important; “obviously we wouldn’t invest in a crackpot scheme,” he says. But in the end, history decides just who the crackpots are. “I can just imagine the reaction many angels had a few years ago, when Sergey Brin and Larry Page were shopping for money for Google,” he says. “The world had enough search engines.”

But what it didn’t have were creative geniuses the likes of Brin and Page – and that, says Venezia, is what angels look for when deciding to place a bet on a startup. “We want to see creativity and drive,” he says. “We understand that ideas are fungible, that business plans and markets change. What we want to see is if the entrepreneur has what it takes to succeed. It’s about integrity, honesty, drive, and ambition.”

It sounds a bit unfair and subjective, but then again, we are talking about private funding, which can legally discriminate all it wants. But Venezia says there a few “tells” he watches out for that indicate whether he’s found his person – such as whether or not the entrepreneur has a job when s/he comes, hat in hand. “Anyone who wants funding for their idea and is still working for a salary is automatically out of the game, as far as I’m concerned,” Venezia says. “You’re not going to succeed unless you have enough faith in your ideas and abilities to dedicate your full working time to making it work. Here you are asking me to take a risk on you – but are you willing to take a risk on yourself? If not, we can’t do business,” Venezia says. “At the very least, we should split the risk 50/50 – me with my money, and you with your time,” he adds.

And although he realizes that in many cases, the tech “flavor of the month” – whether its an application using Youtube’s API or a service that hooks into Twitter, to name two popular development trends – is more likely to come to his attention, Venezia is willing to look at any idea, as long as it’s viable, and especially if it the people behind it have the right stuff. “It’s easier to get money for a ’sexy’ idea, but that doesn’t mean that those ideas are better than one that is far less exciting,” he says.

Matalon would agree – and in fact, one of the speakers on entrepreneurial success at the Forum was Amir Shpitalni, the founder and CEO of Spiral Supports, one of the few ‘low-tech’ companies funded by the Chief Scientist’s Office. Shpitalni invented a new kind of support for shelving that reduces stress and mess – certainly not a ’sexy’ product, but a very practical one. Speaking to Matalon, I got a hint on how well this company was doing – and all I can tell you is that I’ve started praying for my own angel, to fund my big idea!

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Don’t the authorities know how we will react when we’re told we can’t have something? Of course they do – and it could be we’re the ones being played! By inciting a snowball effect of demand when they ban a product, they inadvertently set off a black market, where people smuggle in the product in question, often “smearing” the palms of officials in charge of customs. And when all is said and done and the product becomes “legal,” people have already become conditioned, and are ready to pay even twice what it’s worth.

Did I mention this is a column about the iPad – and why Israeli authorities are banning it?

Now don’t get me wrong – the above discussion was theoretical. Only the paranoid would say that politics (as in “we don’t want the people to have access to this product for some reason”) is the reason customs authorities have announced that anyone caught smuggling (a heavy but accurate description of what you have to do if you want an iPad in Israel these days) these devices into the country will have them confiscated. And certainly we wouldn’t go so far as to think that there’s some financial shenanigans going on here – that a certain interested party leaned on the government to ban the things in order to realize a financial windfall at some later date. You’d have to be a conspiracy theory nut to believe that!

Maybe we should just take the government – represented in this case by the Communications Ministry – at its word. According to the Ministry, iPads are out because of a “standards” issue – as in, Israel’s standards are higher than the ones Apple adopted for the iPad, and in order to avoid problems (security, health, or otherwise) resulting from its use, the iPad must not be used in Israel, at least in its present form, and/or until “further studies” of the thing can be made.

In the words of the Ministry, which released an official statement on the matter, “the iPad, sold today strictly in the United States, uses a wifi modem that is compatible with American standards. Israel’s standards are similar to those in use in Europe, which are different from American standards, which allows broadcasts at lower power levels. The broadcast levels of the device prevent approving its use in Israel,” the statement says. Maybe we should take this as the reason for the iPad ban. But we can’t – because it turns out that the chip that provides the “incompatible low power wifi” for the iPad is present in at least two other Apple products already being sold in Israel!

What caught my attention in this story was that bit about “European” versus “American” standards.. Not that I’d call myself a world traveler, but I have gotten around enough to know that everyone – in the U.S., Europe, and even in Papua New Guinea – uses the same Wifi equipment. While the world is still divided along an electrical fault (110v vs. 220v), the standards used in computing, which are drawn up by committees – in this case, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 WLAN standards. The iPad, complying with these standards, utilizes for its wifi power the Broadcom BCM4329  Low-Power 802.11n with Bluetooth® 2.1 + EDR and FM (Tx and Rx) chip (we’ll just call it “the Broadcom chip” for short) – and that happens to be the same chip being used in the latest editions of the iPod Touch and iPhone 3GS!

So just what are these  “different standards” of broadcast?  A helpful reader of a blog post I put up on this subject pointed out that some countries regulate the transmitting power (apparently Israel does), and the upper broadcast limit for the U.S. is higher than that for Israel.  And indeed, the Broadcom chip is capable of broadcasting wifi in the 5 ghz band, which is out of range for Israel. But once again, the fact that Apple’s rep in Israel, iDigital, is happily selling iPod Touch and iPhone 3GS devices directly from the “mother ship” here in Israel put the kibosh on that theory – especially since we can assume that Apple is not making special editions of its devices for use in Israel, as opposed to most of Europe and the rest of the world (where, in fact, higher wifi broadcast ranges, according to the list quoted above, seem to be permissible).

And as far as I know, this is the first time a consumer wifi product has been officially banned from Israel for this reason; you see American-made and imported wifi routers and other devices all over the stores here. The only consumer product we hear (or rather, have in the past heard) about as causing havoc with Israeli airwaves are 900 mhz cordless phones. Other theories, like the range of Bluetooth broadcast, didn’t pan out either, at least on paper.

So, I decided to take the problem to its roots – the Apple Israel people, and the Communications Ministry itself. The former were no help at all, with the spokesperson telling me tersely that “iDigital policies are in line with those of Apple’s.” The Ministry, on the other hand, was a different story. I spoke to the (only) individual at the Ministry authorized to field iPad questions, and asked him about this chip discrepancy – how it was that the Broadcom chip was not harmful when used in iPad Touch devices and iPhone 3GS devices, but were dangerous enough to warrant confiscation at the airport when found in iPads.

His answer? “I don’t know.” What don’t you know, I asked – whether the Broadcom chip is in the other Apple devices, whether it’s configured differently in iPads, or whether there is some other “broadcast issue” that is problematic? Well, he did know that the only issue was with the Broadcom chip – but as far as what exactly the problem was, or why said chip was “kosher” in other devices, he couldn’t say. When would he “know?” When Ministry engineers do more research.

Thanks to the power of social networking, the iPad ban has made the Ministry very famous – or infamous, to be more accurate (the Ministry isn’t interested in headlines, the spokesperson told me). It’s possible the engineers are hard at work on figuring out why they don’t like the iPad, but do like the other Apple products, and perhaps by the time you read this, the ban will be rescinded.

But I highly doubt it. Assuming that the problem is not technical – again, there are plenty of devices already in Israel using the Broadcom chip – we can assume that there are interests other than science and public security at work. What interests? I’ll never tell, but I do suggest re-reading the first two paragraphs of this article for a hint. Regardless,  I have no doubt that the iPad will eventually become legal, but IMHO, it will only be when those with vested interests in banning the things will decide that it is now in the interest to allow them in.

Meanwhile, I think there is one solid lesson to be learned from this whole tragic affair, which is especially relevant around Yom Ha’atzmaut time. One of the ways Israel strives to protect its good name is via better Hasbara, explaining our position vis a vis the major issues facing the country. Note to Ministry spokesperson: “I don’t know” is not a the Hasbara-type answer we yearn to hear from the only person in the government authorized to speak about the iPad!

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And who are the people we rely on for movie and TV reviews? Well, traditionally, they have been “professional” reviewers writing for newspapers and magazines, or hosting TV or radio shows. For many people (including me), that goes even now, in the internet era; when I want to check out a movie review, for example, I’ll usually surf to Rotten Tomatoes, which gathers up reviews for movies from major newspapers and well-known blog sites. I feel I can “trust” the writers of those reviews.

Until the internet, most publications restricted their reviews to entertainment items – movies, plays, music, etc. But there was surprisingly little peer-review of consumer items (except for cars). What did you do if you wanted to know whether a particular TV set, video camera, refrigerator, etc. was worth the money? Why, you’d “shop around” – a term which consumers took to mean doing things like asking friends, quizzing salespeople, etc. But for the most part, buying a major appliance was an act of faith, because there were only a limited number of friends who probably bought the same item you were interested in – and of course, the salesperson wasn’t going to knock his/her own product.

But today, when you can ask anyone you want about anything, you’re not limited to checking out an item among people you personally know; you can find out what people think about consumer items on thousands of websites, where millions of people have posted tens of millions of opinions on hundreds of millions of items! Theoretically, no one should ever make a mistake buying anything anymore; when considering a product, all one has to do these days is check out the internet and see what “the cloud” has to say about the item in question. No longer does spending money have to be an act of faith; all you have to do is take your own online poll of what others who have spent money on the same item you’re considering say. How can you go wrong?

Here’s how: Have you ever posted an online review at a site like Amazon? Probably not; most people don’t unless they have some kind of motivation. Amazon.com has become one of the premier review sites for products of all kinds today. The site sells everything, and the product page (for every product) has useful information of all types about what you’re buying – including, and most important for our purposes, reviews of the product.

Who’s doing the posting? Well, we assume it’s people who have bought the item. But how do we know? Maybe a negative review was posted by someone working for a company making a rival product who is seeking to push sales in their direction – or who is afraid of losing their job?

While it’s hard to believe that someone would bother “gaming” review sites like this, it makes sense when you begin to realize just how pervasive internet shopping is – both for those who buy online and those who check out products on sites like Amazon before buying retail. In one sense, posting a review in an online forum can amount to free advertising – both positive and negative – when used astutely. And apparently there are some who do use review forums astutely, posting reviews for any number of reasons – promotion (self or product), revenge (against hated corporations, etc.), on-line socializing (participating in the “review community”), etc. Doesn’t anyone post a review for its own sake? Of course – but you have to be plenty motivated (or bored, or angry, etc. ) to bother with reviewing products, imho.

The possibility (and possible phenomenon) of product opinion manipulation has been noticed by others – including noted author Stephen Dubner, who co-wrote the book Freakonomics. Dubner notes in a blog posting that he checked out one particular reviewer whom he says, redates reviews in order to keep them near the top of the review list of chronological reviews on Amazon (the left review column), as well as on top of the overall review list for a product (the right review column). “I noticed this only because the same two-star review of Freakonomics kept magically appearing near the top of the reviews page,” Dubner writes, adding that the reviewer, for his own motives, posted a negative review of his book which, citing a scholarly study, may have impacted online sales.

I checked out the reviewer in question and discovered that, indeed, he was at the top of the Freakonomics review list – as well as at the top of reviews on dozens of other pages! Books, movies, CDs – the reviewer in question has over 2,000 to his credit, many of them quite extensive and well-written. Interestingly, every couple of days, five or six reviews appear under his name, many of them for older movies or books. Is there “redating” of reviews going on, like Dubner says? It’s impossible to know (unless you’re an employee of Amazon and have access to their server data). But it certainly makes you wonder!
This is not to imply any nefarious intent on the part of the reviewer, by the way; his profile indicates that he’s retired, so it’s possible that Amazon reviewing is this gentleman’s second career. But even if he’s on the up and up, is it not possible that others are gaming the system – for fun and profit? Most disturbing to me is the fact that Dubner’s blog posting is from 2005, while the reviewer is still hard at work, with his name still at the top of the review list on all the products he’s reviewed, for all I know (I didn’t check out all the 2100 plus product pages). And he’s not even the number one reviewer on Amazon, meaning that if there are “tactics” at work here, there may be a couple of thousand other people who are using them even more effectively You’d think Amazon would want to do everything it could to assure consumers that they can rely on reviews appearing on product pages. I didn’t look too deeply into other review sites, but if Amazon can be manipulated, others can be as well, cant’ they?

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So why the cookies? Since the images recorded using the system are likely to be saved and recorded in a facial recognition database, it’s probably a good idea to pre-empt being given the wrong label and get on the cops’ “good side.”

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The Carmiel CCTV system is part of a nationwide effort called “City Without Violence” that is being implemented in cities around the country. Modeled on similar programs in the U.S. and Europe (Britain is considered the current “world champion” in CCTV use), the cameras will enable security officers to keep an eye on crowds, sensitive installations, and high-crime areas and situations, allowing police to dispatch officers.

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The program was actually first implemented in Israel several years ago, but it was deployed in cities in the north and south near the borders, as well as in several high-crime areas. Now the program is set to expand, and will include cameras, sensors, and other technology to be installed in cities in the center of the country – covering schools, public institutions, parks, and even residential neighborhoods. According to the Public Security Ministry, which came up with the idea, the program will make it easier for law enforcement authorities to catch troublemakers, as well as allow authorities “to collect information and real-time evidence needed to prevent violence, criminal activity, and public disorder,” the Ministry said in a statement.

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Well, nobody likes violence or criminal activity (I’m kind of fond of public disorder, though). And I know there are many people who, after reading this, are murmuring the words “police state.” But I’m betting that many of those people haven’t lived in high crime neighborhoods – where the residents are more than happy to have as many police and cameras as they can get. Only criminals would be opposed to figuring out better ways to stop crime, right? Besides, we have precedents; Britain has had surveillance cameras for years, and no one could accuse merry old England of being a police state!

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But there are apparently other problems with the British security surveillance system: According to this article, it doesn’t work. In some areas with lots of cameras, crime solving and prevention is lower than in other areas where there are relatively few cameras. Meaning that there are other factors involved, perhaps such as the skills of the police forces in those areas. Studies of other surveillance systems also show that surveillance systems don’t do a good job of stopping crime.

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Why? Perhaps, the bad guys in those neighborhoods came across sites like “How to Vanish ,” which supplies readers with tips on how to stay out of Big Brother’s way when sending e-mail, uploading or downloading files, keeping your money away from the government’s grasp, etc. – and keeping out of view of public security camera systems, as described here . It’s also possible that London has (or will have) a website like iSee , where you can map out a route that lets you avoid cameras. And, don’t underestimate the power of the cookie; if the good guys can get on the cops’ good side, why can’t the bad guys? Might buy them some time! Note, by the way, that all this information is readily available on-line, so it’s not like I’m giving away any secrets.

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And even though we (hope we can) trust police to use their powers only for truth and justice, using high technology for political purposes is not unheard of. The folks in the cited article are often involved in violent riots, so one could say that although their cause is political, their actions are criminal, so they deserve what they get – but it’s not too hard to imagine a scenario where police use technology to thwart non-violent sit-ins and marches, because “there is a potential for violence.”

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So besides being bad for democracy, camera surveillance systems aren’t very effective as crime-stoppers – or terror stoppers, either, since there’s no reason to believe the system will be any more effective for that kind of wrongdoing than it is for crime. Does that mean we’re fated to be sitting ducks? Not at all; there are all sorts of hi-tech ideas out there that are being developed by companies around the world (not a few of them in Israel) that use advanced technology to snuff out terrorists and criminals, while leaving the rest of us to live our lives unmolested.

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One such company is Israeli startup Genesis EW, which has developed a system to catch malefactors through their communication activity. The company makes an application that checks the profile of cellphone users, comparing it to activities terrorists and criminals typically engage in: for example, calling known criminals/terrorists, making many frequent short phone calls, or suspects moving outside their usual geographic area. If mobile communication activity fits the profile, law enforcement know they need to keep an eye on the subject (who can be located using cellphone or GPS technology).

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“Usually, authorities need to know the phone number of the suspect and/or be able to recognize him or her,” says Pini Birman, one of the founders of Genesis EW. “That often makes trailing suspects difficult. But our system examines a user’s communication profile,” Birman says, meaning that it will continue working even if a suspect removes and replaces a phone’s SIM card, a favorite tactic of crooks and terrorists. “The criminal or terrorist will be unable to confuse the system,” he says, adding that the closer the suspect’s behavior to the profile, the more likely an attack or a criminal act – but if the user veers away from the profile, the system realizes that it was mistaken, and takes the subject off the watch list.

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All of which means that only those truly worthy of security forces’ attention are observed – and that scarce security resources can be used more effectively. Like we said, we’re happy the police are keeping us safe – but, as the old saying goes, “respect them and suspect them.” If there is a better, more effective way to protect us without the use of intrusive cameras, why not use that?

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NOTE: The video below, in Hebrew, shows a violent attack in Ramle recorded by CCTV cameras there. According to the report, police arrived on the scene minutes after the attack and arrested the attackers.

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I’m sorry to go all 60’s on you, but that was the feeling during the heady days of the Firefox rebellion, for lack of a better term. But like all revolutions, this one seems to have petered out, and the establishment – both MS and Apple – have been quietly making improvements, to the extent that many users are rediscovering their browser roots, using the built-in applications in their operating systems. That, combined with what has become a plethora of add-ons – many of which are totally unnecessary, but which you can’t help installing anyway – has made FF much harder to manage, at least for me. Is Firefox crashing (at least once every couple of days now) because I keep thirty or so tabs open during my sessions? But shouldn’t 4 GB of memory be enough for what, for me, is “normal use?”

I haven’t made the switch away from Firefox yet, and I may not; I have to say I’m hooked on some of FF’s add-ons that I haven’t seen yet in Internet Explorer 8. But after a recent spate of FF crashes, I decided to check out the alternative – and I was surprised by the advances made by Internet Explorer, now in its eighth iteration.

For example: IE8 now has accelerators, which lets you highlight text on a web page and then further explore information on that topic from a variety of web sources. You could highlight a name for example, and search for it on Linkedin, Facebook, and other social media services, click on a domain name and get information about Alexa, search for a product at Walmart or Amazon, etc. It mimics – actually surpasses – one of the features I find most useful in FF, where I have an add-on that lets me highlight and right-click on highlighted text, and search for it in Google. But with IE8 accelerators, I have many more search options than just Google. You know the tables have turned when you find a Firefox extension called IE8 Activities, which, according to the page, is “an implementation of IE8 Activities (now called Accelerators) for Firefox.”

Or: IE8 also comes with something called Web Slices, which allows you to check information on a page – just the information you’re interested in – from the toolbar. If a Web Slice is available on a page, a green Web Slices icon will appear in the Command Bar. Click on the icon to easily subscribe and add the Web Slices to the Favorites Bar so you can keep track of that “slice” of the web. Here, too, FF is playing catch-up; this site suggests installing a Firefox add-on called Webchunks to allow FF users to have access to IE8 slices. “All of the web slices available there work just great in Firefox,” the page says – but “keep in mind that some may look a little ugly, due in part to them being created for IE!” Note, by the way, that big bad corporate Microsoft has donated the specifications of Web Slices to the public domain under the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication.

Other very nice implementations of important features in IE 8 include Smartscreen, which warns you when you surf to dangerous pages (and which consistently gets top reviews in the anti-phishing  and anti-malware categories); tab isolation, which dumps a bad tab, instead of crashing the whole browser when something bad happens; and enhanced privacy capabilities, using InPrivate Browsing. You can get similar functionality for all these features using Firefox add-ons, by the way.

Which is exactly the point. Besides a revolutionary spirit, many people (including myself) moved to FF years ago because it just had a better feature set, because of the available add-ons. But, as many FF users have learned, add-ons have their price, in increased memory use and eventual instability, leading to crashes. IE8 has built many of their new features directly into the browser code, which should lead to more stability. One could assume that the people who developed the browser would ensure that whatever features were built into it would be compatible with other features, while a third-party writing an add-on might not be aware of all the secrets and bugs under the hood, even if the browser is open source. So you get the same (or better) functionality in IE8 – with better stability and fewer crashes.

If that’s sounds like an argument for corporatism – IE8 is certainly not open source – I would remind you that Firefox is now developed and marketed not by the Mozilla Foundation, but the Mozilla Corporation, and while we wouldn’t deign to compare Microsoft Inc’s corporate culture with Mozilla’s (you have to believe things are free-er and easier at Mozilla), one has to assume that any corporation is going to have benchmarks, managers, office politics, quarterly goals, and pink slips. Like The Who sang, “Meet the new boss – same as the old boss.” The browser revolution is truly over, it seems.

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