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!

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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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What device should you buy? Which makes the most sense for residents of Israel? Which is the best buy, and can I buy it at Best Buy when I travel to the States? So many questions, so little space. Fortunately, I covered the e-book reader scene not long ago (check out the article here), but what good is an e-book reader without content to read? And until recently, content was a problem – which led me to suggest the iPad as the most practical e-reader for Israelis (albeit the most expensive).

Only the iPad’s iBook library gave you the ability to download content directly to your device, as Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes and Noble’s Nook (the two major players in the e-reader market) did not allow you to access content from their bookstores in Israel. Apple doesn’t let you use an Israeli credit card at its bookstore either, but you can buy gift cards for the iTunes store and use that credit to buy content for your iPhone or iPad, including at the iBook store (you can even buy the cards online here in Israel.

That was then – but a new development at Amazon threatens to change the value for money balance significantly in their favor. You can now download content from Amazon directly to your PC or your Kindle right here in Israel, using your Israeli credit card. No more blocked content because your IP address is in the “wrong neighborhood,” and no more nudging your friends who had American credit cards to download content for you.

Unfortunately, the Kindle itself is not (yet) available in Israel, but now that the content is available, it would seem to be just a matter of time until the device is sold here, as it is in some 100 countries (the holdup may be in Amazon’s trying to make a deal with a cellphone service provider for a 3G connection). On the other hand, the Kindle isn’t readily available anywhere as of this writing, because Amazon was inundated with orders after cutting the price of some of the devices (the iPad is hard to get, as well). iPads are not yet being officially sold in Israel either, but that is likely to change at some point in the future, as well.

For now, users who want a device but don’t want to go to the States (or send someone there) to buy one can use a service like Mustop to order either device and have it hand-delivered to their address in Israel.

The Nook’s content is only available in North America right now, as is the device itself, and B&N has no immediate plans to begin distributing worldwide, as Apple and Amazon have been doing for awhile. Now that book content is no longer a problem for either device, the question of which one to buy – iPad or Kindle – depends on whether you want to use your device just for reading books, in which case you’d get a Kindle. If you want a device that can do other things as well, like video, web searching, presentations, and much more, you’d go with an iPad. Like they say in the commercials, “there’s an app for that” – whatever it is, and that’s a claim only the iPad can make at this point.

Note that you can also download a Kindle app for the iPad, allowing you to access the Amazon bookstore and download e-versions of the half million or so books available there. The app, which is free, turns the iPad into a virtual Kindle. There is also a Kindle app for iPhone, Android, and even Blackberry devices. Don’t count Kindle out of the app game yet, either. Amazon offers developers a kit they can use to develop apps for the Kindle. While it will probably take Amazon a while (a long while!) to build an app store that iPad and iPhone users would be willing to take seriously, the Kindle’s sub-$200 price (compared to more than double for the cheapest iPad) will definitely sway some customers in these recessionary times.

We’re talking here about content, and content really does dictate buying choices for e-book readers. Maybe you’re more adventurous, and are willing to spend money on a non-Apple or Amazon product, or maybe someone gave you an eGriver Touch as a gift. Can you get content for it? Where would you download books compatible with your off-the-beaten-path device? As it turns out, there are plenty of other e-readers on the market, and some of them may be better deals (ie, have better features, etc.) than any of the “big three.”

But the big three are just that for a good reason – they have the content. If only there were a way to convert e-book content between formats, enabling Nook users to buy Amazon e-books, or iPad users to get deals meant for Nook users. That would be a great hi-tech miracle, wouldn’t it? Well, miracles do sometimes happen, as we will find out in part 2 of the e-book content story, next time!

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Since, as I’ve written before, Israel does not have an official Apple Store, the company is less committed to providing products to consumers here. Even though content (apps, specifically) are now available at Israel’s iTunes store (which means there is a reason for consumers here to buy iPads and iPhones), there is still no way to buy “creative content” – music, movies, TV shows, and books (indeed, Apple’s book store, for use with the iBooks app, is currently available only in the U.S.). It’s safe to say that for now, the only way for Israelis to get their own iPads is to journey to North America, several countries in Europe, or a couple of choice destinations in the Far East, and make their purchases there. While they last, that is; the number of units available at all is likely to dry up soon, as remaining stocks are sold (as it is, in many major markets in the U.S., you have to wait a couple of weeks between the time you order and the time you get your iPad).

What about the iPhone 4? That device, too, is experiencing a parts shortage that will affect supplies here at home – except that in this case, the shortage is the phone itself! After announcing (yet again) record sales and profits a few days ago, an Apple spokesperson said the company was way behind on supplies of the new iPhones, too, despite the brouhaha over its antenna. According to the spokesperson, Apple is selling iPhones (and iPads) as fast as they come off the assembly line, and its factories (in China) are working overtime to meet demand. Once again, Israel is likely to be at the back of the worldwide line when it comes to getting supplies of iPhone 4 devices. And the recent update of the iPhone’s operating system makes it much harder to jailbreak/unlock the iPhone 4, meaning it’s unlikely you’ll be seeing many of them in the hands of local customers anytime soon.

Note that the rumor that has been sweeping the land (at least some parts of it) that at least one Israeli cellphone company is expecting the device in September, and plans to offer iPhone 3gs customers a free (or very cheap) upgrade to the iPhone 4 is, as far as I can tell (and as confirmed by a higher-up in the company) completely false.

But don’t get me wrong; I am not joining the increasing masses of computer journalists/bloggers who are unleashing the vitriol they once reserved for Microsoft on the new “enemy of the people.” The fact that there’s such a shortage of Apple products, it seems to me, is a clear sign of how good they are, and my description of the situation here in Israel is a form of wishful thinking – that somehow these issues get resolved, and we, too, have an opportunity to acquire the latest and greatest Apple products.

Not everyone is so enamored of Apple these days, however. There’s been much gloating by some writers over every pitfalls like the iPhone 4 antenna issue, which Apple boss Steve Jobs addressed in a press conference a couple of weeks ago. It seems that if you hold the device in a certain way, the iPhone loses some of its connectivity – so Jobs announced a series of steps addressing the issue, including a software update, and a free case for every phone owner (the idea being that the case prevents users from holding the device “incorrectly).

You could picture the writers of some articles and blog posts rubbing their hands with glee, as they described the problem and anticipated the imminent bankruptcy of Apple. Whatever the motivations of these writers – simple jealousy, anti-big business (ie socialist) sympathies, envy that they didn’t think of some of the great ideas Apple did, or shilling for Apple’s competitors – more and more writers feel it’s okay to put Apple down. Each day brings a new supply of nasty articles.

Personally, I think they’re way off base. Many of the features of digital life we take for granted today were unthinkable – or at least thought to be unfeasible – before Apple trailblazed the way. Of course, there were MP3 players before the iPod – but with the iPod came iTunes and the iTunes store, a development that arguably did a great deal to save the commercial music business, ensuring there would be something to play on those MP3 players. Apple’s Mac operating system, from its earliest days, has been the gadfly that inspired improvements to other major operating systems (ie Windows); without the iPhone, it’s doubtful we would have Nokia, Samsung, and other smartphones, and we certainly wouldn’t have the wide range of Android phones we do today (why would HTC, LG, Samsung, have bothered?).

And now comes the tablet revolution. Apple didn’t invent the tablet with its iPad; but so far, all other attempts to push tablets by tech companies have been flops. What’s the secret behind the iPad’s success? The same secret Apple has used to promote its other products: Build an ecosystem that works, make it easy for users to use the product, keep control over the operating system in order to ensure a solid user experience, and – most importantly – make sure there’s plenty of content. It’s a system that works, and bully for Apple that they thought of it first.

Yes, we’ve all heard (and will no doubt hear yet again) the naysayers’ arguments: It’s a closed system, Apple/Jobs is a “control freak,” Apple stifles competition, the company makes or breaks fortunes by keeping developers out of the App Store, they put DRM into their iTunes store products, etc. All good points. Now here’s a “talking point” for the naysayers (and the rest of us): One day someone is going to figure out what Apple’s contribution to the GDP of the United States is – how much the sales of Macs, iPods, iPhones, iPads, music, movies, and all the other stuff Apple sells, contributes to the bottom line of the U.S. How much do you think that might be? Discuss!

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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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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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The iPad, whatever one may think of it based on the short presentation offered by Steve Jobs last week is destined to be a game-changer. Personally, I wasn’t so wowed by it – it seems a bit too wide, and it looks like it would be too easy to scratch – but Apple hasn’t come out with a dog for years (the last one was the Newton, depending on whom you ask), so you can be sure that if they’ve decided to release this now, it’s going to sell like hotcakes. It will be available in the U.S. in a matter of weeks, and, said Jobs, and available internationally by May or June.

The iPad’s charm is that it will combine all personal entertainment into one, easy to use device; instead of various iPods for music and video use, and a Kindle for book-reading, and a laptop or iPhone for surfing the web or playing with apps, you get it all in one super iPad package (I suspect that future editions will sport a cellphone as well, after Apple “milks” whatever it can out of the iPhone). Users of the iPad will have access to movies, books, TV shows, music, and any other downloadable content you can imagine, courtesy of Apple, and whatever deals they work out with the content suppliers.

But once again, Israel will be left behind. Months (years) later, absolutely no progress has been made on working out content deals with the people who hold the music and movie rights in this country; the “sole importers” are clearly holding out for a bigger cut, and are holding their contracts over the heads of the foreign content providers, threatening to sue, sue, and sue some more, if they dare to try and do a digital runaround with books, music, or video. It reminds me of the situation here years ago, when an “upstart” book chain started importing English books from wholesalers in the U.S., selling them at far lower costs than the official importer was selling them for. Some interested party put a stop to that quite quickly, I assure you.

Israel isn’t the only country left out of the i-party; China doesn’t have a true iTunes store, and Amazon isn’t shipping Kindles there. The reason, it appears, is the (quite justified) fear that whatever is sent over to China will be knocked off within minutes, thus destroying any opportunity the companies hope to have to sell legal content there (and you know they are just salivating at the thought of a billion Chinese buying books from the Apple Bookstore). But Israelis, who are not known for knocking things off and are more than happy to pay double for the same stuff others get at regular prices, won’t be able to access any of the i-content any time soon.

Of course, all this can be solved if you are the possessor of a U.S.-issued credit card, with a billing address in the United States. Then, Apple and Amazon trust you with their digital content. Actually, I’m being unfair to Amazon, which will gladly accept your Israeli credit card which allows international use (the various gold or business credit cards) for almost anything they sell, including physical music discs and books. But not for the digital stuff.

And we haven’t even mentioned the issue of the iPad’s 3G connection, which will also not be solved overnight, if the iPhone saga offers any solution – it took quite awhile for Israel’s Apple rep, iDigital, to work out a deal with the Israeli cellphone companies. The company doesn’t expect to get the iPad anytime soon, either – in an email iDigital sent out in the midst of the hoopla of the product announcement, the company said that “Regarding [the iPad's] reaching Israel, it is still too early to determine [when, how and if that will happen]. We are acting in accordance with Apple policy, but we are working with the world [Apple] organization in regards to localization.” As if localization were the only problem!

I know many of the people reading this in Israel do have access to an American credit card, as do the people who live in the U.S. who are reading this online, so it may not seem like such a big deal. But it is – not because of the content itself, which is available at a thousand and one torrent download sites, but because this is a clear example of how legal obfuscation by “old tech” companies is preventing progress of “new tech.” I know that sounds ironic coming from someone who writes for a newspaper – what with the internet cutting into newspaper profits and all – but as we have seen over and over in the past few decades, artificially damming up the flow of progress only makes things worse for the defenders of old technology – and the businesses that think quickly and adjust to the situation are the ones that survive, and thrive (talk radio, which is bigger than rock n’ roll ever was on AM, is a good example).

Now that there’s competition to the Kindle, the Amazon people may be looking to expand their base; the iPad promises to be a formidable foe. Perhaps that will be an incentive for Amazon to lean a little harder on the content suppliers to work out a deal with the local importers. I know Israel is a small market (but there have got to be more English readers in Israel than in Mongolia, where you can buy Amazon books!), but during times of trying competition, companies need all the business they can get – and Israel is a content consumer ripe for the plucking.

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Why that doesn’t appear to be the case when it comes to the new crop of electronic book readers, then, is a mystery – especially since one of these newly announced products was at least partially developed in Israel! (I’m sworn to secrecy, so don’t ask). But regardless, the rest of the world is on the verge of a revolution in the way it reads books – while we are, at least for the time being, left behind.

And I mean “the rest of the world” literally; Amazon’s new Kindle 2, which goes on sale next week, will be available in over 100 countries all over the world. Not in Israel, though. After the Kindle 2 announcement, American book giant Barnes and Noble announced its own e-book reader, the Nook. Not here, though; you can’t buy a Nook in Israel, either.

It’s not, I’m sure, because they don’t like us; there are plenty of English language readers here in Israel who would be more than happy to plunk down the ten dollars or so Amazon and Barnes and Noble charge for e-book versions of bestsellers available for download. The Nook is a brand new product, and isn’t available outside the U.S. anyway – so we can’t fume over being left out of Barnes and Noble’s e-book party, at least just yet; every non-American is being excluded as well. But the Kindle 2 is another story; If it’s good enough for the residents of Andorra, Belarus and Papua New Guinea, it should be good enough for us, no?

Apparently not, and it’s instructional to take a peek at the Kindle 2 homepage and try to figure out why Mongolians are eligible to buy a Kindle, but Israelis aren’t. The Arab world is out (fear of possible fatwas for immodest content?), as is China (well-founded fears of copyright infringement), and some poor countries in Africa (although many, like Kenya, Madagascar, and even economic basket-case Zimbabwe. are in).

It’s not clear what problem Amazon has with Israel, but I suspect that it has to do with import licensing rights for physical books, and the desire of large importers of print books into Israel for a piece of the e-action (this Hebrew site provides a good summary of the legal issues in Israel regarding “hard” and “electronic” copies of licensed works). It’s similar to the issues surrounding MP3 downloads. vs. physical CDs; the current licensee (or licensed importer) has first crack at making a deal for the same work in electronic form. And judging from the way the Israeli rights issue is being handled at the iTunes store (you can buy an iPhone for hundreds of dollars here, but not a 99 cent song), we’ll probably be waiting awhile for Amazon to iron things out with the publishers and importers.

Proof? Amazon is happy to sell you anything on the site to customers with an Israeli credit card, and although it won’t necessarily ship everything here, it will ship physical books and CDs. But try downloading a free e-book or MP3 at Amazon, much less buying one, and the site will turn all apologetic about how it cannot serve people in your geographical area.

So what are the alternatives? Well, of course there’s that old standby, the book – but you haven’t read this far just to hear that there’s no hope for e-reading here. Actually, there is an e-reader that you can buy, right here in Israel, at http://www.ebookshop.co.il, one of several Israeli sites that sell Hebrew language e-books. The site sells the Foxit eSlick, which lets you read PDF format e-books (note that the Hebrew site charges NIS 1,499, close to $400, for the eSlick, while it’s listed at the Foxit site for $259. Are import duties really that high?).

So, right there you have an e-reader alternative that’s “kosher” for Israelis, and it certainly looks like a nice device. But there is a trade-off; you’ll be investing in a device that is definitely outclassed by the “big boys,” Kindle and Nook, which are state of the art – including wifi connections to download books anywhere, and a touchscreen, also a feature of Sony’s PRS-600 reader. The Sony device is sold independent of content, unlike the Kindle and Nook (ie you are not expected to purchase books directly from the Sony site, although there is a bookstore you can access). The eSlick doesn’t have any of those things – you connect the device to your computer and manually upload books.

As mentioned, the problem for Amazon and B&N is connected to content downloads. The Kindle is more or less tied to the proprietary format e-books you get from Amazon, so there’s little point in their selling a device you can’t buy books on yet. The Nook is a little more loose, in that it allows you to read books in a variety of formats (more on that below), but B&N is of course interested in selling its content, so again there’s little point in selling an e-reader we can’t buy books for.

Another drawback for the Foxit device is that it only handles PDFs. There are many e-books available in PDF format, but there are just as many, if not more, in ePub (aka open e-book) format, the format read by many e-book computer readers, and used on a host of devices, including the Nook and iPhone (but not the Kindle). Most commercial bestsellers will be available in multiple formats (ie PDF and ePub), but some more esoteric works may not be, so if your device doesn’t handle both, you’re missing out. A battle royale may be shaping up between Amazon and the rest of the e-book world; Amazon sells its e-books in its own proprietary azw format, while B&N, Adobe, Sony, and most everyone else has committed to ePub and other open formats. Amazon, of course, doesn’t have to worry about anyone else, but not all the players (like Google?) have weighed in on the format issue yet.

If you’ve got a cellphone with a decent sized screen, I would suggest using that as an e-book reader for now, until one of the more advanced devices “makes aliyah.” Granted, a cellphone screen is not an e-book reader, but some of the newer phones have screens big enough to make reading less of a hassle. There are ePub readers for nearly all smart phone platforms (except Symbian – sorry, Nokia fans), but I’d suggest sticking with Adobe PDF Reader LE (mobile) edition, which, if your phone doesn’t have it already, will cost you $15, far less than a dedicated PDF e-book reader. What about content? Besides the hundreds of free places to download PDFs from (they’re all over the place), I found a site that has thousands of best-sellers in e-book format (PDF, ePub, and others) that doesn’t seem to have a problem – but don’t tell a certain book importer that you did!

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On paper, many of these devices really are better than the iPhone, feature for feature. The Samsung Omnia II/Jet (S8000) has a faster processor and a better screen than the iPhone, the Sony Ericsson C905 with a better (far better) camera than the iPhone could even dream of (ditto the LG Arena). And then there’s the Palm Pre, the first of the new generation of “killer” devices that are trying to wrest the title of coolest phone from Apple. The latest attempt to take the crown comes from Nokia, which recently released the N97, and its somewhat older little brother, the 5800 XpressMusic, which I recently acquired.

There’s a lot to be said for the Nokia phones (which I will say below). But before I am accused of shilling for the Finns, let me say it clearly: The N97 (which I spent some time with) and the 5800XM (which I use) are not iPhone killers, simply because they are not iPhones. The two cameras, the video recording capacity, the mini flip-out keyboard (on the N97), the extreme memory capacity on the N97 (32 GB built in, expandable to 48 GB), and so on, will never be enough, simply because they’re not made by Apple.

Why? Can a brand name really trump features to such an extent? The only thing I can think of is that the 1984 Apple commercial introducing the Macintosh, with the jogger smashing the “Big Brother” screen controlling all the automatons, has really sunk deep into the Western psyche, forever branding Apple as the counter-culture, rebellious upstart that always knows better than its “elders” (As the owner of no fewer than five Macs – two Macbooks, two Mac Minis, and an iMac), I’m just as susceptible to this mind-melding (note that I didn’t say the Macs weren’t better than anything anyone else is offering – but as a “Machead” I am very familiar with this mindset. Is a $1,600 Macbook Air really so much better than a $400 netbook?). The only devices I see as having a chance of really “killing” the iPhone are perhaps the phones built on Google’s Android, because Google has that cool counterrevolutionary cachet as well.

But I digress. As much as I and you would like a “real” iPhone, we don’t want to shell out the huge sums they can be expected to cost here in Israel (even if they are offered at a subsidized price, you are going to end up paying a goodly – perhaps a princely – sum). With the arrival and the clamoring for the iPhone, however, prices on other wannabe killers have dropped somewhat (the N97 is too new, but a number of other touchscreen etc. devices were on sale at Orange when I paid them a recent visit). They may not be iPhone “killers,” but they are good enough to compete in the same space, allowing them to maybe beat up and “injure” the iPhone, at least on some features.

Always on the lookout for a bargain (or, always cheaping out, depending on how you look at it), I picked up a Nokia 5800XM at Orange recently for NIS 499, far less than the $299 I was prepared to spend on an unlocked version of the phone at Amazon. According to Nokia, some 7 million of the things have been shipped since it was introduced in late 2008, so I guess I was in good company.

I mentioned earlier that “perceived coolness” is one of the major reasons for the iPhone’s success, but there is also one thing the iPhone has over any other device sold by any other manufacturer – and that’s is the iPhone Appstore and the iTunes store for iPhones. Having perfected the touchscreen/accelerometer etc. device first, Apple was able to get many developers to write applications for the iPhone – and there are currently over 65,000 applications in the App Store’s bevy. By now, every phone maker has an app store for its platform – but according to this handy chart, the Apple version has far more – far, far more – applications than any other version.

If the App Store is the real secret behind the iPhone’s continued appeal, despite the its relative feature deprivation compared to the other “killers,” both Google and Nokia intend to remedy that situation. The Android Market (as the store is called) already has thousands of apps, and Nokia just recently opened its app store, Nokia Ovi (which is supposed to mean “door” in Finnish). The applications in the store are specifically for Nokia’s higher end N-series and touchscreen phones, with the major in app development and sales to come as Nokia moves more N97s. Fortunately for me, the N97 and the 5800XM share operating systems (Symbian OS 9.4 + S60 platform 5th Edition), so the majority of the upcoming N97 apps will work on the 5800XM as well.

Browsing the Ovi store, I came across a couple of great titles. JoikuSpot is a nice Symbian app that lets you share your phone’s 3G connection as a modem for a laptop when you’re away from a wifi hotspot. Even though the official Nokia internet radio application for the N97/5800XM is still under development, I found a great application called Tunin.FM, which lists hundreds of stations that can be accessed with my phone, including some of my favorites. And then there’s Fring, the be-all communication program that lets you use Skype (including Skypeout), Twitter, Facebook, MSN Messenger, ICQ, and a slew of others. And of course, there’s the built in GPS, location finder, voice-driven driving directions (in Hebrew or English!), etc.

My favorite app, though, is one of the few I actually opened up my wallet to purchase. Called Myphone, it lets you turn your Symbian device into an “iPhone,” at least in look and feel. From the “slide to unlock” to the little iPhone-like icons for your favorite applications, Myphone (from a site with the unlikely name MMMOOO.com), is enough iPhone for me – considering the 5800XM didn’t cost me the thousands a “real” iPhone would!

Where do new hi-tech innovations come from? From the minds of hi-tech innovators, of course. Okay, but where do those innovators do their innovating? Usually, in the basement or spare room of the innovator’s house, or in cheap digs in some industrial zone, where a couple of college buddies get together to come up with the Next Big Thing. They certainly don’t come from large corporations that have a business model, and a strict, rigorous hierarchy, where workers are busy meeting performance goals, dotting their i’s and crossing their t’s on the voluminous paperwork required by the various layers of management.

Forget that stereotype, says Tal Givoly, Chief Scientist of Amdocs, which operates around the world and has a large center in Raanana; large corporations are just as capable of coming up with breakthrough technologies as bootstrap startups are – and maybe, in the current economic climate, a little more capable. “Sooner or later the economy will turn – and the companies that used their time wisely, investing in innovation will be the ones that reap the benefits when things turn around. As a large company, Amdocs has the financial wherewithal to withstand the storm – and we expect to emerge stronger than ever when the economy bounces back.”

But hold on a minute – Amdocs as a hi-tech innovator? Absolutely, says Givoly – as Chief Scientist, a position usually identified with technological innovation on a national basis, it’s his job to identify needs and recognize trends, and discover and promote ideas that answer those needs and trends. “Once you know where the market is going, you can come out with products and services that provide your customers, in our case, the world’s largest service providers, what they’re looking for,” he says.

But – Amdocs?! Yes, and yes again, Givoly says. “We’ve been unfairly typecast as a firm that deals chiefly with billing solutions – but we actually offer more than 100 products and services, many of which have absolutely nothing to do with billing.” Besides billing, Amdocs produces systems to manage contact center systems, customer self-service, mobile portals, operations support systems, and commerce systems for multimedia content, to name a few. For example, says Givoly, “we serve content on 60% of all cell phones in the U.S.” Indeed, the fact that he works at the job he does is a sure sign of the innovative, start-up spirit of Amdocs, Givoly says. “Not every large company has a Chief Scientist, and the fact that my job is to identify and act on future needs and trends should make it clear that far from being a ‘corporate dinosaur’ interested in perpetuating its business model at all costs, Amdocs is an innovator that seeks to meet future challenges, and provide the products and services tomorrow’s customers will be looking for.”

To that end, Amdocs recently hosted an “innovation camp,” where managers and employees from Amdocs locations around the world – along with well-known internet innovators, like Yossi Vardi and Jeff Pulver – got together to exchange ideas and concepts, seeking to figure out where the world of media and communications is headed. The gathering was as freeform as you could get – “there was no set agenda, as there are at retreats of this type sponsored by many large corporations,” Givoly says. In fact, some of the biggest ‘innovations’ weren’t even tech-based, but involved demonstrations of the talents of participants – with demonstrations of swordplay, how to make a “potato rocket,” and a musical band where every instrument was based on an iPhone! All with the idea of getting the creative juices of participants flowing. And there was a method to the madness Givoly says – by the end of the camp, participants had come up with a list of top-ten “hot” issues or ideas, which Amdocs will now consider in detail how to address and pre-empt upcoming needs.

Givoly wouldn’t give me the specifics of those trends (like a good journalist, I asked), but he did tell me in what direction he believed the internet/communications market was heading. “There’s been a clear trend on the part of telephone and communications companies to increase their value added by offering not just technology or methodology, but content as well.” As recently as just ten years ago, says Givoly, a hardware manufacturer would produce a device – computer, cellphone, PDA – and sell it, with the content for use on those devices supplied by others. “The Apple App Store is a good example of the change, and many service providers, including our customers, are working on ideas to sell applications in the same manner on cellphones and devices other than Apple’s that will enhance the digital lifestyle. In fact, we have recently launched an offer to help them do just that,” he says. Add to that innovations in instant messaging, massive multiplayer on-line games, social networking, and the way kids use media on their devices, and picture of a digital future shapes up – one that Amdocs is plugged into, and intends to capitalize on, Givoly says.

The current recession is also going to have a big impact on the way people do business; for example, electronic communication is already becoming far more important to many organizations. “Businesses that need to cut their expenses will be looking to lowering costs wherever they can. Video conferencing technology today is good enough to allow multiple groups to get together in cyberspace, but as dependence on teleconferencing grows, there’s a greater demand for quality control, ensuring that everything runs smoothly.” That, Givoly says, is a good example of how technology evolves even during bad economic times. When things improve, chances are that video communication technology will remain popular in the business world, and any product Amdocs develops now to help keep conferences running smoothly will pay off for the company now, and in the long run. “We have other ideas and offerings we are working on in response to the global economic downturn, with these, we’ll help our customers emerge stronger when things improve.”

Recognizing the importance of innovation, Amdocs has a number of programs in place designed to discover new technologies, Givoly says – such as Amdocs’ Open Innovations programs, sort of like “free agents” week in baseball, where the company checks out hi-tech startups and matches what they have to offer with the needs of Amdocs customers; some of the companies are invited to work with Amdocs and build a product that the company will market (last year, Amdocs reviewed about 200 companies). “It’s a win-win idea all around, because our customers get exposed to great new technologies that can help them, and smaller start-ups get access to an audience of large organizations they probably would not have been able to reach otherwise,” he says. In addition, Amdocs actively promotes innovation within the organization, serving up immediate investment to employees who come up with innovative ideas that show promise. “We have over 17,000 brilliant people at Amdocs, and despite the turndown, we’re investing in them, and in the future, harnessing the company’s collective genius and developing the winning ideas our customers need and want.”

Recession or no, Givoly says, Amdocs will continue to invest and innovate. “Companies have a choice – if they innovate now, they can emerge much stronger when things improve, but those that don’t are likely to see their business erode. Cutting research and development now looks good on paper, but is a possible sign of the coming demise of an organization”, Givoly summarizes it simply: “Innovation is not mandatory. Survival is optional. We shouldn’t assume survival is a given – it’s a choice.” Obviously, Amdocs has clearly understood this and is acting upon it – with ‘due diligence.’