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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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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Short of getting an expensive personal trainer, what can you do to get in shape? Get a virtual personal trainer – in the form of the Wii Fit system (http://tinyurl.com/nmoxnw), an accessory of the Nintendo Wii game console. Thanks to the Wii Fit, we have a new term – ‘wiicersize’ – referring to the interactive fitness activities and games you can play using the system. With the Wii Fit, you can box, jog, do yoga and sit-ups, or activities that help improve your internal balance, guided by a virtual “personal trainer” (they come in male and female varieties). But beware: These trainers have a sharp tongue, throwing insults at users it decides aren’t in good enough shape. Unlike personal trainers who get out of line, you can’t fire these two!

The Wii console itself, if you’re not familiar with it, allows you to interact with your TV, using a remote control to control your on screen avatar while playing games. Your game avatar does exactly what you do on this side of the screen; in tennis, for example, when you swing at the ball, your onscreen persona hits it, sending it back over the net, as in a “real” tennis match. You get the experience and activity of playing tennis without having to actually go to a tennis court. The Wii Fit takes this interactivity even further, enabling you to participate in a virtual boxing match, aerobic step activity, or strength training exercises, with the the system measuring your activity and how effective the workout is.

In the Wii Fit virtual aerobic step, for example, the system evaluates how well you did based on how you kept pace with the on-screen trainer leading the exercise. The better you “step right,” putting your feet on the Wii Balance Board accessory that comes with the Wii Fit system (which also acts as a scale, measuring weight and BMI), the higher your score. As you exercise, your on-screen personal trainer guides you, giving you helpful tips on how to do the exercise (“tighten your abs,” “really extend your legs”), as well as what are supposed to be inspiring affirmations (“while you work out, visualize your ideal body”).

Until a few months ago, Wii Fit, and Wii systems altogether, were hard to come by, but since February or so they have been in plentiful supply – meaning they’ll be easy to find if you’re traveling abroad this year (the Ben Gurion duty free stores have a good supply as well). Note that there are hundreds more activities for the Wii system itself other than workout programs – adventure, role playing, sports, music interactivity, etc. (check out the Amazon Wii game page). Also note that many “true gamers” who prefer Microsoft’s xBox or Sony’s Playstation 3 have nothing but contempt for the Wii, which they consider far inferior in graphics. But none of the competition has an interactive exercise system as sophisticated as the Wii Fit. When the system first came out last year, it sold out almost immediately (along with the Wii consoles needed to run it), and a shortage developed that extended into the early months of this year (whether it was one of those “engineered shortages” is still an open question).

Wii Fit isn’t the only virtual exercise program, but it is credited with kicking off the current craze – and it’s still by far the runaway best seller. A new exercise program by Electronic Arts that makes use of the Wii Balance Board and has workouts like the Wii Fit has gotten some good buzz online, and many users are happy with My Fitness Coach and Gold’s Gym Cardio Workout.

Wii systems cost between $250 and $350 depending on where you buy them, while the Wii Fit exercise package costs about another $100, with the balance board included. For less than $500, you get access to a “personal trainer” who will lead and inspire you to get in shape. That’s a lot cheaper than a gym membership! But is it effective? Can you lose weight or get in shape as effectively with a Wii Fit’s virtual trainer as you can with a real one?

Depends who you ask; some criticize the whole virtual exercise thing (there are now four major such packages for the Wii, with the Wii Fit by far the most popular), saying that there’s no way to prevent cheating and truly measure effectiveness without the human touch. Wii Fit advocates reply that the system is very finely and accurately tuned, and that it’s very hard to cheat it (that’s not strictly true, as this fellow demonstrates). A Mississippi scientist is currently studying the Wii Fit’s effectiveness in fighting fat, but according to these young scientists (http://tinyurl.com/mtj9dw), there is a definite benefit to interactive Wii exercise.

In the end, pros will tell you, it comes down to motivation. Now, there are two ways to motivate – positively and negatively. Personally, I find the Wii Fit’s attempts at the former annoying (although I do like it when the female trainer applauds you at the end of your workout for sticking with it). Wii Fit has plenty of negative motivation, though – to the point where some accuse it of being rude. It doesn’t shy away from calling you overweight or even obese, based on your BMI – which many say is an inaccurate way to tell who’s overweight anyway. The virtual trainers have some choice comments for those who slack off in exercises, and if you gain weight, your avatar (called a Mii) gets fatter too! Personally, I can’t think of a greater insult than being made fun of by a computer program. My first choice would be to smash the thing to pieces – but I spent too much on it. Instead, I’ll make it eat its words – by working out harder! Now that’s motivation!

In an exclusive Yom Ha’atzmaut interview with the Jerusalem Post, Oron says he is decidedly optimistic about Israel’s hi-tech future. In fact, he says, “the consensus seems to be that by the beginning of 2010, companies will begin to see significant growth in revenues, that will be translated into financial performance several quarters later.” And that growth, says Oron, will be strong enough to “raise the boats,” fueling development in all facets of Israeli hi-tech – and not just in the hot areas of cell communication or Web 2.0 applications, but in “traditional” areas of IT development – bringing back in its wake the hi-tech jobs that were lost during the current downturn, and then some.

Oron has been working with Israeli hi-tech companies for decades. He was, among other things, President and CEO of Aryt Industries; Co-Founder, President and CEO of Reshef Technologies; Co-Founder and Chairman of Telegate Ltd; and former chairman of the Israel Venture Association (http://www.iva.co.il/). Among his fund’s recent successes was the acquisition of anti-fraud solutions provider Actimize (http://www.actimize.com/), since acquired by Nice; semiconductor maker Siliquent, acquired in 2005 by Broadcom (http://bit.ly/195gPF); and optical measurement solution provider Cognitens (http://www.cognitens.com/), acquired in 2007 by Hexagon. Plus, he’s brought many companies to market with successful IPOs. He’s seen companies come and go, and helped businesses thrive through good times and bad. And, Oron says, while there is what to worry about, the overall picture is better than most people realize.

“One needs to differentiate between the market for tech products and services, and the funding sources available to hi-tech developers,” Oron says. Echoing the sentiments of many economists and experts, Oron says the problem is more one of Wall Street than Main Street. “The large U.S. tech companies like Apple, Microsoft, and the cellphone producers and service providers are doing OK, with sales down at most 5% or 6% overall. Lower sales in the U.S. and Europe are being compensated for by steady demand in Asia. We have a similar situation in Israel; it’s not that demand for products has evaporated, it’s the financing for fledgling companies that is hard to come by.” While most of us are familiar with the credit crisis at the banks, VC and angel funding is extremely weak as well, Oron says – and the investment markets is basically treading water. “The financing food chain for startups is on the verge of collapse. One hopeful sign is that we have seen some activity in the mergers and acquisitions area recently, but overall, tech companies that have only their ideas and patents as assets are suffering,” Oron says.

With that, Oron says he has become much more hopeful in recent weeks – after speaking to high officials in the Finance Ministry regarding the government’s business bailout plan, announced last week. “The message is very clear that the people currently running the Treasury ‘get it,’ and their plan should help ease access to money for many startups. In addition, the government plans to significantly increase – perhaps double – the Chief Scientist’s development budget, meaning that many more companies will have access to development funds.” It’s the first comprehensive government response to the crisis, and it’s a good one, he says. “It’s a serious plan that should accomplish what it is setting out to do.”

And what projects, in his opinion, should the Chief Scientist be funding? Where are the strong growth areas going to be when things do bounce back? “Everything,” says Oron. “There is going to be huge demand for everything Israel specializes in, from broadband backbone to audio technology to last mile wired to wireless. Those who say that there is no need for many of the traditional technologies Israel has specialized in are just not aware of what is going on out there. Already there is a huge demand for technologies that can handle the heavy bandwidth necessary for the heavy internet traffic generated by online video. This market, along with many others, will continue to show strong growth, and it is in these traditional IT areas that Israel has a strong presence.”

Israel’s medical technology providers will also see strong growth, Oron says, while cleantech/greentech is likely to have less of an impact on local growth than many expect. “Much of the IT work being done by private companies trickles down from research and work being done for the IDF,” Oron says, “so we have a built-in market to produce for – something that doesn’t necessarily exist for cleantech applications.” That’s not to say there won’t be growth in that area as well, says Oron – but the areas that Israel has excelled in for years will continue to be just as important, if not more so, for local companies.

And despite rumors to the contrary, Israel’s technology base and innovative drive is as strong as ever. Commenting on the latest doom and gloom rumor – that China is somehow supplanting Israel as a world center of innovation – Oron says that nothing could be further from the truth. “I have been in this business for many years, and every little while someone comes up with a similar idea, that Israel is losing its edge. Everyone we speak to – world class investors, people from Silicon Valley, the elite of IT – who looks at the business plans, technologies, and business models of Israeli companies comes away highly impressed. I won’t say we don’t have some weaknesses when compared to China or India, but losing our innovative edge is definitely not one of them.”

And with all that expected growth, says Oron, those who were laid off this year have a good chance of getting a job – perhaps even their old job – next year. “The layoffs have not been uniform – we’ve been seeing two kinds of layoffs in recent months,” Oron says. “While everyone is cutting back, those working for local branches of multinationals are being more badly affected, since the multinational tends to protect workers in their home country, preferring to sacrifice their foreign satellites. But that’s this year; soon, hopefully by next year, the tech sector will be perhaps the world’s fastest growing sector. Based on the amount of data being generated and the services currently available to fulfill those needs, it’s quite clear that the market demand will be strong. And when the financial markets come back and funding is available, growth will be as strong – and probably stronger – than it has been in recent years.” It’s an optimistic forecast – but as someone in a position to know, Oron’s optimism can give all of us hope that next Yom Ha’atzmaut will be a lot happier for many more Israelis!

Google, for example, believes in Israel’s hi-tech potential to such an extent that it has opened not one, but two research and development centers in the past four years – one of the few countries outside the U.S. where the company has multiple R&D offices, says Google Israel CEO Meir Brand. “That’s an honor reserved for large countries, like Russia and China,” Brand says, “so it’s an indication of just how advanced Israel’s hi-tech capabilities are that the company would open two R&D centers here,” in Tel Aviv and in Haifa. “We’ve found a huge pool of scientists, engineers and mathematicians full of innovative ideas. Israelis tend to think ‘out of the box,’ a trait highly valued at Google,” he adds. As a company, Brand adds, Google seeks out workers who can think and act independently – a trait Israelis are well known for, and that fits right in with the Google ethos.

Besides converting Google products, such as Gmail and Google Docs, for use in Hebrew – (projects that will also benefit users of other right to left languages, like Arabic, says Brand), the Google Israel staff – about 100 people work in the two centers, Brand says – are at the forefront of delivering some of Google’s latest and greatest products. Among them are Google Trends, which lets you research and compare what people are looking for online, contests and annotations for Youtube, and Google Insights for Search, which lets you compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames. And Google believes in Israel’s hi-tech future, as well, Brand says: Among other projects, the company has developed, in cooperation with the Ministry of Education, layers for Google Earth that will help Israeli students learn history, geography, and other core subjects.

Cisco, another worldwide technology powerhouse, also has a huge presence in Israel – with some 750 employees, mostly engineers, working at the company’s R&D facility in Netanya, says Cisco’s Israel director Bina Rezinovsky, making it the company’s second largest research center outside the U.S. Many of those workers came to Cisco as the result of the company’s purchases of Israeli companies; to date, Cisco has acquired nine Israeli companies, which, says Rezinovsky, have furnished the technology for some of Cisco’s most important products, such as the network management systems designed by Israel’s Sheer Networks. Cisco acquired Sheer in 2005 for some $100 million, part of the over $1 billion Cisco has invested in Israeli companies over the past decade.

“Israelis are imaginative, and they are familiar with technology, two traits that make the human resources of the country very valuable to Cisco,” says Rezinovsky. While they can sometimes be a bit “provincial,” she adds, the “Israeli brain is dynamic and creative, and that’s what we need on our development teams. For Cisco, Israel is a second home, an island of stability in a difficult world economy. We have no plans to stop investing here.” Cisco has had great success in Israel, Rezinovsky says, and gives back to the community as well: Besides job training programs in peripheral areas, the company runs the Mediterranean Youth Technology Club (MYTecC), an education initiative aimed at giving ninth and tenth grade pupils from the Mediterranean region the skills needed for them to become future business and social leaders, and the Digital Cities project, which includes more than 20 different projects aimed at improving relations between Israeli Jews and Arabs in Nazareth and Nazareth Illit.

When it comes to working with Israel, however, the “grandfather” of all multinational investors here is, of course, IBM, which began working in the country in 1949. Invited to help the fledgling country with defense needs, the company stayed, and grew from its initial three employees to about 2,200 today, says IBM Israel CEO Meir Nissensohn. “We also had the privilege of opening the first R&D lab, in 1972, when we established the IBM Science Center, developing projects in the medical, agricultural, and other fields.” Today, IBM has three research labs, with almost 1,000 employees – including the company’s largest research lab outside the U.S., in Haifa. And despite its image as a large, mature corporation with very specific policies, IBM actually prefers the less formal and rigid mentality of Israeli workers when it comes to development. “Israelis are very big on innovation, which is key for any corporation today, including ours. There is a huge amount of innovation on all levels in Israel, and the workforce is well educated and motivated.”

IBM also pioneered the practice of acquiring Israeli companies, and last year it snapped up three more, including XIV, FilesX, and Diligent Technologies. Those acquisitions made IBM the largest foreign investor in Israel in 2008. IBM is a strong player in data storage, says Nissensohn, “and companies like XIV and FilesX, developed using the strong talents of the Israeli hi-tech workforce, provide top of the line solutions for IBM to bring to its customers worldwide. Israel has become a worldwide center for data storage innovations, and we intend to continue our growth in this area.” IBM is also well known for giving back to the community, and has a long history of supporting educational and cultural institutions, and supplying schools with computers, libraries, and scholarships for promising students.

Microsoft, which sells more software worldwide than anyone else, is also heavily invested in Israel. Microsoft Israel has a large research and development center here, and has acquired several Israeli companies, says Microsoft Israel CEO Danny Yamin; today, about 700 people work for MS Israel. “Microsoft sees Israel as an excellent source of innovative workers, and we at MS Israel are proud of our contribution to Microsoft’s worldwide development,” Yamin says. Those traits are essential in the software business, says Yamin, and Israel has more than pulled its weight in developing important Microsoft products. “Their ability to think out of the box and get past formal strictures is a big advantage,” Yamin says.

MS Israel is also heavily involved in the local market, helping large and small businesses, as well as consumers, with software solutions. “Microsoft was one of the first companies to commit to translating its products into other languages, and in fact, any new version of Windows or Office is available in Hebrew the same day it is released worldwide,” Yamin says. “We see ourselves has having an important responsibility to the local market. According to an IVC survey, about 90,000 workers in Israeli hi-tech use Microsoft products. That’s a large group, and they look to us for solutions.” Microsoft Israel’s commitment to the country also expresses itself in the many philanthropic and education projects the company runs; the Maala index for Social Responsibility consistently gives the company its highest ranking for philanthropy and community involvement.

In a sense, the story of Israel’s rise as a hi-tech giant is one of the most inspiring chapters in the country’s history, and one of the greatest signs of the success of the Zionist project. It’s a sure sign of the country’s maturity, and the resources of its people; if multinationals, whose bottom line is the bottom line, are rushing to invest in Israel, we must be doing something right!

OpenOffice, as everyone knows by now, is the free open source office suite, an alternative for many people (including yours truly) to Microsoft Office. Writing in English as I do, I work mostly with the U.S. English version of Oo (and its Mac brother, NeoOffice), generally using the word processor component of the suite, and occasionally building a Powerpoint-style presentation using Oo’s Presentation component.

Now, this not a story comparing the abilities, plusses and minuses, or other competitive aspects of the MS Office/OpenOffice issue – you can find reams of data about that in your friendly local Google search box. For most of those who have worked with both programs at one time or another, that battle was resolved a long time ago – depending on individual experience, need, disposable income (can you afford MS Office) or level of ethical commitment (do you refrain from pirating expensive software, especially if several perfectly good alternatives are available). For me, Oo works great; I haven’t compatibility issues for years, with everything I produce in OpenOffice readable and editable by those using MS Office, and vice versa. As far as I’m concerned, the war is over – and I (and my wallet) won!

But because I work mostly in English, I had the luxury of choosing Oo – or other office suites, such as StarOffice (which used to be free), as alternatives to pricey MS software. For those who need to work in Hebrew, though, there was no choice – until 2003, when the Finance Ministry made a commitment to developing a Hebrew language version of OpenOffice, in order to give Israelis a choice; the government’s antitrust authority was very close to declaring Microsoft a monopoly for refusing to include Hebrew support in a number of products (http://tinyurl.com/5lk5vc) , and the Treasury in fact suspended its upgrade and purchase contracts with MS for a time (http://tinyurl.com/5utz66). In addition, the Ministry wanted to promote the development of a lower cost office suite to help close the “digital gap,” between the haves that could afford Microsoft Office license, and those who couldn’t (Note that there was once a free Hebrew version of StarOffice, but that has been superceded by OpenOffice).

Version 2.2 of the Hebrew version of OpenOffice is currently available for free from http://openoffice.org.il). Development is funded by the Ministry of Finance’s government ISP, called Tehila, via developers TK Open Systems, which has been working for years to ensure full integration of right to left Hebrew text and fonts in the general left to right version of Oo, as well as translating menus, etc., based on the original work done by Sun Microsystems. It should be noted that the general versions of OpenOffice have Hebrew support packs, and I haven’t had a problem reading or writing Hebrew (although there are the usual on-screen quirks users of English-oriented word processors typing in Hebrew notice, like the jumping cursors when switching between languages, or the sometime backwards orientation of numbers). The Hebrew version of OpenOffice is for people who have a Hebrew language operating system, with menus in Hebrew and installed basic system Hebrew fonts. Interestingly, the Hebrew Oo also has an English support pack!

Earlier this year, the Treasury informed OpenOffice’s Hebrew development team that it had run out of money for further development (the current version seems to be mostly done, but there are always bugs to work out), but this week, the government told the developers that money had been found for further development, after all; work should get back into gear in about a month. There are currently versions for Windows and Linux, but further development will only be made on the Windows version, in order to ensure better “quality control” (actually, since Oo is open source and the code is readily available, an adept programmer should be able to port the changes to Linux). And, as part of the mission entrusted it by the government, the Israel Oo team plans to conduct workshops and seminars for users in outlying areas in the North and the Negev, as well as in the Arab sector – in order to ensure that even those without resources to attend training courses get the basics on how to use an office suite that works just like (yes, I know, not ‘exactly like’) the basic office productivity suite in use today, thus helping to connect them to the world of modern business – something they may not have thought they would have the opportunity to ever be a part of.

Thwarting a potential monopoly, ensuring choice, helping have-nots become haves – what could be wrong? You’d think Israelis would embrace OpenOffice, even if they weren’t fans themselves, preferring the tried and true path of MS Office. But somehow, politics, security, and good old mud slinging gets into the mix when the subject comes up on local web sites. The level of vitriol slung by some “talk-backists” to the news that the government is committing more money to OpenOffice was overwhelming!

Accusations of corruption, government waste (“why don’t they use the money to help the poor?”), kickbacks, and even appeals to national loyalty (“if everyone uses OpenOffice, hundreds of people at Microsoft Israel will lose their jobs!”) – the reactions I read ran the gamut, with about sixty percent for resumed funding, and forty percent against. The most cogent (and level-headed) arguments of the naysayers revolved around the inappropriateness of government getting involved in funding a project that is supposed to compete with a commercial product. And they have a point, of course; but the reason you have regulators in government is to make sure that there is real competition, and to prevent monopolies in the first place. Seen that way, the government’s funding of OpenOffice is a salute to democracy and freedom of choice – and exactly what maintaining a free market is all about!

And they can’t even come up with a decent copy of the stuff they’re ripping off, the critics say; Windows throughout its life span has often been notoriously unstable, and thanks to the Windows Registry and the million and one ways it can be manipulated, Microsoft basically created the computer virus business. Dissatisfaction with Vista is so high that many new computer buyers opt for the seven year old Windows XP instead of the “latest technology” Vista version of Windows (beginning today, the only version of Windows you can buy on a new laptop is Vista, with MS now requiring customers to ‘upgrade’). And Microsoft has traditionally done everything it can to discourage open source systems and software use and development. Recently, the company has become a bit more open to working with open source developers (like it had a choice in this open-source day and age?), but it’s still doing its best to hold on to its old attitudes.

What emerges is a picture of a company – and, by extension, a man, as Gates is so closely identified with Microsoft – that at best bumbles through, using less than wholesome tactics to retain its market position. You can’t blame a company for wanting to make money, of course, but Gates has more than enough (about $65 billion, according to http://philip.greenspun.com/WealthClock). You’d think he would give a little “back to the people” – not only in cash donations to charitable causes, but to the computing public, where he made so much of his money. I could go on and on, but you get the picture; here is a man who is hated by many. Even the people who admire him don’t necessarily like him as a person, it seems.

Now, I don’t want to give the wrong impression here: I am not a friend of Bill (not Gates, nor even Clinton); I don’t know him, personally or otherwise. But it seems to me that a positive word is due to this man, flaws and all, who really has had a major impact on computing today. Below are some of the accusations hurled at Mr. Gates, and why in my very humble opinion, they don’t apply.

Bill Gates is a robber baron: In the manner of railroad and banking barons of yore, Gates quashed the competition to get ahead, and rigged the system to keep his company on top. That, at least, is the received history. But if you want to blame anyone for Windows’ dominance, blame IBM, which allowed MS to sell versions of DOS to other PC manufacturers. In fact, according to this article, Gates would have been perfectly happy to make a deal with IBM on his Basic computer language; had suggested that IBM investigate an OS called CP/M (refuting another accusation leveled against Gates, that he somehow thwarted IBM’s adopting the competition to his as yet unwritten operating system).

It was only when that deal fell through that IBM sought Gates’ help on building an operating system. It’s hard to imagine any business willingly giving up its customer base – you were expecting MS not to try and convert customers from MS-DOS to Windows 3.1, then to Windows 95, 2000, XP, and so on? As Gates said in a 1995 Time Magazine interview, “If you’re accusing me of competition, then yes. You have to decide. Are we optimized to help competitors, or are we optimized to help customers?”

Windows is a ripoff of [insert OS name here]: When people say that Windows “ripped off” its OS from Apple or other companies (most notably Xerox’s PARC system, which Apple itself is accused of ripping off), they mean that Microsoft stole the idea of a GUI (graphical user interface), using icons, drop down menus, and other visual interfaces to interact with a computer OS. On the surface, it would seem to be a legit charge; DOS was as text-based an OS as you could get, and Apple’s Lisa and Mac systems preceded the release of Windows in any form, as demonstrated by the timeline at http://toastytech.com/guis/guitimeline.html.

However, the timeline indicates that there were a number of other GUI systems on the market. And while today MS is accused of having stolen its GUI ideas from Apple, at the dawn of graphics interfaced OS systems it wasn’t Microsoft that Apple had a problem with – it was Digital Reseach’s GEM system that ripped off the Mac’s “look and feel.” It was only several years later, with the introduction of Windows 2.0, that Apple targeted Microsoft (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc._litigation).

The point is that clearly GUI work was not being done in a vacuum in the mid-1980s. Today, of course, the arena of who took what from whom has expanded significantly, as the New York Times link above demonstrates. Let’s say that historically, as well as today, the various operating systems (today that would be Mac OS X, Windows XP/Vista, and Linux GUIs) are “derivative,” meaning that one looks at the other and attempts to duplicate a good idea – much like car manufacturers do when they add new features to new models. Anyone who remembers word processors like Wordstar, though (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordStar) knows that there’s no comparing its DOSsy interface to the menus used in GUI-type word processors. Meaning that sooner or later, all word processors were going to go GUI – as were all operating systems.

Windows is buggy, prone to virus infection, etc.: I have never worked for MS, and have never been within 500 miles of its headquarters in Washington State (see how provincial I really am?). So I’m really not in a position to comment on the company’s culture. For example, some have tried to link the preponderance of viruses for Windows to some factors in the company’s methods of work and research (being reactive instead of innovative and fighting last month’s battles instead of looking forward) – but others say that it’s to be expected, since hackers seeking to inflict damage will aim for the OS used by 90% of the market – Windows – in order to wreak the most havoc.

One thing that is clear about Microsoft, or any other large corporation: It’s not a startup, where you can run through experimental ideas on the dime of a VC angel. MS has a responsibility to its stockholders and clients, and accusations like “they don’t innovate, just duplicate” have to be seen in this context. Knowing their clients, it would probably be irresponsible for MS to put IT managers in the position of trying some new, little tested innovation just because engineers in the company believe in it. In other words, you would expect nothing less than a conservative approach to the computing field from a company the size of MS.

Which brings us back to Mr. Gates. Say what you want about him, but it takes a lot of talent – and innovation – to build a Microsoft. Now that he’s free of the restrictions of the CEO’s desk, he might really surprise us, and come up with a very non-corporate innovation. He’s certainly got the money to invest in his ideas. Like good ol’ Colonel Sanders, retirement could be the next big career move for Bill Gates!

Well, the legend has come to pass. The war that began down here between Google and Microsoft – in the form of their earth 3D virtualization programs – has now spread to the skies. Last August, Google introduced Google Sky, an “extra” for Google Earth which lets you look up virtually from the ground – as opposed to down below from the sky, as in GE (Sky has since moved online for those without Google Earth installed, at http://www.google.com/sky/).

Microsoft also has an earth virtualization scheme, called Virtual Earth. As opposed to Google Earth’s desktop application, the MS version is strictly an on-line affair (some role reversal there, considering that Google is the online king, while the desktop is MS’s domain), accessible at http://maps.live.com/ (you may need to download a 3D display component from http://www.microsoft.com/virtualearth/ in order to use the site properly). Both earth programs have been around for a few years; in early reviews of both, many users gave the advantage to the MS program because it had more ready made buildings and landmarks, and rendered better 3D images up close, but by this time, most people consider both programs to have more or less the same capabilities.

Last week, Microsoft launched its own space-based virtual mapping program, called Worldwide Telescope. The early reviews give it high marks (even GE-focused Ogle Earth called it “stunning” at http://tinyurl.com/6nhqvy). In terms of experience, WWT really gives you a bang for the buck (don’t worry, it’s free!), allowing you to explore the ends of the universe, just like Google Sky – except the attention to detail seems greater, and the pictures seem sharper. WWT’s images are taken from the Hubble Telescope and ten major earthly satellites, while GS relies mostly on the Hubble. With WWT, you can move back in town to the beginning of the common era or move forward another 2000 years, and view the sky as it was or will be seen from any point on earth, complete with labels on what you’re looking at (stars, constellations, etc.).

You can zoom into an area of the sky as far as the telescope image supports (ie viewing from the same spot in space that the photo was taken from). You can see the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Venus and four of Jupiter’s moons (not Titan, thought) in full rendered 3D. You can view panoramas of the sky or the planets taken by spacecraft that have flown there, such as panoramic views of Mars taken by the Rover, as well as collections of images taken from some of the most famous observatories and planetariums in the world. And, using the ASCOM (AStronomy Common Object Model) driver, you can attach supported hardware – like telescopes – to your computer and record your own images, which you can add to WWT and integrate into your virtual universe. You can build your own “guided tours” of the universe (similar to building a Powerpoint presentation). WWT even has an earth component, offering many of the views available in MS Virtual Earth (although it uses a different engine).

WWT sounds wonderful, and it is. But (there’s always one of those!): Wimpy computers need not apply. This is an application designed with the Vista Age in mind. You need memory (gobs) and a video card capable of accelerated 3D graphics (to display DirectX 9.0 compatible graphics, a must for WWT). However, if you have a relatively new computer, you should already have all the hardware you need for it; I got WWT to work on my Macbook with virtualized Windows XP (SP3) installed, using a virtual 3D graphics card. It wasn’t the fastest horse on the track, but it did the job.

Indeed, “professional production” is written all over WWT. For a company often called unimaginative by its critics, WWT really is something new and different. According to Microsoft, they are not planning to work out ways to profit from WWT (until daily space shuttles around the Solar System become a reality, I guess) – it’s more of a prestige project, unlike the case with Google Earth and MS Virtual Earth.

As such, you download, install and use WWT on Microsoft’s terms – and if your computer doesn’t meet the standards they’ve set for use, then it’s not for you (in other words, you really, really need a Vista machine to enjoy this to the fullest). And of course, Mac and Linux users are not invited to the party (don’t expect one, either). And, unlike in Google Earth and Sky, where any old Joe can feel right at home, the community in WWT is associated with prestigious publications or groups, such as s the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and or Sky & Telescope magazine. It’s truly humbling to be able to tap into the knowledge provided by these groups, and even more humbling to see the miracles of outer space up close. If you’re really into the stars and take astronomy seriously, though – if you’ve ever wanted to “see the distribution and illumination of massive primordial hydrogen cloud structures lit up by the high-energy radiation coming from nearby stars in the Milky Way” – you’re going to love WWT.

But wait – before you download and install (or if you’re not a Windows user), keep in mind that there are other virtual universes out there you can download and use. The one I like best is Stellarium, a free open-source program that lets you examine the universe from anywhere in the world, and works in bunch of languages as well (no Hebrew, though). You can also install user scripts of events that occurred in the past, record presentations, set the earth time for previous or future cosmological events, and check out over 210 million stars (!). Between Google Earth/Sky, WorldWide Telescope, and Stellarium, you’ll be busy flying around the universe whiling the light years away – until you come back down to earth and explore the briny deep, with the upcoming Google Ocean!

Can it be? Would a multinational corporation voluntarily give away, for free, some of its most powerful programs and best-known brands – some of which have had a near monopoly in their particular specialties?

The company in question is Adobe, which last week released on the Internet, for free, a Web version of its Photoshop software. Photoshop, of course, is Adobe’s top-drawer, photo-editing software; after nearly 20 years, it is still the most used program for photo editing, selling like hotcakes every time a new version comes out.

If you’re a graphic artist, Web designer or photo editor, you use Photoshop on the job (and if you’re one of the very few who don’t use PS on the job, you still have to know how to use it). Now, if you want to use Photoshop, you don’t have to pay the big bucks for PS CS3, the latest version; just surf to http://www.photoshop.com/express/index.html https://www.photoshop.com/express/index.html> , upload your photo, edit, save, download and you’ve saved yourself a pretty penny. The site says it’s for US residents only, but I didn’t have any trouble with it.

And it’s not just Photoshop that Adobe is “giving away.” There’s also an on-line version of Adobe Premiere, the company’s high-end video-editing and -mixing tool. Surf to http://www.adobe.com/products/premiereexpress/ to check out the product, and follow the links to either the MTV or Photobucket site from that page.

You upload your videos to your accounts on those sites, where you can make use of the Premiere Express software. You can even get free (albeit limited) access to some aspects of Adobe’s PDF-making software, Acrobat. At http://createpdf.adobe.com/, you can upload a file in a whole bunch of formats, like MS Word, Powepoint, plain text – even Pagemaker (!) – or insert a URL for a Web page and turn it into a downloadable or e-mailable PDF. You can convert five documents for each e-mail address you submit, but if you’ve used up your allotment, the site suggests you sign up with another address. Here’s a chance to use up all those Gmail invitations you have; just invite yourself to open a new account and you’ve got virtually unlimited access to on-line PDF making.

Sounds too good to be true – like, there has to be a catch, doesn’t there? Well, that depends on what you’re looking for. First of all, the PDF converter definitely works as advertised, and has helped me out in a couple of pinches where I had to send a document or Web page as a PDF to someone.

True, there are plenty of third-party programs that you can download and use for this, but this is Adobe (the people who created the PDF, after all), so you can be sure that whatever you generate using their service will be a “real” PDF, readable by Adobe PDF reader, which is the standard program for reading these documents. Not that the documents generated by the others aren’t 100 percent compatible as well, but why take a chance if the PDF’s “mother ship” is giving it away for free, with no installation necessary?

As for Premiere Express, it reminds me a lot of Apple’s iMovie or Windows Movie Maker – simple, basic and very easy to use. Never having used the full version of Premiere, I don’t know what I’m missing by using this clearly limited version (the on-line version can’t be the same as the one http://tinyurl.com/6ohp2m). And again, it’s Adobe – so how can you go wrong?

But Photoshop Express is a different story. Having had a lot of experience with PS, I can safely say, What were they thinking of? PS Express gives you a limited number of tools, similar to the ones you can get with Apple iPhoto, Google Picasa or a whole host of on-line photo-editing software. It’s basic, with almost none of the sophisticated tools the “real” Photoshop is famous for. That’s not to say it isn’t very good at what it does; for each of the 17 actions you can use on your photos – red-eye removal, touch-up, sharpen, hue – there are six or seven preset changes you can select (there are no variations). On the other hand, you can’t make a selection in the photo (changes are made to the whole thing at once). It’s a nice, elegant, basic photo-editing site, but it’s not the Photoshop you grew up with.

My question is, Why would Adobe attach the Photoshop name to this Web site? It’s not like the program needs more name recognition; “photoshopping” as a term to edit photographs is practically in the dictionary already (http://tinyurl.com/5k7qjj). Surely they could have come up with another name for it? I don’t mean to be nitpicky, but it’s not like there is even a continuum of “lite” (PS Express) to “medium” (Photoshop Elements, http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelwin/) to grown-up Photoshop. Obviously it’s aimed at casual users, such as those uploading photos to Flickr or Facebook (to which you can directly link from your PS account).

On the other hand, the whole idea of putting a version of Photoshop on a Web site shows that Adobe has a sense of where the future is going, and that’s to on-line applications.

It could be that the company also has a master plan to add more Photoshop-like features to the site (after all, it’s in beta and barely two weeks old). There was a bit of a flap over the digital rights Adobe claimed for photos uploaded to the site, but that seems to have been resolved (http://tinyurl.com/5vw32n.

Photoshop Express is by no means the only on-line option for photo editing; there are a couple out there. If you can live without the cachet of a major brand like Photoshop, you might find Fotoflexer (http://fotoflexer.com/) more versatile, with more sophisticated tools (many of which were found in earlier versions of the “real” Photoshop), but still easy to use. Fotoflexer offers more than 75 tools, as well as the ability to work in layers, add text, animations, distortions and lots of other fun items; it’s also free, and with links to all the sites where you would save photos (Myspace, Picasa, etc.).

As Adobe invented most of the tools on the Fotoflexer site anyway, I am looking forward to a beefed-up (and still free) Photoshop Express site real soon.

Note that I said “some” of the class-action suits. Nobody (except lawyers, of course) ever got rich off a class-action lawsuit – the class tends to be too big. But if you join a bunch of such lawsuits, you can get more than one piece of the pie. It’s like getting on the gravy train!

Class-action suits (in Israel, the concept is known as a teviah yitzugit) are generally complaints that a large group of people have in common – usually over a substandard product or service (http://tinyurl.com/2olctv). The idea behind such suits is, among other things, to make the legal process smoother and more efficient, as judges or juries only have to consider and decide on a single complaint.

Attorneys like them too, because, the thinking goes, the bigger the suit, the more of an impression it makes. In addition, the damages done to each individual plaintiff may not be enough of an incentive for a court case, meaning that defendants can continue to get away with whatever it is they are doing wrong. With a class-action case, complainants who feel ripped off are more likely to demand justice.

But not everyone is a fan of class-action suits; the settlements are usually very small and disproportionate (the settlement is spread out equally among those with greater and lesser claims of damage). On the other hand, a class-action suit is often the only way a lowly consumer is going to have a chance to get justice from a business giant like Microsoft.

But if you picked up a “Vista-ready” laptop or PC on a recent trip to the US, you may have a chance to recoup some of your money (and/or other restitution; I wouldn’t expect a check). The firm of Gordon Tilden Thomas & Cordell LLP is at your service, presenting a class-action suit against Microsoft for misrepresenting the capabilities of computers to run its new Vista operating system.

“Consumers paid for Vista capability (the computers were priced higher because of their Vista capability), but allegedly did not receive ‘real’ Vista capability,” reads a US District Court decision from several weeks ago, certifying the case as a class-action suit.

The computers, many of them low-end, were labeled as being “Vista-ready,” but customers found that they were incapable of taking advantage of many of the features of Vista, because their video cards were not able to use the Aero display, Media Center PC interface or Flip 3D window-switching. In addition, many of the peripherals that work with Windows XP won’t work with Vista, because drivers are not available or don’t work.

The lawsuit was first brought last year by a Washington State woman, but the law firm successfully argued that many consumers have similar complaints – opening the way for the suit to be certified as a class-action suit.

Apparently, the issue is one of either a misunderstanding between customers and Microsoft, or over-enthusiastic sales on the part of salespeople. Any new computer sold with Vista is capable of running Vista – in its basic version, that is. It would seem that many people got or were given the impression that even cheap computers were capable of running Vista Premium, with all its bells and whistles.

Should Microsoft have known better or been more careful in the way it presented Vista? That’s for the court to decide, but if you want to get in on the action, check out http://tinyurl.com/28rjuy to see if you qualify. It appears that Microsoft is going to have a hard time contending with this action; apparently Vista’s “dog” status was well known to Microsoft insiders (http://tinyurl.com/2tcnc9), who in a series of e-mails (released for the trial) apparently knew all about the problems with Vista – and went to market anyway, with what the plaintiffs contend was deceptive marketing.

If you were one of the early adopters who bought a Samsung Blu-ray DVD player, you’re in luck – you, too, can sue! Now that Toshiba’s HD-DVD has more or less thrown in the towel, with Sony’s Blu-ray standard the winner in the next-generation DVD format war, Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray DVD owners (other models have issues as well) have an extra reason to be hopping mad; their “victory” has been marred by the fact that their machines can’t play several popular movies (http://tinyurl.com/2ty4mt).

Samsung may just be the tip of the iceberg, industry insiders say, with the company likely to claim that it cannot be at fault, since standards for Blu-Ray were still in development when the machines in question were sold (June 2006). Purchasers of Blu-ray DVDs from other makers have also had their share of complaints, but this is the first certified class-action lawsuit against a Blu-ray DVD maker (other manufacturers in the industry have been sued over patent or other issues).

Because of the standards argument, and being that Samsung has issued several firmware updates to ensure full compatibility for players, the company has a better chance than Microsoft of surviving the consumer onslaught.

Then there’s the scam Network Solutions has apparently been running, according to yet another lawsuit. The company would automatically buy domain names that potential buyers searched for, and hold onto them for at least several days (http://tinyurl.com/ytu67u). Anyone who wanted to buy the names had to buy them from the company – for $35, instead of the eight bucks it would have cost you at a service like Godaddy.com.

Network Solutions has a story, of course, but a lawsuit is in the works, and may be granted class-action status as well.

If you’ve ever been a customer of Verizon Wireless in the US and had to pay an early termination fee to get out of your contract, you could get a piece of a whopping $1 billion that the company is being sued for in a class-action suit (http://tinyurl.com/2slx6u).

And if you own a Treo 600 or 650 PDA and have had to repair it two or more times, check out http://www.palzasettlement.com/ and file for a cash rebate ($50 or $75) in a recently settled case. It may not solve all your financial woes, but like I said, if you can get in on a bunch of these suits, you’ll be riding down Easy Street in no time!