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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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That works, of course, if you’re lucky enough to be in a vehicle that breaks down near the restaurant district. But let’s say your bus or car gives up the ghost on the way to Eilat – far from any wifi connections – and your replacement transportation is hours away. Meanwhile, you’re stuck on the side of the road, and you’ve got reports to file, virtual meetings to attend, or work on the server you’ve got to get done. Whaddaya gonna do now?

It’s especially galling – and frustrating – to be in a situation where you actually have time to get stuff done uninterrupted, but no way to get that work done, because you can’t connect to the internet. But to the rescue come the cell phone service providers, who will allow you to use their cellular network for your internet needs – for a price.

If you’ve recently acquired a new phone from an Israeli cell phone service provider and/or signed up for a new talk/SMS package, chances are you were offered an opportunity to receive a cellular modem for your laptop, which you can use to connect to the internet using the cell company’s 3G internet connection. If your job really requires you to connect to the internet at the drop of a hat, anytime and anywhere, a cell modem could be just what you need in the way of “internet insurance.”

If this sounds like something you could use, the service reps at your local friendly cell phone service provider will be happy to hook you up (unless you’re with Orange, where, based on the three phone calls I had to make in order to get answers, information on cell modem surfing packages is a well-kept secret).

In order to surf the net, you need two things – a modem (or other communication method, as will be described below) and an internet package. Most 3G phones come with such packages – the basic one at Orange is 21 shekels a month, for example – and when you sign up for the package, you’ll hear something like “you get 3GB of connection a month” (measured in data transfer). It sounds like a lot, and it is – but the catch is that the 3GB must be used only within the Orange network, ie on the sites they offer via their portal (“My Orange,” “Orange Time, “Orange News,” etc.). Once you leave the portal, though – to read, say, the New York Times online – you’re not connecting via your 3 GB of portal internet data allocation, but through the much more limited “external connection” allocation, which in the basic package, comes out to 30 MB of data transfer.

That’s not going to get you very far in the data world – it might be good for a couple of hours, but not much more. But for insurance purposes, 30 MB might be sufficient.

But then there’s the issue of the modem itself – and the cost. Orange offers three cell modems, one of which is priced way out of my league. The other two can be had for NIS 14 and 19 per month respectively, paid over a period of 36 months (total NIS 504 or 684). You get that money refunded, though, if you sign up for one of Orange’s “expanded” data plans – 5 GB of data connection for NIS 81 a month, or 20 GB for NIS 117. In addition, you have to commit to the plan for at least 18 months. And, if you stick with the basic package (or the medium one, which gives you 150 MB of data connection for NIS 40 a month) you have to pay for the modem – or supply one yourself.

Sounds expensive! There are ways to cut costs, though; there are many web sites that will tell you how to turn your Bluetooth-equipped cellphone into a modem – the advantage being that you can connect your laptop without a modem. But having used several phones in this manner, I can tell you that it’s often a complicated process, really not for the average phone user who just wants a little insurance against worst-case scenarios.

There is another way, though; for 15 euros (about 75 shekels), you can download and install a great program called JoikuSpot Premium, a piece of software that acts as a “soft” modem and lets you easily use your phone to connect a laptop to the internet. In fact, you can connect two or three laptops to the internet using JoikuSpot, which lets you provide insurance not just for your laptop, but for the laptops of friends and colleagues who had the bad luck to get stuck in the car with you!

The reason JoikuSpot is easier – on your computer, and on you, because it’s easier to set up – is because it translates your phone’s 3G internet connection into plain old wifi, making connecting a laptop to the phone modem a matter of choosing a wifi connection from the list your laptop usually presents you with. You can create a secure (password) connection with JoikuSpot, or even open a VPN pipe to a corporate server. You can change the name of the network, choose any (or no) landing page, and automatically drop down to a 2G connection if and when your 3G network runs out of gas (of course, the connection will be much slower). As an insurance policy, it’s a lot cheaper (and more versatile) than buying a modem, and you don’t have to commit to 18 months of 5 or 20 GB internet in order to get a free modem. So, the next time Ol’ Betsy starts smoking, don’t panic – pull over to the side of the road, called your service company for a tow, and make the most of your time doing some productive work – thanks to JoikuSpot!

At which point, faced with a plethora of choices, you may just find yourself wishing that now-defunct monopoly back in existence!

Israeli trust-busters have been having a field day in recent years, legislating corporate diversity among cell phone service providers, long distance phone companies, TV and radio broadcasters – and now, local home and business phone service, wresting control of the fixed line phone business from Bezeq. Now, anyone with a license (which you get from the Ministry of Communications) can offer competing fixed line phone service, using the same phone infrastructure installed by Bezeq (but paid for by our tax shekels!). In other words, you use the Bezeq phone line, but you don’t pay Bezeq a shekel (or maybe you do, depending on whom you ask).

Long-time Israeli residents who remember the nose-up-in-the-air elitist attitude of the “old” quasi-governmental hyper-bureaucratic Bezeq jumped for joy when competitors started entering the home phone market in 2006, after the Knesset amended the Telecommunications Law (http://tinyurl.com/pp775z) to allow the licensing of fixed-line phone service providers – and to enable customers to keep their phone numbers when signing up with a new service provider (a provision which came into effect in 2007). Finally – a chance for the consumer to tell those Bezeq so-and-so’s where to go with their smug and condescending attitudes! On to the brave new world of freedom of telephone choice! Yeah!

Well, it certainly is a new world of home phone communications out there – and make no mistake, you need to be brave in order to take it on. For most home phone subscribers, there’s Bezeq, the known quantity, on this side of the technological abyss. Bezeq service works pretty much as it always has; you plug your phone into the wall, pick up the receiver, hear a dial tone, press the numbers on the phone pad, and talk. You get your bill at the end of the month and pay. Then you do it all over again next month. No surprises, and the service is usually pretty reliable; the only times you don’t get that dial tone are usually the result of cataclysmic events, like a war (when the lines may be jammed with worried callers or diverted for defense purposes), after a major storm when phone lines may be down, in the event of a strike – or, when you forgot to pay your bill.

But in this high-speed trust-busting freedom of choice era, variety is the spice of life, and you can now avail yourself of no fewer than five other choices for your local phone needs. Besides Bezeq, local phone service is now provided by 013 Netvision, 012 Smile, Hot (the cable TV service provider), Orange (the cellphone service provider), and Bezeq International (separate from Bezeq, known heretofore only as a long distance company).

As a good consumer (and thanks to a suggestion by a loyal reader), I decided to check out the phone field in order to determine whether I could save a few shekels by leaving Bezeq. So, can Bezeq customers save money by moving to another service provider? Short answer: Yes – but (there always has to be a “but!”)

The first question that people new to the concept of alternative phone companies ask is whether or not they can keep their current phone numbers. The answer is yes – thanks to the amendments to the telecommunications law mentioned earlier, your number is yours as long as you want to keep it, regardless of where you send your payments. You even get to keep your area code (if you sign up for a new line with any of the new service providers, they will give you the area code assigned to the company – for example, new accounts with 012Smile that were not transferred from Bezeq get an area code of 072).

All the competitors to Bezeq use broadband to connect your calls to the local and international phone network, so you have to be an ADSL customer with some level of high-speed internet in order to take advantage of their deals (unless you’re a customer of HOT, the cable company, which uses its own infrastructure to offer phone service).

All of the service providers offer what appear to be very attractive prices. Speaking at length to Ilan, a rep from 013Netvision, for example, I was offered a deal that would let me surf the internet (at a speed of 5MB/s) AND make 3,000 minutes of calls to landlines in Israel for NIS 55 a month. That sum does not include calls to cell phones, but for an extra NIS 7.90 a month, I could reduce the cost of calls to cell lines from the 33 agurot per minute they usually charge to “less” (depending on how much I called, times of day, etc.). In addition, Ilan told me (after somehow ascertaining that I was observant) that his company’s service was “approved by the Great Rabbis,” and that since calls to other 013Netvision customers were free, I could hear the various Torah-on-the-phone lectures that the company hosts for free, for as long as I wanted to listen. That sounded like a good deal – maybe a little too good, as we will see below.

I also checked out Orange, with whom I have a cellphone account. While Orange may not have the best price, it does have very advanced services, especially for Orange cellphone customers; for example, you can forward a call to your home or cell phone to the other device when one of them rings, you can hold as many as three conversations at once, and you pay one price to all phone numbers – including cell numbers (everyone else charges the same rate as Bezeq for calls to cellphones). I figured I could save about NIS 60 a month if I switched to Orange’s phone and internet service provider plan (you can find a helpful calculator here which will show you how much you can expect to pay, based on how much you surf and talk).

The story was the same everywhere else; Bezeq, it turns out, is more expensive than all the other providers (the one with the cheapest rates was Bezeq International). So of course I called Bezeq in order to see if they could be bargained with.

Apparently many others have done the same in recent months, because as soon as I said “013Netvision” and “Orange home phone,” they transferred me to a fellow who was clearly trained to deal with calls like mine. Of course, he said, you realize you won’t get the same quality with “the others,” since you’re using your ADSL line for talking and surfing at the same time. “I have had so many customers come back after they left to try out the others, complaining about how their calls drop when they download a movie or other heavy item,” said Matan, the rep. In addition, he said, all these companies were still obligated to pay Bezeq a line fee for use of the ADSL line, which added about NIS 25 to all the alternative providers, including (he said specifically) 013Netvision, a claim that both they and Orange denied, claiming it was already included in their monthly fees. In addition, Matan from Bezeq said, you have to pay an installation fee to switch services, and there is definitely a negative impact on phone service when you surf the net.

Installation does indeed cost money, with all the Bezeq alternatives – mostly in the area of NIS 200 or so. However, many of the companies seem willing to waive the installation fee if you are willing to commit to a period of service, like a year (both Orange and 013Netvision said I could drop the phone service any time, although they both wanted a year commitment on the internet service).

The latter claim is easy to check out too: If you’ve ever used a service like Vonage (or even Skype) on your home ADSL line, you’ll be ready for the worst-case scenario with the alternative phone companies. Just how much broadband “juice” does an Internet phone call use? I found a few interesting discussions on the internet (see http://tinyurl.com/qd4cfh, http://tinyurl.com/qu5yts, and http://tinyurl.com/okjx8g), but of course, those rates are dependent on many local factors that may or may not be relevant here in Israel.

And that, really, is where the dream of “punishing” Bezeq for all the injustices Israelis have suffered at the company’s hands over the years fell apart, at least for me. Because while in theory a 5MB/s connection sounds like it should be able to cover both serious surfing and internet phone calls, the sad truth is that you’re probably getting far less speed than you think you are (that’s a story for another day, but meanwhile check out the Hebrew article on the subject at here). Bezeq, of course, will say that the reason your bandwidth speed is up to 40% less than what you’re paying for is because of your home network, devices that are using the bandwidth, etc.

Which could very well be true – but currently, 5MB/s is the most cost effective speed for Bezeq ADSL (the price jumps significantly at 8MB, the maximum offered to home users, unless you live in an area served by its next generation network, which you probably don’t). Unfortunately, based on my experience, I’m not ready to trust my home phone service to the graces of my current ADSL setup – and as a result, Bezeq gets to keep its monopoly at our place, at least a little while longer.

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.’

“If you’re asking for a mission statement, here it is,” replied Chris Dibona, Director of Open Source Code at Google World Headquarters. “We want to harness the world’s information and make it useful.”

Such was the atmosphere among computer folk at last week’s Google Development Day (GDD), held at Airport City. There were seminars and talks on how to use the tools Google has developed (or acquired and made their own) for the organization, digestion, and presentation of that information.

The computing society is moving on-line, converging from three directions – print, television, and computer media. Print’s problems are well-known, with the long-term erosion of its audience (due to the internet and poor worldwide reading standards). As far as television is concerned, that. too is showing its first signs of cracking under the strain of competition with the Web: In last week’s election, pollsters found that more of the 18-31 set got their information about Barack Obama and John McCain from the internet than from TV. And media, such as disks, CDs, and even DVDs, have long been losing out to on-line storage, digital MP3 music and video files, etc.

So it’s not just information that Google is organizing: It’s online electronic information, which Google hopes will become the medium for storage and transfer of most forms of information, like books,
video, documents, databases, etc. Naturally, the company develops tools to allow developers and users to manipulate that information.

But Google can’t be everywhere all the time; it can’t provide all the information it would like to in all possible forms. But it can help developers do so – and in order to make things easier for them, Google provides numerous APIs which they can plug into the applications or services they are building, many with minimal programming required; much of the “heavy” programming work is done on the Google back end, so if you don’t need to modify the default API too much, you won’t have to dedicate too much effort to integrating it into your product. Thus does Google win hearts and minds in the developer community – by making available to them easy to use and integrate components that make their lives easier, all for free!

Google sponsors its Developer Days in 16 countries around the world – including Israel, which has, according to the Google folk at the fair, one of the larger GDDs, thanks to the large number of internet application and service companies here. The truth is, lots of these companies would probably use the Google API as components in their applications anyway, because they’re there, easy to use, and free. So, it’s awfully nice of Google to put on a nice party, complete with snacks and lunch – thus promoting good public relations, as the company realizes that the true way to the heart of internet programmers is through their stomachs.

And, according to the company execs who presented at a press conference during the program, Google is always innovating, looking for the new products to roll out to developers. “Seventy percent of Google’s work is in the search engine and applications, 20A% is in emerging products – where we come up with major new ideas that eventually go ‘mainstream,’ like Google Docs – and 10% is what we call the ‘crazy’ stuff, which may or may not ever get out of the lab,” Dibona said.

Google’s two newest projects – Chrome and Android – were much on the mind of Google staffers. Chrome (http://www.google.com/chrome), of course, is the new browser the company has released, with Google hoping to garner market share from Internet Explorer and Firefox users. Why bother with a browser? According to Bill Hesse, who works on Chrome, the company wanted “a faster browser with fewer buttons and more space on the screen for display, as well as being more compatible with increasingly complex Google applications.” The browser is completely open source, and according to http://tinyurl.com/5zzz9q, Chrome doesn’t collect information about your online activity, and doesn’t even hardcode its own search engine into the browser (unlike IE, where, if you leave MSN as the default page, you can’t even touch the screen until the MSN site loads).

Android is an even more ambitious project – an operating system and software platform for mobile phones, also open source, free, and completely flexible for development purposes. The phones themselves are made and offered by cell phone manufacturers and service providers (especially T-Mobile in the U.S.), and cost roughly the same as other smart phone; the idea is to let developers run wild, taking advantage of all the features of both phones and Android code, letting them come up with the next “killer app.”

Naturally, the Google Israel people had what to say as well. Yossi Matias, head of Google’s Tel Aviv development center, and Yoelle Mark, head of the company’s Haifa development center, discussed the Israeli contribution to Google worldwide. Far from just rendering Gmail and Google Maps into Hebrew (and a fine job they did on both), Israel is also the main development center for several Google products, such as Trends (http://www.google.com/trends), Youtube annotations (http://www.youtube.com/t/annotations_about), and Youtube contests (http://www.youtube.com/contests_main). Thus Israel, too, pulls its weight in the Global Google Information Empire. And we couldn’t be happier!

So what’s the first thing a good Jew yells when confronted with such a situation? Anti-Semitism! But hold on – it could be that, in this case at least, Apple is actually doing us a favor. True, we may be excluded from the new iPhone party (at least for now), but thanks to the 3G iPhone, the opportunity to get a iPhone device we can actually use – and afford – has never been better.

First, the details: The new iPhone is, according to Apple, “twice as fast and half the price.” The new version works with 3G networks, provides GPS style maps, lets you work with Microsoft Outlook Exchange servers, and allows users to access the “App Store,” the first Apple-sponsored centralized depot of free and for-pay iPhone applications. And, the new device has a 3G radio, allowing streaming radio as part of the built-in applications (courtesy of AOL). The biggest change, of course, is the price: Instead of the $399 it cost until now to buy a device, you can get a more advanced, 3G iPhone for just $199. It’s like “two for one” day at the supermarket!

Why We Can’t Buy One Here: After the worldwide success of the iPhone, with millions of the things being “unofficially” used around the world (the original iPhones were offered only in the U.S., and later some European countries), Apple got the hint, and has struck deals with cell phone service providers all over the world to sell iPhones and calling plans. It appears that Apple is selling in just about every country where it was able to strike a deal – how else to explain the wide diversity of countries on its list, which include hi-tech “giants” like Cameroon, Burundi, Jamaica, Equitorial Guinea, and Uruguay- as well as Jordan and Egypt? Like Israelis wouldn’t snap up many more iPhones than Egyptians, Jordanians and Burundians combined!

Israel isn’t the only country Apple is skipping: Notably absent from the list are several countries one would have expected see, like South Korea, China, and Thailand. Qatar is in, but Dubai and the UAE aren’t. And Russia’s not there either. Each country has its own story on why its citizens can’t get a 3G iPhone with local service, according to a number of Web sites I reviewed (in South Korea, for example, there seems to be a lot of pressure from local cellphone manufacturers Samsung and LG against Apple’s inroads among service providers). Israel, too, has a “story” when it comes to its exclusion from the club.

It actually doesn’t take much brainpower to figure out what the problem is. In much of the Middle East and Africa, the preferred service partner seems to be Orange, so I assume they have some kind of multi-country zone deal with Apple to provide service. After numerous attempts to speak to someone at iDigital, Apple’s local representative, I couldn’t find someone official willing to make a statement on why Orange Israel hasn’t adopted the iPhone, but a brief perusal of Orange’s website provides the likely answer. Orange, like other Israeli cellphone service providers, makes a good chunk of change on the devices it sells, not just the service. Orange currently sells phones that can be considered iPhone competitors – the Nokia n95 and the Blackberry Curve 8310 – for NIS 3,205 and NIS 4,294 respectively. How’s it gonna look for them to sell an iPhone for NIS 805 ($199 at the current exchange rate plus 15.5% VAT)? That’s cheaper than almost all of the “cheap” phones Orange sells! Like they say in Brooklyn, fuhgeddaboutit.

What to Do If You Want an iPhone Anyway: While many Israelis who have gone abroad over the past year have brought back with them iPhones purchased on their journeys that they unlocked and used with their GSM Sim cards here, that may no longer be an option with the iPhone 3G. In the U.S., iPhones are available in two places – Apple Stores and AT&T service centers, which provides all the official calling plans for U.S. iPhones. The reason the new iPhone is half the price of the old one is because AT&T is subsidizing the price – which means that if you buy a 3G iPhone, you will be required to sign up for a two year calling plan (which, according to many sites, such as http://tinyurl.com/5k55nq, will make it more expensive than the $399 device with a calling plan!). That will also be the case in the Apple Store; until now you were able to buy a phone without signing up for an AT&T plan, but under the new system, you are obligated to join one within 30 days of purchase – and if you don’t, they’ll charge your credit card like you did anyway (it’s not clear if you will be able to pay a penalty to get a phone without joining a plan; I’m betting no, at least at the beginning).

Then there’s the issue of the cost – and benefit – of 3G service in Israel (the 3G Internet package for the Blackberry costs NIS 175 a month!). Do you really need 3G anyway? Probably not. If you’re looking for a cool replacement phone you can easily swap out your Sim card into, the “old” iPhone (which just two weeks ago was the height of cellphone technology!) will do just fine. And now you have an opportunity to get one at a bargain price! If you’re traveling in the U.S. this summer, check out an Apple Store and check out one of the now surplus iPhone models, which will probably be on sale beginning in mid-July – and for those who can’t make it to an Apple Store, you can be sure there will be a flood of “outdated” iPhones on sites like eBay available for a bargain price, as many current iPhone users with proper AT&T calling plans upgrade to the new model. For you and I, though, last month’s technology can become this year’s bargain cellphone buy!

While not exactly old hat, iPods have been around long enough to have come down in price significantly. There are a host of cheaper imitators that may be easier to handle (see below), but let’s face it: Zunes, Sansas, and no-name made in China MP4 players just don’t have the afikomen oomph of an iPod. If they don’t already have one, you could do worse than spending $39 on a refurbished iPod (http://tinyurl.com/65qfhr), on sale at Apple USA. If you’ve got someone to bring them in for you, iPods at those prices qualify as gifts for the under $50 no import duty rule. You may have to pay VAT if you have them shipped, although the shipping costs would be minimal, because they’re so small.

Modern generation iPods can play music and video, as can many other modern portable player clones. The difference is that the iPod is a platform, with many extra applications written or produced especially for it. Because the iPod is so popular, many developers have come up with tweaks and programs to help you get more out of it.

Sometimes, it seems, it pays to go with the name brand.

For example, you can download and install CantoPod (for Mac OSx or Windows), which lets you see the lyrics to the songs on your iPod (all except the Shuffle). The program’s database has the words to over 200,000 songs, including many of those that your kids are listening to that you know are they shouldn’t be, but can’t figure out why, because you can’t understand what the performers are saying. There is also a version for cell phones with music players. Check out the free CantoPod at http://www.staylazy.net/canto/.

The miniscule iPod is perfect for running around with, whether in the gym or on an outdoor running track. Many people who already exercise buy one to keep them company, while many others buy one as an incentive to get them to exercise. That’s where the free iPodGym program comes in handy (http://somatotype.net/iPod-Gym/). This site has dozens of instructional videos you can download to your iPod (properly formatted, of course) and watch. Even more ambitious (but costing $19.95) is iWorkout (http://www.helmesinnovations.com/iWorkout/) with 101 videos, nutritional charts, nutrition & dieting essentials, etc.

The iPod is great for exercising not only your body – but your mind as well! Any iPod that can display video or song lyrics can also display text and with iPod Notes (http://www.ipod-notes.com/) you can turn a text file on your computer, or even a Web page, into an e-book that you can display and read on your iPod. Also available is iPod eBook Creator (http://ebookhood.com/ipod-ebook-creator), which, in association with http://ebookhood.com/, lets you download hundreds of already converted e-books (including many classics, science fiction, etc.) all ready to go. And, if you like the idea of a “walking encyclopedia,” you can download the entire Wikidpedia for storage and display on your device. Or, if you need instant access to a dictionary, you can download the 2006 edition of the Merriam-Webster dictionary at http://tinyurl.com/qymfc/ (all programs are free except the dictionary, which is $9.95).

One of the most amazing programs for the iPod is Handbrake (http://handbrake.fr/). If you’ve never tried this all around (and free!) video converter for iPods, get it now before Apple people sue it out of existence. Handbrake will take any DVD (Video-TS folder, DVD image or real DVD) and output it to MP4 (Mpeg4, suitable for iPod display), MKV, AVI or OGM, with all the DVD features including subtitles, chapters, etc. Handbrake can even “do” encrypted videos (using third party components) and the program has a very active user forum with lots of good advice on the site’s community page. If you prefer “pre-canned” video in the form of clips you can download from Youtube, check out Ares Tube (http://www.benjaminstrahs.com/, for PC only), which can handle video from not only Youtube, but dozens of other video sites as well.

Not all is hunky dory in the world of iPod. The bane of many device users is having to coordinate what’s on the player with iTunes, which has its own peculiar (some would say rigid) way of doing things. Fortunately, you can divorce an iPod from its dependence on iTunes; download Floola (http://www.floola.com/), a cross platform iPod manager that does everything iTunes does, and then some, adding support for lyrics, album artwork, converting video files to MP4 format, and downloading Youtube files. It also lets you copy files to and from the iPod without “synchronizing” the whole thing with the computer’s music library, as well as, allowing you to connect more than one iPod to a computer – both features that seem beyond the abilities of iTunes to perform in a user friendly manner.

In fact, if you try to do either of these things with a Mac, expect to spend several hours at your computer trying to work things out! If you insist on using iTunes and you want to copy songs or video or your device onto the computer independent of the music library, check out Expod (http://expod.joynt.net/). After being the nice dad who got his kids a bunch of iPods and who wanted to transfer songs from one device to another without having to erase them each time (because of iTunes’ limitations), and after trying a bunch of tools that claimed to allow such copying, I found Expod to be the only program that actually worked, letting you run such a basic operation on an iTunes equipped Mac. In the case of multiple accounts and copying songs, the iPod could learn a trick or two from its Chinese no-name clone cousin!

You might think that I, sophisticated and worldly Newzgeek who always seems to be on top of things, would be able to count himself among the digitally privileged. But oh, how wrong you would be. Some computer folk, it is true, find their paths open and laid out before them, with no obstacles in their way. Not me; I have to work like a dog for every advance, for every innovation.

Not one to rely on glamorous press releases, I try out ideas that developers and Web sites claim are cool. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t – but either way, I have an experience I can share with readers to clue them in to a great idea, or warn them away from one that doesn’t work.

To wit: In my never-ending quest to cheap out and avoid buying an iPhone (it’s just a matter of time, I assure you), I’ve been busily upgrading my Sony Ericsson w710i, still a great phone for the money. It’s advantage over run- of-the-mill 3G cellphones, of course, is the built-in jogging and running software; when you run the program, the phone records the number of steps you take (walking or running), speed, distance covered, calories burnt, etc. Can the iPhone do that? Probably, but my phone is cheaper, and I have it already.

I also installed an improved video player, so the phone can also play back MP4 video format files (along with a bunch of others), just like the iPhone. As a Sony legacy product, my phone is all about being a Walkman too, and has music software that can handle playlists, searches, song identification, etc. And I upgraded the storage card (memory stick, in Sony’s world) to handle 2 GB of stuff. True, that’s half the amount of the least of the iPhones, but all that means is I have to connect my phone to a computer twice as much as an iPhone owner. Big deal.

And there’s one thing my Sony phone has over an iPhone – FM radio. Maybe it’s an internal response to the existential of modern life, but I much prefer recorded music played by a live person on the other side of a microphone to recorded music on a memory card. The iPhone doesn’t have built-in local FM radio; you have to spend an extra $50 for an add-on to get that. What you can listen to on the iPhone, however, is Internet radio, via a number of applications and Web sites that have special streams for the Apple devices.

As it happens, you can listen to Internet radio on a Sony Java phone too – at least theoretically. (This is about where the press releases and glowing statements began to diverge from the reality of things.) Unfortunately, listening to Internet radio on a Java phone isn’t easy, and it’s probably not free.

You may be wondering why I need Internet radio if I’ve got regular radio to keep me busy. Why not just listen to MP3s when I’m in the mood, and Reshet whatever when I want a live voice?

Because I want to be free. Untethered. Able to lift my head, run and jump as I please, without worrying about getting tangled up in something I might not be able to get out of so easily. And, because if an iPhone can do it, I can do it too.

For you see, the one drawback to my local cellphone radio setup is that I have to be tethered to the phone. The radio needs an antenna, and the antenna connects physically to the phone via the recharging (data) port. The connector has a microphone, a connection for a pair of earbuds or earphones, and of course the antenna. Usually I don’t mind it that much, but there are times when it’s annoying to have the wires running around the front of my body.

Avoiding wires is why people buy Bluetooth headpieces and microphones, but in this case, Bluetooth won’t allow streaming of FM radio. But I could use a Bluetooth headset to listen to streaming Internet radio. All I had to do was find a streaming Internet radio program for Java phones that would allow me to enter the URLs for my favorite stations (and upgrade my plan to allow for unlimited data connections, of course) and I was set!

So, doing my due diligence duty, I came up with no fewer than four different solutions for Java cellphone Internet radio: MFRadio (http://mfradio.sourceforge.net/), Radiobee (http:// www.radiobee.com/), Mplayer (http://tinyurl.com/32fdz8) and La Velle Mobile Radio (http://www.lavellamobile.com/). With four to choose from, I figured at least one of them would work out and I would be listening to my favorite local radio via their Internet streams, without encumbering wires. Untethered.

As you have probably figured out by now, it wasn’t that simple. I started with Mplayer (Sourceforge is always good, isn’t it?), but – nothing. The highly praised Radiobee also turned out to be useless; unable to stream a sound. The only program that worked at all, in fact, was the La Velle application.

Why did La Velle work but not the others? Apparently my SIM is somehow “locked” for the purposes of streaming Internet radio. (I couldn’t figure out exactly why, but it may be a security thing.) La Velle had a workaround for this, which allowed me to stream their stations, but the workaround didn’t fix things for the other programs.

But one program is all I need, right? Maybe, but La Velle is not going to allow me to stream the sites that I want, from what I could tell. The site has more than 130 stations streaming via their server (and you have to use their “rebroadcasting server” if you have a locked SIM card, unless you set one up yourself. I have the instructions, if you’re really interested). Plus, it’s not free; although they are running a special where you can get lifetime membership for a mere $19.97. (In this day of the puny dollar and the super-shekel, it works out to not a bad price.)

I was very tempted, but my experience with the several free stations they offered as a sample was not very encouraging; stations would drop out after a few seconds and reconnect randomly. Tweaking the buffering settings and such, as suggested by the program’s site, had no effect. After an hour or so of sincere trying, I gave it up. Still tethered after all these years, it seems.

It’s possible the La Velle program would work fine in other places; maybe we just have an anemic GPRS connection around here. (I may keep the program around for awhile to experiment with connections in different parts of the country.)

The iPhone has Wi-fi, along with GPRS, so you would be assured of a strong stream if you were within range of a Wi-fi network. (You may have a problem if the connection tries to roll over to GPRS when you get out of Wi-fi range.)

But it still doesn’t have local radio, although Apple is said to be getting read to roll out an FM-equipped iPhone. Until then, though, the standoff continues – and I must continue to plod along, tethered. Life’s tough.