Readers will have certainly read this story (http://tinyurl.com/6mcjbq), a Jerusalem Post scoop, describing serious security breaches on Facebook. IDF soldiers have posted details of their bases, weapons they have worked with, and personal information about who they are and what they do in the IDF. A special IDF unit, the article says, has been searching Facebook for months trying to identify and, hopefully, eliminate the information, which could potentially be used against Israel in a future war.

It’s the same on Google Earth; terrorists have, by their own admission, used information on GE to target Israeli sites (http://tinyurl.com/3agqb7):

“Members of the Aksa Martyrs Brigade, a group aligned with the Fatah political party, say they use the popular Internet mapping tool to help determine their targets for rocket strikes. ‘We obtain the details from Google Earth and check them against our maps of the city center and sensitive areas,’ Khaled Jaabari, the group’s commander in Gaza who is known as Abu Walid, told the Guardian. Abu Walid showed the Guardian an aerial image of the Israeli town of Sderot on his computer to demonstrate how his group searches for targets.”

All this, in addition to the insult and injury both Google Earth (http://tinyurl.com/5vazkc) and Facebook (http://tinyurl.com/5pzttm) cause us as a nation and a people.

But what’s good for the Israeli goose is good for the Iranian and Syrian gander. They, too, have military secrets that are “out there,” and a discerning Web surfer could find out a thing or two about how Israel’s enemies are preparing for war. Much information of use to terrorists anywhere in the world is publicly available on the Web. Many shopping malls, for example, have detailed information about the way the building was constructed, the plumbing or air filtration system, or similar details that an ambitious terrorist could take advantage of.

And there are also sites that have useful tidbits and nuggets about security procedures, weapons and other interesting information for almost every country in the world (it helps to be multilingual, though). Even local map sites have interesting and useful information that maybe shouldn’t be there. I found a couple of what I thought were “questionable” items on a well-known Israeli map site (I won’t mention what or where, for obvious reasons, but I did e-mail the site).

What’s good about services like Google Earth and Facebook is that they’re “concentrated” – everything you need is on one site, if you know what you’re looking for. And no country is safe; finding out “secrets” is often more about human error (as in the case of the IDF soldiers and Facebook), or intelligent people putting two and two together.

Intelligence experts in Europe last week noticed something different on a satellite photo taken in Iran recently, and determined that Iran was developing long-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching targets in Europe (now they know how it feels).

Of course, anybody with access to a multimillion-dollar satellite that can take high-resolution photos from space of objects two feet off the ground (http://tinyurl.com/5s8j4w) can pull off the same trick. But you don’t need to spend a lot of money on satellite photos to figure out what the Iranians are doing. All you need is a quick eye on Google Earth, like the person at http://tinyurl.com/5bmg55. While the hi-res photo didn’t reveal the specific site in Iran where the missile development is taking place, comparing the hi-res photo with older images of Iran on GE, the poster of this information figured out where the new facility was – right down to the building:

“Entering the coordinates N 35 13 19, E 53 53 41 reveals a Digital Globe satellite image of the facility taken earlier than” the one cited by Jane’s (the site was referred to in the article as “a previously unknown missile location, the site, about 230 kilometers. southeast of Teheran”).

Another intelligent guess on intelligence regarding Iran can be seen at http://tinyurl.com/59xvh2, where the author extrapolates what Iran would do with the the S-300PT SAM system it purchased from Belarus (it got two from Belarus and two from an “undisclosed source”). The author of this blog cites his source as Jane’s, and discusses several other weapons and defensive systems Iran has acquired recently.

Being apparently less innovative than Israel in how its weapons are deployed, the author makes a case for a scenario in how the systems would be used to defend strategic Iranian interests, including Teheran and the country’s nuclear facilities. Attached to the analysis are images of Google Earth, marked up with diagrams showing how the missile systems (to be used for defensive purposes, the author said) would be deployed, as well as the most logical locations for the systems, given their known capabilities.

GE has also helped reveal to the wider world the “secret” of Syria’s nuclear weapons deployment in the North of the country. The Ogle Earth site (http://tinyurl.com/5vwjva), which is where GE geeks go to share ideas, analyzes the satellite photos of the September 6 raid (officially, we still don’t know who was behind it), and based on information quoted in the name of a “senior US official,” pinpoints what the site believes to be the “single spot” where the facility could have been. The building where the facility was being built for the last six years, according to intelligence reports (http://tinyurl.com/63dgbf), should have shown up in GE – and indeed it does, following the coordinates based on the analysis listed.

Of course, Israel’s security is a lot more important to us then Iran’s or Syria’s – and Israelis, as citizens of the nation with the highest per capita amount of computer ownership in the world, have more opportunities to make mistakes. (It’s hard to imagine Syrian troops forming a club on Facebook.) With greater opportunity comes greater responsibility, of course – but it’s nice to see that the system can work in our favor sometimes, too!

More than 50,000 people visited the 1,200 or so exhibitors at the show last year, and this year organizers hope to increase the number of visitors substantially.

Out of the 1,289 exhibitors this year, 88 are from Israel – more than any other country, except for the United States (208), Britain (188), France (146) and Germany (111). In fact, one could say that Israel is far more innovative than even these technology superpowers, since almost every booth run by an Israeli company at this year’s show works primarily in R&D, as opposed to the many service providers representative of other countries, both large and small, who are attending the show solely to build partnerships using their existing resources.

And it goes without saying – but we’ll say it anyway – that the entire Arab world was barely able to muster a minyan of representatives for the show – even “hot” Middle East economies like the UAE (three). Of Israel’s immediate neighbors, Lebanon (three), Jordan (two) and Saudi Arabia (10) have companies that will be attending, while none came from Syria or Egypt, which is the largest country in the Arab world and has had a GDP growth rate of more than 6 percent that has rivaled Israel’s over the past several years. Makes you wonder.

You may have already heard of the first bit of big news to come out of an Israeli company exhibiting at Barcelona – the “modular phone” being introduced by Israeli start-up Modu (http://www.modumobile.com/). You slip the credit-card-sized Modu component, the “guts” of a cellphone/PDA/GPS/Entertainment device/alarm clock/whatever into a “jacket” that primarily performs the function you are interested in at any given moment.

The product was announced with great fanfare last week and featured in the computer press around the world, guaranteeing that the Modu booth at the Congress will be jam-packed, as service and content providers clamor to join the three service providers Modu says it has already made a deal with.

This is pretty big news, if you ask me. And while it would seem that Israel has, with the Modu announcement, already received its share of Barcelona glory and fame, there are plenty of other innovative companies that will be presenting innovations no less impressive, in my humble opinion. I actually have written about a number of them in my “Stellar Start-ups” column, the latest being InfoGin, http://tinyurl.com/2hr9rp, whose technology could revolutionize the way cellphone surfers see and use Web sites.

With convergence the watchword in the computer, Internet and cellphone industries – and manufacturers and service providers trying to pack as much communications punch into their devices – cellphone/device development is now where it’s at in the technology world, attracting the best and brightest people and ideas to solve a whole new crop of problems that are preventing the cellphone revolution from moving forward.

One typical problem is battery power, which tends to fail when you need it most on portable devices like cellphones – but also on laptop computers, iPods and PDAs. Elaborate chargers are supplied when you buy these devices, but they’re difficult to lug around. Why can’t someone come up with a normal power supply – say, AAA batteries – to power cellphones? Probably because such batteries wouldn’t provide enough power to run a cellphone, but maybe they could help recharge the device’s lithium battery pack when you’re on the road.

Now that’s one idea most of us would never have thought of. Luckily, Israeli start-up Techtium (http://www.techtium.com/) did, and will be presenting their line of standard alkaline battery backup solutions for cellphones, laptops, video cameras and other devices at the congress. Batteries may not be as “sexy” an innovation as Modu-type “jackets,” but it’s a great solution to a practical problem faced by everyone who uses devices with rechargeable batteries.

Israeli companies will also be showing off software innovations this week, such as the one offered by Aerotel (http://www.aerotel.com), which takes GPS-based safety to a whole new level. Aerotel will be showing its GeoSkeeper GPS quad-band GSM module; it allows parents to keep track of their children’s whereabouts via GPS. If the kid leaves the specific area s/he is permitted to be at (school, the mall, etc.), the phone can send an SMS to parents, caregivers or security personnel – sort of like an electronic security guard following the wearer. The company also has a number of interesting solutions in the area of “Telemedicine,” enabling caregivers to provide long-distance assistance to patients.

There are plenty of others, too. EIM Telecom (http://www.eimtelecom.com/) has developed a bridge device to connect cellphones and laptops, enabling users to make Skype-style free and low-cost IP phone calls from their cell devices (http://www.skuku.com/).

Dblur (http://www.dblur.com/) develops software to enable cellphone cameras to take better pictures. Nexperience (http://www.nexperience.com) develops innovative testing procedures for cellphone makers.

It’s worth checking out the full catalog of Israeli companies at the congress site (on the home page, click on Exhibition > 2008 Exhibitor Listing, where you can select by country and/or industry). Many of the companies presenting at the congress are members of the Israel Mobile and Communications Association (IMA), which is sponsoring several events for the Israeli companies attending. In addition, the IMA will broadcast recorded video blogs from the show, so you can feel like you’re there, at least in spirit.