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!

Oh, of course the news is mostly about Google Chrome, available currently only for Windows XP/Vista and released a couple of weeks ago to a not exactly browser starved public. Even if you’re happy with your current browser choice, it’s worth a try, because it gives a refreshing take on searching. Whereas Firefox can be considered a power search program (with the extra power coming from the thousands of add-ons you can implement to squeeze productivity out of the browser), Chrome, still a beta program, is more about simplicity, with iconic representation of recent searches in new tabs, and the automatic searches (via Google, of course) of any term you type into the address bar (here known as the Omnibar).

It’s also fast, and introduces an important innovation in the world of browsers, in which each tab is treated as a separate process. This is important, according to the little comic book presentation on the Chrome home page that attempts to explain Chrome’s technological innovations (you have got to see it!), because Web pages sometimes get “stuck” on a tab (often when your browser is trying to run a poorly-behaved Java applet). By separating the processes by tab, essentially running the tabs as separate programs, you don’t have to trash all your tabs when one goes bad. For Firefox users who are often the victim of such problems, that in itself is a reason to consider using Chrome.

There was a bit of a flap when Chrome was first released, with its end user license agreement requiring you to basically agree that all the information you typed into Chrome for searches belonged to Google. The original EULA, since toned down, read “By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to” do whatever Google wanted with the content. That put a quick damper on Chrome download enthusiasm, prompting the company to allow that the user retains his or her own copyright to what they type into the browser.

Perhaps to make amends for this gaffe, Google announced last week that it would “anonymize” its user logs – remove information like IP addresses, etc. that could be used to identify individual users – after nine months, instead of the 18 months that had previously been its policy. Actually, if you use Gmail, Google Docs, or any of the other freebie Google services, you’re placing personal sensitive information in the trust of the company’s servers anyway – in other words, Google already knows (or can know) all about you, if they want to.

Anticipating perhaps the hesitation on the part of some to entrust even more information – this time, on what they do in their browsers, and not just what they search for if they’re using Google – Chrome includes an “incognito” mode, in which Chrome does not record information (cookies, archived pages, etc.) on sites you visit (note that this is a feature in the also still in beta Internet Explorer 8, and even Firefox, according to http://tinyurl.com/6rgk9j). As such, it is possible, according to http://tinyurl.com/6pgfu5, to run two different Gmail accounts at the same time, something that you cant’ do in any other browser. Another nice plus for Chrome users!

As I mentioned, Google doesn’t need Chrome to build a personal profile on you, if it were so inclined – it already has more than enough dope on you from Gmail. When you think of the tens of millions of people using Gmail and the billions of people in the world, and the fact that Google only has about 10,000 employees (about 20% of whom are probably out to lunch or on a coffee break at any given time), you realize that there is no way they could keep up with the minutiae of our little lives without working way overtime (which they can’t be doing, since Fortune Magazine has several times named Google as the best company to work for). Given all that, it seems highly unlikely to me that Google is running a deep cover spying operation on users, for – what purpose?

Besides, there’s no money in keeping those kinds of records. But there is lots of money in figuring out what we’re interested in spending money on. Like Gmail, Chrome is clearly another “service” by Google to help the company better hone its advertising methodology, which, as a capitalist, I have no problem with. But if you prefer to err on the side of caution, check out http://tinyurl.com/5nt9uu, which tells you how to increase your anonymity in Chrome, and http://www.imilly.com/google-cookie.htm, which tells you how to rein in Google’s cookie, the agent that hunts and gathers information on you and your surfing habits.

But, in the final analysis, a browser is just – a browser. But a new online map of every street in Israel – even if the directions part of the system isn’t ready yet – is really big news. The fact that Google Maps (so far, just the Hebrew version, at http://maps.google.com/?hl=iw) realizes that Israel actually has roads, highways, streets, and neighborhoods, is a huge step ahead, and the day when we can use the easy to use and easy on the browser Google Maps to plan road trips in Israel (as opposed to the memory draining current choices that insist on super duper flash, Activex or java to work properly) can’t be far.

Google Maps for Israel does indeed show every street in every town – and even shows every town, including those on the “other side” (of the green line), complete with parking lots and even some businesses, such as gas stations and bakeries, in the big cities. One of the charms of Google Maps, of course, is being able to search for the kind of business you want and get a listing on the map, complete with links to web pages, directions, and photos, and this clearly preliminary version of the Israel map already has some of these features for businesses in Tel Aviv. The new system came on line rather stealthily a couple of weeks ago, apparently, and replaced the previous version, where Israel was just a flat plain of land with no marked roads or highways on its map.

Currently, all the features described can be seen in the Hebrew version only, although apparently changes are coming to the English version as well, since you can see blank streets (awaiting someone to update the English map database, I guess) on the Israel map in http://maps.google.com. You can search for businesses in Hebrew already, but the information is still limited (“Pizza” results in about seven or eight entries, all in Tel Aviv). But it looks like they’re adding more businesses every day. When I checked it out, it didn’t appear that there was yet a method to add your own business in Israel, as there is in the U.S. and most of Europe, but that may have changed already. But don’t worry – soon Google Maps Israel will have all the information you need to find what you’re looking for – using the same freebie tool everyone else is using, too.