The price of gas may have gone down, but more people are out of work – so incidences of gas theft are probably as common now as they were a year ago, when gas was $4 a gallon in the US (and $7+ in Israel!). According to insurance industry officials, about 4% of the diesel fuel on tanker trucks is stolen every year. I’m sure it’s at least as bad elsewhere.

To prevent such theft, Israel’s Ituran (they have an American site as well), which makes vehicle theft tracking systems, among other things, has come out with a gas-tracking system! According to the company, the device, developed at a cost of about $100,000, was “designed to provide an electronic solution to prevent thieves from stealing fuel, warning them off while they are in the act, without causing any potential risk” of fire or explosion in the gas tank (apparently it was an issue from an engineering point of view, to place an electronic detector next to or in the gas tank).

One side of the device is active only when the vehicle is turned off, and its sensors read the amount of fuel in the tank; the other side is connected to the vehicle’s theft alert system. If the fuel level begins to go down while the vehicle is parked, the warning system tracks down the owner – just like it would if the vehicle were being stolen. The device can also be programmed to check fuel levels while the vehicle is turned on ensuring that the fuel depletion rate is correct (in the case of trucks, the company says, that’s about 1 liter of diesel fuel every two or three kilometers). Why? Because apparently lots of drivers are in on this fuel theft scam – instead of “gassing up” at a service station, they “gas out” at secret, hidden gas tanks at the side of roads, and sell the fuel later!

According to Ituran’s figures, a company with a fleet with 15 trucks, each of which loses 20-30 liters of fuel a week to “shrinkage,” can save up to 3 million shekels a year ($750,000!). Even assuming the cost of fuel in Israel is double, it’s still a great investment for U.S. fleets as well.

Before anyone gets too panicky about swine flu, make sure you check with the experts. Not the CDC or your doctor; as everyone knows, Google is the real expert on everything, including flu. And according to the Google Flu Trends site, the risk of flu is low – nearly minimal. “Current estimates of flu activity are still generally low across the United States, as is expected given the confirmed swine flu case count,” say Google.

And how did Google get to be such an expert on flu – and other – trends? By working with great developers right here in Israel! Google has two development centers in Israel – in Tel Aviv and Haifa – which shows how much Google values Israeli development (there are only a couple of countries around the world – MUCH bigger than Israel! – that have more than one development center).

Flu Trends is a demonstration of the overall Google Trends technology. According to the Trends blog,

Our team found that certain aggregated search queries tend to be very common during flu season each year. We compared these aggregated queries against data provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and we found that there’s a very close relationship between the frequency of these search queries and the number of people who are experiencing flu-like symptoms each week. As a result, if we tally each day’s flu-related search queries, we can estimate how many people have a flu-like illness.

But it turns out that Google has been not only using made in Israel tech – its whole identity could be considered to have been created here, according to this article in Haaretz. Artist Ruth Kedar designed the famous Google logo ten years ago while she was at Stanford in California. According to Kedar, the logo’s simple look is deceptive, hiding its complex layers. Quoting her, the article says:

Someone who sees the logo for the first time doesn’t necessarily need to absorb all the layers and considerations behind every decision – it’s better for him to discover something new every time. It somewhat amuses me to turn on the computer and look at the logo I designed. But it also fills me with pride. When you say Google to people today, they immediately see the colorful logo.”

If Elvis had lived, he could have been president – after all, if it was good enough for Ronald Reagan, imagine how the voters would have gone for Elvis Presley! But I have a better idea; He was such a unifying force and a symbol of coexistence, Elvis would have been the perfect candidate for Prime Minister of Israel! And he could have qualified for the job, too – after all, Elvis was (sort of) Jewish!

On the occasion of what would have been his 74th birthday on January 8, it’s worth remembering Elvis and his impact on bringing people together. While casual music listeners tend to put down Elvis’ relatively unsophisticated music, all his biographers attribute his early use of rhythm and blues (which some accused him of “stealing from blacks”) as opening the door for the Motown sound, and later on the rise of Michael Jackson and other modern African-American superstars. So right there, Elvis was a unifying force, right on his home turf.

But less known is his charitable work for Jewish organizations in his hometown of Memphis, and his attitude to racism – and to Arabs and Jews. There are millions of Elvis fans out there, which means there are thousands of stories floating around about him, most of which can’t be corroborated. But the overwhelming consensus of the man is that he was someone who was charitable – both financially and personally – and identified with minorities, including Jews and Arabs.

During his latter years, for example, Elvis would take to wearing a big “Chai” – and when he was asked why by his friend guitarist Charlie Hodge, he supposedly answered that he didn’t want to “miss out on going’ to heaven on a technicality!”. In fact, quoting from the book “Elvis and Gladys,”, this site makes a case for Elvis’ Jewish ancestry (his maternal grandmother), which explained to some extent his affinity for Jews. According to the book:

“One day the Memphis Jewish Welfare sent a delegation to Graceland to see him and ask if he could contribute. At Christmas every year he would donate $1,000 to a number of Memphis charities and one of them was the Memphis Hebrew Academy, and so they thought maybe they could get something. They explained what they do, taking care of poor Jews and orphans. Elvis excused himself for a minute. When he came back, he handed the leader of the delegation a check. They didn’t know what to expect. They thought $1,000 would be nice. When they looked at the check, it was for $150,000. The equivalent of more than a million dollars today. The man said, ‘Elvis, you must have made a mistake.’ Elvis said, ‘I didn’t make a mistake, I know what I’m doing.’”

And Elvis had a soft spot for Arabs as well. Michael Saba, former executive director of the National Association of Arab Americans, tells a tale of a childhood friend of his in Memphis:

“Farid told me that one day at his high school, some of the school bullies started teasing him, calling him names like “you dirty Arab” and threatened to hit him. He said Elvis came along and said, “Hey, you leave him alone. I know him and his family and they are very nice people. Those ‘Arabs’ treat me well and you better treat him well also.” The bullies moved off and Elvis told Farid that if anybody ever tried that again, he should let Elvis know.”

So besides a talent for music, Elvis had a talent for peacemaking! Of course, Elvis isn’t around for us to give him a try at leadership (or is he?) but we do have Israel’s Elvis Inn, “famous for bringing Arabs and Jews together,” especially on Elvis Impersonator Nights! And as one of the impersonators told reporters,

“If Elvis Presley was alive, he could help the crisis of the Arab and the Jew. I think he’d make a song of it, of the whole situation, and perform in a lot of Arab countries and of course in Israel. He’d try to make peace between the Israelis and the Arabs once and for all. I think he would have done it if he was alive today.”

Thanks for reading this post. Let me just point out a couple of things before I start: I am not a “troublemaker,” or a shill for paper money, or a flamer, or any other looking-for-a-fight type of person. I have some questions that have been bothering me about gold – at least the way it’s presented, as a hedge against the coming “bad times” – and it would really be helpful if someone knowledgeable about the issues would help me out.

I am also neither a kid, nor a fool. I’m old enough to have put away some money. I’m a very conservative investor – for me, locking up my money in a two year closed CD type account is a big deal, much less investing in stocks. I was very conservative during the big stock runup of the last few years, so I didn’t make as much as other people – but I lost a lot less last year, too.

I’m also quite familiar with the gold advocates (I think it’s supposed to be politically incorrect to use the term ‘gold bugs’ today!). I have, for example, been reading The Daily Reckoning for years. So you’d think I would have “seen the light” by now about gold. But actually, reading for nearly a decade about how “this time it’s really going to happen,” only to see gold retreat yet again and the dollar continue to thrive, got me thinking about the whole issue, especially from the perspective that the DR and other gold advocates promote. If anyone can help me out with the following questions, I’d really appreciate it:

1) There’s no question that the government is printing lots of money. I’m really not in a position to judge if it’s “too much.” Everyone knows what happens when you have too much money chasing too few goods.
Question: The people selling the gold are getting fiat currency for their commodities. If they really believed that “the end was near,” you’d think they’d want to hold on to their gold – at least until the price begins to shoot up (again, I emphasize, these are NOT flame questions!)

2) For decades, it has been illegal to own gold in forms other than jewelry or coins, from what I understand (ie no bullion). If I were to buy gold today, it would be in the form of an ETF.
Question: How does that help me if dollars end up becoming worthless? It’s not like I can ever get at the gold I “own.” And even if I could get it, and I knew where to find it, who would give it to me? One could assume that the security guard with the guns standing at the door of the storage facility would use his weapon to take “my” gold for himself! The only thing I can do with an ETF is sell it – for fiat currency! (or am I wrong?)

3) In the scenarios painted by the gold advocates, gold becomes the currency of choice. I have a hard time picturing being able to go down to the corner store and trading a chip off a gold coin for some bread! If paper money does fail, I suppose the only viable system of exchange would be barter – or a new paper currency, backed by gold and freely convertible this time.
Question: Wouldn’t the government (or whoever is in charge) seize whatever gold it could in order to back their new currency? Or will things break down so badly that there won’t be a government or a form of currency? In that case, wouldn’t I be better off putting my money into things that I’ll really need – tuna fish, toilet paper, etc. – instead of gold?

These seem to me like very logical questions, if you are looking at gold as “the final option,” which seems to be the major thrust of DR and the other gold advocates. If you look at gold as a regular investment, though, how do you explain the continued inability of gold to take off, despite all the nervousness in the market?

Like I said, I am not looking for a fight… just answers. All the newsletters and sites I look at seem to make assumptions about these questions, as if they were asked and answered. Well, I haven’t seen these questions dealt with anywhere – and it’s pretty shocking to me that people would be willing to hand over their dollars to buy ANYTHING, without carefully checking out what they’re buying!

Please help me out, if you can. Feel free to leave comments (I assume at least some of you will be trying to sell me something, that’s OK). And, if you can retweet my question so I can get more information from others, I would really appreciate it to. Peace!

Tel Aviv University researchers, led by Prof. Yuval Shavit, have developed a computer algorithm that has shown a 50% chance of identifying pop music stars based on file sharing networks like iMesh. The system, first developed by a grad student as his project for a master’s degree in computer science, analyzed 500 million requests by users for file downloads on the Gnutella file sharing network, and developed a list of “most likely to succeed” unsigned musicians and groups whose songs were being downloaded – without even listening to the songs. When the list was compared later to the U.S. Billboard popularity charts, as many as half the groups picked by the algorithm were found to have succeeded, either with a monster hit or a record contract.

For example, the system “discovered” Soulja Boy Tell’em and Sean Kingston weeks before their first hits even entered the Billboard Hot 100, and Shop Boyz before they were even signed onto a label. All three of these had grammy nominated/winning songs in 2007, and Shop Boyz Party Like a Rockstar was the number one downloaded ringtone in 2007. According to Prof. Shavit, there are many factors involved in success, including geography (where the artist is located, how often they play live, etc.) that the algorithm analyzes, and he believes that even greater accuracy will be possible with more work.

The grad student, Noam Kingstein, won a prize from TAU for the most commercially viable project, and at least one record company has already spoken to him. This is maybe the first time a system has been developed to allow record companies to profit from online music sharing, which has so far devastated sales.

Why read a flat map, when you can luxuriate in a 3D GPS-style rendering of exactly where you are on the highway – for FREE! Israeli company 3DVU (I interviewed the CEO, Isaac Levanon, a couple of years ago) has a new product called Way2Go,

“the first and only personalized Web-to-Mobile route planner giving real-time turn-by-turn, GPS tracking, voice and text guidance navigation for PC and mobile phones with full 3D aerial photography and real terrain elevation of entire countries.  Way2Go is based on patented technology, enabling users to plan, review, share and navigate their routes in a full 3D virtual world with smooth zooming and perspective angle maneuverability. Way2Go one-ups mapping solutions like MapQuest, Google Map and Yahoo Maps.”

Don’t take their word for it – download a free route map when you sign up. The Way2Go service, which provides you with up to 15 route maps a month, usually costs $4.99 a month, but they are giving away a sample route for FREE! You register, download the appropriate viewer – Windows, Symbian, Blackberry, or Windows Mobile – and build yourself a route map for any to-from route in the US, UK, Germany, and some other European countries.

If you don’t want to subscribe to a GPS service, Way2Go is a great alternative, because there are no online charges – you download the route directly to your device, in advance of your trip – and the Way2Go maps are way better than anything Google or Yahoo has. 3DVU has its own rendering engine (used in its other products as well). If nothing else, a 3D map will keep you more alert on the road, making it safer for you to drive. I downloaded a map with a route from my parents’ house on the Jersey Shore to NYC – the Garden State Parkway never looked so good!

So people check out your tweets, or surf to your Facebook page. What does it get you – directly, I mean? Sure, there’s the “value-added” of your enhanced online reputation that can get access to useful information – or even help you land opportunities- but you don’t get any specific benefit when people actually visit your pages. In the case of Facebook, clicking on your page lets them charge more money for ads, and find more customers for their “gifts” – and Twitter will figure out how to cash in one day very soon, as well. But what about YOU? Where’s YOUR payday?

Right here – at Inter8ing, an Israeli company, which holds social media popularity contests, where you get your buddies to vote fpr your profile. The most popular profiles on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Friendster, My yearbook, Netlog or Hi5 – meaning the profiles from these sites that garner the most votes at Inter8ing- win cash prizes! The top prize on the page right now is $200 (they pay through Paypal).

It looks like anyone from anywhere with a profile on these sites can join, and anyone can vote on the web (Israeli voters can vote via SMS).

According to the site’s rules, you can solicit friends, or even vote for yourself. All they care about is the votes. Why not use Twitter to get your buddies to vote for you? It could work like Twitter followers – “you vote for me and I’ll vote for you.” The $200 winner has 436 points, which I take to mean 436 votes. That’s small change for Twitter members with 4,000 or 5,000 followers! Talk about “monetizing” your Twitter popularity!

I wrote an article in the Jerusalem Post a couple of weeks ago on using Twitter to find a job (link is to archive on my own site, original JP edition here). I thought it was a pretty good article, and so did Mikael, who is visiting from Sweden (he blogged about it in Swedish!). He sent me a direct message on Twitter, and asked if he could meet me to discuss how social media was being used in Israel (I’m not an expert, but I play one in the newspaper )

Only one problem – I got his message a week before Pesach, which of course is crazy time around here, like everywhere else. Since he was based in Jerusalem he naturally wanted to meet me there, but I had already done my Jerusalem thing that week and wasn’t planning to go back.

So I invited him out here – to “the ranch.” Because I live in an area that is uh, disputed, I thought it would be interesting for Mikael to get a look at a side of Israel that I figured he hadn’t ever seen. And, he accepted. So last Friday afternoon, Mikael and his wife drove out here for a Shabbat dinner (sans challah, of course – and I don’t think they finished their piece of matza!). We saw the sites – particularly, the top of the hill, where you can see the whole country, practically (that’s not them in the photo, btw). Our Swedish guests even came to shul Friday night – a very gutsy move, if you ask me!

Of course, our guests said they had a great time (I hope they really did!) But we Shamahs had a blast! My kids were very excited over the whole idea of visitors coming from so far away, people whom they would otherwise never have probably met (the couple is from northern Sweden, a destination that is definitely not on the way during our usual annual hegiras to family in New York and Los Angeles!). We discussed lots of subjects, including politics (can Israelis hold a discussion on anything without including politics?), the kids’ school, Judaism, and why synagogues have a mechitza (I sensed that Mikael’s wife wasn’t too happy about being on “the other side,” but they were too polite to make an issue out of it!). One of my kids even tried to talk to them using Swedish “TV accents” (you know what I mean!), but they were very cool about it. Kids!

And despite my plea in a phone conversation before their visit (I said “your presence is present enough for us” – good line, huh?), our guests insisted on bringing gifts – an album of photos by Swedish photographer Sune Jonnson, and this very pretty trivet!

So, even though we didn’t get to discuss the details of how people in Israel use social media, I think the entire evening was an object lesson in exactly that. If not for Twitter – Mikael’s interest in it, my writing about it, and his DMing me using it – we would never have had the opportunity to meet them, much less have them visit our  home. And anyone else from exotic (or even less exotic) locations who wants a taste of “down home hospitality” are invited to drop me a line (leave a comment or write me at ds @ newzgeek.com!)

(thanks marc!)

I met the guys from SaveAnAlien a few weeks ago at a VC pre-conference (a workshop to help startups get ready for their presentations – very cool! Read about it here), and as soon as I heard their presentation I decided to write about it for the Jerusalem Post (but see the article here!).

It wasn’t just me – everybody in that croweded room jumped when Raz Friedman started talking about his project. There were five other presentations that day, and as good as the ideas were, it was clear that SaveAnAlien was in a different class!

Why? Two reasons. “Social” isn’t really enough today – there are so many ways to be social, and just sharing avatars or letting your pets play with each other doesn’t differentiate you from the competition, of which there is a great deal in this space.

But SaveAnAlien is about “caring” – you “adopt” a lost soul that you can relate to. It’s not like a let, because an alien has the ability to be a sentient being. After the crash of materialism around the world, idealism is back in a big way - and letting users “save” a being like themselves appeals to a need that users have right now. Eventually, Raz told me, they hope to bring the concept down to this world, with users “adopting” endangered animals, starving children, etc.

The second big difference is that SaveAnAlien takes full advantage of the way cellphones operate to make money – letting users buy credits via SMS, through the phone company. IOW, any kid old enough to have a cellphone and has a plan that includes SMS is a potential customer. As the parent of two kids with iPod Touch devices who are constantly buying small $2 applications, I can tell you that parents fall for this stuff without an argument – the few bucks you spend a month keep them happy, and it’s not worth getting into an argument about.  That’s the nature of “microsales” – the purchaser doesn’t really feel it, but the company doing the selling does!

The result? Big profits for SaveAnAlien! They certainly didn’t invent the idea of buying credits using a social media application on the cellphone, but add that to the app’s premise, and SaveAnAlien becomes a company to watch!