How did Canadian authorities figure out that suspected terrorist Khurram Sher auditioned for Canadian Idol in 2008? Possibly an alert Youtube viewer picked up on the image (you don’t get many Idol auditioners in full Muslim dress; it was a pretty unforgettable image). But if that was the case, we would definitely have heard from the person who uncovered the video – recognizing a terrorist on a TV show via Youtube would be the perfect ticket to 15 minutes of fame these days.
So in the absence of any claim to fame, we can assume that the connection was made using internet face recognition technology – like that developed by Israel’s Face.com. Face.com’s application checks Facebook photos, comparing photos in different accounts to identify unknown people on user pages. The application analyzes photos with tags, associates the tag with the person in the photo, and then searches for the same image in untagged photos in other Facebook accounts. In other words, Face.com can compare photos and determine identities based on information in other photos that are already a know quantity.
I interviewed Gil Hirsch, CEO of Face.com., last year, and wrote
While Face.com’s technology sounds like it could be developed into a fantastic security application as well, Hirsch says that the company is concentrating on the consumer market for now. “Our next step is to expand our presence in Facebook, and over the next year we will be rolling out more services on other sites.”
Face.com has expanded since I did that interview – and is now available to developers for use with other platforms. Interestingly, in this story from August of this year, Hirsch is quoted as saying that
You can basically search for people in any photo. You could search for family members on Flickr, in newspapers, or in videos on YouTube.
So could technology developed by Israel’s Face.com have been used to find the “singing terrorist?” Could be!
The word is out – Israel, despite all the talk of it being the target of Turkish and Arab hackers, is far safer online than most of the “first world” (and it’s pretty safe offline too, with crime stats per capita far lower than that of the U.S. and other countries). Israel, the most open country in the Middle East, is also the safest country in the region for internet users; Israelis have a one in 211 chance of experiencing an internet attack, far better than the world average, in which computer users were attacked online one in every 73 times they used the internet.
Israel also compared favorably to the rest of the Middle East, where there is a 1 in 119 chance of getting attacked. Jordanians had a 1 in 98 chance of getting attacked Syrians a 1 in 198 chance, and in Turkey – the world leader in internet riskiness – there was a 1 in 10 chance of getting hacked when you went online!
Not only that – Israel beats nearly all of Europe and the U.S.: In Australia, you have a 1 in 75 chance of getting attacked, while in the UK the chances were 1 in 63(!). In the rest of Europe, the chances of attack were 1 in 72, while in North America, the chances of getting hacked while online were a pathetic 1 in 51 – with the US a sad 1 in 48 (ahead of the US, counting up to the dubious number 1 spot occupied by Turkey, are: Portugal, Vietnam, Laos, Bangladesh, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Russia). Come on America – you can do better than Bangladesh and Russia!
The statistics were compiled by anti-virus specialists AVG, makers of AVG and AVG Free applications (FAR better, imho, than the “commercial” anti-virus apps like McAffee and Symantec). The information was compiled during July, so, the company says, the stats may change. Yeah, but not radically – which means that Israel will continue to be much safer online than any of its neighbors.
Considering that the internet is far more open in Israel (as is society in general), and considering that Israel is the prime target for the hackers who have made internet surfing hell in Turkey, it’s surprising that Israel is so safe. Chalk it up (again!) to Israel’s hi-tech prowess; as usual, Israel has to work twice as hard as everyone else to survive, and in the end manages to live better than any of its neighbors. It’s a phenomenon we see repeated over and over, in many different areas of society.
It’s too bad about Turkey; they burned their bridges with Israel, so we’re unlikely (hopefully) to be offering them any knowhow on building a safe internet. And without a safe internet, Turks are going to be locked out of the future hi-tech world. Well, they wanted to be part of (lead) the “great Muslim Ummah,” aping the lifestyles of hi-tech jewels like Syria and Egypt. And it certainly seems like their wish is coming true!
Israelis, as a whole, are very loyal to their country – but Ikea is by far now the most popular furniture store in Israel. Why have Israelis abandoned Herzl St. in Tel Aviv, the country’s furniture center, for Ikea? What does Ikea have that Israeli furniture stores don’t?
Variety – that’s what they have! Israelis want nice homes with knick-knacks and bric-a-bac, and they’re willing to pay. Until Ikea opened here a few years ago, Israelis would journey to the U.S. and Europe and bring back what they could – usually little items – to try and distinguish their homes from others. And when they were finally able to get the “big ticket” items that they couldn’t shlep on the plane, they descended on Ikea like hungry wolves.
You’d think other retailers would have realized by now that Israelis are ripe for the plucking, but so far no other major international chains have opened here – although Israeli furniture retailers have gotten the hint and have significantly updated their offerings.
Why am I going on about furniture? Because Ikea proves that choice and competition work; you get more for your money when companies have to compete for your business, and businesses that do not have to compete in this way feel they can inflate prices as much as they want. Take treadmills, for example; why are they triple and quadruple the price at Megasport than they are at Sears? Because. Whaddaya gonna do about it?
Well, Megasport’s day of reckoning – and the day of reckoning for many other retailers – may be coming soon, thanks to an Israeli-invented company called FiftyOne. FiftyOne runs a service that allows U.S. retailers to sell and ship goods around the world. I interviewed Mike DeSimone, the CEO of the company for Israel21C, and he told me all about it. They have several dozens stores – many of the ones you see in U.S. malls – as well as some big online retailers, like Overstock.com and Shoes.com. They will soon be adding retailers like the Gap, Macys, and Bloomingdales. And, they also have Sears.com, which by itself has tens of thousands of products!
You can connect to all of these retailers’ international sales services directly from FiftyOne’s merchant page. When you make a purchase, you’re essentially making it from FiftyOne, which keeps the books, determines the shipping (to Israel it’s usually five to fourteen business days) and the customs duties and VAT. It’s all determined before you place your order, so you know exactly how much you’re spending (not all stores ship to Israel, but enough do). Not all products are available at all sites; for example, we’ve been wanting a futon, which seem to be unavailable in Israel, but I couldn’t find one Sears was willing to ship here. On the other hand, I could have bought all the beanbag chairs I wanted.
The prices at Sears looked to be what they would in the U.S. (where most shipping is free) but the shipping pushes the price way up. Depending on the item, though, it might still be cheaper to order it online than to buy it here, even with the shipping and taxes. An exercise cycle, for example, came out to about $400 – NIS 1,500 or so – from Sears. I can’t imagine it costing less here.
Not all the prices were that great, however; Overstock.com seems to have more expensive prices for its Israeli customers, and a laptop I checked out there cost more than $200 higher than it did on Amazon. To order from Amazon, you can use the Mustop service – and when their shipping was added to the price of the laptop, the two figures weren’t that far apart.
But I’m willing to give FiftyOne some time – to get more stores and better (ie cheaper) shipping options, especially for bigger (and bigger ticker) items. Sooner or later, we’ll be able to import Kenmore washing machines and dryers directly into Israel!
One of the more popular subjects on this blog ever since I first wrote about it has been “Kindle for Israel – yea or nay?” Until now, it’s been a big NAY; you had to buy your Kindle in the U.S., and have an Americancredit card to download content with.
Until now. Not that they are going to be shipping Kindles to Israel anytime soon, but if you have a PC, Mac, iPhone, Blackberry, or iPad, you’re welcome to install the Kindle App on your device, and download hundreds of thousands of books from the Kindle library!
Following up on a tip I got from a reader (thanks Yossi!), I revisited the Kindle page on Amazon. As before, Kindles were not available to be shipped to Israel. But there was a change; now, you can download content from the Kindle store to your computer or other device which uses a Kindle application. It’s even possible (pretty likely, I would even say) that if you had a Kindle in hand, you could just connect to a wifi network here in Israel and download any book you were willing to pay for!
According to the Kindle page at Amazon, Israelis can now access over 400,000 of the 600,000 plus books available in the Kindle store. I installed the Kindle app on my new iPad, and began downloading content (they have hundreds of free books, and I actually bought one, too). Worked perfectly!
Which is a pretty good thing. In the past, any attempt to download a book from Amazon in Israel resulted in a block, with a message display saying that the content I was after could not be downloaded outside the U.S. Note that I have my credit card on file with Amazon, and I routinely order things from them for shipment to addresses in the U.S. with my Israeli credit card (in that, Amazon is much more liberal than the vast majority of retail websites, which ban any non-U.S. credit cards). Not this time, though; just clicking on a title (and in the case of books that cost money, clicking on the “one click payment” option) resulted in my Kindle (app) getting updated with the new selection. Nice!
Clearly Amazon is flexing its digital muscles; it never made sense for them not to be selling e-books in Israel, where there are so many English speakers and readers. In the past,, Amazon was prevented from selling in Israel due to rights issues with the importers of books who had exclusive import deals with publishers (happily, you see the term “sole importer” less and less often here these days). Knowing the stubbornness of these “sole importers,” my guess is that Amazon put its foot down, opened up the content to Israelis, and told the big bookstore chain with the import rights to many of these books to take a hike. About time! We may not have many good English language bookstores here in Israel, but with the Kindle/Kindle apps and the Kindle bookstore, we don’t need ‘em anymore!
(And yes, I know it’s been awhile since I posted!)
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