Happy Passover from the Robots of the R&D Institute for Intelligent Robotic Systems, Computer Science Department, College of Management, Academic Studies, Rishon Lezion (thanks Marc!)

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If you’ve been looking for a hi-tech job in Israel, there’s good news: New statistics indicate that the long drought in hi-tech jobs is over. A poll released last week by Israeli placement company Jobinfo says that demand for hi-tech workers is up 40% this year – while the numbers of those seeking jobs in the field has fallen dramatically, as companies retain their current workers and hire new ones.

Jobs in hardware development rose significantly – by over 30% – in the first quarter of 2010, compared to a year before. There was also a 12% increase in jobs for internet programmers – especially for developers with skills in PHP, Java, and C.

Along with the new demand, salaries have risen, the poll says. Engineers with 2 to 5 years experience are making 8% more this year than last, while salaries for web engineers have gone up as much as 20%. Jobinfo says that “The positive statistics are a positive sign that indicates that the time is ripe for hi-tech workers who lost jobs in the past to look for new ones now, and it is also an excellent time, in our opinion, for those who already have jobs to examine the opportunities in the marketplace.”

Well, of course they would say that – they’re a placement company! But still, the numbers don’t lie – and neither do the anecdotes, as a number of people I know who have been looking for quite awhile have begun new jobs in the past month or so. Yeah! Party like it’s 1999!

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Over the past few days, Intel has been showing its new Xeon (Westmere) processor, which the company says has 40 percent better performance and 30 percent better energy efficiency. The processor features a chip that supports six cores each. Meant for use in servers, the Xeon is also the first processor to use Intel’s 32 nanometer manufacturing process, which results in processors with features as little as 32 nanometers wide. All of which means the Xeon – built on Intel’s familiar x86 architecture – can get much more done with less power, and is likely to find its way into new hardware. Already, IBM has announced a new line of servers that are faster and cooler running, all running on the Xeon.

Given Intel’s history in Israel, you always have to suspect that much of the work done on any new piece of hardware the company comes out with was largely developed in Israel. Alas, that is not the case for the Xeon (a derivative of the Nehalem processor). So I have been told by “informed sources” in Intel. Note, however, that the Next Big Thing from Intel – processors that use the Sandy Bridge (aka Gesher) architecture, with many improvements to the Nehalem series of processors. Sandy Bridge processor technology was largely developed in Israel – the project will be remembered for having its name changed from Gesher, the Hebrew word for “bridge,” after a political party (now defunct) emerged in Israel with the same name. Sandy Bridge-based processors will only be released in 2011, after the “life cycle” of the Westmere/Nehalem line peters out.

Although Israel can’t take direct credit for the speed and efficiency of the Xeon, it can take credit for an important security feature built into the processor: Included in all new Intel processors is the Intel Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) Instructions Set. Tests showed that encryption/decryption of files was 400% faster with AES, and whole disks can be encrypted with barely any impact on performance (anyone who has ever tried to encrypt even a single file with a “regular” processor will understand the benefit).

The AES instruction set, from what I can tell, was largely developed in Intel’s Haifa research facility; the white paper cited above was authored by Shay Gueron, a researcher for Intel and a Professor of Applied Mathematics at Haifa University. He, along with a colleague from Intel in the U.S., is the patent holder for “A method for speeding up the computations for characteristics 2 elliptic curve cryptographic systems,” which looks pretty cryptographical, and is clearly part of the AES.

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So I clicked on my favorite oldies station in iTunes radio the other day – but instead of hearing the golden sounds of the Cousin Brucie era, I got instead a rather rude message, telling me that I could no longer listen because I lived outside the borders of the United States! The sponsors of the ad tried to make it sound funny (there was nothing funny about it), and suggested that I sign up for Last.fm. Which costs three bucks a month!

Although it was an Apple product that delivered the bad news, apparently further expanding the company’s discrimination against Israel, the culprit this time seemed to be not Apple, but, according to the ad, CBS, AOL and Yahoo, which have conspired to impose this “geographic locking” on all users outside the U.S. Good thing I didn’t invest in that $250 internet radio device!

Of course, I have a personal interest in wanting to keep these streams free for everyone to listen to, but imho, I think the United States government is making a big mistake by letting these companies get away with this. Actually, the companies have every right to maximize profits and withhold their product from anyone they want, if they think they are going to make money this way, but I truly believe this is a matter of national security.

Let’s face it: The U.S. isn’t what it used to be, what with the outsourcing, the deficits, the endless inter-party fighting, and so on. America is behind the eight-ball in nearly every industry where it once dominated – except one, and that is entertainment. Nobody does movies like Hollywood, and no music is like American music. If the U.S. really wants to win hearts and minds, it’s got to do something to stop this creeping isolationism; it’s amazing how far a jolt of good old rock n’ roll goes to make terrorists and other no-goodniks think twice before blowing themselves up!

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I don’t know Amal Jaraisy – in fact, I don’t know anything about her lawsuit against Google Israel other than what was written on several websites – but I do know that she has zero chance of getting her lawsuit certified. According to news reports, Jaraisy, a resident of Nazareth, is suing Google in an Israeli court for enrolling her in Google Buzz without her permission, and revealing information she wanted to keep private. Buzz apparently chooses users for you to follow, a la Facebook, and publicly displays the names of those you are following – based on your private Gmail correspondence, so everyone knows the people you’ve been e-mailing back and forth with – even if you’d rather keep that relationship private.

Jaraisy is seeking to turn the lawsuit into a class action suit, although I couldn’t find a web site to sign up to participate. There are certainly plenty of angry people who would sign up for such a lawsuit, as many of those who got “Buzzed” automatically don’t like that they were automatically enrolled in the program.

However, it is highly doubtful that a lawsuit against Google would go anywhere, since there are so many provisos and “outs” in the terms of service all users agree to when they sign up for a service. Regarding the use of Gmail contacts for a purpose other than email. A quick scan of the Gmail TOS, like all TOSes, basically gives Google the right to add, subtract, or otherwise alter the services it provides or doesn’t. One relevant line in the TOS is in paragraph 4.2, which reads: “Google is constantly innovating in order to provide the best possible experience for its users. You acknowledge and agree that the form and nature of the Services which Google provides may change from time to time without prior notice to you.”

Ms. Jaraisy is an intelligent young woman – here Facebook page says she attended the Technion, Israel’s top science school. One could assume she knows her way around a computer, and a TOS. So why is she bringing the lawsuit? And why is the first Google Buzz lawsuit being brought in an Israeli court? Wouldn’t it make more sense to sue in a California court, where Google is headquartered? After all, the Israeli office does not operate as an independent entity, and Google’s facilities in Israel are dedicate to research and development, not management.

I have some ideas on what the motivation here might be, but I need more information – and as soon as I find what I’m looking for (which I’m pretty sure is out there) I’ll let you know.

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Tags: California, facebook, Google, Google Buzz, Nazareth, Search Engines, Searching, Tools, twitter

Remember that old commercial, “Is it live, or is it Memorex?” That’s a question we will soon be asking about what we see, not just what we hear, thanks to the development of a technology called Augmented Reality. Using a device’s camera, GPS, Bluetooth, digital compass, wifi, and other networking and input capabilities, you can turn reality into a video game, run through “what if” scenarios, or get a text or video overlay on something that they are looking at.

Example: You’re checking out what movie to see at the multiplex, and you forgot to check out the reviews. With an AR app on your phone, you could point your phone at a movie poster, and then get reviews displayed on the screen, without having to press any buttons! More sophisticated versions would let you see a trailer, or even buy tickets. It’s not at all science fiction – actually, an application like this exists for some Nokia smartphones, and there are already a slew of AR apps for Androids and cellphones (I could have used this one when I installed my non-YES satellite dish a couple of months ago!)

As it turns out, an Israeli company called Ogmento, is deeply involved in developing AR applications, especially for the iPhone. If you want to try it on the web, check out the application they developed for Vampire Academy. Scary!

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A study by Israel’s Oketz Systems released Thursday said that workers in hi-tech companies have a better chance of finding a “life partner” than workers in other professions. According to the study, one out of every nineteen workers on average finds a mate among their co-workers – but for hi-tech workers, that figure is one out of fourteen. In addition, the study showed that significantly more hi-tech co-worker romances ended up in marriage, than did hookups for workers in other areas. And of course, since hi-tech workers get paid better, it’s a good deal all around!

via this Hebrew story…

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We hear a lot about business “giving back to the community,” but everyone knows it’s BS. There are no free lunches, and everything has strings attached. It’s always all about the money. Everyone knows it.

But maybe what everyone knows isn’t always right. It certainly wasn’t at the “startup roundtable” meeting I went to, hosted by Israeli investment adviser and social media expert Sharon Weshler. Sharon and his buddy Aviad of the Termiks startup investment center ran a “roundtable” for fledgling Israeli startups, where entrepreneurs with great ideas could get some help in getting their idea ready for presentation to investors.

The ideas were really creative, ranging from a system to improve management of nursing homes to a home entertainment gadget, and a better way to grow food! Presenters gave the group their core idea and “elevator pitch,” and attendees could comment, question, or give constructive criticism on ideas and presentations.

The startup roundtable idea isn’t a new one, and I’ve been to a number myself. But most of them are sponsored by advisors for their clients, prepping them for presentations to investors. In other words, the sponsors of the roundtable have a financial interest in ensuring that their candidates present well, so they can bring in the bucks

Not so at Sharon and Aviad’s roundtable – from what I could tell, there was no financial or contractual relationship between the presenters and the sponsors. That said, I’m sure Sharon and Aviad would be happy to find a company to work with, but you have to figure there are better ways to track down companies interesting enough to invest in without spending upwards of four hours listening to ideas that they had no idea in advance would be worth listening to! That is what I call really giving back to the community!

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After I outed Tunewiki as an Israeli company, I came across another great music phone application made by an Israeli startup – MeCanto!

The truth is I downloaded both Tunewiki and MeCanto from the Nokia app store at the same time, but I just realized a couple of days ago that MeCanto was made here too. As opposed to Tunewiki’s social music app, MeCanto is a personal music app – letting you connect your phone directly to your home music collection. You install the MeCanto application on your phone (Nokia, iPhone, Windows Smartphone, Android) and on your Windows computer, and you can create an instant streaming connection between your PC and phone. In other words, you can play all the music in your home computer on your phone. The application works immediately, opening a private network between computer and phone, but it will also upload your collection to the MeCanto servers, which provide a faster and smoother connection than the phone-PC VPN. And, you can log into your MeCanto account from any computer and listen to your music on-line.

MeCanto turns your phone into a true MP3 player – but it’s better because you can upload ALL of your music, without limitations! “Our goal is to enable users to store their entire music collection online and imposing some limit on storage will defeat that purpose,” says the company FAQ.

Here’s an email I got from MeCanto CEO Uri Keren the other day: “We are pleased to inform you that MeCanto made it to the top 10 finalists of the Nokia Developer Contest. Now we are asking for your vote by becoming a fan on MeCanto’s Facebook fanpage. On February 4th all votes will be counted and weighted together with the judges’ votes and the winner will be announced. Your support will allow us to improve MeCanto and provide you with a better product and service.”

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There’s only so much you can put in a newspaper article (like the one I wrote on Google’s ‘courageous’ stance on China’s human rights offenses), I find – I’m often forced to leave out the juiciest nuggets. Like this week, when I wrote about how Google, so courageous when it pursues China for hacking into its accounts, somehow loses its nerves when it comes to net abuses in the Arab countries.

As my article points out, the Arab countries are far more obsessive in their censorship of web usage – and far more vengeful against those who violate the rules. Offenders who post information that displeases the various dictatorships they live in run the risk of jail time (think “Midnight Express” prison, not the Allenwood federal pen) – or worse, like torture. Is China any better? No; it’s just as repressive a society. But at least China strives to improve material living standards for its billions of citizens – unlike most Arab countries, where residents are expected to toil without complaint, making the barons and sheikhs who run their countries richer.

If Google had pinned its decision to “reconsider” doing business in China on Beijing’s oppression against human right activists – a claim that rings very hollow, given the company’s lack of backbone on Arab country’s rights abuses. Google’s complaints would be a lot more believable if they pinned their complaints on China’s industrial espionage or some other business motive. But human rights abuses? That claim only opens Google up to charges of hypocrisy.

Not that you can blame them for not wanting to start up with the Muslim world, given its reactions to images and words that “offend” Islam. No doubt they would say that they don’t want to “offend” the “culture” of the countries gracious enough to host their search engines and services. But the company has no problem taking on the “yellow peril.” Meaning that Google is more afraid of the Arabs than the Chinese – clear proof that the Chinese have a far lighter touch than the Arabs, imho.

And here, it seems to me, is the definitive proof: There is only one image in the world that Google Earth displays in a different format than anywhere else. The entire world as rendered by GE shows hills and dales, lakes and rivers, buildings, houses and cars. From an aerial view, you can look down and see the actual topography of the world – natural and man-made. Except for one spot: The Ka’aba, the center of Muslim worship, in Mecca. According to the Google Sightseeing blog post for this photo, the photo used is a Digitalglobe satellite photo, the only one used on GE. Why?

It took me awhile to figure out, since there doesn’t seem to be a ban on photographing or taking video of the place (you can watch Muslims praying there five times a day on many satellite TV stations in the Arab world). But then I saw the following on this web site, discussing the direction Muslims must bow when they pray: “As one is not permitted to take a GPS reading from on top or inside the Kaaba, an estimate must be made from various positions around the Kaaba.” That photo may have been taken by a Digitalglobe satellite, but it looks suspiciously like a pencil drawing (as you can see from the photo below; note the contrast with the buildings to the south) – something Google decided to put in out of “respect” to Islam, which probably would have frowned on (or, more likely, “strenuously” protested) inclusion of an aerial photo of the Kaaba in GE. Can’t say I blame Google for wanting to avoid trouble. But at least they could drop the pretense of standing up for “morality” when it comes to China.

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