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!
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).
It’s amazing how even the most innocent tech story turns political in the Middle East. Take Gmail SMS chat – brand new in Israel.
In Israel, Gmail users can send free SMS messages to any Orange or Pelephone number for free (the recipient gets “charged” an SMS unit. There is now a “Send SMS” box at the left side of the Gmail page. You type in a phone number and a pop-up box where you can type your message, and choose the destination (Gmail SMS is currently available in four locations – the U.S., “Palestinian Territories” (see below), Israel or Ghana (!). The message gets sent (it went through pretty quick when I tried it with my phone) and when the receiver responds, you get a pop-up in Gmail, enabling you to chat with them. It’s great if you have a plan with lots of SMS messages – otherwise you might want to switch to Gmail if you’re going to be having a long chat (there are mobile versions of Gmail at http://www.google.com/mobile/).
You start out with 50 free messages, and every time someone sends you one back, you get five more free messages for a maximum of 50 (messages to/from North America don’t have a quota). And, according to the help page, “if your quota goes down to zero at any point, it will increase back up to one 24 hours later. So, you won’t ever be locked out of the system.”
So, everything’s cool, and make get even cooler: According to some entries I’ve seen in official Google blogs, the introduction of messaging services by Google in a market heralds a communication expansion – so we could (hopefully) get Google Voice here in Israel in the near future.
Attempting to figure out what the criteria were for Google’s choosing of these four locations for the introduction of this service, I came up with this: The U.S. because it’s the U.S.; Israel, because it was probably developed here; PA areas, because they’re more or less on the same network as Israeli cellphone companies.
And Ghana? That’s part of a Google commitment to spread technology in the third world. Ghana is about as third world as you can get: it’s got a 65% literacy rate, and a GDP of $1500 per capita. According to this article about a Google SMS service in Uganda, Google is promoting cellphone services in third world countries because many more people in such countries use cellphones than computers. Ghana would certainly seem to fit that model as well: According to this site, Ghana is 93rd of 117 countries in the world in broadband usage.
“In Africa, we’ve learned that mobile phones are easier to get to than internet connections and PCs, and that working towards our mission means working through mobile phones. At the beginning of 2008, there were over a quarter of a billion mobile subscribers on the continent. Mobile penetration has risen from just one in 50 people at the beginning of this century to almost one third of the population today.”
When it comes to Israel, though, someone always has to throw politics into the works. One of the few blog posts I found was here, where the author referred to “Israel” as being one of the places where Gmail SMS is being implemented. Explaining why, the “author” (whoops!) writes that
“I just would like to say ArabCrunch has no political views and we do our best to stay away from politics. As for me I only put “Israel” between ” ” to note that this is a area of conflict nothing more, i am not against anyone.”
I, too, will keep my opinions to myself, and will just cite facts: Israel was created in 1947 as a result of a United Nations vote that authorized the creation of a Jewish and Arab state in the former British mandate of Palestine. The Jews accepted that deal, the Arabs didn’t, and seven Arab armies attacked the newly formed state of Israel. The Arabs lost, and Jordan occupied Judea and Samaria (“the West Bank”). Only two countries recognized Jordanian sovereignty over those areas – Britain and Pakistan. In 1967, the Arabs again began a war against Israel (the blockade of the Straits of Tiran was a classic casus belli), again losing.
Unlike Jordan, Israel is administering Judea and Samaria, and has been for the past 43 years, because there is no entity currently legally responsible for those areas. As such, the term “occupied territories” is improperly used in this context, since there was no legally recognized sovereign in those areas after 1947. In 1994, the United Nations voted to recognize the Palestinian Authority (the inception of which was an Israeli idea) and that entity has observer status in the UN. The PA is considered a candidate as a possible sovereign in Judea and Samaria. These are all objectively verifiable facts, and use of the term “Palestine” as a national entity is inaccurate from an international legal point of view – as is the use of quotation marks around “Israel.”
Finally got around to seeing Avatar. I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, but count me among the (apparently) very few naysayers. If you hadn’t seen it already (which you probably have), I’d say don’t bother; you’ll have a much better time with a DVD of Disney’s Pocahontas, EXACTLY the same story as Avatar, but with nice music!
Nearly all the reviews I’ve seen said that story was no big deal, but the effects were… and they were, for the first hour. Maybe it’s because we were sitting in the first row of the theater, but I found myself getting a headache watching after awhile (I’m usually pretty good with not getting headaches). Or maybe it was the glasses, which I found rather clunky.
Yeah the effects were nice, but I thought the preview for Alice in Wonderland was a much better use of 3D than Avatar; the 3D didn’t really contribute much to most of the film (although there were scenes where it was indispensable). And who says that carefully handcrafted Pocahontas-style animation isn’t as good a medium as 3D? The similarities between the two movies are well documented and just too numerous to list, but the first hour and a half of Avatar – where the human Avatar learns the ways of the Na’avi – can be summed up much more efficiently and elegantly in the three minutes of “Colors of the Wind!”
Regarding articles like this one, in which the author bends over backwards to find connections between Judaism/Israel and Avatar (the “Na’vi,” etc.); Judaism is relevant even if it does not keep up to date with the latest Hollywood blockbuster, and trying to squeeze Jewish content from a pagan/eastern/new-age stone just makes us look desperate (interestingly, the author of the article makes a case for Titanic, another James Cameron blockbuster, as also being “Jewish”!)
Avatar’s “we are all part of the divine” philosophy is diametrically opposed to Judaism’s approach to kedusha, holiness – a word the commentators have defined as “separation.” The little “bracha” the Na’avi make over animals they kill for food (something like “thank you for giving up your life for me to eat – now you are part of me and I am part of you”) is a Chassidic/Kabbalistic concept via new age Madonna-style “Kabbala” (the Jewish concept has to do with the ascension of a creature’s soul to a higher level of existence, not the Na’avi’s pan-nature Zen-style “being-ness”). If you’re looking for religious similes to Avatar, look at Christianity, not Judaism, where a “divine being” comes down to the world to save it, (almost) dying to salvage a world damned by “the Law.”
In addition, saying that Avatar is somehow a “Jewish” movie based on James Cameron’s throwing some Hebrew/Biblical sounding terms (Na’avi means prophet in Hebrew, and the Aish article says that the Na’avi’s deity “aiwa” is related to the Hebrew term for the ineffable name of G-d) is the same as calling the Chumash Indians one of the lost tribes of Israel (“chumash” is the Hebrew term for the five books of Moses). And speaking of deities, Avatar’s plot was such a ripoff of Pocahontas that the “aiwa” deity was located in a tree – just like the prophetic oracle in Pocahontas, and another concept diametrically opposed to Judaism (a tree-deity is called an “ashera,” and worship of it is punishable by death). Avatar? Two and half stars, max (all for the effects).
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.
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.
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 onewhen 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!
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!
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 Israeliinvestment 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!
1) From the presentation by Steve Jobs introducing the device, it appears that they will be having a deal with AT&T in the U.S. for the 3G network connection (confirmed, as AT&T announced that it will be offering unlimited iPad connection for $15/$30 a month). On the other hand, the iPad does have wifi, so you can easily bring one in and use it on any wifi network.
2) The new device is apparently unlocked as well, meaning you should be able to use any SIM card you want – but you may not be able to, because it will be using a new “micro” (3FF) SIM that you may not be able to get from other carriers. According to Engadget, “In fact, from AT&T’s perspective, this is better than a software lock in some ways — you’re not going to be able to download a hack that gets you on another network, so you’re totally at the mercy of your carrier at choice for providing a compatible card.”
3) Meaning that when considering official imports of the iPad, iDigital, Israel’s authorized distributor (which is NOT an Apple Store!) will have to work out deals with Apple for the import of the device, deals with one (all) of the cellphone companies for the 3G network (it’s hard to imagine Apple authorizing the imports without that, even though there is a wifi only version), and deals with someone to manufacture a SIM card for the Israeli market.
4) And, since the content you will be able to download, sync and use will be coming from the iTunes store (with Kindle-like book syncing probably to be added to music and video downloading, which will be an issue EVEN with the wifi-only version of the iPad) – access to which Israelis still don’t have even on “ancient” iPods and already old-hat Kindles – don’t look for the iPad to be officially sold here any time soon.
“Regarding [the iPad's] reaching Israel, it is still too early to determine [when, how and if that will happen]. We are acting in accordance with Apple policy, but we are working with the world [Apple] organization in regards to localization.”
The truth is I downloaded both Tunewiki and MeCanto from the Nokiaapp 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.”
Israel is the world leader in hi-tech innovations. So many of the internet, cellphone, and gadget inventions that make our lives easier and more fun are born right here in Israel! Get the inside track on the newest ideas and innovations in our bi-weekly Digital Israel Newsletter. Sign up right here!
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