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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Don’t hold your breath! Considering how long it took to get the iPhone here, it’s unlikely that the iPad’s path to Israel will be much faster. Here’s why:

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.

According to Apple, deals for many international markets could come as soon as the summer. An email from iDigital I received the morning after the iPad release says the following (after of course chatting up Apple’s “innovations in the digital lifestyle”):

“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.”

As if localization were the biggest issue!

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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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I’m talking about the Freescale Smartbook Tablet, which PC World said last week out-Appled the rumored Apple tablet at CES (in that it is an actual product at this moment, as opposed to vapor-hardware). But at $199, the Freescale device beats any netbook – real or imagined – hands down, based not only on price, but on features as well.

The Freescale Tablet is a real hybrid device, combining the best of the cellphone side with the more convenient features of notebooks and laptops. It’s got a 7-inch touch screen, a 3-megapixel camera, a smartphone-style accelerometer, an ambient light sensor, Bluetooth, and options for a 3G Modem. And from the PC side, it’s got 512mb RAM, slots for MicroSD cards (up to 64 GB storage), a 1 GHz processor, and Wi-Fi. Plus a load of other features. The models shown at CES ran Android and Linux OS’s. And, it comes in cool colors! The company says it expects to be available commercially by the summer.

In this article (in Hebrew), Freescale Israel chairman Moshe Kashat discusses the i.MX515 processor, developed at Freescale’s labs in Herzliya:

“Leading edge users are demanding small devices with strong usability features. Our (i.MX515) processor provides them with high performance, including improved graphics processing, and very low energy use – with the result that users can go longer without recharging, up to a full day. We will undoubtedly provide a strong challenge to the netbooks using Intel Atom processors, and their challengers.”

(“… and their challengers.” Sounds like he’s talking about alternative processors – like the one Apple is planning!). The article also quotes Freescale Israel CEO and Marketing Director for Eastern Europe, Shmuel Barkan:

“Our smartbook opens a door to a new and wonderful world. We believe that our tablet will be adopted by the consumer market as the popular choice for the next generation of smartbooks. Freescale plans on being a leading player in paving the way for the smartbook to be a winning device.”

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I hate to brag, but I called it – the massive escape from YES (and HOT, which we used in the past and was no better). Check out this story from Arutz 7:

Current customers of the HOT and YES cable and satellite TV services have been jamming the companies’ phone lines since Thursday morning, after a ruling by the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Forum that customers have a right to cancel their service for the next three weeks without having to pay a substantial cancellation fee. The fee has been waived because of the closure of the Hallmark Channel, which has decided to stop broadcasting in Israel.
It should be noted that the number of those seeking to cancel the services substantially outnumbers the customers of both services who actually watched the channel.

Looking for alternatives? Look right here and here – at my blog post and Jpost article on Saying “No” to YES!

Could the recession really be over? According to Israeli placement company Etosia, 75% of managers in the hi-tech sector see hiring during 2010 set to grow by at least 20% – with half seeing hiring grow by as much as 30%, or even more. In addition, 46% see salaries in the hi-tech sector growing next year. The poll of 80 directors and top managers in Israeli hi-tech companies was conducted over the past several weeks, with companies of all sizes polled – from those with fewer than 10 employees, to companies with over 500.

Quoting Eyal Solomons, director of Etosia, Globes (in this Hebrew article) said that according to the poll, the hot areas in hi-tech next year – in order of “hotness” – will be software development, sales and marketing, hardware development, and product engineering and development. “Already now we can see a sharp rise in the number of open positions. Since the beginning of the year, demand for workers has gone up 40%.” Salaries, he said, are now more stable as well, since there is more demand.

Perhaps the best result coming out of the poll is that 81% of the bosses believe that the world economy will improve next year. Why is that “the best?” Because Israel’s hi-tech markets are overseas – in the U.S. and Europe, as well as the Far East. Companies wouldn’t be looking to hire if they didn’t think sales were going to rise as well – in the U.S. and Europe. While sales to China are already up, China is still far smaller a customer of Israel’s than the U.S. (first place) and Europe (second).

After being battered for the past couple of years, hi-tech companies have been very conservative in hiring – so the fact that they’re going out on a limb and proclaiming their desire to hire means that change really is in the air. Let’s hope that these guys are right!

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It’s pretty ridiculous, when you think about it – that a population of maybe 13 and a half million “runs the world,” which is closing in on about 7 billion these days. While I could maybe understand how that could work when there were only three billion people in the world – and the Jews were maybe a half a percent of the total – now that we’re just a quarter of a percent, you’d think that canard would fall away.

And yet it persists – and strengthens! Of course there are prominent Jews in many fields – just as there are prominent Irish, Italians, Americans, and Chinese. But somehow, there seem to be “more” prominent Jews – ie, more than you would expect. At least that’s the impression people have (and not just anti-Semites, either). And thanks to an article in the New York Times this week, I think I may know why.

The article, by David Brooks, discusses the “protocol society”- a society that produces not “stuff,” but intellectual property. According to Brooks,

A software program is a protocol for organizing information. A new drug is a protocol for organizing chemicals. Wal-Mart produces protocols for moving and marketing consumer goods. Even when you are buying a car, you are mostly paying for the knowledge embedded in its design, not the metal and glass.

In other words, Western society is now primarily producing ideas, and not just any old ideas – ideas that revolve primarily around the spoken and written word.

In other words, America (and the advanced West) are today in the business of dealing with words – instructions, rules, regulations, all of them leading to ideas. Exactly what Jews excel in!

Don’t take my word for it; the famous genetic researcher, Charles Murray, asks in an article in Commentary magazine in 2007 why the Jews are so overrepresented in the sciences, arts and literature, when it comes to superior achievement:

What accounts for this remarkable record? A full answer must call on many characteristics of Jewish culture, but intelligence has to be at the center of the answer. Jews have been found to have an unusually high mean intelligence as measured by IQ tests since the first Jewish samples were tested.

Murray goes on to cite IQ scores, showing that Jews score higher than the general population. However, he says

Jews are only about average on the subtests measuring visuo-spatial skills, but extremely high on subtests that measure verbal and reasoning skills.

In other words, Jews have an IQ propensity for dealing successfully with ideas – or, in Brook’s words, “protocols!” Interestingly, Murray says that Jewish accomplishment in general society (as opposed to within Jewish academic society, where everyone was expected to be literate) dates only to the mid 1800s, when society began its slow turn from agriculture and manual labor to intellectual creativity.

Now that we’ve arrived at Brooks’ “protocol society” – where intellectual property, “ideas that revolve primarily around the spoken and written word,” is the main product – it seems that Jews are everywhere, even if they’re not, because in order to succeed, everyone has to “think Jewish,” at least to some extent! The better your verbal and written skills, the more successful you’ll be in navigating modern society.

Why this should be true for Jews in particular, says Murray (and also, at least partially, for other groups as well, such as Chinese and Indians), is the subject of his very interesting Commentary article (interestingly, Murray says this applies mostly to Ashkenazi Jews, who lived in more advanced societies, but the letters to the magazine afterwards cite the possibility that it could apply to Sephardim, as well). So, the next time someone rants on about how “the Jews” run everything, keep in mind that the ones running things might not actually be Jewish – they might have just come up with a way to “think Jewish” and succeed in the “protocol society!”

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There’s no accounting for intelligence out there, particularly among the lower intellectual classes, such as the morons that run the anti-Jewish and anti-Israel web sites of the world. Why are they so humorless – and clueless? A sense of humor (and irony) is clearly a sign of intelligence, according to many studies. Meaning that if you don’t get the ironic aspect of many ridiculous situations in life, you’re just dumb.

That’s how it is with these people – and here’s the proof:

Over the past week, an article I wrote about anti-Israel and anti-Semitic web sites has become the darling of the very same people I trashed – because I apparently “outed” one of their ilk, with whom there seems to be a dispute. I’m not all that up on cockroach politics, but apparently one group of losers is accusing senior anti-Semite Alex Jones of being a “Mossad agent” or some such thing.

What do I have to do with this? Because in this article, I exposed Jones’ “Jewish connection.” Jones, a well-known peddler of dark conspiracy theories, apparently works at a Jewish-owned radio station, from where he broadcasts his theories on a syndicated radio program. The big “revelation” is freely available on Wikipedia, which I quoted directly from: “According to Jones’ Wikipedia biography page, ‘the Alex Jones Show radio program is broadcast live from Emmis Communications’ KLBJ Radio in Austin, Texas.’”

A quick search of the Emmis corporate website indicates that the company’s CEO is Jeff Smulyan, whose biography page says that he has, among other things, been awarded with “the Jewish National Fund’s Tree of Life Award.” Further rutting around on racist websites (I won’t offend you by listing the links) indicates that Smulyan is indeed Jewish (as if with a company named “Emmis Communications” there could be any doubt!)

As Mr. Smulyan has not taken any steps to hide his Judaism and still employs Alex Jones as a radio host (4-6 PM Sundays on KLBJ-AM Talk Radio, according to the site’s schedule), I assume both he and Jones are aware of each others’ identities and background. That means that either Smulyan is an extremely liberal fellow, who so believes in freedom of speech that he’s even willing to give someone like Jones access to the airwaves (it CAN’T be because of the advertising money Jones is pulling in!), or Jones is hypocritical enough to overlook his association with the “Jew media,” satisfied to make a deal with his “devil” in order to find a home on a “legitimate” radio station (this assumes, of course, that Jones is an anti-Semite, which you have to conclude he is, judging by the company he keeps).

My entire point in the article which mentioned Jones (and a couple of other jerks, whom I’ll get to in a moment) was their hypocrisy; here Jones goes on about the (according to his ilk, clearly “Jew-run”) Trilateral Commission and the (ditto) “Jew Rockefellers” running the world – while making use of the “Jew media” to spread his poison. It’s not just hypocritical – it’s irony on the highest level!

But the brains who run the hate sites just can’t relate to irony – hence they have wrenched that paragraph out of context, using it to “prove” that Jones is actually an agent of the Jews! Idiots – that’s not what it means! It means that he is a fake, phony and fraud, just like the “Hawaiian Settler” – the guy who occupies a home in Hawaii, stealing land and resources from native Hawaiians, and from where he points fingers at “Israeli occupiers” (ironic!). And he is a fake etc. just like the “Peace in the Desert” Jew from Brooklyn, living in occupied Jerusalem posting about Israel’s “atrocities” in Gaza (super ironic!). As is, to add to the pile, the “street brother” who besides being a Jew-hating cretin, is clearly extremely stupid – the proof being that he was the one who “exposed” what I wrote about Jones, without paying attention to the context, humor or irony or of the article. No doubt he thinks “irony” is what happens when you get the wrinkles out of your clothes. Duh!

(Hint: Watch the first video for some “rational” talk from Jones, then watch the second one for some “context”).

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