Cynics would say it’s about time Microsoft released a free anti-virus program – after all, aren’t most of the viruses that infect Windows systems the result of the all too easy to bust registry?

But we’ll leave aside the politics of the registry for now. What I like about the new, free Microsoft Security Essentials is that it was developed right here in Israel! As of today (June 23), the package is available for download (I found a link for all versions here, but by Wednesday it should be on the official MS security page).

The download is free, and available for now to users in the U.S., Israel, and Brazil. According to a bunch of articles I read, the reasoning is that the U.S. has lots of computers, Israel is where it was developed, and Brazil has lots of infected computers, so the feedback will help MS improve the product. It’s not exactly an anti-virus suite like Norton or the others, but it’s good at nabbing trojans and viruses in e-mail and downloads.

At a press conference, Moshe Lichtman, the director of Microsoft Development in Israel, unveiled not only the antivirus program, but 13 other innovations the Israeli unit came up with, including a new version of Messenger for dual computer/cellphone use, that will display messages on the phone as SMS messages, and as regular Messenger messages on the computer – automatically.

Microsoft’s Israel labs have had a long tradition of innovating killer products for the company. Like – developing much of Windows NT (the precursor of Win2k and XP)! From an article I wrote a couple of years ago, where I tried to ascertain Israel’s role in the creation of Windows:

After lots of Web surfing, I decided to give Microsoft Israel a call. Apparently, they get this question a lot; the very pleasant young lady I spoke with said that “Parts of Windows NT were definitely developed in Israel,” but that she could not specify which ones – other than to say they were “probably” mostly “security related.” Security, of course, was NT’s biggest selling point, so this young lady may have said more than she meant to. Hmm. On the other hand, she seemed to indicate that NT, as all of Microsoft’s products are, was a team effort, with different research groups working on different parts of the program.

Which would mean that Israel, although perhaps an important contributor, did not necessarily develop “most” of NT or XP. I was ready to take that as the situation, in fact – attributing the statement on the poster to overenthusiastic Israel-loving (not that there’s anything wrong with that) – until I came across this site (http://tinyurl.com/nwe5w), a technical site that made this statement, in the context of a computer show it was covering in Tel Aviv: “Microsoft also announced Windows NT Embedded which is to be released this year and is being developed at Microsoft R&D centre in Haifa, here in Israel.” Well, if they developed NT Embedded, why not NT itself?

I was never a good writer. Not the kind of writing that you read to get information from (that kind of writing I’m not too bad at). I mean the kind of writing where you take a pen and start jotting things down on paper. Suffice to say that when I was in seventh grade “they” sent me to the school psychologist because my handwriting was so bad.

Nowadays, except for signing checks and the like, I do all my writing via the keyboard. For me, it’s not a choice – nobody would be able to read anything I wrote on a pen and paper anyway! And now, after so many years of keyboarding, I’ve practically lost the penmanship skills I ever had anyway!

But for normal people who know what to do with pen and paper, there’s an Israeli invention that lets them digitalize what they’ve written. Pegasus Mobile Note Taker, you can take notes anywhere and on anything, and automatically have it transformed into text, editable in MS Word and the like!  Note Taker doesn’t scan your writing, but actually converts what you write into text. And while there are plenty of digital pads and pens out there that can do the same thing, the chidush here is that you can use regular paper – pads, notebooks, or wherever you take notes.

That sounds cool enough, but if you already have your laptop on the table, why would you want to take notes on a pad using a regular notebook? Seems as if it would be easier to just type directly into the computer! Ah, but Note Taker goes beyond the screen; you can connect the device not just to a computer, but to a cell device too – via Bluetooth! So, if you have a smartphone, you don’t need to shlep a laptop to meetings – just turn your phone and your Note Taker on, start writing, and your text will get recorded as a document in your cell device, for later uploading to your computer!

That in an of itself makes Note Taker extremely useful. But I thought of something even better: Besides a small piece of hardware that you connect to your pad, the system includes OCR software that automatically reads and converts your writing into onscreen text. But it works with graphics as well – so if you’re an artist who draws on paper or even canvas, you can automatically digitize your artwork while you work, with a digital copy of your canvas masterpiece on-screen. Thinking about this aspect of Note Taker’s capability, I got a good business idea for artists – professional or even aspiring:

Paint something good and get the original  of your work into an art gallery or even public institution somewhere, and then sell digital prints of your masterpiece that’s hanging in, for example, city hall! You can appeal to civic pride of town residents, who no doubt would be motivated to buy a reasonably priced copy of a work that graces one of their fine city’s prestigious institutions. Plus, if you’ve donated the original work, you get credit for your public mindedness – always a marketing plus! Set up a website promoting your work and put together an e-mail marketing campaign to reach your customers; as orders come in, you can print out your work one piece at a time, saving money on the up front investment you usually have to make in producing copies of artwork. Find a printer, make a deal on production, and you’re on your way to fame and fortune!

You’ve probably tried out CamSpace, the Israeli “Wii Killer” that lets you interact with your computer screen without a mouse or keyboard – just using your body. And if you haven’t, shame on you, because you didn’t read my great article about it at Israel21c. CamSpace is still maturing, but already you can play dozens of games that let you be “in” the game, waving your hand around while playing tennis, boxing, playing Donkey Kong type games, etc.

Well, it turns out there’s yet another Israeli company working in this space – and its technology is apparently going to be at the heart of Microsoft’s Project Natal which will be included in future Xbox editions. According to Engadget, Israel’s 3DV Systems’ ZCam, which

“is at the size of a typical webcam, and provides home users revolutionary gesture recognition capabilities in addition to real-time background replacement, enabling them to control video games and personal space through intuitive body gestures and immerse themselves with virtual reality”

will be the piece of hardware Natal uses to connect users to the their screens!

The ZCam is actually a hybrid between the Wii’s approach and the CamSpace approach (but closer to CamSpace); using dedicated motion detection hardware and software like the Wii does (CamSpace is software and works with any web cam), with a full body orientation like Camspace allows, instead of just limiting you to interactivity with the remote control, like the Wii. According to Engadget,

“Project Natal really couldn’t be further from the Wii when it comes to motion controls. Instead of representing potentially arbitrary controller motions and gestures, Microsoft has its sights set on capturing the motion of the entire body. The technology is certainly impressive, combining an infrared camera and traditional camera to capture motion and 3D location in with glorious resolution and responsiveness — from furious full body flailing to the subtle motion of an imaginary steering wheel, gas pedal and gear shifter.”

And that camera combination will apparently be coming to you courtesy of Israeli startup 3DV Systems. Apparently a deal for MS to buy 3DV has been or is about to be completed, and it’s possible the first ZCams (or whatever they evolve into) will show up in Xboxes next year.

Not to sound racist, but there’s no way a person raised in a Western country can’t feel some consternation when a person of clearly Arabic background gets on a plane. 9/11 was just too much of a shock to the system, and it’s impossible not to do some personal profiling, even if you try not to.

The same applies to Arabic text. If you’re from the United States or Israel (and probably lots of other countries) it’s impossible not to look at a page of Arabic writing and not get “nervous” – as in, “it must be some anti-Israel/anti-Jewish/pro-terrorist screed.” We’ve come to expect it, especially in Israel. And if you live in an area where there is lots of Arabic on the radio (such as Israel), you get the same suspicions listening to broadcasts of speakers who are dramatically intoning – something.

Other than learning to understand Arabic, there’s little you can do about the audio “threat” (one of my daughters more or less taught herself Arabic, so she can make out what goes on in these broadcasts). But for the rest of us who are too lazy/uninterested/incapable of learning a new language at this point in our lives, there’s Google Translations. There are lots of reasons not to like Google (like the people here say), but one amazing thing Google has done, imho, is Google Translate, where you can paste in text or URLs and get them automatically translated between dozens of languages – like English, Arabic, and Hebrew, as well as Swedish, Finnish, Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, and of course the more “pedestrian” languages like Italian and French (no offense meant!).

Google Translate has helped me out numerous times – including just this afternoon, as I was writing a feature story on Israeli boxing. As part of the story, I wanted to mention the tragic death of a former Israeli Golden Gloves champ, Karim Nayif Bathish, who was killed a couple of weeks ago in an auto accident. I really wanted a picture of Bathish, but couldn’t find one anywhere – on the English and Hebrew sites, that is. Then I got the bright idea to Google Bathtish’s name in Arabic, seeking out articles about him on Israeli websites in Arabic. As a local hero in Nazareth and Haifa, you’d figure there would be a couple of articles. And indeed there were – complete with picture. The articles were quite factual, and the talkbacks were all what you would expect (mourning for the victim, etc.).

This isn’t the first time I’ve used Google Translate to research an article on Arabic language websites – I actually wrote an article in the JPost about it last year. And of course, I can’t help but check out other stories than the ones I was searching for on these sites. Let’s just say that while some fill the post-9/11 stereotype, most don’t. Believe it or not, “they” are not as obsessed with us as we think they are!

The thrust of my boxing article is how the organization tries to promote co-existence (most of the boxers are Arab or Russian kids). The director of the organization, Dr. Shahade, told me than in 20 years of running the Israel Boxing Association, there hasn’t been one ethnic/religious fight among the boxers! That’s great for kids who are in shape enough to box – but how can the rest of us avoid tension? Maybe Google Translate is the arena for us!

In Israel, the authorities are very focused on collecting taxes (I guess authorities everywhere are). As such, the authorities have set up a variety of mechanisms to make sure that they get their money. Thanks to a computer snafu, though, they managed to get some money that wasn’t theirs – including mine!

Most people in Israel (salaried workers) have their income taxes automatically deducted; technically, they don’t have to file a tax return, unless they have an exceptional expense or deduction (average charitable contributions, credits for dependents, etc. are all factored in already). Independent operators/freelancers/self-employed people, on the other hand, file annual returns. Every two months, you are supposed to pay an advance to the Tax Authority; they give you a little book of receipts where you are supposed to fill in the amount of money you earned, and pay a percentage as income tax. That percentage is determined at the beginning of the calendar year, and is based on your previous year’s income.

It makes as much sense as any collection system, but it’s expected that there is going to be some money owed by either side, since by definition a freelancer/self-employed person does not earn the same amount each year from the same employer (otherwise they might as well take a salary). Between varying income, changing business expenses, new dependents (ie children), and other factors, you could be eligible for a hefty refund – or have to pay a hefty amount to cover your obligation.

Having done this for a few years now, I can also say with authority that it depends on the accountant you have, too. I have a good one. Not that he’s a crook or anything, he just knows his way around the tax codes, and has been able to get me a significant refund each year for the past three years!

According to his reckoning, I was supposed to get about 5,000 shekels back this year. They usually send these refunds out by February, but here it is May, and I haven’t gotten mine yet. What I have gotten, though, are dunning letters demanding that I pay them 2,400 shekels!

Now, let it not be said that I don’t do my part as a taxpayer; there are lots of deductions I don’t take on purpose. I’d rather pay them and have them leave me alone. When I got the first letter (they don’t start threatening until the third), I called up my accountant and asked him what had gone wrong – assuming he had miscalculated or something. “Let me check my figures,” he told me – and called back a couple of days later to tell me that he had been right, and the tax people owed me money! “I even called the tax official in charge of your account,” he told me, “and he agreed completely.” So what happened? “Must have been a glitch. I’m sure they’ll clear it up in a couple of days.”

Nope – and I’ve now gotten a fourth letter! I was all set to write them a check, when I saw the article describing exactly what happened. In his annual report, Micha Lindenstrauss said that the Tax Authority had “lost” the deduction eligibility information for a whole slew of taxpayers when implementing a new IT system. Apparently, there a series of different computer systems that the Authority is trying to unite in a single system – a project that has been going on for the last 18 years (!) – and it still isn’t ready.  Now the question is, do I give up, or try to get my money back? Can’t we put some hi-tech entrepreneurs to work on this?