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!

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• Facial recognition software to go public (telegraph.co.uk)
• Khurram Sher: A high-achieving, joking doctor (theglobeandmail.com)

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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• Annoyed With Buzz In Your Gmail? Add Facebook Too! (techcrunch.com)
• Google advised to make Buzz opt-in service (newstatesman.com)
• How To Turn Off Google Buzz From Gmail Account (techgenuine.com)
• Privacy watchdog probes Google Buzz complaints (network.nationalpost.com)
• Google Tweaks Buzz After Overblown Privacy Backlash (wired.com)

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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• The Plethora of Playback Options (bombtune.com)

One of the great things about a smartphone is the ability it gives you to connect to the wider world – through its data connection. And now, with relatively fast 3G internet networks, you can really hook into lots of great services. While the iPhone usually gets most of the glory, plain old Symbian or Windows devices can do most of us just fine.

For instance, I like having the option of hooking up internet phone calls on my cellphone using Skype. Skype has an application, called Skype Lite, which lets Java phone users dial into Skype via a regular cell phone call, with the call forwarded from the local connection to your Skype contact anywhere in the world. That’s a great way to save on international phone calls, but if you want to avoid the phone call charge itself, you can make a free Skype call using your smartphone, if you’re using a wifi connection. What if there’s no wifi? A smartphone lets you easily switch between the different connection options, such as WAP or 3G.

My Nokia 5800 phone is a Symbian device, and as of now Skype doesn’t have a native application for Symbians. So, I use an app called Nimbuzz, which very neatly lets you connect with your Skype account and call your contacts – as well as your the contacts in your phone book (I used Fring for awhile, but found Nimbuzz to be much neater in its approach).

Other notable apps that let you hook up with the rest of the world: Qik, a great app that lets you broadcast (via e-mail, Twitter and Facebook) whatever is happening around your phone live to the rest of the world; vTap, a video sharing site for mobiles; and Waze (http://www.waze.co.il or http://www.waze.com), which uses your phone’s GPS settings to determine where you are, and informs you of traffic problems or speed traps in your area.

As I wrote in the Jerusalem Post, you can connect to services like these via wifi, or 3G. But when using cellular internet, you are being charged by the kilobyte for all data you transfer on the network. For Orange customers, for example, the basic surfing package gives you almost unlimited surfing within the Orange site network, but once you try and connect to the rest of the world, you find that the 30 MB in data transfer you get with the basic NIS 21 package just isn’t enough.

Unfortunately, the concept of unlimited data connection is unknown in Israel, unlike in the rest of the world. On the other hand, the commensurate cost of the data connection is cheaper, because you get to choose from one of four data connection packages, so you can decide how much or how little you want to spend. Fortunately for me, I’m able to do a lot of my work in wifi-friendly environments, so I use my phone’s wifi connection to connect to most of the cool services I use. But having that 3G backup “insurance policy” is essential; for example, I was able to use soft modem Joikuspot to get my work done while helping my wife keep vigil recently at the hospital for a sick relative.

Having already received a warning that I was running out of allocated data time, I decided to upgrade from the 30 MB to the 150 MB package, which costs NIS 41 a month (to fund it, I dropped the GPS, which was NIS 21 a month, so my bill is essentially the same). The next package in the series, 5GB of data connection time, should put paid to any concerns I would have about going over the transfer limit; but that package is NIS 81 a month.

Since I don’t want to pay any more on my monthly bill than I already do, I didn’t upgrade to the 5GB plan – but if I could drop another NIS 40 in existing services that I don’t need as much, I would. Unfortunately, since most of my bill consists of set charges (for minutes and SMS usage), there’s almost nothing I can cut out without going to a different call package. But if I could shave off some of that cost – maybe take a package that doesn’t include 200 free SMS messages (I don’t use nearly that many), I could cut down the talk package and apply that money to the data package.

So here’s what I’m planning to do: I’d like to call Orange and figure out what the absolute cheapest package they offer is, and figure out whether signing up for that, along with the 5 GB data package (or even the 20 GB package, for NIS 80), comes out cheaper. My wife, for example, pays a basic charge of NIS 8.57 per month, and then by the minute (about 60 agurot). Which sounds expensive, and would be if I used it to talk the 200 plus minutes a month I usually use my cellphone. But – what if I were to make all my calls using Nimbuzz/Skype? I’d still have to pay SkypeOut minutes if I call non-Skype customers, but maybe that would be cheaper than paying for the cell phone minutes.

And even if it cost the same (I suspect it would), I would have the greater flexibility of being able to use the data package anyway I wanted, which is much more efficient than having services I don’t really need or want (extra SMS messages, which Orange is always giving away for free anyway – their latest promo was 1,000 free messages in honor of Ramadan!). With 5GB (or 20GB!) of data connection, I wouldn’t even have to use Skype; I could contact everyone directly on Facebook, Messenger, or e-mail, with actual talking over Skype taking place only when necessary (how many times do we just need to convey information, as opposed to getting into a conversation, when calling colleagues, customers, etc.? That’s why SMS messages are so popular!). If nothing else, this would be a cool topic to write about. I figure I could get three columns out of it!

So people check out your tweets, or surf to your Facebook page. What does it get you – directly, I mean? Sure, there’s the “value-added” of your enhanced online reputation that can get access to useful information – or even help you land opportunities- but you don’t get any specific benefit when people actually visit your pages. In the case of Facebook, clicking on your page lets them charge more money for ads, and find more customers for their “gifts” – and Twitter will figure out how to cash in one day very soon, as well. But what about YOU? Where’s YOUR payday?

Right here – at Inter8ing, an Israeli company, which holds social media popularity contests, where you get your buddies to vote fpr your profile. The most popular profiles on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Friendster, My yearbook, Netlog or Hi5 – meaning the profiles from these sites that garner the most votes at Inter8ing- win cash prizes! The top prize on the page right now is $200 (they pay through Paypal).

It looks like anyone from anywhere with a profile on these sites can join, and anyone can vote on the web (Israeli voters can vote via SMS).

According to the site’s rules, you can solicit friends, or even vote for yourself. All they care about is the votes. Why not use Twitter to get your buddies to vote for you? It could work like Twitter followers – “you vote for me and I’ll vote for you.” The $200 winner has 436 points, which I take to mean 436 votes. That’s small change for Twitter members with 4,000 or 5,000 followers! Talk about “monetizing” your Twitter popularity!