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 syndicatedradio 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”).
So the iPhone finally came to Israel – overdue and overpriced. As I predicted, I might add (not that you had to be such a genius to figure it out!).
Don’t bother. The iPhone is so “this year” (maybe even “last year”). Save up your money so you can buy the real game changer – the First Else, made by Else (formerly Emblaze Mobile). I interviewed the CEO of Else for Israel21c.org (look for the full article there) and saw the First Else live and in person.
And it’s like no other phone you’ve ever seen! The video below doesn’t do it justice. This is an elegant – dare I say it? – work of art, that was ergonomically designed from the ground up to provide maximum usability and minimum (actually zero) futzing around.
I don’t want to give away too much because I want you to read the whole article (I’ll link it when it comes out), but I wanted to be sure to let you know what the future holds. Else CEO Amir Kuperveis and I discussed much about the philosophy behind the First Else (appropriate for a device that was designed from the bottom up), comparing it, of course, to the iPhone. Suffice to say that the one advantage the iPhone has – the thousands of apps you can install in order to improve functionality – comes off as a primitive band-aid solution to getting your device to work the way you want.
In the end, the cell device is about getting things done – and the ease of use in the First Else (here’s a tidbit: you can do everything – but everything – that you need to do on the phone with one finger, your thumb! It was designed that way) blows away any and every device on the market. If the First Else is a color high-def digitalTV, the iPhone is an ancient early color analog set – while my Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is like radio!
If you thought you weren’t getting the internet connection speed you’re paying for, you may be right. According to Knesset member Meir Sheetrit, the two companies in Israel that provide infrastructure and backbone services for internet connection – Bezeq (the phone company) and Hot (the cable company) – are not going to be able to provide the super-fast speeds they are promising to customers, except in maybe a few places.
Sheetrit suggests that the companies be required by law to tell customers the maximum speed they can expect in their areas, considering the potential for misleading customers. “Often, because of their naiveté, customers sign up for service at high speed and prices, only to find out that the company is unable to provide the service,” he wrote in a letter to the Knesset Technology Committee.
Sheetrit forgot to add what comes next – the near-impossibility of getting your money back after you’ve been ripped off by these vultures. It’s bad enough that they (by “they” I mean almost every large service company, not just ISPs) will try to sell you stuff you don’t need at almost every turn, but when the service or product they dump off on you doesn’t even work, trying to get your money back is out of the question – the best you can hope for, usually, is a credit towards a future purchase. In other words, once they’ve got your money, you’re not getting it back!
As I wrote in the Jerusalem Post, it’s a worldwide trend – service and quality you once expected as a matter of course is now “premium,” as companies, strapped for cash, nickel and dime us for everything they can squeeze out of us.
Why am I not surprised? This is just another manifestation of an attitude that you find in so many places, from the corner store to the bank to, of course, the government. They sweet talk you and act like you’re their best friend when they try to get you to sign up – but once they have your money, try getting the time of day out of them!
Here are a few good tests I’ve found which indicates how badly you are going to get ripped off:
Before ordering a service, call the company’s service line, and see how long they keep you waiting. While all companies are guilty of giving lousy service, some are less bad than others. As I do lots of research for my writing, I call companies like Orange, Bezeq, etc. to ask questions, even if I’m not a subscriber to the service. A good indication of what to expect is the “sales to service call” ratio – ie, the time difference between how fast the sales people answer the phone, and how slowly the service people talk to you. The bigger the gap, the worse the service, I’ve found.
Ditto for the sales pitches they give you, both recorded and live. Some companies will respond to nearly every question with a sales pitch, basically ignoring what you asked (but implying that your problem can be solved if you just ‘upgrade’). Often long times on hold are coordinated with repeated recorded sales pitches – it’s as if they keep you waiting just so they can get you to listen to their stupid ads! Avoid companies that do this, if possible.
Any service or sales person that does not implicitly understand that they work for you – and not the opposite – is a bad reflection on the company they work for. When I speak to sales or service reps, I’m very attuned to signs of cynicism or superciliousness. If the person on the other end of the phone sounds like s/he has his/her nose up in the air when they talk to you – like they’re somehow better than you (even though you’re paying their salary!) – it’s time to move on.
How do you resolve these issues? In Israel, a loud voice always helps. You have to be prepared “lahafoch shulchanot” (go crazy),as they say. Threaten to switch, cancel the service, or threatening to tell all your friends how bad the service/product is can help too, sometimes; most of the people you speak to on the phone don’t care one way or the other, but if you really do cancel or switch, you can be sure their manager will be listening to the recording of the conversation and probably call them on it, so if you can make them understand that it is they who are causing you to want to leave the company, they may think twice before acting nasty. Unfortunately, there’s no sure-fire single method that works every time; it’s a matter of experimentation, seeing which company reacts to what tactic.
But it’s worth the effort; when you confront the service providers and make them understand what they are doing wrong, you are contributing to an improvement of the consumer culture in this country – and maybe even helping the next person not to get ripped off!
Israel is a technology powerhouse – but how powerful a powerhouse? Very powerful, it turns out – and now we have the statistics to back up the claim. A study by the Taub Center for Social Policy Research shows that Israel runs circles around even the most advanced countries when it comes to patents, research, and even Nobel prizes!
For example, the study says, Israelis get more patents in the United States per capita (relative to population size) than any of the G7 countries, including the U.S. itself. By 2003, in fact, Israelis had 69% more patents per capita than any of the G7’s. In 1990, by contrast, Israelis got 6% fewer patents than inventors in G7 countries (which in itself is not too shabby, imho).
Nobel prizes? Israel is in sixth place overall in absolute numbers of Nobel Prize winners. Since 2000, Nobel Prizes have been awarded to at least one winner in 20 of 200 countries around the world – while Israelis during that period won 5 Nobels!
Research? Check this out: Israeli economists were cited in more publications (per capita, ie relative to the number of economists in each country) between 1970 and 2000 than economists in any other country in the world. The runner-up is Britain – but Israeli economists were cited seven times more than British economists in magazines, books, periodicals, journals, etc.!
The study has more to say – not so good -about standards of living, poverty, etc. I’ll get to that in the next an upcoming post, but let’s first enjoy this good news, at least for now!
Chalk up another successful export industry Israel is a player in: Satellites. Earlier this year, Israel’s first communication satellite, Amos-1, was sold to Intelsat, one of the largest operators of communication satellites in the world. Amos 1 will now be known as Intelsat 24, and will be used for communications in East Asia – meaning that Iranians watching channels like India’s Star TV may be getting their shows from an Israeli-made satellite!
According Amitzur Rosenfeld, director of MicroSat Israel (a joint venture between IAI and Rafael to build micro-satellites), Intelsat is directing eastward Amos-1, which is still in orbit. Speaking recently at a scientific conference in Tel Aviv, Rosenfeld said the original plan had been to use whatever fuel was left on the old Amos-1 (launched in 1996) and fire it out of the earth’s orbit, to make room for new satellites. By doing so, Israel was being a good world citizen; according to NASA, there are over 9,000 (!) satellites and/or other “artificial objects” orbiting the earth, so things can get crowded up there!
Israel, it turns out, is one of the most advanced countries in satellite technology anywhere, because of the launching technology it has developed, along with breakthroughs in imaging. Most of the country’s communication satellites (like the Amoses) have been launched from outside the country (France, India, Russia, etc.), because of the need to fire satellites in an eastward direction, the direction of the earth’s rotation. That works fine in Florida or Texas, but in this part of the world, an eastbound launch might be construed as an attack by Jordan or further neighbors.
And, in addition, Israel’s new TecSAR satellite provides superior imaging capabilities, enabling sensors to pick up what is going on down below even during cloudy weather. Israel and France are developing a satellite that will enable farmers, fishermen and governments to better keep track of the land and sea environment, and according to “informed sources,” NASA is set to build a satellite in Israel using TecSAR technology to be used to map the usually very cloudy planet Venus. Nowadays, here in Israel, “space cadet” is a compliment, not an insult!
With the weather turning wintery in Israel over the last few days – and more promised for this week – I wanted to tell you about a great service you may not know about. Dr. Barry Lynn’s Weather It Is is a weather forecasting service that gives a specific forecast for dozens of cities in Israel, usually much more accurate than the forecast you get on radio or TV.
I interviewed Dr. Lynn for the Jpost a few years ago, and he told me that the standard “one size fits all” weather forecast issued by the Israel Weather Service is the result of bad equipment, small budgets, and poor motivation (as in small salaries). The one perk the forecasters doget, it appears, is fame – the one on duty during prime radio hours gets to jabber with the hosts a little bit, but beyond that there’s little to attract talented meteorologists to a government job, he said.
By the way – weather forecasters do a lot more than just tell you whether you should take an umbrella when you leave the house. As I wrote then:
…improved and more accurate weather prediction could be a boon for many industries that need to wrestle the environmental elements in order to get work done. Take an electric company crew that needs to do major line work, for example. These guys get paid a huge hunk of change for field work, and if the company sends them out on a job, while they sit in the truck instead of working because a surprise electrical storm has made it too dangerous to work, the company – and, of course, its customers – end up footing that bill. An accurate weather prediction for the specific area in question is valuable information for the utility, says Dr. Lynn, and they’ll pay – as will oil and gas drillers, farmers, airports and a host of other industries and services.
When I spoke to Dr. Lynn, he mentioned that he was involved in forming some deals, and indeed he now has a general website where he advertises his services, and it appears he’s “weathering” the recssion. Meanwhile, he updates his Israel site on a regular basis. It’s interesting to see what the differences in weather are in various places in Israel during stormy times like these!
Remember the startup contest, Exit’09? The one where the winner gets – would you believe it – a package worth $250,000? Well, we have a winner!
If you will recall (and if you don’t, the original article is here), Exit’09 was a contest to decide what Israel’s most promising startup was. Applicants submitted ideas, videos, and details to the judges, who decided whether or not they qualified for the contest; those that did survived by getting people to vote for them, with the top winners each week advancing to the finals. Eventually, there were only two companies left, and they participated in a “Big Brother” style internet broadcast, with web viewers able to watch them put together their final presentations, which the judges would then decide between, declaring one a winner.
And the winner? While you’d expect the people (and the judges’) choice to be a really sophisticated new web service, or groundbreaking piece of software, the idea that got the prize belongs to Penina First, a young lady from the town of Givat Ze’ev, who wants to organize an SMS alert system for odd job seekers and the people who need them to run errands.
Penina foresees a site called Day-Job (doesn’t seem to be in existence yet), where people looking for someone to do a short task – say, babysitting, filling in for an absent waiter or secretary, someone to do some housework, etc. – can search out a worker and hire them. Candidates who are members of the service get an SMS, and the first one to respond gets the job.
First says that the system is perfect for students, soldiers, etc., who can’t commit to a regular work schedule, but want to earn some extra money. Her sympathies are with the workers (she’s clearly “been there”), so all fees are collected from the employers – who are asked to pay a modest sum of seven shekels, collected by reverse SMS when they close the deal to hire someone.
It’s really an ingeniously simple idea – so much so you would have thought it already existed. But it doesn’t! Even more – the idea is genuinely Israeli. I read somewhere that Tel Aviv is one of the best cities for temping and odd jobs. Meaning that First’s idea is bound to be a winner. Good choice, Exit’09 judges!
Everybody’s got a “Bezeq story.” Here’s mine. It’s about unrequited revenge. But one day I will be avenged, mark my words.
In my Jpost article today, I talked about the alternatives to Israeli phone ex-monopoly Bezeq. While only Bezeq can still offer traditional PSTN phone service, a host of challengers have arisen to provide consumers with broadband-based home phone services, usually on a POP (pay one price, like at Great Adventure) basis. Until customers can connect to the internet at more than the current 8mb/s (most people here have 5mb/s or less), I wrote that transferring for your home phone service to the internet – which for various reasons is dicey enough in Israel (the infrastructure sometimes hems and haws) – might not be such a good idea, at least until Bezeq’s NGN fast data transfer infrastructure (reputed to provide up to 50mb/s capabilities) reaches your neighborhood. And the truth is, Bezeq’s prices and service aren’t all that terrible.
Now. Now they’re not so terrible. As one reader commented on the Jpost site, Bezeq’s prices and service aren’t so terrible now because the company has five competitors breathing down its neck, who are actually having an impact on its customer base. For me, with a network of five or six home computers that are always on and active, downloading, processing, or presenting and playing this or that, adding internet-based home phone service would be just another strain on the system (I’ve been down that road anyway, with both Skype – which usually behaves, but sometimes doesn’t – and a dedicated softphone, complete with VoIP box). But for any folks who aren’t heavy web surfers, saving 50 or 100 shekels a month on their phone bills by switching away from Bezeq. Many are doing so. It makes lots of sense – and can be a very satisfying experience.
That’s because everybody has their “Bezeq story.” You can’t really blame them for the crappy service in the “old days,” before 1984, when the culprit was the government-controlled Ministry of Communications. But you can blame them for the crappy service after 1984, when the Ministry spun-off Bezeq into a separate – but still government-controlled – enterprise.
Even just a few years ago, on the eve of its becoming a private company, Bezeq was still mired in its old ways. Example: You have been able to pay your Bezeq bill by credit card anytime, day or night, over an automated system for nearly a decade. You call their service number (199), press some buttons, and input your credit card number using your keypad. The process is pretty efficient – now. Until about a year and a half or so ago, however, it was much easier to call during business hours and get a real person; that virtual cashier would go on and on for eons, making you repeat input, checking and rechecking things.
Perhaps they planned the system like that for uptight Israelis who expect to be given a hard time by the people they pay for services, but what should have been an easy input-based bill paying exercise turned out to require your full attention for as long as ten minutes! Note that this situation prevailed even during a substantial period when Bezeq was a private company. They’ve cleaned up the input manager now, and it now takes about three minutes to go through the process of changing things.
But that’s not my Bezeq story – instead, this is it: About seven years ago (2002) I was getting ready to leave with my wife and kids for a family trip to U.S. relatives. The flight was to leave quite early, I remember, and we were up long before dawn making last minute preparations. Then it hit me – I forgot to pay the phone bill, which was already overdue by a couple of days! But where was the bill? Already edging on towards late and trying to take care of a plethora of last minute details, I search and searched, but couldn’t find the bill.
When you call Bezeq from your home phone, the computer identifies your phone number and account – and that feature was active in the 2002 version of the Bezeq online payment system. So no problem, right? You don’t really need a bill; call the automatic payment system, let it identify your account via your phone number, let it tell you how much you owe, and pay.
That’s the way you would expect it to work – but not at Bezeq circa 2002. While the system could identify who you were, it couldn’t tell you how much you owed! You had to have the bill in front of you in order to input the full – exact, down to the agora – you were supposed to pay. What if you didn’t have the bill, or wanted to pay in advance? Could you, before, say, going out of town and having lost your bill, input a clearly inflated sum like NIS 500 (instead of the NIS 200 the bill usually was), and let them hold it for you on account?
You could try – as I did – and be told that the payment had been recorded in the system. And you would go on your merry way, confident that Mamale Bell was watching out for you. And you wouldn’t even realize you had a problem until you sauntered back home three weeks later and picked up the phone – and heard nothing!
Why nothing? Because Bezeq had cut off your service. And why had they cut off your service? Because you didn’t pay your bill. But Ms. Bezeq lady, you beg, I lost the bill and input much MORE than I owed, so you would get your money! It’s just not fair! To which the Bezeq lady would reply, in more or less words, “tough.” To get your service back, you had to pay your bill PLUS a cutoff fee, EVEN THOUGH your payment was seemingly accepted at the time of payment by the system!
And you, left holding the bag, seethe with rage. And you tell the Bezeq lady, “All right for you. But one day the government is going to allow competition, and on the first day they do, I am dumping you for anyone else that can offer home phone service, even if they charge more money than you!”
So much for dreams of sweet revenge. Nowadays, it would seem that the revolution is over, that Bezeq has joined the family of humanity and positive human relations. But people like us remember – and our day will come yet!
I’ve fallen behind on my blogging schedule of late. I was in the U.S. for most of August, and you know how that is – hanging out with the kids, running around to the stores, etc. Visiting the family is wonderful, but it’s no vacation!
I was all set to get back into the swing of things, when the almost unbelievable happened – my wife’s sister, Abigail Radoszkowicz, passed away, at the age of 53. Abigail was the editor of the Op-Ed page of the Jerusalem Post, which wrote a lengthy and emotional obituary for her. I’ve made a web page with the obit, plus letters and e-mail messages that the writers Abigail worked with sent to the Jpost in response to the tragedy. People who visited my wife as she sat shiva said they couldn’t recall ever reading an obit with such emotion and sadness. She was clearly loved by her colleagues – and yet, she was always sure she was going to be “the next one” to be fired!
She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer only in the middle of July – barely six weeks before she died. It was a very aggressive cancer, that spread to the liver and kidneys, until her body basically broke down on the Thursday (Sept. 3) that she passed away. She died very late Thursday night, and her husband, trying to arrange for a funeral for the next day, was told that there was no room in Jerusalem’s main cemetery, Har Hamenuchot – so she was sent to Har Hazeitim (Mt. of Olives), usually reserved for only the most righteous. While to look at her you wouldn’t think she was one of the “hidden tzaddikim,” apparently G-d knew better – and He arranged for her to be buried in a place worthy of her.
There’s lots I can say about Abigail – as a journalist, a sister in law, and a family member (the latter two are not necessarily the same, as most of us know). She was an intellectual who didn’t flaunt her knowledge, a cultured person who didn’t look down at the “masses,” and a religious (almost Chareidi) mother who encouraged her kids to explore the world. Abigail got me my start in the Jpost many years ago, where she got me an interview with the head of the ads department – from where I moved into systems administration, and finally writing. It’s only now, after the week of the shiva, that the loss is sinking in.
To read the obit (if you missed it in the Jpost), and the letters to the editor, please click on http://abigail.cyberjew.net/
As an almost certified paranoiac, I haven’t been posting for that last three and a half weeks – the exact amount of time I was away with the family in the U.S. I didn’t want to write anything that would give away the fact that I was out of town (and that the house was for the most part empty) like this guy did, giving crooks a green light for their home invasion. You could probably find out my address, if you googled hard enough! Note to all potential thieves: We’re home now, so don’t bother coming around!
What did I bring back from the States, you ask? Plenty: Lots of “stuff,” but even more stories, not all of them happy. Most people who live in Israel and go to the U.S. buy stuff, because it’s often cheaper there, and they have more of a variety. For example: I picked up a nice flat screen TV for the bedroom, only $285 at Wal-mart (which I should have returned, because I saw it a week later at Costco for $225!). We got a bunch of other stuff too, lots of it from the Dollar Store (and Kohl’s, which had some great sales!)
But the stories – those weren’t as much fun as the shopping. Many of the stories had to do with trying to get some help with products and services, and getting pushed around by phone correspondents who were clearly from someplace outside the U.S., who could do nothing more than read a script (usually in very poorly accented English, I might add). I alluded to one of these situations in a JPost article; I was trying to get Verizon, the service provider for my parents’ DSL internet connection, to fix a connection issue.
For a week I was bounced around the world, speaking to phone attendants in India and Mexico, for the most part, who had no answers for me, and no interest in getting my problem solved. As I wrote, these people, from a third world background, have more serious survival issues to deal with than fixing my connection in time to allow me to attend my videoconferencing meetings. And of course, with each subsequent phone call, my tone got louder and louder. You could just picture the phone attendant pulling out her “angry customer script,” reading back the responses she was supposed to give when the customer starts yelling (I bet that script gets a lot of use!). Finally, I managed to get through to someone in the American call center, and the problem was resolved a day and a half later.
Verizon was far from the only runaround I was subjected to – I had “incidents” with several cell phone service providers, and even the customer service in some stores wasn’t up to par. I could even swear that 7-11 was using an inferior grade of coffee – it just wasn’t that good! Not to mention the much higher prices everywhere. Eleven bucks to cross a stupid bridge (the Verrazano)? Fuhgeddaboutit!
As I wrote in the Post, Hebrew has apparently saved Israel from the scourge of outsourcing. It’s unlikely that workers in India or other outsourcing centers are going to bother to learn Hebrew in order to serve the local market, so we’re unlikely to be subjected to the scourges resulting from dealing with uncaring foreigners half a world away. Instead, we’re subjected to the scourges of dealing with uncaring Israelis a half kilometer away! But it’s not the same; you have a common cultural basis which you can pull out of your pocket when you deal with a local person (we’ve all had some experience in this, like the secretary who takes pity on you because she knows you’re getting the kids ready for Shabbat).
Ironically, as a reader reminded me, Israel has a significant outsourcing operation as well; although much less active here now, New Jersey-based IDT runs dozens of call centers here in Israel. But the Israeli call centers are far different than the Indian ones, because here the centers recruit from among American immigrants – so when a caller reaches an Israeli center, they really are talking to someone with whom they can identify, and who can identify with them. Based on my frustrating experiences with call center people over the past few weeks, that identification apparently counts for a lot more than we realize.
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But the stories – those weren’t as much fun as the shopping. Many of the stories had to do with trying to get some help with products and services, and getting pushed around by phone correspondents who were clearly from someplace outside the U.S., who could do nothing more than read a script (usually in very poorly accented English, I might add). I alluded to one of these situations ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=3496dcae-8469-4c6f-8c51-342fa112534c)
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