Posts Tagged 'ישראל'

New year, new start

Saturday marks the start of the 5770 Jewish Year, Rosh Hashana.
During the last 12 months I left IBM, proposed to my girlfriend, did a short term at Isracard and had 1,000 new followers to my twitter account, among other things… 😉

It has been a great year, filled with tough decisions, happy moments, cool events, meeting awesome people and more, much more.

Next Tuesday, Sep 22nd, I’ll start my new job as VP Sales and Marketing, at a SW company called IntLock, developers of CardioLog – the leading reporting and usage solution for Sharepoint portals. I’m very excited to kick off the new year at a new place, with a talented group of professionals and I can’t wait to start!

For new beginnings – Shana Tova to all  :-))

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New blog design and connect options

This post is for all the people reading my blog via your favorite RSS reader. I’ve made some design changes. No, that doesn’t change the RSS link, which remains the same: http://feeds.feedburner.com/dvirreznik.

Couple of things have changed, but before addressing them, I’d like to thank @ronenk for his professional advice – thanks man! Now, the changes:

  • New design template, clearer, whiter, which in my opinion is easier to read. I hope you like it.
  • Navigation has been moved to the left, a task long over-due, I know. Living in Israel I have this weakness for Hebrew, that is written from Right-to-Left. So obviously my blog, although in English, needed to adhere to Israeli rules. Over the time I realized that it’s just wrong. So I switched sides.
  • Connect with Dvir isn’t a new widget, but it couldn’t hurt mentioning it again. I’ve listed my social identities, in no special order, including my email address. Feel free to contact me in any of those methods.
  • Text size. Analyzing my traffic I noticed that a growing # of requests are coming from mobile devices/browsers, and the normal text size can be too small. So now there are 3 text sizes for you to choose from.
  • Google Friend Connect and MyBlogLog widgets offer you a great way of getting to know new people who share the same interest. Feel free to join my networks.
  • Google Reader Shared Items. I’m a big fan of GReader, and although the various real-time services out there, I can always rely on Reader to keep me busy at nights/weekends and updated on the stuff I missed. In this widget you can see the recent items I’ve ‘Shared’ on my Reader – hope you’ll like them too.. 😉
  • Zemanta is a new discovery service I’ve added a month or so ago. Zemanta is actullay a double multi-platform solution, for blogs (wordpress, blogger, typepad, tumblr and others) and emails (Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo), bringing you relevant content from known publishers like mashable.com and techcrunch as well as other ‘smaller’ bloggers, like me. If you read a post you like, hit the ‘Reblog‘ button (site, not RSS) and share your thumbs-up with the community.

Do hope you like the changes and additions, comments are always appreciated!
Thank you for being a reader.

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First 4 hours with my Nokia N97

Following my participation at Nokia Israel’s N97Unboxing campaign earlier this week, I was starting to pile some feedback and comments from people I knew, getting their opinion towards writing a post later this week. Frankly, after Lior Levin and Amit Cohen won the N97 I kind of lost the interest in the game, ’cause once the package reached me, and was sent to the next blogger, my incentive for following the campaign and contributing to it was gone.

Yesterday Nokia Israel called me up to set up a time to deliver me a package, ‘a surprise’ they said, for participating in the campaign. I thought it’s gonna be some promotional material, t-shirts, accessories maybe – but today at 14:30 I got my very own Nokia N97 Black!! Before you think of ambushing me at a dark corner, the phone is on a lease, for a month, without any strings attached – meaning Nokia Israel don’t expect me to write anything, good or bad. The only term in the contract is that I have to return the phone in 1 month, un-harmed.

So, first impressions, 4 hours into the action:

  • First off – it’s a beautiful device. In dark black it attracts attention, and the screen is HUGE (3.5″), especially when compared to other Nokia devices, N95 or E71.
  • Touchscreen takes some getting used to. Unlike the iPhone’s capacitive touch screen, the N97 screen is resistive (what’s the difference?), to ensure proper recognition via a stylus pen as well. There’s a feedback on your click, as if the screen is pushing back at you. Also, when there’s a list of items (like in your Inbox or Music Library), you’ll need to ‘double-click’ to select – one click only highlights your choice.
  • Homepage has widgets, which can be customized according to your need. The list is quite long and includes: weather, Amazon, Facebook, Calendar, Contacts, Bloomberg, FM Radio, Media Player, Shortcuts and you can always download more from OVi. You can drag&drop the widgets and set them up as you want.
  • Data plans – a MUST! Since Facebook for S60 Touch is a widget, you’ll need to have an open connection (wi-fi, UMTS, GSM) if you want to see updates as they happen. Syncing your business email is easy, as well as connecting to Gmail/Yahoo/Live via a friendly wizard.
  • Sound quality is solid and the stereo speakers do an excellent work when listening to music or using the speakerphone.
  • Keyboard takes some getting used to, and the N97 is the first N-Series phone to get a full QWERTY keyboard. The 3-line layout is different, and I still haven’t formed my opinion about it. Because there are only 3 lines, the ‘space’ button is at the right, and there’s a multi-touch button at the left side – to go right/left/top/bottom/select, in any application/screen you are. The keys are well spaced, much better than the E71. Oh, and to change input language (Hebrew/English) you need to press & hold ‘Up arrow’ with ‘Sym’.
  • Twibble has some issue, which my guess is the result of the N97 being both Symbian and Touchscreen based. The ‘menu’ and ‘hide’ keys are non-functional, and instead you see on the screen 2 buttons (when the keyboard is open) or a full navigation-pane, like a multi-touch button, with A/B/C/D quick link button, that takes up half the screen (when the keyboard is closed).
  • Storage is almost infinite in today’s landscape: 32GB of internal memory, with up to 16GB in Micro-SD card. You can throw pretty much anything to it, and you’ll still have couple of GBs free.

So far I’m quite pleased – it’s a great phone, huge screen and the keyboard is a needed addition to the N-Series line. I have the Nokia N97 for a month, so stay tuned for future reviews. I’ll also take some photos and actual screenshots and post them later.

Nokia N97 Unboxing

Nokia N97Image by suanie via Flickr

Nokia Israel kicked off a unique campaign this week, dubbed The Nokia N97 Unboxing – Online as it happens. During the game, Nokia Israel reps are visiting prominent bloggers bearing a box, that might house the new powerhouse from Nokia. The initiative, in cooperation with Y&R, joins this list (also in Hebrew) of digital marketing campaigns, and is quite welcome I might add.

True to the theme of Online as it happens, each visit is broadcasted live and can be viewed at any time on the site, along with a Google Map widget to show you where the package was last. There are also photos from each visit shared on OVI, for your pleasure. If the N97 is not at the box, the blogger is then asked to pick a name from the list I mentioned earlier – the next candidate who’ll recieve a visit from Nokia Israel folks. Each visit is broadcasted, and publicized by both the blogger and Nokia Israel in the various social media sites. The social features could have been better, focusing on (and showing) more content published by those prominent bloggers, but I guess you can’t have all at once.

Although my name is on that list (it’s a short list.. 😉 I’m still waiting for my surprise visit, all dressed up and ready for my close-up.. In the meantime, check out Ilan Peer unboxing his Nokia N97 box:

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Exclusive tour at Channel 2 News

Just got back from the first bloggers’ tour at a news company, as 15 of us visited the offices and broadcasting studios of Channel 2 News (web and web) in Neve Ilan. The tour was organized by Liran Dan, VP Interactive Services and Anat Ginio, who among other things is the ‘voice’ behind @channel2news – thanks guys! One fact I learned at the beginning is that according to Israeli Law, every news broadcast MUST be aired from Jerusalem and Channel 2 News got an approval to shoot at the Jerusalem area – Neve Ilan is midway between the capital and Tel Aviv. Weird law, but that’s for another discussion..

It’s always interesting to visit at a news network, being at the studio and all, but with the Iranian election in the background, and the change twitter is bringing into this medium as well, it’s even more interesting. The goal of the visit, at least for me, was to understand how social media, twitter in this case, can support the on-going efforts to bring the news, as they happen, to the viewers.

Channel2news joined twitter some 6 months ago, and in the past 2-3 months they are putting some 50-100 updates a day, mostly breaking stories, special reports, live coverage and Q&A. Their online strategy includes twitter of course, and they sport a youtube channel as well, but are always learning this medium, trying to figure out the best way to use it. Learning is also about listening and asking for feedback, which Liran was interested in getting. We suggested to open a second twitter account, for breaking news (much like CNN Breaking News), that would alert followers to new stories as they happen, and also raised the option of ‘pulling’ live conversation data from twitter (trending topics or twitterfall) to get the public’s reaction to the story. I’m guessing the adoption of the latter will not happen soon, but our first proposal might.

Still, there’s much to consider when mashing community conversations with journalism, and I for one think it’s wise that Liran is exploring this step-by-step. Only 4 weeks ago they first asked viewers to submit questions to the weekend show (Meet the Press), and even thou they could promote this initiative more, they’re going slowly, for now. Twitter (and other social services) are changing the way we consume (and produce) content, but once you started, it’s almost impossible to undo.

I do believe social services will change the way we view the news, and the recent events from the elections in Iran proves it, but the battle between traditional vs. new media will bring new challenges, that must be solved. Journalists have a tough job these days, as they see/read/hear stories as they happen, but cannot report them until they were authenticated, and thus losing the scoop. The next 12 months are going to be pivotal in the history of the social web and its effect on the way we consume the news, so stay around, we’ll be right back… 😉

Links:
Channel 2 News on twitter
Channel 2 News on mako.co.il and reshet.ynet.co.il
My photos from the tour, Kfir Pravda‘s photos and Yarin‘s photos (on facebook)

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Mobile & Media Consultant. I help startup companies launch products to the consumer market. Reach out: dvir.reznik [at] gmail.com
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This is my personal blog. The postings here do not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my past employers or of my clients. It is solely my opinion.