Archive for April, 2007



RIM service is back up

BB (BlackBerry) isn’t that popular in Israel, as no cellular carrier picked it up and translated the interface. Yet. Although several did try. There are some US imported BBs, mostly with people doing a lot of business in the US, and has a US carrier to support their BB account.

Still, my heart and thoughts were with millions of BB users, who could give their thumb a little (and much needed) break. 48 hours were enough, now back to work !
CNNMoney has just reported that the service is back on, may be some delays, but you can start stretching your thumbs… Oddly enough, and contrary to what many BB users think, the world didn’t come to a halt this past 48 hours, although the blogosphere was filled with posts and comments about the recent outage and some conspiracy theories as well.

Couple of posts I liked about the last (and most severe) outage came from Todd Watson, IBM Pundit Blogger, writing about BlackBerry Blackout and Megan Barnett, from Portfolio.com, in her BlackBerry Addicts in Detox post.

Presentations can make you laugh..

I’m known to be a fairly good presenter, and I usually lecture on marketing/communication issues at work. Ever since I had to give a lecture about Web 2.0 for Managers, I take great interest in presentations techniques and methods. To stay up-to-date I follow Garr and Guy Kawasaki’s blogs, among others.

This last post from Garr really made me cry from laughter.. it’s amazing how true some of these insights are. I bet most of you have seen, at least once, a slide filled with information, that the presenter just read to you out loud, as if you are 1st graders who can’t read…
You can read the full post and watch more funny videos at PresentationZen.
Life After Death by PowerPoint

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Before I wrap this up, a friendly reminder:
IBM Software Group in Israel will host the SOA by IBM event in May 8th at Avenue. If you want to hear about SOA from business and industry leaders, you are most welcome to attend – it’s free! There are 4 different sessions to choose from, I’m sure you’ll find your spot, and get the answers you need.

Installation Party at IBM Forum

The first time I heard of ‘installation party’ was 2 months ago, in a pre-event meeting I had with Nir Simionovich, the CTO of Atelis. Apparently, the ‘parties’ were a known event at the Technion CS department, were the CTO graduated from, and drew a large crowd.

Anyhow, on March 27th IBM Forum Israel (IBM solution and conference center) hosted the first face-to-face annual event of Asterisk – open source for VoIP. The driving force behind the event, and the entire Asterisk community in Israel is Atelis, an ISV (independent Software Vendor) of IBM GTU (Global Technology Unit). The event drew over 80 developers, who came with their PCs/Laptops, to hear, share, network and install open VoIP clients.

The developers could install the new version of AsteriskNOW, which is a full communications solution, built on Web Services and AJAX, running Linux (of course), and allows for all the usual communication services of a switch board or call center.
I am not a technical person, but even for me, it was inspiring. It showed the true power of the community – this was the first face-to-face event, and all the developers knew each other from previous events and meetings. There were kids, around 16-19, configuring systems, explaining to the people the improvements in the new version – amazing.
I’m definitely buying my kid (still single, but thinking ahead…) a PC to play/break a part with.

You can read more on the Asterisk Developer Event here (Hebrew article).

Utilize your ‘assets’ to the max

Just back from a short vacation to the north.
I had a birthday recently and decided to take some time off with my girl and go up north (near Tzefat) for 3 days for some r&r.
Since I was on vacation, I left my laptop at home, for some r&r of its own, although I’m sure I could find a free wi-fi spot if I searched…
I always have a camera with me, either on my cellphone (Nokia 6233 – 2MP) or my Sony DSC-P73 (4.1MP – 3 years old..). I often find the Nokia camera more available, since I usually have it on me, and taking a picture is a 4sec thing, nothing more.
Why this long intro? and what’s the connection to the title? be patient, it’s coming.
I like good food, especially meat (what can I say ;-), and I eat about once a week outside, with friends usually. There are excellent places in Israel, but most of them are gathered in and around Tel Aviv. If I go up north (way north, near the border with Lebanon) I search the web for the good places in the north.

I went to eat dinner at Doris Butchers, a specialized restaurant for meat. Only meat.
It’s hard to differentiate yourself in the restaurant business, and the life span of most places isn’t something you can brag about, but Doris Butchers have made it. They have only 2 branches in Israel, and oddly enough, the 1st one was established up north, in Rosh Pina, some 3 years ago, and the 2nd one in Tel Aviv, 6 months ago.
In each location, there’s a large window at the entrance, with the ‘merchandise’ – the meat (look below).

There’s no mistaking where you are – if you don’t like meat, that’s not the place for you. And I’m not talking about Burgers/Hotdogs – I’m talking 1/2kg minimum, average serving size is 1kg ! That’s a lot. Good (1st) example of how you can take advantage of your current assets, in this case – the meat!
The 2nd example of utilizing your assets I saw on the road, on the way back. There aren’t many 18 wheelers in and around Tel Aviv, so I didn’t see it before, but this is superb! I took my phone and snapped a picture, right away..

The truck belongs to Neviot, one of the water companies in Israel (like Evian), and they sell water in several ways: bottles of 500ml/1.5L or 20L for home/office use. They started a new line recently, for smaller offices, 10L bottle, and on top of the usual marketing tactics and media, they found a way to use their marketing pipelines – the trucks.
For those who can’t understand Hebrew:
On the back of the truck, an 18 wheeler truck, there’s a sign saying: “small, but ahead of you”, and a number for reservations. Simple and smart.
An excellent example of using an asset you have, and creating a different ad, with a hint of humor.

Brand yourself !

In 2007 there are over 1 billion people surfing the web, +140 million of them have MySpace pages and more than 70 millions are blogging. That’s a lot of web pages. A lot. Which leads one to ask “how do I make myself notable? different?”.
The answer is simple: brand yourself.
There have been numerous articles on the importance of self branding, and a quick Google search would bring you some 1.5M results to browse through.

I read the recent State of the Live Web report (April 2007) and started thinking how can I make myself notable? What makes my blog different from the other 45 millions out there (deducted the spam bloggers..)? I guess not much, and that’s fine by me. I know my place in the blogosphere, and quite pleased with it.
But still, how do you know what others think of you? Google yourself of course, that’s how people find you.. So I did just that, and I’m quite pleased with my results. 8 out of 10 results in the first (and most important) page are about me, leading to this blog, to comments I made in other blog and to reviews I gave in forums. I even appear on the 3rd and 4th results pages.. nice.
I’m not a lists kind of guy, but here are some tips, from one ordinary person to another:

  • Create a blog. If you use your name in the url – even better. URLing your name can pretty much nail you that coveted 1st place in the results page. And the posts will most likely also appear on the first page.
  • Comment using your name. If blogging isn’t for you, but you like reading other people posts and commenting, use your name. As a blogger, I like to know who’s commenting my post, other than John Doe…
  • Everything is public. Be careful what you say on the web. Everything can find its way to the internet, and if there’s something you don’t want people to read/know, keep it offline.
  • Freedom of speech. The internet allows people to say pretty much everything they want, but there are still laws to uphold. If you feel a certain post is misleading, or a pure lie, don’t sit quietly. Demand the owner to remove it. Not everything is bound by the freedom of speech.

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