Posts Tagged 'אינטרנט'

Amidar Housing picked IBM WebSphere Portal

Amidar Housing, the government agency responsible for housing in Israel, has just launched its redesigned website, developed over IBM WebSphere Portal Express software. Excellent gift for the holidays!
During the 2nd stage of the project, Amidar – along with Web-Tech Innovation, IBM BP specializing in portal and KM solutions – will launch a new intranet website, that would connect Amidar’s 500 employees spread at 50 locations across the country.

Amidar picked IBM in July 2008, with a definite roadmap to launch the redesigned site by the end of the year. The solution, WebSphere Portal Express V6.0 (packaged for small-medium businesses), along with WebSphere Dashboard Framework, provides the perfect platform for Adimar, and cost-effective one, to develop and deploy 2 portals over a single infrastructure – exploiting the solution’s capability of ‘Virtual Portal’.


Amidar also took advantage of some innovative web 2.0 technologies embeded in the solution, by deploying the map you see above, of the various locations across Israel. The launch of the redesigned site, as well as the internal portal (to be launched soon), are part of Amidar’s 2009 approach of focusing on the customer’s needs.

Yaacov Brosh, Amidar CEO:

Access to public housing and learning the rights every citizen entitles to, demand first of all – access to information. The redesigned website provides just that.

Amir Belferman, Amidar CIO:

Building over WebSphere Portal technology enabled us flexibility in content management, easy setup of the different pages/categories and operational efficiency, under a very short time frame. We plan to maximize the platform in the future, by enhancing the services and information we provide to our customers online.

Links:
Amidar website
Amidar improves customer care by launching a redesigned website built over IBM technology
IBM web portal software
WebSphere Portal Express software

Obama leads to change in Israel politics as well

It seems that Barack Obama‘s victory echoes all the way to our little country of Israel.
Obama’s flawless use of the web has created many copycats, most of whom mimicked the L&F of US President Elect website. Even the NY Times picked up the story, first caught by a local blogger, who mentioned it to a friend, who blogged about it – and shortly after published at ‘traditional’ news sites.


There’s even a new word for it in Hebrew – ‘likebama‘ (free translation – dorbanot.com):
‘Someone attemping to be like US President Elect Barack Obama, to enjoy Obama’s popularity’.

Links (most in Hebrew):
Ido Kenan (blogged about it)- Netanyahu and Obama website
Ido Kenan – More copy-paste stories
Ido Kenan – Some more stories
Gal Chen – the local blogger
TheMarker IT – from an Israeli blogger to NYTimes
Ynet – Does Netanyahu’s website mimcks Obama’s?
nrg.co.il – Yes he can! Netanyahu launches new website
NYTimes.com (requires sign-in) – Israeli candidate borrows a (web) page from Obama

Firefox reaches 20% market share

I’ve been using Firefox for over 4 years now, so for me using the Fox is like a second nature. I even got my spouse to use it on her laptop – she just loves the weather gadget I put there.. 🙂

Anyhow, according to a recent analysis from NetApplications, Firefox has reached 20%, an important milestone in the browser’s short history. For those not strong in math, that means 1 in every 5 people browsing the web are doing so with Firefox.

The early days of B2C (aka web 0.1)

Nowadays it seems trivial, the internet. I am doing pretty much everything online, and if it’s not available online – chances are I will not look at it or consider any other action.
Been visiting a veteran Lotus Notes customer the other day, when I came across this poster, from one of IBM’s old campaigns, e-business.
Lou Gerstner, IBM CEO and President in the 1990s mentioned the term in his book, referring to IBM’s internet and marketing teams. Seeing this poster was like taking a time machine back to 1998… :-))

What I have in Firefox 3

Since upgrading to Firefox 3 some 10 days ago I’ve been trying to optimize its performance, both in UI (themes and extensions) and extensibility (plugins and extensions).

The installation went very smooth, the software remembered all my preferences, but I had some issues with daily usage: my ‘back’ button didn’t display the name of the site, some plugins were not suitable for FF3 and other extensions I wasn’t using that much. Some issues were answered by @firefox_help – excellent example of using micro-blogging to reach your audience. There are other examples here (Mashable) and here (Hebrew).

Niv Calderon asked me to share my extensions, as he did a while back. For the sake of saving real-estate space I decided to start with a blank page, un-install all my extensions and install only what I use on a daily basis.
There’s also a screenshot of my Search engines, what I’m using more frequently is at the top of course – web 2.0 related, either IBM internal or public – results are better coming from those sources.

So, this is how my Extensions window in Firefox looks like:
bluetwitsidebar – an IBM extension that adds twitter to FF sidebar, and integrates with internal IBM micro-blogging tools, such as BeeHive.

Colorful Tabs – cute, adds some color to your browser

Ctrl-Tab – super extension with cool UI, F4 opens up a tab mosaic for easy access to open tabs

Delicious Bookmarks – add bookmarks and search your existing ones

Facebook toolbar – Share button is most important, as I share quite often. The rest are nice, but can live without them

Forecastfox – what should I wear tomorrow? short sleeves or short sleeves…

FoxClocks – when working with Europe and the US a lot, it’s a priceless extension

Foxear – another IBM extension, that adds Lotus Connections’ social bookmarking buttons (similar to del.icio.us, only internal)

Gmail Manager – easy way to see what’s up in my Gmail inbox, without keeping the tab open

Google Gears

Google Preview – adds a tiny preview to Google Search results

IBM Bluepages Plugin – another IBM internal extension, for our employee directory. Allows me to add people to my Lotus Notes 8 address book, IM list or personal group

IE Tab – for those ‘great’ websites that support standards

Minimap Addon – just installed it, haven’t use it much yet to form an opinion

PDF download – open or save a file, without freezing your tab/browser

Screen grab – copy or save full screen, visible portion or selection – brilliant

Tab Mix Plus – probably one of the best FF extensions ever. The FF3 extension is still in beta

Tommy! – another internal IBM extension, that aggregates employee directory, IM, blogs, bookmarks and communities – in one mini-view

Undo Closed Tabs Button – ever closed a tab by mistake? here’s the solution for restoring it

Web 2.0 Unified Search – not an actual extension, but more a search engine plugin, IBM internal, that looks up in every web 2.0 repository (blogs, communities, bookmarks, social networks, etc)

Who is This Person – highlight a name and search various people finder search engines

If you have any extension I’m not using, that you feel I should – leave a comment.

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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.