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Posts Tagged 'israel'

Got a 10MB bandwidth at home? Surf the Autoban

Published October 21, 2009 Uncategorized 2 Comments
Tags: bezeq, Broadband Internet access, Internet service provider, israel, privatengn

That is, in a nutshell, what Bezeq International, an Israeli ISP, is offering to its customers. In a closed event for bloggers and tweeple held this week, the company CIO presented the new package – PrivateNGN – the first of its kind in Israel. The idea is very simple:
Customers with a bandwidth of 10MB and above (consumers, not businesses) will enjoy a dedicated server to tunnel their requests, unique IP address and their very own VIP call-center.

Broadband internet penetration rates in Israel have increased dramatically over the past 7 years, from 4% in 2002 to a whopping 76% in 2008 (PDF, Hebrew), with an average bandwidth of 2.5MB compared to 500Kb in 2002. There are 2 infrastructure providers (ADSL or Cable) and over half a dozen ISP providers – conditions that create a highly competitive market, and each ISP is working hard to get the competitive advantage.

Following the semi-technical presentation (that was very easy to understand – lots of graphs and logos), the Marketing Manager took the stage, showing us the campaign surrounding the launch, the design language and the brand new TV spot – first screening ever (was aired later that evening on TV).

To wrap the event, and staying true to the language of PrivateNGN, Bezeq Intl. got us flying!! Well, not exactly flying, but I did complete several summer-salts while suspended above ground. On the other hand, London 2012 is out of the question, but I’m practicing for Rio 2016!!

I am interested in seeing how the other ISPs will respond to Bezeq Intl. announcement, as it changes the broadband market and definitely puts Bezeq Intl. in a better position to increase sales and customer base. From the social media aspect – excellent initiative!! More and more companies are realizing the potential of the social scene, by starting (and continuing) a conversation online, adding social media aspects to their marketing programs, inviting bloggers to press events, holding closed events for bloggers and tweeple – well done Bezeq Intl.!

[Pictures courtesy of Meir Pinto]

New year, new start

Published September 18, 2009 Uncategorized 4 Comments
Tags: israel, jewish, microsoft sharepoint, New Year, Rosh Hashanah, ישראל, ראש השנה

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 :-))

Orange StartApp – iPhone Contest

Published September 14, 2009 Uncategorized 2 Comments
Tags: apple, cellcom, iphone, israel, Mobile phone, pelephone

It’s no secret that Apple’s iPhone has revolutionized the mobile scene, in all three fronts: device makers, cellular operator and consumers. In Israel there are some 50,000 iPhones, all purchased abroad of course – the local Apple distributor, iDigital, is not bringing the coveted device.

In July 2009 the 3 largest cellular operators (Cellcom, Orange and Pelephone) in Israel announced they’ll be bringing the iPhone to Israel, and since then the country is in mini-chaos. Rumors are flying, prices are still un-known, apps developers are in high demand, marketing campaigns are on hold and everyone are waiting to see when will the iPhone hit the stores and at what cost. Presumably each operator committed to selling 100,000 devices a year (300,000 together), a serious amount – considering Israel’s best-seller, Nokia’s N95, sold 150,000 devices in 18 months. Since Apple are overseeing the marketing campaign, the main differentiators in my opinion will be the overall packaging and service – which operator will create the best eco-system around it to support its iPhone users.

Orange will kick-off an interesting contest next week, Orange StartApp, in which 3 winning developers will receive 10,000 US$ each and 1 of them will get a full Orange campaign to promote its iPhone application in Israel. The contest will start Monday Sep. 21st for 3 months (until Dec. 21st), and any developer with an account at Apple Store can submit his/her applications in 1 of 3 categories: Entertainment, Business and Location and Local Content.

Orange definitely took a step ahead of the pack, by harnessing the power of the developers community – one of the iPhone’s key success factors. The operator that will build a bigger eco-system around it, will probably win more votes, not to mention ‘calling shot-gun’ on the local developers community. With Apple controlling every move of the launch, the 3 operators have very little space to navigate and diffrentiate themselves – Winter is gonna be very interesting, that’s for sure.

New blog design and connect options

Published August 31, 2009 Uncategorized 5 Comments
Tags: blogger, css, design, Hebrew language, israel, בלוג, ישראל, עברית, עיצוב

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.

Learning to speak Android

Published August 22, 2009 Uncategorized 2 Comments
Tags: Android, cellcom, google, israel, nokia n97, samsung galaxy, גוגל אנדרואיד, סמסונג גלקסי

Something good is happening to Israel in the social media scene. Twitter is getting A LOT of screen time, and even yours truly got his 30sec of fame in a recent TV piece (1:25min from start and again, later on) trying to uncover the mystery behind the micro-blogging platform.

Advertising agencies and consumer goods companies cannot ignore the stats and grown interest, so both started to incorporate social media aspects into their traditional and interactive campaigns. A month with Nokia N97, courtesy of N97Unboxing.co.il, did bring plenty of attention and social media coverage for Nokia Israel and the N97, but most reviews weren’t that favorable, and in my opinion might damaged the launch of the device.

But enough of Symbian, because I have roughly a week to learn a new language – Android! I’ll be switching to a Samsung Galaxy (aka i7500) within a week or so, part of a local campaign run by Samsung Israel, Cellcom (largest cellular provider in Israel), TheFusion, McCann Digital and Nir Refuah of course, to launch the first Android device in Israel. Details of the campaign are still sketchy, but I do know it will be a 48 hour contest (vs. another local blogger) during which I’ll have to send status updates (#samsungalaxy) every 30min or so. To keep me busy (and awake) during those 48 sleep-less hours, Samsung will pamper me with various treats and surprises. Good thing I haven’t found a job, yet… 😉

So, couple of necessities before the campaign starts – help appreciated (Thanks in advance!):

Twitter app for Android
Facebook app for Android
Video streaming app for Android
VOIP app for Android (Fring doesn’t support Android OS)
Must-have Android apps – update: found Android Market, but if you have specific suggestions, feel free to comment.
Tips and tricks

Will keep you posted how this develops.

Dvir Reznik | The (old) Blog

Posts Tagged 'israel'

Got a 10MB bandwidth at home? Surf the Autoban

New year, new start

Orange StartApp – iPhone Contest

New blog design and connect options

Learning to speak Android

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