Just my take

Sincerity

2011-02-16T11:21:00.000+02:00

Recently I find that my answers on Quora can be so long, that I might as well have written them as a blog post...

So I figured, why not just copy/paste them into my blog.

I answered the following question on Quora:

How can I have someone be sincere with me?

I have a hard time feeling that people are being genuine with me, given my well-renowned position and reputation. When I am surrounded by my closest consorts, I still I tend to have this feeling in the back of my mind that people are only acting the way they do to gain favor even though I know they care for me deeply, and it's eating me alive.

My Answer:

Tempted to start with "this is not the right questions. The right question is..."

But I won't. In Quora, you should either what a person asks, or not answer at all :)

So my answer to the question is "you can't". It's actually quite simple - YOU can't have someone be sincere with you. THEY need to be sincere with you, and you have little control over that. Except if you already know what they really think, in which case you don't really need to talk to them at all :)
But, trying to help you with what seems to be your struggle, I'm going to say this:

1) I think that your best way to tell if someone is sincere with you is by past experience. If they have always been sincere with you, then there's a good chance they'll be sincere this time around.

2) Number 1 brings out the question - so how can I tell if a new person is being sincere with me? Answer: you can't. Someone once told me that if con people were easy to spot, they'd be out of a job. I tend to keep this in the back of my mind.
I'm a lousy judge of character. I think most people are, especially the ones who think that they are good judges of character. This is, again, due to the fact that good liers are very experienced at misleading people. So the question I have in mind when a person I don't know tells me something is not "are they sincere", but more of "what's at stake here, if, god forbid, this person is not being honest".
I find this to be an excellent way to deal with people's sincerity question. It reduces the stress level resulting from this question that keeps popping up in your mind, and it actually creates a learning experience. If there's not too much at stake, you can assume that you don't know if the person is being sincere, and just wait to see whether they were or they weren't, and then learn from it a little.

3) Unless you are Barack Obama, The term "eating me alive" suggests that you may be taking this subject way too seriously. The guy at the store is giving you advice aimed at getting you to buy the product that gives him the best margin. Your dentist may be recommending expensive treatments that will help her redecorate her living room. Your boss may be giving you advice that is not only for your own good, but also for his own good. Your employees are doing good work not only because they love you, but also because they want your job one day.
It's OK. You have to learn to live with it. Respect everyone and suspect everyone, but don't be un-trusting. Don't be naive, but be a sucker sometimes, (knowingly, even). Getting screwed, when the price isn't too high, is a very valuable learning experience.
Make sure you are bothered by what's important

How to Ruin your Reputation by being Petty

2011-02-06T08:17:00.000+02:00

I've been using an online backup service for many years now. I got introduced to the subject by Mozy, later to be acquired by EMC. They used to give everyone 2Gb of data free (they still do). When it finally became time to back up more than just 2Gb, I wanted to go on Mozy's paid program, but their software simply didn't work, and did not manage to back up more than 4Gb of my data. (they probably fixed it by now)

So I looked elsewhere, and found carbonite. They had unlimited backup for ~$4 a month. Same as Mozy, but actually working. Installed, turned it on, paid the annual subscription, and became a happy camper.

3 lovely years passed, where I even got the chance to restore once, and it was well worth the money spent (not to mention peace of mind).

My amount of data grew gradually, until one day not too long ago, it seemed like a good idea to get an additional hard drive. I went out and got a new hard drive, external this time (it was on special). I connected it to my computer and moved some data to it. Then I went in carbonite and found out that they won't back up data on the new drive because they don't work with USB drives. Say what? Why do you guys care what hardware I'm using? What am I supposed to do now, just not use the drive, or perhaps make sure all my important data is on the other drives? A bit of snooping around to find out that this weird policy doesn't exist in any other online service. Time to talk to Carbonite, my good old backup provider, and ask them if they can cut me some slack.

I wrote a letter to Carbonite's support, asking them to make an exception, because my new drive was just as important as my other drives. They said no. I wrote another letter saying "listen, guys, I really need to backup my data and I really like your service, but if you won't let me protect all of my data, then we cannot do business together. Please refund what's left of my annual subscription (more than half)".

This is the response I got back:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Customer Support
Date: Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 12:58 AM
Subject: User incident report [Incident: 110125-001173]
To:

Response (Leena G.)01/26/2011 05:58 PM
Hello and thank you for contacting Carbonite Customer Support.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused to you. At present, Carbonite only backs up local internal hard drives. For more details, please click the link below.

External, Network and USB Drives: http://carbonite.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1386

Also, please ensure that if you delete/move a file from your computer, Carbonite will schedule the file to be deleted within thirty days. This gives you some time if you realize you deleted the wrong file. For more details, please click the link below.

Retention of Deleted Files: http://carbonite.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1402

Additionally, we request you to please review our refund policy at: http://carbonite.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1496

As stated during our purchasing process, when selecting 'Confirm' you agreed to Carbonite's Terms of Use and acknowledged that you were aware of Carbonite's Refund Policy. We also give users the opportunity to run our free trial to try before they buy.

If you are having difficulty using Carbonite, please let us know what the issue is and we will be happy to assist you.

Please let us know if you need additional assistance.

Sincerely,

Leena G.

Carbonite Customer Support
www.carbonite.com
Back it up. Get it back.

For those of you not familiar with American English, let me translate:

Dear Customer,
Go F yourself.
Had you read our full TOS when you signed up with our service, you would have realized that you're making a mistake because if you decide to buy a USB drive, we would not back it up for you. Further more, we were nice enough to tell you upfront that if you're stupid enough to sign up to our service even after we told you all this, that you won't see a dime back. This is why it's called ann(u)al subscription.
True, you signed up with us 3 years ago, when USB external drives weren't as popular, and yes, you've been extending our service every year since, but hey - there was a checkbox there saying that you agree to everything, so take responsibility for your actions.
Just between you and us, you have about $30 left on your subscription. You've been our customer for 3 years now, so what's $30 among friends? Imagine you took us on a night out, or find some other way to live with the loss.

Bottom line: Carbonite could have allowed me to cancel my service, and could have refunded my 20 or 30 bucks, because who in their right mind would not allow a person to own a USB drive nowadays? They could have saved me the time of writing this post, and save themselves the embarrassment of getting a bad review from an old faithful customer.

Mental note: never ever refuse a refund to a customer who is not happy with the product and is giving it back.

P.S. I am on CrashPlan's trial now. They are 10% through backing up my data. If it completes before my 30 day trial is over, I will switch over to them. I'm losing $30, but my data is too important to be left for chance.

The @DimDim exit plan for you freeloaders

2011-01-07T12:23:00.000+02:00

Warning: this is a bitchy post.

SalesForce.com acquired DimDim (online collaboration software) for $31M. First of all, congrats for that. We always love to hear when someone in this business gets rewarded for good work they've done. If you work for DimDim, now would be the time to stop reading, because that's pretty much the last good word you will hear from me during this post.

I was introduced to DimDim a couple of years ago, when I was invited to an online presentation that used their tool. The person who invited me was naturally a founder of a startup (it's what we do). I was happy and a bit surprised to see that someone offered a free option to run quick presentations, limited by features and number of participants, but good enough for most bootstrap joints to use when they needed to show-off their stuff. I installed it on my machine, of course, and gave it a shot too.
Since then I didn't actually use it much, since I didn't find it good enough for my own needs, but I have told many people and startups about it. In our lean & mean startup world, every penny counts, so instead of spending $50/month on other services, DimDim really did seem like a good, free, sane option for the occasional broke presenter.
Not sure how many free users DimDim had, but I believe that the "freeloaders" took their role in making the DimDim platform a very popular online sharing tool. Don't you?

Enter the ungrateful part of this evening. I read @TechCrunch as much as the next guy, but I got introduced to the fact that salesforce.com acquired DimDim through the following email I got from DimDim:

Dear Customer:

Dimdim has been acquired by salesforce.com. Your free Dimdim account will remain active until March 15, 2011. After that date, you will no longer be able to access your free Dimdim account.

Please see the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for additional information.

We appreciate your understanding, and we thank you!

The Dimdim Team
Pursuant to the Dimdim Terms of Use (the “Agreement”) governing the use of Dimdim Inc.’s (“Dimdim”) Site and Services (as defined under the Agreement) by you (“You”), Dimdim is hereby exercising its right to terminate Your Dimdim Account and the Agreement in its entirety. Dimdim will continue to provide Services to you until March 15, 2011. Following March 15, 2011, neither You nor Dimdim shall have any further rights or obligations of any kind under the Agreement, including the right to access the Site, or receive or use any Services. Dimdim thanks you for your business, and wishes you success in the future.

Dimdim, 900 Chelmsford St. Lowell, MA 01851
This email was intended for: | Remove

(Report Abuse) - Only if you feel this email was repeatedly sent to you without your permission.

Now let me tell you my take, or what I actually read between the lines:

Dear FreeLoader and Ex-Customer,

We just got acquired for $31M. We're rich. Richer than you will ever be. If anyone tells you that "freemium" models can't bring happiness, just send them a picture of us, fishing.
We did it all by ourselves, and we are extremely happy to tell all of you so-called "customers", who made us so wildly popular by using our free service, that you can go F yourself. We do not think you had any contribution to making us popular, and we don't think you are even remotely related to the fact that we are now filthy rich. As such, while the negotiation with salesforce.com was going on, we didn't think it was appropriate to demand, as part of our severance packages and all that, that our free service remains free, at least until people forget that the salesforce.com online sharing tool was once DimDim. In fact, you should be grateful that we're letting you keep the service for another two months. We award you with a valuable lesson - there is no free lunch in this world. We really wish we could see your face as you read this announcement, but we're a bit drunk from the champagne and generally have better things to do.

P.S. Aren't you glad our lawyers made sure we can terminate your account at will ? Oh, don't bother to get up, here's the relevant paragraph from our TOS, which you never bothered to read when you signed up to our free service.

Jokes aside for a minute, I would have done it differently. I don't believe in "exit strategies" per se, and I believe that you should always think about how to make a successful and sustainable product that people need, and hence will want to pay for. An exit is something that happens when another company realizes that you've done such a fantastic job, that they want you and your product as part of their offering. DimDim was big on the "freemium" model, and it's a big part of what made them successful. Dropping the free, and leaving the "mium" before the body of their acquired organization is cold leaves a bad taste in my mouth. DimDim is officially worth $31M - are you telling me that the "free" part has no part in this ? How much money is salesforce.com saving by cancelling the free service? Time will tell if this was the right business decision, but I, for one, think that this was the wrong moral decision.

"So long and thanks for that big fish that just ate us".

Impressions from TechAviv (or, "Just Do It")

2010-12-23T19:13:00.000+02:00

When I was young, I had a foul mouth. Then I grew out of it and became a foul-mouth blog writer. Apologies for all the profanity in advance.

Yesterday was my first time ever in a TechAviv event. I've been a registered founder for about two years now. I always wanted to go to one of those gatherings, but somehow, while I've RSVPed many times, I never managed make it. There's always some important fire-fighting going on. Last night involved too many important people from the industry that I claim my company (zx900) is part of. It also had Mike Eisenberg on stage spelling out his Humus Manifesto, and to me that would have been like watching the movie based on a book that I liked. Going there got priority (and my wife OKed).
I have to admit, I’ve never had much chance to hang out in the Israeli startup/angel/VC scene, and so what I heard there caught me off-guard. The place kind of turned into a battle field with the founders on one side and the VCs in the other (and @Roi Carthy in the middle).
I decided to write a few things and offer a my perspective. I’ll most likely give reference to it in a comment on TechAviv’s board, and I’d be happy to hear your thoughts.

1. VCs invest in ventures that they think can make THEM (the VCs) a significant return on their investment. Statistics shows that only 1-2 out of every 10 startups makes it (i.e. doesn’t close shop). If they didn’t invest in your venture, there’s at least an 80% chance they were right. Probably more. No offense - it’s just statistics. Give them a break. You don't spend your savings on investments you don't believe in, right?

2. VC money is private. It’s not your tax dollars (shekels, whatever). They don’t owe you anything. They’re not the chief scientist. Just back the f*ck off. I was so lost in that discussion on Wednesday, along with some folks on stage (seemed like). I found myself sympathizing with the VC partners, which is funny, because I actually think most founders should stay away from VC money for as long as they can.

3. People have been burnt by taking an investment from the chief scientist. Remember that. Mike Eisenberg is not making things up. Don’t be caught off guard a year into the process. Having to close shop in a year from now because you've raised money in the wrong place wouldn't be more pleasant than not getting funded at all right this minute. Make sure you know what you're getting into.

4. Even more people got burnt by taking VC money. Go read the TheFunded (but don’t believe everything you read). Getting an investment from a VC would put you in a spin - make sure you’re ready for that spin, as it will not be what you had planned on when you first thought of starting your venture. Be prepared, you’re not winning the lottery here, you’re acquiring partners who have a different agenda than your own. The fact that you both want a successful exit does not mean you see things eye-to-eye.
A VC pays a million dollar for 25% in your company, let’s say. You paid nothing, and you own a larger share. Do you think both of you translate the word “success” the same way?
Again, know what you’re getting into. VC is definitely a great way to go, but it’s not a one-size-fits-all.

5. If you’re a founder, this is important, so listen up.
In today’s world, you don’t have to have seed money to get started with many ventures ($10K is not seed money, guys).
There is an alternative. You WILL need to put YOUR money where your mouth is, you’ll need to work like a mule for many months, but if your idea is as good as your pitch says that it is, refusing to do these two things means that you’re full of of it. Look yourself in the mirror. Are you willing to risk something here, or do you just want to roll the risk over to some rich guy who you think will sustain less damage if things go south?
If you’ve already done all that, and still can’t get funded, perhaps you’re one of the 80%? Think outside of the box. Maybe that box is your whole venture.... You’re an entrepreneur, you’ll think of some other great idea if you put your mind to it. Don’t get caught up in your own idea. Think, launch, and if it doesn’t work out, think again, and launch something else. Repeat till you retire. Doctor's orders for sick people who need to constantly create new things.

6. And this is just to try and show that I’m not talking out of my *ss.

zx900 participated in launching a few different ventures this year (radiorec.fm, sprophet, jobsfor10, SearchGmailBySize to name a few). We cover the "actual work" part - we build the product. I’d tell you how much money was spent in building each, but I’m afraid I might lose your attention while you’d be rolling on the floor laughing. Statistics shows that none of these ventures will be successful, but we’ll keep going till we find one or two. We like it. We like entrepreneurs who put their heart where their mouth is. We partner with them, and we hack their product out the door. The discussion on Wednesday defined us as “hackers”. I disagree with the definition - I think that we simply prioritize correctly, but we’re here, and we'll do it for anyone with his/her head in the right place. Give us a call (no more sales pitch, I swear. Stay with me).
THERE IS a different way to do things. Any web venture, any mobile venture, any SaaS venture, any social venture, and 80% of any software venture can be launched in a bootstrap. It’s going to almost kill you both financially and personally to go there without raising money first, that’s true. But if you believe in your idea as much as you claim that you do, then go do it. You’ll launch, you’ll put that balloon up in the air, see what happens, get some traction, get wiser. And then you can decide if you even want to raise money, and if so how much, and who from. A wise copywriter once said “Just do it” (no idea how it relates to shoes)
Scott Tobin said on stage “we have $750M. Come see us”. I believe him. He’ll want to see you. But you need to bring something to show them, and PowerPoint is Microsoft’s product, not yours.

Get to work !

The nice story about hacking the new iPhone OS (or: hackers are nice people)

2010-11-29T08:30:00.000+02:00

A short history lesson

Skip to the iphone story if you're short on time

I unlocked my iPhone again today, after the iPhone DevTeam came out with another wonderful way to "jailbreak" and unlock it. When I read the story about how they cracked the iPhone this time, I actually found it hilarious, to the point where I decided to blog about it, trying to keep it in layman's terms. Maybe my friends can laugh with me without understanding the fine technical details.

When I was young I wanted to be a hacker. Hacking into my bank's computer system and pumping my balance up sounded so much easier than actually having to work for money. So I read about what "hacking" is what hackers are, and surprisingly, one of the first sentences I read in a few different sources was "hacking is good, not evil". I got a lengthy explanation on the difference between hackers and crackers and how the very basic quality of a hacker is that whatever they do, they do it to improve things and not to harm anything or anyone. I believe this is true, especially in the case of the iPhone hackers, who are not looking for fame (they're anonymous) or fortune (they refuse to take donations).

Enter the iPhone DevTeam. A bunch of folks, people don't know who they are, who decided one day that Apple is being unfair by making everyone take "their way or the highway". So they "jailbroke" the iphone, and made it into a better device - one that is open and can work exactly how its owner wants it to, without having to go through Apple's approval. Then they also unlocked it and made it usable on any GSM network, and not just AT&T. By that I'm pretty sure they didn't only help the people, they also helped Apple. I bought my first iPhone only because I knew I can use it anywhere in the world. The hackers helped Apple increase sales and footprint.

For some mysterious reason Apple has been after those hackers since day 1. They are constantly patching the holes that the hackers use to make the iPhone a more usable device. There's a cat and mouse game between the hackers and apple that has been going on for years now. And the last story of how the hacked the iPhone AGAIN after OS 4.2.1 was released by apple is quite funny.

The story
It started off with Apple closing all known holes, making it quite hard for the hackers to allow people to use their phone outside of the intended network (AT&T in the states). Seems like the hackers got a look into the newly released operating system, and said "kudos, apple, this is going to take a while". So they thought "how can we still help all these poor people who happen to have bought a phone recently and are locked in the unlockable OS?". You see the problem is, Apple wouldn't let you downgrade your phone. Once you have the version 4.1 installed, you cannot go back to version 4.0 or 3.2. You can only go up the version number scale. This means that while there is no known hack for version 4.1, you are pretty much stuck in the locked state.

Well, I guess suddenly someone remembered that the iPad (not iPhone) actually has operating systems starting with the number 6. Not only that, but the iPad actually has a known hack. So what they did was, instead of creating a hack for version 4.2.1, they created a hack that takes bits and pieces from version 06.15 (the ipad version), including the version number itself, merges into any iphone version, creating a mongrel that looks like it has the number 06.15, but is actually an iphone OS that can be unlocked. While installing this on the iPhone, the iPhone does not reject the new operating system, because it checks and sees that 06.15 is greater than 4, or 4.2. Problem solved, and Apple can (again) kick themselves in the head while thousands of iPhone users got control of their device again.

Surely the next iphone version will explicitly make sure that it is not taking the iPad OS in the back door...

Tom won again, and Jerry is looking for new ways to catch him.

תסתמו

2010-08-29T10:39:00.000+03:00

טוב, נראה לי שמישהו צריך להגיד את זה.
מתנחלים - אני מכיר כמה חבר'ה על הכיפק מעבר לקו הירוק, אבל בגדול אני חושב שמי שגר היום מעבר לקו הירוק הוא במקרה הטוב נודניק, ובמקרה הרע פנאט.

מכאן ועד לקחת את החוק לידיים ולהחליט שאני כאומן לא מוכן להופיע בפני אזרחי המדינה, שומרי חוק, יש דרך ארוכה. אין כל ספק שהאמנים הם שהתחילו את כדור השלג המטופש הזה. אם הייתי רוצה לשמוע את הדעות הפוליטיות שלהם, הייתי מצביע להם בכנסת. אני לא מעוניין בדעה הפוליטית לא של בעל המכולת שלי ולא של השחקן שעומד על הבמה בהצגה שעליה שילמתי ממיטב כספי. אמנים צריכים לעסוק באמנות, ולא בפוליטיקה, וכמו שאין לכם בעיה להופיע בחו"ל, ולא צריכה להיות לכם בעיה להופיע במצרים או בעזה, ככה לא צריכה להיות לכם בעיה להופיע באריאל, או על הירח, כל עוד נותנים לכם חמצן ואבטחה ראויה.
כמובן שהפוליטיקאים עצמם לא טומנים את ידם בצלחת ובמקום להרגיע את הרוחות, ישר טיפסו על עצים ועשו רעש גדול.
שורה תחתונה רציתי לומר לכולכם - פשוט תסתמו. נמאסתם. כולכם. כן, גם את

Change MySQL Engine for a bunch of tables (or all of them)

2010-04-25T06:39:00.000+03:00

Prepare for another very technical / boring morning blog !

I needed to change an entire MySQL database from MyISAM to InnoDB (that is, change all tables in the schema). After Googling for how to do that in a bulk, I found... nothing (didn't look very thoroughly, though...)

I was contemplating doing it manually, as there weren't too many tables in my schema, but I finally caved in and the Engineer in me won and went looking for an our of the box solution.

This is what I came up with (don't laugh) :
SELECT CONCAT('ALTER TABLE `', TABLE_NAME, '` ENGINE = InnoDB;') FROM information_schema.`TABLES` WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA = '';

Run this from your MySQL command line, control-mouse-select the result (so that you can get just the text without the frame) and paste into your favorite MySQL client. Voila.

And the Geek Oscar this morning goes to....

Hope you find this useful

Saving Power (??) - Yet another morning blog

2010-03-04T09:34:00.000+02:00

I got an email from MicroMiser today announcing their latest version. This reminded me that I actually have Micromiser installed on my machine, so I decided to open and it up and see what gives.

I found the image on the right here.
Turns out Micromiser saved me $2.46 by now, and more importantly helped save the environment, yadayadayada.

For those of you (all of you?) who didn't know this, MicroMiser makes some fancy technology that should help companies with large server farms save on their energy by doing some voodoo magic that you can read about on their website. As a bonus, they are giving away that same technology for free for personal computers.

So,
It's a free open beta (registration required). And just in case these guys make more than just a window with random "you save $X" messages - you should probably install it and feel better about being a tidbit greener.

P.S. Thanks to @Ehud who introduced me this cuty as part of the effort to convert me to Linux. Too bad the Windows version came short-after, dude.

How is it that...

2010-02-06T16:57:00.000+02:00

I just tried to make my kids' computer usable by one, M. Wife.

She needed primopdf, so I installed it for her. Then it didn't work. Nothing would print, no errors, nothing.
After playing with it a bit, taking the "push all the buttons" approach, I finally managed to get an actual error message in place of the nothingness:
The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135)

Copy/paste in Google. Voila. It shows up a zillion times in almost any app you can think of, and the explanation - the dot-Net framework is missing. OK, so now I'm downloading the thing, and we'll be back up and running in no time. I guess my kids never needed the .Net framework.

Now I gotta ask a series of how is it questions :
1) How is it that M$ expects the .Net framework to be so mighty popular, and they still haven't implemented a decent error message of "please install the .Net framework" if it's not found ?
2) How is it that MS themselves did not use the .Net framework for Office 2007 ? (I have office on this machine, and it worked without it). Not good enough for them ?
3) How is it that when I write "download .Net framework" in any search engine including Bing, I get v2.0 as the first result, whereas v3.5 only comes second, and v3.5sp1, which is the newest one may or may not show up depending on which search engine I use?

So many stupid questions, so little time...

Google pulling the plug on IE6...

2010-02-02T09:21:00.000+02:00

Hip Hip ! (if you didn't hooray, you must have been asleep in the last couple of years. Or maybe you're not a web developer)

I just got the email below. Finally someone picking up the check, if not Microsoft, then at least their rivals ;)

Dear Google Apps admin,

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser. We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.

In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience. We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.

Thank you for your continued support!

Sincerely,

The Google Apps team

Email preferences: You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your Google Apps product or account.

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

Great stuff on Google Docs

2010-01-17T09:38:00.000+02:00

This morning I opened up Google Docs and got this message.

This means that you can use Google as a repository for your documents in their original form (docx, for instance). Sort of like a G-Drive for office documents. A first step in the right direction, I guess (I'm really waiting for a functional G-Drive that would work like DropBox).
Note that when you upload a doc to Google Docs now, you can uncheck a box that says "convert to Google format. That's all there is to it.

Good work G-folks !

My blog posts technical ranking

2009-12-10T09:06:00.000+02:00

Tech-rank: 1

I figured I'd rank my blog posts between 1 and 10 on a "technical" scale, one being completely non-technical, 10 being hard-core stuff that even programmers may not find interesting if it's not exactly in their area of expertise.
I'll just add it up there, on the post itself, if I remember.

Morning blog1 - Windows 7

2009-12-10T08:29:00.001+02:00

Tech rank for this post: 5

I read a blog post from someone who suggested that instead of reading emails in the morning, or reading the paper - you should maybe write a blog post. I figured that's not such a bad idea. I've made a habit out of making note of every subject worth blogging, so that I remember to write that blog post later on. In recent months I've been working 18 hour days, so blog posts weren't exactly my priority. Seems like I should have plenty of items to write blog posts about, but when I went over the list just now, many subjects seemed kind of old.

One of those subjects was "Windows 7, good and bad". I remember that this issue went through my head after I installed W7 Release Candidate on some relatively old machine that had to be reinstalled. I could immediately see that this IS something different - not another Vista (as a side note - I nicknamed Vista "the new ME" -named after the notorious Windows ME, yet another operating system that everyone skipped and went directly to Windows 2000).

The first thing I noticed about Windows 7 is that its name fits its Hard drive footprint. After you install Vista, 7Gb of your HD are gone (if you really must know why it's called that way - I found this post from the team). Not so long ago, 10Gb was acceptable, and 20Gb was plenty. Well, these days are over, and in the age of smallest HD being 160Gb, that's fine.

Being such a negative person, I had to find something bad to write about W7 - hence that "complaint" about footprint above, but honest to g-d, other than this W7 turned out to be my next XP (as opposed to Vista being compared to ME).

The UI finally makes sense (Mac anyone?). Seriously. Check this out:

(note there's a new Windows+tab app switcher that does this 3D effect of switching between windows)
I always wanted a Desktop that looks this cool. W7 finally takes you there very easily. I'm even persuaded not to turn off all the fancy animation bits that hurt performance. A quad-core with 4Gb of memory has its advantages. If your machine isn't that strong, the OS will decide on its own to deactivate some of the fancy-shmancy stuff.

I could go on forever, but this morning blog would become afternoon blog, and there are plenty of other reviews of W7 out there.

Just a couple more notes -

The new paint

1) I am not usually an early adopter when it comes to OS, because I need to be productive, and don't have time to deal with v1 kinks. In this case it so much happened that I started to use virtualization on a large scale, and had to move to a 64-bit OS just in order to make better use of my RAM. My brother persuaded me that there's a good chance the 64-bit version of W7 works better than the XP one, and it actually made sense to me. I installed it knowingly, thinking that I'd run back to XP if anything goes wrong. It has been up there for a few weeks now, and for all practical purposes - I strongly recommend it to anyone with a reasonably modern machine (Dual core, >=2Gb RAM). Incidentally, I don't recommend the 64-bit, unless you truly know that you need it. It works fine, but if you're not a hard-core programmer, don't bother. 95% of the software is still 32-bit anyways. Most work fine on 64, but why bother having a bi-polar machine.

2) I know that it's really hansom, but we've always been to look at what's in the box, rather than the box itself. I can honestly say that finally the UI starts to make sense to me. Windows, to me, has always been about working AROUND its UI, rather than simply using an enjoying it. I've got plenty of productivity tools installed on XP machines, covering up for things that Microsoft just didn't do so well. I'm talking about trivial stuff like the windows explorer, notepad, clipboard, and a whole bunch of others (can you smell that next blog post coming?). With windows 7, there's a bit less of that, and a bit more usage of the tools that come out of the box. That's one nice thing.
But the nicest thing for me is that the entire UI and its behavior makes sense. My taskbar never gets filled up, and yet I can find all of my open programs easily, and this whole quicklaunch toolbar thing finally makes sense in its new form (again, behavior gracefully "stolen" from Mac).

Bottom line - go get one.
If you're a startup that fits MS relatively loose standards, you can get it free, along with every other piece of Software M$ usally sells for thousands of dollars. It's called Bizspark, and it's a good subject for another blog post.

Enjoy.

Bing not f@#$ing ready for Israel

2009-12-08T14:14:00.001+02:00

My sincere apologies to all those who don't read Hebrew, but here's an explanation:

I entered the Hebrew word for "Movie" in Bing.
The fourth result read "Porn Movies". Then there's a very graphic description of what you'll get if you click the link, which I will not repeat in full. Suffice it to say it talks about a bathroom, a man, a semi-converted transgender, and certain body parts of both parties involved, all located below the waistline and above the legs.

I won't include a link, but if you write Hebrew, just enter the word סרט in Bing.

Let's see how quickly Microsoft removes this obscenity. It has been there for at least a few days now.

Yuck.

The POJ Stage

2009-10-29T13:34:00.001+02:00

I just came up with a new software phase - The POJ phase.
The way I see it, in software you have Alpha, Beta, Release.

Alpha means what Beta used to mean before Google set up new standards. It means the software may break unexpectedly, but it mostly works.

Beta means what Microsoft used to call "V1", and sometimes "V2", and sometimes even "Vista". It's a product that works. Every software product has bugs, even after 10 years in the market. The standard that Google set for all of us is that Beta should work pretty much flawlessly.

Release only has significance in the MS world, and it is the equivalent of most of everyone else's Beta in recent years. It means the software should work flawlessly in its normal course of usage. Some previously unknown bugs may pop here and there in extreme cases.

This blog is not about that. It is about a new phase I just named POJ - the Piece of Junk Stage (I wanted to name it FPOJ but it's hard to pronounce and not very polite).

And why did I think this new term? Because I just tried using Google Wave. It's not Alpha or Beta or Gamma, It's in the POJ phase.
The POJ stage means "I can't use it for what I think the author intended me to use it for". The software can even work pretty well technically, but I just wouldn't be able to become a beta-tester of it, because it's missing important features, or important things break.
In the case of Google wave the first and most annoying problem of it is that I have to keep it open all day (and it's not easy on the RAM, CPU and browser, mind you). I don't get notifications when a wave has changed via email. Neither do any of the people I tried to surf the waves with. This is a killer - I update a wave, then go on to send an email to people telling them to look at the wave. That's when a short cry comes out unintentionally - WHAT A POJ!

Other things that bother me:
Other people can see what I write, and the "draft" box is disabled. Can you tell from this blog I'm a bit impulsive, and sometimes write nasty things? I do that over email too - but before I hit "Send", I hit Ctrl+A, Del, then I write a more polite version of what I wanted to say. It's my therapy and no one gets hurt. If people could read the initial versions of my polite answers to them, I'd be committed in a psychiatric institution. Well, now they can. Not good.
Kudos on the technical implementation, Stephanie (one can only imagine what it takes to perform this technically, assuming the whole world may be using Wave). But what the !@#$ were you thinking?

And why isn't reply working for me? I guess it's just a bug. I can only reply to my own messages - if I try to reply to other people, it comes out as new message. But that's a bug I can live with. There are others, I'll keep them off this blog an in the bug report (where is it, by the way?)

The Call for action:
Google - let's move out of the POJ stage, and into the Alpha stage, ~~A-Hoes~~ :) Please.

The before and after...

2009-08-14T10:53:00.000+03:00

A recent micro-discussion on facebook prompted me to create and upload this.

My before and after....

For the brave of heart - Click the pic to enlarge...

Believe it or not, there's a 40 pounds (20kg) difference between the left and the right halves of the picture. There's also a 5-7 years difference, and the kid on my shoulder on the right side is the little brother of the baby on the left (and please don't call child services on either one...)

Large text file editing GEM

2009-08-12T14:55:00.001+03:00

Whenever I find a hidden gem utility, I feel like I need to share.
Granted - I'm a utility freak. I have it on my todo list to post a few on utilities that I use, but this is for later.

Today I just wanted to mention one utility that I bumped into.

I was on a 45 minute call with someone who sent me a log file to view, and for 30 minutes out of the 45 was trying to view a 0.5G text file, crashing all possible programs - notepad, notepad++, word, wordpad. The guy on the other side of the line said he opened it with Textpad, but that's commercial and for text editors I really think there's enough good free stuff out there.

Then I entered "view large text files" in Google, and among all sorts of suggestions to split large files, on one of the sites, in one of the comments I found this amazing piece of software called "Programmer's File Editor", or PFE version 1.01 (catchy...). Found it here: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/steveb/cpaap/pfe/

This software took less than 2 seconds to open this file, that all other software crashed after a few minutes of cranking at it.

The interesting bit is that this software works on Windows 3x... It was written in 92 by a guy on the Lancaster UK University staff, and was last updated in 99. There's still a note in the readme asking you to report any Y2K bugs if you find them...
Amazingly, it still not only works like a charm, but it is extremely fast and efficient opening files that are larger than what used to be the average memory size of computers back when it was written (maybe that explains why it's so efficient...)

If you're looking for a solution to open huge text files - I highly recommend it. In fact - go download it right now. Who knows when this 17 year old will vanish from the web completely...

Things are getting warmer....

2009-08-04T17:17:00.000+03:00

Wow.
Check out this little link on Yahoo answers. It's part of the new pact, I guess.

Is it just me, or did someone just turn off the A/C ? It's getting really HOT.

Speechless

2009-08-04T14:28:00.000+03:00

This is a lecture given by Seth Godin.
If you're in the business of making products - watch it. Invest 60 minutes of your time, and you won't regret it. If you don't have time right now, come later. If you can't afford 60 minutes at once, watch it in parts.
Watch it.

Today, in our "knock it off" series... MS annoyance.

2009-08-02T15:58:00.000+03:00

Yes, I realize that the line that breaks case REALLY IS unreachable code, due to the "return" statement right above it, but seriously! Do you honestly expect me to omit the break statement? Would you consider that good practice ? (Damn, I just noticed I forgot to add it for the default block...)

I vote for MS removing this annoyance from the IDE, and allowing programmers to always have a break after case, without pointing a green finger at them.

Who's with me !?

The Paris Hilton Search Paradox

2009-07-13T18:31:00.001+03:00

Everyone who ever had a professional encounter with search engines is familiar with the Paris Hilton Search Engine Paradox.

For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, in short - think about what happens if you decide to go to Paris, you want to stay at the Paris Hilton, and decide to look it up on Google to find good deals or whatever. You immediately become a victim of the paradox because if you run "the paris hilton" in Google, most of the results you'll get will be for Miss Paris Hilton.
The Paris Hilton search engine paradox refers to the problem search engine programmers have when they need to figure out what the person was really looking for when a search phrase is very ambiguous. The case of Paris Hilton is particularly problematic, since Paris Hilton is really a sibling of the Hilton family, owners the hotel chain. Hence, even the search phrase "Paris Hilton Hotel" may still mean that someone is interested in the lady and not the city (since she is the inheritor of the hotel chain). It would be extremely difficult, probably impossible, to figure out what a person meant without knowing a bit more about the person, the context, or something else. It would, however, not be very morale to provide search results based on profiling the person (it's a 14 year old male - must be interested in the Paris, the girl, because they cannot afford the hotel and because of other reasons I can't write here ;) ).

Aaaaaanyways, I got carried away with this post - what I really wanted to share with you is this Saturday Night Live sketch my brother sent me, which noticeably took this paradox to different place: Enjoy.

Do you know Andy Hey ?

2009-07-12T17:05:00.000+03:00

I just wanted to ask you - since there are people talking to me three times a week about signing this dude, Andy Hey. This guy must be mighty popular if everyone wants to sign him, but I couldn't really figure out who he is.

So, if anyone out there knows who Andy Hey is, please send me his contact details. I know of a number of people who want me to sign him.

P.S. If a tree falls in the forest, and all people who can hear it fall signed an NDA, did it make a noise?

Knock it off with your NDAs, will ya? You're making me publish really stupid blog posts.

Web development companies. Sheesh!!

2009-07-06T09:54:00.000+03:00

Have you ever had this? Did you ever feel like you were alone in the world, you and your so-called "high" standards? Have you ever had a contractor deliver some seriously suboptimal deliverables? (let me see those hands...) Have you ever had an argument with your contractor, where he just couldn't see what was so embarrassing in what they did, and you thought you were going out of your freakin' mind?

I was recently involved in a project that required building a branding website. We hired Israel's top leading company in Drupal to do the development (no names mentioned), despite the relatively high price-tag, because we wanted the best, and we didn't have any room for mistakes, and had a short deadline, yada yada yada.

We set the timeline. Everyone was happy. We were looking over the developer shoulders constantly, and we saw they were not working fast enough to reach the milestones. We started whipping them, and in parallel started dropping features from the deadline, so we can make it there on time. We finally made the deadline (WE ALWAYS DO! It's a principal to work by) with less than half of the applicative content we had planned for, but with sort-of enough content.

All this we've seen before, and I refuse to get excited about it anymore. It's a general form of practice with web companies in Israel. Sometimes in the states too. You promise one thing, and deliver something else. You promise top quality product, on time. You end up delivering low quality on time, or top quality two months late, or low quality not on time. We've actually gone to the point where if you received one of the two - either quality or timely deliverable - you are a happy camper.

But the thing that drove me mad is the fact that the web company felt it was adequate to release the site with things like the above image (and this is merely an example. There was plenty more). To me this just reads "unprofessional" all over the canvas. Meeting the deadline with everything that was agreed upon is one thing. But releasing something to a production system that embarrasses your customer in front of their customers is a whole different ball-game.

Think about it - the whole idea of the website is creating new contact. You spend money on online advertising, leading your new potential customers through funnels, and when they finally push the button you wanted them to push most, splaaaaaaaat.

I sent the above image to the web company so that they know what my problem is.
Needless to say they had no idea why I am so upset. The feedback text is there, ain't it...

Farewall RAZR...

2009-07-02T15:58:00.000+03:00

About three years ago I bought me a top of the line, bleeding edge mobile phone - the Motorola RAZR V3.
About three weeks ago I bought me a top of the line, bleeding edge iPhone 3G.
It is amazing to see the distance that the mobile phone industry traveled in three years, courtesy of Apple. However, this is a subject for another post.

This post is dedicated to saying goodbye to my V3.

I've been a big Motorola phone fan since I was the proud owner of Motorola Timeport.

But RAZR V3 blew me away. At the time it was one mean piece of equipment - the first one to carry a USB plug for both charging and syncing, and a great step in the non-proprietary direction in that. The same charger is used to charge my phone and my bluetooth earpiece, and my MP3 player. I can charge my phone from my Laptop. Oh, wow.

And there is one thing that I have to tribute to the UI folks in Motorola. It seems like all they do all day is sit and count how many clicks it would take to get a trivial task done. If it's more than 3, it's back to the sketch-board.
I recently had a setback of 3 days where my iPhone stopped working (upgraded to 3.0, long story...). I went back to my ancient V3, and I have to tell you - I was actually having fun.
Suddenly an operation that would take 10 clicks on the iPhone, and would actually make me think about it while I was doing it, was being done by my fingers automatically in 2 clicks. Something as easy as pulling out my recent calls is done in one click. Dial to one of my contacts? 3 clicks.
Now, granted, that the iPhone, the most amazing piece of common computing equipment ever to be invented by man, carries "a bit" more features than my V3. Still, being the commandline geek that I am, I want to be able to do common tasks in one or maximum two clicks.
Am I not going to be able to do that in the modern world of mobile phones being cool-small-computers?
Time will tell.
Meantime, I just wanted to thank my V3 for a wonderful 3-4 years. I'm going to miss you like you miss an old dog that passed away.

I have a new iPhone puppy ;)

GPS Excitement

2009-07-01T20:32:00.000+03:00

Cool.... A bike ride...

Multiple Adwords and Gmail accounts - finally resolved (for me)

2009-06-16T11:01:00.000+03:00

I've had this issue as long as I can remember - Adwords and Google accounts collide. If you are an intense user of both, you know what I'm talking about.

It is a great mystery why Google invests so much money in developing magnificent products that generate 0 revenue, and the one product that brings in all of its revenue - adWords - remains a step child. It is the only product that works really badly with the whole Google single-signon system. To take just one small example - the password strength requirement is different in AdWords. AdWords requires a stronger password, so if you attempt to sign up for a new Adwords account, your good ol' password from your Google account may not be strong enough.

Anyways, that's enough whining for one post. The reason I'm writing it is to explain how I finally got all my logins lined up without getting thrown from one account to another unexpectedly or getting logged out in the middle of writing an email.

First, the problem:
My problem was simple (turns out) - if you log in to a Google account (gmail, calendar, whatever...), and this same account has an Adwords account associated with it, you are automatically logged in to your Adwords account, even if you were already logged in as another user to your Adwords. As you find out about it, and sign out from AdWords, then sign back in with the AdWords account you wanted to be logged in with, you later realize that you were signed out of your email account as well. This cat and mouse game can continue forever.

Why is that?
If you're like me, your first adwords account was your gmail address. Then you got to manage one or two account more. Then maybe you thought you'd want to use the My Client Center to manage multiple account.
When you signed up to the MCC, you were told that your gmail address cannot be used as login for the My Client Center. So you created a new account. Then you added all the other accounts you were accessing individually into your MCC account. Great. It all works.

Now you went back to your gmail, and found out you were logged out from it when you clicked the "sign out" link on AdWords, so you log back in, read some emails, etc.
Then you go back to your AdWords MCC account, only to find out that you have been logged in to the original gmail AdWords account and out of the MCC account. If you log out from the Adwords account now, it will log you out from gmail.

Darn it.

Here's the solution:
You cannot have your gmail account as an Adwords account if you are using multiple AdWords account. What you need to do is this:

1) Log in to your AdWords account with your main gmail account.

2) Go to My Account->Access, and invite yourself to be an admin of the AdWords account, using some other email that you have (Gmail or other).

3) Accept the invitation, confirm yourself (this requires some logging in and out, back and forth - very annoying, but it's for a good cause and you won't have to do it again once you're done).
Important: As you sign up for the new AdWords access, remember the credentials you're using.

4) Log in to your original AdWords account using the new login you've created in steps 2-3. Then remove access to the original gmail account.

5) What just happened is that your gmail account just lost its Adwords privileges (you can still access the same account with the new login you created in steps 2-3). This means that when you log in to your gmail next time, it's not going to log you out from whatever Adwords account you were logged into. And vice-versa - when you log in to any adwords account, including MCC, you will not be logged out of your gmail.

Problem solved.

Optionally - you can now change your MCC account to use your main Gmail account, but I haven't tried it myself, so if you do, and you like, let me know.

Good luck. Be happy to help with more answer if I can (comment, and I will responde)

Thank you, Taiwan.... NOT

2009-03-08T22:36:00.000+02:00

In one of the ventures I was involved with recently, I had to get myself a laptop that would be convenient to carry. I got an MSI Wind. An absolutely gorgeous piece of work. It weighs less than two pounds and is about as powerful as my Desktop used to be 5 years ago.

I was so impressed, that when I moved to the next venture and needed to leave the wind behind, I simply bought another one (they're dirt cheap, did I mention?).

There was something weird about this laptop. It got warm much faster than the previous one did. I thought this was due to the larger battery, but after a few days I noticed that this machine was so much quieter than the previous one. I read somewhere that the newer models were indeed quieter on the fan side, but this one was a bit too quiet. Plus, the mouse pad was getting so hot that my finger would burn.

Finally, when I opened it up as part of adding more memory to it, and took a look at the fan, I found out that out of the three little sockets of the fan wire, one was slightly smaller than the rest (a plastic drip or something). Looks like the guy or girl who put it together couldn't care less about it, and they just shoved it in the slot real hard, bending one of the little iron thingys to the side, until they managed to fit it. The poor fan was not getting any electricity. I stuck a pin and widened that socket just a bit, and used the same pin to straighten the little wire, reconnected, and voila - the fan was working and the Wind no longer burns my fingers.

Now I'm really pissed at the guy or girl assembling this thing in Taiwan. I mean - I know you're getting paid peanuts, but this is my work you're talking about!! Other than burning my fingers doing what you did also means that you have shortened the life of my CPU dramatically.

Have some consideration people!!

Contact me if you happen to have an MSI wind that gets terribly hot, specially on the mouse pad side (that's where your CPU is).

I've got gmail HTML+Inline image signature working perfectly!!

2009-03-07T00:20:00.000+02:00

Long time and a lot of effort, but there finally is a way to create nice signatures, styled with HTML, and have embedded emails in there - yes, the type of images that do not require your recipients to confirm "display images", because the embedded email is considered safe.

And it's so easy... Ready? Here goes.

1) Create the signature you like in an email client. Use outlook, thunderbird or whatever you want. Note that you don't need to create the signature as signature within the client - simply create an email that has the signature you need. You can include images from your local computer, and format it however you like.

2) Send the email to your gmail account.

3) Enabled Labs in your gmail account, and specifically enable "canned responses".

4) Open the email you've received from yourself. Start forwarding it.

5) Once forward email is open, clean up anything you don't need, and make it look like the signature of your desire.

6) Find the "canned response" link, and save the email as canned response called "signature"

That's it. From now on you can add this signature to any outgoing email by starting the email, hitting "canned response", insert->signature.

Good luck.
This was too good not to share.

Coming out of the darkness by electing a darker skinned president

2008-11-05T08:34:00.001+02:00

For the first time in many years, the United States actually did something right!
Electing President Obama today is one of the bravest smartest things this country could have done. I believe that by electing this talented African-American individual president, America just bought itself another substantial period of time as the world's greatest country. A country with a lot less prejudice.
Today is the happiest day in the last 15 years.

Greasemonkey goes Chrome

2008-10-20T09:57:00.000+02:00

Related to one of my previous posts, Garret Rogers reveals today that Google Chrome open source version (Chromium) has added a very initial support for Greasemonkey.
I think we all know where this is going. Greasemonkey is about 50% of what I need in order to switch to Chrome with all my heart and soul.

I had this period when I was using Chrome primarily, but I finally caved back into the convenience of Firefox extensions and user scripts. Not even the Chrome amazing speed can beat some of those excellent additions you find out there. The thing that tipped me over eventually was Ubiquity.

At this point I'm using Chrome for office related activities (Gmail, Calendar), and trying to use firefox for everything else - which is kind of hard since all links in my Gmail open up in another Chrome window.
I'm also worried about the Firefox folks, who I thought were good friends with Google. If Chrome supports all the plugins and extensions, why would anyone use Firefox.

I, for one, vote for a Firefox browser with the Chrome engine.

...and one more - watch the first, then the second

2008-10-03T12:13:00.001+03:00

Sara Palin - Oh dear...

2008-10-03T12:08:00.001+03:00

Shana Tova!! !!שנה טובה

2008-10-01T12:14:00.000+03:00

To all of our friends and family around the world:
Shana Tova! (Happy Jewish New Year)
May all your wishes come true this year.

Merav, Itai, Elad and Liam Raz

לכל משפחתנו וחברינו,
שנה טובה!
שיתגשמו כל משאלותיכם, חוץ מאחת שלא יהיה משעמם.

מירב, איתי, אלעד וליעם רז

Google Chrome - I'll switch in a second, if....

2008-09-07T10:43:00.001+03:00

Excellent Browser. Ultra-fast. Really really really fast. Very friendly. Of all the browsers out there, largest amount of screen real-estate for what you really need (i.e. web pages...).

But,

If they don't put in the ability to have extensions, and in particularly if I don't get to use my firebug, greasemonkey, possibly better gmail 2, I can't abandon Firefox. I really want to, but can't. Too much missing.

Now, I'm sure technically it should not be that big of a deal, being that all websites that work on Firefox seems to work flawlessly on Chrome.
So - guys, pick up the envelope. You know what? I'll make you a deal - just greasemonkey, and I make you my default browser. OK?

For those of us who can't write "Chrome" in Google - here's the link http://www.google.com/chrome

a leading global provider...

2008-07-11T09:12:00.000+03:00

Did you ever notice that every company, as small and insignificant as it may be, is always a "leading global provider" in some area? Kind of takes the sting out of being the real leading global provider.

In fact, if you need to tell everyone that you are a leading global provider, then it's most likely you are not one. I wanted to research this point a bit, so I went on the AT&T website and looked for the word "provider". Sure enough I found that AT&T are a leading worldwide provider of IP-based communications. Now, I knew that AT&T are global leading providers of telephony, cellular and many other things, but IP-based communication? That's not what I had in mind.

This kind of brought me to the conclusion that "global leading provider" is actually a synonym for "the PR department was instructed to push us in this field, since we really need to become a significant player in this market"

My new Idol

2008-07-02T15:52:00.000+03:00

I just lost a bet to my wife. We were watching TV the other night, and I was telling her that something (can't remember what it was) reminds me of Shai Agassi. She asked me who it was, and I was shocked that she had never heard of him. I then told her that he is the center of he buzz around green technology, and that he is probably as famous as Brad Pitt, and that everyone know who he is.
My wife started laughing and made a quick round of phone calls to friends and family only to prove me dead wrong. None of the women knew who he was. A few of the men knew that he was a famous entrepreneur. One guy actually knew that he working on the electrical car vision.

So, please, if you already know who Brad Pitt is, and the name Shai Agassi kind of rings a bell but not really, go check out his wonderful performance on the Brookings institute panel. You'll learn that if you buy a car today in Israel or Denemark, you're likely to have to dump it in the trash in 2011, because everyone would be driving electrical vehicles for free by then. God willing.

AXIOM

2008-05-27T15:25:00.000+03:00

I just cleared my spam box. 40 messages since this morning (yey, Google)

Allow me to suggest an Axiom:
You will never (NOT EVER!) find a good deal marketed through spam-email campaigns

Anybody cares to disagree?

Free Entertainment

2008-05-24T12:21:00.000+03:00

The next time you find yourself bored, looking for something interesting to read or do, I highly recommend going through the "legal threat" section of the piratebay.org website. I swear it is absolutely hilarious!!

For those you not familiar - the pirate bay is one of the largest infringe-ware websites in the world, allowing you to search through millions of torrent files and downloading copyright infringing material such as music, games, videos, etc (you download it from other peers, not directly from their website, and that's what may protect them legally). Without going into whether that's OK or NOT, I guess one interesting point is that the pirate bay consistently claim that they are not breaking any laws, since they're hosted in Sweden "land of vikings, reindeers, Aurora Borealis and cute blonde girls" (quote) oh, and also the land of "sane copyright laws".

I'm gonna quote some of their response as teasers, but you really must go there and read for yourself.

To DreamWorks lawyers: "As you may or may not be aware, Sweden is not a state in the United States"
"It is the opinion of us and our lawyers that you are ....... morons, and that you should please go s**** yourself with ..." (cover your ears)

To EA: "Hello and thank you for contacting us. We have shut down the website in question. Oh wait, just kidding. We haven't, ..."
"Please don't sue us right now, our lawyer is passed out in an alley from too much moonshine, so please atleast wait until he's found and doesn't have a huge hangover..."

To WB in response to them asking them to remove all links in the search result here: http://thepiratebay.org/search.php?q=billy+corgan: "Sorry, but I can't remove search.php - our users would get upset if TPB suddenly lacked a search function. "

Bookmark it and read when you have a minute. Entertainment guaranteed.

Google Health

2008-05-20T07:40:00.000+03:00

HIV Positive? May we suggest this great cocktail, which will extend your life two weeks longer than the competition can!!
I couldn't help it, but this sort of imaginary ad was my first response to Google's new health service. I'm a huge fan of Google, and half my life is stored on their servers - be it all my business emails, my calendar, all my notes, some of my documents, and even files. I'm very small on big brother conspiracy theories, and I think anyone can get your information unless you make extreme-almost-unreasonable steps to protect it. I even use clipperz for storing most of my passwords "online" (read the service description - it's not that simple).
And still, after I logged in, and the site suggested it would automatically access my records in my doctor's clinic, just like facebook offers to access my gmail account to look for friends - that really did make me feel uncomfortable.
When you come to think of it, since a lot of health services in the country have all your information exposed online for your convenience, Google can be no different. In fact, I believe that the folks in Google, on average, are better programmers than the rest of us, and so your information there is likely more protected than your information on your health-service provider's website (if you've had the luxury of working with an IT department of some health service providers, you may actually be getting a weird itch right about now). But, giving access to your medical records to an organization with a business model that relies for the most part on being able to provide personalized ad-serving, still somehow gives me the chills.

Anyways, who cares what I think. Enjoy the service.

Am I spending too much time on the Internet? (Virtual Bonfire)

2008-05-17T14:57:00.000+03:00

My wife was talking to my son the other day, telling him that on Lag-Ba'omer, I'll be going with him to his school bonfire party, whereas she'd be taking his younger brother to his own school's bonfire party. The idea behind telling him that in advance was some setting of expectations, since our kids are used to the family sticking together on such occasions (or, if nothing else, at least stick with Mom. Going with Dad without Mom can be regarded as some sort of punishment).

In any occasion, the goal was to make him feel comfortable about this in advance, so Merav went on to tell him how much fun it was going to be, and knowing that he likes doing outdoor activities with me, also told him that him and me would probably be going out to look for burning material - such as wood in its different forms. She used the word "search" - search for wood.

Well, my 6 year old, hearing the words "search" and "dad" in the same sentence immediately came to the right conclusion and asked (very seriously) - where would Daddy be searching for wood - on the Internet?

Got GA

2008-05-13T09:46:00.001+03:00

I added Google Analytics code to my blog today (not that you'd care).
Used an excellent post from Andy Wibbels which took me step-by-step through it. I love these posts for dummies - they work great for pseudo-professionals like myself.
It also seems like Google Analytics is going to be inherently supported in blogger, but right now it's just private beta (don't you just hate how they get a blog before they even release a product for general availability?)
Don't know about you, but I'm still excited about being able to get all of this nice software for exactly $0.00.

חופש הביטוי

2008-05-12T15:52:00.000+03:00

בימים אלה יש רעש גדול בעקבות פיטוריו של העיתונאי שלמה מן ממעריב. מן, שהסתתר מאחורי הכינוי ייגרמייסטר, כתב בלוג שבו ביקר את כתיבת עיתוני הספורט בישראל. קצת מצחיק, בהתחשב בכך שהוא עצמו היה עיתונאי ספורט של מעריב. האיש טוען, ונראה שיש לכך סימוכין, שכתב תמיד באופן אובייקטיבי וביקר גם את מעריב, ובאופן מצחיק גם את עצמו, אם גילה טעות לאחר שכבר פורסמה . כמו כן הוגשה נגדו תביעה ע"י אתר One (אתר ספורט). האמת שאני לא מתעניין בספורט, אלא אם אני עצמי הספורטאי. אבל יש פה משהו מדאיג מאוד אם עיתונאי כבר לא יכול לכתוב דברים אובייקטיביים לכאורה מבלי שייתבע ויפוטר ברגע שמתגלה זהותו. עוד משהו מדאיג כאן היא חשיפתו של מן, שנהג להסתתר מאחורי שם עט. למי שמבין די ברור שזה בטח לא מאמץ פשוט לחשוף מישהו בנבכי האינטרנט ללא צו שופט. ישנן טענות לכאורה להתנהלות בלתי חוקית של אתר One ומפעיליו בניסיונם להוציא את "ייגרמייסטר" מאנונימיותו. מכל מקום, לא נעים בכלל. יש כאן הרבה עניינים של הגנת חופש הביטוי, ובכלל נשמע ונראה מוזר כל ההתעסקות של העיתונים בסגירת פיותיהם של מי שמעזים לבקר אותם. מי שמעוניין לחתום על עצומה שכמה בלוגרים, מן ביניהם, הקימו יכול לעשות זאת כאן: http://www.atzuma.co.il/petition/themis/1

Hebrew in Gmail

2008-05-02T15:31:00.000+03:00

Final Update, Sep. 12 2008: Google now has the new RTL button right there at the top of the email body section, rendering this script completely obsolete. If you're still using this script, or are now downloading it, consider looking for those buttons I just mentioned. Many thanks to everyone who downloaded, used, commented, became fans of, reported bugs and cursed me quietly when the script didn't work.
I'll be seeing you next time that the RTL user community is neglected by Google ;)
--itai

Do you speak Hebrew or Arabic? If not, this blog wouldn't be all that interesting. Ever since Google came out with their new UI, it has been virtually impossible to write right-to-left emails (Hebrew, Arabic...). Extensions that were written for firefox to bring out the direction buttons became non-functional, because those buttons did not exist in the UI. When I found out this week that the Google guys actually bothered to write inherent Greasemonkey APIs, I figured that it wouldn't be all that difficult to write an extension that will enter right-to-left text in your email's body. Those of you who know a bit of HTML probably know that switching direction has become a piece of cake in recent years. So I found this signature script, that seemed to be doing something similar to what I had in mind. I modified it to become Heb4Gmail - a Greasemonkey extension that will insert right-to-left text into your email, allowing you to write nice Hebrew or Arabic emails. It even works great with mixed sentences (Hebrew and English together). If you use Gmail, and you write Hebrew emails, I think you'll find it useful. If you don't know what Greasemonkey is, or you don't use firefox, this isn't for you (but you're missing out on all the fun). Enjoy. Download it here: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25811

2008-04-21T16:58:00.000+03:00

I'm back on windows...First Episode

A couple of months ago, due to various reasons that I will go into on another post I had to go back to using one of my old laptops (Pentium M, 0.5G of memory). Former one was monster Dell with 2G of RAM, dual core 2.something GHz and 7200RPM disks, so I figured this new-old one was going to be a nightmare. I therefore decided to pursue any geek's dream and install a Linux OS on it. Since I have customers and projects that still require C# programming, I thought I'd go for dual boot, unless I can make it work on mono (yet another subject for another post, but bottom line - I don't think you wanna go there...). Last time I worked on linux it was when Redhat was still freely available and no Fedora. This time I went for Suse 10.3. I put the CD in, it recognized all of my devices, including the wireless network during the installation, which allowed it to download updates and a couple of hours later it was all done with.
Oh--MY--GOD. I was very impressed. So easy to install. Like always, everything that I needed already installed (from Office to Gimp to Eclipse ). It took me another 30 minutes to find out that whatever I didn't have installed already, I could use the most impressive YAST tool to automatically get - I swear it's easier than windows, and certainly easier than it used to be on good-old Redhat.
Then I went on to install XP. First mistake. Trashed my MBR, no going back. But wait - all the posts I read said having a dual boot with Suse is a classic. Ah, OK - they said you need to install XP first, then suse. Why on earth would that matter? Well, when I did it the second time, I understood.
Disk reformatted. XP was installed (terrible experience - had to download half the machine drivers from Dell. Shame on you M$ - Novell Suse had it all figured out, no intervention required). Then I put in the Suse disk. BAMMMM! It comes out with a message saying something like "Knock knock Neo, you seem to be installing on a machine that already has windows installed on it. Allow me to suggest the following - I will shrink the windows partition to 10G out of the available 40, then format the remaining 30G for myself, and install Linux there. How about that? Oh, I will also automatically map you windows disk on the linux OS and call it... Windows"
Amazing. What's even more amazing is that it managed to do it perfectly.
Also - Suse met all expectations, and actually performed faster than my Windows was performing on the former monster laptop. What a pathetic comparison, I know...

Anyways, this post is episode 1 and since it is named "Back on Windows", you'd have to now wonder with all the great things I have to say about Suse Linux, what can happen in the next episode. Since I have no time left, I promise to write the next post soon (but not right now). Anyways, if there's one thing you're going to take from this post - remember to always install Windows first on a dual-boot machine - and then install Linux. Oh - and format Windows to FAT32 not NTFS.
That's it. Catch you later.

The SSEWAM Strategy

2008-02-06T22:14:00.000+02:00

It's 1998 all over again.
Though the markets are a lot more sane, there's still a lot of money going around, blowing up the valuation of startup companies beyond any proportion to their potential value. Other phenomenas include companies that would not have gotten a dime out of VCs two years ago suddenly securing a few million dollars so they can continue being opportunistic and seek out a real business plan.

I developed a theory about companies that you want to stay away from, at least as an employee or partner (if you're a VC, no need to read on - VCs have other considerations in their agenda many times). It is just a rule of thumb theory, and every rule has its exceptions, but one thing I learned from recent bubbles is to stay away from any company the follows the SSEWAM strategy. Don't Google for it - it's a term I just made up.
SSEWAM stands for Someone Stupid Enough Will Acquire Me.

Ever met a company with such a strategy? Sometimes they wouldn't flat out spell it, but you'd be able to tell it's a SSEWAM company by the explanation you get from the founders on how well their idea fits with the strategy of X company (say, Google). Another thing that you'll sometimes get from these guys is a bunch of examples on latest acquisitions that were done on companies having similar idea/business.
What would be most suspicious is when you get that kind of answer as a response to a question like "how will you make money?". Simple question ain't it?
I say, if you can't give me a straight 30 seconds answer on how you're going to make money, it means that you're still struggling yourself. The worst is to ask the "how will you make money" question and get back a response saying "what are you talking about? Just last week Yahoo acquired FoxyTunes for $XXXM, and our product is even better".
Not buying it (and neither is Yahoo). A company cannot have SSEWAM as an exit strategy. If you cannot explain how you're going to make your business successful on its own, how you're going to build a product or service, and sell it while making a profit, then guess what - Yahoo wouldn't waste what's left of their money on you.

In short, my friends, when you start your companies, make sure that someone will pay you money for using your products (and no, VCs don't count as someone, unless you just built a product for managing VC firms). Your company as a whole is usually worth nothing, if you can't sell your products, and even make profits from it.

Just my take.

Jesus was Jewish Too!

2007-12-16T23:36:00.001+02:00

Get your own at Gizmoz.com

In case you were wondering, this is what I do nowadays (not the dancing, the software...). My company allows you to take your head places... Simply upload a head-shot of yourself, and you can animate it. Pixar for the people!

Merry Christmas everyone, happy holidays, and hope you enjoyed your Hanuka!

Drivers and their mothers

2007-12-15T00:52:00.000+02:00

This post applies to drivers in Israel, so I wrote it in Hebrew. Please forgive me, and/or let me know and I'll send you a translation

לאחרונה קניתי קטנוע. נמאס לי, נמאס לי, נמאס לי מהפקקים. אני גר בשוהם, ולאחרונה נטשתי את משרתי הנוחה באיירפורט סיטי (חמש דקות), ועברתי לעבוד בר"ג (עשרים דקות, או שעה וחצי תלוי בתנועה). אחרי חודשיים של נהיגה, ובזבוז של כשעתיים מיותרות ביום על הכביש ו/או יציאה מהבית בשש בבוקר, נתתי ניסיון קטן לרכבת. גיליתי שנסיעה מהבית שלי לתוך טרמינל 3 זה 20 דקות (ביקורת בטחון וכאלה), עוד חצי שעה בערך ברכבת כולל המתנה, ועוד 10 דקות הליכה למשרד. כל זה במקרה שהרכבת מגיעה בזמן, מה שלא קורה ב-35% מהמקרים (לפי סטטיסטיקה שלהם, לא המצאתי).
אז, כאמור, עברתי לקטנוע. יורד עלי גשם לפעמים, אבל לא נורא. קטנוע הוא האישור שלך ממשטרת ישראל והסביבה לנהוג כמו חמור, בשוליים, אבל בלי שאתה מפריע לאף אחד ותוך שאתה מסכן רק את החיים שלך (אני לא מרכיב). במהלך הנהיגה על הקטנוע כל שעליך לעשות הוא להגן על חייך אולם מעבר לכך אין הרבה התעסקות. מוסיקה אין - והראש פנוי לתכנונים, חלימה בהקיץ ומחשבות על המוות הממשמש ובא עם כל נהג שחותך אותך.

במהלך אחת הרכיבות האחרונות, תוך כדי שאני צופה בנהגי הקופסאות שלידי, וכיצד הם מתנהגים אחד לשני בצורה אדיבה כמו קופאית של סופר ללקוח שאין לו כרטיס חבר מועדון, עשיתי חישוב קטן שרציתי לשתף אתכם בו. גיליתי לחוסר הפתעתי שהנהג הישראלי הוא פשוט, בהיעדר הגדרה קולעת יותר, מטומטם. כנראה גם חלש בחשבון.
שמתי לב כי בירידה ממחלף לתוך אוטוסטרדה הכביש לרוב נפתח בעוד מסלול אחד (מסלול ההשתלבות של התנועה המצטרפת). באופן קבוע תראו נהגים מהתנועה על האוטוסטרדה חותכים לתוך מסלול הההשתלבות שהוא לרוב פנוי יותר, רק בשביל לחזור לנתיב המרכזי 50 מטר (וכ-10 מכוניות) אחר-כך. בפעולה אדיבה וחברית זו הם חוסכים להם 50 מטר שלמים, שהיו לוקחים להם כ-10 שניות לעבור וחוצים אותם במהירות שיא של 2 שניות. לכאורה נאמר - למה מטומטם? האיש פשוט מיהר ורצה להגיע הביתה לראות את ילדיו הקטנים לאחר עמל היום. או, וכאן נכנס אלמנט הטמטום לפעולה. אותו נהג מופלא שרצה לחסוך לעצמו זמן, למעשה חסך כאמור 8 שניות בכל פעם שהתנהג כמנוול. במהלך הנסיעה עוברים, איזה, עשרה מחלפים? כלומר נהגינו המסור חסך 80 שניות שלמות שהן דקה ועשרים שניות. חתיכת חסכון שהיה ללא ספק שווה את המאמץ של לחתוך את המכוניות המשתלבות מהמחלף, ולאחר מכן הדחפות חזרה לפני התנועה בנתיב המרכזי תוך כדי שאתה מוכיח לכל הנהגים על פניהם חלפת באיזה מקצוע אמך היקרה עבדה בשעה שנשאה אותך בבטנה.
אז מי מביניכם שנוהג בשעות העומס ועושה את הטריק המדהים המוזכר כאן - בעודכם מתאמצים בנהיגה ומעצבנים את שאר הנהגים על הכביש, תחשבו על אותן 80 שניות שאתם חוסכים ושאלו את עצמכם אם מגיע לאמא שלכם שאנשים שאינם מכירים אותה ידביקו לה מקצוע שמעולם לא חשבה לעסוק בו.

(בלוג זה כתוב בלשון זכר, ולא רק מטעמי נוחות)

2.0 or not two-o...

2006-06-09T11:33:00.000+03:00

I've been a big fan of this whole Web 2.0 business. I've been an Internet buff since its inception (that is, when Al Gore invented it...), and always tried to keep myself ahead of the curve. I have to say, though, that recent events are not helping me keep up. Seems like you have to be on the web 24/7 in order to really keep up with all the new stuff coming out. It's not enough to be registered to the Google friends newsletter any longer...

In a recent bike trip with some friends someone mentioned Second Life (aka SL). The guy, who was no big maven was then bombed with questions in the form of "are you serious? what does a grown up, a well established contributing member of society (first life society, that is) have to do in a virtual world, and why on earth would you be messing around in kids' games?

Well, from mockery I turned to curiosity. It was right around the time he told us that the reason he got himself an "avatar" on SL was that his company - one of the largest companies in the world in its field - had asked him to snoop around and see how they can get themselves an "Island" in SL, so that their presence in the virtual world is just as real as in the real world.

Wow - now that sounds weird. A virtual world so "real" that real companies would actually want to open a branch there? I'm intrigued.

Well, those of you who know SL are probably laughing right now. When I finally got myself an avatar I found a "world" that is as large as the country I live in (Israel). It has the same amount of residents, and the citizens are taking all very seriously. My initial thinking about this whole business being a kids game vaporized the minute I walked into a place called Erotic Sinful Desires. Keep your kids away...

Bottom line - SL seems to be pretty darn real. And if it's real - I want a piece.

My name is Itai Hax (they don't let you choose your last name in this world. I didn't bother to ask why). I'm an avatar.