JenLog

Is Google going Digg ?!

2008-07-18T13:38:00.003+03:00

Google has recently released a new feature in closed beta. I'd even rather call it a whole new search interface than just a "feature". The new interface allows you to leace comments, and vote search results up and down, pretty much like digg...

The TechCrunch article about this interface is titled "Is This The Future Of Search?", well I think not :)

Facebook's 60 photos limit

2008-05-27T21:29:00.003+03:00

Why does Facebook limit every photo album to 60 photos. For me personally - this is a huge inconvenience as I’m uploading every photo album to both Facebook and Picasa. I wouldn't upload pictures to Picasa if I had the possibilities to comfortably manage all my photos in Facebook. I use Facebook anyway, in order to share the pictures with friends. If only it didn't have the 60 pics limit it could have been a great competition to Picasa, and maybe even to Flickr and other image sharing sites.

So, the guys in Facebook - do something about it!

Fire in your eyes

2008-05-25T14:01:00.002+03:00

The Eurovision song contest took place last night and here is the Israeli song - "fire in you eyes"

If you listen to the beginning of the song, it sound a little bit more suitable for Asiavision or mabye middleastvision than Eurovision.

But the question that really bothers me is - Does anyone actually watch Eurovision nowadays? I know that it used to be a major event back in the 70's-80's-maybe-even-90's, but in the 21st century?! In my opinion this contest became irrelevant on August 1, 1987 - when MTV Europe first launched.

And if you wonder who won - the name is Dima Bilan, the Russian contestant who performed in English with a heavy Russian Accent. The Israelis gave him 12 points, by the way.

Flight of the Hamsters

2008-05-10T19:26:00.003+03:00

This is defenetly the best Flash game ever!

I started playing 2-3 days ago, just between doing things that I had to do and got totally addicted. It's the kind of game that while playing it you always promise yourself that it's your last try and than you're off to do the important things that you have to do - but it never is :)

So if got some free time to burn - go ahead, try to launch a hamster.

I scored 634 today, think you can do better?

A great Israeli initiative on Facebook

2008-05-07T17:18:00.001+03:00

Tonight Israel celebrates it's 60th independence day. To honor the significant event in our small country’s life, some Israelis on Facebook (and I think that almost all Israelis are in fact on facebook) have came up with a very patriotic initiative - To change the profile pictures to the Israeli flag for 28 hours!

As of now 12,367 people have confirmed their attendnace (including myself).

This is the event's page on facebook.

So if you are Israeli or just want to support Israel and honor the independence day - go ahead and join us :)

A fly in a cup of coffee

2008-05-05T17:14:00.003+03:00

How do people of various nationalities react to the discovery of a fly in their cups of coffee, while sitting in a coffee shop.

The English man, throws out his cup of coffee and leaves the coffee Shop.
The American guy, pulls the fly out of the coffee and drinks the coffee.
The Chinese guy, eats the fly and dumps the coffee.
The Japanese guy drinks the coffee along with the fly, as they don't charge him extra for the fly.
The Israeli guy sells the fly to the Chinese fellow, the coffee to the America Fellow and buys himself a new cup of coffee.
What does the Palestinian do? He naturally accuses the Israeli guy of inhumanity and blames him for placing the fly in his coffee. Than he asks the UN for support and asks the International Community to give him money for a new cup of coffee. He gets the money, and instead of coffee he buys explosives. After that, he blows up the coffee shop, along with the American, English, Chinese and Japanese guys while they try to set the Israeli straight by explaining to him how he is being to aggressive towards the Palestinian.

Disclaimer: The story in this post is a joke and is not mentioned or intended to insult anyone or to express any political views.

NooTag

2008-04-13T02:03:00.002+03:00

For a really long time I didn't post anything to this blog but now it's the right time to bring it back to life.

The first post I'd like to make is about an intiative (future start-up) that I've been involved in during the past year along with my friend Alex Ginzburg.

I can't say to much about it, as it is still in super stealth mode :)
but we have some great ideas and we've been blogging about it at nootag.com/blog.
I can also say that we have a website under development and we'll soon publish our really cool brand new logo.

I will post updates about NooTag as soon as I can.

My Simpsons Avatar

2007-07-20T14:50:00.000+03:00

The Simpsons movie is coming out in about a week. In the meantime there's the Simpsons movie website where you can create your own custom Simpsons Avatar, Here's mine:

Parking lot Hand-break fun

2007-07-15T12:06:00.000+03:00

Ok, I've finally decided to bring this blog back to life after not posting for about 2 months.

My first post after the break is a little video captured with my new Nokia 6288. My friend Oleg is leaving his current job and returning his leased car. We decided to take it to a parking lot in Ramat-Aviv and do some 180 spins with the handbreak.

Here's the video:

I've got Joost

2007-05-03T12:48:00.000+03:00

I've finally got a Joost Beta account with some invites. A few months ago there was quite a market for those invites (they were selling easily for 20$) and some people got rich off it. But today the beta is almost over and everyone got lots of invites to give away. So it's easy to get someone (like me) to give you one for free. So if you still don't have one, feel free to drop a comment to this post with your first and last names, as well as an e-mail address to send the invite to, I'll be happy to send you an invite, Just like some other generous blogger sent me one.

check out Joost.

eWeek's 100 Most Influential People in IT

2007-05-03T11:47:00.000+03:00

eWeek has published it's list of the 100 Most Influential People in IT.
It's an Interesting list to browse...

Great City to live in for a rock climber

2007-04-29T22:49:00.001+03:00

ad
Originally uploaded by Avi_Abrams.

I've just seen this Photo in the Dark Roasted Blend and figured that this might be a grat city to live in if you're a rock climber. Just imagine waking up early on the weekends, repelling 200 meters down that cliff at the edge of town and than cimbing it all the way up in a whole day multi-pitch. There're even parking lots near the edge to park your car while you're climbing.

Israel Celebrates it's Independence

2007-04-22T21:37:00.000+03:00

Tomorrow is the eve of Israel's 59th independence day. To honor the occasion I've decided to post some Israeli related Statistics that were published by the Israeli central statistics bureau.

Population: there are 7,150,000 residents in Israel.
When Israel was established (in 1948) only 806,000 people lived in Israel, about one third of them still live here today.
Jewish Population:There 5,415,000 Jews in Israel.
Arab Population: There are 1,425,000 Arabs in Israel (Israeli Citizens, not Palestinians). They are about 20% of the general population.
Birth rate: 148,000 new babies were born this year.
Immigration: 18,000 new immigrants have moved to Israel.
Large Cities. 92% of the Jewish population reside in cities. 10% of the population live in Jerusalem. 5% of the population live in Tel-Aviv. 4% in Haifa and 3% (Including myself) in Rishon le Ziyon.

Knut the polar bear

2007-04-22T18:57:00.000+03:00

Remember this little guy?

It's Knut the german polar bear who got a death threat by some animals movement a few months ago. Today I was Browsing the Blog Catalog and I've found out that he has his own blog.

Google's Blue logo

2007-04-22T16:15:00.000+03:00

Google is known for placing special logos on their front page for special occasion. Today, they did it without an occasion. I guess someone at google got drunk last night :)

New Blog! - ScubaReview.org

2007-04-19T18:27:00.000+03:00

I've started a new blog today! It's name is scuba review. And its... well - about scuba diving. The point of this new website is to gather objective reviews for various scuba equipment and dive sites. I'll also be publishing various Scuba Articles there.

I do not plan to work on this new website all alone - so if you are or you know any scuba divers who wish to contribute - Help is needed! I figured, that if anyone can just write a simple review about his gear and one of the diving sites that he's been to, the site will pritty soon contain a lot of useful information for everyone's sake.

The Picasa "Feeeling Lucky" feature.

2007-04-18T21:00:00.000+03:00

In this post, where I've published the pictures from the last trip to Eilat, I wrote that the same pictures look better in my Picasa album than in my friend Kushi's picasa album. The reason is that I've downloaded his pictures, used the "I'm feeling lucky" feature on them and uploaded them to my own Picasa album. Don't worry - I didn't violate any copyrights, I have his full unwritten (and actually also- unspoken) permission. The funny thing is that my friend Kushi has also seen the pictures in my album and he was really impressed. In fact, he was so impressed that he has deleted all of his Picasa Albums, used the "I'm feeling lucky" feature on all of the pictures and re-uploaded them back to Picasa.

One of the greatest advantages of digital photography is the ability to edit, adjust and fine-tune every image to look at it's best. But who got the tolerance to edit 500 images with Photoshop ?! The brilliance of the "I'm feeling lucky" is that it auto-adjusts the lightning and color-balance of every image momentarily with just a single click. And it really makes a difference! poor quality pail pictures suddenly look vivid and interesting. Way to go Google!

Ok, I'm feeling that I've been praising Google to much today - I promise not to do it again for at least a week...

Google is getting deeper into SaaS

2007-04-18T18:26:00.000+03:00

We are already familiar with Google's "docs and spreadsheets" which are online office web-applications, similar to Microsoft's Word and Excel. Yesterday, Google's CEO has announced that they are also going to develop a similar software-service for presentations (something like MS's PowerPoint). I find this way of offering Software very convenient and useful. Especially because it is completely machine and platform independent. For example - in Google Docs, you can save your document as either HTML, DOC, PDF, RTF or OpenOffice format.

The SaaS (Software as a Service) model has many advantages - no need to buy anything, no need to install, fluid free updates, online storage space, etc... I wrote a PCON article about it a few months ago, and turns out that analysts foresee a great future for SaaS (which is the next generation of the ASP model - ASP is Application Service Provider, not Active Server Pages). Analyst IDC predicts that the SaaS market is going to have 21% growth over the upcoming 4 years and reach $10.7 Billion in 2009. The "conventional" software market is only expected to have 4% growth until 2008 (according to analyst Forrester). Analyst Gartner predicts that in 2010, 30% of all software will be distributed in the SaaS model. Gartner also predicts that only 33% of the software vendors will be able to make a successful transition to the SaaS model.

Microsoft is trying not to stay behind. Steve Balmer has declared that SaaS will be one of 3 major issues on witch Microsoft is going to concentrate this year. Oracle is also getting into SaaS - in the last quarter of 2006, Oracle's SaaS application has produce $86 Million in net profit.

Pictures from Eilat

2007-04-16T19:38:00.000+03:00

2 posts ago I wrote about the trip to Eilat and promissed some pictures - here are the pictures (Picasa Albums), one from my Picasa, and one from my friend's nigger, who actually took the pictures. I used some of Picasa's correction features, so the pics in my album actually look better :)

Eilat - April 2007(My Gallery)

Eilat - Niger's Gallery

BTW: The little green thingy that i'm holding in my hand is named "Snoopy" and he is my new scuba toy. Snoopy is Argentinian, so he only speaks Spanish. I've bought him in Salta last summer. We had no scuba gear that could fit Snoopy, so he had to dive free style :)

Danni Gillerman on the Daily Show

2007-04-16T19:32:00.000+03:00

Michael Eisenberg has posted this really amusing video. It's an item on the Daily Show about Israel, including an interview with the Israeli Ambassador to the UN - Dan Gillerman. This guy rocks, his as cool as ice and seems to be a very effective speaker. I think that he's the best UN Ambassador that we've has since Benjamin Netanyahu. I'd definitely like to see more people like Dan Gillerman taking part in the Israeli politics.

Diving in Eilat

2007-04-16T10:50:00.000+03:00

I've just spent the weekend scuba diving in Eilat with some of my friends (including my dentist). On the first day it was raining, so we did only one dive, and was actually raining during the dive. The funny thing is that there's only about 2 days of rain in Eilat every year and this year I've been there on both rainy days (some luck). On the second day the weather was awsome. I've managed to pull a stunt on one of the dives. We were diving to a sunk boat (at 30 meters depth) - I've managed to forget to open my air tank. When we reached 29 meters, I've reached my partner and asked him to open it for me, while breathing from his octopus :)

My friend nigger took some underwater pictures - coming soon....

Lost Teaser - Season 3 Episode 16

2007-04-09T11:30:00.000+03:00

Ok, I know I've promised to put a LOST teaser every week, and I almost forgot to do it this week, but here it is:

The thing that bothered me the most in episode 15 was that they never tried to ask Juliette things about the island. I mean, she must know at least a few things they don't (being one of the OTHERS). Kate was just walking in the woods with her and instead of asking her about the others, who they are, what are they doing there etc... she was talking about Jack - come on! that really sucked... Well according to this promo, it looks like in episode 16 ("one of us") Sayid is going to have a little chat with Juliette. And Sayid knows how to get answers to questions. It seems like he's the only character that the producers haven't ruined yet with stupid love triangles and other irrelevant plot...

pdway raises 3$ Million

2007-04-08T21:38:00.000+03:00

pdway is an Israeli based start-up that developes a system for the destribution of coupons at points of sale. The coupons are destibuted to the users' Cellular Phones and Handsets. The company has raised 3 Million Dollars from a private investor in the real-estate sector. And they don't even have a website yet (it says "coming soon").

A few Facts about NMS Systems

2007-04-07T20:04:00.000+03:00

NMS stands for Network Management Systems or Network Monitoring Systems, I've even seen one website that said it stands for Network Management and Security.

In any case, NMS is (and if it's not it should be) a major part of the organizational IT. This systems allow the IT team to gave centralized management over the Networks Performance, Failures and Security, Including Asset Management. These Systems have been around for about 15 years, but analysts and consultants tell me the only know the market seems to be showing some real interest in these systems.

Everyone are willing to spend money in order to save more money. NMS allows you to save on downtime costs. An average large Enterprise spends around 30$ Million on downtime (in direct and overhead costs), that's around 2.2% of the revenues! While an advanced Multi-Vendor and Multi-Technology NMS costs only 300,000$. That's why I would expect CIO's to push their organizations into investing in NMS.

The top high-end commercial systems are considered to be:

IBM Tivoli
CA Unicenter
BMC Patrol
HP OpenView

There are also some Open Source Solutions, like:
• Nagois
• Open NMS
• Ground Work
• Zenoss
• Pandora
• NeDi

If you read Hebrew, There's an upcoming PCON issue on NMS.

300

2007-04-05T14:15:00.000+03:00

I went to see 300 yesterday, and in my own opinion the movie is awesome. Some of my friends did not agree with me, but that's just because they're stupid. Ok, not stupid, but there's something that they don't understand. Before seeing a movie like this one must know what to expect. The movie was expected to deliver some sort of experience, and that's exactly the experience that it delivers. You must know not to judge all movies by the same standarts. When you go to see a movie like 300, you don't expect a great screenplay or great acting or an interestingly evolving story line and not even credibility of any kind. What you expect from a movie like 300 is great special effects and thrilling historic battle scenes - This is exactly what the movie delivers. Knowing that, you can go see the movie and enjoy.

In the meantime, here are a few screen shots: