Since my first experience with a PocketPC Phone Edition in 2002 I've come to the conclusion that the world was going in the direction of Smartphones, that those might one day replace the computers that we have at home, and that this move was happening in fast speeds.

The world continued going round, technologies were in constant change, and the appearance of the iPhone and Android in the late 2000's made me feel my prognostic was completely right. Until something strange happened to my life: I began working in a company which has in Feature Phones (those simple phones that don't allow you to install software on them) its main market, and received a view of a completely different world.

I must say I was shocked. After so many years of belief, I was suddenly seing some data that showed me I was living a lie!

Well, no, not exactly a lie, but in best case a very partial truth. This discovery was the moment that made me begin looking back at the assertions I had within me and re-check their truthfulness, timing, localization, and all other kinds of details.

 With the release of the Iphone 4S, a new upgrade kit has been released for the owners of the old Iphone 4:

Any additional word is superfluous.

Source: BuzzFeed.

 Well, this site has become, at best, a little boring in the last months.

To tell you the truth, all my efforts were heading somewhere else, getting a job. My own business wasn't growing the way I expected to, I was not sleeping quietly at night, and I had taken last March the decision to stop being a consultant and going back to a regular job, possibly in international sales. 

Well, it seems that those times are over. I have taken over a position in Latin American sales at EMOZE (www.emoze.com) and I am soon beginning to be in the area. So there will probably be more stories to tell soon.

Stay tuned.

Many thanks to Lucas Repullo who shared with me this pearl.

In today's market, most of the companies in the mobile phone sector are more busy in patent wars for stopping others from making products, than on making their own products at all.

The situation is, let's agree, quite outraging. Specially when you consider that many companies involved in these wars have never released a single product to prove their patent really stands.

But here is the deal: here is a guy that invented a mobile product which can go with you everywhere (though not very comfortable in the pocket), produced it in consumer market commercial quantities, and for what I have read, has already sold 400,000 units of it.

In the video below the inventor Bob Balow demonstrates his invention.

If you are duying to buy this product, here is the link: http://www.rcbproducts.com/

Enjoy the spaghetti.

One of the things I mostly like is new technology developments which are a result of "thinking outside the box".

In this context, one of the technologies that offers the largest potential for these kinds of developments is without doubt Augmented Reality. And I find it not surprising that the automotive industry is finding so much interest in it.

The last thing I have seen is the video below from Toyota:

Yes, the company has built transparent touch displays in the car windows and provided it augmented reality functions which do a lot of things, from Zoom & Pan and up to translations of the names of the objects we see through the window of the car.

It is very interesting to see into what this will develop in the next years. I believe we have some very nice things to see in the future.

And this one was sent to me by an uncle from Brazil. So thanks for this one, Henrique!

It comes from the Agilent Educational Corner, and it shows a group of fields in our life that would be completely different today if there weren't engineers in the world.

The last picture, however, is from the guy that joined all the pictures in one mail, and decided to add one more showing how the world would be if there weren't engineers at all. So, better or worse?

Just join us in the pictures. BTW, the originals in high definition are in this link.

NO CIVIL ENGINEERS

This is a nice one sent by a friend. Thanks, Camille.

What would you say if you would go out boating on a river and a big fish would jump inside your boat? Coincidence? And what would be if 3 fishes would jump in? Luck?

See the video below:

OK, now, 19 is a completely different story. Specially when all fishes around you are jumping like crazy.

I would surely like to go there for some fishing ......

It is quite some time since I last posted on this blog, and this is mainly for two reasons: first I was very busy with some other projects, and second, there was nothing really special worth posting here.

Now, winter is gone, spring is almost gone, and at the end of May we have had a national event called Baja Israel, a cross-country race in which Jeeps, motocross bikes, and track cars and buggys crossed the whole country off-road in one day, from the Golan Heights to Eilat.

Since our Burgmans don't really fit the off-road definition, we created a parallel event: the 'Round Israel Tour. This was a three-day tour doing a circular path that went through: Tel Aviv, Rosh HaNikra, Northern Road, Golan Heights, Mount Hermon, Kibbutz Marom Golan, Tiberias, Jordan Valley Road, Dead Sea, Arava Road, Eilat, Mitzpe Ramon, Beer Sheva, Tel Aviv.

Here is the path in the Map:

You can click the map to see it in full size. The green line is the path done by us in those 3 days, between 1,200 and 1,500 Km.

Thanks to my friend Ofer Spiegel who brought this video to my attention via Facebook.

This is one of the nicest campaigns I have seen for a cellular device. I guess only the Japanese at NTT DoCoMo could do something like that, Bach in the woods.

Just check for yourself:

Let's hope that in the whole world ads will one day be in good-taste like this one.

A friend of mine posted this in her Facebook, and I had to bring it here since is is really amazing.

Take a look at the conversation between these two twins:

So, what they are talking about?

New refrigerator technology?
World peace?
How to trick Mom and Dad?
or maybe just imitating grown-ups?

I can't say that I really know, but they seem to be getting to a good understanding between themselves.....

Many of the readers here probably still remember the review I've done some months ago about RadioTime and TuneIn Radio.

I have re-visited the TuneIn Radio website today to see what is new around there, and was surprised to see that they have added two additional mobile platforms: WP7 and BADA !

So from now on more people can enjoy their 40,000+ radio stations from around the world while on the roads. Just download the software from your platform's webstore, set yourself a user at www.radiotime.com, set there your preset stations, login with the same user in your mobile device, and enjoy the music.

I enjoy it in 3 ways:

There are some really beautiful places in Israel, and I believe that I would not get to many of them if it wasn't for the Israel Burgman Club I am part of. Riding around the country is a great experience, and riding with friends make it even better.

This time we have been at Yatir Forest, Susiya and Lahav Forest. From all, I need to talk a little about Susiya, the first Hebrew cities found in this land, dating from the 3rd century AD. This archeological site shows a city actually near the size of Tel Mond, a town near where I live. It seems that many thousands of people lived there, and one can find there in the site the homes, the burial caves, and an enormous synagogue which seems to have been the center of a very rich community.

We left Tel Aviv with cloudy weather and a chance of rain, but as we proceeded South the weather became blue and beautiful, though very cold.

Here is the video of the trip:

This is it. I hope you have enjoyed. Another tour is bound to happen on March 30th. Stay tuned and I surely will have what to say.

Sometimes the ideas are just there under our noses and we need a genious to see them there.

We are all aware of the quantity of video-calling applications for smartphones coming out lately: SIPDroid, Fring, Skype, Tango, Yahoo! Messenger, and probably the next version of Google Voice.

However, most of us are still with phones from the previous generation that don't have a front facing camera: iPhone 3GS, Google Nexus One, HTC Desire, and many others.

In this case, all this video-calling stuff is quite non-relevant, right?

WRONG !!!

Please meet the Vainworks Stand, a brilliant idea by Phil Farrand. Phil was kind of disappointed that he couldn't do video-calling without a front-facing camera, and decided to solve the problem. What he built was a stand made of mirrors at specific angles that turn the back camera into a front-facing one. Look at the video demoing the stand with Fring (note his own image with the orange shirt at the small picture):

Perfect!

Best of all, instead of paying some hundreds of dollars to upgrade your phone, you can pay $19.95 on this stand or $29.95 on a double package with two stands. Choose what you do, one for you and one for your wife, one for home and one for office, etc.

More info, videos and purchase at this link.

Thanks to Tammy Goren who caught my attention with this movie on her Facebook post.

In 32 years of career in the IT industry, I have done a lot of presenting, and also seen a lot of presentations. What to say, if there is something we are very used to seeing is BAD presentations prepared by people who have never had any training in presentation skills.

Presentation is an art, and it takes time to learn. However, preparing a good presentation in Powerpoint is nowadays an important part of this art, and it can save or destroy a presentation.

Since learning how to do it can be a long study, a guy called Don McMillan, who is a former chip designer who managed to turn his career into a laughing subject, made a video that at least teaches, in a very interesting way, what NOT TO DO with Powerpoint.

Here is the video:

Hillarious.

BTW, Don McMillan owns a website called Tecnically Funny, in which you will find a lot more of corporate funny stuff.

OK, I have been already for 6 months with my HTC Desire, have upgraded it to FroYo, which left it approximately the same way it was previously with Eclair, and was already beginning to get bored.

What was left? Trying an upgrade to newly released Gingerbread.

The picture above already gives you an idea of the result......

My two main concerns:

1. Finding a ROM version that was reliable - since the Desire is my primary device,
2. Having Hebrew in the device at the end of the process - since without Hebrew using the device in Israel will be impossible, even though my calendar and phonebook are kept in English.

More after the break.

OK, I admit: this site does not get updated every day.

The reason for that is simple, this is mostly an opinion & blog website, and I care to come here and update it only when I have something to say.

Considering this, I always try to provide tools that will facilitate receiving the site updates even when users don't come here everyday.

Well, this is the deal with our new functionality for Android Users:

We have published a new Android application which brings all the updates directly from the website. You can set this application to sync with the website automatically according to a schedule you choose, or to sync manually only. When syncing, all the updates on the site will be brought to the palm of your hand, and you will see them in the list you have in the left. Read items will have our icon in B&W, unread items will have it in color.

This story follows the story published yesterday about good people willing to change the world by the availability of technology for the masses.

India is a place where 1 billion people live, actually 1 out of every 6 people in the planet. It is a place full of social and cultural differences, and 50% of its population cannot read. The poor population in the country has no access to computers or to the Internet.

One good man, a manager in a technology company, started a private project called "The hole in the wall", in which he installed computers in different local slums and encouraged the local children to try to use it.

It is beautiful to see the results of the project; children without any previous computer experience just "taught themselves" how to use it and found their way through the internet to the places that interested them.

Any additional words are a waste. Just watch the video:

I wish there were more people like this man and his Japanese friend from the previous post. If mankind was more dedicated to these projects and less to hate we would surely live in a much better world.

This video was found by a friend of mine, Diana, who published a link to it on Facebook. Thanks, Diana, couldn't be better.

In the crazy lives we live we do a lot of damage to the planet, and most of us don't even notice that. One of the biggest damages we have been doing during the last full century is the irresponsible use of oil, which is taken in quantities from our underground, refined, used, and left around as waste of variable forms: plastic, PVC, synthetic rubber, and all kinds of other things.

The developed world is just in the beginning of its learning on recycling, and until now most of the recycling technologies, though important, fail on achieving the objective of creating recycled products which can be important to our daily lives.

One of the important developments of these recycling technologies was a process invented in Israel that makes possible turning used tyres into asphalt. The first full road made of recycled asphalt from tyres has just been built near Haifa.

But I believe that what we see in this video is something that goes beyond all: a Japanese scientist managed to build a machine which through a simple process recycles plastic waste back into oil. From 1Kg of plastic waste we can obtain 1 liter of oil, and this can be used as is or processed into gasoline, diesel or kerosene. Consider that for every Kg of plastic burnt around the world we emit 3 liters of CO2, and we conclude it can also help very much cleaning our air.

Here is the video:

I hope this guy manage to create a commercial product out of this prototype, which can be built, sold for acceptable prices, and held in every home. I would be glad to reprocess all my plastic waste into gasoline and fill my tank with it. You don't need to be an environmentalist in order to love the idea...... specially when you consider the current gasoline prices.

I've got the link to this video tonight and couldn't be more impressed. This looks like science fiction to me, but it seems to be working. Anyway, I don't know if it is a full service or just a beta test.

OK, people used to say that one day cars would travel by themselves, and here it is.

It seems it travelled very slowly in the video, so I don't know how advanced this whole thing is, but the simple fact that it managed to arrive to its destination in one piece is already an achievement.

What do you think?

Just found a series of 4 videos from the TV campaign that T-Mobile has created in the Czech Republic with the great help of the veteran actor Chuck Norris.

The story is simple: Chuck Norris enjoys a multi-generation popularity in the Czech Republic. His movies were the first signs of western culture there even before the end of the Cold War, when movies entered the country illegally. As well, after the opening of the country to the west, when TV series from the US became popular there, one of the most popular was "Walker: Texas Ranger". So his popularity goes from people that are today in their 60's and until those that are from the internet generation.

The ads put him visiting the Czech Repulic at a local family's home and trying to put up with the local costumes, not necessarily successfully. They are all in Czech, but it is fun to see it even like this.

BTW, "brusli" - and not Bruce Lee - is a Czech word meaning "ice skating" or something close to that.

The 4 videos are after the break.

I found this short video at Youtube yesterday, showing a half-car-half-scooter that could be considered "the car of the future". Meet the Carver:

Well, if you like it you will probably be disappointed to know that maybe the car of the future is a thing of the past; it seems that the Carver has been manufactured from 2007 to 2009 and abandoned after that. What a pity !!!

Lately Facebook has been a good source for finding good YouTube videos that would go unpercepted if we wouldn't get a link there for them.

One of the examples is this video which presents British humour at its best: the link was received on Facebook from Mike Waizman.

Eggs-Box, anyone?

Hope you enjoy.

 I've received this video clip in a mail, and felt I had to share it with my friends.

The idea behind the clip is: what would happen if all the story of Christmas would happen today? Well, if you are also curious about it, see the video, and pay attention because things happen fast there.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year, everybody !!!

I have recently received this information from a member of my Hebrew website www.mobilityfreak.co.il and thought it would be nice to share it here as well.

Member of the site adunsky describes a way to create a link and transfer information OTA between a computer running the Chrome browser and an Android device. The whole functionality can be very interesting for people that are frequently busy moving information from one to the other.

So here it goes after the break.

Well, having my wallet everywhere I am seems quite trivial when I am talking about my physical wallet - yes, that one that holds the bills - but it may not be so when I am talking about an electronic wallet that holds my passwords and personal data.

In the past, when I used my Windows Mobile device, I used to use eWallet from Ilium Software, a great wallet system which had a very good desktop companion and Windows Mobile Client for keeping the wallet updated everywhere. Every day I would connect my device to the PC and the wallets would sync.

Then I moved to Android, and all that Ilium could offer me in this platform was a viewer to my wallet, while all the editing was supposed to be done in the PC. Better than nothing, but not enough for me. I was out to find my new wallet software.

Luckilly, in the same days, SBSH announced their new Safewallet 2, and with it a version for Android to be released soon (meanwhile it has already been released). Knowing the quality of SBSH products, I decided I ought to try it. And so I did.