Yovav (Jay) Meydad's Personal Blog

This is probably one of the biggest and amazing things that ever happened in the history of the game of basketball. This is a story for a Hollywood movie. This is the story of a very happy team, that tonight won for the first time in its history the title – Israel’s Basketball Champions.

And if you are curios to know why I think this is the biggest thing in the history of basketball, read further:

• At the end of the previous season, Hapoel Holon qualified from the 2nd league to the premier league. After less than a year (!) they won the title.
• The team is coached by an unknown and inexperienced coach – Michael (Mickey) Dorsman, a charming businessman that bought the team who has been a fan of since childhood, then took also the coach position and did amazingly well in it. Yesterday he received the ‘Best coach of the year’ title. Tonight he won the championship.
• Hoolonia’s opponent in the final game was Maccabi Tel Aviv, one of the most successful clubs in European basketball. For decades Maccabi has been dominating Israeli basketball with 47 championship titles (since 1970 they lost the title only once in 1993).
• At the beginning of the season, the team was penalized due to the behavior of one stupid fan who threw a stun grenade in a game and wounded a guard. The stupid guy is now in jail and the team have overcome the difficulties and ended the season in the first place in the Israeli league.

I have been a fan of this team for more than half a decade, attended many games in the good old Holon City arena, watched many more on TV and a few on my PC (thanks to RayV’s player). Today was the best day ever and it was worth the long wait.

Don’t disappoint the legendary Dr. J – he wants to give you the title tonight.

The man behind it told me it is going to be worthwhile…

Have you registered?

I think there are still some places left in the black level.

Sorry I can not be in person at Blumfield tomorrow and cheer you in your last game.

The past weekend in Los Angeles was all about Israeli music. As part of celebrating 60 years of independence to the state of Israel, a few Israeli artists came to town to perform.

The first concert I saw was by one my favorite Israeli band, Hadag Nachash (and if you insist to translate it to English — “the Fish Snake”). Hadag performed at Temple Sinai in Los Angeles at what seems to be a well kept secret among the people who live in the city. It was a fairly intimate show but an amazing one!

I stood right next to the stage, took plenty of photos (sorry for the poor quality – that’s the iPhone to blame), recorded a few videos and had a great time.

Here’s the opening song – Lotus. Two additional videos can be found here and here.

The second concert took place the following day at the world famous Kodak Theatre which was packed with excited crowd. It was an impressive and well organized event, with a few speakers (Kirk Douglas was one of them), dance shows and live performance by four leading Israeli artists and bands: Idan Reichel, Achinoam Nini (Noa), Rami Klenstein and Habanot Nechama (young, fresh — a great surprise for me).

Here’s Habanot performing Hachnisini, a classic song written by Israel’s national poet, Hayyim Nahman Bialik.

And more Israeli artists are coming to town. This coming Sunday, at Woodley park there will be a huge event to celebrate Israel’s independence day with a few artists, and last, but not least, another pop/rock legendary band, Mashina will be in town on May 27. I am going to be in both events.

What a great month for Israel music lovers.

and it is called Myrmekiaphila Neilyoungi

Image details: Neil Young In Concert At The Nokia Theatre served by picapp.com

Earlier today I upgraded the version of the Nullriver Installer that is installed on my iPhone. The biggest improvement in the new version, numbered 3.1, is search which makes it easier to find applications. In addition to that, the “Featured” page was updated to include a few additional applications, among them Kate, a commercial package of tools and toys.

This made me thinking about the economics of the “Featured” page and the Search results pages. After all, VC are investing and companies are raising money to develop iPhone applications and so distribution is going to be critical to succeed. So far, everyone has expected Apple to be the one selling applications via iTunes but I think that there is a secondary market that is already bubbling called the Nullriver Installer.

The thing with the Installer that makes it unique compared to popular software download web sites is that currently the Installer is the single entry point to get 3rd party applications for iPhone and iPod Touch. Hundreds of thousand and maybe even millions of jailbreaked iPhone users around the world access the Installer every day in order to search, install, upgrade or uninstall applications, games, utilities, themes and all kinds of tweaks for their iPhone. Every time these users start the Installer, the first thing they see is the list of featured applications, and from today they are also going to start using the search capabilities.

So, what should a company/developer do in order to get his app featured? I did some research but could not find an answer. So, for now, I am assuming that the list is compiled by an editor with some exceptions (my guess – Kate which charges users and therefore can pay for distribution). The search function is also very primitive and seems broken (a search for “Wiki” returned zero results).

But I think that this is just the first step in what is going to become an active marketplace (probably PPI – Pay Per Install) that is going to be developed around the Installer. Both the “Featured” page and the search result pages are too valuable to be kept as they are today. And seeing how fast the Installer has evolved so far, I expect this to happen sooner than you expect.

As I blogged in the past, the fact that the website of Apple’s reps in Israel is not apple.co.il but iDigital.co.il is a big disadvantage for them, since they do not get free traffic from search queries such as “apple.co.il”, “apple in Israel” or “Apple Israel”. Instead, other sites, including this blog, which is ranked at the top of the result set on Google for these queries, are seeing an increase in traffic as the popularity of Apple products in Israel increases over time.

Well, it looks like something is cooking and soon a new home page will be launched. The question I asked myself is, by who: iDigital or Rami Prashove, the current owner of the domain? and what is going to happen to this blog’s traffic?

Today, during the Holocaust Remembrance Day, we remember the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis. Never again.

Jason finally jailbreaked his iPhone and asked me yesterday for a list of recommended applications he should install. Instead of sending the list to him via email, I am posting it for everyone’s benefit.

I have plenty of applications installed, but the ones I use most are:

• Twinkle – an awesome twitter client with seamless camera & geo-location integration 
• TuneWiki – song lyrics displayed while songs are playing
• Capture – taking screenshots has not be so easy
• iLog – a rich call log util (make sure also to install the Call History Patch to increase the number of entries)
• Snapture – a better camera applications with zooming, color adjustments and more
• iPark – I am terrible at remembering parking spots
• Hebrew fonts & keyboard (by Hebrew 4 iPhone) 
• Fring – both as an aggregate IM client but mainly for Voip calls over Wifi
• and lots of games that my kids love to tryout, including Tap Tap Revolution (Guitar Hero using your fingers)

In case you are interested in the complete list, you can find it below. Putting it together was simple. I used Capture to take screenshots of the “Uninstall” tab. This way you can see all the applications installed, including those that don’t create an icon on the dock. You can also see the category each application belongs to, so you can easily find them under the “Install” tab.

Feel free to recommend more using the comments section. Enjoy.