Yovav (Jay) Meydad's Personal Blog

I just installed Xobni and will be testing it in the next couple of days.

I have five invites – email me if you are interested: jayblog {at} meydad {dot} com

I find it pretty funny that the most searched term on Apple’s Support site is “Blue Screen”…

When do you think a “Leopard vs Vista – my blue is nicer” ad will be released?

Today at BlogWorld, I met the product manager and the lead developer for Live Writer. Besides complementing them for creating a great desktop blogging application, I also learned that the official version for the product has just been released – welcome Windows Live Writer 2008.

I wrote in the past about this tool and how great it is. The new release makes things even better. Here are four examples for improved capabilities:

• Embedding images and video became easier and with more capabilities. For example – when pasting an embedded code from any video sharing service while working in the Web Layout mode, Live Writer immediately displays the video player instead of the html code. In the previous version you could only paste code in HTML mode
• The “New page” feature lets you create new pages. The previous version enabled only the creation of new posts
• An “Add category” feature was added (prior to that I had to do it via the WordPress admin console)
• If you add post’s “Keywords”, those would automatically map to WordPress’s tags (a ver 2.3 feature)

Basically, I have less and less need to login to WordPress admin in order to post on a regular basis. The only reason to login is to manage comments or update the site template & plug-ins.

Kudos to the Microsoft Live team for the improvements. I highly recommend installing/upgrading.

• Gmail announced the addition of IMAP support. Finally my inbox can be kept in sync when I read emails using my iPhone. This is how to set it up.
• Meebo, my favorite web based IM service, released a very cool and useful Firefox plug-in. Try it out.

Later this week a delegation of selected Israeli digital media start ups will hit Los Angeles.

The event is organized by Yossi Vardi and Arnon Milchan with the purpose of introducing Israeli entrepreneurs to some of the world’s largest media companies.

In addition to those meetings, there will be a panel of Israelis who work for US media companies. I will be one of the panelists together with Nimrod Lev (Fox Interactive/KSolo), Shaul Olmert (MTV Networks), Roy Bahat (IGN Newscorp), Itzik Ben-Bassat (formerly Blizzard) and others.

I look forward to meeting old friends & colleagues as well as getting to know some of Isreal’s most creative minds. In case you will be in the event, please come by and say hello.

Congratulations to my friend Eyal Keren from Pudding Media for launching their product at Demo 2007. 

I had the opportunity to play around with this product several times in past few months and was really impressed with it’s capabilities. They have a breakthrough technology that integrates contextual content and ads into conversations between human based on speech recognition.

The fact their product is controversial is a good indication these folks are on something big. Remember the initial reaction to Google Adsense inside Gmail? or the criticism Snap Shots received initially? The important thing is to listen to the users’s feedback and improve the product to make it useful and engaging.

By the way, Eyal also started blogging. Check out his blog to read the latest about his company.

I have not had a chance to try it myself although I really want to, but from the video below it looks like a cool on board instant messaging feature which is part of the on flight entertainment system on the new Virgin America air planes is becoming an annoyance to many passengers, especially those who are not into chatting or high altitude matchmaking.

Perhaps Virgin needs to add instant messaging/chat privacy settings to the flight preferences section on the eleVAte passenger profile page. Or how about installing a shock absorber at the back of every seat so people will stop complaining that others poke their chairs.

By the way, the mood lighting looks really groovy!

Technorati Tags: Instant Messaging, Virgin America, Usability, Product Design

Last night I decided to extend my iPhone’s functionality with a few goodies.

The first thing was to hack the iPhone.

Then I added Hebrew fonts to Safari & the built in RSS reader. The lack of Hebrew support was one of my biggest pains with the iPhone and with the ability to read a few Hebrew web sites (not all sites render properly) things are a little better, although I am still waiting for the full native Hebrew support.

The next thing was to add several applications and personalize the device with a custom ringtone. I installed iBrickr on my computer and use it to manage my iPhones apps, ringtones etc. 

Among the applications that are currently installed on my iPhone you can find:

• Communication applications: Apollo IM & Twitterrific
• Games: Light Off and a few Nintondo retro games running on the NES emulator
• Utilities: VoiceNotes & the text editor Scribe
• Configuration Utilities (launch and manage the iPhone applications): Launcher & recombinant SpringBoard arranger
• and my favorite utility, the Dock, which brought the famous Mac OS feature to the iPhone

Technorati Tags: iPhone hacking, iBrickr, Twitter

I don’t want to add any fuel to the flame, I just want to report an annoying problem that I hope will get addressed soon. After all, according to Sue Decker’s memo, Yahoo is going to focus more on the customers, rather than on the advertising products.

Here is my problem – as a premium Yahoo AT&T user I want my Yahoo Mail to be ad-free. Well, for some reason Yahoo insists on showing me ads. . No matter how hard I try to hide the advertising panel on the right it keeps coming back the second I move between tabs within the application (read message, compose, back to inbox etc).

Take a look – just follow the cursor:

Technorati Tags: Yahoo Mail, Usability

[This post is for those who read Hebrew websites...]

TheMarker is one of the few Israeli web sites that constantly introduces new products, features, technologies and improvements such as: Tag Cloud, Social Network and experimental UI

I visited TheMarker earlier today and was surprised and pleased to see something new once again. TheMarker IT (still in Beta) which covers the Israeli Internet & technology industry is their latest product and from a first look I can say that the TheMarker team did a pretty good job.

Things I like in particular:

• The site seems to load faster compared to TheMarker (although there is always room for improvement when it comes to speed). Hopefully this will continue to last even with the (expected) increase in the number of ads on the site as well as the (expected) increase in traffic to the site
• Overall design style
• The width of the pages was increased by 200 pixels and more information is now visible above the fold. The extra width makes the page feel lighter and less cluttered compared to TheMarker. I assume that this change is due to the fact the majority of the readers are IT professional using high resolution/large displays and they all saw large empty margins screaming “Use Us!”

Things I think can be improved:

• I have an issue with the fact that the site has no navigation bar and that the only way to access different sections is by using the tag cloud at the top bar. Tags are great but should not be the primary navigation method
• “Popular Stories” section could be moved above the fold to increase visibility and serve it’s purpose. The “Upcoming Events” section is probably not that important and could be moved down
• The integration with TheMarker can be improved. It is not clear to me why top stories on TheMarker’s High-Tech section would not show up on TheMarker IT. Perhaps this is a symbolic sign that the there needs to be a better connection between Israel’s Technology and Internet industries & the rest of the world

Final suggestion – The Search results page could be greatly improved using Snap Shots next to each search result. This will improve the user experience (especially since some of these pages load really slow) and would add some web2.0 glam to the site.

Technorati Tags: TheMarker, Usability, Snap Shots, Website design, TheMarker IT