Roy’s interpretation to Steve Jobs’s iPad announcement and what would his older brother, the iPhone, say/sing.
I have been getting many questions & comments about my two posts on how to listen to Israeli radio stations on the iPhone and iPod Touch using the FStream app (here). That’s the “price” I had to pay for being ranked first on google for queries like “israeli radio on iphone”. Hopefully this post will provide answers to many of the questions.
Recently a new free application was released to the App Store called “Visual Radio” (download link). It was developed in Israel by Unicell and it offers the capability to listen to over 10 stations using a clean and elegant user interface.
Unlike the FSTream solution which requires configuring the radio stations’ streams urls into the app and changing the urls whenever those change, Visual Radio comes pre-configured with many radio stations which leads to an easy “install and play” experience. A few stations are still missing and I hope the Unicell team there will add them soon. Other nice features include:
1. Radio Dial that lets you preview what song is being played in a station before actually switching to it – big time saver
2. Displaying artist and song names
3. Song’s lyrics (when available)
4. Programming for every station
Kudos for the Unicell team for a great app. One small tip to the developers – change the app name to say something like “Visual Israeli Radio” so people who search iTunes will be able to easily find it.
Posted via email from jaymeydad’s posterous
I was using Microsoft Excel the other day and had that Eureka moment. I typed in a simple formula that had a closing parenthesis but forgot to put an opening parenthesis. An error message popped up and I realized that I have been getting that same error message, for doing the same mistake, ever since I have been using Excel. And even though Microsoft has released several Excel versions along these years, this specific problem has been carried from version to version without getting an elegant solution.
I am pretty sure that the same exact error happens to millions of users every day, and many of them are clueless and do the same thing – they get frustrated, delete the formula that has a minor error and start over.
So, here’s my suggestion to a very simple killer feature – AutoParenth. Excel should automatically add an opening parenthesis whenever it detects that a cell: (a) has a function (first character inside the cell is minus, plus or the equal signs) and (b) it has a closing parenthesis. This feature should be built similar to the AutoCorrect feature to give the users greater control.
If that’s too difficult to implement, Excel should at least provide an informative error message, just like Apple Numbers and Google Docs do. This is such a common error that a specific error message with clear instructions is necessary.
Apple Numbers informative error message.
Google Docs also provides enough information to guide the user.
I hope that someone at the Microsoft Office team will read this post and add this request to their todo list.
Interesting. Google is running a campaign on iPhones via AdMob to promote the google voice search app.
I saw it on QuickGold which is an app (great one – the Quicksilver version for iPhone) that can be installed only on a jailbroken iPhone.
This makes me wonder, does Google, a long time Apple partner, advertise on semi-illigal applications? Or is that a RON type of buy?
Last week, when I was at the TheMarker COM.Vention in Isreal, I noticed the presence of a very impressive Apple booth on the Expo floor. It was very nice and added to the feeling that this is a true international event (beyond the fact the program was in English and dozens of speakers and many attendees arrived from the US and Europe).
While I was at the Apple booth, I was looking for one of the iDigital mangers to provide some tips & feedback, but since I could not find any of the managers, I will use this post to do it.
Since I first blogged my thoughts about Apple’s web site in Israel, I have been receiving questions and comments from people who visited Israel, purchased an Apple product there, and later on had a need for customer support. Since iDigital’s web site is only in Hebrew they could not find their answer there, and so using the help of Google, these people searched and landed on my blog. I was glad to help as much as I could with basic questions & translations, but did not have answers to all of their questions. So, here’s tip #1 for the iDigital team – create an “English” page with at least “contact us” information. You’d be surprised how many people who do not read Hebrew are looking for a way to contact you.
Anyway, the last question I received was from a woman who was looking for the customer support phone number for iPod, so I visited iDigital’s website and saw that they have recently started offering group workshops and one-to-one training, similar to the training programs that are available at Apple stores across the US. These are great news for Mac users in Israel (but still not for iPhone users since it is not officially sold there yet and therefore not supported) but there is one difference that makes it look somewhat wrong in my point of view – the price.
So here is tip #2 – if you really want to build a market share, look at how things are done where Apple is gaining market share, and then mimic. Only good things could happen if you would do that.
Just received this email from Apple who is using car dealers marketing tactics to get users to try the new MacBook Air. Very smart!
I was just wondering – are we going to see blue, yellow and red balloons rising above Apple stores…?
No one can blame me that I am anti-Apple. I own more Apple products than Microsoft. I have 2 ipods, an iPhone, a Mac Mini in our house’s living room, I have some AAPL shares in my portfolio and recently I put my hands on a MacBook Pro. I thought that after 15 years or so on a PC, the time has come to fully migrate.
I’ve installed plenty of utils (thank you versiontracker.com). I’ve learned by heart tens of shortcuts. I’ve even got used to looking for the [x] button on the top left corner. But, after two weeks on a Mac as my primary work machine I have to admit that I still find it very difficult to get used to the fact that some basic applications, such that I have been using every day, are missing or partially available on a Mac, and that there is no good alternative. In many cases, I feel 50% less productive than I used to be on a PC.
Here are a few examples — in case you have answers or suggestions to some of these issues, please leave them in the comments section:
1. Entourage is a terrible email client compared to Outlook. Plenty of basic features are missing (I don’t know where to begin…). It is also very slow and feels like Outlook Express v 2.0 to me.
2. Spotlight cannot index my Outlook PST files. From what I have been reading, the only way to overcome this issue is to import the PST files into Entourage. But then I would end up with a huge and slow inbox. Am I missing some hidden plug-in or am I expected to give up years of email archive?
3. MS Office in general, and PowerPoint in particular, for Mac is bad, really bad. On Powerpoint for example, If you need to edit/open/edit presentations made on PowerPoint you are in serious trouble. Fonts do no render properly, print is almost impossible and the overall experience is really slow. Yes, I have Keynote installed and it is amazing, but when you are part of a company that has a majority of PC users, I have no choice but using Office.
4. I need to have ability to run IE7 (or my favorite Maxthon). There are many sites that are not compatible with FF and Safari (at least Israeli ones). Also, my job requires me to look at everything we develop at Snap on all three browsers, especially the one with the largest market share. A side note: seems to me that Microsoft made a big mistake when it announced that it is not going to support IE for Mac OS any more.
5. My favorite desktop blogging client, MS Live Writer, does not have a Mac version. Anyone has suggestions for a really good alternative for Mac?
I know what some might say–just install Parallel and Windows on the Mac and use the PC apps that you like. But then I would work on Windows most of the day. Besides, what is the point. I could buy an apple sticker and stick it in the center of the cover of my IBM Thinkpad…
The Israeli music industry has changed a lot in the last ten years. The leading radio station, GalGalatz (Israeli Army Radio #2), created in 1998 the playlist — a list with a limited number of popular songs, selected by powerful music editors, that is being played repeatedly and sets the public taste and opinion. Despite the criticism GalGalatz received, claiming (rightfully IMHO) that they became focused on ratings rather than quality, nothing changed.
These days, Galgalatz gets exclusive rights to play new singles before all other stations which makes them even powerful than ever. The result – small group of musicians, mainly mainstream, get the glory, while others are completely ignored.
But all of this does not matter if you are lucky enough to get discovered by Apple’s marketing folks. This is what happened to Yale Naim, a fairly unknown Israeli singer that made her career in France. One of her latest album’s songs, New Soul, is used as the soundtrack of the new MacBook Air TV ad.
The result is great – she is now on the world’s most popular playlists — iTunes Store (2nd most popular song!) and YouTube (with 1.5MM views as of Feb 1, 2008)!
Macbook Air is not the only creative thing Apple came out with this week.
Today Apple started running a new campaign for Leopard. I saw it on the home page of the New York Times. In this 30 seconds ad (which you will want to watch it again and again – trust me), the PC guy climbs the ladder and breaks out from the Half Page Ad unit to the Leaderboard, hangs the "NOT" sign while talking with Mac and then goes down the ladder. The synchronization between the two ad units is perfect and the experience is fun and engaging.
Can you imagine that? There are web products that are dying to get to the level of user engagement this ad has. Harry up and watch it yourself on NYTimes.com
A few weeks ago, a new company bought the license to sell Apple product in Israel. Today, I read an interview with Eran Tor, the GM of that company, iDigital, and one of his quotes caught my attention:
×ין משרד ×¤×¨×¡×•× ×©×œ× ×¤× ×” ××œ×™× ×•, ×›×™ ×›×•×œ× ×ž×‘×™× ×™× ×ž×” הולך להיות פה.
My own translation: There is not a single advertising agency that has not spoken to us, because everybody understand what is going to happen here…"
Yes, the advertising agencies understand that plenty of $$$ are going to be spent, but what about the consumers? Who is going to care of their needs and make sure Apple products are full localized to Hebrew? and how about allocating some of these marketing $$$ in order to buy apple.co.il? or making sure the iDigital site works properly on Safari for Windows and does not break(see below)?!
And what about the language used on the site? The English & Hebrew mishmash sounds really bad. Couple of examples:
At least, iPodHE, the utility that adds Hebrew support to iPod (but not iPhone) is finally free.
