Jay Meydad's Life Mashup

Don’t get me wrong. I cheer for the Israeli football national team and wish them only success. I long for the day I will be able to take my boys to watch the Israeli team at a World Cup or the Euro.

But, at the same time, I can not understand how the hell the team is ranked #16 on the latest FIFA Word Ranking, before teams who have participated in major tournaments (World Cup, Euro, etc.), like Greece, Ukraine, Mexico, United States, Paraguay or Ghana.

The ranking algorithm FIFA uses simply does not do what it is says it is supposed to do: “Under the existing system, rankings are based on a team’s performance over the last four years, with more recent results and more significant matches being more heavily weighted to help reflect the current competitive state of a team.” (source: wikipedia).

FIFA should hire some search experts to tune up the algorithm and its relevance. Otherwise, it is just a matter of time before Israel passes England.

FIFA world ranking - oct 2008 (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_World_Rankings)

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.

• Workshops – In the US, group workshops are free and cover a wide range of topics (I sat on a few in the past and learned a lot), but in Israel they cost a small fee and they are limited only to “Introduction to Mac OS”
• One to One – In the US, one to one training personal training costs an annual fee of $99, but in Israel you pay 225 Shekels/hour – roughly $65/hour. I can understand why these private sessions who are done at the client’s house (since there are not Apple stores in Israel) would cost more, but still, the price difference between one to one training is ridiculous.

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.

I have always known that cellular carriers will do everything they can to keep a subscriber. But when this business philosophy turns to be the way they run their web properties, things become ridiculous.

To opt out from Cellcom’s newsletter (Israel’s largest wireless carrier) you would have to wait up to 7 business days! Don’t they have something better to do with their call center staff then to manually go over opt out requests? Any email marketing management software, like Constant Contact, will do it automatically and most important, immediately.

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:

אין משרד פרסום שלא פנה אלינו, כי כולם מבינים מה 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:

• What does this mean in Hebrew?
  

• How should it be called? Mac or מק or מקינטוש

 

At least, iPodHE, the utility that adds Hebrew support to iPod (but not iPhone) is finally free.

While most the Israeli Internet scene got together to shomooze at iDrink 7 in Tel Aviv, a selected group of them showed up last night on the red carpet of the Beverly Hilton for the reception event. I had the pleasure to be there and meet in person very smart and creative folks who came to LA to impress the local media giants with their ideas, products and passionate personalities.

The reception was the end of a long day which started early in the morning in a breakfast/panel with a few Israelis who work in US media companies: Nimrod Lev, Shaul Olmert, Roy Bahat, Tal Pink, Sam Gonen, Itzik Ben Bassat, Ofer Shaked and myself. Later on, the delegation hopped on busses and went to visit MTV, Sony and other media companies. The format of all the meetings was very similar to speed dating – each company had two minutes to pitch their product to a group of executives, and then companies and executives could spend more time together in one on one meetings.

Personally I find three companies to be very interesting and with great potential: Prime Sense (technology/device that can see, track and react to user movements outside the computer), Musestorm (widget creation, syndication & distribution) and InnerActive (advertising in mobile gaming – check out Adidas ads inside the Fifa game).

I look forward to meeting the participants of the 2008 delegation which I am sure will be even more successful.

I went to Israel for a very short and intensive trip. Spent a few days in Tel Aviv and a few at the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee), saw family & friends and participated in two major internet/technology events that took place that week.

The first event was Kinnernet, the un-conference created by Yossi Vardi. A crowd of about 250 creative & fascinating people were invited to spend two days collaborating, discussing, juggling, and playing.

The second event was TheMarker COM.Vention, Israel’s largest internet conference. I sat on panel called “Disruption 2.0: The Way Web 2.0 Challenges Web 1.0? and had the opportunity to present the way Snap disrupts the search market.

The conference was a great success. Over 3000 people attended the well organized event. I had the opportunity to meet many colleagues from past life (conratulations to my friends Itzik, Eran, Eyal, Amir and the rest of the InfoGin team for winning the ‘most promising startup award’) and get to know new Israeli internet professionals and entrepreneurs. Here’s a brilliant video made by two of them.