rutipo approved

Today is blogday. Each blogger recommends 5 new blogs. So let’s get to it:

1. SMS Text News: (English) News about the mobile industry, but it’s such fun to read, very down to earth laid back approach. I just love reading them b/c I enjoy it, and the professional news come in handy too…

2. My Let Go: (Hebrew) Duet blog with anecdotes and personal posts by Lotem Hayun and Niv Calderon.

3. Nick O’Neil’s All Facebook and Social Times: (English) Great source of FB and other social tech news.

4. Forum Yotzim Beshe’ela in Tapuz: okay okay, I know this isn’t a blog, nevertheless it is a place online I often visit.

5. Intellect or Insanity: (English /Hebrew) Jonathan Klinger’s blog. Interesting and meaningful issues relating to current events, and litigation.

Mission accomplished.

And the winner is…

The Forbes 100 powerful women list is out.

So, what have we got?

1 for Yahoo, 0 for Google (I guess they don’t count being vp of ui that powerful)

2 queens (1 of UK, 1 of Jordan)

1 for Israel

Just over 50% are from the US, despite (or due to, depending on which way you look at it) the recent economic downturn

And the winner is… Angie (yes, that’s how they “fondly” call her in Germany, my sources tell me)

And of course… Senator Clinton, this year’s winner of the title “woman with the highest public profile”. Ooh wow. Surely it is going to make her feel good not having being elected “president of the united states” this year. What a consolation prize.

Because clearly, the real winner here is Gov. Sarah Palin, who didn’t even make the list. Brilliant move by the McCain campaign, what can I say.

Olympics Utopia

Yesterday I watched the opening ceremony of the Olympics in Beijing.

It was magnificent. I was awed. Seeing the whole act in this amazing ceremony. And seeing the completed “Bird’s Nest” Stadium in Beijing, after seeing some of the preparations to the Olympics in Beijing last year, made it even more special for me. Seeing all the different countries’ athletic teams all in one event.

This ceremony really made me feel like we are so close to world peace. It felt so ideal. Of course I was aware of all the controversy regarding the Chinese government, but still, watching it really did feel that we have reached, or have gone very close to reaching, some sort of utopia.

And then I woke up this morning. Battles in Georgia. An American tourist killed in Beijing. Iran nuke sanctions revisited. Car bomb in Iraq killing 18. Syria prevents UN observers to inspect nuke activity. And the political and security situation in Israel hasn’t changed either.

We are definitely not there yet.

Real-Time Stock Prices for Free – It’s About Time

Real-time stock prices from the Nasdaq and NYSE are now offered online for free. But seriously, what took them so long? We’re in the 21st Century, has anyone even noticed? You can get nowadays almost anything online for free, just visit our website and increase our traffic, will ya?

Well, some might say that with the SEC involved, it is a surprise that this was approved before the third millennium. But I am not one of them.

Well, is it about time? Apparently, this feature was available in the past on Yahoo! Finance through August 2006. Yahoo! Finance has again announced a partnership with BATS Trading to provide free stock prices online fairly recently – just before the exchanges announced the same thing – RT quotes online for free. Coincidence? Of course not.

The recent announcements by the Nasdaq and the NYSE regarding the partnerships with Google, CNBC and the Wall Street Journal may seem like a “late to the party”, “me too” announcements. However, it was just a matter of days between them, so they must have been working on these partnerships for some time. Also, you must give them some credit for doing it with style. Why get the real-time quotes from a broker, when you can go straight to the source – the exchange itself. That will definitely do it.

Yes. Definitely do a PR fiasco for Google and the other partners, but unclear why the Nasdaq and the NYSE went along with it. They could have done it more gracefully by announcing they plan to offer the quotes under such a partnership, and have interested companies contact them. Because by doing it this way, they have picked one of the sides in the whole Yahoo! Finance/ Google Finance war.

I’m still wondering what ever happened to the real-time quotes Yahoo has offered in the past. What made them stop the service? (and don’t tell me “consolidation in the marketplace and a new pricing structure”. Don’t they want the traffic all to themselves? Or did they not care because they were getting it anyway?)

Yahoo RT Quote

Google is Broken

Okay, I know it’s a funny way of putting it. But really, it is.

Have you not noticed? It used to be, when you were looking for something, you could just find it in Google.

That is no longer the case. Recently I’ve been doing a lot of market research and other web digging, and Google just isn’t as good as it used to be. My sister told me about this shocking phenomenon earlier, and I was, naturally, skeptical. But now I am becoming more and more aware of it – you just can’t find everything you are looking for on the first page of Google.

I wonder whether this is an inevitable evolution of every search engine (after all, they were not pioneers in this market), or whether this is bound to happen to every search engine which is overly populated and over-used.

I’m still giving it a chance though, just because it has been so good to me over the past couple of years. And I’m a late adopter (I’m very loyal). But not for long. They must do something and regroup. Otherwise… well, competition is always out there.

Congratulations.

I called Bituach Leumi today to take care of some bureaucratic insanity which it pains me to get into.

They told me I just got married recently. So congratulations to me.

I asked them, who did I marry?

The World’s Food and Commodities Crisis Has Only Just Began

My Aunt who’s in Connecticut said they are limiting the amount of rice you can buy at Cosco. A similar case occurred in a supermarket here in Israel not long ago. Oil prices are surging. China and other producers are restricting the export of grains in order to ensure domestic food supply.

The world has become so needy and accustomed to exhausting energy sources, natural resources and commodities. Even though it is a stretch to say that the living outnumber the dead (the current world population outnumbers the combined historical world populations), however way you compute it. Still, more people are alive today than have ever lived before at any given time.

Therefore, there are far greater considerations as to supply of goods that haven’t been taken into account. 100 million people have already been put in danger by the current situation. We used to think this situation will not affect us. Many people feel that at the western countries, one can always pay more and get what he want. So maybe we will have to pay for food what we do now for gold?

Well, maybe. But maybe the now “poor” countries will realize that their gold is worth them their lives, and simply won’t sell it.

Possible Conclusions: Buy commodities, Live in Asia, Develop alternative energy sources (conserving energy is not nearly enough – we will use it all up sooner or even sooner), stock up on food, what else?

Facebook’s Comments to the Mini-Feed or Communication goes Both Ways

Have you noticed the new comments to the Mini-Feed feature on the Facebook? It’s a great feature.

Facebook used to be a place where the main communication was direct – interactions on friends’ walls, you had to go to their profiles in order to see what they’ve changed and what’s up with them, messages, tagging photos and more.

However, for a while now, there has been a shift. It started with the introduction of the news-feed and the way it was portrayed as the homepage, which shifted the concentration on what your friends are doing through indirect communication. You hear about your friends, without actually interacting with them.

But today, when I tried out the new commenting feature, it felt like old times. It actually made me check out profiles of some of my good friends which I don’t always check out. It made me feel that I am a part of the profile, not just a viewer – which can make one feel like a stalker at times. (Though Facebook should connect these comments to the notification system – I don’t think they have, which is a shame).

That’s why the new commenting feature on the Mini-Feed is so great (and yes, even if it is copied from FriendFeed). It helps keep the communication flowing back and forth. Because communication goes both ways – and that is key.

Popcorn mit dem Handy

Yes, you read it, popcorn with the cell phone. The 21st century. don’t you love it.

6 meters under

Today I faced one of my biggest fears.

I’m a certified diver. But this is relatively new for me. Until recently, other than not being on my “to do” list, diving was actually one of my biggest fears. I have seen a documentary in my childhood about diving, where the sport was lethal to some of the main characters. Needless to say, I was devastated. Other things associated with diving make me uneasy as well, but mentioning them won’t help all you potential divers (I highly recommend diving btw – it is amazing). Well, I used to think – why would anyone do that? But two years ago I’ve decided to go for it, despite everything.

There is specifically one part in diving which makes me feel uneasy and makes me want to reach the surface. This is part of the “exercises” you have to undergo if you didn’t dive for several months. Until today I always had to stop the dive in this point, and continue it after reaching the surface.

When we reached this point in the dive today, I thought I won’t be able to handle it. I signaled to the guide that I wanted to go up. I thought “what was I thinking?” “why am I doing this to myself?” “You should go up and out of the water, skip this dive, and quit diving altogether. You’ve always feared it, and there is nothing you really gain out of this experience.”

It was scary because at that second I actually gave up. But then I decided to go for it. I stayed underwater, completed the exercises and the dive (including an injury by a sea urchin, which was actually somewhat amusing, even if painful).