Google is commemorating, and honoring, the yahrtzeit of Chiune Sugihara today.

Worth noting.

Two major tech fails just happened

1. for the first time, after nearly two million miles of test driving, a Google driverless car got into the first car crash that it was the fault and cause of. Thank God nobody in the Google car was hurt :-)

2. It turns out that Waze directed the soldiers into Kalandiya last night that led to the dramatic IDF rescue mission to get them out before being lynched. (waze released a statement denying it was their fault, saying the soldiers went off-route)

Are those tech fails or specifically Google fails (as Google owns Waze)?  As tech takes over our lives more and more, is this a sign we shouldn't give up our independence so quickly and rely so much on tech or are they just flukes? Statistically the number is probably minuscule relative to how many times tech has saved people and/or improved their lives...

cool to have a "Jewish kitchen" at Google...

Chef Amelia Saltsman demonstrates how to make two seasonal Jewish winter recipes, along with Google’s own Jenna Taylor. This teaching kitchen demo includes Pumpkin & Carrot Soup and a colorful Apple, Fennel and Watermelon Radish Salad.

Award-winning cookbook author AMELIA SALTSMAN helps everyday cooks make the connection between seasonal, small-farmed foods and real-life meals. Her new book is a fresh, new way to think about Jewish food. In The Seasonal Jewish Kitchen, Amelia takes us far beyond deli meats and kugel to a universally appealing world of diverse flavors ideal for modern meals. Inspired by the farm-to-table movement, her 150 recipes offer a refreshingly different take on traditional and contemporary Jewish cooking. Amelia is also the author of the award-winning The Santa Monica Farmers’ Market Cookbook.

Google has started their latest project in Israel of imaging the "Shvil Yisrael" - the cross country Israel trail -for Google Street View.

oh, how I'd like to be on this team right now.

According to INN, Shvil Yisrael, 1100km long, will be the longest trail photographed to date for Google Street View, and they plan to spend three months hiking and photographing the trail.

Will Google kill off Waze?

I cannot imagine why Google would spend over 1 billion dollars on Waze just to kill it off. However, they continue developing their own Google Maps with GPS application, despite owning the Waze system. And that makes me wonder.

According to The Next Web, the most recent update to Google Maps for mobile devices includes the ability to calculate the quickest available route to a destination, and recalculate while en route and offer new directions if necessary.

Why continue to develop such thigns when they already own Waze that does this?

On the other hand, Waze has so many features Google Maps does not have, that I do not think too many people will consider Google Maps a viable alternative to Waze. Forgetting all the social aspects of Waze, there is the interface, the graphics, the voice giving directions, which make it much easier for a driver to follow the directions of the GPS.. rather than using Google which has a small map with a moving dot and no voice directions.

I think Waze still has a future, but I do not know if Google thinks that way.

Waze is just a great and useful app. It would be a shame to see it go for an inferior tool.

I don't quite get this proposal, but here it is..

From Globes:

The Knesset is demanding royalties from Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG) for Israeli content. The Knesset Finance Committee has begun discussing a bill submitted by MK Erel Margalit (Labor) which would require Google to transfer 7% annually of its revenue from Israeli copyrighted Internet content, which will be divided up by a special committee that will be set up. 

To meet the criteria for the bill for receiving royalties, a content site must be active for more than one year and the information presented must be updated or changed at least weekly, and at least 30% of the content must be produced by the website itself. According to the bill, the royalties will be deposited in an account managed by the Ministry of Finance's Accountant General from where it will be transferred to content producers that meet the criteria and rules.
The bill is based on the fact that search engines like Google rake in huge profits but they would not be able to exist without the sites to which it refers surfers. Margalit said that very often surfers make do with looking at the results from the search engine without entering the relevant page on the original site in order to receive the requested information.
Margalit warned, "Israeli democracy is in danger. Google is not IDB. Google has become a search engine technology tycoon in the State of Israel. Technology is an important means to bridge gaps and the Israeli economy needs new thinking about the connection between high-tech and technology and the country's economy and growth."

If anybody knows what he is talking about on this issue, it would be Erel Margalit. He is the founder of a Jerusalem-based incubator for hi-tech firms. There is probably nobody more qualified than him in Knesset (maybe other than Naftali Bennet who made millions selling his hi-tech company), and most other places, to come up with such a plan.

My question is do other governments do the same and why not just let each individual copyright holder claim royalties from Google? Why does the government need to be involved in collection and distribution? Maybe they think Google will trample each claimant on his own - no one claimant will be big enough for Google to pay them any attention, so the government needs to step in to protect them all.

Maybe Google can make these payments all through Google Wallet..

Chabad has never been afraid to incorporate the latest technology into its kiruv efforts, whether it was satellite tv, internet, mobile connectivity...

Chabad has now found a way to get hold of a Google Glass (is it a pair of Google Glass? Google Glasses? a set of Google Glass? just "a Google Glass"? what's the correct usage?) and turn it into what they are claling the "Google Glass Tefillin Stand".

The Chabad rabbi on the campus of Stamford University has somehow gotten a Google Glass, and has publicized around campus that anybody who wants to give it a whirl is welcome to do so - on condition that they come to the stand and put on tefillin, along with reciting the shema, which would be displayed on the screen (lens?) of the Google Glass.


The rabbi said "many Jewish students who had never wrapped Tefillin before came out to do so." "Some of them told me it was their first time wearing Google Glass and Tefillin,"

I wonder how many non-Jewish students put on tefillin also just to get the opportunity to try the Google Glass.

Good job to the good rabbi in harnessing technology, albeit it in a low-tech way, to promote religion...

(source: SERoundtable)

This is awesome! Google today launched what they call the Israel Transport Planner. If I understand it correctly, it does away with probably half a dozen apps on your phone, by putting all the necessary features into one app which basically is Google Maps.

To quote from the announcement on Globes:

Google today launched its Israel public transport planner, Transit, in collaboration with the Ministry of Transport and Israel Railways. The service offers routes by bus, train, and the Jerusalem light rail, for reaching destinations.

The public transport planner joins Google's Israel voice navigator, launched in March, which provides information about traffic congestion. The use of Google Maps makes it possible to plan a route by foot, car, or public transport in Israel as in the US.

Google says that the information about public transport routes comes from 21 service providers, including bus operators Egged Israel Transport Cooperative Society Ltd., Dan Public Transportation co. Ltd., and Metropoline Ltd., as well as Israel Railways. The service is available at Google Maps Israel by clicking on the bus icon. The service notifies the user how long it will take to walk to the bus stop, when the next bus will arrive, and where to get off.

Way to go Google!

I don't expect this mistake by Google to stay online for very long. If you check out the Google website, as of right now, you will see the, perhaps rare, Google mistake.

Google made this nice logo for Israel's version of Valentine's Day - also known as Tu B'Av. You can see that hovering over the logo shows it is symbolic of Tu B'Av. The only problem is that Tu B'Av is still a month away...



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PM Netanyahu met with Google Chairman Eric Schmidt




and here is the image of the picture doodled by Netanyahu



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I just saw this report about an orthodox Jewish girl from Maryland, studying in The Torah School of Greater Washington, who has become a finalist in this years Doodle 4 Google contest.

From Arutz 7:

Johanna Robinson, an 11-year-old student at an orthodox Jewish day school in Maryland, is a finalist for Google’s annual “Doodle 4 Google” contest. More than 114,000 kids from kindergarten through grade 12 drew pictures using the search engine’s logo.

The theme for this year’s contest was: “If I could travel in time, I’d visit . . .” The caption below Johanna’s illustration, which celebrates crafts including crocheting and sewing states, “Several generations ago, things were not mass produced as they are today. Instead, many items had to be handmade. If I could travel in time, I'd visit my Hungarian ancestors and receive needlecraft lessons from experts whose homes and livelihoods centered on this unique talent.”

Each year Google takes submissions for an original logo design that will appear on their homepage. This year they received over 100,000 submissions.

“Johanna’s teachers say that she is a good writer and a terrific artist but, more importantly, she has such beautiful middot,” Johanna’s mother, Rachel Robinson told VIN News. “When she found out that she was one of the finalists she took the news so modestly. Her whole attitude was so beautiful and we are so proud of her.”

Representatives from Google visited Johanna’s school, the Torah Day School, and spoke to the students about their classmate’s achievement. “The Google people brought twenty five balloons for Johanna and as it turns out, there are exactly twenty five girls in Johanna’s class,” the school’s headmaster, Rabbi Churner said. “Johanna made sure that each one of them went home with a balloon that day. She really is an amazing girl.”

The national winner, from among the 250 finalists, will be chosen May 17 and the winning doodle will be on the Google home page May 18.

I went to the Doodle 4 Google website to see if I could vote for Johanna, but the voting is already closed and the National Winner will be announced on May 18. I could not even find Johanna's submission among the lists of State Winners and State Finalists. I don't know if the national winner is being chosen from a different list, one that I could not find, or if the publicized list is only partial, or if she failed to advance.

Either way, from the article above it sounds like Johanna is a very talented girl who was raised well. Good luck to her.


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Google Street View Comes To Israel


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The Google Lava Lamp Hanukkah Menora

The Google Menora

Picture Of The Day


the Google Maps Street View car photographing the simtaot, the small, narrow streets and alleyways of Mea Shearim..

If you spend your days in Jerusalem, you might want to try spending as much of them outdoors as possible. That is, if you want to have a chance at ending up in Google Street View maps of Jerusalem.

Google recently received permission to start imaging cities in Israel and including them in the street view maps. This afternoon they are firing their opening shots, having decided to begin their imaging in Jerusalem. They will be holding a ceremony in Jerusalem with Mayor Nir Barkat to kick off the process..

So, if you hang out in the great outdoors of Jerusalem enough in the immediately near future, you might just end up as a pedestrian in Google Street View maps.

Have you signed up yet for Gmail's latest technology? It is pretty cool. Gmail Motion



April Fool's!

Google's new feature, called Google Instant, is kinda cool.