Falling in love again (not what you think)
Find every Israeli radio station online in one iPhone app
You may have noticed I didn’t post as much last week as usual. It’s not because I’ve been traveling overseas or that I’ve been sick. No, I’m in love…
With an iPhone.
Yes, my wife knows. She’s been very understanding, even when I take my new device to bed with me (ostensibly for “doing work”). She even looks the other way when I coo sweet nothings into the microphone for Siri, the iPhone 4S’s sexy female digital assistant, to schedule reminders, set up meetings and search the Internet (“Siri, show me a picture of a gecko” – yes, it really works!)
Like any good gecko…er geek, I’ve filled my new iPhone with the latest and greatest apps, including quite a few Israeli-made products. If I want to figure out how to get somewhere by bus in Jerusalem, there’s JeruBus. If my travels are farther afield, the “Bus Line” app brings me the whole country (although the functionality is pretty funky – you search for a route number and it gives you all bus lines in the country matching that number – i.e., the 14 bus in Jerusalem, Safed, Ashdod and Beit Shemesh…not all that helpful).
I’ve installed both Fring and Viber to make phone calling cheaper, and Israel365 to deliver a daily dose of inspiring Israeli photos. I found a local dog sitter on Janglo’s mobile app, and Haaretz is the place I go first for news about Israel, since they are the only one of the big English-language news sites to have an app (visiting a news website on your smart phone is so 2008).
My favorite app, though, is not Israeli at all, but has great value add for us Middle Easterners. It’s called Tune In Radio and it lets you stream just about every station that’s on the Internet. This includes web-only broadcasters like Israel’s Radio Free Nachlaot and Rusty Mike, but also terrestrial radio stations that have an Internet stream.
The coolest part is the “local radio” tab, which uses your location to find all stations near you. It accurately located every Israeli stream (from Galgalatz to the student station from the IDC in Herzeliya) as well as a few Arabic-language surprises like talk radio station Radio Sawa and Radio Bethlehem.
Like the “Israel loves Iran” campaign that’s tearing up Facebook, Tune In Radio is doing its small part to go beyond the conflict. It may not bring peace now, but the app has managed to get the bickering parties onto the same (app) page.
Foto Friday – Haifa Flower Show preview
Filed under: A New Reality, Art, Business, design, Entertainment, Environment, Foto Friday, General, Holidays, News, Picture of the Week, Pop Culture, Technology, Travel
Spring has definitely sprung. No more sudden snowstorms for us! The sun is shining, dogs are shedding their winter coats (believe me, I know) and a new crop of wildflowers decorates the fields, streets and sidewalks. With perfect timing, the city of Haifa will relaunch the annual Haifa International Flower Show, which will take place during the Passover holiday week at Park Hecht from April 7th-14th.
The nine halls and 25 outdoor exhibits will feature works by international and Israeli designers, including 14 top designers from Zuidkoop Natural Projects of the Netherlands.
Israeli firm O*GE, the creative directors, architects and lead designers of the Flower Show, have created nine huge exhibition halls — each one a world unto itself — which will feature flowers of all kinds, flown in from all corners of the world: rare flowers, genetically engineered flowers, wild flowers, greenhouse-grown flowers, dwarf trees, flower topiary, flower carpets and more.
The more than 500,000 blooms will be presented in very different environments: World of Flowers, Land of the Rising Sun, Hanging Garden, World of the Senses, Secret Garden, World of Fantasy, and World of Water. These photomontage illustrations give a sense of how amazing the show promises to be.
This exhibition covers an area of 30 dunam (7.5 acres) making this the largest flower exhibition in Israel’s history. In addition to the the flower worlds, visitors can enjoy wandering through herb gardens, a flower market and attend various workshops. Spectacular lighting effects at night will give additional enchantment. For more information: http://www.haifaflower.co.il/
Nostalgia Sunday – Einstein archive goes live
Filed under: education, General, History and Culture, News, Nostalgia Sunday, Profiles, Science, Technology
Tomorrow, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem will launch the all-new, expanded and digitized Albert Einstein Archives. The launch is timed to coincide — give or take 5 days — with Einstein’s March 14th birthday, also known as Pi Day (3.14 — get it?).
Over 80,000 records of documents held in original and as copies in the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University (AEA) and at the Einstein Papers Project at Caltech (EPP) can now be accessed with a user-friendly interface via the internet.
The Archives include scientific writings and correspondence, non-scientific writings and correspondence, family letter and travel diaries. The website also presents images Einstein’s handwritten manuscripts, correspondence, typewritten manuscripts, photos, audio material, etc.
The University’s public affairs office states that, in addition to being an essential resource for the history of modern physics, “the archives also shed light on the social, political and intellectual history of the modern world.” Some of the newly digitzed documents inlcude: Einstein’s letter to Azmi El-Nashashibi, the editor of the newspaper Falastin, suggesting a solution to the Arab-Jewish conflict, a letter to the Jewish community in Berlin describing the distinction between Jewish religion and Jewish nationalism, a speech to a Zionist meeting containing a report on a fundraising campaign in the United States for the Hebrew University, a postcard to his sick mother and a letter from his young mistress Betty Neumann.
The online image gallery was created by Ardon Bar-Hama who has photograped an impressive list of some the world’s most treasured objects in libraries, museums, archives, private collections and institutions.
The system offers easy navigation, displaying the search results and additional information such as filters, related topics and similar items. Some of the digitized documents are accompanied by annotated transcriptions and translations, as edited by the EPP and published in the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein by Princeton University Press (PUP). These documents are searchable as full text.
It’s a far cry from Einstein’s original filing system which was “unsystematic” according to the Archive’s History, before his Theory of Relativity came to public attention. “As a result of his dramatic rise to fame in November 1919, his correspondence increased vastly and he employed his step-daughter, Ilse, as his first secretarial assistant. She achieved the first semblance of well-ordered files.
“In April 1928, [secretary] Helen Dukas came to work for Einstein and began to preserve his papers more systematically. However, not even then were copies of all outgoing correspondence kept. Shortly after the Nazis’ rise to power in 1933, Einstein’s papers were rescued from Berlin by Einstein’s son-in-law, Rudolf Kayser, with the help of the French Embassy. The material was brought to Einstein’s new home in Princeton and kept there until well after his death. With a few exceptions, the material left at Einstein’s summer house in Caputh outside Berlin was destroyed in order to prevent it falling into the hands of the Nazi authorities.
“Einstein’s Will of 1950 appointed his secretary, Helen Dukas, and his close associate, Dr. Otto Nathan, as trustees of his estate. Following Einstein’s death in 1955, Dukas and Nathan devoted themselves tirelessly for a quarter of a century to organizing the papers and acquiring additional material. As a result of their efforts, the Archives grew threefold.
“In the 1960s, Helen Dukas and Prof. Gerald Holton of Harvard University reorganized the material, thereby rendering it accessible to scholars and preparing it for eventual publication in The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, a joint project of The Hebrew University and Princeton University Press. To facilitate editorial work, the papers were transferred from Einstein’s home to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
“In 1982, the Einstein Estate transferred Einstein’s personal papers to the Jewish National & University Library in Jerusalem. President Avraham Harman of The Hebrew University and Prof. Milton Handler of the American Friends of The Hebrew University played a crucial role in securing the transfer of the material to Jerusalem. In subsequent years, additional material was dispatched from Einstein’s Princeton residence, namely his personal collections of reprints, photographs, medals, and diplomas as well as his private library.
“In 1988, the Bern Dibner Curatorship for the running of the Albert Einstein Archives was established by the Dibner Fund of Connecticut, USA… In January 2008, the Archives became part of the Hebrew University’s Library Authority, Library Authority and, in July 2008, moved to new premises in the Levi building on the Hebrew University’s Edmond J. Safra campus, allowing for enhanced services to the public.
The www.alberteinstein.info website was launched in 2003 by the Albert Einstein Archives jointly with the Einstein Papers Project and Princeton University Press. The digitization of 900 papers displayed on the original site was made possible by a generous contribution from the David and Fela Shapell Family.
A grant from the Polonsky Foundation of London enabled the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to digitize the archives. The archival database and the collection of new materials was made possible by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and by the Arcadia Fund UK.
The launch will be marked simultaneously at Princeton University, Caltech, the Hebrew University’s Friends organizations and Israeli embassies around the world.
Shimon Peres, superstar
Filed under: A New Reality, Blogging, coexistence, Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Music, Pop Culture, Social Justice, Technology
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg with youngster Shimon Peres.
At age 88, Peres is a new media star and has spent this week, after holding a face to face with President Barack Obama and addressing the AIPAC conference, touring California hi-tech hotbeds as the toast of Silicon Valley, with heavyweights like Mark Zuckerberg and Serge Brin clamoring to pose next to him like he was a rock star.
Zuckerberg helped Peres launch his official Facebook page, which is aimed at creating a dialogue with Arab users. The president repeatedly praised the social networking site as a way for people to bypass failed efforts of governments to seek peace.
And if that’s not enough for you to press like, Peres’s people recruited celebrated Israeli DJ Noy Alooshe to put together a techno mash-up of a Peres speech to promote the page. Alooshe, a member of the techno group Chovevei Tzion, was propelled to international success after his parody last year of former Libyan despot Muammar Gaddafi, which included excerpts from one of his speeches during the early stages of the Libyan civil war.
Accompanied by a pulsing techno beat, the Peres clip features Peres rapping his way through a “be my friend, for peace” riff in his endearing Old World English acent. Visually, we see the presidentin various scenes, from scrolling through his page on a Tablet to meeting international leaders and celebrities like Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, comedian Jerry Seinfeld and the Pope.
The clip appears, of course, on Peres’s own YouTube channel. The man’s a modern marvel. Meanwhile I’m still trying to figure out what Twitter is all about.
Driving in the fast lane
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Technology, Travel
The seven shekel sign
Why not indeed? We exited off Highway 1, right near the airport, veering around the curved road into the parking lot of the fast lane center, so to speak. This is where you can 1) Register for the fast lane (also doable online, but this is actually more convenient) 2) Park your car for free and take a free shuttle into Tel Aviv 3) Pay at the turnstile to enter the fast lane.
Luckily, as we were short on time, as usual, my friend had already registered for the fast lane on a previous trip. That left us the task of entering the two-lane turnstile in order to pay our seven shekels and enter the fast lane. The turnstile, however, did not make sense. If this fast lane is considered the most advanced in the world, why is it that it is impossible to get the car close enough to the self-serve turnstile without having to actually get out of the car in order to pay? And once you do start getting out of the car, a cranky man comes over to take you to task for not getting close enough. He appears to be a tollbooth operator, but not the kind that I’ve ever experienced in my toll booth situations.
Nevertheless, we paid the seven shekels — the price seems to be calculated based on number of passengers in the car and traffic on the road — and headed toward the fast lane entrance. As usual, signage was a little confusing but we figured it out and got on our way. Luckily, we didn’t need to get off at Kibbutz Galuyot, the first exit on Tel Aviv’s Ayalon Highway, as the fast lane doesn’t allow you to exit there.
We arrived at our final destination, just off the LaGuardia exit, with minutes to spare. Were we saved by the fast lane? Probably. But I was not impressed by the system or service. Just to juxtapose it with our next transporation-related segment: We entered a parking lot only to find that all the spots were reserved for the various insurance companies in the building (why did they let us in if there’s nowhere to park?) We finally made our way to the exit, and the parking operator told us he had a parking spot just for us. Where? In the non-authorized spot behind his booth, between the entrance and exit lanes to the parking lot. Quixotic? Yes. But the car was waiting for us four hours and forty shekels later. At that point, we just drove home slowly.
Subscribe
Subscribe to Israelity via email:
Social Media
Categories
- A New Reality
- Art
- Blogging
- Business
- coexistence
- Crime
- design
- education
- Entertainment
- Environment
- Food
- Foto Friday
- General
- health
- History and Culture
- Holidays
- Immigrant Moments
- Israeliness
- Life
- Medical Breakthroughs
- Movies
- Music
- News
- Nostalgia Sunday
- Picture of the Week
- Politics
- Pop Culture
- Profiles
- Religion
- Science
- Social Justice
- Sports
- Technology
- Travel
- tv
- War
The Face of Israel Today
-
About Israelity
Free newsletter
Stories from ISRAEL21c.orgPopular Posts