I grew up in Israel and everytime someone talked about Power Rangers (which even as a kid I couldn’t watch for more than 5 minutes), someone would always mention how this Israeli guy called Haim Saban owns the show. Saban’s brand in Israel is very famous.
I never knew his story until I read the recent (controversial) New Yorker essay about him. Not only does he have the Midas touch, with an amazing sense of what entertainment product kids like, but after reading this essay I am in awe of his dealmaking skills.
Here are 2 quotes I found interesting:
“Haim saw that ‘Power Rangers’ wasn’t going to go on forever, and the key to our business was controlling broadcast outlets so we could get our programming on,
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/05/10/100510fa_fact_bruck?currentPage=all#ixzz0n9CEjZRt
That made me think about today’s social gaming industry. In a way, you could replace this quote with something along the lines of:
“Pincus saw that ‘Farmville’ wasn’t going to go on forever, and the key to Zynga’s business was controlling distribution so they could get their games on.”
I don’t know what the analogous of “broadcast outlets” is (Facebook?), but the bottom line is that distribution is key. How will Zynga distribute their games now that Facebook practically shut down the platform’s viral channels? I can’t wait to see!
“You tell that fucking guy to stay out of my face! I was driving a fucking tank in the Israeli Army on the Golan Heights when he was watching ‘Scooby-Doo’!
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/05/10/100510fa_fact_bruck?currentPage=all#ixzz0n9CN6roT
Classic.
(Volcano?) sunset. Geula street. TLV.
Since I spend so much time on Facebook (because of work. No, really.) I notice every minor change to their UI. I thought I would share these on my blog.
Today: paler like button, a new share button, and a new way to show sources of shared links (at the top).
“What I get a lot is: ‘Why are you against the Semantic Web?’ I am not against the Semantic Web. But from Google’s point of view, there are a few things you need to overcome, incompetence being the first,” Norvig said. Norvig clarified that it was not Berners-Lee or his group that he was referring to as incompetent, but the general user.
“We deal with millions of Web masters who can’t configure a server, can’t write HTML. It’s hard for them to go to the next step. The second problem is competition. Some commercial providers say, ‘I’m the leader. Why should I standardize?’ The third problem is one of deception. We deal every day with people who try to rank higher in the results and then try to sell someone Viagra when that’s not what they are looking for. With less human oversight with the Semantic Web, we are worried about it being easier to be deceptive,” Norvig said.
This is fascinating in retrospect. Will Facebook’s army of 500 million “likers” help it overcome the three challenges of crawling a semantic web outlined by Norvig?
My mom’s blog is phenomenal. I am pretty sure it is one of the most attractive blogs about Israel in French. All of its content is original, creative, and requires quite a ton of research and work. My mother has been working on this blog for about a year and a half.
By far, the biggest nuisance to her blog is plagiarism. It is so prevalent that I would consider it epidemic. I am sometimes shocked to find well established websites basically copy and paste an entire article with no attribution or link. I would say the default is that people just copy entire articles and if nobody complains they keep them up.
Oftentimes, I sense that there is a certain attitude of “well, we are doing something good for Israel, let’s spread this information! who cares about copyrights! It’s a patriotic thing!” Sure, this is what hyperlinks were invented.
I am wondering if in English language blogs this is also that prevalent? Maybe it’s because French languages bloggers in Israel are new to the business of blogging and do not understand basic copyright law or blog etiquette?
Anyway, let me just clarify to any blogger: If you like someone’s work, send them a link, help get the word out there about their blog. But do not, under any circumstance, copy entire articles with no attribution (unless they give you permission to). It’s like spitting in someone’s face.
No more galcon fusion before bed :(
The professional journal Military Medicine reported a test of the Anti-Jet-Lag Diet on 186 members of the Minnesota and Wisconsin National Guards during a joint training mission with South Korean troops across nine time zones. On the trip east to Korea, soldiers who used the Anti-Jet-Lag Diet were 7.5 times less likely to experience symptoms of jet lag. On the return trip west, soldiers who used the Anti-Jet-Lag Diet were 16.2 times less likely to have jet-lag symptoms. Read the Military Medicine study
This is quite a revelation to me. I tried to find a way to reduce jet lag when flying to and from San Francisco. 4 days before my flight from sfo to tlv I started this diet (basically you alternate fast and feast days and have specific instructions for the flight day specifically).
The result? It worked for me. I only crashed the day after my flight in the evening and I really feel pretty good considering the 10 hour time difference. I am going to try this again next time I fly to the States and see if this is consistent.
