Category clever

Feb 14 2011

LCD picture frames for promoting web sites and business marketing

Something I saw when i was just about to leave the UK to do my volunteering work, a couple of small businesses have some of those cheap LCD picture frames in the window of their premises.

I really like this idea, often a normal PC is used for this job, and using an LCD picture frame for simple slideshow of a companies products and services, doing it this way rather than a PC, means no messing about with Windows updates and patches, antivirus updates, a bulky box that has got to sit somewhere, etc.  Most of these just require a low cost SD card (2Gb is about £5.99 from play.com) to load on pictures as a slide show.

A high street bank here in Jerusalem has a clunky old 19″ CRT monitor for customer notices outside, but seems to be off.  This pharmacy store has a LCD picture frame on a counter.

I am thinking about these LCD picture frames could be good for the charity I work for.   The food bank which helps poor Israelis is likely to have people walking past when it is shut and does not have much information on the front of building.    Images on the screen could promote our organisation, and have information in English, Hebrew and Russian (which 15% of Israelis speak)   These devices are cheap and don’t consume much power.   I don’t know if they are reliable enough for 24 hour operation.   Staff could easily compile content onto SD cards from their own PCs without needing much help from IT administrators.

My good friend Ed Ross promotes a podcast called Geeks & God that provides discussion for churches looking to improve their web sites and use of IT.  I would be quite curious to know if anyone has deployed these in the windows of their charity, church, youth centre or retail shop to promote themselves.

For web designers I think these are also of interest.   A web design or marketing agency could resell these picture frames to their clients with content shared from the web site to get a web site noticed by people walking past a shop.  A bright and creative theme for a web site could have some of the pictures played back on the picture frames, and could help to point potential clients to a web site, if say, people walk past a business outside of business hours on the way to the pub, takeaway or whatever.  Realistically you are only going to get 10-30 seconds of notice from the public, but some people may walk past these places every day often perhaps.

Here in Israel, I have seen some of these picture frames but seems to be specifically aimed for on a shop counter, this one is from a pharmacy I was at the other day.   There are some (with 10 or 12″ screen I think) in all the branches of Aroma coffee shops I see here in Israel, but the normal picture frames in retail electronics stores like BUG, Kravitz etc, only sell 7 or 8 inch screens.

Feb 11 2011

Jerusalem Assembly

The weekend before last I went to a different church with a friend, this time to Jerusalem Assembly congregation in Talpiyot.

I ended up not going to my normal church (King of Kings) due to needing to stay in the house as my room mate was coming back and he would not have any keys to get in.

This service was great as Jerusalem Assembly, the service has two speakers, one in Hebrew and repeated in English.  Like some Hebrew only services in other churches you can rent these small radio receiver units, to get a translation, but at this church translations are offered in French, German, Spanish, Arabic and Russian!!

I thought this was quite amazing given the amount of work involved to do this, after the service there was soup and pastries and cake offered and a good chance to meet and chat with different people.   I got see some Israeli believers I work with, as well as other Jewish, Arab and foreign Christians working or volunteering in the land from different congregations.  The word and the worship was really good here.

www.jerusalemassembly.com

Feb 10 2011

Chinese made MG cars for sale in Israel?

Back in 2005 I worked for a vehicle leasing company, the same year the British car manufacturer MG / Rover went bankrupt, and a famous name associated with motor manufacturing in the West Midlands disappeared.

Before I went off to a bible study group, I sat in a coffee shop and there were no English newspapers there, so I flipped through a Hebrew paper there and this ad caught my eye.  There had been rumours of a rebirth of this brand, albeit with the cars made in China to start with the intention of kick starting the factory in Longbridge, Birmingham after that.   This seems enormously challenging given that the car industry has suffered the most during the recession.

This car built by SAIC Motors, China and this appears to be an entirely new model.  It would seem enourmously difficult to convince the public to buy new cars when a recession is on, and also how do you convince the previous dealerships to stock these model cars again?  The other problem is people don’t always associate Chinese manufacturing with quality, it may be hard to shake off this stigma.

Cars are way more expensive in Israel than they are in the UK or Europe.   I think a basic model 1.4 Peugeot 207 costs about £8000, where as in Israel I saw this car listed at the equivalent of £15,000.

Most of the cars I see here are very bland Mazda, Toyota or Hyundai models.  I rarely see any MG or Rover cars from before 2005 here, so this is most unusual seeing this ad here.  I hope MG has great success.  Check out www.mg-israel.co.il

Feb 2 2011

Somewhere out in the internet, bloggers have a twin…

Who is your blogging doppleganger?

Doppleganger, a German word is described as someone as having a twin or someone else with the same name.
See http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/doppelganger

A while ago, I found this chap who not only has the same first and second name as me, from the US, who is interested the bible and IT stuff.

Check out his site at: www.jonathanscorner.com

Only I am in Israel, where the old testament was written in Hebrew, and Christos Jonathan Hayward studies Greek Orthodox Christianity, Greek being the language of the New Testament.

My name; Jonathan Peter is a Hebrew name and a Greek name.  Christos Jonathan, has a Greek then Hebrew name.   See the originals of the name Jonathan here

I wonder how many bloggers and writers have similar sounding counterparts with some paradoxes?

If you have discovered someone with unusually similar interests feel free to comment.

Feb 1 2011

Weather in the desert

This is out of my bedroom of my flat yesterday morning (31st January)  We have rain, and plenty of it!!

Someone did tell me of storms this week that were due.   Not only is the rain a blessing and desperately needed, its probably a good thing for the Egyptians if they get some, as I doubt if troublemakers will want to be protesting and looting out in the wet!   Last night there was a brief bit of thunder and lightning, and I think some more light rain.

Jan 31 2011

Yad Vashem uses Google to document the holocaust

I have always been a big admirer of Google, they always have exciting projects on the go, I like the fact they are the most innovative company on the planet, driven by creativity, leveraging a vast number of talented people to make all kinds of large records accessible to everyone previously not possible.

One of the ugly sides of the internet is hate groups.  Quite a significant amount of this is antisemitism, and quite a significant portion of antisemitism is holocaust denial.

Google are now inviting those who had family lost or survived the holocaust to submit pictures and data to this site as a big collaborative project, to stop history from being forgotten or revised, especially as the number of people survived this ordeal are getting few.   Google use a fair bit of their own OCR software to turn scanned text into searchable data.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/explore-yad-vashems-holocaust-archives.html

Jan 26 2011

Mount Hermon snow trip: Part 2, Snow patrol

1/ Go forth north! – 2/ Snow patrol – 3/ Sloping off – 4/ Nimrod’s Fortress – 5/ Badgers Rock

After much driving up and up, we took a bit of a wrong turn, and saw an Arab town and a military checkpoint ahead, then realised it was a border into Lebanon!  

Note at the time of writing this, the Lebanese government has collapsed, meaning Hezbollah, a terrorist organisation could be filling this gap as they seek to become a satellite post of Iran, threatening Israel even more.   This really needs prayer as this huge worry for Israel, and awful for the Lebanese people as well, this country has one of the largest Arab Christian communities.

We were not in any danger at all, as this checkpoint is well protected, I took this picture of some run down farm buildings out of the window which was close by.

Just a short drive later, we reached Mount Hermon!

Mount Hermon is considered a possible place of the Transfiguration, where Jesus took Peter, James and John up for prayer, and reportedly turned bright white, where he spoke with Moses and Elijah who appeared.  The scriptures reveal it was known as two other names – ‘Sirion’ by the Sidonians; the Amorites call it ‘Senir’.  Deuteronomy 3 : 9

The Bible’s own romantic style book of Song of Solomon mentions it too in versus 4 : 8 and Psalms 89 talks about Mount Hermon giving praises to the Lord too.

Only last friday I had a Shabbat dinner with a couple from my work and they had a bottle of wine the came from this exact part of the country.   After my trip to the Dead Sea which was the lowest place on earth (ie: below sea level)    Hermon is 2,814 metres high.

Once parked and we went through the visitor entrance and a initial bit of childish exploitation of the first glimpse of snow meant a snowball fight, there was some good places to get photos done:-

Woohoo!  all manner of types of military and rescue vehicles for snow use, something most people would think you would never have in Israel…

We were hoping the girls would want a photo of themselves next to some interesting piece of winter military gear here as well, but they chose a giant plastic snowman.  Tsk.

Then off onto the chairlift, yay!!!

This requires the man operating the lift to get you positioned exactly right so quickly sit down and he raises the safety bar down.   Top: someone (probably the boss I guess) has a nice collection of different snow vehicles.   Both pictures: note the strategically placed net, in case you get scooped by the chair lift by accident, or, fall out!

check out www.skihermon.co.il

Next up the slope….

1/ Go forth north! – 2/ Snow patrol – 3/ Sloping off – 4/ Nimrod’s Fortress – 5/ Badgers Rock

Jan 25 2011

As we forgive

Last Thursday, instead of a usual worship and social get together we normally have at my church we watched a movie called ‘As we forgive’.

We saw this film that talks about a large number of murderers where released early from jail in Rwanada where two tribes of people were at war and many people were slaughtered.  The government released these people from prison which caused initial anger and fear from the survivors and families of those lost.

Where as its hard to grasp anyone forgiving someone that was lost in war or terrorism, especially as today I walked past a coffee shop in Hillel Street, and a bakery shop in Jaffa Street that used to be a Sbarro pizza joint – both of these scenes of two tragic suicide bombings that happened in the early 2000s here in Jerusalem.

The film showed rows and rows of skulls and bones on shelves, and talked to murderers all confessed their actions against the families of those who had lost loved ones to killing.   Some of these families amazingly accepted a confession from the killers that were out of prison quite quickly, and some it took several meetings over the space of a few months.

Where as for most people, to forgive someone for the responsibility of a death of a loved one seem enormously hard to comprehend, the point of the movie is about forgiveness can be done with any kind of wrong doing.   This film was really good and I hope it is shown in more churches.

www.asweforgivemovie.com

Jan 24 2011

Mount Hermon snow trip: Part 1, go forth north!

1/ Go forth north! – 2/ Snow patrol – 3/ Sloping off – 4/ Nimrod’s Fortress – 5/ Badgers Rock

On Sunday I got up very early to meet with friends to get to the snow capped Mount Hermon.

This place is not so well known by non-Israelis, as its at the very extreme north east corner of country, where the borders are for Lebanon and Syria.

After a not so pleasant start of my phone waking me up at 4am, necessary given the time to get up there, after teetering around my flat to get things together and have breakfast without waking up other room mates, strangely probably because of the weather is quite cold also at this time, I decided to do a fast sprint for no real reason on my bike out of East Tapliyot all the way through central Jerusalem all the way up Jaffa Street to the main Jerusalem Bus Station only took just over 30 minutes, quite amazing consider how slow I normally pedal.

Once off the bus close to Rachel’s house, the sun was just coming up.   This trip came at a good time seeing I was disappointing in not seeing my dad up here and was also concerned about a lot of choices I have to make this year, so this excursion was a welcome change, one of a lot of blessings this week actually, getting over a stupid week-long cold another one, and also once at the bus station finding a coffee shop that was open there was another one.  I was just about to text my friend Dave to see if he was close and he was suddenly in the shop in front of me.

The drive up there is different from previous drives up north I have done.  It involved going back on ourselves to head down towards a bit of the Dead Sea, then up from the West Bank, on a main road that passes through some Palestinian towns, at times running parallel with the Jordanian border as this above picture shows.

As we overtake this Nissan Micra on the motorway, if you look really really carefully on the horizon you can see a faintly see Hermon.  Once you get as far as Tiberias, the white peaks on it start to become prominent.

This drive through a small but friendly Arab village up in the Galilee, we got some directions as we kept going higher and higher.  This town had a couple of interesting bronze statues that looked more like something from native American history I have seen in Arizona that from a Galilee Arab community.

This felt very different from any part of Israel I had been before…

1/ Go forth north! – 2/ Snow patrol – 3/ Sloping off – 4/ Nimrod’s Fortress – 5/ Badgers Rock

Jan 16 2011

important anniversaries in 2011

This year marks some interesting anniversaries

10 years since the 9/11 attacks in New York, Washington.  Still a terrifying attack which seems so meticulously planned.  No conspiracies just radical Islam who masterminded it.

10th anniversary of Wikipedia the online encyclopedia

marks 10th years of Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system was released.  Still popular and its now Microsoft’s enemy to try and convert everyone to switch to Win7.   Many owners of Vista and 7 based PCs complain they wish they had the speed and simplicity of XP.  It took a while for XP to mature though, it was until several service packs later there was proper firewall, wireless support or use hard disks over 120Gb.  Still the most popular Windows ever, and the longest lived operating system ever I think.  Mac OS X came out a bit before but its changed quite a bit since when going from 10.1 to 10.2 then 10.3 etc, and now Macs have totally different CPU architecture now.

20 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union. This is quite a monument where I am, as this meant large numbers of Jews from Russia and ex-Soviet nations could move here. Currently around 15% of Israelis speak Russian.

20 years also since Ethiopian Jews were flown with El-Al airlines from Addis Ababa to Tel Aviv, giving them a new home in Israel, following poverty and hardship for the African Jewish community.