I'm Sorry to Say This But...

Google Adwords is not really working for me.

First I wanted to use Google Adwords to publicize my blogs, that was maybe three years ago, but then I thought to myself, hey, I'm going to use money to get readers? Really?

So I decided not to do it.

Next, almost two years ago I started to sell ebooks (at the http://mendele.co.il/ site, they're really nice guys, but that's not our topic for today...).

About a year ago I managed to convince Shlomit Guy (site in Hebrew) to sell her book also as an ebook in the Mendele store (it's a book about her adventures with English Soccer, which is actually called Football, but that is also not our topic for today...)

It sold for 40 NIS (about 10$), while selling at the stores the print version for 89 NIS (about 20$), I thought it was a bargain.

I advertised it for about two months, spending a bit more than 600 NIS (more than 150$) on the campaign. The result - one copy sold. The next quarter, no campaign, and again - one copy sold.

Right now I'm running an Adwords campaign for my book (kindle edition), so far it looks like the results are not much better...

So this whole theory about how if only you spend less on Google Adwords than you actually sell, and how that can make you into an instant millionaire? maybe some day, but apparently not today...

I Really Wish Google Books and Google Music...

Would work well in Israel.
It's not that Google books does not work at all. I can search books .
A bit more then twenty years ago, someone told me that if I wanted to improve my bridge, I should read Why you lose at bridge by S J Simon. I did, but sadly it's very hard to find this book now.
Once I could read some of it at Google Books, but now they only tell you about the book, and point you to the Amazon website: 38.95$ is a bit steep for me...
Google books does show some books by Martin Gardner, but you can't buy any books from the site itself (or Google play store, or whatever you want to call it...)
Shame.
I hope they'd let us use it someday, even in the middle of the middle east.
I have even less to say about Google Music. I just doesn't exist here...

Unconventional Uses Of Google Maps

For some odd reason 'The Gun Seller' by Hugh Laurie was only translated to Hebrew in 2011. Maybe because the TV show House was in its last season, and everyone was talking about it.

Anyway, I bought this book at a discount (the infamous 'four books for 100 NIS').

I initially bought it because my wife asked for it, but then some time last week, I read it.

It's an OK book. Funny to read a book written in 1996 as if it's new, when the most terrible thing the guy can say about arms dealers is the first Gulf War (1991).

Anyway, at the end of the book our hero is in Casablanca, and the writer says that its a very boring industrial city.

I wanted to check him on that one. As far as I can tell it looks more like a French city then an industrial city in the English speaking world.

On the way to Casablanca, I stopped for a short visit to Tangier and Tetuan, two cities dear to the writer Mois Benarroche; he was born in Tetuan, and only came to Israel at the age of 12.

It was a lovely trip.

Public Google docs

Let me start off with an apology. I hope to write this blog on a weekly basis, but in fact I have not written in it in the past few weeks. Let's just pretend that I had and unexpected summer holiday, and get on with business.

The business I was at before the 'holiday' was Google Documents.

I was about to say that the next phase in my Google Document 'career' is to start making public documents.

Now don't get me wrong, I fully intend to start making public Google Documents in the coming year, it's just that so far I didn't get around to it.

You see, before making a document, such as my MA thesis about speculative fiction in Hebrew Literature, I need to complete it, and then translate it.

So, in short, writing blog posts is easier...

Non Intervention

Usually I don't talk about Politics, and even this week when I will have something to say about politics, I will try to make it as blurry as possible.

You see, there has been a fine tradition in US Israeli relations.

According to this fine tradition, each party refrains from stating his (or her) preferences about the other party's Politics.

Thus, for instance, if there is a US Presidential race going on right now, than the Israeli Prime Minister in particular, and all of Israel's Members of Knesset in general will refrain from stating their opinions about the aforesaid Presidential elections.

I don't think it will be too much to state my own opinions about Israeli politics though, since I am Israeli, right?

Well, Israel has many parties (I think something like ten in the current Knesset), of this embarrasingly rich tapestry, I now support the Israel Labor Party, and its head Shelly Yachimovich (see picture above).

The Israel Labor party only has something like five seats (out of 120) in the current Knesset, but is considered the major opposition to the current Prime Minister, and up to about two weeks ago  Shelly Yachimovich, was indeed the head of the Opposition.

So it was very nice according to this policy of Non-intervention that our Prime Minister hosted Mitt Romney so nicely here last week, allowing him to raise more the 1M dollars in campaign money, and it was also nice on his part that he cancelled his planned meeting with  Shelly Yachimovich.

I think this is a beautiful policy all around, and I intend to keep this wonderful policy of Non Intervention.

I will not say anything about the US Presidential race!

Using Google Docs - Part II - Google docs and Creative writing

Perhaps now is the right time to say this: I've introduced at least thirty people to Google Docs, and taught them how to use it.

I can't say all of the cases were resounding successes, but some of the more interesting cases were last year when I taught creative writing in Beer Sheva.

You see, quite a few of the kids I taught were originally from the Former Soviet Union (mainly from Russia and the Ukraine).

The cool thing was that when they first opened their Google Docs account, the menus were all in Russian. This really helped some of them get along!

On the other hand I also teach creative writing at the Beer Sheva Municipal Library. There my students are a bit older (the median age is above sixty). 

Not all of my library students have gotten the hang of Google Docs, but the ones that have? let me tell you! it makes working on a manuscript so much easier!

Using Google docs - Part I - My First Google Doc

I guess that just like the rest of us I use Google products such as Google Search, or Google image search, or even Google maps occasionally.

Google Docs is very different. It is my main word processor (I only use the spreadsheet, presentation, and drawing programs rarely, still haven't figured out what the charts are good for...) and thus I use it almost every day. 

Looking just now at the list of my 'recent' Google drive files, I must have more than a thousand docs in there, maybe two thousand, and about a half were written originally on Docs.

But you never forget your first one, right?

So my first Google Doc is a business plan from February 2009. It's a plan to market a computer game, and it came to nothing (so far).

But the convenience! I typed it on my computer, and my prospective business partner (who also happens to be my uncle) could see it on his computer, and edit it, and I could see his edits, and so on!

I thought it way cool at the time.

I still think so today...

Introducing a New Blog

Yesterday I started a new blog:
http://mathandsciencestories.blogspot.co.il/
This new blog will deal with stories about Mathematics and Science, just as its name suggests.
My initial inspiration for this new blog was the discovery of the 'Higgs Boson'. You are welcome to read (a little) more about it in the blog itself.

PS. If all goes well I will start another blog later this week, and report about it here next week...
PPS this blog will start being a lot more 'About literature' in the near future...

Newsflash: Feeling of Power

I didn't think I'd do it this soon, but yesterday I published my first book on kindle!

We are talking here about my book Keter Malchut that I've published in Hebrew in 2007.

It contains five science fiction and fantasy stories in an Israeli setting.

This book is my first effort in publishing, so there are many things that I'd do differently today, but hey it's only 2.99$!

Mainly I wanted to see how this whole 'Publishing to kindle, and selling electrons to (potentially) the entire world' works.

I guess I will find out pretty soon.

Here is the link to the Kindle book.

Here is the link to my Author page.

I also made a Createspace Print on Demand book today - Wow, busy day!

Feel free to share this information, of course!

Techunix Ruled!

Googling Techunix I found out that different people may mean different things when using it, so for the purposes of this blog post, I mean the Unix Server that used to do Pine mail at the Technion institute of technology.
For long spells of time I thought it was the coolest mail server ever! I mean I was a student for the longest time, and I had free mail! Cool!
Then I stopped being a student, the year was 2000 or so, and I thought they would let me keep my mail forever, but no!
I had to get mail from my ISP. I had to pay for it, and where was that cool thing of accessing your mail from everywhere?
Then along came Gmail with its 1GB of free space. I was ecstatic. This was not only mail, it was also a backup of all my files!
I begged my friends and finally got an invite in 2004. Immediately I invited anyone who asked for an invite.
I took me several months to switch all my mail to Gmail, but from 2005 - I never looked back!

Back in 2000 I really loved Ask Jeeves!

When I started using the internet graphically, in late 1995, I loved Yahoo.

I loved the whole 'browsing down a file system' experience. It reminded me of going to the library, and this library was growing every day!

Then Altavista came along, and it was really cool! it found what I wanted... mostly.

After that it started to clutter with other search engines, and I knew what I had to do: ask Jeeves!

"Jeeves" was the name of the "gentleman's personal gentleman", or valet, fetching answers to any question asked. This character, based on Jeeves, Bertie Wooster's fictional valet from the works of P. G. Wodehouse, was really good at finding answers on the World Wide Web, because it brought answers from five different search engines and you could pick your favorite.

I really don't remember why I finally switched to Google, But I think there were three major reasons:

• Google Image search,
• Google was waaay better in Hebrew,
• At one point or another the Ask people stopped showing other search engines, and focused on their own engine. pity.

The Problem With Microsoft

In the past few weeks I have been trying to make the case that as far as I'm concerned, Apple may have had many 'great' products, but Microsoft had even more.

While some of the software I've reviewed here (more like reminisced about) was indeed made by Microsoft, other software just ran on a Microsoft platform.

I don't think that this is an important distinction. If you can make a great software platform (like Windows used to be), and other people build great software on it, you deserve at least some of the credit for that.

So why did it all stop working?

• First of all, I'm not sure it stopped working, could be just that I got tired of paying for software, when there are free substitutes (both in the free speech and free beer sense), that are as good or better (IMHO).
• Second, I think that the old software base, and the need to be loyal to it, just dragged the company for too long, and now it may be too late.
• Third, I think ESR makes a good point - closed software tends to become buggy and bulky with time.

It's a shame really, but I think we won't see much good software from Microsoft any more...

Once I thought Internet Explorer 4 Was The Coolest Browser Ever!

The year was 1998, and I was working for a medical software company (not sure I can say what it was, and it sure sounds much cooler when it's a secret).

I was sitting in front of the computer something like eight hours a day, and since I had no girlfriend at the time, I went back home and browsed some more...

Once I even heard of something called an MP3 file. Supposedly, if you could download such a file, it would give you be a three minute song, with only 4 megs (as opposed to something like 40 megs for a 'regular' audio file).

Can't say I found that many at the time, but the idea was way cool!

Where did I get this idea? From the Economist web site!

How did I browse it? With IE 4!

Plus IE4 had Channels! Way Cool!

In 2004 I switched to Firefox, in 2008 I switched to Chrome. Never looked back.

Wait, actually I DID look back several weeks ago at IE 10. I'm staying with chrome!

I know this is the 'old' chrome picture, but I liked it better...

Once I Thought Starcraft Was the Best Game Ever

I think it was January 1998. I went to the store, I saw a copy of Starcraft, and I bought it right away. 

I may have even read about it something on the web. Something along the lines of: 'The game was finally released after a ridiculously long wait'. I had no idea what they were talking about. I didn't wait for it, and I've never played any Blizzard games (like Warcraft) before it.

The honest truth is that to the present day I (almost) haven't played any other Blizzard games besides Starcraft I.

But Starcraft I was a cool game. I pretended to be sick one Sunday (here Sunday is a work day) just so I could finish all of the original missions. I was something like 28 YO at the time...

I bought it for my 10 YO cousin. Heck I even played a little on battle net. and of course I bought and played Brood war...

But I never even thought of buying Starcraft II. It's too expensive, and maybe I'm getting to old for it.

In the past few weeks me and my almost 7 YO son are busy playing Kingdom Rush.

Once I thought With Visual Basic I Could Program Anything

Truth of the matter: the first Visual Basic I tried was not a version I bought, though I can't for the life of me remember if I had a demo version on one of the disks I did buy (such as office 97), or I downloaded a free version from the web, or I downloaded an illegal version.

Come to think of it, I think it came on one of the disks, and I think it was before web times, and I'm pretty sure I did not try it on my computer, but rather on my girlfriend's computer. Sometime in 1993, or 1994.

I tried to create a simple adventure game. Something that would display some text and a picture, and then move you to some other 'place' also with a text and a picture, depending on what you clicked.

In other words, something that is easy to do today with HTML only...

I was so impressed with VB back then! I could do all of these things, and let's face it, the interface was amazing!

today, there is nothing that can match the simplicity and the elegance it had back then, including, sadly, the newer versions of VB.

that left me seriously hoping that Dart would evolve nicely...