Author: Omer Zak

I am deaf since birth. I played with big computers which eat punched cards and spew out printouts since age 12. Ever since they became available, I work and play with desktop size computers which eat keyboard keypresses and spew out display pixels. Among other things, I developed software which helped the deaf in Israel use the telephone network, by means of home computers equipped with modems. Several years later, I developed Hebrew localizations for some cellular phones, which helped the deaf in Israel utilize the cellular phone networks. I am interested in entrepreneurship, Science Fiction and making the world more accessible to people with disabilities.

Bluetooth Blues

Does anyone know what happened to Philips Semiconductors, which used to operate in Herzliya, Israel, and which represented the international Philips Semiconductors in Israel?

I looked for information on Philips’ Bluetooth chips and development kits. Philips’ Web site directed me to the aforementioned company, listing phone and FAX numbers for them (no E-mail). The FAX number did not work. Today the relay service (operated by Cellcom as a public service project for the deaf in Israel) informed me that the phone number connects you to a recorded reply saying that the number was disconnected.

Philips’ Web site provides a Web form for E-mailing them messages and requests for information, and I used it. The automated response arrived quickly, but it was only an acknowledgement. For human response I am still waiting.

It is amazing that an international company’s rep goes out of business and the company in question did not modify promptly its Web site.

Ayn Rand turns over in her grave

According to The Business Experiment and The Wisdom of Crowds, the collective is smarter than the individual.

On the other hand, a condition for a collective to be smarter than its members is that its members think independently and are allowed to reach their conclusions independently. This condition was not met by historical collectives, in which one or few people dictated to the masses what and how to think.

"Business Under Fire" by Dan Carrison

Review of “Business Under Fire” by Dan Carrison, published by AMACOM. ISBN 0-8144-0839-7

When I attended August Penguin 4 (last Thursday, Aug. 4 2005), ComBooks had a booth, in which they offered books for sale. Most of the books were about Linux, PHP and other technologies. However, they had also some business oriented books.

I figured that most of the technical books are either too fat, prone to be obsolete soon, have downloadable equivalents, or already owned by me. So I went for the business book “Business under fire”.

Today I finished reading it, and here is my review.

The book is about the ways Israeli businesses coped with problems caused by the Al-Aqsa intifada, and what can businesspeople from elsewhere learn from the Israeli experience. The best thing I can say about it is that it is effective in filling Israeli readers with pride of their countrymen. The years after 2000 were bad for the Israeli economy. But, according to the book, the Israeli economy did very well considering the circumstances, having contracted only by few percents, rather than having dropped by tens of percents like, say, the Palestinian Authority economy during the same time.

Most of the book consists of interviews with business managers and leaders, large percentage of whom are hotel managers. The interviews are preceded and followed by discussions and checklists of conclusions. Overall, the impressions and conclusions look reasonable, if a bit superficial. However, I found some factual errors in the book. The city name is Tiberias, not Tiberius (pg. 27). The Dolphinarium bombing happened at June 2001, not June 2002 (pg. 142). Israel was hit by exactly 39 Scud missiles, not 40 (pg. 138, 176).

Notably missing were details about the counter-examples, of Israeli businesses, which were not as well managed, and failed during the Al-Aqsa intifada. It was mentioned that the Hyatt chain pulled out of Jerusalem (pg. 29) but there were no further details about the facts and opinions, which led to this decision, except for the murder of Rahvam Zeevi (not mentioned by name), the then Minister of Tourism, in the Hyatt hotel in Jerusalem.

Missing were also figures and statistics about the business climate in Israel. How much did the Israeli GDP drop as function of time? How large hit, as function of time, in tourist traffic and expenditures did the Israeli tourist industry have to incur? Overall effect on Israeli imports and exports? How much were other sectors, besides tourism and Hi-Tech, affected by the Al-Aqsa intifada? What was the impact of having to fly Israeli managers for meetings in New York on administrative and general expenses of running Israeli businesses with customers and investors outside of Israel? What was the impact on investments in non-Hi-Tech, non-tourist sectors of the economy?

My recommendation: buy the book if you are Israeli and need encouragement. Otherwise, wait for a second and revised edition.

Paul Graham's What Business Can Learn from Open Source

According to Paul Graham’s What Business Can Learn from Open Source, people are more productive when they work at their own hours in their homes. He uses the examples of software startups versus established software companies.

This leads me to wonder how should businesses, which have a lot of capital invested in equipment, manage the work hours of their employees. The employees have to be in contact with the machines at scheduled times, if the machines are to be operated efficiently and economically. Examples: Intel’s semiconductor FABs with their process developing and monitoring physicists and chemists, airline companies and their pilots and airplane maintenance technicians, car assembly plants.

Maybe it is a significant fact that those businesses, which have expensive equipment, do not lock into uniform office cubicles those employees, who deal with the equipment on daily basis. Sailors on a ship sometimes need to be available 24 hours a day to handle emergencies. They work under different weather conditions. They have shore leaves. Shop workers need to be in the shop during its work hours, because it is when the customers come in. However they do not sit in offices or waste time in meetings. They stand and serve customers, reorder the inventory, or whatever. The “expensive equipment” in their case is the shop’s inventory and fixtures which entice customers to leave their money in the shop.

So it seems that it is only those businesses, which do not need to provide their employees with expensive capital equipment, do lock their employees into a 09:00-17:00 day in boring offices and lots of meetings. It is precisely those companies, for which Graham’s conclusions seem to be true. The work done for those companies could be done from employee’s home at his own hours – the inexpensive equipment (such as a PC with one or two specialized peripherals) could be installed at his home. The profession is not necessarily software development. It could as well be a telemarketing operation (heaven forbid).

15797

After all, to my big surprise, I won a prize in the August Penguin 4 prize drawing near the end of the event. I already own a copy of the book which I won, so I was given another (and much thinner) book instead.

This event marked the real end of my first year as the Accessibility Coordinator of Hamakor.

The story starts with the AP3 (August Penguin 3) prize drawing a year ago. I had a prize drawing ticket number. There was a drawing. Someone won. All announcements were made using vibrating air molecules. No one was charged with the task of writing down the winning numbers. So I had no way to know whether my number won. After AP3 I wrote about this, and the response was that I was right – there was an accessibility problem in AP3.

ladypine asked me if I am willing to volunteer to work on improving accessibility. I accepted the job and took over the title “Accessibility Coordinator”. During the year which elapsed since then, I gave two lectures about accessibility in Linux (in Haifux and in Telux lecture No. 28). I owe thanks to Ori Idan, for his help in filling in the blindness relevant information.

As preparations for AP4 (August Penguin 4) started, I became more involved. The first order of business was to ensure that the chosen location is accessible to people with mobility impairment. The Israel Accessibility Web site was helpful with this. I appreciate the cooperation, which I got from Limor Ben-Yossef. She let me know which locations are being considered, so that I could check for information about their accessibility.

After a location was selected, it was time to consider accessibility for blind and hearing impaired people. Blind people need a copy of presentations in their own Braille-enabled PCs. However, no one requested assistance with this.

Hearing impaired people need one of few accessibility provisions: Wireless microphone for HOH (hard-of-hearing), typist (notetaker) with laptop and projector and/or Sign Language interpreter for the deaf. I publicized a call for interested people in a forum of HOH and deaf people asking anyone, who wants to come to AP4, to let me know about this. I got zero responses. So I needed to arrange for accessibility only for myself.

Here again I got cooperation. I took upon myself to book a notetaker. I indicated that neither projector nor Sign Language interpreter are needed. AP4 organizers agreed to let the notetaker enter without payment. I asked to reserve a cluster of 5 chairs for the notetaker and four hearing-impaired people. Again, no problems.

Few days before the event, I publicized a call for interested hearing impaired people, with intention of asking for a projector and screen at the last moment, should there be more demand. I received one response.

In AP4 itself, the decision to bring extension electrical cord paid off. I got electrical power for the laptop from a socket several meters away from where we sat. One of the workers secured the cord to the floor using maskingtape. Initially, there was a problem with a desk. However it was solved by our using the Geeks’ desk until they needed it during the AP Trivia Contest.

Until lunch break, the notetaker served two hearing-impaired people – me and another person, whose name is not disclosed here due to privacy considrations. At lunch he left the event and until the end I was the sole beneficiary of this accessibility provision. It proved to be adequate for the event, as evidenced by the fact that I could contribute an audience answer to one of the Trivia Contest questions (another way to determine the bandwidth of snails vs. Bezeq ADSL links).

I noticed that the organizers were thoughtful to put a big screen with status information in the Exhibitors’ and APCHI contest hall. The big screen alternated between the APCHI contest participants’ status and the most up-to-date schedule of the AP4 lectures. The screen was useful as another accessibility measure for the hearing impaired, as in AP3 I had another rant about not knowing when will the current lecture end. I assume that the screen was helpful also to all participants and to the event organizers, who needed not be bothered by participants wandering on the halls and asking for starting time and subject of the next lecture.

When the prize drawing began, ladypine made a point of ensuring that the notetaker does type down the numbers of winning cards. When my card’s number came up, I at first stared with unbelief. It is so Douglas Addamsish to win a drawing the very first time after a drawing, which was inaccessible to me.

What is 15797? It was my winning number.

Hebrew Book Week

Yesterday evening I went to the Hebrew Book Week in Yehoshua Gardens in Tel Aviv.
The booths were longer than what I remember from previous years. Some of the booths belonged to small book publishers. However, I did not notice poets trying to sell their poems outside of the booths.
It took me three hours to traverse all the booths, even though I skipped quickly booths featuring children’s and religious books.

I went out with one book – a book about the process and psychology of decision making. I also left few billions of red blood cells in the area, as I donated blood in Magen David Adom’s vehicle, outfitted with booths and equipment for donating blood, which was there.

Outside the area, there were few people trying to sell secondhand books. One of them had three issues (No. 1,2,3) of “Cosmos” – an Hebrew language Science Fiction publication, which existed before Fantasy 2000. The original price of the issues was 35 Israeli pounds per issue. The seller wanted 100NIS for the three of the issues. My offer was limited to 50NIS.

If anyone else buys those “Cosmos” issues, may I borrow them from the crazy and lucky buyer for reading?

Orange ribbons

The disengagement opponents finally hit upon a way to express their position, which is nevertheless a legitimate use of Freedom of Expression, and which does not arouse the ire of neutral third side parties.

They tie orange ribbons to the antennae in their cars if they are anti-disengagement, leaving blue-white or green ribbons to supporters of disengagement.

On Friday I drove to Jerusalem and back. There were several cars with orange ribbons, as well as youths standing in road junctions ready to give an orange ribbon to any car driver who shows the slightest interest in having one.

On Saturday afternoon, I drove to Netanya. This time, the orange ribbons were conspicuous in their absence. I saw exactly ONE car with an orange ribbon.

My conclusion: there is high correlation between disengagement opposition and degree of Jewish religion observance, as Jewish religious people do not drive on Saturdays.