Presentation include 3 case studies from 3 different countries : China, Israel and the US, and compares general attitudes and national laws.

Would love to get your opinions on this.

Presentation includes a few case studies from Coke-Mentos, Sony with "All I want for Christmas is a PSP" and Walmart with "Walmarting Across America".

Would love to get your opinions on this.

Having been involved in the world of blogging for so long, I find the discussion of blogger ethics fascinating, and I do believe it is something that most bloggers confront and think about at some point in their blogging life. I would be trying to gain some more academic insights regarding this topic as part of a more general inspection of ethics in business and IT.

Following are the "Blogging Ethics" presentation slides, I strongly encourage your comments and feedback :

So, following are the videos of the long 1 hour talk given about the blog :

The problogging discussion is important. Here's a bit more about the problogging discussion in Israel:

• DakarS. Dakar take 2. More from Dakar.
• Elad in Blogli. More from Elad.
• Lior in Blogli. More from Lior.
• Effi Fuks in Blogli.
• Arik.
• Anacdotes. More from Anacdotes.
• Internet Zone.
• Klinger.
• The Globe.
• Gadi Shimshon.
• Hanan Cohen.
• Nati.
• Cold Fusion.
• Kesef Net.
• Little/Small things.
• Tai Kaish.

Interesting.

The awards are split into a few categories and you can cast one vote for as many blogs as you want, and so - here are my personal Israeli blogosphere favorites that I follow regularly (in no particular order): 

Best personal blogs:

• Jonathan Klinger (vote for Klinger)
• Little Things (vote for Little Things)
• Things.co.il (vote for Things.co.il)
• Starter (vote for Starter)

Best technology & Internet blogs:

• Anecdotes (vote for Anecdotes)
• Holes in the Net (vote for Holes in the Net)

Best technical blogs:

• Achi Dakar (vote for Achi Dakar)

Best CMS/SEO/SEM blogs: 

• Life in a click (vote for Life in a Click)
• WeCMS (vote for WeCMS)
• SEO-IL (vote for SEO-IL)

Best society and politics blogs:

• Webster (vote for Webster)
• Lost for words - Maabed Tamlilim (vote for MT)

Best culture blogs:

There are some really good quality music blogs in this category that I don't follow but are very professional. Give them all a try, and check up on those :

• Aplaton (vote for Aplaton)
• Humus (vote for Humus)

Best "other" blogs:

• Bracha surfs (vote for Bracha surfs)

Good luck to all the blogs. Go and cast your vote now.

Running a self-hosted blog

First, there's the discussion over what was termed in Israel "independent blogs" meaning self-hosted blogs with their own domain and hosting. The Israeli WordPress community has grown substantially over the past two years but still - very few bloggers take the time, effort and small change money to form their own WordPress blog as it seems to be too much of a technical hassle that's only meant for true geeks. Israeli bloggers still prefer the good old Israeli Hebrew platforms of Israblog and Tapuz, the more recent WordPress MU based - Blogli and Themarker's Cafe, over a self-hosted blog. The old blogging platforms have their advantages and serve as big communities where it's relatively easier to find and communicate with others, while those who have self-hosted blogs have to struggle harder to market themselves. But, with that said, those platforms are holding the blogs back as those communities have bad SEO and are very low on SERP, which doesn't allow the blogosphere to evolve and grow beyond those who come into those blogging communities in the first place. I strongly believe that for the Israeli blogosphere to grow, and for influential probloggers to be made possible, the Israeli blogosphere - as a first step - has to start moving into self-hosted blogs. If we assume there are tens of thousands active Israeli blogs out there, then I believe that it's fair to expect at least a thousand of those to become self-hosted blogs. If those thousand blogs set things right and work like other blogospheres around the world - they will soon enough dominate the search-engines results in their niches and will create an online influential power that can't be ignored. Problogging in such an environment will then become a lot easier.

Although I'm not an active member of the Israeli blogosphere, it still has a special place in my heart. About 7 months ago, I created a small experiment that I was hoping would serve as a home community for the Israeli self-hosted blogs, now called Blogerim.net ("Blogerim" is Hebrew for "bloggers"). Although it has yet to grow into something more than an aggregator based community, it is still home to over a 100 self-hosted Israeli blogs updated regularly. If still not good enough for promoting the Israeli self-hosted blogs, it does solve part of the problem of finding those blogs and gives them the initial SEO boost they might need by providing links to all their posts from a PR4 site. I'm hoping that the day will come when the Israeli self-hosted blogs will take advantage of this platform to make the whole community stronger.

Monetizing a self-hosted blog

With Google Adsense launching in Israel it became a heated discussion over monetizing blogs in Israel (and ethical considerations, follow the whole thing on blogdebate). I'm part of a very small minority that believes that monetizing is not shameless, and that it's sometimes even essential to keep a high quality blogging going. I also believe in full-time blogging and full-time bloggers, and those will be made possible only when it's possible to fully monetize a blog and produce a decent salary of 800-1000US$ a month. The monetizing tools for Israelis are still very limited as the main source of income possible is through Adsense, but as demand grows more tools will come out and it's a matter of time till the Israeli market will have something like Reviewme (aff), Kontera and Textlinkads (aff). I still believe that even today, with a little hard work it is possible for Israeli bloggers to reach a good side income that will allow spending more time on blogging without having to constantly worry about what it costs you.

Optimizing and marketing a self-hosted blog

Part of self-hosted blogging revolution is learning how to optimize and market your blog. When you're part of a blogging community there are limits to what you can do with the blog, but on self-hosted blogs oppurtunities are endless. SEO and SEM are essential tools for probloggers, but those are still in their infancy when it comes to the Israeli blogosphere. There are very few people who know how to do this, and even they have a hard time of doing it right in Israel.

-

Actually, the reason why I'm going into all this is because finally, after over a year of watching the Israeli blogosphere from the side-bench, I can see the beginning of a change. A symbol for this small change is a blog called Achi Dakar, run by Hanit who's leading the Hebrew WordPress community.

Whether she wants to or not, Achi Dakar has the highest potential for becoming the first Israeli problogger. She has what it takes to do so by combining two important qualities - taking a leader role in the community and having endless passion for learning new things and experimenting with them. In the last few months she has seriously started a change in the self-hosted blogosphere by taking a few important steps that correspond to what I wrote in this post :

• Focusing on the promotion of self-hosted blogs.
• Helping those who don't know how to setup a self-hosted blog.
• Assisting those with self-hosted blogs make the most of their platform by discussing blogging news and tools, mentioning important plugins that help create better blogs, and by offering design and usability tips.
• Creating blogosphere projects that promote blogosphere link-love and help connect between the self-hosted Israeli blogs.
• Driving the blogosphere to embrace SEO/SEM as part of their blogging efforts.
• Looking into new ways to monetize and how to use the old methods of monetizing the right way.
• Testing everything herself, opening up her blogging experience and sharing her journey with the blogosphere.

This is my small tribute to the Israeli self-hosted blogosphere and the lovely Hanit. You're doing a great job. Good luck.

1. No collaboration - Security experts seem to like working alone or at least thinking of their own opinions as god's word. Security's sense of community is still lacking and far behind most fields. Sharing knowledge, in my opinion, is power.
2. No simple message - An "expert"'s value is in taking a complex issue and explaining it with a clear and simple message, presenting the alternatives shortly and recommending a solution. Most times, listening to security experts, you just can't understand a thing. Simplification as a rule of thumb.
3. No organizational understanding - It sometimes amazes me listening to some of the solutions that security experts offer and discuss, showing little to no understanding of how the organization works and how people behave in it. Technology, as Omer stated, is a small part of what IT security is. An IT consultant shouldn't be technology oriented, but rather - people oriented.
4. No business logic - IT security is vital for business and has a presentable business model. It's not a bizarre concept. If you can't justify your suggestion in a "value" sense, then don't suggest it at all. Car brakes aren't meant to make the car slower, they're made to allow the car to drive faster safely.
5. Reinventing the wheel - Sometimes security experts have the info, and they know it's been done before, yet they still feel as though they want to reinvent the wheel and do it their way. Endless statements like "our situation is unique" "this has never been done before" serve as excuses to ignore what's obvious. Ego problems.
6. Fixation - If security experts used it once and it worked, then they will stick with that solution to the very (bad) end. This is part of what contributed to the "put a firewall and be done with it" IT syndrome.
7. Using meaningless buzzwords - Using keywords like 1-7799 and Common Criteria as security buzzwords like they're some magical solutions. "Just configure some 7799 in the firewall and shove it up with some Common Criteria on the backbone, that should take care of the problem."
8. No listening abilities - It's much easier to just act rather than to actually listen. A security expert usually "just knows" - knows what the problem is, what the costumer wants, what's best for the organization. Think otherwise? have a different opinion? don't bother saying anything, they're not listening.
9. Solving a problem that doesn't exist - "This security solution also does coffee, cleans up your office and makes love to your wife", great, wonderful, that's really nice to know, but it so happens that I don't drink coffee, I like my office messy and I'm divorced. Oh, I forgot... you're not listening.
10. Getting lost - over here, pal. Starting out at one place and coming out in somewhere completely different. It might be more interesting over there, but this is what I really needed.

Hold on, wait a sec, not so fast…

First of all, you should only disable Automatic Updates if -you- want to disable Automatic Updates. It’s a question of personal choice, but I don’t really like the thing, although the security implications are important.
Second of all, I’m not saying you should never in your life use Internet Explorer. I’m saying you should find out if that’s what right for you, and I’m sure that in some cases you’ll find using Internet Explorer a lot easier and at times the only suitable choice for specific websites.

BUT, you should be aware that in most cases there are alternatives that will enable you to do exactly what you did with Explorer on Firefox. Yep, even the awful Windows Update site. Lately, Microsoft have outdid themselves with the introduction of the Genuine Windows program, which does a check on your system to see whether your Windows is genuine, which is even more pathetic than the Activation awful procedure that they came up with not too long ago. I’m not trying to encourage piracy, no way, but Microsoft themselves know that there are alot of problems with that kind of check, which sometimes leave honest users with no updates or makes hardworking folks go through an idiotic time-consuming activation procedure.

To solve the claim made about using Firefox to do Windows updates, it is, indeed, possible. It will also enable you to update your system if your systems fails the Microsoft online authenticity test, for some strange reason.
Check out WinDizUpdate at - http://windizupdate.com/

Now, a site this small doesn’t need such a big introduction and the only reason I wrote the whole thing is because I was trying to make a point, which goes something like this - in today’s tech-world it’s easier to find a solution for something than it is to complain about it. I know most users don’t understand the first thing about technology and don’t want to know, and that’s completely okay. But, the same users make a habit of spending alot of time complaining about their bad experiences and fighting the obvious when they can find the solution for their trouble easily.
Take this Windows Update with Firefox issue as an example. Writing “Windows Update firefox” on any search engine will get you to several good solutions, some of which are official plugin solutions from Microsoft. WinDizUpdate is just one neat solution that -I- use but you’ve got so much information a few clicks away. I keep telling my friends that if my little sister is able to find solutions like that, then I honestly believe anybody can. You can see other people’s opinions, other people’s experiences, you can compare, you can share. The question shouldn’t be whether there is a solution for your problem, but rather - what solution you should choose and what piece of information on your search results is the right one for you.

Today’s social knowledge Internet makes everybody a potential techie in minutes. Those who aren’t techies choose not to be, which leaves plenty of potential gain for those claiming to be experts. The whole meaning of what an expert is varies and changes as an expert isn’t someone who has access to information that you don’t have, but rather someone who knows how to manage the information and how to process it in a unique way. It’s not about the way information is obtained, but rather about the way information is interpreted and used.

• An extremely slow user experience. Applications and heavy websites take a long time to load.
• If an internet connection is used, then a computer is usually packed with spyware and pop-ups that make it impossible to do anything.

Since I've helped at least 5 of my friends to set up their machines recently, I thought it might be wise to write a small guide about the medical care that I've provided them in order to overcome the problems mentioned. For someone who knows basic computing, the overall process should not take more than an hour’s work plus an hour of unattended application runtime. Please note that:

• To make things simpler, I'll make the assumption that Windows XP is installed, though a similar process could also be applied to previous Microsoft operating systems.
• I take no responsibility what so ever for the information provided here. If you follow it, you do so at your own risk. You could, however, contact me if you get stuck and hopefully I will try and help you.
• All software and tools described here are either provided within the operating system or are completely free and available for download from an internet site unless stated otherwise.

On old machines the most valuable asset that a computer has is memory (RAM). Using more RAM than the computer has would mean that the computer needs to cache on the hard drive which would make the process a lot slower. What most people are not aware of is that the default Windows XP configuration, especially the Pro version, is packed with unnecessary services usually preinstalled for a computer intended to operate within a big administrated organizational network (a Windows Domain). Many of those services can be removed and save up a lot of memory, therefore decreasing the chances for caching. Furthermore, Windows XP can be pretty heavy on graphics and enhanced features, most of which can be removed to allow improved speed. So, to start up with a configuration, I recommend Black Viper's famous services optimization tweaks:

• Windows XP Super Tweaks - http://web.archive.org/web/20050330014537/www.blackviper.com/WinXP/supertweaks.htm
• Windows XP Home and Professional Service Pack 2 Service configurations - http://web.archive.org/web/20050401044922/www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

The guides are pretty clear and straight forward, and will gain you major performance increase. I've applied the "safe" configuration to most computers I mess around with, yet I use a slightly modified version of "Bare Bones" configuration on my own machine. The way I see it, there shouldn't be anything running in the background that you're not using at a specific moment, so once you're through with configuring services head-on to disable everything that loads automatically on windows startup through MSCONFIG. If you do need some software running, then best thing to do would be to load it yourself and close it after you finish (such as Messenger, music players etc.). I apply the same philosophy for resident programs like an antivirus or an antispyware. These programs are required to keep a computer running smoothly, but they take up too many resources when resident. So, what I do is I run automatic daily night-checks and disable the memory resident programs. Note that if you're not using a webmail service but rather an email client software, or if you're a massive application downloader then you might indeed require the antivirus running in the background. But most users I know really don't need those heavy applications consuming their valuable resources. After you've finished removing all unnecessary Windows services and features, you should already have a much faster system than you've gotten used to. The next step you should take to increase performance is to clean up your computer from files you don't need and to sort out your registry. Some of my friends use a computer in a shared apartment so there's also the issue of getting rid of personal information. There are many tools that do these kinds of services for you. I can recommend the wonderful free Crap Cleaner (http://www.ccleaner.com/). Next step is to secure the computer and get rid of all the spyware that's been haunting your machine. If you use your computer to access the Internet then the first step you'd need to do is make sure that your internal firewall is running. The built-in firewall inside Windows isn't the greatest firewall out there, but it will provide you the basic protection needed in exchange for very little memory consumption. Windows XP Service Pack 2 offers a very good step up for the internal firewall, providing incoming-application-filtering, so you might want to take advantage of that. I think that, in general, applying Service Pack 2 is something you should do to keep your computer secure. For the lame user, there's really no need for ZoneAlarm or any of the other personal firewalls out there, which might provide better protection as far as outgoing traffic is concerned, but would also complicate things and take up more resources. The Microsoft guide about the internal firewall is located at: http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/protect/firewall.mspx When Windows XPSP2 firewall is running, make sure that you approve traffic only from applications that you use. Once the firewall is up, it is time to get rid of all the viruses and spyware. Once again, there are many tools out there, but of all tools I've found that the following provide a good free protection :

• AVG antivirus at http://free.grisoft.com/
• Spybot Search & Destroy at http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html
• Lavasoft's Ad-aware SE personal at http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

I don’t run the antivirus or the antispyware in the background, but rather use the internal options to schedule a night scan (set to quietly run in the background, run automatic updates download, clean automatically when finding trouble and close when done). Once installed, you should update definitions and scan your computer once to get rid of everything. You may need to restart your computer during the process. Microsoft suggests that you update your operating systems and software from the Microsoft update page or by using automated updates installation. I think there's no major harm in doing it manually. Up to you how you want to do it. Slow computers might want to do it manually, while stronger machines might want this configured to run automatically. In order to avoid popup hell, you’ll require a good pop-up blocker. Plenty of those out there, but the one that I like is incorporated with the Google toolbar (http://toolbar.google.com/ ). This toolbar will, ofcourse, provide you with the usual Google tools as well. If you're really looking for something smoother, then consider running some other lighter browsing alternatives to Internet Explorer. For example, it is well known that Firefox has a built-in popup blocker and a search bar provided within (http://www.mozilla.com/).Finally, some small tips that might seem trivial, but I'll mention them anyhow:

• If you're using a laptop, use the hibernate feature. You don't really need to shut down the computer and wait for it to load up for over a minute every time. For a stable system configuration Hibernate should be all that you use. About Hibernate: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/mobility/getstarted/hibernate.mspx .
• If you're a big (legal ) filesharing P2P user and using an ADSL then you should be aware that uplink has an impact on your download speed and that filesharing programs have a tendency to overload your uplink. Few programs allow limiting uplink, but usually would take down of your download speed as well. To control your application up/down bandwidth you might consider using a shareware tool like Netlimiter (http://www.netlimiter.com/). And while I'm at it, with all due respect to Mule and Bittorrent networks, I think DirectConnect/IRC is the best thing out there (StrongDC++ is a good choice - http://strongdc.berlios.de/index.php?lang=eng).