Starting late next week, early iPhone 4 owners can go to Apple’s website to sign up for a free case. Since the company cannot make enough of its $29 “Bumper” cases, it will allow users to choose from a selection of different case styles.

Ever since the latest iPhone model’s release in the US three weeks ago, many users have complained that they would lose their wireless network coverage when they happen to cover a certain spot on the smartphone with their bare hand. Critics say this is due to a faulty antenna. While the company denied the iPhone 4 has an antenna problem that needs fixing and attributed the problem to a software glitch, Steve Jobs apologized to the people who are less than satisfied with their new phones.

Apple Inc. is a company known for its high regard for customer satisfaction. It has been shown that having a protective case can effectively prevent the occurrence of any reception problems. The company will also release a software update that will allow the device to more accurately display signal strength in an area. In addition, if users are still not happy with their iPhone, they can bring it back and receive a full refund within the next 30 days. There will be no restocking fee.

In a time like this, what stands out most is that the company is taking excellent steps to resolve its issues. For a giant such as Apple to act fast and provide immediate solutions, Steve Jobs and his company are worthy of praise.

So far, in various studies, robots have been able to teach children a variety of things. At the University of Southern California, a robot has been programmed to mimic its playmate’s behavior and teach him how to respond by maintaining eye contact when it notices the child withdrawing. At a day care center in Japan, researchers have proven this mimicry to be a very effective way to get even very fearful children with autism to respond and become engaged.

Marek Michalowski of Carnegie Mellon University points out how it is possible to help children open up with simple synchronous behavior. He also adds that once the child does open up, it becomes possible to teach them other social behaviors through this interaction such as making eye contact, joint attention, turn taking and other things that children may have difficulty learning.

Although it takes very precise programming to make this happen, as delayed responses from the robot would throw off the interaction, this mimicry builds trust and sociability in children. In time, simple imitation turns into interaction and eventually into learning.

The potential for this technology is beneficial for both robotics and child psychology. Researchers specializing in child psychology stand to learn much as well, taking note of what makes these robots effective teachers for young children, especially for those with difficulty learning. The benefits of this research, then, are two-fold. Together, the fields of study can revolutionize the way that children learn.

Chen suggests that single-screen interfaces like the one on the iPad and the Google Android OS allow for a deeper and more natural way of learning. Although there have not yet been studies done specifically on the iPad yet, Chen refers to the research done by Muhammet Demirbilek on the effects of computer interfaces on learning.

In 2004, Demirbilek, an assistant professor of educational technology at Suleyman Demirel University, conducted an experiment at the University of Florida that compared a tiled-windows interface, and an overlapping-windows interface.

He was able to conclude that “Students using the tiled-windows interface were able to learn considerably better than those working with overlapping windows.” They were, “able to find specific information more easily and engage with it more deeply.”

From here, Chen and Demirbliek both inferred that iPad-style user interfaces can help to improve orientation and learning. Soon, other tablets and mobile devices will catch on to the trend of single-screen user interfaces and, in turn, web developers will design more websites that cater to this style of browsing, which is less cluttered, uses bigger icons, and is more focused on the information being provided.

Although I don’t think the iPad can yet be considered as a laptop killer, it does provide a completely different experience for interacting with information on the Internet. I would compare it to an image-based ad versus a copy-heavy ad. They both ultimately have the same goal but each serves a different purpose. One is more focused while the other gives a more comprehensive view.

All across America, libraries are expanding their selections digitally by scanning actual books and compiling them for lending. Library users have found that ebooks are easier to carry around when they’re already carrying a laptop or ebook reader, they can be used for the vision impaired, and they prevent users from having to go back to the library to return a stack of borrowed books.

In response, a group of brick-and-mortar libraries lead by a nonprofit digital library called the Internet Archives, joined forces late last month to create a website that will allow users to check out ebooks as they would from a local library. Among others, the Boston Public Library and the Marine Biological Laboratory will contribute scans of hundreds of books that are still in copyright but no longer sold commercially. These will be added to the more than one million scanned public domain books that the website will make available.

In true library essence, the website, OpenLibrary.org, will not simply allow borrowers to keep digital copies of their books indefinitely. Instead, these ebooks come with an expiry date. When the lending period is over, users will no longer be able to open the file and there will be nothing left to do but to delete it. Copyright laws are not exactly clear on digital copies but the plan is to only lease out the digital copy to one user at a time. While the digital copy is being borrowed, the physical copy will not be allowed to leave the library where the scan came from.

In my opinion, this is just the library’s way of changing with the times, and adapting new technologies in order to better deliver enhanced services. If the library has the right to lend out a physical copy, it should also be allowed to lend out digital copies as long as these copies are controlled. Even if detractors claim that this adversely affects the market for books, it could also spark a new interest in books for the younger generations.

View a previously written post by Mouli Cohen about the Arts and Culture.

A program by Tel Aviv-based Soluto targets a widespread source of frustration – computer boot-up time – and earned a TechCrunch Disrupt award in the process. “We are working to solve one of the biggest problems in modern life – the frustration users feel every time they switch on their PC and wait for it to load,” shares Soluto Chief Product Officer Roee Adler. “And when you’re talking about 1.5 billion people, you can appreciate and understand how we won TechCrunch.”

Representing the firm’s lead product, Soluto’s program is a software download that examines a PC’s boot problems and suggests ways to make the boot-up process work more smoothly. Adler elaborates, “Our software analyzes the interactivity between applications and processes, delving deep into the Windows kernel, and informs you of what’s going on behind the scenes. You can determine which processes or applications are slowing you down, and take the appropriate action.”

The results are highly encouraging – informal tests show that Soluto’s software may be able to cut boot time by as much as half of the norm.

Soluto was founded in 2007, and to date has about $8 million in financing from investors like Proxima Investments, Giza Venture Capital and Bessemer Investments, among others. It is, however, interesting to note that the company won over some very strong competitors. This illustrates just how high the need for something like Soluto’s program really is.

At the end of it all, technology is meant to improve peoples’ quality of life. Annoyance at boot times that may reach a minute or more is definitely not a boon that technology brings. Soluto’s award-winning program once again shows that if a startup thinks out of the box and looks at issues at ground level, success is practically sure to follow.

View a previously written post by Mouli Cohen about Startups.

This desalination plant, operating in the northern city of Hadera, is being celebrated as the largest reverse osmosis facility of its kind in the world. The plant was built by Israeli company IDE Technologies, and joins two other desalination plants on the country’s Mediterranean coastline.

The Hadera plant was built with assistance from the Housing and Construction Group, a real estate development company owned by the Arison Group. It costs around half a billion dollars, and is slated to produce approximately 127 million cubic meters of water a year – an amount seen to meet the needs of one in every six Israelis. And lest anyone think that IDE lacks experience in making water desalination facilities that work, the company has already built around 400 such plants in 40 countries to date, with processes and mechanisms that are proprietary and can truly be considered revolutionary.

The methods used by IDE for desalination involve the removal of salt from seawater using Reverse Osmosis (RO). This is one of the two main ways to desalinate water, the other being electrodialysis. In the case of RO, a water-permeable membrane separates the water from salt and other mineral compounds when placed under high pressure.

The Israeli government is also playing a big part in this push for a more stable water supply. The Hadera plant will join similar structures in Ashkelon and Palmahim in producing water priced at a little over 50 cents per cubic meter, according to a 25-year deal.

While different environmental groups vary on their stands on water desalination, the fact of the matter is that it offers cheap and clean drinking water for millions of Israelis, with a lower ecological impact than that inflicted by over-draining rivers and lakes. From the perspective of improving people’s quality of life, this is a completely winning situation.

View a previously written post by Mouli Cohen about Israel.

This new laser technology actually works opposite from the way that most traditional lasers work. Instead of shooting beams of light, it shoots beams of “night” or darkness. The new laser, which creates “dark pulses,” was created by scientists at the National Institutes of Standards and Technology and JILA, a joint institute of NIST and the University of Colorado.

The logic behind the new technology is that light degrades and fades over great distances. In fiber optics, light even bleeds together. This creates noise and errors that could be avoided using dark pulses instead.

The lasers being used for fiber optics today are ones that pulse, oscillating between and on and off stage. Though the light never really turns off, its intensity is greatly reduced by around 70 percent during the “off” stage. In other words, the pulse laser works with low light intensities, with the occasional brilliant pulses of high intensity light.

The new laser works exactly opposite of light pulse lasers with occasional bursts of dark pulses. These dark pulses last for only about a nanosecond each. Dark pulses don’t fade, degrade or bleed nearly as much as traditional light pulses do, and this causes less noise and fewer errors. The dark pulses have also been found to transmit signals faster and with less noise than light pulses through certain fiber optic cables.

However, developers and investors in fiber optic technology are not likely going to abandon the extensive research, infrastructure and development that are already in place for traditional laser optics. The world will have to wait a little longer to take advantage of this technology.

View a previously written post by Mouli Cohen about Technology.

In 2006, the two professors co-wrote a section of a book called Ethics in Groups, which talked about forces that perpetuate and mitigate unethical behavior in groups. More recently, their collaborative work has appeared in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, a leading journal in the field.

A professor of executive leadership with a doctorate in social psychology, Northcraft’s view can be summed up in one statement as reported by Physorg.com. “Technology has made us much more efficient, but much less effective,” said the professor. “Something is being gained, but something is being lost. The something gained is time and the something lost is the quality of relationships. And quality of relationships matters.”

The new study involved 200 undergraduate students, who were tasked to perform two collaborative teamwork exercises. Some were allowed to work face-to-face while others were limited to communication via email and video conferences. As expected, face-to-face communications produced the best results, while email produced the least. Video conferencing was somewhere in between.

Physical presence instills trust among collaborators. “Face to face, people just have more confidence that others will do what they say they’ll do. Over e-mail, they trust each other less.” says Northcraft.

The findings are highly relevant to businesses today, which tend to use email and video conferencing more for the sake of expediency, and because more businesses now tend to be spread out geographically. These findings suggest that businesses need to balance their means of communications with face-to-face meetings in order to recharge relationships. According to Northcraft, physical contact has a half life.

In addition, emails are not only used to expedite communications, but also to serve as a reference point for accountability in the workplace. Collaborators are always ready to play the blame game when something goes wrong, which does not do well to elicit trust.

View a previously written post by Mouli Cohen about Technology.

Fortunately, software programs to help identify and block access to pedophiles are improving every day. One particular product developed by United Parents Online uses a range of criteria far beyond the first-generation software programs, which merely scanned text for suspicious words. With the old system, once the suspicious words were found, the parent would have to manually check chat logs in order to find the context and determine whether or not there was a threat. This process is both time-consuming and inefficient, and it violates the privacy of children who may be yearning for their own identities.

The new software by United Parents Online, an Israeli company, recognizes behavior patterns associated with pedophiles. It stores profiles on suspected users and establishes digital fingerprints. This means that even if the suspected pedophile changes their chat name or gets a new IP address, they will still be identifiable.

Once a pedophile is identified during an interaction with any of the community’s members, the program bans him or her from chatting with any child with the same program in that community. “United Parents’ strength is based on the fact that the parents essentially work as a community,” said CEO and entrepreneur Hanan Lavy. “And as the community’s critical mass grows, so does its strength.”

The program is not available for purchase yet, but when it is released a few months from now, it should also be ready for use with social media applications.
It would also be a good idea to make this technology available for handheld devices such as Wi-Fi-ready e-book readers, and handheld computing devices, or even cellular phones. The market for this technology would grow exponentially.

View a previously written post by Mouli Cohen about Startups.

Zero-knowledge earned Prof. Goldwasser a trip to Philadelphia to receive the 2010 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science. The professor, who was born in New York to Israeli parents, has made fundamental contributions to the field of study which has become the basis for encoding anything from private messages to credit card numbers on the Internet.

Her first footsteps into the field of cryptography theory were evident when she discovered an affinity to math and physics while attending high school. After graduation, she attended Carnegie Mellon University, which “…already had a strong computer science and applied math department even then,” said Prof. Goldwasser, referring to the 1970s.

Indeed, there had not yet been any concept of personal computing in the 1970s. Prof. Goldwasser admits that some of the women in her computer science classes had never even seen a computer, though she adds that women were more mathematically inclined.

The idea for zero-knowledge came about as an attempt to answer a question posed to by her adviser, who asked what it might take for two people to engage a coin toss over a computer network or phone. Since then, she became obsessed with the finding the answer. And the answer that she came up with was randomized methods of encoding.

Impossible as it may seem, zero-knowledge allows one to process information without seeing it. For example, a merchant can verify whether or not a customer’s credit card information is valid, without having access to the actual credit card number.
Without the technology that stemmed from this theory, the Internet would be a vastly different place. Internet banking, e-commerce, and even email might never exist with any insurance of security.

View a previously written post by Mouli Cohen about Israel.