There Must Be Another Way - Eurovision 2009

Israel was 61 years old today :)

Hi,

Here is a 3 minutes video taken from one of the funniest Israeli-parody-movies that is always on TV in Israel on our Indepenence Day.  This video has English subtitles, so you can enjoy it even if you're not an Hebrew speaker. 

Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business

At Dr. Z's class today of Marketing Strategy we were discussing pricing methods for the marketing manager. 

Our discussion reminded me of this great article from WIRED. 

I, BTW, totally believe in "freeconomics". 

Enjoy!

Short preview: 

Thanks to Gillette, the idea that you can make money by giving something away is no longer radical. But until recently, practically everything "free" was really just the result of what economists would call a cross-subsidy: You'd get one thing free if you bought another, or you'd get a product free only if you paid for a service.

Over the past decade, however, a different sort of free has emerged. The new model is based not on cross-subsidies — the shifting of costs from one product to another — but on the fact that the cost of products themselves is falling fast. It's as if the price of steel had dropped so close to zero that King Gillette could give away both razor and blade, and make his money on something else entirely. (Shaving cream?).

Once a marketing gimmick, free has emerged as a full-fledged economy. 
Offering free music proved successful for Radiohead, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, and a swarm of other bands on MySpace that grasped the audience-building merits of zero. The fastest-growing parts of the gaming industry are ad-supported casual games online and free-to-try massively multiplayer online games. Virtually everything Google does is free to consumers, from Gmail to Picasa to GOOG-411.

The rise of "freeconomics" is being driven by the underlying technologies that power the Web.
Just as Moore's law dictates that a unit of processing power halves in price every 18 months, the price of bandwidth and storage is dropping even faster. Which is to say, the trend lines that determine the cost of doing business online all point the same way: to zero.

To read the article: Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business

Or you can start with this video:

The views 2 minutes walking from our home at the beginning of February 2009

January 2009 - pictures and story

On January, after 9 years of working without a break... I had a 3 weeks break. Luckily, my good friend Eleonora (Eli) was also on a job-break with me, and we went to explore the city together (finally).

This is the view of Lake Michigan at that period of the year:

And here is the amazing skyline of Chicago.

In this opportunity we were in the Aquarium. As an evidence you can see the Anaconda that is behind me...

My Patents!

5 of them can be found under my name (Hagit Perry) on Google now! Yeyy!

You can also find them here - http://www.faqs.org/patents/inv/325896

Defiance

My grandfather was only 13 years old when the Nazies and their helpers attacked his villege in Belorussia and killed 99% of my family and his villege. 

After this, instead of going to school, playing with friends, and imagining what he will do as a grown up, my grandfather was living in the woods, trying to survive from one day to the other. As a part of his survival efforts, he joined the Bielskies and inside the group, he joined the fighters. He wasn't with them all the time because he was afraid of being a part of a big group, but he did find a shalter there, which definately helped him survive the 4 years of death horror.

When I was 12 years old, my grandparents took me to Belarussia to see everything. 

I saw the villeges and the forests and I have many stories from there. 

One view that is burned inside my head is the long-long rows of short green hills. 

I really recommend you to see the movie. You can start with this great trailer - 

Caution - Kids on the way

*** Purim in Israel (the Jewish Halloween)

And we were definately kids this year -