http://www.thebigfelafel.com/category/essentials/

App of the week:

http://itunes.apple.com/il/app/jerubus/id330784950?mt=8

http://www.jerusalembusmap.net/

Noteworthy News:

http://www.israel21c.org/201008188217/environment/pasta-de-israeliano

New Exhibits for the Israel Museum comes with an updated website

- http://www.english.imjnet.org.il/htmls/home.aspx

Israel to use Facebook to curb bad driving

-http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=183619

Tips for staying cool in the Summer Heat

-http://lifehacker.com/5315230/lifehacker-readers-best-stay+cool-summer-tips

Where to go hiking in Israel

-http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http://itunes.apple.com/il/app/lametayel/id382418978%3Fmt%3D8%23&sl=iw&tl=en

Jailbreak and unlock your iPhone to use it while traveling abroad this summer:

Jailbreak – http://videos.wittysparks.com/id/2877680365

Unlock – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4v0N37sCZU0

If you have any suggestions for next week’s episode please leave it in the comments!

Much sooner than we have expected our Birkat Hamazon app has reached its new milestone.

It’s been merely 3 weeks ago when we reported our previous milestone of 500 users and a number of times iBirkat has been used then was 2,000 times. Since then those numbers grew about 500% and today we are reporting our 2,500th user and it has been over 10,000 times that people

have praised G-d after the meal using our app.

As a result, on July 21st iBirkat became a number 1 free app in its category on the Israeli app store, taking down such heavyweights as Ebay and Facebook. These results have been very promising, and the mes

sage that comes out of it, is that people in Israel do not only play games or follow news on their iPhones but are also fullfilling their spiritual needs with it as well.

Finally we can see iPhone as a device that really becomes a digital Swiss Army Knife of a modern individual in 2010, that does not want to be overburdened with carrying multiple gadgets and yet does not want to compromise on the functionality.

We can’t wait until our next major release that gets i

Birkat completely redesigned.

Without going into much detail on what got changed since our previous release, I can only mention at this point that now our app is going to be accessible to a wider audience then before and will feature a new design.

As always we welcome your feedback, spread the word to your friends about our apps and stay tuned to new products and updates from appSTUDIO.

Join our Facebook page, and follow us on Twitter

Shavua tov to all,
David

That’s a pretty big number, and even though our milestone is not as impressive on the global scale, and not flashing as many zeros, as I’m writing this line we have reached 500 users worldwide of our bencher app – iBirkat. Considering a very limited potential market size for this app, particularly our typical user can be characterized as a Torah observant (or at least interested) Jew sporting an iPhone or iPod Touch and soon enough (with our next update) an iPad.

Without going into much details why some Torah observant Jews would NOT use a smartphone even set aside financial reasons, iPhone is not the only smartphone out there and so far iBirkat only works on Apple devices, which number over 100 million at the time of this writing, another number for you.

For us 500 users is a promising number, considering it’s been a little over a month since the release of our bencher and with over 2,000 uses the message that we get, is that people don’t just check it out, but actually use it.

All I can say now, is that we are just breaking a sweat, there are many more people out there that will love iBirkat and we keep developing it, making it ever better, raising the bar for ourselves and others.

Send us your feedback, we love reading your stories about your episodes with our apps.
apps@appstudio.co.il

or

Futurama is Back, and everyone is a Robot

The Gang

Futurama is a TV show created/developed by Matt Groening and David X. Cohen.

The show takes place 1000 years in the future and has a main character that is from our time, brought into the future via a cryogenic freeze.

My favorite part about the new episodes was the question of what is a human, and what defines “Me”.

Are we simply a collection of our physical appearance, memory and opinions, or is  there something more?

In the episode, a main character is assumed dead an exact robotic duplicate is created. The duplicate is given all the memories of the original and from the view point of the rest of the crew, no distinction can be made.

In Judaism, the belief in an eternal soul, that is an extension of the creator of the universe, is a prevalent theme. Biased on this belief,  no robotic copy, no matter how good, could be considered a “person”. For example a robot copy could not be married, or serve as a witness.

This concept of duplicates not being equal to the original seems fairly apparent when you talk about one being flesh and bone and the other being aluminum and silicon, but what if we are referring to an identical duplicate down to the nitty gritty atomic level.

For example. there are countless (ok, fine I am sure someone has counted them) episodes of Star Trek, where  due to a transporter malfunction, an exact duplicate of an individual is created. Now in this case lets assume that each copy has the exact same atomic make up, and memories and personality as the other, branching only at the time of the duplication. One could argue that after the split, it makes no difference which one you kill off, because they are exactly the same, and there is no way to tell the difference between the two.

Now, lets take an example from the movie “The Prestige“. Assuming I have a duplicating machine, and I invite you to come over, make an exact duplicate of yourself, and then drink a painless poison that would kill you instantly, and cause your body to spontaneously dissolve.

How many people would be interested in participating in an event like this, not likely many. It may seem to the rest of the world that the same person who entered my apartment, was the one to leave, but to the individual, the “YOU”, the story is significantly different, namely, death has occurred.

Please feel free to leave comments. I hope to continue this narrative in a next post: iRobot vs meRobot: Part Two

We removed the splash screen and shortened loading time in this version. We also changed the way some of the hebrew text appears on the screen.

In this version we also began the implementation of location awareness. We have released location based descriptions of the app, to localize it to the various regions of the iTunes App Store. Now when you download iBirkat (or upgrade)  the app will ask you permission to send us location data. No personal data is transferred, on our end we simply get a notice “someone in France downloaded iBirkat”.  We hope to use this information to better cater to you, our audience, with location and language specific translations of relevant Jewish texts.

We have a lot of great ideas for more free Jewish apps for the iPhone/Touch and iPad, and are always interested in hearing what ideas you guys can come up with. Please feel free to drop us a line at info@appstudio.co.il

Nintendo’s Wii is hitting its 4th birthday this November and amazingly enough is still right there up with its beefier competitors the XBox 360 and PS3. When Nintendo Wii made its debut, competitors argu

Remind anyone of anything?

ed that “gamers” did not want to get up out of the couch. Nintendo showed they they were wrong, but inventing new games, my wife included, that although never had interest in video games before, couldn’t keep their hands off this interesting new controller, and long list of “causal games”.

The gimmic of “waggle motion”, as Sony fanboys often referred to it as, has now become fully integrated by the PS3, notably with positive results.

In a later post I will devote time to Xbox, and talk more about what Nintendo has in store, for now enjoy the videos.

Tiger Woods PS Move Demo – E3 2010 – Funny blooper videos are here

Successful First Launch

Watch a video of the launch.

During our travels to the mystical land of Haifa, Israel, my buddy introduced me to this amazing condiment.

We at appSTUDIO are avid hot sauce fans, so this little find was quite significant. It may just find its way into the company’s budget’s food rations.

The conversation went as follows:

“So then I was watching Solid Dudes Kitchen and he tosses out the “F Bomb” to anyone that does not know about Sriracha.”

At this point, I interrupted and asked to be enlightened. The table went silent, and our host, saying nothing, rose from the Shabbas table and brought back this bottle.

Its awesome. All you hot sauce fans out there, give it a try, you might not look back to Tabasco again.

With this update we improved the look and feel of the text, cleaned up some background code, removed the “Back” button, and added analytics. We hope you like it

Here is the description:

iBirkat offers quick access to the after meal blessings according to the tradition of Ashkenazi Jewry.

Included in this app are both the prayers for week day blessings and the blessings included for the new month.

Our First Update to iBirkat