Archive | 2011 | December | 13

PM Netanyahu’s Christmas Greetings to Israel’s Christian citizens and to Christians throughout the world.

Sneak Peek: Chanukah: The Missing Menorah

Check out this sneak peek of Shalom Sesame’s Chanukah episode ‘The Missing Menorah’. Grover’s bringing the latkes and all is well until Anneliese van der Pol gets caught in a game of tag with a chicken and loses her special menorah …right before sunset! Can her friends find the missing menorah in time?

Stars of Top US TV Shows Make Pre-Holiday Visit to Israel

During his visit to Israel, Greg Grunberg shared his experience via Twitter

Israel’s Ambassador to the Vatican has been researching history of tattoos for past 20 years, recently organized conference on subject, but does not does have any tattoos himself

The Israeli Ambassador to the Vatican has an unusual line of expertise – tattoos. Mordechai Levy recently initiated the first ever academic conference on the history of tattoos in one of the Vatican’s universities.

The conference was attended by experts from around the world and Levy used the opportunity to present a study he conducted on the matter. According to his study, tattoos was brought to Western Europe by Christian pilgrims who journeyed to the Holy Land in the 16th Century and not by Haiti’s James Cook in 1771 as commonly believed.

Levy’s tattoo fascination began in the mid 1980s while he was serving in Israel’ s embassy in Sweden. He had been reading journals of Swedish pilgrims who came to the Holy Land and discovered they tattooed their bodies. While researching the subject, Levy came to the conclusion that the tattoos were applied by members of the Franciscan Order in Jerusalem and Bethlehem. “The Franciscans needed to provide for their lodgers who were essentially tour guides,” Levy said.

“The tattoos were based on pilgrim motifs like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Ascension of Jesus, the fructification, the cross, Jerusalem and others. We also discovered Hebrew tattoos on Christian pilgrims’ bodies. One such 19th Century tattoo read ‘Jerusalem’ and depicted the Western Wall and the Temple Mount,” he added.

And in case you were wondering, with all his love for tattoos Levy does not boast even one on his own body and has no intention of getting one in the future.

Source: Ynetnews

As noted by TechCrunch, Calcalist (Hebrew) reports that Apple is considering purchasing an Israel-based company called Anobit for $400-$500 million. 

Anobit is a fabless semiconductor company that specializes in flash storage. According to their website:

Anobit provides flash storage solutions for the Enterprise and Mobile markets. It’s MSP™ (Memory Signal Processing) technology significantly improves the endurance, performance and cost of flash storage products and systems. Anobit’s products are used by world leading flash manufacturers, consumer electronics vendors and storage system providers.

Calcalist reports that Apple already relies on Anobit’s technology in the iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air. Apple’s interest in the company is related to their ability increase the amount of flash memory storage in a device and improve long term reliability. AStorage-Switzerland article describes the company’s MSP technology:

Essentially this means they can detect flash problems in flash cells when they’re much older, allowing them to extend the usable life of MLC flash significantly longer than other manufacturers. The net of this ability is Anobit’s flash products have much longer endurance than comparable products from other vendors. They claim commercial-grade MLC endurance comparable to that of SLC flash from other manufacturers. Theoretically, this would enable users to replace SLC flash with the more economical MLC products.

A $400-$500 million acquisition price would make Anobit one of Apple’s largest acquisitions ever. Prior to that, you have to go back to 1997 when Apple paid $404 million to acquire NeXT, Inc, bringing Steve Jobs back to the company.

Flash memory has been a key component in Apple’s products over the past decade. Apple has made strategic bets on Flash storage in the past by pre-purchasing large amounts to ensure a constant supply. Apple’s reliance on Flash remains with the ongoing popularity of the iPhone and shift in notebooks to SSD.

Source: Macrumors

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