Category: English

Sudden Drop in Feedburner Subscribers

The number of subscribers that Feedburner reports hs suddenly dropped. Here, from a total of 153, it dropped to 92. This includes email subscribers and RSS subscribers to the different feeds I provide.

I’m addicted to statistics. I know that staring at numbers is usually a wste of time, but I can’t help myself. During the last months, I’ve seen the number of subscribers to my blog steadily grow. The subscriber numbers are updated every morning (Israeli time), and I check them out as part of my regular morning routine. This morning, I was disappointed…

Checking out some other blogs that publish their stats, I found that their numbers have dropped as well. I guess that one of the big web RSS readers such as Google Reader, Bloglines or Netvibes suddenly stopped reporting the number of subscribers.

I hope that the numbers will get back to the higher level…

Post post: Beth updates (in the comments) that the drop is related to Google’s RSS readers, probably the desktop reader. Thanks Beth!

Bad Coffee

The coffee in Tel Aviv (and also throughout the country) is great, excellent, superb. I always praise it. Also tourists do. Yet, two coffee networks are currently in the news, and for the wrong reasons. Both networks, in certain branches in Tel Aviv, have brutally violated their workers’ rights. Here are these two coffee disputes in a nutshell.

Espresso

Coffee Bean

This network, which boasts good coffee and excellent ice-coffee fired one of it’s workers that tried to form a union. The worker, Alon-Lee Green, sued the Israeli franchise for illegal dismissal. He won and he’s now back to work.

The struggle consisted of a demonstration in front of Coffee Bean’s branch on Ibn Gvirol street, lots of posts in the Israeli blogosphere. Many articles were written. Here’s more info..

I used to drink their excellent cold coffee in the Dizengoff center branch. No more.

Coffee To Go

The second case is currently in the news.. Elite Coffee, which belongs to major Israeli corporate Strauss Elite. Their branch at Tel Aviv University, formerly known as Coffee to Go, distributed the tips in an unfair manner. In addition, tip money was used to complete their underpaid salaries.

The waitresses decided to get up and stand up for their rights. Negotiations failed, and they went on a strike. The management deployed other workers at the cafe, but the protesters beside the cafe make customers go elsewhere.

Except the aforementioned strike and protests, the management lied about the waitresses’ salaries. The last move was an evil one: the management filed a libel suit against 3 waitresses. The story is still developing.

The Hebrew blogosphere is closely covering the story. I thought I’d share it with English readers as well.
The striking workers have set up a blog (Hebrew).

I stick to drinking my coffee in local cafes, that are not part of a network.

Wordcamp Israel was Great

The first ever Wordcamp conference in Israel was a great success! 150-200 people attended the event, that was organized by volunteers.

Wordcamp Israel

All the pictures from Wordcamp Israel 2007. Start slideshow.

Many aspects of blogging and WordPress were discussed throughout the day. The technical issues ranged from installing and basic configuring of WordPress, through a small dip into designing with CSS and up to speeding page loads in WordPress.

The non-technical lectures featured Lorelle VanFossen as the keynote speaker. I enjoyed her lectures, which were interactive, funny and insightful. The Israeli speakers and panelists talked about WordPress as platform for expressing yourself in cultural issues, as well as marketing and knowledge management.

Legal issues, podcasts and even Facebook were also discussed along the day. The only bad thing that I can say about the event was that it was much longer than expected. The last lecture was 90 minutes late. Since I wasn’t in any hurry, I didn’t bother me…

Wordcamp Panel

Except listening to interesting lectures and panels, such events consist of lots of mingling. Since it’s Israel, and most of the participants aren’t into making a business out of their blogs, I can’t call it networking.

Anyway, this time I only revealed one or two faces that I haven’t sen before. All these blogging conferences and parties in the past year or so really made a community out of these independent bloggers. A good community of good people that I enjoy meeting.

Well, enough said. Special thanks go to Tal Galili, Hannit Cohen, and Ehud Keinan for organizing the event. Many other assisted.
If you want to dive into the details of the lectures, just explore the conference’s website.

Going to Wordcamp Israel

This morning I’m off to Wordcamp Israel 2007. It’s actually the first conference of this kind in Israel.

What’s it all about? The conference will deal with blogging issues related to WordPress. It also aims at bringing more people to this wonderful blogging platform. On the other hand, the conference will try not to be too technical. Not only for geeks.

I’m acquainted with the organizers, and I know many of the speakers. My expectations are high. I took a day off from work in order to attend the event.

Anyway, enough said, gotta go. Since the vast majority of the participants write solely in Hebrew, I’ll make my writeup from Wordcamp in English, probably tomorrow.

Globalization

Face of Globalization

We got a thousand points of light
For the homeless man
We got a kinder, gentler,
Machine gun hand
We got department stores and toilet paper
Got Styrofoam boxes for the ozone layer
Got a man of the people, says keep hope alive
Got fuel to burn, got roads to drive.

Keep on rockin’ in the free world

About the picture: A homeless man sleeping on a Tel Aviv bench beside a glowing globe. The globe is one of 100 globes of an exhibition that celebrates Globalization.