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Rakuten proxy shopping services

Going through my wife’s emails, we have found a new service from Rakuten.

The Rakuten Proxy shopping Service  looks like a great new service:
Rakuten will act as a proxy, purchasing the desired goods from one of the shops, handling international shipments! The service relies on PayPal, which is a proven platform for such services.

Fees seem a bit expensive, but I believe we will definitely use this service as we often want merchandise from Japan, and do not want to burden our family and friends.

Fees:
1) JPY980 per item ordered as handling charge.
2) 5% (!!!) of total product amount
3) Shipping
4) 5% of international shipping Charge

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Alvarion mulls Layoffs

In case you can’t read Hebrew, you may have missed the news that Alvarion mulls Layoffs.

This Globes article reports it in English,  but fails to mention that the number 10% was repeated in other websites.

Alvarion currently has more than 1000 employees around the world, most of them (around 80%) in Israel.

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WiChorus Series C Funding

WiChorus received their Series C Funding of $18 Million, which brings the total investment in the Company to $43 million.

It is a reassuring step for WiMAX?

RedHerring report hints the opposite:
““Nobody can say for certain how bad or how long the downturn will be, but that is part of the reason why we sought a cushion just in case the economy impacts the [carrier] rollouts [of WiMAX],” said Renan Jalil, CEO of WiChorus.”

The report also keeps mentioning WiMAX, when WiChorus website is trying to rebrand themselves out of the WiMAX business, and into the 4G and LTE market as well.

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Vertu brand

Vertu is a manufacturer and retailer of Luxury Mobile phones. It is owned by Nokia and has stores around the world.

I have browsed around, and found out there is no Vertu shop or reselller in Israel.Why is that? Not enough Customers?

Don’t get the concept of this phone, and will never buy one, no matter how much money I will have.

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Airspan achieves Multi-Band Mobile WiMAX Handover

A press release from Yesterday reports a successful First Ever Multi-Band mobile WiMAX Handover.

This was achieved using the MiMAX USB, a Quad band Mobile WiMAX USB dongle.

“Staged in the UK, this achievement was performed with the collaboration of long-term customer and partner FREEDOM4 and strategic partners Starent Networks, using their Access Service Network (ASN) gateway for connection management, and Bridgewater Systems, using their subscriber management solution that delivers carrier-grade authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) services.”.

I am very proud of this unique achievement, which can benefit operators:

“Carriers and operators will benefit from the option to deploy a single, large mobile WiMAX network using two or more frequency bands. In many regions, the availably of 2.5 GHz is limited. Now operators can aggregate spectrum to allow significant expansion of coverage and roaming capabilities. A carrier, for example, could begin with a small allocation at 2.3 or 2.5 GHz and add a larger, often more affordable, allocation at 3.X GHz or even 5 GHz.”

Disclaimer: I was one of the people who founded this project, and was the Software Manager of the MiMAX USB for more than 2 years

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Gmail themes

Google has recently announced the gmail themes.

I haven’t configured, set, selected any theme, so I guess I received the default.

So, how come the ads are invisible?  Bad, bad design Google team.

Gmail theme - Ads invisible

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Daewoo Logistics to lease half of Madagascar

From the Financial Times – In the world race for food crops, Daewoo has secured a 99 year lease of 1.3m hectares of farmland as countries are concerned about long-term supplies.

This is a bit scary, and the report also mentions this make create a “neo-colonial” system. What will happen in Madagascar when they get short in food supplies, when prices will Soar in Africa, but remain relatively low in Korea, thanks to these overseas farms.