“When Yinon Yamin bought his iPod last summer, he was as infatuated with the small music player as the next user — but with one significant difference. The Israeli university student soon discovered, to his great frustration, that the high-tech player had a major deficiency: Download a Hebrew-language pop song with its information written in Hebrew, and the corresponding song title on the iPod would come up blank. The problem made finding certain songs difficult. ‘Nothing would come up. Only the English captions were displayed,’ he recounts,” Carolynne Wheeler reports for The Globe and Mail. “So it seemed only natural for this computer science student to help his player learn to read his mother tongue.”
“Mr. Yamin’s version is a simple program that takes less than 15 minutes to download and install. It was quickly embraced and got a few thousand hits within days. A first part to the program adds Hebrew fonts to the iPod; a second part allows text to be typed and read from right to left, instead of the left-to-right used in English. It was also closest to what Apple’s Israeli designers were already working on, and a deal was struck within two weeks of the program’s posting on Mr. Yamin’s website. After some debugging and upgrading, the Hebrew-language patch was made available through Apple’s Hebrew-language site last fall. It has been widely received since. ‘I didn’t want to make money off this program, so I spread it free, and when I gave it to them I told them to spread the software for free, that was one of my conditions,’ said Mr. Yamin, who added that he wasn’t paid extravagantly for the program,” Wheeler reports.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Michael K.” for the heads up.]
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I’m with “Thru The Noise” – Does this sort of story always have to go down the geo-religious-political road? Can’t it just be what it is – a story about a novel solution to help other PEOPLE get some basic benefit from their iPod?
So much for the simple “sees-need-provides-solution-for-others” kinda comments along the lines of congrats – and the kvetching that also comes with it where people will say “when is someone gonna do that for ___?___”.
That’s a far cry from what many others have put up here so far. Very disappointing and embarrassing on both sides.
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Kate, you, in your moronic verbosity, started the pathetic zionist whining.
So go back to the settlement and stfu.
I guess that’s your version of admitting defeat.
Don’t worry, I’ll treat you well–I’ll turn you over to some nice Jewish interrogators from the IDF.
Love and kisses,
Kate
Alright you knuckleheads…
Here’s something interesting, it’s Apple Israel:
http://www.yeda.co.il/
I believe that if you check out the iPod section, there is an iPod HE link, and this could be the language download.
The whole site looks so…biblical…
MW=”blue” as in, blue and white
Yikes! This board is fully rabid bigots. Aren’t you satisfied with simply hating Microsoft?
Right here on MDN:
THERE’S TO MANY OF US
SO………….
LET’S HAVE A WAR
SO YOU CAN GO DIE
LET’S HAVE A WAR
WE CAN ALL USE THE MONEY
LET’S HAVE A WAR
WE NEED THE SPACE
LET’S HAVE A WAR
AND CLEAN OUT THIS PLACE!
http://www.frontpagemag.com/
Dear Tulip,
its sad to say that you support muslim fundamentalism, and you support the death of woman and children. and for that, you opinion is as worthless and yasser arafats promises you homosexual freak.
What a fantastic and generous effort by Yinon Yamin! And I’m so glad Apple went with it!
As for the anti-Israel losers on this forum, try reading the Hamas Covenant and you might understand why Israel had to go into Gaza.
Oh, and don’t swear. I don’t like it.