2006: Launchpad Israel launches, is hijacked, then lands!

(updated: 23 April 2022)

In October 2006 while staying at the Petra Hostel in Jerusalem, I built and launched the website Launchpad Israel. I did this while working as a night-watchman.

LPI was a tech blog (and CMS) running on Xoops (like GrooveTip.) A well known tech blogger at the time covered it (below middle) and I was actually caught off-guard as I hadn’t really promoted it to anyone as yet.

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LPI screenshot [7 January 2007]:

As with all my projects, I put a lot of heart into the site and improved the logo.

The site was even defaced in December 2006 but it wasn’t a significant attack in terms of data loss.

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launchpadisrael.com didn’t run for a long time and I closed it with mixed emotion – it was too time-consuming. I kept the domain and started a twitter in December 2008 which took on a more geopolitical activist slant – and I was actually interacting with people. I stopped that eventually (it felt futile) but kept the twitter handle while resetting it in about 2012.

Old retweets of @launchpadisrael can be found here and there are many, e.g:

Note: my Nom de Plume on twitter was Commander LPI – this was a character I took on for dramatic effect.

I relaunched the site in 2009 from Australia using WordPress but it just didn’t feel the same – it was an adaptation of my site CleanZap.

 

2020: the LPI guy lives!

Today, I am both more realistic and more idealistic about Israel. Jews of today really need to take into account the existence of the lost tribes of the old Kingdom of Israel. It seems likely that today’s Jews and Israel are at war with their long-lost brethren, with that war just being love in disguise. Also, Jews are at war with each other. But how does one find oneness… in any country?
✓ 3 years ago