On May 9th an article appeared in the Technology section of the BBC News website under the title “Keepod: Can a $7 stick provide billions computer access?“. Its writer, Dan Simmons, also produced a filmed version of the report titled “Keepod ‘magic drives’ put Nairobi’s children online” which appeared on the BBC World News programme ‘Click‘ on May 10th and 11th.
Both reports are about a company called Keepod which has invented a USB flash drive with its own operating system, circumventing the need for a computer with a hard disk and storing all the user’s files for use on any available computer.
The only very round-about clue to the fact that Keepod is an Israeli start-up in the report’s written version is the following caption to one of the photographs used to illustrate it.
“Keepod is Hebrew for the word hedgehog. It is also a play on words, as it joins the English word “keep” with the Hebrew word “od”, meaning “everything”.”
‘Od’ actually means ‘more’ in Hebrew – not ‘everything’.
In the report’s filmed version, no mention at all is made of the fact that Keepod is an Israeli company and in neither report is the fact that the USB flash drive is an Israeli invention noted.
