It is said that there is an application for everything on the Apple iPhone. So what about an app to make you a holier Jew?

Well, now there is.

From America comes the mitzvah app - which is set to take the community by storm. The Orthodox world, which has traditionally been suspicious of digital technology, is embracing this development, although there is a minority that feels that the new app will herald a Big Brother culture in Judaism.

Israel is becoming addicted to start-ups, says Dr Ed Mlavsky, the founder of venture capital fund Gemini and credited as one of the five most influential people in the Israeli high-tech industry. He argues that Israel is home to an increasing number of "repeat entrepreneurs" - those who sell their original business but go on to inherit, establish and/or buy other ones.

Two Birmingham University graduates have devised an electronic mobile pre-payment system allowing students to buy tickets for gigs and events by text message.

Txt2buy.com was set up by Simon Rabin and Daniel Rosenberg late last year and is currently being used in Manchester and Leeds.

The 23-year-olds became friends through FZY and spent a year researching the feasibility of their plans.

Simon said: “We originally approached the networks with the intention of billing purchases to students’ phone bills and were more or less ignored by them all.

The first beneficiaries of a scheme to promote academic ties between Britain and Israel, backed by the governments of the two countries, have been announced by the British Council.

Fifteen partnerships involving British and Israeli universities will share grants worth £365,000 in all, ranging from research into the causes of diseases such as Parkinson’s to the evolutionary history of the universe.

Israeli robotics expert Dr Alon Wolf captivated student audiences in London with explanations of pioneering futuristic systems developed at the Technion in Haifa, where he is director of the biorobotics and biomechanics lab.

As well as addressing JFS and King’s College London groups, Dr Wolf — who visited under the aegis of the British Technion Society — gave a lecture at the Royal Institution on robots deployed on search and rescue missions. These include snake-like mechanisms which imitate real-life snake locomotion.

Do you find yourself sitting in front of the computer desperately trying to remember whether you mean khaver or khazer in the email you are sending your bubbeh?

Well, platz no more. Google has launched a tool which translates English words and phrases into Yiddish, and vice versa, in seconds, eliminating unfortunate misunderstandings and leaving you ongeshtopt with new phrases.