Israeli politicians joined criticism of Apple on Thursday over a new phone application of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious early-20th-century anti-Semitic forgery, recently made available on its iTunes store. Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein called on the electronics giant to ban the app, arguing it perpetuated the canard of a Jewish international conspiracy to take over the world.

Brand strategist Peter Economides knows about taking brands at their lowest ebb and turning them into world-beaters. He was part of the team that helped create Apple’s “Think Different” campaign in 1997. ....Economides believes that Greece is at the point where an inspired and properly managed rebranding campaign could turn it into the “Apple of the Mediterranean.”

“The challenges of a changing world and the needs of the American people demand that our foreign policy community -- as Steve Jobs put it -- think different,” Clinton said. “We have to position ourselves to lead in a world where security is shaped in boardrooms and on trading floors, as well as on battlefields,” she said.

Officially, the ‘i’ stood for “Internet”. To many, it also represented the product’s focus as a personal device — ‘i’ for “individual”. The ‘i’ can also stand for innovative, iconoclastic and ‘insanely great’, a favourite phrase of Jobs’ to describe his products. And, we might add: impatient, impetuous and irreverent. All attributes that made Jobs a culture-changing force, and a fine example of American soft power in action.

The cultural center is called @america – a name chosen because diplomats in the world’s most populous Muslim country thought it would appeal to the technical savvy young people, while conveying a measure of respect.