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Underway in Ireland
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31 May 2002 |
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Mike Chambers: "The Flash community has been getting pretty excited about Flash and RSS lately." We're going to glue these two things together next term in a Web Writing course taught at Tipperary Institute.
Sent from Radio TransNote on Irish Rail at Kildare.
Pointer from Scripting News ref: 125 |
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Leading the Way in Hotspot Deployments |
| Alan Reiter: "Many WiFi experts think the U.S. is the WiFi leader. We're the leader in software development and new business models, but not in hotspot implementation. In Korea, there will be 25,000 hotspots in perhaps a year. In the U.S. we now have 1-2,000 hotspots." If you want to be part of the leading edge of hotspot development, you should subscribe to Boing Boing's RSS feed.
Sent by Radio TransNote over Vodafone HSD while on Irish Rail at Carlow.
ref: 109 |
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The Web is a Scripting Environment Dave Winer: The Web is a scripting environmnent.
As The Irish Times moves to locking down its essence behind a PPV walled garden, another dimension of the Web has emerged that brings high-quality content into an easily managed client news hamper.
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RIAA Hurting Musicians. Brian Zisk: Tells RIAA's Steven Marks and SoundExchange's John Simson that their credibility "has ceased to exist," and that their efforts are "hurting SoundExchange, the recording industry, the webcasting industry, and worst of all the musicians." Zisk is technology director with Future of Music Coalition.
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The Web Needs More than Walled Gardens Scott Johnson: The Web isn't hypertext, it's DECORATED DIRECTORIES!
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Major Labels Avoid Web Radio George Mannes: The major record labels would rather maintain the status quo when it comes to
promotion (i.e. radio) than be willing to adopt new Internet models.
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Combo MP3 FM Walkman Brad Wilson: Can you imagine what a cow the RIAA would have if someone came out with an 802.11a (high speed wireless) equipped device that played MP3s, WMAs, AVIs, etc., that allowed you to just beam the content from one device to another? "Hey, whatcha listening to?" "New Moby disc." "Any good?" "Here, this track's phat, take a listen." Ouch. :)
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30 May 2002 |
Digitally Signed Hotspot
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What makes a digitally signed hotspot? Wireless hotspots are springing up wherever there's a critical mass of business travelers. Digital signs have evolved smartly since the mid-90s. Combining the two would be a logical progression in the evolution of our electronic lives.
Sent aboard Bus Eireann exiting Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary, using Radio TransNote with Vodafone.
ref: 109 |
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1m Blogs in NYC
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Dave Winer notes, "There are a million blogs in the naked city." Organisers are sorting them by subway stop.
Sent by Radio TransNote near Freshford, County Kilkenny over Vodafone.
ref: 125 |
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Irish Times Soon to Charge for Online Content
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| Only a few days remain before The Irish Times starts charging for access to the best content.
Thought leaders from the Irish Open Mailing List believe news hounds will migrate to the free content offered at the Indo, Examiner and Electric News.
Sent from Garringreen over Eircom ISDN.
ref: 125 |
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29 May 2002 |
New Economy II
John Robb: "Individuals, armed with the Internet, will continue to chip away at the old moats and barriers corporations have erected in order to gain pricing power."
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Thank You Lawrence Lee |
| | I've mucked around with Radio UserLand for several months, longer than the little calendar shows on the right. I've lost some content because I deleted and reinstalled the program once. Another time I lost content because I set my date back on the system hosting Radio. Thanks to Lawrence Lee, my system is restored. I learned that Radio doesn't like to work with information out of sequence in its root data set. I also learned to make a Radio input once a day. That way it's relatively easy to amend content at a later date. If the placemarker isn't in the system, you might have to revise files in the root data, and that can create headaches.
Sent over Eircom ISDN from Kilkenny, Ireland.
ref: 125. |
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Yosemite Holiday |
| John Jennings is off to the sunshine of Yosemite. I wish I was as lucky.
Sent from Nokia 9110i as mail-to-weblog from Clonmel, Co Tipperary, Ireland.
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Multimedia Diploma in Tipperary
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I've got first year Multimedia students under tow at Tipperary Institute. They're getting ready for exams in software development, computer applications and web design, design and aesthetics, interpersonal communication, writing skills and Java Programming. A few of them have sent content directly to the blog -- like this snippet.
Sent to blog by Eanna McAteer in Clonmel. Revised in Radio TransNote.
ref: 143
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27 May 2002 |
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If you were one of 100,000 who sent an SMS response to a poll about keeping Roy Keane in the World Cup, you might be wondering what happens to your phone number once it's exposed to marketers.
Sent over Vodafone HSD with Radio TransNote near Carrick-on-Suir.
ref: 143 |
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I stumbled upon These the on-line archives of a Stanford course on entrepreneurship. They offer streaming video of all the lectures. The archives include VC types (Vinod Khosla, Steve Jurvetson) with a smattering of tech innovators (Larry Page), all high quality content. Cheers to The Shifted Librarian.
Sent over Eircom ISDN from Kilkenny
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26 May 2002 |
Audible.com
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| If you're stuck in traffic, you need to occupy yourself with help from Audible.com
Sent from The Ignis in Thurles, Co Tipperary with Radio TransNote.
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Intellectual Property Threatens Creativity |
| | Listen to Justice Talking for the National Public Radio programme with Siva Vaidhyanathan and learn how the rise of intellectual property threatens creativity. Sent in The Ignis with Radio TransNote approaching Thurles.
Comment? ref: 125. |
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Mesh Networks |
| | What if every mobile phone was a repeater, part of a mesh network? There's routing technology on the market that uses a P2P network architecture instead of traditional mobile phone masts. Every subscriber device is a major part of the network infrastructure. Mesh Networks is doing this now.
Sent in The Ignis with Radio Transnote on the N8 at Urlingford.
Comment? ref: 109.
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24 May 2002 |
If Weblogs Had Music
Wouldn't it be cool if weblogs had music?
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Does Google Steal Content?
When reading material published online at the Creative Commons, I started to wonder if Google violates copyright when harvesting and caching web pages. Do news bloggers steal traffic from on-line papers when aggregating content?
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23 May 2002 |
Patents and Royalty Income on Software Can you patent technology and avoid Irish tax? Yep. I watched lawsuits unfold in the Y2K arena a few years ago, when an Irish company secured a Irish patent on encapsulation software. They didn't get a patent in any other company, but they got slapped with lawsuits for patent infringement by an American company. It's happening to SmartForce now.
Irish companies can avoid paying tax on royalties. So if a business process is a patented process, it could be generating royalty income. In Ireland, royalty income is most commonly enjoyed by entertainers. And software developers.
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Blogging During Conferences Will we blog the September 2002 SEISS conference in Kilkenny? The ETCON 2002 conference demonstrated that weblogs are having a powerful impact on conferences. I'm on a planning committee that thinks we should have blogs report on the conference in real time. They would link their content to posts on boards.ie and inject links into threads on the Open, IIA-WST and IIA-EBS lists. We would aggregate comments into a conference news blog, make this blog page the default page on internet terminals scattered throughout the conference. We would also inject weblog commentary into conference discussions.
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Radio UserLand Confused on Date
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| My personal Radio UserLand Web server has lost its date. So many of my posts are scrambled. There has to be a way for Radio UserLand to work with ejits like me, who have to occasionally boot up with an incorrect date. |
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Creative Commons |
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Creative Commons has opened with plans to provide a free set of tools to enable creators to share aspects of their copyrighted works with the public or to dedicate them entirely to the public domain. Stanford Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig is the first Creative Commons Chairman. He described the new project this
way when he spoke at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference: Our
tools will make it easier for people to make some or all of their rights
available to the public for free. If, for example, an artist wants to make
her music available for non-commercial use, or with just attribution, our
tools will help her express those intentions in a machine-readable form.
Computers will then be able to identify and understand the terms of the
license, making it easier for people to search for and share creative
works.
Sent from Radio TransNote while in The Ignis, KK to TS.
ref: 125. |
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22 May 2002 |
About Information Ecology
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We could learn something about the Network Design Experience by observing the information ecology of online gaming, where the interactions between players are supported by the elements of the game environments. Except where I teach. Because management bans games on computers.
Sent to Weblog in the blind over IOL Webmail, from Co Tipperary.
ref: 125. |
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Hoping for 24 Nina
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| How can I get more than 24 hours of Nina? She's the loyal counter-terrorist agent who features strongly in the Fox television series 24. Many in Ireland can see the show on two different channels separated by 48 hours. Meaning you can get 2 of 24 if you like. |
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For the first time ever, I've started trawling the Internet, seeking out 24 clues. It looks like Nina for every episode. Now, if I'd taped the show, I'd get my fill 24/7.
Sent from Garringreen over Eircom ISDN.
ref: 350.
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Macromedia Flash is More Than Shockwave
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Macromedia Flash is more than Shockwave |
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21 May 2002 |
Key2Audio Loses to Marker Pen
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| I wasn't impressed when several artists released CDs that refused to play on my computer. Today, I'm less impressed to see that Sony's elaborate "Key2Audio" CD copy-protection technology fails when you blacken the rim of a copy-protected music CD with a felt tip marker.
You can also use cello tape to accomplish the same trick because all that's needed is to block the disc's security track, typically located on the disc's outer edge. The technology prevents users from playing the CDs on a computer by adding a track that contains bogus data. Because computer drives are programmed to read data files first, the PC tries to play the bogus data file over and over again and never gets to the music files elsewhere on the disc. My White Lilies CD would play on standard CD players, but not on my Iomega USB CD-ROM drive. I wasn't alarmed when it didn't play in The Ignis, because Ruth isn't wild for Natalie anyway.
Sent onboard The Ignis abeam Slievenamon, County Tipperary, using Radio TransNote, Nokia Cardphone and Vodafone HSD.
ref: 125 |
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Beautiful Rear
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Sighting: another Declan McCullagh masterpiece.Spotted while assessing end-of-year Web projects in Tipperary Institute, Ireland.
Radio TransNote connected over E1 HEANet bandwidth.
ref: 350. |
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Worm in Kazaa I use KaZaA but I'm thinking not, after reading that Kaspersky Labs, an international data-security software developer, has detected the network worm "Worm.Kazaa.Benjamin" - the first malicious program to spread through the KaZaA file exchange network. I'm not sure that my anti-virus program protects me.
On an infected computer "Benjamin" creates a directory accessible to other users of the KaZaA network and regularly copies itself into this directory under a multitude of different names, the amount of which counts several thousand. When a network user conducts a search for a file under a name corresponding with one the worm's pseudonyms the unsuspecting user is given the chance to download it from the infected computer. Thus, this is how Benjamin spreads itself through the KaZaA network.
In addition to eating up free disk space Benjamin takes additional actions: under the name of the infected computer's owner it opens an anonymous web site from which it displays advertising banners. This way Benjamin's creator profits by the resulting increase in advertising displays.
more info on "Worm.Kazaa.Benjamin" at Kaspersky Virus Encyclopedia.
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Gayometer Challenge
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| Bernie Goldbach took the Gay-O-Meter Challenge and needs to soften up.
Sent from Garringreen over Eircom ISDN.
ref: 143 |
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Journalism Enters New Era At a time when The Irish Times has started charging for content, Dan Gillmor explains that journalism has entered a new era.
Paul Andrews (Online Journalism Review): News by the people, for the people. Barton and Foster both operate in a journalistic gray zone corporate media can't quite figure out. They are self-made publishers who create more than content: They're building interactive communities that "meet" online to share their thoughts on the news, often writing polished commentary and connect-the-dot essays that pull together news on a topic from various sources.
Eric Olsen: New Media in the Old, Part 4. Typically, mainstream media outlets don't parody subjects in which the public has no interest or stake - what's the point? It was readily apparent to anyone who cared that the blogosphere had achieved a new level of prestige and recognition when it was parodied yet again in February, this time in the very mainstream Weekly Standard.
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Innovative Google Labs
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DMCA Hoedown
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| Proving that pictures are worth a thousand words, Declan McCullagh snapped photos of proponents of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a law recognised as a restriction to the flow of information. I like Declan's straightforward licensing conditions for use of his photos.
As I glanced at the photos, I was simultaneously reading an excerpt in Brewster Kahle's Internet Archive from Eldred v Ashcroft:
By unconstitutionally extending the term of copyright, the CTEA single-handedly deprives our schools, libraries, and children of enjoying almost any benefit that digital archives have to offer. The CTEA's retroactive and prospective extensions have frozen the public domain in time.
Sent over Eircom ISDN from Kilkenny, Ireland.
ref: 125 |
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20 May 2002 |
Googling in the Blogosphere |
| | By the time the O'Reilly Emerging Tech Conference had wrapped up on 16 May, organisers realised they had welcomed thousands of virtual spectators into the wings. Those not physically present were just as involved as some in the back of the conference halls.
They were tied into the proceedings via a patchwork quilt of Weblogs. One week later, LuskPeople.com achieved the same functionality, by making a Weblog of the issues surrounding a Treasury Holdings project in their community. Both examples showed how an organiser can leverage background material and coverage by Webloggers via the Internet, while events were unfolding. When you blog, you write a log on the Web.
Sent over Eircom ISDN from Kilkenny
ref: 26121 Read more |
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Customer Care in Low Cost v Irish Flag Carriers
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My wife started working for Aer Lingus yesterday, having passed her training with flying colours(!)
The last job Louise had was with a low cost carrier. She got squeezed out. She put the customer first. Officially she was told that there was no room in the low cost business for placing the customer first.
This morning Louise came home delighted –- she was let go forty minutes early by her supervisor for having processed a check-in queue in next to no time.
At Aer Lingus they obviously put the customer first. She’s found her thing. Aer Lingus have found her.
Now I don’t fly myself. I go to all lengths to avoid it. I’ve driven to Spain to avoid the flight. I see it as a totally unnatural process to put oneself through.
To those who fly, I have a little question. Why are you all so mean when it comes to putting your lives in someone else’s hands? Low cost flying must kick in someday. Surely there is a reason why flying from A to B in a very expensive machine costs X amount. Would you send your nearest and dearest over to London for a fiver? What? You would?
There have been a lot of stories recently about people being treated shabbily by the low cost airlines. What do you expect? No rudeness or arrogance? Hell they’re the only ones making money.
There’s no room in the low cost airline model for customer care. It seems customer care isn’t a thing that the customer cares for.
Posted by Tim over GPRS from Lusk in Ireland |
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Otis Blackwell |
| | I'll remember 6 May 2002 as the day Otis Blackwell died, 70 years old. His name was nothing more than a small line of print, but his creativity gave the world Don't Be Cruel, Great Balls of Fire, and Breathless.
According to music business legend, "Goldy" Goldmark told Otis, "You can write about anything. Write about this!" Whereupon he shook a bottle of soda. Otis came back with All Shook Up.
Otis Blackwell: born 1932; died May 2002.
Sent while drinking a Coke in Kilkenny.
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Is a Picture Worth 1000 Words?
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Is a picture really worth a thousand words? The Irish mobile phone companies certianly hope so, as they consider the pricing structure for multimedia messaging service (MMS). You might be shocked to see the rates.
The working numbers suggest a basic MMS rate of one euro a pop. And who is going to pay 9 times the rate of SMS to send a picture to their mates?
If vox pop research means anything, the mobile phone networks have their work cut out for them in trying to pull subscribers onth the path between GSM and GPRS. Adding this stifling MMS rate isn't going to encourage usage.
Sent from The Hibernian, Kilkenny with TransNote Radio over Vodafone HSD.
ref: 109 |
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Video Conferencing in Flash For the third day walking, I am dripping wet inside The Tea Shop. Today, my car wouldn't start on account of a weekend of drenching on its spark plug cables. I'll miss a meeting in Carlow as a result. Time for a new set of wheels.
So, have you heard the rumours about video conferencing in Flash? Well, Macromedia's FAQ answers some questions. MM also have an Early Notification form so you can get your hands on it as soon as it's available. According to Flash Blog, "This new server technology will allow developers to easily integrate two-way, live and stored, audio/video streams into any Macromedia Flash MX web application, without requiring users to have anything but the current Macromedia Flash Player." ++++++++++
Sent by Nokia 9110 email to Topgold Blog while in Kilkenny. ref: 143.
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19 May 2002 |
Dave Winer's Main Points at ETCON 2002
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Dave Winer made some really good points in the O'Reilly Emerging Tech Conference, some I'm repeating here.
How XML-RPC came to be
- Networking software on Windows and Mac in 1998.
- Use XML as encoding, HTTP as transport.
- Collaborate with Microsoft.
- Spec finalized in April 1998.
SOAP continued the process
- Work continues with Microsoft.
- Other big companies come in the loop.
- The vision remains constant.
- Simple cross-platform scripting.
The Web as a scripting environment
- Simple, low-tech, ubiquitous.
- No one owns it.
Bootstrapping
- Doug Engelbart coined the term.
- Lay a thin cable, use it to lift a slightly bigger cable.
Start simple
- And stay simple. One step at a time.
- Nothing in the technology industry ever gets accomplished by committees.
- Only the bootstrapping method works.
25 percent cash register, 75 percent writing.
- Most of what goes on on the Web is reading and writing.
- Writing is too hard.
Decentralization
- Moore's Law continues to rage.
- Centralized resources are dear, as more work moves on to the Internet.
- Move as much work to the edges as possible.
- Get Moore on our side.
Demo
- Post an item to my weblog.
- Route it to a category.
- Look at the XML.
- See the "cloud".
- There's a very simple Web Service.
- How do you find the services?
- Look in the XML.
Sent via Garringreen ISDN.
ref: 26121
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Niggling Questions from Dave Winer [ETCON 2002]
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| Dave Winer fielded some niggling questions during the O'Reilly ETCON 2002 Conference.
What Do You Think?
- How will we prevent lock-in by vendors when they start patenting and copyrighting schema, etc?
- Why do tech companies assume that users will gladly trade in purchased software, where they can use it as long as it works, for the vendor wet-dream of subscriptions? It may make sense in some cases, but it's plainly not in our interest in others.
- Privacy seems to be an absolute afterthought. What will protect us?
- The copyright owners, i.e. Hollywood, loathe peer to peer technology, a key part of Web services. Could they stomp it all out?
Sent from Garringreen over eircom ISDN.
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Convert OPML into SWF
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| We need to convert OPML into SWF.
Useful Links
Sent from Garringreen over eircom ISDN.
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Liggers at The Ragg
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| Tipperary has two winners today. It's senior hurlers topped Clare and its senior politician topped the polls. So that means plenty of free pints at The Ragg, just outside Thurles, County Tipperary.
The Ragg is Michael Lowry Country. People who couldn't stand the drama of the counting room nursed their Guinness in The Ragg, watching RTE coverage or text messages on their phone. The RTE coverage was quick because Michael captured 10,400 votes on the first count.
Michael told attending journos, "Don't be looking around corners that don't exist," as he savored his moment of triumph. There's still the matter of a tax compliance certificate that he must present to comply with the Standards in Public Office Act.
But for now, this is "the best day I have had in politics," as Michael bought dozens of rounds for well-wishers at The Ragg. The Progressive Democrat Bill Dwan was eliminated on the first count, with just 1,446 votes. According to Michael's people, those were Lowry votes, the 1,200 votes that separates the 2002 Lowry victory from his 1997 run out.
Sent underway in The Ignis between Thurles and Urlingford, using TransNote Radio, Nokia Cardphone and Vodafone HSD.
ref: 17 |
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Sinn Fein, Greens Major Winners
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Sitting in The Hibernian and reading the Sunday papers. Sinn Fein has made sensational gains here in Ireland, and is set to be a significant force in the new Dail. The Green Party has also polled exceptionally well, and will at least double its representation.
The Greens seem to be tapping into issues that concern the biggest chunk of the voting public -- gridlock, environment, and housing. You can tackle gridlock by constraining private autos and you can help the environment by articulating rational waste management, like the issue promoted by Lusk People.
Sent after 2 Irish coffees and four newspapers from The Hibernian, Kilkenny, Ireland.
Using TransNote Radio, Nokia Cardphone and Vodafone HSD.
ref: 17 |
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Smokestacks Over a Treasury Holding
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I'm getting dozens of views on the Topgold Blog ever since starting to cover Treasury Holdings in Ireland. Local townspeople in Lusk, County Dublin claim they want to preserve their treasured landscape from an incinerator. They've taken on Treasury Holdings, Ireland's biggest property development company. The dispute centres more on the use of the domain name, rather than the use of agricultural land.
You cannot underestimate the power of cyberactivism. And the No Incineration in Lusk Campaign has an edgy activism sharpening the issues. The cause is helped by the advice of professionals from two political parties and coverage from The Register.
I think people need to become more informed about these issues, perhaps by reading the plans proposed by Treasury Holdings, track records of Herhof Waste Treatment plants and fact sheets from ECo, a waste management concern. LuskPeople.com point to a few relevant links.
Sent via TransNote Radio UserLand in Kilkenny's Hibernian Hotel using Nokia CardPhone on Vodafone HSD.
ref: 17 |
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Managing Your Links List in Radio
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18 May 2002 |
Treasury Holdings Loses the Dot Com Domain |
| We're involved in a local issue about a waste incinerator and it has electronic and election undertones. The activisim involves snapping up the domain name http://www.treasuryholdings.com and using it as a doorway page in a group campaign against a Treasury Holdings-backed waste facility project.
The Irish Times carries the story, revealing that Mr Tim Kirby, a Lusk website developer who is running the campaign, discovered the Treasuryholdings.com domain name was available while doing research on the company. He then paid the $37 (€40) annual fee to obtain the rights to the name.
I listened to several phone conversations with people from Treasury Holdings where they whined about forgetting to renew the registration on the domain name. The company's web developers should be called into question about this error.
So, now http://www.LuskPeople.com have the Treasuryholdings.com domain to mirror community information, providing a range of information on the Lusk area. As could be expected, many in the small agricultural community are against against incinerators, running a No Incinerators in Lusk (NIL) stance. ++++++++++
Sent from Kilkenny over eircom ISDN.
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17 May 2002 |
Are Bloggers Building an Online Ghetto?
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| The Shifted Librarian noticed two emerging technologies (intentional adjective) at ETCON 2002 during O'Reilly Emerging Tech Conference.
The first is from Alan A. Reiter:
"O'Reilly gets it. Well, of course they do. This a terrific example of how a conference organizer can leverage articles about the speakers and coverage by Webloggers via WiFi as the conference is going on. On one page O'Reilly has a couple of sentences and links to such Weblogs as boingboing, raelity bytes, megnut.com and many others. It also has links to articles about the speakers and photos of the conference.
Conference organizers need to see and know about this. It's not rocket science, but not many conferences are doing this. I'm going to make sure the attendees at my WiFi conference for conference organizers know about this. I'm also going to use it as an example in my other conference presentations and as part of my wireless consulting (and I speak around the world about this stuff).
Unfortunately, most conference organizers are clueless about the value of this sort of information."
This is an interesting use of the technology during conferences of geeks. If implemented, you would get immediate dissemination of panels and presentations out to the 99% of the profession that can't make it to any given conference.
The second is from Rob Flickenger:
"So there I was at ETech, sitting in the back of the Emergence discussion, listening to Rael Dornfest, Cory Doctorow, Clay Shirky, and other extraordinary blogging minds thought about the blogging world.
I was thoroughly enjoying the discussion, but I had to wonder, how were the other 200 people in the room reacting to the proceedings? Response seemed very favorable, but I did see quite a few faces staring down, with accompanying tell-tale key clicks buzzing about the room.
If only there were some way of getting into the collective stream-of-consciousness of the crowd, to gauge their actual reactions to what was really going on up on stage....
If you've never heard of EtherPEG, its a Mac hack that's been around for a while that combines all of the modern conveniences of a packet sniffer with the good old-fashioned friendliness of a graphics rendering library, to show you whatever GIFs and JPEGs are flying around on your network. It's sort of a real-time meta browser that dynamically builds a view of other people's browsers, built up as other people look around online.
The effect was staggering. As I expected, traffic was very light at the beginning (a couple of big news and blog sites were obvious, and strangely enough, the Microsoft Developer's Network.) But as the talk continued, some people were obviously letting their minds (and their fingers) wander...
I was impressed that when Tim O'Reilly stood up to ask about whether bloggers were building a city or living in their own ghetto, virtually all traffic stopped. Evidently, this was something that almost everybody in the room was interested in listening to. And once Tim sat down again, the pixels began to flow once more....
It became obvious that the crowd could be viewed as a living organism, with its own cycles of activity and rest. The chaotic effect of random images plastering themselves on my screen gave me a unique point of view-- it was a sort of mental feedback (much like audio feedback, even with the accompanying headache, only this headache was in some bizarre fourth dimension.)"
++++++++++
Sent from The Ground Floor, Kilkenny, Ireland using Nokia 6310 IR for O2 GPRS from IBM TransNote.
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16 May 2002 |
Herhof and Dioxins
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| Treasury Holdings is trying to launch its new website today. Naturally, you would expect cross-branding from the Irish company, straddling the dot.ie, dot.net and dot.com domains. Right now, the Treasury Holdings dot.com site provides an apolitical look at incineration, covering arcane concepts about dioxins and the Herhof process. These matters concern the residents of Lusk, County Dublin, a small garden farming community with more than its share of unwanted municipal waste. Their online activism indicates a level of awareness not normally associated with a rural community.
++++++++++
@Carlow,Ireland, aboard Irish Rail from an IBM TransNote over Vodafone HSD.
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Jake's Blogroll Editor
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Task: Write code that creates a HTML page from a cookie
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| Thanks to Jenny, the shifted librarian, I have learned that left-brain bloggers tend to provide insight and commentary rather than just reposting a link. But what does it mean if readers of shifted blogs also like left-brain blogs like Lawmeme, Jim McGee, 802.11b News, and Dan Gillmor? These aforementioned blogs give context to wire stories, more than you normally get from many Irish publications.
Although I wouldn't be caught with a copy of Hello!, I admit to the emotional appeal of right-brain dominant blogs, primarily because they personalise a story. "They tend to include in their posts one-liners that do a beautiful job of summarizing an issue, often making a backhand point to the story," says The Shifted Librarian. Have a read of librarian.net, bOing bOing, Doc Searls and Mary Wehmeier's Blog Du Jour to get a taste of this right brain style. I agree with Jenny, "it's definitely the tunnel into their emotional thoughts that keeps me coming back."
The ones that successfully mix the two sides of the brain are my favorites, though - Kottke.org, Scripting News, Adam Curry, and Ernie the Attorney to name a few. Sure, these guys get all of the press, but they are also the "big picture" folks who provide analysis and emotional connection, and from their standing in the blogger community (and hit counts), I'm not alone in this assessment.
This is the type of online communication towards which marketers should be striving. The Macromedia blogs are a good start, but they don't give me enough bigger-picture context to connect with me on a more emotional level. They don't grab me and make me say "hallelujah" or "yes, I'm going to do that!" Of course, I don't think they're supposed to perform this particular function and these guys already have full-time jobs, but their marketing division could pursue something more right- or mixed-brained. (Hey, I'm "Seussing" and making words up as I go along!) The left- and right-brain mix is probably the Cluetrain connection for marketers.
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Sent from Garringreen over eircom ISDN. |
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Listening to Morning in Garringreen |
| | My dog takes me for a walk around Garringreen and the Pococke River just before 6 each morning. At that time of day, you can hear Garringreen awakening. In this part of Ireland, no industrial noise blankets the birds, cows and horses. Unlike Phoenix Park in Dublin during the same time frame, the local animals don't have to talk above road noise or trains jockeying for morning departures. Walking Garringreen in the morning is almost like being down the country. ++++++++++
Sent over Eircom ISDN from Kilkenny, Ireland |
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15 May 2002 |
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| When man was landing on the moon, my downwind neighbours were getting cancerous growths and brain tumours. From their well water.
When it was happening, we thought it was just one of those things. But it happened to two successive families living in the same house. Whatever caused the maladies was in the well water.
The Goldbach Family drew its water from a different vein, so I grew up with healthy brothers, strong enough to etch scars on each other.
Today, there's a problem brewing in Lusk, County Dublin. It relates to potentially contaminated well water too. The problem stems from an oversaturated dump. The area may now get an incinerator, bringing with it dioxins for the generations to come. That means my godson is more likely to suffer from cancer than someone living in the rural hills of Kilkenny, next to me.
I'm bothered by the way some Irish planners relegate certain communities to the unhealthy zones of life. We should treat our waste problem as a health issue, not an issue of convenience.
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Sent from Athy aboard Irish Rail over Vodafone HSD from an IBM TransNote.
Get a Lusk People Press Kit for more info. |
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Increasing Number of SMS Messages
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| More than 140bn messages will be sent in 2002. This is simply the most extensive, yet accidental, non-intrusive technology of the early post-Y2K era.
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Semt by Tim Kirby from Outlook to Weblog. |
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Dave Stewart Takes on Corrupt Music Industry
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While sitting in the Kilkenny train station, I'm amazed to see two backpackers reading the Financial Times because students know you can get two Page Three spreads for the price of one FT.
Looking closer, I can see they're reading the Creative Business insert about Dave Stewart taking on the corrupt music industry. I wish him well in his endeavours and wonder if he might consider an affiliation with Kilkenny. After all, the medieval Irish city has Cartoon Saloon and the Young Irish Film Makers, both suitable for rounding out Dave Stewart's newly-emerging Artists' Network.
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Sent over Vodafone HSD with Nokia CardPhone from IBM TransNote. |
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14 May 2002 |
SEISS Events
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Several SEISS working group meetings are scheduled for May. One happens in Kilkenny on Friday, 17 May. Another happens in Carlow on Monday, 20 May. Both involve working to achieve strategic objectives in support of the Information Society.
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e0: Sent by Notes Mail over E1 HEANet to weblog. |
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ICS sponsors inaugural event of new SOFTWARE TESTING SIG The first meeting to kick-off this group is on May 15th, at the Landsdowne Hotel, Pembroke Road, Dublin from 5.30pm until 8.00pm. This meeting is open to all and is FREE to attend. You must RSVP.
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e0: sent by Patrick O'Beirne via email. |
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Irish Roads Are a Mess |
| Try using a laptop on a Bus Eireann trip and see if you're able to operate more than 40 minutes without being jostled all over the keyboard by bumps in the road. If you can, call me. I'll buy you a pint.
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17b. Sent over Vodafone HSD by IBM TransNote using Nokia Cardphone. |
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13 May 2002 |
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When Lawrence Lessig visited Dublin, Ireland, he railed against the overly zealous culture of copyright protection. Now he's taking the fight into the Creative Commons, a nonprofit company that will develop ways for artists, writers and others to easily designate their work as freely shareable.
Lessig will unveil Creative Commons this week in Santa Clara, California. It's backed by nearly a million dollars in start-up money. He will also sign his latest book, The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World, in which he argues that imminent changes to Internet architecture plus court decisions that restrict the use of intellectual property will co-opt the Net on behalf of Establishment players -- and stifle innovation.
We need a Creative Commons because legal protection has overexpanded for intellectual property. Things like the 1998 copyright law, extending the term of copyright by 20 years, will inhibit creativity and innovation. We also need Creative Commons to help identify material that is meant to be shared. If you make it easy to place material in the public domain, more people will share their stuff.
Count me in as someone interested in Creative Commons licensing. This project will design a set of licenses stating the terms under which a given work can be copied and used by others. Musicians who want to build an audience, for instance, might permit people to copy songs for noncommercial use. I work with graphic designers who would allow unlimited copying of certain work as long, as long as they get a credit for the work.
I have seen work at www.picsearch.com from photographers, journalists, and graphics artists who have gone through courses I've taught. They would benefit if licensing was machine-readable, enabling anyone to use an internet search engine to find legally reusable images or music clips.
Professor Lessig describes this process as "a way to mark the spaces people are allowed to walk on." This sounds like the Open Source movement. Creative Commons ultimately plans to create a "conservancy" for donations of valuable intellectual property whose owners might opt for a tax break rather than selling it into private hands.
Besides Professor Lessig, the Creative Commons' board of directors includes James Boyle, an intellectual property professor at Duke Law School; Hal Abelson, a computer science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Eric Saltzman, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School.
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ref: 125 Uploaded from Upper Garringreen ISDN, Kilkenny, Ireland. |
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Who Moved My Cheese
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Everyone needs motivators, but as time goes on, our motivations change. Would a small company be open to new bits of cheese -- like new processes, techniques, or changes to its organisation dynamic? In a sense, that encapsulates part of the CHANGES initiative. Expect more details from the Tipperary Business Advisers' Network.
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This SIGHTING sent as e-mail from a Nokia 9110 during a planning meeting in Clonmel, County Tipperary. |
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Leaking the Internet from the Lamposts | Leaking the Internet from the Lamposts Electricnews.net reveals how MLE is leaking the web over WiFi. That's a great step towards more public-funded agencies leaking the internet from the lamposts.
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Sent by Nokia 9110 O2 email while in High Street, Kilkenny, to Topgold Weblog. |
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Technology Real People Pay to Use | I admit to being a geek with technology, someone who isn't a real consumer. But when it comes to figuring out how to get people to pay to use the stuff, you have to take on a different attitude.
Take the Orange House, located on the edge of Hatfield Business Park in Herfortshire, England. It's chock-full of communications but those living in it couldn't be bothered with controlling their lights or turning on their oven remotely by using their phones. Real consumers don't see the advantage of home automation.
So, what pays? Idle chit chat pays. I'm on a slow-moving train to Dublin and people are paying to talk and send SMS text. But those same people won't give up a pint on Friday night to be able to open their front doors by using SMS. I'll bet they would pay to carry around a wireless tablet streaming the World Cup. Wouldn't they?
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Sent over Vodafone HSD through an IBM TransNote on Irish Rail at Kildare, Ireland. |
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12 May 2002 |
| Sitting on the banks of the River Nore in Kilkenny, I watched Ferrari make a mockery of racing sportsmanship. With less than 300m to run in the incident-filled Austrian Grand Prix, Ferrari bosses directed Rubens Barrichello to slow down and permit Michael Schumacher to win the race. Based on the reactions of those Irish watching the race, Ferrari lost street credibility with their decision. I'm not ever going to be a Ferrari fan, and I won't ever buy a Fiat. My decision is reinforced by these kinds of on-track shenanigans. If you think the same, tell Vodafone you don't like Ferrari abusing the spirit of sport.
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Sent from the Kilkenny Rivercourt Hotel over O2 GPRS. |
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11 May 2002 |
| Woven into the Fabric
Walking around in Ireland, it's easy to forget how much we've woven technology into our lives. I just got an SMS message to my phone, sent through e-mail by my extended family in the desert southwest of the US. To those around me, it's an SMS beeping on my phone. To those in the States, it's a short e-mail message sent on their computer. And it works nonintrusively -- an interaction woven into the fabric of everday life.
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ref: f1 bfg
Sent e-mail to blog with Nokia 9110 mobile phone. |
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When I used Infopop's Ultimate Bulletin Board to author with several friends while underway, the server-side features wouldn't always publish. Sometimes my wireless modem would drop offline. Other times, it just took longer than expected to get revisions made. Now the UserLand community has strung together a Multi-Author Weblog System that works faster, mainly because its functionality lies on the client side. Details here: http://radio.userland.com/discuss/msgReader$14400?mode=topic&;y=2002&m=5&d=8
++++++++++ref:143 Sent from Palm m505 MultiMail over O2 GPRS with Nokia 6310. |
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Telcos Bleeding
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The technology and telecoms sectors have shed a quarter of their value in the first half of 2002. And that is on top of declines of more than 30% in 2001. |
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| From the aniMoto Press Room: The Irish Animation Festival plans a weekend event in Kilkenny, Ireland, November, 2002. Details announced in Annecy, France during the first week of June 2002. |
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10 May 2002 |
Having a Senior Moment I'm having one of those senior moments. I just cannot remember where I put my USB CD burner.
I can hear Tony Buzan grating his teeth. He's the memory expert who offers Getting Ahead tips for improving your memory and your work life.
You could run a TIme and Motion Study on the effort I expended trying to locate the CD burner. As I was rummaging around, I had flashbacks of friends searching for papers, documents and CDs. And I remember how stressed they felt.
So, I've taken Buzan's advice. I tried to play back in my mind the last time I recalled touching the CD burner. Then I tried to remember what I was thinking about how I was going to take care of the thing. I remembered telling myself to put it in a bag so it wouldn't get separated from its power or data cables.
Voila! The mental snapshot worked. I remembered it was in a black bag from the ICT Expo. Trouble is, I can't remember where I put that bag.
Sent en route from Urlingford to Thurles. 18km. 15 minutes. In an Ignis on a sunny May Day.
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There's a lively spam discussion raging on the Irish Internet Association
e-business mailing list.
Siobhán Tyrrell of www.Strata3.com stunned a few readers when she revealed
there are some marketers that abhor spam.
In her mind, "Marketing is about affecting behaviour to meet predefined
objectives. Stating the bleeding obvious but quite apart from the usual and
valid arguments re bandwith, inconvenience, clutter, and intrusiveness, the
use of opt-out unsolicited email is lazy, inefficient non-effective
marketing! It takes the increasingly outmoded and failing principles of
broadcast/mass communications and appies them to an environment which is
built around micro markets, peer dialogue, interests and all that other
good stuff.
"It's not going to work is it? Just because it's cheap and anyone can press
the send button doesn't mean you're going to get results. Marketers who
don't get this should be forced to hand in their badge."
Subscribe to the e-business list at www.iia.ie
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07 May 2002 |
It's a 50 minute drive from Kilkenny to Thurles and I'm underway now. Once into County Tipperary, you get a teeth-chattering welcome to the Hurling Kingdom. (Actually, Kilkenny hurlers, fresh from beating Cork, would argue they hold the top-of-the-table honours.) Although election posters dot the landscape, none of the politicians are promising to fix the awful state of the road surface.
Over the long and sunny weekend, Ruth and I toured through County Waterford, stopping at a fun fair. There were no bouncy castles! But we saw some fun rides and enjoyed Chinese food just uphill from The Junction in Tramore. RECOMMENDED.
I'm pulling together some thoughts designed to help some Irish software companies get broad coverage on commercial wired publishing channels. The coders I've met during the last three years can hold their own on a global playing pitch. And the ones in wireless space could show American companies ideas guaranteed to win competitive advantage.
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0:50 traveling 53km in Suzuki Ignis. Sent Blog over Vodafone HSD using Nokia Cardphone 2.
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04 May 2002 |
Just got off the bus from Kilkenny and am running around Clonmel trying to locate a rather expensive video camera. There must be a dozen leaflets advertising the Kilkenny Rhythm and Roots weekend. Be there!
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| I listen to Brian Greene's Playlist, one of Ireland's leading voices in the pirate radio sector. He's not alone in his crusade to keep the radio waves open. WebMonkey reminds readers, "Radio manages to create a dynamic environment for the exchange of information without asking too much of each individual user. They've made it simple for beginners to get involved in a kind of active network that would've required much more know-how a few years ago. If you're looking for more than just a tool, but an effortless way to get a site launched and incorporated into an online community, Radio may be your best bet."
I have to figure out how to teach radio skills (just the script creation and elements of technical production) to college students, give them a channel to the outside, while not competing with Radio Kilkenny. |
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It's a rare day when an Irish morning starts without clouds. And this long weekend looks like it's going to be a winner. We're aboard Bus Eireann from Kilkenny to Clonmel, using a IBM TransNote to write this short snippet and a Nokia Cardphone to send it to the world. I'd rather page through the Saturday London Guardian. I think it's the best newspaper you can buy in Ireland on a Saturday.
Because of some self-inflicted problems I've had with my Internet Service Provider, I haven't updated my blog in months. I missed the daily updates, so now it's back into action, writing while underway in Ireland.
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