Underway in Ireland

31 December 2002

Blogs Officially Mainstream Jenny Levine -- Many people have declared blogs officially "mainstream," especially after the whole Trent Lott debacle, however, there's definitive proof in the January 2003 issue of Ladies Home Journal. "Teenagers used to file first kisses and missed curfews safely under lock and key in a private diary. But today's tech-savvy teens are keeping a blog (short for Web log) or online journal instead. In essence, a blog is a form of personal publishing that allows willing diarists - sometimes anonymous, usually not - to create a Web page where they can share their stories in cyberspace, and update them frequently (there are now as many as 500,000). At livejournal.com, a blog home base, of sorts, the need to build a Web page or buy software is eliminated (users only have to sign up before letting it all out). And letting it out teens are. Says the site's supervisor and developer Jesse Proulx: 'Some kids even consider blogging a new form of therapy.' Tom Murphy echoes much the same, speaking from the the PR world where he says "blogs were obviously the hottest topic in the online PR world and there was plenty of good advice on how to tackle them" in 2002. ["Their Heart on Their Screen" in Ladies Home Journal, Jan 03 p88 and The Shifted Librarian. Plus Lloyd Trufelman and Laura Goldberg in "Pitching Blogs." And Phil Gomes in "Blogs: Ignore them at your peril."]

Comments for Irish Minister Dermot Ahern GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- I concur with comments raised in Business Opinion sections of several Irish papers. The Irish Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources should direct participation by his colleagues in the public discussion forum of the Department website, including a rallying cry to the thread that asks, "Is this forum a sham." Minister Ahern should publicly advocate a major project, like the metropolitan fibre ring in Kilkenny (YES!) or the Digital Hub in The Liberties of Dublin. Minister Ahern ought to champion an easy victory in the realm of WiFi enablement, perhaps by "a national policy to encourage the development of wireless hotpspots in public areas such as libraries, airports and universities" as articulated by Karlin Lillington. ["Communication must be Minister Ahern's keyword" by Karlin Lillington in The Irish Times and The Ireland Offline Forum and The Eircom Tribunal.]

What Should I Do With My Life Aaron Swartz -- What Should I Do With My Life? asks Aaron the teenager. Po Bronson also asks this in his new book. Some of Aaron's shortlist items could be my resolutions, including Use wireless to bring back the community-run Internet Write software to make non-commercial copying easier Read lots of books Answer email and chat on IRC [Dewayne Mikkelson and Aaron Swartz]

Housebreaking My New Dog in Seven Days [day nine] GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- The big news is the puppy has relieved herself outside when directed to go outside. (I wonder if this means I've got a housebreaking victory ahead of Karlin Lillington completing her XP installation?) She (Holly) needs to be invited outside when it's dark out back. She would rather use the newspaper inside the house because it's warm and familiar. I haven't been able to get her to be productive when on short or long walks. However, we'll take our small victories and outside action of any kind is good. PLAN: Walk Holly solo, with a treat in my pocket and keep her in an area where other dogs have marked. Find another cleaning agent because Toilet Duck cleanser does not remove the residue of her previous markings. [Karlin Lillington]

My New Year's Resolution GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- I have a single New Year's Resolution and it is to execute at least one line of an outline each day. That's no mean feat, when using a Bonsai outline on a Palm planner. Chris Gulker offers encouragement: "I like simple resolutions that are easy to keep and that can add up to big changes." [Bonsai]

30 December 2002

Searching the Blogosphere on Christmas Day Aboard Irish Rail -- I combed through a slow day on my blog by examining everything that occurred on the web server for 25 December 2002. Here is a record of the 31 distinct individuals who visited the Topgold Blog on Christmas Day 2002. Visitor from Germany Used Google at 0010 searched for “nokia cardphone gprs" Visitor from Reston VA USA Used Google at 0030 for "innogear MP302" Visitor from Ealing UK Used Google at 0206 for “PSC 750 hp review” Visitor from Bombay at 0232 Visitor from AOL Used Daypop at 0240 for “macromedia” Visitor from AOL Used Google at 0251 for "Open Mailing List” and “horstmann” Visitor from El Paso TX USA Used Google at 0504 for “moblogging tools” Visitor from Jersey City NJ USA at 0650 referred by cyberjournalist.net Visitor from Montevideo Uruguay Used Overture at 0714 for “underway” Visitor from Amsterdam NL at 0750 Visitor from Denver CO USA at 0758 Visitor from Beijing China at 1058 Visitor from Dublin Ireland at 1259 Visitor from UTV Internet Ireland at 1313 Visitor from UTV Internet Ireland Viewed 3 Pages at 1324 Visitor from China at 1501 Visitor from St Louis MO USA Referred by Gulker at 1554 Visitor from Hong Kong to Legacy Page at 1612 Visitor from Louisville CO USA at 1632 Visitor from Hard Rock Café Kuwait Used Yahoo at 1723 for “videos for Nokia 7650” Visitor from Toronto Ontario Canada at 1732 Visitor from Bletchley UK Used Google at 1756 for “wireless PC to Stereo Link” Visitor from ICT Eurotel Ireland Used Google at 1756 for “notebooks Dublin” Visitor from Albany NY USA Used Google at 1933 for “Vincent Fuschino” Visitor from Denver CO USA at 2043 Visitor from Milton Australia at 2102 Visitor from Indigo Ireland at 2107 Visitor from Iowa USA Used Yahoo at 2152 for “Prairie Inet p2p” WAP Browser Using Google on Nokia 7210 at 2252 Visitor Used Google for "gianni Jacklone" and Viewed 3 Pages at 2308 Visitor from Ireland at 2312 [G! See also Chris Gulker's Robot Noise Study. Filed from IBM TransNote using Nokia D211 HSD Service en route to Kilkenny. x: 119]

Should We Feel Your Pregnant Wife's Breasts Before Boarding? Aboard Irish Rail -- I think the Portland Airport Authority should seriously consider the demeanor of its security personnel. Americans should not expect passengers to politely endure humiliating personal searches, even under the claim of 9-11 safety standards. [G! started at Nicholas Monahan and Hack the Planet but not fact-checked.]

On the Train IRISH RAIL -- I am onboard Citygold service en route to Dublin, checking my Radio News Aggregator at 40kbps and see that Dan Gillmor is on the train between Kyoto and Nara getting 128kbps service there. [Dan Gillmor]

Bookshelf: The Design of Sites BAWNTAMEENA -- Van Dune, Landay and Hong have an excellent book that includes wonderful coverage of pattern groups for e-commerce. It's available in 2003 from Addison Wesley, entitled The Design Of Sites: Patterns, Principles, and Processes for Crafting a Customer-Centered Web Experience. [ISBN 0-201-72149-X]

Million Dollar Markup Mark Pilgrim -- Great thoughts from Mark about using semantic web techniques to get the most out of lightweight content management systems. [Dare Obasanjo and Tantek Celik and Hans Nowak and Nico Brunjes and Sam Ruby]

Housebreaking My New Dog in Seven Days [day eight] GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- After eight days, young Holly the Samoyed cross is using newspapers placed next to outside doors. But she isn't relieving herself while on long or short walks outdoors. Occasionally, she misses the newspaper and goes on tiles that were previously marked with urine that leaked through the newspapers. PLAN: Walk Holly solo, unaccompanied by the other house dog. Evaluate whether Toilet Duck cleanser removes the residue of her previous markings. [The Shopping Bag advises Toilet Duck cleans but does not disinfect.]

29 December 2002

Excellent Products for Mobloggers ZDNET -- If you're a moblogger, you should cast your eye on the best products of 2002 because most of the recommendations will deliver years of productive use for those working the mobile Web. [Alex Kidman]

Housebreaking My New Dog in Seven Days [day seven] GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- Well, less than 12 hours remain on the seven day clock and my mixed Samoyed stray named Holly still pees on papers in the house, even when the papers are placed next to an open door. She won't relieve herself while on short or long walks, even when accompanied by a companion Pomeranian who goes everywhere. I think we're looking at another week of housebreaking for the puppy.

Bookshelf: The Twenty-First Century: A Coat Hanger Culture? GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- I remember 1903 as the year of the first flight and the year my grandmother was born but there were other notable events too. Albert Parkhouse picked up and bent a piece of wire to fashion the world's first coat hanger. Mary Anderson drew up designs for the first windshield wiper. Edouard Benedictus accidentally discovered how to make a shatterproof windscreen. Binney and Smith launched the world's first box of colour crayons. Other notable centennial celebrations in 2003 will be the world's first canned tuna, the registration of the Pepsi-Cola brand name, and the building of the first Harley-Davidson in a wooden shed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Bookshelf: The Millennium Atlas Jonathan Leake -- The Millennium Atlas: Petroleum Geology of the Central and Northern North Sea is a 22lb tome that could be Britain's heaviest academic publication and one of its most expensive at STG199 a copy. The atlas describes the geological development that has led to the petroleum deposits in the North Sea. It shows that 540m years ago southern England, Wales and Southern Ireland lay close together about 2,000 miles from the South Pole. They were part of the supercontinent Gondwana that also included South America and Africa, Antarctica, Australia and India. ["We're being sent to Siberia" by Jonathan Leake in The Sunday Times, December 29, 2002]

Sighting: Antarctic Waves ANTARCTIC WAVES -- Here is a fun musical program that encourages learning, creativity and technical know-how. The CD-ROM helps you to create music by manipulating scientific survey data that has been transmogrified into sound. You can rearrange solar pings against the ocean floor into rhythmical patterns. The pitch of gurgling ice floes can be harmonised as if on a keyboard. [James Knight]

No Irish IT Floatations in 2003 Sunday Business Post -- No Irish technology firms are expected to go public in 2003, according to a straw poll of venture capital funders and corporate financiers conducted by The Sunday Business Post. [Gavin Daly]

Irish e-government tender remains stalled Sunday Business Post -- A multimillion-euro plan to offer public services online has stalled on selecting a shortlist of prospective service providers because the tenders have come in above the original costing targets allocated by the government. I would be concerned about the degree of protection given to all the records gathered under the Irish government's plan. In Arizona, where I once contemplated retireing, thieves have compromised the files of TriWest Healthcare Alliance, a private firm that runs the Defense Department's TriCare HMO program for the military in 16 states. Tens of thousands of Arizonans had confidential information compromised during a Dec. 14 break-in. Thieves made off with computer equipment and data files that contained plan beneficiaries' names and addresses, Social Security numbers, phone numbers, medical claims histories and, in some cases, credit card information. [Gavin Daly]

Silicon Technologies Europe Receives Government Subsidies Sunday Business Post -- Silicon Technologies Europe Ltd is based in offices at the government-subsidised Shannon Development Clare Business Centre in Ennis. Dylan Creaven has a hand in the company's stated assets of €4.16m. Creaven also has a hand in conspiring to cheat the British Inland Revenue of STG 162m of VAT. What I would like to know is can you get VAT back on aircraft leasing arrangements. One of the mobile phone traders arrested by British VAT investigators had the personalised automobile registration plate of JU51 VAT (JUST VAT) and another car he owns bears the plate ABU 51T (ABUSE IT). The owner had run a scheme to exploit the zero VAT rate for trading partners in the EU single market. Creaven is not unique. "Assets of €70m in VAT fraud probe" by Barry O'Kelly in The Sunday Business Post. Barry O'Kelly: The big VAT call in The Sunday Times, May 25, 2003. x_ref1481

28 December 2002

Joel Roberts Poinsett METAFILTER -- Joel Roberts Poinsett was the first American ambassador to Mexico, Martin Van Buren's Secretary of War, and a founder of the National Institute for the Promotion of Science and the Useful Arts, which later became the Smithsonian Institute. But his most lasting legacy at Christmastime is as the namesake and American "discoverer" of the poinsettia. [MetaFilter]

Karlin Lillington's Clean Install Karlin Lillington -- I think I can housebreak my dog faster than Karlin can complete a clean install of Windows XP. Time will tell. [Follow the saga by reading technoculture.]

The FBI Has a New Way of Tracking Terrorists Kurt Grigg -- "They are now able to see every click they make on the internet. Privacy advocates say this is bad, but the FBI says you will never even notice, and it won't affect the common man at all." [Have a look for yourself, with JavaScript turned on :-)]

Housebreaking My New Dog in Seven Days [day six] GARRINGREEN -- Holly knows she needs to find a doorway with tiles before she squeaks, squats and shits. Unfortunately, the tiled doorway area need not have newspaper coverage. As far as I can figure, she's going to places she has used before. So I must get some potent solution that can remove traces of her urine and runny poo from the grouted sections of the tiled hallway. It's good to know that she is giving us regular cues before she has to go. She paces with purpose and she utters cute little squeaky noises when she needs to find a poo point. Our problem is we're sometimes engrossed in a television show and we don't notice her get up to go. She doesn't make the noises in carpeted areas or on hardwood floors, just near the point of impact for her four puppy-sized (approx 100g) poo piles. [G!]

Sighting: Bonsai Radio Outlines Rick Klau -- It pays to think in outline format because it's easier to direct actions from lists instead of from lengthy paragraphs. At least that's what I believe. Marc Barrott's activeRenderer tales Radio outlines and converts them to very useable HTML pages. My registered copy of Bonsai lets me create outlines that export to Radio. This means I can make and revise edits on my Palm m505 and they sync to Radio. Then I can use activeRenderer to upload (and render) those outlines to the Web. Rick Klau tells you how.]

Pushing the Semantic Envelope by Posting through CITE Mark Pilgrim -- Check this out: blog posts that are auto-generated from semantic markup in the posts themselves (specifically, the cite tag). If you run your own text miner (askSam is a good one if you don't want to get your hands dirty), you would get more for your effort by parsing outbound links. As Gary Noone from Dublin's Zenark notes, effective information harvesting means developing effective text miners. [Sam Ruby is doing it. deus_x will break open an HTML cookbook and relearn those tags. Tao of the Machine likes the CODE tag. Dave Winer likes the whole concept. Jeff Chan puts his money and time with proper text mining.]

27 December 2002

Sighting: Ceiva Internet Picture Frame CEIVA -- My father is proud to be ungoogleable. Well, he thinks he's not in Google, but he's wrong. Dad doesn't trust this Internet stuff, but he enjoys contact. I'm sure he would enjoy a Ceiva digital picture frame. You hang this Internet-enabled frame near a phone line and it calls out for new photos. The traditional frame houses an LCD screen that displays up to 20 pictures in a single-view or slide-show format. Once a day, the frame dials in to Ceiva's Web site and downloads any new photos that have been sent to a special Internet address. This is so unintrusive that my dad would never know he was using an Internet connection in the house. [Thanks to Xeni Jardin and Karlin Lillington for reminding me.]

Collaboration Tools in Homeland Defense Paul Boutin -- Following a NYT story, Paul Boutin found a TIA screen shot that shows the Groove interface using P2P architecture grounded in XML. [Mark Lazaroff in a Groove release and John Markoff: "Many Big Brother Tools Are Up and Running," and Paul Boutin: "TIA Screen Shot" and Dave Winer]

Year of the Blog TECH CENTRAL STATION -- So if 2002 is "The Year of the Blog" we might watch 2003 pan out as "The Year of Blog Rot." While 2003 will see the increased expansion of blogs into areas such as research and learning, blogs will also rot away. They're too time-intensive for most authors. Many employers equate them to time-wasting. And few bloggers have learned techniques of knowledge logging where they could distill blogged content into action-based knowledge objects. [Glenn Harlan Reynolds and "Essential Web Journaling"]

26 December 2002

New Billboards Sample Radios as Cars Go By, Then Adjust SACRAMENTO, California -- As part of a $20 million investment, Alaris Media Network, a Sacramento-based company, has erected 10 billboards that can display both video and text and can be programmed with changing messages and images. In addition, the billboards include fledgling technology that is designed to identify the radio frequencies of passers-by. If you knew the radio listening patterns, you could deduce the income, sex, race and buying habit data of the listeners. Then you could batch out appropriate content to the viewers. Alaris is not targeting individuals, but drivers en masse. For instance, if a preponderance of rush-hour drivers are tuned to a radio station known to have affluent or educated listeners, then the advertisements at that time would be aimed at them. [Matt Richtel in The New York Times]

Yawn of a Year in Tech TECHDIRT -- The Washington Post rounded up 2002 in technology and concluded it was pretty damn boring. Most companies are trying to figure out what to do with all that technology crap they bought at the end of the 90s, so the last thing they want to do is buy any new technology crap. Some seminal trends deserve noting. The Internet has now clearly permeated mainstream society. In Ireland, the Intenet is on lamposts and in purses. Companies now focus on building useful technologies instead of pie-in-the-sky technologies. [Mike on TechDirt and Leslie Walker in The Washington Post.]

Making Ringtones Making Money GARRINGREEN -- One of the most lucrative channels for revenue transfer in Ireland is the millions of euro spent each month in the purchase of mobile phone ringtones. Christopher Stern explains the business that college students can enter with a MIDI keyboard and an ear for music. It seems to me that many of the loudest gameboys on Slashdot don't get it. However, there are others in the Slashdot discussion who politely educate the rabble to the potential of ringer revenues. [Washington Post and SlashDot]

Housebreaking My New Dog in Seven Days [day five] GARRINGREEN -- I you are keeping count, you will detect that little Holly (a female Samoyed cross) has been in my Kilkenny home for six days, not five. We're not counting Christmas as a performance day because someone gave Holly dinner table helpings and that rich food (liquer-enriched cranberry sauce on turkey meat) gave her the runs. I can happily report that she now goes on papers on top of tiles placed next to doors. She will not deface wood floors or carpet. AND THE BIG NEWS: we have figured out the special way she walks and the little noises she makes when she has to go. So we just pick her up and place her outside. Unfortunately, she has to go every four hours so we don't hear her little whimpering at night, which is when she shits on pictures of Manchester United soccer star Roy Keane. Nothing personal, Roy, but the titles I buy shoot your face bigger than anyone else and that gives Holly a big plopping target. G!

Control Government Snooping GARRINGREEN -- In the States, Congressman Bernard Sanders plans to introduce legislation to exempt libraries and bookstores from parts of the sweeping USA Patriot Act. In Ireland, Karlin Lillington points out why the Irish government should not be given free rein to information gathering. Both initiatives deserve a good reading. And both deserve support by anyone with an active electronic identity. Both the US and Irish government are eroding civil liberties with new directions in legislation. Dan Gillmor recommends some places where you can donate money to fight to defend the gift of liberty. [Patrick Armstrong in The Brattleboro Reformer and Karlin Lillington in The Irish Times. Karlin's "In Defense of Data Privacy" should be read aloud to every elected member of Irish government.

25 December 2002

Grannies in the Blogosphere at Christmas GARRINGREEN -- I went online once, early on Christmas Day, in search of recipes for roast turkey and cranberry sauce from scratch. Then I kept the online recipes in cache to show our guests how I made both of them. The Scottish grannies down the street think it's remarkable how this Internet thing works. And to think the recipes cost me nothing! Well, they actually cost me 99 cents, which is about the amount I paid eircom for the phone call and the daily line rental for ISDN. Dave was whinging that "it's hard to find much news on Christmas Day" as he trawled Weblogs.Com for interesting tidbits. "It's kind of lack-of-news news, but I guess that's news," he surmised. While online with Ms Dynamite playing in the background, my Newzcrawler grabbed over 220 breaking stories, so I made a hard copy of all the pages for guest to hold and read. You can't buy a current copy of an Irish broadsheet on Christmas Day, so it's important to be able to roll your own personal newspaper. Then I cut and printed my blogroll for the grannies. I don't think they understand what this blogging thing is all about. But when I told them it was like getting a daily Christmas card from friends and families, they had to see how that worked. They didn't understand the funny looking letter C on the printout, so I showed them The Creative Commons Weblog but they still don't get it. My Christmas wish: to set up one nursing home with a hands-free Internet experience for residents before 2004. If I'm to retain my sanity when I'm old, I will need my daily dosage of online mental interactions. That includes my contact with the blogosphere and a way to share files with my kids. Musings from Garringreen, County Kilkenny, Ireland.

24 December 2002

Housebreaking My New Dog in Seven Days [day four] GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- Holly can now sleep through the night in a bedroom without soiling anything. Plus, she can confine her pee and poo to one sheet of newspaper. She prefers that paper to be placed half-open right behind the front door. We still haven't figured out how to get her to relieve herself while on a daily walk, but we're armed with dog treats to reinforce her behaviour once she cops on to that.

Lewis and Clark With Satellite Photos Margaret Kane -- Margaret describes a NASA remote sensing data set that will remap the Lewis and Clark expedition. I remember reading the Lewis & Clark Corps of Discovery Journals and marveled at how they created a wonderful snapshot of the natural history of North America, two hundred years ago. Patching together a satellite photo mosaic of the expedition's route represents another snapshot in time. [RSS.com]

FACT: Online shopping passes $11bn Margaret Kane -- BizRate thinks there's an increase of about 40 percent in the number of online shoppers. BizRate surveys consumers as they finish making purchases in its 2,000 online shops. "The figures arrive amid a discouraging season for retail in general. Major retailers including Wal-Mart, Federated Department Stores and Kmart all noted that sales for the holiday season would be at the low end of their forecasts, or miss them altogether." Sent by Nokia 9210i mail2blog over Vodafone HSD.

FACT: Millions of bloggers online TEMPLE BAR -- JD Lasica notes "there are now more than 970,000 registered users of Pyra's Blogger software, up from 343,000 a year ago. So perhaps it's fair to say there are as many as a million bloggers today." This tracks with the sublte growth of Irish blogs during the past year. They've more than doubled, with fewer than 10 percent dying of link rot. I've many of the Irish URLs noted as "Irish Sources" on my daily blog page. Sent by Nokia 9210i mail2blog during a moccachino.

Do You Use a News Aggregator? TEMPLE BAR -- JD Lasica is researching an article for OJR on news aggregation tools, without getting too heavily into the technical aspects of RSS. So, if any of you are regular users of news aggregators -- NetNewsWire or Radio, for instance -- and want to answer a few interview questions by email, tell JD. Dave Winer Sent by Nokia 9210i mail2blog during a moccachino.

Mike Fagan, Done and Dusted ZENARK HOTSPOT -- Anyone with an interest in the e-business dimension of Ireland will undoubtedly follow the talking points and controversy around IEDR. Here's a tip: Google for "Mike Fagan" AND IEDR, then let your mouse tell an interesting story. Connected to Buffalo by Nokia D211 Transnote.

The Smallest Computers That I Use ZENARK HOTSPOT -- I carry two small computers. One is a Palm m505 running Palm OS4. The other is a Nokia 9210i running Symbian. I also treasure my IBM TransNote notebook. In Shanowen, I've used a Cappuchino mini-computer with a thin TFT screen and that gave me the smallest desktop footprint ever. If I had a Compaq T1000, I would have the smallest desktop computer on the market. Each week, people come here looking for the Dell Optiplex SX260, perhaps because of its small footprint. I don't have that computer nor have I tested it but since people are coming on the back of a search engine query string, looking for the "smallest desktop computer," I mention it here.

Ekahau's Positioning Engine 2.0 Pinpoint the location of all the users on your WLAN within a few feet with Ekahau's technology.

Go Figure 41B -- As a seasoned traveler who gives a minimum of EUR 400 to Irish Rail each month, I have something in my bag that marks the fact that I have given Irish Rail enough to buy a 1996 Peugeot 406. I have a new pocket calendar, illustrated with maps of Ireland. However, the country maps do not mark the locations of the rail lines. Go figure out where they run on our own. Sent by Nokia 9210i mail2blog while crawling along Dublin Freeflow traffic.

23 December 2002

Yahoo Slurps Up Inktomi YAHOO -- I like Slurper and I've always gotten along with Inktomi's search engine algorithm. So if the deal goes through and Yahoo acquires Inktomi, we'll have some major competition for Google. [Scripting News and BizReport and InfoWorld]

Two of My Favourite Things Aboard Irish Rail -- It's a v.quiet train today and that means more full-fare passengers are aboard. The students travel with leaky headset and irritating ringtones. The free traveling pensioners talk to anyone with ears but paying passengers use travel time to think, read, sleep or work Like me -- because I think I am lucky to have a Palm m505 and a Nokia 9210i. Although they actually perfrom similar functions, I toggle between the two of them quite well. I would deeply miss either one if misplaced. And at the moment, I cannot see a reason to replace either of them, even though both are more tha 14 months old. Sent from Nokia 9210i mail2blog nonstop through Newbridge, County Kildare.

MS Flash? OPEN -- On an otherwise quiet day with the Open Mailing List, Alex Horstmann wonders if we're looking at a future of Microsoft Flash. He points to a story in The Register that says "Microsoft is believed to have trained its acquisition crosshairs on Macromedia Inc, lining up a deal that would throw enterprise Java into a spin." I wouldn't expect to see much more integration between Java and Flash if MS went through with the buy-out. As The Register sees it, "a Microsoft acquisition of Macromedia would inevitably see Flash, and Macromedia's other cross-platform tools, tailored purely for Windows and .NET." [The Register and Alex Horstmann] Sent by Nokia 9210i Communicator mail2blog.

Is This Usable? OPEN -- The European Union has funded research into Web Accessibility ands Usability but there's one site purportedly advocating elements of usability that isn't. Check it out yourself at http://www.usabilitynet.org/home.htm [Derek Lawless] Sent by Nokia 9210i mail2blog aboard Irish Rail.

Housebreaking My New Dog in Seven Days [day three] GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- She now squats at the front door or along the side of the tiled hallway on pieces of newspaper. She doesn't eat the newspaper anymore. Plus, she has found three places outside where she circles to squat and she doesn't roll in her own waste. On the downside, she makes a lake whenever she's excited near the front door. And she still drops a sizeable load inside whenever the urge hits her. However, we might actually get a housebroken dog within seven days!

22 December 2002

Music Silenced by Immigration SUNDAY TIMES -- Several international musicians have fallen foul of the Irish government's crackdown on illegal immigration, writes Scott Millar in the Sunday Times. On 17 Dec 02, Youssou N'Dour, an internationally-renowned Senegalese musician, was detained at Dublin airport for four hours. Members of N'Dour's group have complained that they were individually interviewed without a translator despite their poor English, and say the band was confined without easy access to toilet facilities. The group was freed only after direct intervention by the Department of Justice and took the stage an hour late. Ireland's opting out of the Schengen agreement, which allows non-EU nationals resident in the EU to travel freely, is a cause of confusion. The opt-out has disproportionately affected musicians from the Third World, many of whom are resident in Paris, the unofficial capital of world music. Chief Superintendent Martin Donnellan, head of the Garda National Immigration Bureau, thinks it's necessary to run a tight ship. He told The Sunday Times that "more than 3,000 people attempted to enter the country illegally through Dublin airport last year and the immigration police must apply the letter of the law in each case regardless." Performances in America have been complicated by the need to inform immigration services of an intention to perform six months in advance, and by an increase in visa costs. Scott Millar x: 174

Tax-free Creative Income While Resident in Ireland GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- Under an exemption system that dates back to 1969, an artists who lives and works in Ireland doesn't have to pay tax on income earned from an original artistic product. The product can be a painting, sculpture, musical composition, fictional writing or personalised non-fiction, such as an autobiography. Because it is the product and not the producer that is tax-eempt, performers such as Westlife, many of whose songs are written for them, are not eligible. Neither are actors, because they are seen to be performing the original product of someone else (the playwright) whose income is exempt. Enya, whose Day Without Rain became the world's bestseller of 2001, is eligible for exemption from Irish tax. She composes every song herself, without use of samplers, synthesisers or backing vocals. That means she spends months laying down hundreds of vocal layers for each track. Plus, she spends much of her time in her studio, so she rarely performs live or goes on tour. When applying for tax exemption, an artist fills in a form, which is submitted along with an example of their work. The Revenue Commissioners then decide whether the income is tax exempt. They may take advice from the Arts Council on borderline cases. Enya's income in 2001 was estimated at €102m, putting her ahead of Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones, Moya Doherty of Riverdance and Chris de Burgh. Like any other artist, she must pay PRSI on her tax-exempt income. ["Artistic Talent Receives Original Reward" in The Sunday Times, 22 Dec 02.]

Housebreaking My New Dog in Seven Days [day two] GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- We have got the new puppy to the point where she is walking to the front door before she squats on the tile. Plus, she poos in along one area of the back yard. These are workable habits and suggest we can look forward to a housebroken dog before the New Year.

Bookshelf: Translucent Databases GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- There are also practical reasons why businesses may want to cloak their databases. In today's Sunday papers, whole pages are being printed about subpoenas for phone records and diaries. These subpeonas are a tax on people who keep good records. Shipping companies like FedEx have entire divisions devoted to answering calls from law enforcement and the courts. As Peter Wayner tells Declan McCullagh, "It's not just spies defending the realm either--divorce lawyers love to poke around for evidence. A business that keeps the records must also spend the costs to answer questions." [Peter Wayner and Declan McCullagh]

Irish Strategic Rail Review Needs 7bn euro GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- The Irish government will have to invest almost €7bn to improve the Irish rail service over the next 20 years, according to an internal government report. Merely maintaining the rail system at current levels will require a €3.45bn investment. The report calls for rail investment to be directed towards two strategic areas: large inter-urban routes and the commuter belt around Dublin. This will marginalise myself, living in Kilkenny and commuting to Dublin. "Strategic Rail Review" x: 17

21 December 2002

Nokia Screensavers Got a Lot Easier Kilkenny -- Along with some friends, I'm tricking up my Nokia phone with some of the coolest screensavers. It's much easier to get these things nowadays, especially compared to how things were back when I bought my Nokia 7110. It took me the time to order and eat a pizza before I got that phone configured for WAP. Today, Irish network operators supply Nokia phones with WAP features ready-configured, so you do not have to do anything in order to use WAP. All you need to do is save it. That guarantees the easy transfer of millions of euro, paid by those who want really cool colour animations on their new Nokia phones.

Taxonomy and PR on the Semantic Web Mark Pilgrim -- Mark frets about taxonomy and how it's so difficult trying to agree on a common lexicon. The problem becomes even more significant when sitting around a table discussing a product launch with marketers, technicians and sales managers. It's an age-old issue and it reflects our failure to insist on precision in expression. [Dive Into Mark]

Irish Phone Users Overcharged ALTO -- The Association of Licensed Telecoms Operatios (Alto) claims fixed line operators such as Eircom are paying over €300m a year to mobile phone companies for use of their networks. According to Alto, only €55.4m of that money can be justified using acceptable market rates. Put another way, each month spent by the Irish telecoms Regulator introducing cost-based termination rates imposes an extra cost of over €20m on the industry and consumers. [Irish Examiner and Gavin Daly]

Housebreaking My New Dog in Seven Days [day one] GARRINGREEN -- Like Ben Hammersley, I have a new puppy and the challenge of the holiday season is to housebreak her. She is relieving herself with generous, well-formed droppings on the hallway tile. I guess that's not unusual because she spent the first three months of her life standing and pooing on concrete. I have taken her on one 20 minute walk. She didn't pee or poo so I couldn't compliment her. I can sense challenging times ahead. I guess I could make a Christmas wish for a book about training dogs but she likes eating The Irish Times and teething on the 2003 IPA Yearbook and Diary, so I can't imagine she would let me get through a book without tearing a few pages out of it for herself. She certainly doesn't think newspapers are for reading or defecating because she seems to know humans wrap their fish and chips in newsprint so it's alright for her to shred the papers as well. [Shirlee Kalstone for a book and Ben Hammersley (link is FOAF) for Pico Poo.]

20 December 2002

Wonderful 19th Century Predictions About the Future of Media HIDDEN KNOWLEDGE -- But what of the future of books? The narrator argues that Gutenberg's invention will soon disappear. Reading causes lassitude and wearies us tremendously. Words through the speaking tube, however, give us a special vibrancy. The gramophone will destroy printed works. Our eyes are easily damaged, but our ears are strong. But, his listeners object, gramophones are heavy and the cylinders easily damaged. This will be taken care of; new models will be built which will fit in the pocket; the precision of watchmaking will be applied to them. Devices will collect electricity from the movements of the individual, which will power the gramophones. The author will become his own editor. In order to avoid imitations and counterfeits, he will deposit his voice at the Patent Office. Instead of famous men of letters, we will have famous narrators. The art of diction will become extremely important. The ladies will no longer say that they like an author's style, but that his voice is so charming, so serious, that he leaves you full of emotion after listening to his work--it is an incomparable ravishment of the ear. [The Schism Matrix and Boing Boing]

Movie Maker Mentality Aaron Swartz -- Every so often the people fighting sharing slip up and tell us what they really think. Ed Felten points to an article about a program that lets you copy DVDs. “It’s like somebody selling a digital crowbar,” said Patricia Benson, an attorney for the studios. As Felten points out, crowbars are available at the local hardware store, even though they can be used to break into private property and actually steel things, as well as attacking people. Last time I checked, you didn’t need a licence to get one. In the movie studios world, they’d pass tough new laws making it illegal to sell crowbars, or describe how to build one. They’d speak out against the makers of crowbars, claiming they were only selling them for profit and ignoring the terrible harm they can do. They’d try to throw people who created new innovative crowbars in jail. And, of course, they’d ignore the legitimate reasons to have crowbars. Would you like to live in that world? [Aaron Swartz]

Emily Is Wearing In Her Leather Dress DUBBERLEY -- Since I like Emily's Blog, I am going to have to buy the magazine and the book.

Dive into XML and Tap the Power of the Press BUSINESS WEEK -- There's nothing difficult or mysterious about putting together a press kit aimed at generating some free publicity. Blogging your message helps elevate its prominence, because as Greg Elin notes, once you blog, you're Googled. And as Mark Pilgrim knows, a good blog with a reach in the thousands can get you a publishing deal out of the blue. [Karen Klein and Greg Elin plus Dive into XML]

Mobile games will boom as MMS languishes DUBLIN -- Semi-sober discussions around Molloy's pub in Christchurch focused on the revenue horizon ahead for Ireland's mobile phone networks. Only one person among the 22 techies assembled had an MMS-capable cameraphone. Another planned to buy a Nokia 7650 before the New Year. That leaves more than 90 percent of our anecdotal audience without MMS in 2003.Nokia plans to release more new models next year than in any in its history. Even without buying up, everyone in the group can download ringtones, operator logos and games. So like Strategy Analytics, we think MMS is a good idea, but it won't generate significant revenue for the mobile telecos until more than half of the users have camera phones. That event horizon is more than two years away. [ENN and Business Week and Brian Greene and Electric Search]

Bloggers Catch What Mainstream Press Misses Dave Winer -- The mainstream press missed incinderary comments made by Senator Trent Lott, but those remarks were picked up and stirred for public consumption but several astute bloggers, giving the story cause for follow-up days after the tempest would have cleared. [Scripting News and Cynthia Webb in the Washington Post]

The Incredible Vanishing Web SEARCH ENGINE WATCH -- "More than any other country, the U.S. government has used the Web to make a wealth of information available to its citizens. But as we are now discovering, the dark side of Web-based information is the ease with which it can be deleted," notes Danny Sullivan. Recognising the need for best practise, Irish developers in South Tipperary have built their county council site structure around traditional documents and hypertext. Visitors can get information in lightweight HTML while also downloading traditional documents for applications such as standard forms-based transactions. So even if someone wipes the HTML, core documents will remain. Moblogged with the best colour phone on the mobile market today.

When the Logic Bombs Chey and Stephen Cobb -- This week a former sysadmin for UBS PaineWebber, Roger Duronio, was arraigned in a New Jersey federal court on charges of sabotaging two-thirds of the company's computer systems. His alleged motive? To undermine the company's stock price and make a bunch of money. He is alleged to have "shorted" over 30,000 shares of UBS stock prior to unleashing his attack which means the potential was there to make 30,000 times the amount by which the stock dropped when the media got wind of the attacks. In the recent stock manipulation case involving Emulex, shares fell 50 percent. Based on the trading range of UBS PaineWebber stock at the time of Duronio's alleged attack, it is reasonable to say his profits could have exceeded half a million dollars. The flaw in Duronio's alleged scheme was the obviously unexpected ability of UBS PaineWebber to prevent news of the attack getting out. This was quite a feat on the company's part because the logic bombs activated on about 1,000 of its nearly 1,500 computers and the malicious programs did actually delete files. Indeed, the company says attack cost it $3 million. These days, newer forms of malicious programming, such as viruses and worms, tend to vie for our attention, but the logic bomb, dormant code that is later activated or triggered by specific circumstances, is one of the oldest forms of computer attack, dating back to mainframe days. For example, in September 1987, Donald Burleson, a programmer at the Fort Worth-based insurance company, USPA, was fired for allegedly being quarrelsome and difficult to work with. Two days later, approximately 168,000 vital records erased themselves from the company's computers. Burleson was caught after investigators went back through several years' worth of system files and found that, two years before he was fired, Burleson had planted a logic bomb that lay dormant until he triggered it on the day of his dismissal. Burleson became the first person in America to be convicted of "harmful access to a computer." This week, the federal grand jury charged Duronio with one count of securities fraud and one count of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. If found guilty, Duronio could be hit with up to 20 years in prison and fines of more than $1.25 million. Earlier this year, Timothy Allen Lloyd was sentenced to 41 months in prison for leaving behind malicious programs that deleted critical data from the servers of Omega Engineering, a high-tech measurement company that claimed the cost of the attack was $10m. How can companies defend against such attacks? By hiring the right people and then treating them right. In other words, this is a people problem and so it needs a human solution. All the technology in the world is not going to prevent an insider, with authorized system access and detailed knowledge of the system, from planting a logic bomb. There are some technologies, such as network surveillance and monitoring programs, that might detect attempts to create logic bombs. Integrity checking software might deflect attacks from logic bombs. Properly enforced software development policies and procedures will make it harder for someone to plant a logic bomb. But the bottom line is that a determined insider is almost impossible to stop. On the other hand, it is fairly easy for other humans to spot a disgruntled insider. We've seen numerous cases of insider system abuse where the identity of the culprit came as no surprise, at least to co-workers, if not supervisors or managers.. So, before your company spends money on technology to cut down on insider system abuse, take a look at morale and working conditions. Talk to the people who have the skills and access to mount this sort of attack. And read the landmark 1993 paper on the subject by Dr. Mich Kabay: "Psycho-Social Factors in the Implementation of Information Security Policy" (Risks Digest). [Chey Cobb and Stephen Cobb and NewsScan] Sent by Nokia 9210i mail2blog over Vodafone HSD aboard Irish Rail.

Finding: First Time for No Inbox Mail DUBLIN -- At 1711 GMT on Friday, 21 December 2002, I used my Nokia Communicator to check for e-mail and discovered nothing to download. No spam. No list mail. No direct mail. No SMS text mail. In my 17 months of using a Nokia Communicator to handle mail-on-the-go, I have never had a totally empty mail queue during the course of a working business day. This is a first for me and an occasion that helps me restrain my expenses. Sent from Nokia 9210i as mail2blog.

Irish Labour Market Review Recommends Targeted Approach DUBLIN -- According to The Irish Labour Market Review 2002 by the Irish national employment and training authority, a "more targeted immigration approach" is warranted, "focusing on skilled immigrants working in occupations where shortages are both critical and obvious."

New Java for Mobile Phones ONLINE BLOG -- Sun has released a new form of Java for mobile phones. The latest version comes from a developer group headed by Motorola, Zdnet reports today. Mobile Information Device Platform 2 (MIDP 2) will give developers more control over interface design, improve game performance and standardise data transfer, among other improvements. But MIDP 2.0 will require up to 100k of memory to run - exceeding the limits of most mobile phones currently available. Nevertheless, the new Java platform indicates that Sun's platform-independent software is consolidating its position in areas where Microsoft has failed to dominate. [ZDNet and Alistair Alexander]

Trashing Someone's Computer is Not On CRYPTO-GRAM -- The MPAA disabling someone's computer because he's suspected of copying a movie is wrong, even if the movie was copied. Revenge is a basic human emotion, but revenge only becomes justice if carried out by the State. [Counterpane]

Recommendations on Building Ireland's Information Society Sylvia Leatham -- The Information Society Commission presented its intial report to Mary Hanafin, the Irish Government's Chief Whip. The report, which contains 60 key recommendations, encompasses the views of government, industry and representative bodies with regard to building a knowledge society in Ireland. The study identifies three key points that the government should take on board. A climate of innovation building on world-class research must be encouraged. Accessibility to affordable broadband must be accelerated. Lifelong learning must become a key public policy objective. [Building the Knowledge Society by ISC and ENN]

Irish Internet Association Active in Downturn GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- I think it is notable to document that even in an economy that has slowed down, the Irish Internet Association remains an active focal point for the industry. It logged an enviable track record during the past 12 months. Ran over 30 events in 2002 with 12 in the regions Launched the IIA North West Branch Ran two 2-day Conferences - National Conference in Dublin and ICT and eWork @ Work Conference in Kilkenny Moved into Temple Bar Launched the IIA eGovernment EzineBecame a major contributor to public policy Developed Website Privacy Policy Template for Members Relaunched the Members and Non-Members Ezines in html format Launched the new IIA Website with members extranet I believe Sinead Murnane deserves special mention for the dedication required to accomplish all these tasks.

Technology Built in the Garage TECHDIRT -- Mike had lunch with a friend who started his own company a few years ago. They laughed about how far off the mark venture capitalists seem to be, and how many people are building real businesses the old fashioned way: bootstrap a product with extremely low costs, and then make money by actually selling that product to real customers. That's the new Silicon Valley plan, it seems. Companies are being started inside people's homes. Everything is cheap these days, including labor. The get-rich-quick tourists have all gone home. The excitement among startups is how little they spend on expenses, not how much money they've raised. In the end this means counting "honest revenue" - which is real money from real customers paying for real products. It seems like such an obvious concept, and it's happening all over the valley. [G!]

Marriott Adds Wireless John Blau -- Marriott plans to add wireless to 400 of its hotels. It will collaborate with wireless service provider STSN to offer the service in hotel lobbies, meeting rooms, restaurants and other public spaces, complementing its current in-room high-speed access. The plans involve services from STSN because Marriott has a stake in the Salt Lake City service provider, as does the Intel Communication Fund. STSN will deliver dual band 802.11a and 802.11b wireless access in the hotels, the company said. It expects to complete the deployment by June 2003. [Infoworld]

19 December 2002

Lighting Up the Week SJ MERCURY NEWS -- At a time when copyright news seems to be so consistently sour, new technology and a positive court ruling give us light. First, a nod of appreciation to The Creative Commons who have created a 1.5MB Flash presentation that outlines the essentials of the Creative Commons project. "It can be that easy," says the presentation, "when you skip the intermediaries." The second piece of good news for the creative community comes from the dutiful ElcomSoft jury. In a case that may have enormous implications, a federal jury in San Jose brought back a not guilty verdict against a Russian software company charged with violating copyright law. The company, ElcomSoft, had sold a tool that gave purchasers of electronic-book software more flexibility in how they could use e- books but which also broke the e-books' copy protection. Adobe brought the case on the claim that ElcomSoft was selling products designed to hack Adobe's eBook Reader. When ElcomSoft programmer Dmitry Sklyarov spoke at a conference in Las Vegas, he was handcuffed and tossed in jail. Adobe deserves the wrath of the technical community for its actions. Fortunately, the jury returned sanity to the situation in its decision to acquit. [ Dan Gillmor and Tomalak's Realm] Photo inside Garringreen Upper by Bernie Goldbach using Concord EyeQ IrTranP camera and Nokia 9210i Communicator.

WANTED: Heavy Goods Death Ray GUARDIAN co uk -- US military radar is shutting down vehicles that use special frequencies in their key fobs. The radar emissions are globally approved, but their strength is deadly. You don't want to drive a new BMWs or 4WD SUV around the perimeter of a UK air base anymore. The anti-missile radar will shut them down. I wouldn't mind Dublin Corporation using that capability whenever a vehicle stopped on a yellow box in city centre.

Ads Going Up in New Venues GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- Even in small town Kilkenny, my local SuperQuinn provides me with news shorts, weather forecasts and advertisements while I stand in the checkout queue. But how effective are these placements in the "outernet"? Has anybody done an eyeball audit to measure the effectiveness of flat screen digital advertising? According to New Century Media Inc., flat screen plasma placements dramatically outperform static backlit advertising campaigns. Sign Web "Signs of the Times" by Sean O'Leary, April 2002. "Coolsigns Coming to a Theater Near You," by Ken Liebeskind, MediaPost, May 23, 2002. "Signs Going Up in New Venues," by Greg Johnson in the Los Angeles Times, March 22, 2002.

Sighting: Coolsign COOLSIGN -- AdSpace Networks Inc. is the developer of CoolSign, dynamic digital signage for public spaces. The AdSpace NOC in Las Vegas controls a national network of Coolsigns, using Cisco IP technology running over LANs near each installation. This is an advertising-driven piece of technology that meets prospective customers in high footfall areas, targeting people with digital messages. The back-end system allows advertisers a method to examine their campaigns, downloading proof-of-play statistics. [Photo by Brian Greene using Sony Ericsson T68 cameraphone in Chicago.]

Claiming Damages from Weblogs WASHINGTON POST -- "Te same law that relates to publishing in the offline world, generally speaking, applies to material posted publicly on a Web log, legal and human resources experts said. Posting information or opinions on the Internet is not much different from publishing in a newspaper, and if the information is defamatory, compromises trade secrets, or violates copyright or trademark regulations, the publisher could face legal claims and monetary damages." "You never know who is lurking." [Jennifer Balderama and Dave Winer]

What is RSS? Mark Pilgrim -- If you need to know about RSS, you should "dive into Mark." He explains that RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, including major news sites like Wired, news- oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs. It's not just for news. Pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS: the "recent changes" page of a wiki, a changelog of CVS checkins, even the revision history of a book. Once information about each item is in RSS format, an RSS-aware program can check the feed for changes and react to the changes in an appropriate way. [XML.com and Dave Winer]

Don't Photocopy Your Bum This Christmas THE REGISTER -- Use a cameraphone (best optics from the Nokia 7650) instead of a photocopier for those zany Christmas photocopies. [The Register]

Ex-IEDR CEO Agrees Settlement Irish Times -- Mike Fagan, has settled his legal action against the Irish Domain Registry. Fagan had sought an injunction to prevent the company from considering a report prepared by KPMG, on the basis that doing so would be in breach of the rules of natural justice. The report makes 18 allegations against Fagan, including overpayment of salary and incorrect treatment of expenses. Fagan has now agreed that IE Domain Registry can use the report in disciplinary proceedings against him. [ENN and Open]

e-Working Fails to Make Inroads in Ireland John Cradden -- "There is a persistent reluctance among Irish businesses to embrace e-working, despite the potential benefits, according to experts in the sector." From my vantage point at a Kilkenny Information Seminar, it's good news that e-working percentages have not declined as employment numbers slip during an economic downturn. [ENN]

Quicktime 6 Becoming Mobile Phone Standard Martyn Williams -- Apple's QuickTime 6 is becoming standard on some 44 million Japanese mobile phones. Apple and many other companies are pressuring hard to make MPEG-4 the industry standard for video-on-demand services in 3G cellular networks, and to keep Microsoft and its proprietary Windows Media out of the mobile phones market. [IDG News and Slashdot]

Bookshelf: Designing Embedded Hardware OREILLY -- A new O'Reilly release,"Designing Embedded Hardware" (Catsoulis, US $39.95) is the most in-depth, practical, and up-to-date guide to building your own embedded computer systems. Whether you're working on cell phones, cars, handheld organizers, or refrigerators, this book provides software and hardware engineers with the necessary conceptual and design building blocks to understand the architectures of embedded systems. Steering between the practical and the philosophical, the book enables you to both create your own devices and gadgets and customize and extend off-the-shelf systems.

Most Wanted Search Terms Leander Kahney -- Lycos Most Wanted lists the top 100 search terms for 2002 and many are the same as in Google's Zeitgeist and Yahoo Buzz. All these results are suspect, because the search engines often filter porn results before they aggregate. Great News! Boy bands are down this year, while female singer/ songwriters are up. You could predict the rise of Avril Levine to stardom because people started searching for her name early last summer. Although Kahney didn't mention this metric, I think it would be useful to add the Top 100 weblogs to the list, using Blogstreet's blogrolling tracker. [Wired]

Intel to Support Two WiFi Companies NEWSFACTOR -- Money from a fund set up by Intel will go to support two companies--STSN, a Wi-Fi network access company, and TeleSym, an IP telephony software company--involved in Wi-Fi broadband technology. Of the Intel Communications Fund's $500 million, $150 million is intended for companies working with Wi-Fi technology. Intel's upcoming Banias chip set targets the wireless market, and, according to Intel spokesman Daniel Francisco, the work of these two companies will complement Intel's efforts to "support mobility and offer anytime, anywhere high-speed access to the Internet."

Searchable Audio through Phoenetic Indexing INFOWORLD -- Phonetic indexing and search technology from Fast-Talk brings full-text search to audio recordings and video soundtracks. This doesn't involve speech-to-text translation along with text indexing. It directly indexes audio via the 39 phonemes in English. For example, "phonetically" is indexed as "F AH N EH T IH K L IY." Fast-talk time-stamps the occurrence of each phoneme, so you can also do proximity searches. [SIGIA-L]

Enterprise Weblog Software TRACTION SOFTWARE -- There's enterprise weblog software available now, coming from Traction's Competitive Intelligence and Market Research solution to its TeamPage™ Enterprise Weblog. Traction solves the problem of collecting, organizing, sharing, linking and retrieving strategic competitive intelligence information from many sources. Targeted at strategic planning, competitive intelligence, market research and marketing professionals, Traction C.I. is the first, enterprise weblog technology to address a specific business process. Enterprise Weblog looks a lot like any blog tool, but Traction has added some features to help them make the case to corporations. [Network Fusion and eWeek]

Texting Faces New Challenges INSTANT MESSAGING PLANET -- Ten years after its inaugaration, texting is well-accepted in Europe and growing in the States. But texting faces new challenges. [Internet.com]

The Best, the Worst, and the Ugliest of 2002 HARDWARE CENTRAL -- An annual look at the PC industry's winners, losers, best products, and biggest letdowns includes Hyper-Threading, Hammer, Tablet PCs and Apple imitators. The range of stuff runs from irresistible consumer gadgets to ill-equipped consumer desktops. [Internet News]

Traditional Books a Web Success Story CYBERATLAS -- I spend a third of my online money in the purchase of books, serving as an example of how new media meets traditional media in the e-shopping for books online success story.

Internet Increasingly Integral to Entertainment Marketing iHOLLYWORD FORUM -- Web-based marketing strategies for movie studios and record labels have only just begun to penetrate one of the fastest growing consumer hubs in the world, say marketing gurus. [iHollywood Forum and Internet News]

18 December 2002

Robot Noise from Weblogs Changes Dave Winer -- Expect a whole lot more robot noise if Dave Winer's suggestion to Sergey Brin comes to pass. Dave asked whether Google would read the Weblog changes.xml file in order to make Google's index even more just-in-time. Dave has asked in public after asking privately several times. [Joi Ito and Scripting News]

Best Colour Phone Motorola T720 GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- If you have a budget for a colour screen phone, and you need to get the best value for your money, you need the Motorola T720. It will cost you under EUR 270 with a contract in Ireland, more than EUR 100 cheaper than the first generation of cameraphones on the Irish market. If you never wanted a cameraphone but wanted something sexy, you will like the way that the T720 is a cross between two of Motorola's most popular models: the famous StarTAC and the slick V60 series. The result is a phone that's sexy, functional, and reliable. The first thing most people notice about the Motorola T720 is its large, bright, and crystal clear display. However, if you are like me and push up the contrast to its highest level, you will need to recharge the phone daily. The big screen is handy for moblogging, because you can comfortably get 11 lines of text on it. If you prefer to enlarge the text, you can zoom in by changing the display. Although you can use one of a number of built-in or downloaded pictures as a background image, you'll find Irish and English companies offering downloadable images as well. [Mobile Liquid]

Moblogging with Motorola T720 Kilkenny, Ireland -- It's frosty frozen outside and before I trek two miles to the house, I'm going to send this short note from my Motorola T720 phone to my weblog. The phone delivers great value for money. I love its sleek appearance, polyphonic ringtones and email. Plus the games are a real timekiller aboard late-running trains. Sent from Motorola T720 mail2blog.

17 December 2002

The Truth About RIAA's Statistics LAW MEME -- Learn the truth about RIAA's statistics. Big clue: sales will decline if you cut fewer deals with new artists. [LawMeme]

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- I will be licensing all original content on Topgold under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

Sighting: Web-based WiFi Forum WIRELESS-STARTER-KIT -- Wi-Fi Forum Online opens in conjunction with the launch of a book on wireless networking. Sections include Wi-Fi and Academia, which could be helpful for ICT programme specialists at Tipperary Institute. [The Wireless Librarian and The Shifted Librarian]

16 December 2002

Weblog Metrics: 'bots redux GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- I have set aside way too much time to perform a line analysis of a single day's record of Web traffic to my blog. I've documented how updating this blog triggers a half dozen different spiders into trawling its index page. All prominent aggregators make XML-RPC calls to Weblogs.com and other aggregators get told by Radio that there's been an update. If your blogging tool does not have XML-RPC ping capability, it won't tell major spiders that it's been updated. No XML-RPC ping, no indexing. The biggest Blogging tool (Blogger) does not have a list of recently updated weblogs. Tha means no indexing for the search engine content. [Chris Gulker and Kiruba Shankar]

Blogging for the Underemployed INDEPENDENT co uk -- Among other things, Chris Gulker wonders if there's "a correlation between the meteoric rise of blogging, the practice of keeping a frequently-updated online journal, and the rise of unemployment in Silicon Valley and other tech corridors. When you're not working, you don't have to worry about the boss objecting to you working on a blog." [London Independent and Chris Gulker]

Year in Ideas NYT -- Have a look at the New York Times Year in Ideas review of the year that was 2002. Jenny Levine thinks "it's a fascinating read, littered with technology highlights we'll look back on fondly some day. Image from The New York Times. Click to expand. [The Shifted Librarian and What Irish Visionaries See]

Open Source Web Designs OSWD org -- Open Source Web Designs are freely-usable page layouts and graphics styles, suitable for a range of sites. You can select designs according to whether they meet W3 guidelines. [Column Two and Jenny Levine]

Blogging with K-Logs Improves Listening HALMACOMBER -- A lot of the mis-coordination on projects is the result of project participants not listening. Broken signals increase the uncertainty on projects. Actually, k-logs can help projects fail fast. Reading the k-logs of the people on the team (or perhaps a consolidated feed built from their individual feeds) is a key aspect of how you understand what is happening on the project, how you can tell if it is failing and understand the issues [Hal Macomber and Phil Wolff and Matt Mower]

Googleopoly Challenges WIRED -- Both Wired and Newsweek have stories about Google this week. Wired's long feature talks about Google's moral divining rod, personified by founder Sergey Brin. Brin trys to follow the engineer's ethos, which Google's mission statement sums up as "Don't be evil." He's faced with new challenges from governments, religions and overly litigous entrepreneurs are all trying to influence Google's activities. As Cory Doctorow notes, Google really has become a critical piece of the Internet's infrastructure. [Wired and Newsweek and Slashdot and Cory Doctorow]

15 December 2002

Flash Remoting BUILDER -- Good introduction to Flash Remoting written by Dennis Baldwin explaining what Flash Remoting is, and how it works. [Dennis Baldwin and mesh on MX]

Sighting: KABLOG RAWTHOUGHT -- Todd Courtois has some wicked moblogging tools for mobile phones and PDAs. KABLOG is a tool for mobile phones and PDAs that allows you to post new blog entries to Movable Type. It may also work with other blog services supporting an XMLRPC interface. KABLOG currently runs on the J2ME (MIDP 1.0) platform. This means my Palm m505 will support this software. And my Motorola T720 and Nokia 9210i Communicator phones will support it too. Other PDA blogging software includes PocketBlog, which is for Pocket PCs. Jenny Levnie is "a firm believer in the interactive, always-on, wireless future, and I think people will be blogging, taking pictures, video-conferencing, and more with their handheld devices in the near future. I'd be doing it now if I had enough money for the right equipment. Consider this another reason for your public library to implement a wireless network for the public." [Todd Courtois and The Shifted Librarian]

Lands' End On the Web NYT -- For Lands' End, the Internet "will represent 30 percent of holiday sales," up from 25 percent last year. [Scripting News]

RSD: Really Simple Discoverability INTERTWINGLY net -- I downloaded RSD code from Radio and now need to figure out ways to integrate Really Simple Discoverability into web services. RSD and RESTLog and Sam Ruby]

14 December 2002

Red Alert! WIRED -- At the annual corporate security conference InfoSecuity 2002, new "computer forensics" software is on display, including software "that allows corporate IT folks to research employees' criminal histories, credit information, financial asset details, friends and associates." The software is called Red Alert 2.0, and more specifically the research software is an optional subscription based add-on called Intelligent Information Dossier plus. This software permits your employer to spy on your private life, in real time. [Michelle Delio and MetaFilter]

Heidelberg Hat Einen Neuen Bücherbus RNZ de -- A rolling library to complement the rolling hills of the Rhein-Neckar Valley. The new mobile bookmobile carries 5,000 books, CDs, cassettes and magazines. We need this kind of highly visible resource driving into school playgrounds throughout southeast Ireland. [RNZ and netbib]

Memory Stick Breaks Gigabyte Barrier ZDNET -- Memory stick has no reason to exist now that 3GB CompactFlash cards are easy to find. [ZDNET and Hack the Planet]

Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution OPEN P2P -- The continuing controversy over online file sharing sparked Tim O'Reilly to offer a few thoughts as an author and publisher. He writes an excellent piece on piracy that should be read by everyone with an online presence. [Tim O'Reilly and Chris Gulker]

AOL Getting Into Blogging GOOD EXPERIENCE -- In an interview, Rick Robinson, VP of Community Products, AOL, said, "We've had them for a while. A few years ago, in our Digital City area, we called them 'comment boards.' Type your thoughts, click a button, and they're published sequentially on the page. It was essentially the same thing as blogging, only it was a group environment rather than one author publishing to many readers. So yes, we're looking at that type of environment for members to publish in." [Mark Hurst and Dan Gillmor]

Moby Mauled MOBY -- The bald musician is a little confused as to what he did to deserve a beating outside a Boston club. "Maybe they don't like skinny bald guys who play cover songs," he writes. "I'm sure that's it. It's my fault." That could be it, and if so, "I sure hope Eminem has an airtight alibi". [Moby and Amy Reiter]

13 December 2002

Moblogger Conversations Aboard Irish Rail -- Vodafone's High Speed Data (HSD) coverage works nearly nonstop from Dublin to Kilkenny, which means e-mail service for most of the 80 minute trip. I got a note from Chris Gulker saying he "enjoyed seeing your piece on email on the train. I'm about to jack my PowerBook into a new Sony Ericsson GPRS phone via Bluetooth, and see if I can replicate your success on the Menlo Park to San Francisco CalTrain." Well, I don't think you can expect California coverage to be as rock-solid as European GSM service. The biggest difference I noticed was speed. I routinely get 43k connections with Vodafone HSD. I never got more than 9.6k in northern California, mainly because the cellular network there tries to meet voice standards above all else. If true mobloggers publish wirelessly over telephone networks, it might be a while before Chris can stake his claim in Moblog Territory. Photo inside Kilkenny-bound Irish Rail, taken with Concord EyeQ digital camera.

Christmas Wishes from Ireland DUBLIN -- Even though the average Dubliner has less in his pocket this holiday season, retailers on Grafton Street haven't noticed a downturn in spending. Personally, I would be overjoyed to receive a practical item, like a pair of shoes to keep my black Cats company next year. Lacking that, there's always the iPod, Sony NR-70, or anything from Cash 'n' Carrion to keep me smiling.

Resource: Vivisimo VIVISIMO -- Here's a search engine that tries to logically sort out the hits it locates in a Windows Explorer type listing, categorizing the hits by subject. [SIGIA-L]

My Favourite Nokia 7650 Screensaver MOBILE LIQUID -- My Nokia 7650 entertains me as much as it keeps me connected. I've discovered a treasure trove of Nokia 7650 screensavers that remind me of psychedelic Pink Floyd moments. Funny thing is I know the guys creating these screens and they don't have Floyd on their iTunes playlists. [Mobile Liquid]

12 December 2002

Southeast Ireland May Start its Broadband ENN ie -- According to Andrew McLindon, a major broadband project for the South East will receive funds in 2003 after initial concerns that it would be shelved, but its completion will still be delayed. I wonder what Kilkenny will see in 2003.

Videos on Nokia 7650 Mobile Phone Aboard Irish Rail -- I can't help glancing over the shoulder of an guy who is using his Nokia 7650 to watch a videoclip. I first saw an advertisement for this feature during the 2002 Kilkenny Arts Festival. Three months later, O2 customers are watching streamed video over GPRS. The Nokia 7650 provides a good viewing platform. The phone uses the Symbian operating system along with an Oplayer. You send an SMS to Oplayo, receive a return message, and download the player over GPRS. If you have the budget, Mobile Media Club have the videos. However, you have to be happy with jerky frames because you won't get much more than 30k for your connection speed with the mobile phone network. Personally, I believe the untapped market is in streaming porn to mobiles. Plus, I think people will pay for video ringtones too. When 3G hits Ireland, Oplaya will have some major competition from established streamers like Real and Microsoft. However, it probably won't lose the customers it gets to install its own player.[Devices]

Movie Posters That Talk Back NYT -- ThinkPix interactive posters, while dazzling some moviegoers at the multiplex, are raising concerns among others who say they do not want to look at posters that may be looking back. The devices, formally known as ThinkPix Smart Displays, are part of a rapidly growing number of winking, blinking, beckoning digital displays stuck almost anywhere human eyes are likely to fall upon them. Increasingly described as ubiquitous computing and the Outernet, examples of this newest, more aggressive means of advertising and information bombardment abound. In pedestrian-packed places like the Las Vegas strip and Times Square, electronic billboards, news zippers and interactive displays are many and obvious. But small-screen technology has also enabled advertisers to pipe marketing messages into any town or hamlet at A.T.M.'s and gasoline pumps, and on smallish screens in restrooms, taxicabs and airports. A new McDonald's restaurant in Midtown Manhattan has 27 flat screens positioned along a counter, each screen playing an almost endless loop of commercials and trivia for customers munching on their Big Macs. AdSpace Networks recently announced that it has been selected to control the largest digital billboard in North America, a 165-foot-tall screen that stands over the Long Island entrance to the Queens-Midtown Tunnel. AdSpace's plasma screens, commonly known as Coolsigns, are already bringing commercial messages to more than 1,000 locations, including airports, department stores, casinos and movie theaters, said Karen Katz, the company's president and chief executive. [New York Times]

Spam is Delicious When Served Cold THE REGISTER -- Brilliant perspective on handling spam, with the retaliatory strike co-ordinated by four lads on Slashdot. [Matt Brown]

Information Week Review of Radio INFORMATION WEEK -- Good review of Radio. [John Robb]

11 December 2002

Decentralised Collaboration Works GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- There's no need for a souped-up collaboration toolkit. Decentralised collaboration with blogging tools works already.

Conference Blogging Enhances Integrity of Presentations Justin Mason -- Dan Gillmor gave a quick lesson on Journalism 3.1b4 and it covered blogs, WiFi and the Web, proving that bullshitting a keynote at a conference isn't quite as easy to pull off as it used to be.  At PCForum, Joe Nacchio, the CEO of Qwest was on-stage, doing a Q and A. Joe was whining about how hard it is to run a phone company these days. Dan (Gillmor) blogged, "Joe's whining." A few moments later, he got an email from someone who wasn't at the conference, someone in Florida, with a link to a page that showed that Joe took $300MM out of the company and has another $4MM to go -- gutting the company as he goes. Esther Dyson described this as the turning point. The mood turned ugly. The room was full of people reading the blog and everyone stopped being willing to cut Joe any slack. [Dan Gillmor's Supernova keynote and Cory Doctorow and Justin Mason]

Ireland Offline's Draft Response to Communications Directive IOFFL -- If you are serious about improving the state of Internet connectivity in Ireland, you should follow the Ireland Offline Call-to-Action. [Ireland Offline]

Bookshelf: Quetelet's "Treatise of Man and the Development of His Faculties" NEWSSCAN -- Today's Honorary Subscriber is the Belgian mathematician, astronomer, statistician and sociologist Lambert Adolphe (Jacques) Quetelet, (1796-1874), who is best known today for his application of statistics and the theory of probability to social phenomena. His 1835 seminal paper, "On Man and the Development of His Faculties; an Essay in Social Physics," laid the foundation for modern-day statistics. Influenced by Pierre Laplace and Joseph Fourier, Quetelet was the first to apply Gauss' normal curve of error to population statistics. He showed that measurements such as the chests of Scottish Soldiers and the heights of French Army draftees varied from the average in the same manner as would happen if one were plotting the repeated casting of dice. He invented the fiction of the "average man" as the central value around which measurements of human traits are distributed in conformity with the normal probability curve. His studies of the numerical constancy of such presumably voluntary acts as crimes stimulated extensive studies in "moral statistics" and widespread discussions of free will versus social determinism. In trying to discover through statistics the causes of acts in society, Quetelet noted the association between specific age groups and different social behaviors, such as criminal activities. This idea, like his "average man," concept evoked great controversy among social scientists in the 19th century. Quetelet was born in Ghent, Belgium and in 1819 received a doctorate of science from that city's University. He then taught mathematics in Brussels, later founding and directing the Royal Observatory after studying astronomy and probability for three months at the Observatory of Paris in 1824. He served as perpetual secretary of the Belgian Royal Academy and organized the first International Statistical Congress. For the Dutch government, and later the Belgian government, he collected and analyzed statistics on crime, mortality, and other subjects and devised improvements in census taking. He also developed methods for simultaneous observations of astronomical, meteorological, and geodetic phenomena from scattered points throughout Europe. In his honor the international measure of obesity is called the Quetelet Index, sometimes also called the Body mass index (BMI). As one of the most influential social statisticians of the nineteenth century, Quetelet's applications of statistical reasoning to social phenomena profoundly influenced the course of European social science. [Newsscan and Amazon]

A Little Bit of Filtering Can Go a Long Way NYT -- We talked about content filtering at an IIA Spam Event a few days ago. In the New York Times, Vicky Rideout, VP of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, said, "A little bit of filtering is O.K., but more isn't necessarily better." The Foundation conducted a study showing that when anti-pornography Internet filtering software is set at a low level of restriction, it's just as effective as when it is set a high level, and is far less likely to prevent searchers from reaching bona fide health sites. But some observers, such as Judith F. Krug of the American Library Association, think that filters are such blunt instruments that they should not be used at all in public institutions: "Filters are just fine for parents to use at home. They are not appropriate for institutions that might be the only place where kids can get this information." The filtering programs generally block any references to sex-related terms; examples given by the report include such subjects as safe sex, condoms, abortion, jock itch, gay, and lesbian. [ New York Times]

Real-Time Blogging with Groove Radio Matt Pope --"When I finally went to bed, a solution came to mind as soon as my head hit the pillow and I couldn't stop thinking about it (and thus I couldn't go to sleep). Integration of Radio with Groove, using Groove Web Services, would further decentralize Radio in a way that would allow real-time blogging from machines not running Radio. I want it." Click to expand Matt Pope's sketch. [Matt Pope and Dave Winer]

Resource: Best 404 Pages 404 Research Labs -- The best 404 pages are in the Plinko's treasure trove (the 404 lab).

Google Web Quotes LABS GOOGLE -- View search results with quotes about them from other sites.

Incredibly Shrinking Poindexter Richard Smith -- It looks like members of the Total Information Awareness (TIA) development team at DARPA don't like the lime-light. All of their bio's were removed from the Information Awareness Office Web site sometime during the past couple of weeks. However the Google cache still had all of the bio's cached, so you can see them on Computer Bytes Man. [Computer Bytes Man and Politechbot]

Nokia 7650 Screensavers Lead to Hours of Fun ABOARD IRISH RAIL -- If you needed any proof that the new Nokia 7650 is more than a a phone, all you need do is travel aboard Irish Rail to a hen party. The phone doubles as an integrated digital imaging device. Point, click, send. People in a rowdy group headed to Kilkenny were using the Nokia 7650 as their party viewfinder. They were snapping pictures and sharing the moments with friends all across the Vodafone network. They could also save the picture in the photo album. And with a little technical tweaking, they could make their snapshots into screensavers to wrap into their electronic wallpapers forever. [Globetech and Xi Creative]

10 December 2002

2002 Google Zeitgeist GOOGLE BLOGSPACE -- The 2002 Google Zeitgeist is out, covering search trends. It also includes a nifty Google Timeline 2002 that covers the popular queries and logos over the year on Google. [Google Weblog]

Google Adwords Work for Jakob Although Jakob Nielsen doesn't disclose he's on Google's board, he does disclose that Google Adwords work for him.

WiFi: The Future Isn't Here Yet Wireless communications analyst Dylan Brooks of Jupiter Research says the industry is in "a bit of a bubble... We've had more than $2 billion in venture capital money flowing in, more than total revenues." Everyone seems to agree that Wi-Fi is the future -- but the future won't be here for at least another few years. Synergy Research predicts that the industry's revenues won't top $3 billion (1% the worldwide telecom equipment market) before 2003, and WiFi has yet to crack into the corporate market -- which is where the money is. Giga Information Group analyst Stan Schatt explains, "Most corporations are holding back because the suppliers cannot provide good security or tools for closely monitoring how the networks are performing." [ New York Times and Newsscan]

The Fall, Rebranding and Rise of Push Publishing IT WORLD -- "RSS is a veritable hive of activity and innovation." It's not about push. It's about weblogs.

Jon Hanna on URIs "Unfortunately there seem to be a good few people who still think of the web as 'URL points to file' and haven't got the basic concept that URIs identify resources," says Jon Hanna, eminent Irish code warrior.

Topgold's e-mail Stats Aboard Irish Rail -- I've been receiving and sending e-mails while aboard Irish Rail since March 2000. This year, I graduated from the Nokia Cardphone to the Nokia D211 card. Its antenna sensitivity is better. However, I've noticed that wireless connectivity is better when en route from Kilkenny to Dublin than it is between Thurles and Dublin. This must frustrate those traveling to Cork. The Dublin-Cork run is one of the most popular rail links in the UK and Ireland. Here's a look at my personal mail stats from the past year: 975 averge mail messages per week 23% of all messages read 66 new messages sent each week 24 replies written each week 6:47 used each week for e-mail Sent from IBM TransNote and Nokia D211 using Vodafone HSD.

Open: Browsers for the Visually Impaired OPEN -- Places to start learning about accessibility issues include many of the bookmarks maintained by members of the Open Mailing List. Browser Issues for Disabled CAST Trial of Home Page Reader Lynx Browser [Alan Horstmann, Mick Kelly and Derek Lawless]

09 December 2002

Known Spammer Gets Spammed LOCKERGNOME -- After Detroit Free Press columnist, Mike Wendland, published a story on Alan Ralsky, known sender of Unsolicited Commercial E-mail, the story spread across the Internet. Some hard core anti-spam advocates discovered Alan Ralsky's home address, then subscribed him to every piece of physical junk mail they could cram in his mailbox. [Detroit Free Press and Lockergnome]

"You've Got Spam" Fight Will Cost You DUBLIN -- David Bolger talked about MailSweeper to attendees at the IIA "You've Got Spam" event. MailSweeper provides a corporate solution to a community problem. I have set up mail rules myself, using both IOL's filter system and Eudora's rules. I have never succeeded in getting ahead. I know I need a corporate solution but it might be easier to move my mail to an ISP with something like MailSweeper running on top of its servers. At the very minimum, fighting spam costs me time and that's worth money, no matter the size of a company. Sent by Nokia 9210i mail2blog over Vodafone HSD.

Corporate Solutions for a Spam Problem DUBLIN -- I listened to David York from ClearSwift (MIMESWEEPER) talk about the problems at an IIA "You've Got Spam" event, and he reiterated several common themes. You cannot unsub from spam. Spam doesn't care if it's illegal in Ireland. If you run a 100-user mail network, you are looking at 2.1m messages per year. Getting rid of a single message takes the average user 6 seconds. Among his solutions: Set policies. Use real time blacklists. Use sophisticated blocks that validate sender's addresses, IP addresses, limit number of recipients. Like several techies at the IIA event, he covered the need to shut down open relays. I didn't see anyone from eircom tech services in attendance. Sent by Nokia 9210i mail2blog over Vodafone HSD.

Chris Gulker on What Makes Weblogs Popular GULKER -- Chris, blogging since early Frontier days in 1995, points out that if you want more readers, you should become famous and, lacking that, write frequent, long posts about stuff that you know well. Encourage inbound links, but don't worry about outbound. You can find Chris in print in The (London) Independent, giving his perspective on Silicon Valley. Recommended. Sent by Radio TransNote using Nokia D211 card over Vodafone HSD.

Spam and the Irish Internet Association DUBLIN -- Cormac Callanan, chairman of the ISP Provider Association of Ireland and director of Hotline.ie spoke about spam and the Internet at an IIA event. He's pictured on the right, holding a microphone to a PolySpan phone while answering a call-in question from Brian Walsh. Callanan established EUNET in Ireland in 1991. He's well familiar with tech dimensions behind mail servers, open relays and the responsibilities ISPs have dealing with spam. He had 13 slides for viewing, including some including porn popups from his personal email. He pointed out how the EU eCommerce Directive 2000 covers "unsolicited commercial communications" and how they should not result in charges by the recipient. As his audience was largely nontechnical, Callanan spent most of his alloted 20 minutes talking about the directives, definitions of opt-in, opt-out and other countries handling spam. Callanan doesn't think EU directives outlawing spam will stop spam because most of what he receives comes from outside Europe. He has graded the spam he has received during the past fortnight and 113 are about sex, 13 about virus, 89 about business -- about 26 spams a day. He notes that child porn is distributed by spam, a fact that concerns him in his work at Hotline.ie. Sent by Nokia 9210i mail2blog over Vodafone HSD.

WiFi Internet Access is Hot But Profit Isn't NYT -- If you install a WiFi node, you cannot expect easy profits from the low margins in this relatively new marketplace. [New York Times: Technology]

Rewriting the US Constitution ACLU org -- A spectacular TV ad campaign criticizing US Attorney General Ashcroft's systematic undermining of the Constitution is running in the States now. This is a tight message explaining what's wrong with John Ashcroft's America. [Cory Doctorow]

08 December 2002

Python Thumbnail Generator A.M. Kuchling -- Elegant and free really simple Python code to generate thumbnails, re-size pictures and output a simple html code. [Kuchling and WhyKay's Happenings]

Mobile Internet User Growing Mobile Data Association -- Messaging via the internet, either by sending text messages to a buddy list on the net or sending messages direct to e-mail accounts is proving one of the most popular uses of mobile net services.

Timeout: Fregate Island FREGATE -- About once every six weeks in the early 80s, I flew six miles above Frégate Island and its collection of sixteen luxury villas. Lately, I've seen how each one provides guests with the highest degree of privacy and comfort, far removed from the hutches two flying hours away in the British Indian Ocean Territory.

Motorola SmartStream MOTOROLA -- Broadband Communications Sector introduced its SmartStream Encryptor/Modulator (SEM) technology. SEM works with operators’ existing digital networks to quickly and cost-efficiently multiplex, encrypt, and modulate streams for session-based video-on-demand (VOD) services. Designed for interactive digital cable headend architectures, the Motorola SEM has the capability to encrypt a large number of services across eight separate 64 or 256 QAM cable channels into a single rack unit of space. Content delivered via the Motorola SEM is protected by Motorola’s MediaCipher conditional access system, which currently secures content delivered to more than 20 million subscribers. [MOT and Design Technica x:109]

Incubation in Southeast Ireland SEEPP ie -- The South East Enterprise Platform Programme is a 12 month rapid incubtion programme that supports entrepreneurs in devloping their business plan from an early stage. The programme director is Alan Kelly and the funding comes from Enterprise Ireland.

British Identity Cards Will Provoke Backlash BBC -- There is likely to be a big public backlash to government plans to introduce compulsory ID cards in the UK, says Simon Davies of the civil liberties group Privacy International. [Privacy International and BBC]

07 December 2002

Delta RocketCam Videos dmaas -- High quality RocketCam Videos from the inaugural launch of Boeing's Delta IV rocket have just been made available (in MPEG-1 and Quicktime). [Slashdot]

Spam Could Destroy the Internet David Berlind -- If ISPs start clamping down on spammers by invoking blacklists, email will lose its credibility as a channel for always-on connectivity.

Groove on My Commodore 64? Jeff Chausse -- There's no need to tie up your Windows PC with Groove. Put Groove on a cheap PC. Set it in a closet, hook it up to your LAN. Build whatever interfaces you really need, out of .NET/Java/Perl/Fortran, and access it from your Mac/PalmPilot/WebTV/Commodore 64. [Jeroen Bekkers' Groove Weblog]

Sighting: Macromedia Contribute You can set up this slick program in such a way that only certain users have certain privileges. The developer defines the areas of the page that are accessible, so you can easily and quickly define the main body of text (but not the nav features) as being editable. [Webmaster Base] Sent by Nokia 9210i mail2blog over Vodafone HSD.

Ten Tech Promises That Will Never Be Fulfilled Here are 10 technology myths and our analysis on what solution providers should be doing about them: The Paperless Office Tag line: Remember carbon paper? Myth: E-mail, instant messaging, digital signatures and other electronic technologies will rid the office of paper files and copiers. Reality: E-mail generated more paper as people made copies for their files. In fact, the FBI still works this way, as do many legal offices. Fallout: Copiers and file cabinets are still the norm, though most businesses don't know from carbon paper anymore, so there is some hope. Still, businesses do more printing now than ever before. IP/telephony Tag line: Network your phone! Myth: Get rid of that expensive PBX and connect all your telephones on your corporate Ethernet network. Then you'll only have one infrastructure to manage and maintain. Reality: IP phones aren't that easy to deploy. You have to beef up the quality of service on various network switches and routers, and you may need to retrain your data-center staff to understand telco quality vs. network quality. Fallout: While Cisco and others are briskly selling IP phones, getting all the infrastructure and staff up to par may take a few more years. Desktop videoconferencing Tag line: Live video to your desktop! Myth: The Internet, IP and H.323 protocols and cheap Webcams will bring about a new era in desktop-videoconferencing applications. Reality: While JenniCam and others have made live video feeds popular, the more mundane office communications,at least between people fully clothed,have lagged behind. H.323 is a rat's nest of complicated and confusing protocols, and standards aren't quite as interoperable as they could be. IP networks aren't always up to the task of delivering full-motion video without hogging all of the network bandwidth. Fallout: Some interesting products and applications have come from all this work, nonetheless, including low-priced video servers that can be used to distribute desktop videos, Web-based videoconferencing/applications-sharing and improvements to multicast IP applications. Client-side Java Tag line: Write once, debug everywhere. Myth: Java will revolutionize the software-development industry by providing a standard programming language that will run on numerous desktop OSs. Reality: Subtle differences in Java runtimes and implementations make this almost impossible. Helping to confound matters is that Java was caught in the crossfire between Sun and Microsoft over which company would control its destiny. Fallout: Some good has come of the whole Java mess, and from an unsuspected direction: the server. Java servlets, small pieces of code that run on top of various server-based processors, have taken off and spawned an entire new industry of Web services and standards. Unified messaging Tag line: Faxes in your e-mail inbox! Myth: Workers will soon be able to use a single inbox to sort through all their communications needs, including e-mail, faxes, voice messages and files. Reality: There are inboxes galore littering the computing landscape: Most of us have multiple e-mail, voicemail and fax addresses that accumulate messages quickly. Trying to sort out these different data types in a single location or service isn't as easy as once thought. Fallout: Well, we do have services such as jFax, eFax and other Web-based fax offerings that came from these efforts, which are popular, effective and useful, especially as the number of junk faxes continues to climb. Internet-based payments Tag line: Sending money has never been easier. Myth: Paying for goods over the Internet is fraught with problems because of the exposure to big, bad hackers and crackers. Reality: This is one of those myths that actually works the other way. There is plenty of technology that can solve this problem, and people are buying stuff over the Internet to the tune of many billions of dollars a year. And the reality is that most Web-based attacks are focused on the content or gaining control of the servers themselves, not intercepting individual transactions. Fallout: eBay now owns PayPal, which has become the preeminent Internet-based payment provider and has largely unified a fractious and confused industry overnight. Firewalls Tag line: Protect and serve. Myth: Any corporation with any sense whatsoever will protect its network resources with a firewall. Reality: Most firewalls don't protect everything and don't operate perfectly. Many have holes that allow all sorts of mischief into the average network. Even without these holes, the firewalls can be easily circumvented with some very easy tricks, such as proxy servers or hacked trusted accounts. Fallout: Better intrusion-detection devices have come to market, and better sharing of attack profiles and techniques that can compromise proxy servers and the like are now available. Windows server security Tag line: Just as secure as Unix. Myth: Microsoft will tighten down the hatches, patches and cracks to make Windows servers as safe and secure for corporations as any other OS. Reality: Windows servers running Microsoft applications have so many security loopholes that exploits are legion, frequent and well-publicized. Fallout: The software community can thank this myth for generating an active industry that keeps track of patches and fixes, to be sure. Desktop Linux Tag line: Better Windows than Windows,cheaper and fun, too! Myth: Linux for the masses, running on your average Intel desktop PC with all the applications that you ever could use, just as long as they don't come from Redmond. Reality: Linux is for servers, not desktops. Getting the right drivers, getting an operating system installed and a graphical interface running, and getting Linux to behave isn't for the faint of heart. Fallout: The Linuxes are getting better at installing themselves, and some corporations have begun to standardize on them for desktops under certain limited circumstances. Secure e-mail Tag line: When you absolutely need privacy in your communications. Myth: E-mail gets transmitted in clear text around the Internet, but it can easily be encrypted to keep prying eyes from reading messages between parties. Reality: Encryption isn't easy. Cryptographic solutions require all sorts of heavy lifting, and getting two e-mail systems to interoperate under these circumstances is more a matter of luck than skill. Fallout: For the most part, secure e-mail is still the pits and still the province of a few techies. But we do have encryption creeping into more and more products: Witness Groove and PKZIP are two examples that include this feature. And e-mail-encryption service providers are beginning to get the ease-of-use message as they deploy their products. [David Strom, VARBusiness] Sent by Nokia 9210i Communicator mail2blog over Vodafone HSD.

Generating Labels from Web Server OPEN -- Good ways of generating labels from a database on a webserver. As long as you don't mind initially working out a table grid that matches the Avery sheets, use Fop (http://xml.apache.org/fop/index.html). It'll run on just about any modern JVM and turn XML into PDF (and other stuff, but PDF works best). The nice thing about the source files being XML is that it's very easy to do a "plug your data in this end" job. If you set up Acrobat Exchange on their web server, you can schedule a task to run a VBA routine in Access to print to the PDF printer driver. [Dermot McNally and Derek Lawless]

Identity Theft Often an Inside Job Stephen and Chey Cobb -- Society pays huge costs for security breaches related to personal information. The fastest growing crime in America is not drug smuggling or terrorism, but a crime that is increasingly computer-based: identity theft. So says the Federal Trade Commission, the lead agency at the federal level, and many state attorneys general agree. Last week federal prosecutors arrested and charged three people in connection with a scheme to steal the personal financial information of 30,000 Americans. Given that the average cost to a consumer whose identity is stolen is estimated to be more than $6,000, the potential impact of this scheme was over $180m, far bigger than any conventional robbery job. in this case a computer help-desk employee who had access to sensitive passwords from banks and credit companies stole that data and sold it to scam artists, splitting a fee of $60 per name with an accomplice. The theft continued for several years because during that time the passwords were never changed. The economic impact of this category of crime -- which almost always involves some form of computer crime -- is already significant, and looks set to increase. Here's just one example: the identity-theft caseload of the LA County Sheriff's Department was 2,119 cases in 2000, 4,149 in 2001, and will likely exceed 6,000 cases this year. A GAO report earlier this year put the average cost of working ID theft cases at the federal level in the $10,000 to $15,000 range, with prosecutions averaging around $11,000. Exact numbers for ID theft are hard to track down, but one very telling place to look is allegations involving SSN misuse. The GAO reports that these increased more than fivefold, from about 11,000 in fiscal year 1998 to about 65,000 in fiscal year 2001 (about 81% of all allegations of SSN misuse relate directly to identity theft). At the federal level, complaints to the FTC have more than doubled recently (85,820 last year, up from 31,113 in 2000). They are set for more double-digit growth this year (the FTC received 70,000 complaints in the half of 2002). A major reason for this explosion is "a shift by identity thieves from going after single individuals to going after a mass amount of information," according to Joanna Crane, identity-fraud program manager at the Federal Trade Commission, recently quoted in the Washington Post. Not surprisingly she observed: "There's an awful lot of bribery of insiders going on." Lessons learned: Your employees are your biggest threat. Employee access to internal systems needs to be tightly controlled. You can't keep using group logons. Each user must be individually logged on. Group permissions are okay as a way of managing access controls, but the membership of each group must reviewed on a regular basis to make sure only the appropriate individuals are included. Individual passwords upon which permissions and access controls are based must be regularly changed. Personal information (Personally Identifiable Information or PII) is valuable. We now know that the average person's data is worth $60 per head on the street, but that same data could net the buyer many thousands in bank withdrawals, credit card purchases, cash advances and courtesy checks.If your organization has any PII in its computers, it had better make sure it is well protected. The trend in infoseconomics is not to blame the person who sold the PII but to blame the company that didn't do enough to protect the PII from getting stolen. ["Network Security for Dummies" and "Privacy for Business: Web Sites and Email" and ePrivacy Group and Newsscan]

Is Search Engine Optimisation Worth the Bother? GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT --Getting highly placed in search engines can be an exercise in chasing your tail. Focusing on good content organisation and promoting your site within relevant communities, like link exchanges, email marketing lists, or joining a networking group or discussion list and having your URL in your email sig actually delivers more effective site promotion for small businesses.

06 December 2002

Who needs a Constitution if you have Homeland Security?

Column Two: XFML in Action STEP TWO com au -- Mark Pilgrim writes about his experiences at applying XFML (XML Faceted Markup Language) to his Dive into Accessibility resource. This is a really useful case-study that shows how faceted classification information can be converted into a range of navigation and searching tools, amongst other wonders. [dive into mark/further reading]

50,000 WiFi Hotspots Coming COMETA NETWORKS -- "The former Project Rainbow has yielded Cometa, a joint effort by Intel, IBM Global Services, and AT&T to get 20k to 50k WiFi hotspots launched across the USA, putting one within 5 minutes of everyone in a major metropolitan market. [Cometa and Anil and NYT and Cory Doctorow]

News Fits My Aggregator BAWNTAMEENA HOTSPOT -- It's amazing that the amount of news that happens in the blogosphere every day always just exactly fits into my news aggregator. [Thanks to Jerry Seinfeld]

05 December 2002

Taxi Drivers Have to Pay Music Royalties ANANOVA -- The music industry has apparently convinced the Supreme Court in Finland that _taxi drivers need to pay royalties for the music they play in their cars. If the cab driver has the radio on, then he or she owes the music industry money for those "public performances". [Ananova and Techdirt]

Generating Income from Intellectual Property McKINSEY QUARTERLY -- McKinsey's study of current intellectual property practices and valuations suggests that IPR assets could generate 5 to 10 percent of operating income. Yet only a small number of the companies that McKinsey examined earn more than 0.5 percent of their operating income from licensing. Unlike the top performers, which on average do at least one intellectual-property deal a month and earn licensing revenues of more than $10,000 annually for each active patent, most companies in the McKinsey survey complete only one or two deals a year and average less than $1,000 per active patent. [McKinsey Quarterly]

Best Blogs 2001 Dave Winer -- Listing of favorite weblogs, by category. Nominated for the top category of "Blogger of the Year" in 2001 were Adam Curry, Camworld, Rageboy, Dan Gillmor, Doc Searls, Evhead, Glenn Fleishman, Heather Champ, JD Lasica, Joel Spolsky (he won), Lance Knobel, Rafe Colburn, Susan Kitchens, Wes Felter and Zeldman. [Scripting News and Shoptalk]

Broadband Projects Delayed in Southeast Ireland ELECTRIC NEWS net -- Work on the first phase of a major broadband infrastructure project for southeast Ireland looks set to be postponed until 2004. John Cradden reported the project to construct 100km of fibre optic network in Waterford and five nearby towns was due to begin shortly, but is likely to be postponed by the South East Regional Authority (SERA). The project, known as SERPANT, is one of 19 schemes that were approved by the Irish government as part of an infrastructural plan to develop high-speed Internet technologies. SERA Director Thomas Byrne simply did not get the funding. That means no broadband construction. We would've had high-speed Internet access in Kilkenny if this project had received funding. SEISS needs this broadband linkage to fulfill its visionary objectives. The innovative work set in place by Sean Lynam, e-business manager for the South East Chambers of Commerce, won't reach the masses without broadband points of presence. [The Irish Times and Electric News]

US Justice Department Must Respond to Information Request PC WORLD -- The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in August requested information from the US Department of Justice concerning the agency's surveillance activities since passage of the USA PATRIOT Act. Jameel Jaffer of the ACLU said that the breadth of the surveillance powers included in the PATRIOT Act allows for the possibility of their abuse of personal liberties. When the government failed to respond to the Freedom of Information request, the organizations sued, and a federal judge has set January 15 as the deadline for a response. According to EPIC's general counsel, the Justice Department has compiled 300 pages of information in response to the request but has not decided to release it. EPIC and the ACLU have asked for statistics showing how often the government has used its new surveillance authority for activities such as wiretapping and intercepting e-mail. [PC World and EDUCAUSE]

Content is Back in the Frame Word at AOL's stockholder meeting yesterday revealed that magazines, TV and films are coming to the rescue of the Internet. AOL plans to attract advanced email services allowing users to send things like movie trailers. According to David Teather in New York, although AOL is being forced into broadband by the demands of the market, the profit margins are lower than for the dial-up narrowband service, which accounts for the largest part of the existing business. Jonathan Miller, appointed to oversee AOL three months ago, believes the Internet has moved towards a traditional media model that depends on subscriptions and advertising. The days of free content are numbered. The idea of an Internet portal as a destination is a hangover term from the 90s. ["It's Back to the Future for Net Heads" by David Teather in The Guardian, 5 Dec 02]

Jamie Oliver's Redemption Kitchen SHANOWEN HOTSPOT -- After watching Jamie Oliver for a month of Tuesday nights on Channel 4, I am not surprised that The Naked Chef has become a Media Saint. Oliver has tied to cajole 15 unemployed young people into becoming chefs for his new cooperative restaurant in London. Simultaneously, this week's profits statements from Sainbury's establishes Oliver as one of the most fascinating current public figures. The supermarket chain claims that Oliver was personally responsible for 20% of its profits last year and that his campaigns have increased its turnover by more than £1bn since the century began.

Who Needs a Puppy? Ashley Norris -- Gadgets come and go, so you need to know the ones that aren't just for Christmas. Archose Multimedia Jukebox is the Swiss-Army knife of the gadget world. The Jukebox's 20GB hard dixk is capable of archiving up to 400 albums of MP3 music transferred from a PC or recorded directly from a CD player via the unit's onboard MP3 encoder. You can also use it with a plug-in camera and then review the pictures with the Jukebox' 320x240 colour screen. Sony Clie PEG NR-70V includes an integrated MP3/ATRAC3 audio players, gMovie and Picture Gear software. It has an on-board DSC with a swivel lens. Sony also offers Clie Remote Commander software, which means this device can change your television channels too. Philips Streamium MC-i200 not only includes an FM tuner alongside its CD player but also a web browser optimised to deliver Web radio stations via a connection to a broadband modem. Innogear Duex MP302 includes an integrated MP3 player and voice recorder. So you can carry your documents, files and tunes in your pocket. [The Guardian Online]

04 December 2002

They Buy Ringtones but They Don't Buy the Tracks Conn McQuinn -- Although people don't want to pay for CD tracks online, they buy dire ringtones based on the same tracks. "There are websites doing land-office business selling music online -- music in the format of ringtones for phones. I find it fascinating that people won't pay 99 cents for an entire CD track, but will pay up to a dollar to download a five-second snippet of the same song to play on their telephone." [Newsscan]

John Steinbeck: America and Americans John Steinbeck -- "Our land is of every kind geologically and climatically, and our people are of every kind also -- of every race, of every ethnic category -- and yet our land is one nation, and our people are Americans. In the beginning we crept, scuttled, escaped, were driven out of the safe and settled corners of the earth to the fringes of a strange and hostile wilderness, a nameless and hostile continent. Some rulers granted large sections of unmapped territory, in places they did not own or even know, as cheap gifts to favorites or to potential enemies for the purpose of getting rid of them. Many others were sent here as a punishment for penal offenses. "Far from welcoming us, this continent resisted us. The Indigenes fought to the best of their ability to hold on to a land they thought was theirs. The rocky soils fought back, and the bewildering forests, and the deserts. Diseases, unknown and therefore incurable, decimated the early comers, and in their energy of restlessness they fought one another. This land was no gift. The firstlings worked for it, fought for it, and died for it. They stole and cheated and double-crossed for it, and when they had taken a little piece, the way a fierce-hearted man ropes a wild mustang, they had then to gentle it and smooth it and make it habitable at all. Once they had a foothold, they had to defend their holdings against new waves of the restless and ferocious and hungry. "America did not exist. Four centuries of work, of bloodshed, of loneliness and fear created this land. We built America and the process made us Americans-a new breed, rooted in all races, stained and tinted with all colors, a seeming ethnic anarchy. Then in a little, little time, we became more alike than we were different -- a new society, not great, but fitted by our very faults for greatness, E Pluribus Unum." [John Steinbeck and Newsscan]

CADCO Evolution: Training, Web Design, CMS and AutoCAD in Ireland CADCO EVOLUTION -- Electronic Content Management (ECM) provides companies with pressing Content Management requirements with tools, techniques and consultancy -- and that means more people get the message.

Register.ie Provides 20 Percent of dot.ie Domains Registered REGISTER ie -- Although there's some turbulence inside IEDR at the moment, companies using register.ie will be well-served in carving out an online status. As many cynics noted when the dotcom hysteria subsided, getting online is more than hanging a page off a URL. There are some notable solutions at Register.ie that deserve reviewing when Irish companies look at the state of their online affairs.

03 December 2002

Spam Will Get Worse Spam will get worse. By 2007, the average American will receive over 600 pieces of spam each year. It get that amount every two weeks. [Lockergnome's Bits and Bytes]

Recording Industry Continues Wasting Money CHRONICLE -- An e-mail sent from Cary Sherman, general counsel of the Recording Industry Association of America to Graham B. Spanier, the president of Pennsylvania State University, says the recording industry will send more infringement notices to colleges. Until now the RIAA has been "somewhat circumspect" in notices sent relative to observed copyright violations. The RIAA thinks file sharing on campuses is the leading cause in the decline of CD sales. [EDUCAUSE]

Opening Pearl Harbor's Logs POLITECHBOT -- I watched Pearl Harbor on TV last week, recalling how my earlier understnading of that day of infamy came on the back of reading Lladislas Farago's code-breaking book. There's a companion book, Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor by Robert B. Stinnett that deserves equal time. What makes Stinnett's work more interesting is that immediately after his book appeared in bookstores in 1999, the NSA began withdrawing pre-Pearl Harbor documents from the Crane Files housed in Archives. As of January 2002, over two dozen NSA withdrawal notices have triggered the removal of Pearl Harbor documents from public inspection. [Articles by Stinnett: "The Pearl Harbor Deception," 2 Dec 02 and "December 7, 1941: A Setup from the Beginning," in Honolulu Advertiser, 7 Dec 00 and "Pentagon Still Scapegoats Pearl Harbor Fall Guys," in Providence Journal, 7 Dec 01]

Tim Woolford -- Great report on commerical hot spots in London. [80211b News and technoculture]

37m Americans Banking Online INFOWORLD -- Study shows 37m Americans now bank online. Rate has increased 164 percent since 2000. [InfoWorld: Top News]

02 December 2002

Restaurants Make Bad WISPs TECH DIRT -- Eating establishments are better off offering free Wi-Fi to their customers than trying to squeeze the extra cash out of their pockets. That's because restaurants aren't WISPS. Some pubs in the UK are now offering free Wi-Fi to customers, saying that those customers are paying for it by coming in and ordering food that they wouldn't have ordered otherwise. That's the same argument that Schlotzky's Deli has made in the US. [Mike on Techdirt]

New Specs for Digital Imaging INFOWORLD -- A group of six digital still camera makers and printer vendors, including Sony and Hewlett-Packard, have jointly proposed a new industry standard that allows images recorded by a digital still camera to be printed out without using a computer. This standard will trickle down to camera phones within three years, leading to kiosk-style print imaging. We should expect no less -- photo booths can double as print facilities for those with MMS phones. [Kuriko Miyake]

Draft Policy on Irish Flat Rate Access and More DUBLIN -- Dermot Ahern, Ireland's Minister for Communications, released a draft Policy Direction to the newly established Commission for Communications Regulation (CCR). Flat Rate Access is considered to "be of substantial benefit." Broadband Electronic Communications should be "widespread ... open-access, affordable, always on ... throughout the State within three years, on the basis of utilisation of a range of existing and emerging technologies and broadband speeds appropriate to specific categories." Regulation only where necessary. Regulatory Impact Assessment. "The Commission having decided to impose regulatory obligations on undertakings in the market for electronic communications or for the purposes of the management and use of the radio frequency spectrum or for the purposes of sustaining universal service obligations in the postal sector, shall conduct a Regulatory Impact Assessment in accordance with European and International best practice." Consistency with Other Member States. "The regulatory obligations imposed on undertakings in the electronic communications market in Ireland should be equivalent to those imposed on undertakings in equivalent positions in other Member States of the European Community." Consistency Across Platforms Regulation of Retail Prices Management of the RF Spectrum. "The Commission shall ensure that, in its management of the radio frequency spectrum, it takes account of the interests of all users of the radio frequency spectrum." Views are welcome up to 10 Jan 03. I would expect a major submission from Ireland Offline. [Policy Direction and IOFFL reaction]

Sighting: LeapFrog iQuest LEAPFROG -- The LeapFrog iQuest is "like training wheels for PDAs and cell phones" for the thumb generation, according to Jenny Levine. [The Shifted Librarian]

Happy Birthday Britney Spears GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- Britney Spears turns 21 day! I think she should've flown to Dublin for the day because there's no better place to celebrate a 21st than in Ireland.

Karlin Lillington's Call to Action Karlin Lillington -- After breaking a front page story concerning the Irish government's draft legislation on data privacy, Karlin plans to create a permanent resources section on issues around safeguarding digital rights and especially the Irish government's plan to introduce a bill allowing for the retention of data on all Irish citizens' emails, faxes, phonecalls, mobile calls, and internet use. This is a good idea because Ireland needs a dedicated digital rights privacy advocacy group to inform the public and lobby against things like the UK RIP procedures. The Irish branch of the Electronic Frontier Foundation remains inactive. Karline calls for its reactivation and possible creation of something like Statewatch. [EFF and technoculture]

Billions of Public Access Wireless YANKEE GROUP -- A Yankee report says North American public wireless access (PWLAN) will grow into a billion dollar business. [Yankee Group and Peter Bellew and allNetDevices Wireless News]

Dave Winer on Bootstrapping DAVENET -- There is plenty to be learned from how UserLand bootstrapped itself into productivity. Remember, the process is more important than the product.

Imagine a Blogcam Intellisign GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- Webcams can give you a wonderful snapshot of interesting vantage points from around the world. And if they scroll into view on a street sign, wouldn't that be just as interesting? Imagine asking the street sign for a look at a favourite spot, then getting to see the webcam's view at your request. x:109

01 December 2002

Incitement to Hatred and e-Mail GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- Under The Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act (1989) it is an offence "to publish or distribute written material ... likely to stir up hatred." Can we assume the Act covers transmission of e-mails? Each week, I receive dubious e-mails, purportedly humourous, that cross the line of disrespect. Read by the wrong person, they would encourage negative views of people.

State of the Art of Reputation SMART MOBS -- Reputation is not something that's internal to you. You don't have a reputation with yourself per-se. Reputations only really exist within the context of your interactions with others, and therefore, a reputation can be viewed as existing in the space between you and others. While a reputation can be thought of as distinct, separate and external to us all, it is inextricably linked to us. Reputation doesn't exist outside of the context of the owner to which it refers. In some instances, a reputation can become so independent from us that it 'takes on a life of its very own.' In these cases, reputations can actually drive how we act, rather than the normal case of how we act dictating our reputation. For example, sometimes we find ourselves acting in uncharacteristic ways, many times unconsciously, just to support an external perception of who we are amongst others that is no longer true to our being. A reputation is comprised in part of what we say and what we do, over some period of time in some particular context of an interaction with others. As an individual, I might never know all of the different facets of my reputation, just as others might also never know every aspect of my reputation. Needless to say, reputations are important to us all because they affect us in very tangible ways, serving to make our lives easier or more difficult, depending on whether they are positive or negative.> [Kuro5hin and Howard Rheingold]

Video Conferencing Tips GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- Some tips for better videoconferencing. Coordinate the meeting schedule. Always introduce everyone in the room to one another and get acknowledgements that everyone can hear. Reposition the camera periodiclly. Don't drum your fingers. Pause for comments. Speak naturally. Make visual aids simple and in landscape. Mute the microphone when not speaking.

Using XFML to Handle Multiple Feeds Matt Mower -- When trying to handle feed from multiple blogs, "we will reach the situation where people using different words to mean the same topic. This will be a problem, but hopefully not as a big of a problem as it could be. It is for this reason that I have been tracking XFML so carefully. With XFML we have the ability to say 'A's topic X is the same as B's topic Y'. liveTopics already does XFML." [Scripting News]

ICE Tech ICE Tech ie -- The company provides touch screen kiosk technology to the Irish public sector. It supplies solutions to both central and local government agencies, health authorities an semi-state bodies. Its kiosks enable users to access useful online information, view multimedia presentations, send and receive e-mails, bank online and make online purchases.

DIY Home Cinema XI BLUE -- The digital media revollution has just begun, according to Tim Kirby, who believes that in five years' time, everyone will be creating mini-movies as part of everyday life. Kirby is perfecting ways people can videoblog. He also is devising training courses that would allow people to create mini-TV shows about their lives, using just Apple equipment and a DV camera.

Ireland's Attitude Towards Drunks GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- I like Eamon Dunphy, the controversial Irish presenter, because he brings things into focus. At the moment, he is focusing issues concerning drunken driving for me. Dunphy was recently convicted of driving while intoxicated, his ninth motoring offence. He has been put off the road for 10 years. Dunphy lives a pattern of questionable conduct. His drinking patterns and recreational drug use are common knowledge. The courts don't defer to him, they levy a sentence evenly weighted for the offence. So anybody with the same kind of pattern of driving while intoxicated would walk for 10 years when convicted by an Irish court. But they wouldn't serve a custodial sentence, because that's Ireland's attitude towards drunks. That's the same country where more than a million will tune in to hear Dunphy chat about current events or to analyse a football match. They won't tune out from disgust because they like Dunphy's attitude on most things and they'll accept his misconduct on other fronts.

Ireland Ending Writers' Tax Exemption GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- Ireland's finance minister Charlie McCreevy is considering taxing artists and writers. Defenders of this tax-free system point out that it has attracted hundreds of creatives to Ireland. Plus, most artists and writers don't hit it big, so their tax-free proceeds give them money to live without availing of welfare payments. It's worth noting that Ireland is the country that produced Yeats, Wilde, Joyce and Beckett. None enjoyed the artists' exemption.

Garringreen Hotspot BOARDS ie -- The guys in the IrelandOffline Forum don't believe we have home DSL service from EsatBT running in Kilkenny. I get a WiFi signal from a home with DSL service right now. It's always-on, even when the residents are out. I'm going to verify its speed and contract standard because we need to know if it was installed as a business or home connection.

Narrow Vision on Broadband THE SUNDAY TIMES -- Jane Suiter has tired of the rehetoric concerning how Ireland is supposed to become an e-commerce hub. She points out that "Ireland is still an effective wasteland for broadband services" and cites how "fewer than 2000 people in Ireland use broadband services." And why that? Because it's priced too high. Eircom says it's because people don't want broadband. As Suiter explains, Chris Horn from Iona Technologies doesn't buy this argument. And she says minister Ahern will correct the pricing structures with new pricing tables within weeks. The IrelandOffline community have been articulating these issues for nearly two years now. As David Long, winner of an IIA Net Visionary Award points out, there are a multitude of killer applications out there waiting for broadband carriage. Ireland needs to turn on reasonably priced always-on service options, which will show citizens a way towards new functions like collaborative hieroglyphics.

Filing on the Fly GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- If you Google already and you want to improve the way you save your precious discoveries, you should consider Copernic Professional. According to David Hewson, "if this top version cannot find something on the Web, then it probably does not exist." If Copernic finds something interesting, you can easily store the page using SurfSaver or Content Saver. Both create helpful databases of your Web pages that are easy to search, share and mine later.

Sighting: Software to Sniff Out Lost Files David Hewson -- One of the best computer search tools is The Sleuthhound. It indexes your folders, then searches the contents for any key words entered. The results pop up almost instantly inside a screen designed to look like a web search engine. If you file things on removeable media, spend €30 and download Ontrack's PowerDesk5 file manager. It puts two tiny icons in every open and save box, listing all the recent files and folders you have worked with. This help you navigate to documents you used earlier.

Doors Six-Point Action Plan to Fight Spam Danny O'Brien -- I pay around  €290 each month for spam I do not want. I believe these six points would combat the rise of electronic spam. Local politicians should complain to government that obscene spam crowds out e-mail from their voters. The government should give ISPs the power to fight back by suing spammers for damages. Service providers should pursue customers who abuse their systems and work with each other to stop the spammers abroad. Software makers must improve antispam software. The public should campaign for electronic postage stamps. Everyone should call for an independent watchdog to which we can report spam, where prosecutions are co-ordinated and evidence agains the most prolific spammers collated.