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Underway in Ireland
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02 November 2002 |
Santry Skunk Works -- We are playing around with a Tablet PC and it does what it says in the box. After a morning of messing around with it, I have three immediate observations. First, its Windows XP operating system protected me from the blue screen of death.¹ Second, the battery life is as good as it gets. We turned it on shortly after 0900 and it was still able to run WiFi plus an InFocus projector right up to noon. That's better than any battery powered laptop I've carried.² Third, it feels like Compaq have taken all their processing power and ensured they buttoned it into an ergo-friendly package that adapts to the user, not the other way around. This alone makes the TC1000 a fine piece of technology.
We've had the opportunity to compare the TC 1000 to an IBM TransNote. The TC 1000 has some rough edges in the pen computing department. Specifically, its pen actions are no where as intuitive as touching and tapping. But for people lugging around a 6-pound laptop that's more than 3 years old, the TC 1000 is a real leap into the 21st century.
Dan Bricklin tried out tablets and he agrees.
The most important thing to know about the Tablet PC, as far as I'm concerned so far, is that Microsoft did a great job...of naming it. Much as the press wants to call it a "pen" computer, it is a Tablet computer. You must understand that. The basis of the machine is that it is (or can be turned into) a tablet. The pen is secondary, and not always important. I think they did the right thing in concentrating on the tablet aspect. I would not get a Tablet PC without the software supporting the pen. Those who use OneNote from Microsoft Office swear by its usefulness.
NOTE ONE WEEK LATER: I am amazed that 56 different people viewed this page within the first week of its publication. That indicates there's a lot of interest in the slablets, and in getting tablet computers with Linux.
TWO WEEKS LATER: We carried the TC 1000 around the lobby of The Kilkenny Ormonde Hotel while setting up for a regional IT Conference and the thing was a bona fide Geek Magnet. Business Week's Stephen Wildstrom would agree.³
¹ However, we weren't running anything outside of the standard installation and we didn't work with any other application other than a browser and Office.
² I haven't explored the default power-saving features but I believe they are set to maximise power savings.
³ "The Compaq is the most interesting of the bunch," wrote Wildstrom in "The Liberation of Laptop Design," Business Week, November 25, 2002.
Dan Bricklin and "Sighting: Slablet", Topgold Blog, 25 Oct 02
Sent by TransNote over Nokia D211+Airport WiFi.
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01 November 2002 |
Ray Ozzie -- 1) I love GSM. Let me repeat: I love GSM. It's the only communications safety net that I really keep in-place wherever I go. I so very much appreciate that it works most anywhere - except Japan, Korea, and New Hampshire - and lets me reach critical phone numbers such as voice mail, the hotel, and in this case, the U.S. Consulate.
2) I love OAG. Although I didn't stay connected, I carried my Libretto in my backpack "just in case". When forced to do significant last-minute (and very complex) rerouting of my trip due to the unfortunate bombing in Indonesia, I was able to use OAG (TIS) to do significant and nontrivial rerouting, I was able to use 9600bps GSM dialup to Earthlink to look up some hotel information, and I was able to communicate with the travel agent, airline, hotel, and my assistant, reworking an entire itinerary in five hours end-to-end. An incredible testament to the state of technology and the Internet.
3) I love my Casio Exilim (for stills) and my Panasonic SV-AV10 (for clips), both of which fit in my pockets, and both of which - with 512MB SD memory cards - fit all of the hundreds of images from the trip. Truly revolutionary.
[Ray Ozzie]
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ONLINE BLOG -- When Sun Microsystems was promoting Java (J2EE) for corporate use it produced Pet Store, a sample application to show how it really should be done. Microsoft then produced an implementation using .Net to show how much better it was. "Foul" cried the Java-backing multitude: Pet Store wasn't optimised for performance. the Microsoft.net Pet Store 2 still trounces the Java version. In fact, the Microsoft.net server with two processors is rather faster than the 8-processor J2EE server B version, and amazingly cheaper ($4,722 v $316/tps). Worse, the Java B server tested "was unable to sustain peak throughput beyond four hours, destabilizing over this period of time to the point of failure" says TMC's report. Another aside from this fun-packed epistle: the Java version of Pet Store 2 required 14,004 lines of code whereas the C#/.net version was done in 2,096. You can download a copy of the report here. The Java side is discussing the implications on The ServerSide.com.`
[onlineblog.com] Sent from TransNote using Nokia D211+Vodafone HSD
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OPEN -- I am putting this post here to solicit a comment that tells me the settings for the Esat ADSL modem (Ericsson HM220d) on a very simple setup PC->ADSL modem->Analog line. PCs can ping ADSL router but no further.
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Easy Mail to Blog BALLYBLOG -- So I have a "Contact" named "Blog" and when my fingers slip on my mobile phone's messaging area, I fire blanks at my blog. This little posting contained nothing until I saw it and decided to explain to anyone watching how a Nokia 9210 can fire blanks.
Sent on train by Noka 9210i e-mail to blog
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BALLYBLOG -- It seems that each passing week brings me more spam. I need better spam filtering and that means using Spam Assassin or Choice Mail. I am resigned to paying for protection against junk mail. That's simply part of the cost of participating in the Net. But I miss the days when I posted to Usenet without thinking of such things.
Sent by Noka 9210i e-mail to blog.
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Letting Advertising Pay for City ServicesUSA TODAY -- Cash-strapped American cities are considering innovative ways of getting revenue. Larry Copeland discovered San Diego is considering letting General Motors put ads on life guard towers in exchange for 35 free police cars. The city of St Charles, Missouri, is renting ad space on its trash trucks. And the 1,793 people in Biggs, California, are mulling an offer from the California Milk Processor Board to change its name to "Got Milk?, California," in exchange for a "meaningful contibution.
Sent by Noka 9210i as e-mail to blog
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Spam Suffocates MeFour weeks after the SIGIA-L put their archives online, I have more than 2000 pieces of rubbish in the trash folder of my company mail account. I filter my mail. Before the SIGIA-L archives went public, I received hardly any jjunk mail to my company address. Someone should pay me to receive their junk. As it is, I am stuck with the costs of receiving, filtering, storing and deleting.
Sent by Noka 9210i as e-mail to blog
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It's Official: The Celtic Tiger Has Died BUSINESS WEEK -- The European edition reports the death of the Celtic Tiger and no wonder -- economic growth has slowed markedly in Ireland, tax revenues are sharply below target and technology jobs are shriveling. I chalk up the downturn to the exit of the telecommunications companies from funds that stimulated the growth of concept businesses. The principals who got the money had a "time to market" imperative without having to prove the validity of their business models. Some didn't have a model, so they had no benchmarks at entry. A tech sector skimmed high daily rates from Y2K-paranoid companies, then many of the same consultants discovered they could charge more because they were few in numbers. Now, demand for their services is down, as is their income, as is the tax take.
The government also started the Special Savings Investment Scheme, which siphons around €425m annually. Now the Irish government must borrow €750m in 2002 and €3bn in 2003. There is no slush fund to maintain public spending. For the next two years, slowdowns and reduced expectations will replace the champagne days of the Celtic Tiger.
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Irish Penalty Points System Implemented Irish Motorways -- If you drive on an Irish motorway, you will probably observe slower-moving traffic as the penalty points system finally gets implemented. I think getting points will deter friends who violate traffic code. After just three speeding violations, drivers can be forced to find another way to travel to work. That prospect will change drivers' behaviours. As it stands, speed kills more than the dire state of most Irish roads.
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Magadalene Sisters Movie Heads for Box Office Record ECLIPSE PICTURES -- A hard-hitting film examining the gruesome conditions pregnant girls endured in notorious Irish workhouses has sold out in cinemas across Ireland. It is expected to hit €300,000 by the close of its second week on release. That could push its revenues over a million within five weeks and make it one of the biggest grossing pictures ever screened in Ireland. The film won The Golden Lion Award for best film at the Venice Film Festival but it has been blasted by the Vatican.
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Irish Software Association Company of the Year ISA -- The shortlist for Young Company of the Year is out for the annual Irish Software Association Awards. The shortlist includes AEP Systems, Am Beo, AMT, Cinehub, WS2 and Xiam.
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XI BLUE -- To produce a film using the digital tools available at Xi Blue is certainly less expensive than using traditional film formats. Xi's post-production suite also makes it easier to add special effects or to remove items that detract from the original footage.
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31 October 2002 |
15 SECONDS -- Learn how the pros and cons of different non-standard HTTP tunneling techniques have shaped current XML Web services technology.
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OPEN -- Months ago, the Open Mailing List discussed how far someone could go to publicly name and shame someone in Ireland. Now victimised users from eBay are starting to put up websites exposing those who defraud.
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Open: Evolution in the Mobile Phone Market OPEN -- Several Open thinkers (specifically Brian rezoned, BHG, and Gaddo) mentioned some interesting points concerning the current evolution of the Irish mobile market. Distilling their ideas risks marginalising some of their emphasis, but here's what I took from the mailing list comments.
- Mobile phone manufacturers have spent years trying to refine their operating systems. Microsoft has just started this process.
- Microsoft has succeeded in achieving full spectrum dominance before. That feat will be more difficult today.
- Phones don't have to have Bluetooth, or IR, or a camera. They have to work and be affordable.
- GPRS is too expensive.
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Landing in a World Where Computing is a Utility BALLYBLOG -- I am toying around with some "first mover" technology and sincerely believe we're able to bolt everything together because of three serendipitous evolutions in technology. - Our back office staff can avail of a rendering grid which allows them to create things on their desktops and send them over the network for rendering. A few years ago, your desktop created, then rendered, while you sat idle.
- We have built in elements of autonomous computing so that the deployed computers monitor themselves and correct erratic behaviours. This makes the deployed computers more like utilities rather than mere computers.
- We sit on top of abundant bandwidth, a factor that makes continuous connectivity a reasonably-priced commodity. That's good for everybody.
Uploaded by Radio TransNote on a train, using Nokia D211 and Vodafone HSD.
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OPEN: Design Your API First OPEN -- We are building an extensible application by defining an API that the outside world must go through in order to access the data in a centrally controlled location. We think this is the surest way to maintain data integrity.
Uploaded on the train from TransNote with Nokia D211 using Vodafone HSD Services.
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NEWS com -- T-Mobile will be adding hot spots in Delta, United airport clubs, expanding service T-Mobile already has in some American Airlines Admiral's Clubs. Analysts' reports indicate 40 million business travelers are "mobile professionals," or people who work on the go with technology, and 20 million travelers use the three major airlines' club lounges each year.
[80211b News and Alan Reiter]
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Get Your Free Copy of Office Ben Hammersley -- When commenting on the (free) Open Office, Ben Hammersley remarked, "I'm as much a power user as anyone, and I've not been able to find any downside at all. Everyone can still read my documents, and I can read theirs." The newest version of Microsoft's Office Suite will only work on Windows 2000 with Service Pack 3 and Windows XP. This forced-upgrade strategy has tenebrous implications for many businesses running on fixed IT budgets, who say they may turn to StarOffice or OpenOffice.
Sent on a train by Noka 9210i as e-mail to blog.
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CNET -- Monet Mobile Networks, a new wireless Internet service provider is offering speeds up to 20 times faster than typical dialup services using the CDMA20001xEV-DO standard in North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. EV-DO, as it's nicknamed, offers downloads at speeds up to 2.4Mbps, and leading wireless carriers Verizon Wireless and Sprint PCS may be considering building EV-DO networks by 2005. Both companies now use the CDMA standard, which is adaptable to the faster version. Verizon says it is already testing EV-DO networks in San Diego and Washington, DC. Meanwhile, Monet plans to focus its business strategy on bringing broadband Internet access to rural areas, which typically are underserved. For $40 a month, Monet subscribers get unlimited Web access, three e-mail addresses and 5MB of data storage.
Sent by Noka 9210i as e-mail to blog from Shanowen Road WiFi hotspot.
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30 October 2002 |
SUN TIMES -- "Web sites are colorful and noisy and clicky, but when you get down to how content is organized, a Web site really isn't more sophisticated than an analog newspaper." Andy Ihnatko likes the Radio Aggregator. He recommends NewzCrawler for Windows and he recommends reading RSS feeds to stay up to date.
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ELECTRIC NEWS -- Vodafone has shifted its emphasis on email support from companies towards individuals. ENN says the move anticipates a robust uptake of MMS, part of Vodafone Live! I got my promotional literature last week and all I need now is a Nokia 7650 to climb aboard. Well, I also need to budget for the higher costs of connectivity, because MMS use will cost nearly four times as much as my SMS and GSM use.
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Will Durant -- I need to follow this advice from Will Durant: "One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say."
[Quotes of the Day]
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Sjoerd Visscher -- Everyone with an interest in easily connecting to XML needs to look at Xopus. Q42 doesn't have a marketing department, and their Xopus site looks daunting.
All actions in Xopus are schema controlled. If the schema doesn't allow it, the user can't do it. This doesn't stop with structural actions, like 'can you add one or more Authors to a Book', but markup is also restricted by the schema. Can a user only add bold and italic, or also lists and tables? And if the user can add links, is he then allowed to add a target attribute? This is a big issue for CMSs, where the site designers want to give the site a consistent look and feel, but where the editors keep messing things up.
Xopus provides the standard Word-like interface, like toolbars, context-menus, and some dialogs. But a user must do more than edit some XHTML. For example, the University of Groningen allows teachers to edit course descriptions and other course related data using Xopus. The two options they had before were either teach the teachers to use an XML editor, or build huge amounts of html forms more or less by hand.
The teacher doesn't even have to know the storage structure of the CMS. If he wants to edit his course, he fires up his browser and he surfs to the webpage of the course. And because the system can recognise the teacher, an extra link appears to edit the course. When clicked, the Xopus toolbar slides in and the course data becomes editable.
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LAW MEME -- Excellent discussion on the heels of ENN Opinion, Economist writing and Reuters reporting concerning whether all web info is publicly accessible. We talked about this issue on the Open Mailing List several times during the past two years. Wired thinks security by obscurity could be threatened by this Swedish legal review.
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29 October 2002 |
Sighting: Dell OptiPlex SX260This small-footprint computer can easily be mounted on the
back of a flat panel monitor. Because the SX260 is a modular unit, unlike some competing all-in-one designs, it can also sit horizontally or vertically on or under a desk.
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Cuppa Firewall DUBLIN -- I glanced at financial figures for a leading training and development company and noticed that they spend more on the coffee bar than they do on digital security. Across town, an affiliate company bolted down their newly installed DSL connection with an independent firewall. Security must come hand-in-hand with new always-on connections, or companies will never know an intruder is visiting.
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DIGITALMASS -- Ireland gets to see Microsoft Tablet PC technology this week. I have used a stylus with W98 for over a year and Palm stylus since last century. The Windows software was never as good as the Palm technology, so I am eager to sneak a peek at what's coming our way in time for Christmas.
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How Long to Make an Hour?How long does it take to develop one good hour of classroom training? How long to develop one good hour of computer-based training? I spend nearly onw work-week (38 hours) to develop one good hour of computer-based training. I can create one good hour of classroom training in 10 hours. Rosalyn Zigmond, president of Educational Design Group LLC,says "An hour of training is good when learners understand the material well enough to applyit to their jobs and improve their performance." That is why I like proficiency-based objectives.
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28 October 2002 |
MACROMEDIA -- Good thoughts about Web site usability on DesDev.
- Get to know your audience and design for them—not for yourself or your colleagues
- Test your site with inexperienced web users
- Make the content on your first page rich and explanatory
- Archive content after redesigning or changing a site
- Include useful search terms in meta tags and titles
- Provide contact and copyright information on every page
- Provide search options
- Maintain consistency of design
- Think about noise, movement, or anything that spins twice ... no, wait ... three times
- Proofread the text on your sites
- Provide printer-friendly pages
- Enhance your pages—don't replace them
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Flash MX -- Check out how washingtonpost.com coverage of the local area sniper shootings uses Flash MX for its maps and descriptive details. The Montgomery Country information includes video. Here's another one : ShelterNet provides Canadian women fleeing abuse with a ColdFusion MX and Flash MX interactive map to find a shelter near them.
[Matt Brown's Radio Weblog]
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Adam Curry -- You can hear Adam Curry's audio-blog post on the webtalk guys radio show where Mitch Ratcliffe guest hosted. It also arrives as an enclosure in this RSS feed, so if you aggregate with Radio UserLand, you will automatically receive the mp3 file for immediate playback.
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Sighting: Sony Electronics Offerings SONY -- Sony wants to tie its computers into all things entertainment. I've seen interesting things in European Sony Centres. - Vaio Media is an alternative to Windows Media Center with its own interface for audio, video, and data management. Different PCs on a home network can use it to easily share content.
- Click to DVD makes it elementary to transfer video from a camcorder to a DVD.
- RoomLink is a little wireless device that attaches to your TV, allowing you to use your PC's media on the TV.
All these things reflect Sony's business model. Sony aims to boost sales of digital camera, MP3 players, camcorders and TVs with its PC business, and vice versa. Once you get over the fact that Sony's memory stick is proprietary, the experience is rather seamless.
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My Sony Vaio Experience BALLYBLOG -- I've liked Sony's laptops since the early days of the Vaio. It took me a while to understand that the name stood for Video Audio Integrated Operation but shortly after I figured that out, I bought a Vaio laptop. That was in December 2000. I dropped the Vaio several times during the course of an academic term, ultimately cracking an internal hinge attach point for the screen. Within a dozen times of opening the screen, I shorted out the motherboard. That meant I got 14 months of use out of the Vaio. I had the laptop on a 24-month payment plan and my finance plan says I have two more months of payments remaining. Will I get another Vaio, eke out wireless connectivity issues with my TransNote, or move up to a Powerbook?
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27 October 2002 |
Sighting: Think Solutions IBM -- The Think Solutions campaign aims to make owning PCs less onerous. One application allows users to carry laptops between wired and wireless networks without having to fiddle with internal settings. Another program continually duplicates everything a user does on his PC to a special area on his hard drive. If a machine dies, the user can more easily get running again.
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Alsop's Outrageous Cellular Call FORTUNE -- Stewart Alsop believes CDMA will unseat GSM as a worldwide standard by 2010. What he argues is heresy in the world of cellular phones. Nonetheless, the facts show that CDMA makes for better phone calls and for better data services. It is easier and cheaper for wireless carriers to install and upgrade. And it will enable those carriers to find new revenue streams by hawking high-speed data services. That's the kind of performance advantage that leads to a real competitive advantage. And competitive advantages have a way of overwhelming even well-established technical standards. Alsop has eight years for the market to prove him right.
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Why Women Should Rule the World FORTUNE -- Kim Campbell, former Prime Minister of Canada, has a solution for today's scandal-riddled world: women leaders. "The qualities that are defined as masculine are also the same qualities that are defined as the qualities of leadership. There is virtually no overlap between the qualities ascribed to femininity and those to leadership." Yet in several studies, Campbell said, "results show that when you have a critical mass of women in an organisation, you have less corruption."
Lest you think that all we aspire to for the world can be accomplished by male-dominated organisations, I have only to say to you: Enron, Taliban, Roman Catholic Church.
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What'a Happening to the Shannon Knowledge Network? THURLES, County Tipperary -- I pinged a few servers that should be in the Tipperary Technology Park and they're not there. They were supposed to be part of the Shannon Knowledge Network. Technology parks in Tralee, Thurles, Birr and Ennis were to link together as part of a world class business environment for knowledge-based companies. It meant having the Thurles servers positioned so as to take advantage of the upturn in the world economy when it comes about. Those servers are not running anymore. Maybe there's another reason, but it looks like the Thurles link of the Shannon Knowledge Network is offline.
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Siemens Takes Risk with GSM in America SIEMENS -- Virtually unknown in the United States, Siemens is walking into the American market with its GSM technology. Siemens makes only GSM equipment, not the CDMA equipment that dominates the US. The trend is not with GSM. The two big networks that use CDMA, Verizon and Sprint, are winning market share from AT&T Wireless and Cingular, the carriers that switched to GSM.
I think American wireless carriers will quickly enter 3G space and standardise early on UMTS. This standardisation could marginalise Siemens, a company with little expertise in the faster space.
I think American carriers have discovered that CDMA works better. CDMA systems transmit clearer sound, plus the system is better suited for data. Carriers also know CDMA is easier and cheaper to install. It's CDMA-based companies like Sprint that are making real offers of new data services to customers earlier than networks running GSM. All these facts spell trouble for Siemens' entry as a GSM network provider.
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More e-Government Services Needed for Ireland DUBLIN -- If Ireland aspires for world leadership in the realm of e-business, the government must seriously consider putting the following things online: - Registration of new companies
- Search of trademark and patent databases
- Application for work permits
- Tendering for state contracts
- Filing of company annual returns
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