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Underway in Ireland
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09 November 2002 |
NYT -- One of the things I easily forget is that the Irish mobile phone market has tested and increased revenue streams possible from cell phones. We've played with ringtones for more than two years already, so it's a little surprising to discover that NYT journalist Lisa Napoli is just discovering how American ringtones can make money for telcos too.
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Dave Winer -- Radio now leverages aggregation. AggregatorLand facilitates the create of user interfaces for UserLand's engine in any language or environment, including Flash, .NET, Java, DHTML, Cocoa, Python, Tcl, and Perl.
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THE REGISTER -- John Lettice writes about an outrageous e-mail sent from an EMI customer services rep at EMI in Germany to a customer who had difficulty playing a copy-protected CD in his CD player. One of the most stunning lines from the translation: "If you plan to continue protesting about future audio media releases with copy protection, forget it; copy protection is a reality, and within a matter of months more or less all audio media worldwide are copy protected. And this is a good thing for the music industry. In order to make this happen we will do anything within our power - whether you like it or not."
[German original and Slashdot]
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08 November 2002 |
Richard Stallman -- Every Halloween, Stallman finds another reason to poke two fingers at Microsoft. This month, it's another leaked Microsoft memo. You could conclude that the memo shows Microsoft's strategy failed when publicly bashing the Open Source Movement. You could also conclude Microsoft is going after open source. Dan Gillmor believes the primary method will be to launch patent lawsuits. Microsoft has explicitly threatened to do this. This tactic might catch the Open Source movement on the back foot.
[InfoWorld: Top News and Dan Gillmor's eJournal]
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K Oanh Ha -- The Audio Publishers Association says that the audio book industry has become a $2 billion business, with revenue for
audio books outstripping printed books by more than 41% between 1996 and 2000. Many publishers now release audio books (which can sell for as much as $80 for an unabridged selection) whenever printed versions go on sale, and almost any new title is available in audio format. (Some publishers are offering downloadable MP3 audio books on the Web, for about half the cost of books on tape or CD.) And the latest wrinkle is the development of audio book rental stores,
whose success is in more-or-less direct proportion to the amount of time weary commuters have to spend in traffic. This is the kind of product that Irish planners are trying to promote with their road works strategy.
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AFTENPOSTEN no -- Two men in Norway discovered that the text one of them was typing on his Hewlett-Packard cordless keyboard was also appearing on a neighbor's computer in another building at least 150m
away. They have since had their equipment replaced, but the problem
persists and HP Norway product manager Tore A. Särelind says the firm is taking it "deadly seriously," and has mobilized forces to correct the situation. "Among other things we will check the suitability of the frequency we use. It is a so-called walkie-talkie frequency with a radius that can be difficult to limit," says Särelind. "We would also like to do an 'on-site' test in the area where Helle and Evjeberg live to see if there are special circumstances there which might influence the
wireless reach of the keyboards." Over 65,000 of the keyboards have been sold in Europe.
[Newsscan]
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NYT -- Yale computer scientist David Gelernter believes "operating systems are lapsing into senile irrelevance" and he thinks, "every piece of digital information you own or share will appear (in the near future) in one universal structure" -- one to which you'll have
access from any Net-connected computer anywhere. "I have time for only one screen in my life," says Gelernter. "That screen had better give me access to everything, everywhere." The universal structure, dubbed Scopeware, will be a narrative, 3D stream of electronic documents flowing through time. "The future (where you store your calendar, reminders, plans) flows into the present (where you keep material you're working on right now) and on into the past (where every e-mail message and draft, digital photo, application, virtual Rolodex card, video and audio clip and Web bookmark is stored, in addition to all those calendar notes and reminders that used to
be part of the future and have since flowed into the past to be archived.
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Competitions All Over the Wall John Stanley -- "Competitions attract people. Think of the crowded shopping mall where people hang around a storefront or a sign. Now add interaction to it." The Light Surgeones get people to stop in their tracks when they beam displays onto large wall. Imagine what that looks like if you mix that with multi-player games.
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Gartner Group -- Gartner Dataquest released third quarter 2002 market share results for the PDA sector, revealing that PDA shipments for the first three quarters of 2002 are down 8.3 percent from the same period last year. Meanwhile, Palm retained only 30 percent market share in the third quarter, down from 70 percent a year or so ago. But what would I do without my Palm m505?
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07 November 2002 |
Search Engines -- Like Matt Mower said last week, "Google is a business, not a public servant." So those in the business of trawling the seas of public data must take on board the fact that portions of Google's algorithms are weighted against the display of meta-tagged content. It might pay to have your own agnostic search mechanism if you need to find all flavours of content.
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THE REGISTER -- Sendo has abandoned the MS Smartphone and is now developing for Nokia 60 series phones. Sendo was supposed to launch its Z100 handset this month into Spain and Italy. Microsoft has invested $12m in Sendo but this recent move will cause some questioning of that investment.
[The Register and Devices]
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 Karlin Lillington -- Green TD Eamon Ryan was one of three Greens that chained themselves to the 100+ year old plane trees down Dublin's main thoroughfare, O'Connell Street.
"In its infinite wisdom, Dublin Corporation has decided to chop down ALL the trees and replace them with smaller lime trees. Apparently the big old planes won't fit in with some trendoid landscape artiste's 'vision' of what the grand old street should look like. Dubliners are furious about this, going by the anger expressed on radio programmes in the past few days. Dublin has few enough trees as it is, and old trees are even rarer, much less trees that had a front row seat to the 1916 Uprising and Pearse's reading of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic from the front of the General Post Office on O'Connell Street."
[ t e c h n o c u l t u r e ]
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06 November 2002 |
Kevin Werbach -- Reporting from the Foursquare Conference, Werbach said, "The media industry is still obsessed with Tivo. All of the entertainment company CEOs have brought it up, whether as a threat, an opportunity, or something they can successfully compete against. Tivo CEO Mike Ramsay is speaking tomorrow. All this attention doesn't guarantee that Tivo the company will survive and thrive, but it reinforces my belief that they are onto something deep and important."
[Werblog]
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Bookshelf -- O'Reilly's just-released "MySQL Cookbook" provides a unique problem-and-solution format that offers practical examples for everyday programming dilemmas. The chapters include problems along with code that you can insert directly into your applications. The books also explains how and why the code works, so you can learn to adapt the techniques to similar situations and get the most out of MySQL.
Sent from Nokia 9210i mail-to-blog
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Circle of Friends FLAGSTAFF, Arizona -- Too many people put off something that brings them joy just because they haven't thought about it, don't have it on their schedule, didn't know it was coming or are too rigid to depart from their routine. I got to thinking one day about all those women on the Titanic who passed up dessert at dinner that fateful night in an effort to cut back. From then on, I've tried to be a little more flexible.
How many women out there will eat at home because their husband didn't suggest going out to dinner until after something had been thawed? Does the word "refrigeration" mean nothing to you? How often have your kids dropped in to talk and sat in silence while you watched 'Jeopardy' on television? I cannot count the times I called my sister and said, "How about going to lunch in a half hour?" She would gasp and stammer, "I can't. I have clothes on the line. My hair is dirty. I wish I had known yesterday. I had a late breakfast. It looks like rain." And my personal favorite: "It's Monday." She died a few years ago. We never did have lunch together.
We tend to schedule our headaches. We live on a sparse diet of promises we make to ourselves when all the conditions are perfect,. We'll go back and visit the grandparents when we get Stevie toilet-trained. We'll entertain when we replace the living room carpet. We'll go on a second honeymoon when we get two more kids out of college.
Life has a way of accelerating as we get older. The days get shorter, and the list of promises to ourselves gets longer. One morning, we awaken, and all we have to show for our lives is a litany of I'm going to, I plan on, and Someday, when things are settled down a bit.
When anyone calls my 'seize the moment' friend, she is open to adventure and available for trips. She keeps an open mind on new ideas. Her enthusiasm for life is contagious. You talk with her for five minutes, and you're ready to trade your bad feet for a pair of Rollerblades and skip an elevator for a bungee cord.
My lips have not touched ice cream in 10 years. I love ice cream. It's just that I might as well apply it directly to my stomach with a spatula and eliminate the digestive process. The other day, I stopped the car and bought a tripledecker. If my car had hit an iceberg on the way home, I would have died happy.
Now, do something you want to, not something on your Should Do list.
If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?
Have you ever watched kids playing on a merry go round or listened to the rain lapping on the ground? Ever followed a butterfly's erratic flight or gazed at the sun into the fading night? Do you run through each day on the fly? When you ask "How are you?" Do you hear the reply?
When the day is done, do you lie in your bed with the next hundred chores running through your head?
Ever lost touch? Let a good friendship die? Just call to say "Hi"? When you worry and hurry through your day, it is like an unopened gift, thrown away.
Life is not a race. Take it slower. Hear the music before the song is over.
Sent by Misty at NAU to Topgold Blog to mark National Friendship Week.
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Esat DSL Wires My Neighbourhood KILKENNY, Ireland -- My housing estate gets DSL service from Esat BT this month, more than a year after Eircom completed its ADSL testing here. So why have Eircom refused to sell broadband services to homeowners? I have two theories.
- To stifle competition. The track record shows Ireland's dominant telco has not unbundled the local loop, has impeded leased line interconnect, and won't facilitate 1891 interconnect.
- To protect an existing revenue stream coming from Eircom's leased line revenues.
Sent from Nokia 9210i Communicator as email to blog.
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McMurdo, Antarctica -- 
Photo from the US Antarctic Program.
I remember taking Emperor Penguins for a flight from McMurdo one day. But I they had to walk to their departure point and I don't think they ever caught a ride on a bicycle on the ice cap.
[Polar.org Photolibrary and KerLone with Boing Boing Blog]
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DUBLIN -- HP's tablet computer begins entering the channel, looking sleek while raising questions whether it can handle digital text (handwriting) any better than earlier iterations from other vendors.
If the TC1000 makes its mark where its marketers think it should, the machines will be used extensively in meetings, as ubiquitous as pen on paper. And they would appear as reading tools for next generation electronic books as well as a means of automating work flows for medical staff, legislators, sales representatives and delivery workers.
But the digital pen has to work. Previous generations of the same technology suffered from poor handwriting recognition and the inefficiencies involved in managing large amounts of text with a pen.
The company must pitch the TC 1000 as a niche device because companies do not pay &8364;3000 for each notebook today. That's about the price point of a reasonably configured Tablet PC with docking capability.
A decade ago, Microsoft killed a nascent pen computing industry because it thought it would be a threat to its Windows operating system business. Now the technology has emerged from the ashes of an anti-trust lawsuit. It still must win in the marketplace.
[John Markoff in the New York Times]
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DUBLIN -- Media Lab Europe have announced that Rudy Burger is leaving as CEO as MLE enters "a phase of consolidation" but Burger will stay on as an adviser to the board and as a visiting scientist. Prof Kenneth Haase of MIT will be the interim director.
[Karlin Lillington]
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05 November 2002 |
Law Meme -- It appears that spammers have started leaving ad URLs as the "referring page" in their HTTP headers. By reloading a given blog a few hundred times, they can force their chosen URL to appear to be the most common link to that blog. Comment sections will be next. The current default is typically completely unsecured, so anyone can leave any text they want. This has happened to the ElectricNews discussion boards already. I need to lock down my comments by forcing people to register on the Topgold boards. It's free but normally requires human interaction.
[Michelle Delio: "When Spam Hits the Blogs"]
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Search for a Powerful Connection FT -- Fiona Harvey looks at data over powerlines and thinks "there may be another, less ambitious use for the technology. While outdoor digital powerline still looks risky, indoors the technology has been proving itself." In the US, the Homeplug Powerline Alliance has gained the backing from the likes of Cisco, Intel, Motorola and Hewlwtt-Packard. Other members of the consortium have developed products that plug into ordinary power sockets to create wireless networks that any suitably equipped piece of electronic equipment within a short radius can connect to.This opens the way to home networks connecting personal computers, printers, laptops and in future other devices such as digital television sets and digital radios. This kind of cabling is the only practical way to wire the inside of medieval structures. Traditional cabling would be prohibited by planning factors and cost issues.
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04 November 2002 |
NYT -- John Markoff of the New York Times writes about Vivato, a smart antenna startup that claims it can extend WiFi to distances of 2,000 feet indoors and four miles outdoors. The exciting aspects of the technology are that it works with the established WiFi standard, and with a point-to-multipoint configuration serving several hundred users.
The Vivato antenna is shaped like a large picture frame, about three feet by four feet and about three inches thick. The Vivato technology, which stems from 1950's research for so-called phased-array antennas for military applications, makes it possible to electronically steer numerous radio beams from a single point. Focusing the beams increases their signal strength, and using large numbers of them greatly increases the antenna's traffic capacity.
The core of the old Musenki source tree is the basis for the Vivato switch software, right down to the bootloader. The Musenki software was developed under an open source license. [Werblog]
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Picture: International Space Station
The crew of the International Space Station took this view of exploding Mt Etna from space.
A plume of brown ash blows to the south-east (to the left of the picture) and reportedly extends almost 600km. We drove under that area in mid-September.
The lighter-coloured plumes north of the summit (to the left) are produced by forest fires set by lava flowing into the pine forests on the slope of the 3667m mountain.
By and large, the people of the Etna region (they proudly call themselves <i>Etnei</i>) stay put. They have an affectionate relationship with <i>a' muntagna</i>, as they call Etna. When Ruth and I visited Sicily in September, we heard the people say, "la montagna e buona" which means "the mountain is good."
Etna perches atop savagely beautiful landscape. It extremely fertile soil produces excellent oranges, lemons, mandarins and wines. However, the lava flow consumes trees, vegatation and any buildings rashly placed high up the mountain side. We collected some tokens of a centuries-old flow and now have a few lava rocks sitting around our home in Ireland. We plan to go back next year and collect some more.
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Sean Redmond -- He tells the Irish Open Mailing List that he's "in Switzerland, a land where a litre of milk costs one Euro, 500mls of beer costs €4.16, the average salary is €41,666 and ADSL/Cable-modem (256Mb) unmetered-access starts at €28 per month. I won't even mention what the rent is like here. It will only depress ye all further."
[Tim Kirby]
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What People Are Looking for Here Last week, more people came to this blog looking for Gianni Jacklone than any other term I've blogged about. Almost the same number came looking for Maddox Rules and "I am better than your kids." Britney's Lesbian Lust continued to attract, bringing 30 readers to the Topgold blog for a look. The most attractive gadget on the blog was the Logitech io Pen, bringing in 21 viewers.
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Real SuperPass Best Five Clicks in October 2002
Sent by Nokia D211 into Eircom ADSL to Blog
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The Guggenheim -- "To disable the Internet to save EMI and Disney is the moral equivalent of burning down the library of Alexandria to ensure the livelihood of monastic scribes."
--Jon Ippolito, of the Guggenheim, on the CBDTPA
Sent by Noka 9210i as
e-mail to blog
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03 November 2002 |
Happy Birthday, Karis Hunt DELGANY, Ireland -- Karis Hunt turned 32 today. Like many who read Mick and Keith by Chris Salewicz, I wonder how much support her father (Mick Jagger) actually provided her. Her mom, writer Marsha Hunt, put up with a lot of hassle for the trickle of money Mick actually sent. It's a story I write in my own mind whenever I see Marsha thumbing through book shelves in local shops.
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Ireland Needs a Green Card System DUBLIN -- I have long wondered why Ireland does not have a work visa system, where the visa is owned by the employee, not the employer. Actually, you can get an Irish work visa. The Sunday Business Post reports that nearly 5,000 work visas were issued in Ireland in 2001. Current Irish legislation for immigration dates back to 1935, which means that Ireland has no immigration system. It only has programmes for handling aliens.
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Eliminate the Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland Kilkenny, Ireland -- Talk around the pub is about television advertisements that got the ax from the Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland (ASAI). The watchdog group recently upheld complaints against ads for Levi's jeans in which young adults fully clothed in denim looked suggestively at the camera. The tagline was "rub yourself." The complaints committee also pulled a Carlsberg ad featuring a female construction worker happily displaying her builder's bum to a group of male Carlserg drinkers on holiday. In 2000-2001, the number of complaints made about offensive ads was just over twice the number made about misleading ads, 192 and 93 respectively, according to ASAI figures. The ASAI will pull an advertisement based on the number of complaints. That guideline has allowed a puritanical brigade to regulate advertising in Ireland.
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Gerry Sighting: Busy on the Lecture Circuit Sunday Business Post -- Adrian Weckler explained that Nua founder Gerry McGovern has "reinvented himself as a star of the technology lecture circuit." He is also close to launching a new product: a corporate scorecard for companies with large websites.
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