|
Underway in Ireland
 |
04 January 2003 |
GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- On an otherwise calm weekend before most of the world returns to work for a new year, I detected pointers to this blog coming from The Washington Post "Filter" and Scripting News. It appears that the referrer signal strength from Scripting News is twice that of The Washington Post. In a 24-hour period starting with the online publication of this blog's URL, 43 people followed the Post's hyperlink to visit "Underway in Ireland." In the 6-hour period starting with Dave Winer linking to my story of the Nokia 9210i, 24 people followed Dave's link to the local story.
Perhaps a link from Dave Winer is twice as effective as a link from a mainstream online publication.
["Cell Phone Story" and Karlin Lillington and Cynthia Webb and Dave Winer]
|
|
BAWNTAMEENA, Co Tipperary, Ireland -- Dave Winer is looking for a "next generation cellphone" that could also work as a mobile weblogging tool and I think he should consider the phone with a legacy for mobile keyboard capabilities. That's the Nokia Communicator. Plenty of bloggers advocate another phone -- the Treo -- a product that could be nearly $600 cheaper than my preferred Nokia 9210i Communicator.
I have not used a Treo, but I do use a Palm m505 with a snap-on full-sized keyboard. The user experience for moblogging is similar. But the Palm is not a phone, so you get more for your money with a Treo over a Palm, if you want a device that combines a voice phone with a PDA.
BUT, if you have $600, here are the things that I have seen on a Communicator that I never seen on another device:
- Superb colour screen on a handheld device that plays sound files, handles digital still pictures over IrTranP, runs Flash movies with sound and more.
- Hands-free operation that sits comfortably on a conference table (or on the seat of a car) with a volume level loud enough to be heard on another speaker phone.
- Rudimentary CRM handled through a call logging system that never loses track of any call, fax or data session.
- Opera browser delivering performance approximating 30k connectivity on a landline.
- Filtered or full email system robust enough to handle multiple POP accounts.
- Add-on ($210) text-to-speech processing that reads my mail, Word documents, and text messages.
- Tactile (and silent) keyboard that lets me file live moblogs in conferences.
- IR that works 90 degrees from the red window for an easy connection to my IBM TransNote across my desk. Or for beaming large files (images of revealing poses or bulging spreadsheets or bloated Word docs) across a crowded pub.
I depend on mobile communications and last year my average monthly phone bill was €510. I am not employed or retained by Nokia or any concern in the telecommunications industry. I have owned three Communicators in the past three years. They are one of the most durable devices on the market, with strong battery life, powerful reception and the lowest Selective Absorption Ratio (SAR) of any phone I have ever owned.
[Dave Winer and Karlin Lillington and Ole Eichhorn and Devices]
x: 1334
|
|
BAWNTAMEENA -- After watching a demure member of Graham Norton's audience expose her naked torso for a digital camera on international television last night, I am waiting for the imminent arrival of similar user-generated content on Nokia's cameraphones. Judging from my random sample, a great mass audience of voyeurs and exhibitionists log on to look at do-it-yourself small screen pron (that's the way dozens of blokes spell the word, according to my web logs). People want porn for mobiles. It's a hobby that has boomed with the spread of digital cameras.
[Voyeurweb and Cliterati and The Economist and G! pron]
|
|
Cold in Kilkenny  KILKENNY -- It's the coldest day of the year and the wheelbarrow has turned into an ice cube! It's even too cold for the dogs. They won't walk on the frosted grass.
[Composed by Ailsa on the coldest day in 2003. Picture by Concord EyeQ camera of last week's rainfall.]
|
|
GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- If you want a QWERTY keyboard for moblogging and don't mind if it comes attached to a 244g sharp-looking mobile phone, you want the Nokia Communicator. I have used the Nokia 9210i Communicator since March 2002 to file stories wirelessly from the phone directly to this blog. It's now part of my essential moblogging kit. I have also used its older brother the Nokia 9210 and I found its software prone to system crashes. For nearly 18 months, I used the Nokia 9110i and found that phone totally reliable as well. If you're a serious moblogger and like a phone for filing directly to your blog through an e-mail conduit, I unreservably recommend the Nokia Communicator. I have seen SIM-free used Nokia 9110i Communicators for sale on the Irish market for less than €130.
[Nokia: 9210i Communicator and Dave Winer and Alan Reiter and Devices. Image property of Nokia.]
|
|
|
03 January 2003 |
GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- You can admit it -- if you had a Nokia 7650 cameraphone, you would like your choice of downloadable builder's bums on it, wouldn't you? That's the kind of information I am getting by reviewing the referrer logs from this site. There's a lot of pent-up interest in the Carlsberg building site advertisement, now that it's been pulled from Irish television. No worries! We have the technology to make strip video builder's bums for every make and model of cameraphone.
[Liquid Mobile]
|
|
BAWNTAMEENA -- The little gate lodge of Bawntameena sits across the parking lot from the imposing Tipperary Technology Park but only the gate lodge lights are on. Its kinda sad, but the lights remain off in the Park, except for the occasional maintenance crew. In my opinion, if Shannon Development hope to attract an anchor client here, they must romance an existing company, such as Iona Technologies, to reduce its cost base by shifting some employees to Thurles. It's a big shift. But anybody with half a clue in Ireland will know the kind of adjustments that need to occur.
Picture of Tipperary Technology Park shot at night with Fuji 602Z by Bernie Goldbach. [Shannon Development]
|
|
SMART MOBS -- If you believe Howard Rheingold, GPS is running car thieves off the road. That may be true in the case of an expensive car, but Irish joyriders as young as 10 are more likely to nick a Honda Civic or a Nissan Micra. Neither of those cars have the on-board smarts to remotely track a vehicle and pass the information on to police. At least two expensive cars were stolen in Dublin and were recovered the same day, thanks to GPS modules connected to onboard computers. The high-end systems are sophisticated enough to allow an operator to remotely turn off the motor, lock the doors, shut off the engine and honk the horn. The Irish government should reinstate its programme of paying to scrap old cars. It costs around €200 to scrap a banger. If the government proposes this as a new tax, they should straight away offer reductions in vehicle registration tax.
Howard Rheingold
x: 17
|
|
ZD NET -- Would you trust a bureaucratic committee to regulate Internet content? Charles Cooper knows that "the people staffing these agencies are hard-working and mean well. But technological innovation-through-committee-work is, at best, a hopeless laboratory concept. To be sure, the new realities of our times require some accommodation with the security and geopolitical environment, but putting government in the driver's seat is a mistake." Jawohl, Herr Kommandant.
Charles Cooper
x: 153
|
|
DUBLIN -- Zenark have done some interesting transactional analysis of behaviours on the worldwide Web and their conclusions are the same as mine -- that most people browsing today search first and then expect to click straight into content. For Web site owners, this scientific conclusion means it would pay to know how people arriving from major search engines behave on your site. If the goal is to sell a product, remain on site for more content, add a comment to a discussion board, or sign up for a newsletter, the site's navigation should encourage transactions. The same site navigation would encourage transactional behaviour on the part of people entering through the front page of the site. People arriving through the front appreciate an internal search function that works.
Zenark have burrowed deeply into the field of enthnography, because that gives them the leverage they need to deliver highly selective content back through specialised digital asset management search trawls. The day has long passed when people would fire up a browser and go on a nonchalant stroll. Time is money and online time costs more than the telecommunications fees.
[Zenark]
x: 119
|
|
NYT -- After a stint in The Pentagon, I know that it's impossible to remain focused on more than a single flash point. There's much more incinderary material in North Korea than in Iraq. That's where the American pressure would be best placed at the moment.
[Warren Christopher agrees.]
|
|
Reverse Cowgirl -- There's a Blog Conference in the planning phases for Los Angeles on 1 Feb 03 and they're looking for mobloggers. About 20% of the stuff on the Topgold blog is sent from mobile phone to my blog. Tim Kirby sends digital pictures as enclosures to his blogs. Funnily enough, it's a lot harder to send data over American mobile phones. In Ireland, we've been using mobile phone as data bearers for donkey's years. I know that my preferred moblogging kit, using the Nokia 9210i Communicator, won't work as a mobile phone in southern California. Does that mean we're moblogging in isolation? Or is it merely a reflection of California lagging Europe's mobile data standards?
[Susannah Breslin and Doc Searls]
|
|
SANTRY HOTSPOT -- Most of the techniques used to optimise dynamic sites for search engine placement start where the search engine crawlers look. So if you know Googlebot is trawling a section of press releases, it would be good to lay down enticing content in that section for Google's indexing.
[Search Engine Strategies]
|
|
IRISH TIMES -- Although some commentators visiting Karlin Lillington's weblog don't see the cause for concern, I believe the Irish Department of Justice's proposed data retention Act will inevitably lead to misuse and abuse. It is very naive to think that "if you've done nothing wrong, you don't have to worry." Data surveillance is a slippery slope, one prone to fishing expeditons and compromise of sensitive information. Losing your electronic privacy conjures up many of the same emotions as being raped. I know the feeling.
[Karlin Lillington]
|
|
JHAI org -- Thanks to ambitious cross-linking, the Jhai Foundation's donation page (with the helpful title "Using Paypal")merits a Top 40 placement on Daypop. I clicked in to sign up for the Jhai newsletter.
Daypop Top News
x: f15
|
|
NYT -- The last time I looked, Powerline WiFi wasn't available for European circuitry. Powerline offers WiFi speeds over house electrical wiring, and WiFi itself. Siemens SpeedStream division has released a Powerline Wi-Fi gateway for $99. Instead of dealing with repeaters and wires, you could use Powerline to extend a network in a home or small business, and treat the SpeedStream gateway as a pass-through: run DHCP and other services off a full-featured gateway connected to the Internet elsewhere on the network.
[Walt Mossberg and 80211b News]
|
|
|
02 January 2003 |
POCKETSOAP -- Pingback provides for a more connected weblogging experience. This tool is a pingback client tool for Radio, it will automatically send pingbacks to those servers that support them when you post entries in your weblog. This is an early version, that only checks the X-Pingback HTTP header for pingback support, a future version will also check for the <link rel=pingback as detailed in the auto discovery part of the specification.
[Download pingback.root, drop it in your Radio Userlandtools directory, then restart Radio.]
|
|
PSU edu -- The Penn State Portal Project makes clever use of RSS. It's the kind of undertaking I would expect to see at Tipperary Institute.
|
|
|
01 January 2003 |
Housebreaking My New Dog in Seven Days [day nine] GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- We are declaring "mission accomplished" although there are some sticking points. Specifically, young Holly doesn't have a nonverbal sign to warn us when it's time to go outside. But she has made measureable progress during the past week and that's good enough to count as "housebroken for tiles."
|
|
PANORAMAS dk -- QuickTime does a marvelous job of ensuring a picture tells a million words.
[Panoramas.dk]
|
|
GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- Here are some things I think will happen in 2003, thanks to thoughts borrowed from Dan Gillmor and William Safire.
- Apple's iPod will morph into a handheld organiser.
- Microsoft will file meritless but tactically useful patent lawsuits against open-source software developers.
- Tablet PCs will become a mainstream item.
- SMS revenue will be more than twice MMS revenue for operators, although camera phones will sell well.
- Hard disk video recorders will begin to replace VCRs.
- Wireless data communications will surge with innovative deployments of WiFi, 2.5G and Bluetooth together.
[Dan Gillmor and William Safire and Gerry McGovern]
|
|
GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- The most commonly answered query answered by this web site in 2002 is "how do I speed up my modem" and the answer is on the Shoptalk bulletin board. Gordon Weakliem might prefer to let pingback answer this kind of question, but the fact is that a Web site serves much more pass-through (passive reader) traffic than viewers who know how to post comments in a pingback mode. At the end of the day, you have to know what kind of content is is the greatest demand.
[Analysis by Analog and askSam]
[x: 119]
|
|
ALL NET DEVICES -- Mobile carriers are waking up to the potential of offering fixed wireless services using license-free spectrum. A combination of fixed wireless, 3G, and even 2.5G service could be the foundation of a powerful, pervasive business plan.
[allNetDevices]
|
|
|
31 December 2002 |
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."]
|
|
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.]
|
|
 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]
|
|
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 |
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]
|
|
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.]
|
|
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]
|
|
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 |
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]
|
|
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
|
|
|
