Inside View from Ireland

Google's IPO Auction

FT -- Even local radio knows Google--which means the brand is a service and its IPO will do the numbers. Teenagers in my housing estate ask each other "How do you know for sure? Did you Google that?" Librarians fret because students use Google as their first stop, not the card catalogue. I think I will set aside EUR 2000 for Google's massive online auction of shares next quarter. Investment bankers believe Google will take in more than $15bn. This is worth the deferral of Christmas presents.

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Richard Waters -- "Google considers online IPO auction"
Joi Ito -- "Holy cow." with seven comments and counting, including insights about DPO.
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Watching kids finding Nemo

KILKENNY -- Cinemas in southeastern Ireland may note the presence of 34 college students coming to the showing of Finding Nemo because their attendance is necessary as part of a Writing Skills course. I know three students who plan to write their essays after interviewing their kids or nephews. This will make interesting reading.

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Sent mail2blog by Nokia Communicator Vodafone Typepad service from McDonagh Junction.
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Educating knowledge workers

KILKENNY -- Well aware of the global levels of competition faced by my current cohort of college students, I am trying to get more out of each level of assessment. Because I have to increase student productivity if I expect to enhance their productivity on the job. I went looking for pregnant pauses in their workflow and fingered the most prominent one--the print queue. Figuring that if I killed the print queue, I could increase their productivity in creating and refining new media products, I simply told them I do not want to receive written materials from them. When several began to stress out over the prospect of their e-mail failing to arrive to me on time, I showed them how to blog their assignments. Now we have started a process where students use designated catch phrases in their blog titles that my aggregator catches in its routine crawls. I aggregate their topic sentences, then return with SurfSaver to harvest their work. I've given them blog space in a shared domain along with access to the back end of the web server to upload and manage raw content. This has killed the print queue and increased the flow of new media material generated by a very talented crew of multimedia developers.

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Ahmed Bilal -- one student's first month of blogging
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Google Juice for Burkie

CLONMEL HOTSPOT -- Liam Burke is chuffed because he's rocketing towards the top of Google for the term "bukie" so all of his friends need to band together and boost his Google rating by linking to his blog with the hypertext term of "burkie." Unfortunately, when I conducted the same Google search a few days later, Liam Burke dropped from the rankings. That's a normal occurrence in Google. I've done my part to enhance Liam's standing. Let's see how the Google dance shakes out in another month and hope Liam is the top Burkie.

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Liam Burke -- "Climbing the ladder of greatness"
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Mobile Java for the Pocket Classroom

J2ME -- I find John Hannafin's posts on Mobile Java useful in developing a J2ME for application a "pocket classroom" application.

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John Hannafin is an ICT Programme Specialist.
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Speedbird Zero One descending to Flight Level Four Five Zero

KILKENNY -- The Charles Heidsieck is tucked away, the crisp linen tabletops cleaned of their Royal Doulton china and the remanants of the rocket salad neatly packed in the rubbish bins as Concorde's 250,000 horsepower engines begin biting into the straosphere above Ireland. "Speedbird Zero One" gets approval from Shannon Control to begin its descent into Irish airspace in the mid-afternoon today, on its final extended descent to Heathrow. It will receive higher traffic priority than an aircraft bearing a head of state because senior aircraft captains will give way to the final flight of Concorde as she turns gracefully onto final approach shortly before 1540 Friday, October 24, 2003.

Memory Card Problems

UNDERWAY -- As Bus Eireann trundles towards Callan, my Nokia Communicator is objecting to how I have used its 8MB memory card. I'm backing up content from the card to my hard drive by using a USB card reader every other day. That reader is stamping some details on the 8MB card every time I copy its contents. Those details are causing my Nokia Communicator to refuse to read the card. That means I lose my ability to manage the 910 messages saved on the card.

It is not good practise to manage your life through your mailbox. Important details need to be tracked as project items or calendar events with milestones and deliverables. I must set aside time to begin pruning my 9210i "sent items" otherwise I will lose control of my day-to-day flow.

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Sent mail2blog by Nokia Communicator Vodafone TypePad service when entering Callan, County Kilkenny, Ireland.
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The dog who climbs walls

UNDERWAY -- I know that Holly, our adopted Samoyed-Spaniel dog, will climb over our six-foot tall concrete block wall before I finish the 45 minute trip to Clonmel. I hope to check back into Irish Animals and discover that someone has offered a solution to Holly's wall-jumping exploits.

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Sent mail2blog using Nokia Communicator Vodafone Service when leaving Callan, County Kilkenny, Ireland.
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Multimedia Degree material in my pocket

KILKENNY -- I have managed to filter my important mail into the space filled by my Nokia Communicator AND to limit most of that mail to material related to matters related to the multimedia degree programme planned by Tipperary Institute. This is a big deal because my daily mail flow always crests above 300 messages a day. I'm handling fewer than 30 a day through my Nokia 9210i and I feel much better about my time management.

Kilkenny People front page hospitals

KILKENNY PEOPLE -- The local paper dedicates more than half of its front page column inches to coverage of government plans to close maternity and emergency services in St Luke's Hospital. Most observers think this is unworkable.