Inside View from Ireland

At the Hayden Planetarium

KILKENNY -- Pink Floyd just got done playing me "Dark Side of the Moon" and I'm lusting for a planetarium trip where music and motion take me on a journey. The Hayden Planetarium in NYC has a wonderful 35 minute animated show that spins visitors from the observatory ceiling and into an alien dance party.

Listening to power lines

KILKENNY -- People who walk through fields before sunrise can often hear power lines talking. It happens to me as I walk Doggie the Pomeranian near the Kilkenny train station. Power lines overhead that feed the Hebron Industrial Estate bleed off power that courses in the wires. Eugene Kelly, an expert in energy savings, told me that 7% of the power shipped across the electrical grid is wasted as heat. You can hear some of the wastage in the crackling sounds at night.

The electricity industry is a market ripe for breakout disruptive technologies. Seamus Hoyne, a programme specialist at Tipperary Institute, knows people are interested in reducing their energy burden because his energy management information sessions are often oversubscribed. I want to get my own fuel cells sorted out, so I can capture energy locally and use it to power my home. A DuPont engineer joked recently that if his company could design a fuel cell that looked like an iBook, everyone would want one. Steve Silberman¹, contributing editor at Wired, thinks "we need a set of standards, so that those who want to roll their own electrons can plug and play." Silberman is right.

The grid was a good idea 100 years ago. So good that we were able to graft a much more resilient network--the Internet--on top of it. It's time for the grid to learn what the Net already knows.

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¹Steve Silberman -- "Taming the Electricity Beast" in Wired
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Digital dashboard from Systematics

SYSTEMATICS -- While in Thurles for the Excellence Ireland Conference, Systematics showed me how their software can be used as a digital dashboard and improve operating efficiency. I think it's very useful to have simple pie charts and graphs telling a colour-coded story. The simple presentation, aligned with drill-down information, gives managers info they need to improve productivity. And at the end of the day, that means more money for everyone.

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Sent mail2blog by Nokia Communicator O2 TypePad service.
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In conversation with Brian Mulligan

THURLES -- Few college lecturers more experience in the field of have the range of first-hand experience with electronic learning than Brian Mulligan. So his hallway conversations can be revealing.

Projects with legs

THURLES -- One of the special exhibits in the lobby of Tipperary Institute's main campus is a display featuring world-class research by three talented students.

• Brian Corbett's X10 home automation system has turned the heads of visitors interested in controlling devices across the Internet.
• Ciara Fogarty uses clever Java programming in a fun-filled multi-level game.
• Eamon Kearns used sophisticated database programming to produce a very useful query structure that extends well beyond the proficiency expected of a Diploma student.

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Sent mail2blog by Bernie Goldbach using Nokia 9210i Communicator mail2blog O2 TypePad service from the Excellence Ireland Conference. Another Fuji S602Z picture by Eanna McAteer.
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Promoting messages through multimedia

THURLES -- Why not promote your company by letting Tipperary Institute interview YOU!? From very early this morning, Tipperary Institutes Multimedia students have been setting up and putting together some VERY cool stuff...but were getting slightly anxious incase promoters wouldn't want to be interviewed. Lucky for us we've got PR guys banging on the doors to get in! So far we have great footage and all interviews have gone really well!

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Sent mail2blog by Aedin O'Shea using Nokia 9210i Communicator mail2blog O2 TypePad service from the Excellence Ireland Conference. Another Fuji S602Z picture by Eanna McAteer.
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Superquinn's excellent bytes of fresh food

THURLES -- Superquinn needs its accountants--to measure the improvements made in its IT processes. The Irish supermarket chain has developed a world class team renowned for excellence in fresh food and customer service. Superquinn uses technology to improve customer service to "getting the customer back" and ensure that they "get the product that they want". Superquinn have improved their on-shelf availability from 94.5% to 98%. The company made an investment of €32m on a new centralised distribution centre and so far have centralised 142 suppliers to this new centre. This has resulted in reducing the previous 72 hour lead time to 15 hours max.

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Sent by Denise Kelly as mail2blog by Nokia Communicator 9210i O2 Typepad service
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Sustaining rural development with IT

THURLES -- Padraig Culbert, the CEO of Tipperary Institute, opened the Excellence Ireland conference by reflecting on the positive impact IT has made on southeastern Ireland. More than 140 attendees observed the opening remarks, made in a spacious conference centre. Culbert has directed the intelligent deployment of IT resources at two campus locations, which resulted using a videoconferencing broadband link to simultaneously open two campuses located 30 miles apart. The day-long technology event is chock-full of similar success stories.

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Sent mail2blog by Nokia Communicator 9210i O2 Typepad service
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Sustained moblogging

UNDERWAY -- According to the "sent" items in my Nokia 9210i, I have been using the Nokia Communicator to upstream items to one of my blogs for 13 months now. It's easier to moblog with the 9210i than my Palm m505 because the form factor is smaller with Nokia. I think it's remarkable how easy this process can be, and even more remarkable when moblogging forms part of a work process. It works for me.

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Sent mail2blog with Nokia 9210i Communicator O2 TypePad service.
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PR RSS

KILKENNY -- The first PR pitch that I saw via RSS was from Tom Murphy in August 2002 (an article about Edelman PR), the second from Traction software in November 2002. Actually, you have to count Proplyon Software as having an RSS feed that fulfills a PR function as well and I've been reading Sean McGrath since early 2002. Yesterday, Dan Gillmor cited the first PRR RSS that he encountered. Both Vordel and Traction Software should note that they didn't get onto a prominent A-List journo's radar scope. That's a shortcoming in their PR campaign. It's also fair to mention that several Irish journos give over elements of their daily newsfeed to reporting events they attended at the request of PR agencies. That's been happening for the life of the blogs run by Karen Lillington, Dick O'Brien and David Stewart. If you read their RSS feeds in an aggregator, you occasionally get an embedded PR message.

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Dan Gillmor's eJournal -- "Public relations firm goes RSS"
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