Inside View from Ireland

Go fast

I THOROUGHLY ENJOY technology that moves fast. And the wireless technology that surrounds the BMW Williams F1 cars pushes some of the fastest-moving boys' toys to take-off speed. I think there are 130 wireless sensors on the Williams F1 cars. Some are for traction control. Others link into HP ProLiant servers to send settings to the car to prevent overtaching or to lean out fuel mixtures to compensate for pit stop constaints. F1 rules prevent some of these things from occurring during races. Race engineers can monitor the airflow over several sensors which helps them adjust the camber and angle of attack of the wings for downforce on the car. Some of these features will trickle into passenger cars, years down the road.

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HP has every flavour of wireless connectivity for the office.

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TBL FOAF Semantic Web

TIM BERNERS-LEE (TBL) suggests a way to get started with the Semantic Web: create your own FOAF. You place data about yourself in a Friend-of-a-Friend file. FOAF files are formatted in standardised ways. You can publish information about yourself, your organisation, pubilcation, places or photos. FOAFs can point to related content that you have placed on the internet or they can point to other people you know.

Reducing RSS strain

OREILLY -- Popular web sites pay for increased hosting charges when they get hammered too much frequently for their RSS feeds. As Mícheál Ó Foghlú spotted, RSS feeds can be polled through the Bloglines API, thus reducing the overall load on individual websites.

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Mícheál Ó Foghlú -- "Bloglines API may provide RSS scalability"
Marc Hedlund -- "The New Bloglines Web Service"
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Ansari X1 Launch

XPRIZE -- At 2PM Irish time, the Ansari X1 lauched in the Mojave Desert. We miss our Concorde and want to know there's something wondrous up there to pique our imaginations.

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More at the X Prize website.
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iPod Platform

ZDNET -- Steve Gillmor cites the emerging iPod Platform as a direct competitor to broadcast channels of television and radio. This is a very advanced Alpha version of Personal Optional Digital entertainment (tip of hat to Doc). As Adam Curry has shown, iPod's software-hardware bridge delivers radio-on-demand, some of it hand-rolled, other parts running on an Open Source Frontier system. Curry uses a single PowerBook and one outboard sound processor to produce content that sounds grand playing back on the iPod. Interesting times lie ahead on the heels of this seismic event because music is the sound track of our lives. Many are listening. (Cue RHS.)

Sony MP3

CNET -- Doc Searls spotted this: Sony is adding MP3 support to its handheld audio devices.

Another Flickr Investr

FLICKR -- Esther Dyson is addicted to Flickr and unlike many others expressing their opinion about Flickr's forthcoming cost model, Dyson has invested in the company. It's a sure winner--even more certain because of Dyson's nod of approval.

Digital kimonos

AP -- For thousands of years, Japan's kimono-makers have used paintbrushes and stencils to painstakingly create their works of wearable art, and a traditional kimono's price reflects that effort -- a nice kimono can easily cost between $2,700 and $10,000 for a garment that is worn only on ceremonial occasions. Wht if things go digital?

Simple to digest

BILBAO -- The Spanish news, like the Irish nightly broadcasts, offer snippets of the American presidential campaign. The soundbites evolve from clichés that are simple to say and easy to digest. Europeans are getting the impression that Americans want their foreign policy simple and their leadership focused on delivering that. In a complex world chock-full of ethnic diversity, the steamrolled variety of Bush foreign policy seems more like a football strategy than a global formula. This is not good for international politics but that seems to be a desired corollary for the Bush Team. It would seem that denigrating Europe plays well as a vote-getting strategy for George Bush. And perhaps that is all that matters in the United States of today.

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Sent mail-to-blog using free Eircom Wi-Fi service at Dublin Airport.
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Guggenheim Bilbao

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Published on autopilot by Typepad's embargo servers. We're busy inside the Guggenheim and will revise this posting after the trip.
Image from the Guggenheim.

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