Inside View from Ireland

Recovering dropped data

I HAVE SEVERAL important tasks to accomplish before the end of 2004. All concern recovering data that dropped from view after I skewered or dropped the device that was recording the data. After I recapture the lost data, I need to upgrade my geek bag with better equipment, including a data cable, restored Nokia 9210i, binhex software, and a Nokia 9500 Communicator.

Mobile phone VoIP

CORK -- I just discovered that if you have a Motorola CN620 in an open Wi-Fi hotspot you can ring another CN620 for free. That's a cost-avoiding Push-To-Talk technology but as Antoin points out below, you have to have a Motorola back-end to make everything work. That's not a problem in Mahan where I saw the system running but it's a pricey issue for most other adopters.

When will music industry learn

MARK CUBAN, OWNER of the Dallas Mavericks, asks, "When will the music industry do it right?" When will it stop crying wolf? This is tantamount to Denis O'Brien asking, "When will O2 stop gouging customers?"

Prior to his purchase of the Mavericks, Cuban co-founded Broadcast.com, the leading provider of multimedia and streaming on the Internet, in 1995, selling it to Yahoo! in July of 1999. Before Broadcast.com, Cuban co-founded MicroSolutions, a leading National Systems Integrator, in 1983, and later sold it to CompuServe.

Irish Net Visionary Awards

IIA -- Voters have set 35 people onto the shortlist for the Irish Internet Association 2004 Net Visionary Awards and some familiar names look poised to collect well-earned accolades at the annual IIA event on 25 Nov 04. More than 45,000 separate votes were cast this year--more than ever before. All on the shortlist were nominated by colleagues, clients, and peers, and voted on by the industry.

Road delays cost

DUBLIN -- Every minute of stop-and-go traffic today is magnified by a factor of ten. That's because I'm with a group of ten students en route to a jam-packed day in centre city Dublin. Because our rate of travel has slowed below the running pace Paula Radcliffe has when training, we have to abandon plans for our first activity. It was meant to be a visit to the Straffan Steam Museum where we would see examples of the technology used to push Ireland through the Industrial Revolution and then connect her citizens by rail, electrical cable and telephone wire. We won't see those excellent samples in the Steam Museum because our average speed is no better than 9 mph. It's very ironic that we might have traveled from Naas to Dublin faster in the 19th century than we can do today in the 21st century. ANd because it's slower, we cannot accomplish things we need to do to remain productive.

An Open Note to Michael McDowell

DUBLIN -- We know Michael McDowell's staff will see this "open note" because we know the electronic search tools that cull the internet for mention of things related to the brief of the Irish Minister of Justice. And here's the thrust of this open note: make it easier for Chinese science students to come to Ireland.

Deskless Works

NEC -- I think it is stupid to spend money in building walls and buying desks for college staff. So does NEC at its head office in Japan. At NEC, you can forget about a plush corner office. The company is running a demonstration project involving 500 employees of its broadband division. They have no chairs in the conference room -- standing cuts down on meeting length. Second, there are no conference rooms -- just open plan space.

In Kilkenny People

KILKENNY -- You can learn more interesting things about the city of Kilkenny by reading its local paper than from any other source this week, Some things I will affirm from the pages of the current edition:

Online wine for Mom

KILKENNY -- The only way I can send Irish Mist to Mom in Pennsylvania is through a murky process involving the postal service. Like other Americans, she cannot shop online for Christmas and buy her favourite spirits online to enjoy during the festive season.. I doubt this will change, even with the U.S. Supreme Court hearing arguments next month in a lawsuit that will, if successful, permit American adults to freely buy beer and wine over the Internet.

Konfabulator for Windows Review

KONFABULATOR -- There are at least 300 widgets you can download for Konfabulator and many of them work on the newly released Konfabulator for Windows. First impression: it doesn't drain CPU processor but each widget uses up to 7 MB of RAM. I won't be able to run a Konfabulous desktop while editing sound or video. Second impression: I have to set aside more time to explore the hundreds of widgets. Third impression: It's easy to tell the widget where you want it to source its information. That's handy when working kludges to RSS widgets.

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The full-sized (but cropped) screenshot.
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