Inside View from Ireland

Sligo needs docheads

PROPYLON -- From Sean McGrath comes this jobs announcement: "Dochead Required." This XML/Publishing/Workflow job in technical architecture is for you if your 10 years of experience has enabled you to withstand "the reality distorting field of off-the-wall analogies and ocassionally preposterous notions that surrounds the CTO to a depth of 20 meters." More:

Scumbags one year later

KILKENNY -- One year ago, I had to set aside 20 minutes every other morning to deal with a trail of scumbags lurking on the internet. They would deface various Irishblogs I maintain. Their spamming annoyed me and pushed me into adopting a Six Apart server side solution. Now I write most of my stuff through Typepad because its blocklists have proven their worth in controlling the scumbags. During the summer, I will have time to reignite some other parts of my online journals so I will once again have thematic content dedicated to technology, traveling in Ireland, and multimedia learning.

What I have learned from blogging

CHRISTIAN LINDHOLM -- Few people use "life blogging" as seamlessly as Christian Lindholm so when he offers his lessons learned, I take some time to examine what he says. Lindholm has "come a bit on the journey to Vannevar Bush’s Memex vision, but there is plenty of work left to do." His lessons learned:

About Open Media Network

OMN -- The Open Media Network has several pieces of content worth viewing and the producer's FAQ suggests there's room for uploads from Irishblogs-- media that would be difficult or impossible to distribute using a traditional network architecture. OMN caches high-quality video and audio that are included in an RSS 2.0 feed as an enclosure. Each program has its own listing along with full metadata and links back to the producer's site. Unlike Google videos, OMN feeds are free. To become available in OMN an audio or video file must remain online at its origin long enough to be cached by OMN. OMN polls the RSS feeds it caches every hour so the content only needs to be hosted by you for a few hours to ensure caching in OMN.

Half of Americans Think Bush Misled Them

CLONMEL -- While local radio plays sound bites from British politicians that drone away saying that the English were misled by Tony Blair on Iraq, a Gallup poll points out that half of the American population thinks George Bush misled them about weapons of mass destruction. This is the highest percentage that Gallup has found on this measure since the question was first asked in May 2003.

4GB of MP3s in Nokia N91 Musicphone

NOKIA -- Several students in Tipperary Institute are looking at the Nokia N91 as their pocket companion as they explore ways to carry academic podcasts with them while underway in Ireland. More realistically, they are printing out pictures of the phone for Santa's Christmas 2005 wishlist because the N91 will be a €700 decision.  By deciding on the Nokia N91 music phone, they subordinate their decision to buy a laptop but they open the floodgates on Bluetooth song-sharing. I'm unsure whether the phone will return more value for money than the laptop but for a person looking for a radio or television career, you can probably afford to treat a personal laptop as a stage prop. Not so with a mobile phone. Presenters often start as researchers and researchers need smart phones to cover as much ground as they can every minute of the day. We haven't been able to give the Nokia N91 a shake-out yet but expect to use the summer months ahead for the requisite carpet bounce test, Guinness splash test, and flat battery test. You have to do all those things to a phone to ensure it survives in a student operating environment. Actually, the phone is a computer. It has a 4 GB hard drive, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g and 3G. Jørgen Sundgot calls it "Steve Jobs' wet dream."

Resident Alien on Plasma Screens

RESIDENT ALIEN -- Tim Kirby, a developer with his web feet in the first generation of Irishblogs, has a series of DVDs that turn black plasma screens into vibrant backgrounds in pubs and clubs. The big challenge for nightclubs is making money from hardware--like plasma screens--that might have been installed years ago. The Resident Alien DVD System is a series of ambient video DVDs that transforms bars and clubs, entertainment and hospitality venues, public spaces and retail stores. The screen effects provide warmth, mood and atmosphere--all the things a club manager needs to energise a crowd. Resident Alien DVDs incorporate organic and geometric shapes, particles and cascades, landscapes, tunnels, field warps and 3D abstracts. With music pumping, they remind me of a Pink Floyd concert.

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Recording streams from computer

TIPPINST -- This week our Skunkworks team is looking at ways to digitally record audio streams from a computer. I have a noisy laptop that I want to use to create podcasts from Skype phone calls. In order to remove the annoying hiss and fan noise of the laptop, I have embedded a microphone inside an over-the-head earphone contraption but I wonder if there's a more elegant solution. So we're looking at all sorts of patch cables and hope to find a solution that's plug-and-record.

Sex and the Irish

TRIBUNE -- Helen Murray analysed the results of a Millward Brown IMS poll and concluded, "We like sex and plenty of it, with lots of different partners, oh, and a few toys to give it that extra edge. And we're not averse to a bit on the side either, if the opportunity is there." The Sunday Tribune commissioned the poll and it documented talking points that have appeared in several Irishblogs whose writers talk about their social lives. Some findings:

Neighbourly WiFi

KILKENNY -- When my neighbour turns on her laptop while sitting at her kitchen table, her XP Pro system finds my WLAN and asks whether she wants to connect to the available network. So she occasionally does, especially when out in the back garden under the sun. Does she incur a liability when connecting to my open WiFi node? There is plenty of talk in the Irish tech press about securing your infrastructure but as anyone with an eye to the cheap side can vouch, you can find open WiFi nodes sprinkled all across Dublin. Many of them come courtesy of Eircom, the largest Irish telco. Attorneys have started grappling with issues related to open access and those burning questions will bounce around on Irishblogs as the popularity of wireless technology continues to increase.