Inside View from Ireland

BlogDay 2005

THE VOYEUR IN ME likes list-making so my contribution to BlogDay2005 is more of a personal shortlist than a cross-cultural set of hyperlinks. While the organisers encourage people to select five new blogs, "preferably ones that are different from their own culture, point of view and attitude", I fired up my FeedDemon and compared it to the FreeNews feeds in my SonyEricsson P910i. The five feeds I offer up are the ones that originate from my desktop favourites listed in the order of the number of feeds they have archived on my phone. These are feeds in my pocket, ones I pay my mobile phone service provider to read. From top to bottom, here are the five feeds that cost the most to read while providing the most value per screen.

Binning Bills

RUNNING WITH BULLS points out something that will immediately reduce my stack of paper bills--you can view and print out your eircom bills online. With an eircom account number, you can view your bills online as PDFs. "These are regarded as official bills," eircom told Running With Bulls. So if you toss away your eircom paper bills, the biggest setback is you lose an easy way to pay at the Post Office because the bottom of every bill is the payment slip.

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Bernard Michael Tyers -- "Scanning Official Documents: would they stand up?"

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Cluetrain Withdrawn

IT DISTURBS ME to see the big black stamp "WITHDRAWN" on a hardback copy of The Cluetrain Manifesto (see photo). We use this seminal work as an essential reading in the Public Relations course taught in Tipperary Institute and it's a little unnerving to see a public library pull the copy--which they sometimes do after they prune back catalogues. It's still among the top 20,000 titles sold through Amazon. My Amazon request for a hard cover text took six months and five dollars to satisfy. Perhaps it took that long to declare the book lost from the stacks of the Geneva Public Library District.

Your Shrinking Digital Rights

YOUR DIGITAL RIGHTS will shrink dramatically upon the release of the next Windows operating system if the news reported by Cory Doctorow is correct. Doctorow reports that computers using Windows Vista "will break compatibility with current monitors, analog outputs and currently shipping software, all to unsure that the restrictions dictated by entertainment companies are obeyed by WIndows". This means you will able to do less with your movies and songs on your next Windows computer than now. This is not a good thing for anyone involved in remixing tracks, creating parodies or remediating digital content. This portends an era where the WIndows operating system controls what plays in your home according to the revenue table devised by the major players in the entertainment business. Few who read this blog think that's a good idea.

Continue reading "Your Shrinking Digital Rights" »

IF RIP-OFF REPUBLIC was on your phone, would you watch the video of Eddie Hobbs lambasting the government? If you lived in Finland, you would probably watch the clips. Nokia ran the world's first mobile TV pilots in Helsinki, Finland and 41% of pilot participants indicated they would be willing to purchase mobile TV services and half thought that a fixed monthly fee of 10 euros was a reasonable price to pay.

DIFFERENT KINDS of hands use the SonyEricsson P910i comapred to the Nokia 9500 because the two phones have distinct strengths in a shoot-out of features. I own both phones and think it's instumental to point to strengths in both.

Nokia 9500 winning features.

1. Opens to a thumbnail keyboard that gives me 20 wpm typing speed.
2. Opens to a speakerphone that fills a meeting room or a car and allows cross-talk normally possible only with an optional speakerbox.
3. Plays Real Video without a hitch and sends slideshows to Bluetooth television screens.

SonyEricsson P910i winning features.

1. Faster data connectivity over the air because its antenna array appears to be much stronger.
2. Jog dial works intuitively for nearly every application, giving you a single-handed operating capability.
3. Highest-quality microphone of any I have used, making it well-suited for quickly producing podcasts.

It's horses for courses but if you've never owned a smartphone, you will find the SonyEricsson P910i more appealing than any other currently on the market.

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PODCASTS NOW allow busy people to get their religion on the fly via places like The Godcast Network which offers 16 programmes of Biblical readings, sermons and Christian rock. You could fill an iPod with the new shows and with established Christian network broadcasters.

CATS CAN ENTERTAIN as hundreds of interesting photos of cats on Flickr demonstrate. May I suggest Cats in Sinks and Stuff on My Cat for all those who think felines are sly and devious animals that deserve only to be chased by demented dogs.

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Jumping cat from Junku and is part of the "Critters in Motion" pool. My "most interesting cat" is Jack, the commode-hugging cat.

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UPDATE: No fewer than 12 people visited after this blog entry, coming from the Google Answers link. It looks like a game show is asking how far the Dublin Spire is from the Statue of Liberty.

I NEVER EXPECTED to see my blog cited as a geographic point of reference but one of the geotagged photos I uploaded proved important when a reader asked "How many air kilometres is it from the spire dublin to the statue of liberty new york?" Sure, they could have asked Gavin Sheridan who is spending a few days in NYC at the moment. For the record, I put the Spire in Dublin at N53.21 W06.15 and we know the Lady stands tall at N40.41 W74.01. To calculate the distances, you might use an online calculator.

ON THE 17TH anniversay of the world's worst airshow disaster, I have a knot in my stomach as I recall the evil smell of burning flesh that penetrated the stunned silence wrapped around my ice cream stand 17 years ago during Ramstein Flugtag 1988. Among the 70 who died was a young German girl whose last taste was a lick of American chocolate ice cream that I served her. I no longer eat American chocolate ice cream cones because of that searing memory.

If Rip-Off Republic was on your phone

IF RIP-OFF REPUBLIC was on your phone, would you watch the video of Eddie Hobbs lambasting the government? If you lived in Finland, you would probably watch the clips. Nokia ran the world's first mobile TV pilots in Helsinki, Finland and 41% of pilot participants indicated they would be willing to purchase mobile TV services and half thought that a fixed monthly fee of 10 euros was a reasonable price to pay.

P910i Nokia 9500 shootout

DIFFERENT KINDS of hands use the SonyEricsson P910i comapred to the Nokia 9500 because the two phones have distinct strengths in a shoot-out of features. I own both phones and think it's instumental to point to strengths in both.

Nokia 9500 winning features.

1. Opens to a thumbnail keyboard that gives me 20 wpm typing speed.
2. Opens to a speakerphone that fills a meeting room or a car and allows cross-talk normally possible only with an optional speakerbox.
3. Plays Real Video without a hitch and sends slideshows to Bluetooth television screens.

SonyEricsson P910i winning features.

1. Faster data connectivity over the air because its antenna array appears to be much stronger.
2. Jog dial works intuitively for nearly every application, giving you a single-handed operating capability.
3. Highest-quality microphone of any I have used, making it well-suited for quickly producing podcasts.

It's horses for courses but if you've never owned a smartphone, you will find the SonyEricsson P910i more appealing than any other currently on the market.

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Godcasts

PODCASTS NOW allow busy people to get their religion on the fly via places like The Godcast Network which offers 16 programmes of Biblical readings, sermons and Christian rock. You could fill an iPod with the new shows and with established Christian network broadcasters.

Cats as Entertainment

CATS CAN ENTERTAIN as hundreds of interesting photos of cats on Flickr demonstrate. May I suggest Cats in Sinks and Stuff on My Cat for all those who think felines are sly and devious animals that deserve only to be chased by demented dogs.

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Jumping cat from Junku and is part of the "Critters in Motion" pool. My "most interesting cat" is Jack, the commode-hugging cat.

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Collapsing Distances

UPDATE: No fewer than 12 people visited after this blog entry, coming from the Google Answers link. It looks like a game show is asking how far the Dublin Spire is from the Statue of Liberty.

I NEVER EXPECTED to see my blog cited as a geographic point of reference but one of the geotagged photos I uploaded proved important when a reader asked "How many air kilometres is it from the spire dublin to the statue of liberty new york?" Sure, they could have asked Gavin Sheridan who is spending a few days in NYC at the moment. For the record, I put the Spire in Dublin at N53.21 W06.15 and we know the Lady stands tall at N40.41 W74.01. To calculate the distances, you might use an online calculator.

No chocolate. It's Flugtag.

ON THE 17TH anniversay of the world's worst airshow disaster, I have a knot in my stomach as I recall the evil smell of burning flesh that penetrated the stunned silence wrapped around my ice cream stand 17 years ago during Ramstein Flugtag 1988. Among the 70 who died was a young German girl whose last taste was a lick of American chocolate ice cream that I served her. I no longer eat American chocolate ice cream cones because of that searing memory.