Inside View from Ireland

Everything you blog is false

TOM RAFTERY has recorded an excellent interview with TJ McIntyre from Digital Rights Ireland that spotlights how easy it is to squelch bloggers. Although McIntyre's focus is on the legal tools that established brands can use to protect the integrity of their marketplace position, you don't need to use a legal instruments to shut down comments from bloggers.

Divisive software patents

IN THE TECH PAGES of the Irish Tmes, Karlin Lillington writes an excellent piece on the divisive nature of software patents, capturing the essence the divisive battleline that scores the Irish industry. She hits all the marks in a story that should be essential reading for all CEOs who develop software or who pay more than EUR 5000 annually in software licensing fees because Lillington dissects the harms that could follow on the heels of ramming this directive through the back door of the European Parliament,

Among other things:

Teaching dipping skills

DOES IT MAKE SENSE to award college credit for the learning of 20th century job skills? Or should third level colleges challenge the market imperative of high-level finishing skills enshrined by their syllabi? I often consider this question when I flick through college courses that hone darkroom processing skills involving chemical baths. You might know these from a half dozen Irish third level institutions that have photo darkrooms on campus. In my mind, those rooms and their related courses merely award academic credit for dipping skills. Students learn to dip film and paper through chemicals and water to make a photographic image. This has quickly become more of an artistic process than a commercial process.

Christmas Never Comes

AS I CLICKED "Checkout" on my last order of podsafe music, I realised I probably won't get my Lovespirals CD before Christmas. I know this because I know the delivery timeline between the States and Europe in December. I won't get some Christmas gifts in time for wrapping because surface mail service with An Post in Ireland isn't as efficient as Deutsche Post in Germany.

In defense of Sony

WHILE I DO NOT condone what SonyBMG did with rootkits on computers, I think it's important to note that Sony electronics is another part of the conglomerate and that some Sony equipment helps us deliver educational multimedia better than any other option. We use the Sony ICD-MX20 to rapidly produce audio segments that complement classroom sessions. It's handy to walk around with 1GB memory cards containing podcast snippets and work files. Most of our mobile and studio microphones are Sony kit. Our default sound editing package (SoundForge) is a Sony product. All these things work seamlessly in several modules that train third level students who are becoming multimedia producers and multimedia programmers.

Sam the Ugliest RIP

AFTER 15 YEARS of faithful service (and scaring a lot of people), Sam, the World's Ugliest Dog passed away, a victim of kidney failure.

I met Sam through Doc Searls, who pointed me to Sam's "mom" Susie Lockheed. Hundreds of people have visited my Irish blog to see Sam--many fans and dog owners who know how sad it is to lose a faithful friend. Goodbye, Sam!

---

Sam's blog written by Susie Lockheed and with touching thoughts about Sam's final day (via The Obvious).

x_ref125ws

Digital Right Analogue Left

LIVING IN THE SOUTHERN hemisphere (that's South Tipp in my world) allows me to share the pain of the digitally disenfranchised everywhere. But rather than complain about lack of inexpensive always-on connectivity (it's really not broadband, except in the product name), I've connected to my audio archive. Thanks to the generosity of ZeZe (yet another identity of mash-up master Steffen Coonan), I have a Casette-Corder that can happily play my tapes from 20 years ago. Two other cassette players that I inherited had inoperative headphone jacks when I tried to use them for this process. Steffen's ("Hey, it's really old man! But it lines out!") Sony TCM-16 should be on eBay earning a few bob because all it's doing is gathering dust at his place. I'm glad it's still around because it gets my analogue cassettes into my digital archive. When I line out a stereo cable from the Cassette-Corder into the mic jack of my Sony ICD-MX20, I can listen on earbuds to my 20-year-old stuff as it goes digital.

Tips on Google Base

ANYONE WHO USES or runs classified advertisements should look at the beta version of Google Base. Within a week of its soft launch, nearly 100 people have stuff on offer from Dublin, Ireland.  Google Base is Craigslist on steroids. Its interface is good as a means to create a free ad to sell something because you get these free features:

Acid Test of Accessibility

I WONDER IF the acid test of accessibility for a website is being able to literally talk yourself around a Flash screen. We are trying that in the Tipperary Institute Skunkworks. Jakob Nielsen's take on it: "A strict focus on accessibility as a scorecard item doesn't help users with disabilities. To help these users accomplish critical tasks, you must adopt a usability perspective." So if you can use a Flash screen by telling the screen what to do, does it mean it's Neilsen-accessible?

---

x_ref264pm

How I got into computers

MY JOB LED ME into computers in 1982 when I got a Morrow MD-3 CP/M machine and used WordStar on it to write commendations that were then folded into personnel records. I used that computer through the 80s, ignoring Windows at first (too slow when it was unveiled 20 years ago!) then dovetailing it with a Windows-powered laptop in the early 90s. Along with two other hands-on pilots, we used several Apple computers to mine aircraft data in 1983 and that effort won a major flight safety award.  In 1984, I got an Apple II GS to run educational multimedia for kids. The MD-3 was the only desktop I purchased. Since 1992, I have owned notebooks made by Compaq, Dell (two of them), and Sony. Over the past three years, I used the laptops to analyse trends. Sometimes that means online but the trends emerge just as often through stuff I aggregate and open later when commuting or when offline at home. I don't hack much on my own computers because scripts, templates and Web 2.0 spaces like Ning. My pathway into computers is hardly as technical as others appearing on O'Reilly Radar, the place where I started thinking about how I got started.

---

Nathan Torkington -- "Burn in 0: How I got into computers"

x_ref125mc