Sunday News from Ireland

WITH A WINNING Irish rugby team and a weeping Eamon Dunphy on the front page of most broadsheets, many in Ireland believe the recession is well and truly beaten. In a 10-minute Qik video clip [27 MB MP4 file], I run through three Sunday broadsheets in search of items related to technology and current events. The first keyframe of the video (at left) comes from a collection of photos by Douglas Kurn in Spectrum [1] , the section the Sunday Times Magazine dedicates to photography. "I asked all the actors to have a go at all of the sins," says Kurn. "And to begin with, I just let them perform their own interpretatin. As the shoot developed, I steered them in a direction that I thought would add something to what we had already accumulated." Kay Headley is depicted in the first frame of today's video. Show notes for the rest of the episode follow.

Eco-friendly Cars. As Stephen Price reports [2], "salesrooms are closing and many shiny new machines are being handed back. Ireland will not revert to a nation of banger drivers overnight, but people will hold onto the cars they're driving for much longer." We were driven to a cost advantage position a few months ago once we figured out we could get a newer car for the same monthly cost as our 2000 BMW. It helped to know that we would not have a vehicle maintenance bill through 2011. If we bought an electric car, we would pay not Vehicle Registration Tax in Ireland and only EUR 46 annually for road tax. That's nice. We're looking at Green Options, including the stunning electric motorbike selection sold by Green Machines in Terenure, Dublin 6. Motoring journalists should prod vendors with eco-friendly vehicles to advertise in mainstream papers so people like myself might get reviews of environmentally-friendly vehicles. Most of the current coverage of motoring in Ireland assumes readers want to read about ways of extending their egos, not their time between petrol station fill-ups.

Google Latitude. A new Google service lets you track friends' movements from your mobile phone or desktop computer. [3] It's a voluntary system--you have to agree to the tracking and you have to agree to share the tracking with people. Some members of the privacy brigade think Google Latitude has gone too far. Those cellphone Amish often see imminent danger in communicating to people without being next to their audience so it's no wonder that the naysayers would not point out how simple it is to fool Google Latitude. Personally, Latitude is helpful and fun in the kind of way that interactive sporting chalkboards are fun too.

Sitting Room Tech. I like personal video recorders and the "Tech & Net" section of the Sunday Times likes the Panasonic DMR-EX88 for EUR 525. [4] You can get 512 hours of viewing from its most economical recording option. It also stores MP3 and JPEG files, turning it into a virtual jukebox and photo album. You can make TV recordings directly onto DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, DVD-R or DVD+R discs, or copy stuff from the hard-disk to any of these formats. If you need more that the eight hours of recording time offered by these formats, then you can also copy HDD recordings to dual-layer DVD-R and DVD+R discs, increasing the recording time to over 14 hours.

I also like the Sony Vaio P series notebook. It costs more than twice what mere netbooks cost but as my iPhone friends point out, you pay over the odds for classy, distinctive things.

An Energy-Smart Community Effort. A new scheme promoted by Gavin Harte, an eco-campaigner, and Codema, a Dublin-based energy agency, is set to start next month. It's the Energy Smart Community and it involves work with the government and Sustainable Energy Ireland. The scheme is intended to help clusters of homeowners in a community to club together when carrying out retrofit energy-efficiency improvements. The Energy Smart Community hopes to organise groups of up to 50 homeowners on housing estates where the properties are all the same or similar and to offer them a range of products aimed at boosting the energy efficiency of their homes. [5] This grassroots effort could benefit from the elegant online community tools offered by IGOpeople.com and it also could point people to the courses offered by Amergin at Tipperary Institute. I'm intrigued at clever energy solutions like power-generating speed bumps [6] (electro-kinetic road ramps) that could have a role in Cashel, the town where I live.

Hi-Tech Memory Leaks. Keeping in touch has never been easier--or more exhausting, explains David Smith in the Observer. "The average person now has more than seven points of contact including landline phone, mobile, email and online social networks to remember," he writes, citing a survey of 1,600 adults commissioned by Telnic. [7]

Quieter Planes, Lower Emissions. An unducted fan engine flew at Farnborough 21 years ago, claiming to use much less fuel than standard designs. It never made into production because decades ago, no one cared about takeoff noise or fuel prices. Things have changed and now Rolls Royce, General Electric, Pratt & Whitney and Snecma are spending millions of euro every year in search of aircraft powerplants that save up to 30% of fuel burned on a normal two-hour flight. [8]

Errors in Crowd-Sourcing. Wikipedia is to curb its open-to-all policy after a string of howlers, including an obituary run on Senator Ted Kennedy when he hasn't actually died. [9]

Ireland Is No SV. An item certain to pique the interest of the Open Coffee crowd reveals "a leading internet innovator based in Antrim has played down Ireland's chances of becoming Europe's Silicon Valley, despite the investment of €30m in a transatlantic cable. [10]

Clickable Hotspots for Product Placement. In my Qik video, I referred to The Script's enriched pop video and how you could mouse over objects in videos and be permitted to buy the products. [11] I cannot find a hyperlink that gives me the enriched video option.

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Direct Link to MP4: http://www.podcasting.ie/video/sundaytech_090208.mp4
1. Sunday Times Spectrum -- "Our world this week: pictures from the front line of life" 8 Feb 09.
2. Stephen Price -- "Turn the roads green" in the Sunday Business Post Agenda magazine, 8 Feb 09.
3. Matt Bingham -- "Ah, now we're stalking" in the Sunday Times InGear supplement, 8 Feb 09.
4. John Archer -- "They put you in control of TV" in the Sunday Times InGear supplement, 8 Feb 09.
5. Niall Toner -- "Neighbourhood warmth scheme" in the Home section of the Sunday Times, 8 Feb 09.
6. Rhodri Phillips -- "Speed bumps to get new role as a source of green energy" in The Sunday Observer, 8 February 2009.
7. David Smith -- "Memory strain a by-product of hi-tech age" in the News section of the Sunday Observer, 8 February 2009.
8. Dominic O'Connell -- "Aircraft engine makers flying into a brighter future" in The Sunday TImes, 8 Feb 09
9. GIles Hattersley -- "The wiki-snobs are taking over" in the News Review section of The Sunday Times, 8 Feb 09.
10. Kathryn Johnston -- "Ireland not open for  business, says web whiz" in the News section of The Sunday Times, 8 Feb 09.
11. Jan Battles -- "Pop fans click on to stars' sing'n'sells" in The Sunday Times, 8 Feb 09.

Most read current blog item last week -- "First look at Google Latitude" with creative multimedia students from Tipperary Institute.

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