Inside View

TSA Can Strip Search Your Laptop

THERE ARE MANY REASONS why I try not to carry a laptop when flying out of the country. I have seen border police power up laptops and scan their contents. Although I have not seen anyone actually cable out the contents, I once traveled i...

A9 Image Search Got Smarter

INTELLIGENTLY SEARCHING IMAGES occupies a lot of our time when supervising multimedia degree portfolios at Tipperary Institute. So it's good to see how A9 Image Search has added some semantic awareness to search queries. The default imag...

Yahoo 360 Launches Beta

YAHOO -- Yahoo! launched its beta version of Yahoo! 360 today and it's a tight integration of push-style social networking across the Yahoo! properties that uses a Multiply model to take weblogs and Irishblogs to another level on the bac...

Nokia N70 First Touch

AT FIRST TOUCH, the Nokia N70 feels like a stainless steel bar of soap. Like a piece of finely sculpted art, the phone invites handling, sits securely in rain-soaked hands and seems more secure to the touch than any other Nokia phone I h...

IBM's Blogging Guidelines

GUIDELINES FOR BLOGGING often challenge large corporations so it's informative to read "IBM's Guidelines for Blogging" and to know they evolved from an Open Source wiki populated by employees.

Grants for home heating

IF YOU PAY to heat your home, you should look at the Greener Homes Grant Scheme. It supports the installation of a range of renewable energy heating systems in houses over the coming years. The technologies which are being supported incl...

An X10 Flagship Experience

FIVE DAYS OF USING the SonyEricsson X10 have transmogrified my index finger into a stylus. As much as this disrupted my old school relationship with small computers, the X10 has given me ideas about touching and swiping my way through a ...

Android Voices

VOICE-OPTIMISED SOFTWARE stops me dead in my tracks. I'm finding more and more of Google's shadow in the handheld voice space whenever I look at free voice-activated offerings for my SonyEricsson Xperia X10 phone (shown with some battle ...

Saving Polar Bears with Our Empty Oil Tank

Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | Photo of our polar bear RECENT TELEVISION NEWS images of the shrinking Arctic ice mass have encouraged me to think about what the cousins of our housebound polar bear might be facing. In a past life, I fl...