Inside View

Repeat it and they believe it

PROVING THAT if you repeat the war on terror meme long enough, "half of Americans now say Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the United States invaded the country in 2003," says the Washington Times. That figure is "up from 36 percent last year, a Harris poll finds. Pollsters deemed the increase both "substantial" and "surprising" in light of persistent press reports to the contrary in recent years". It doesn't matter what the facts are, it is what you believe the facts to be.

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Jennifer Harper -- "50 percent of U.S. says Iraq had WMDs"
John Walkenbach -- "Explain this."

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Open Note to Michele Neylon

MY NEWS AGGREGATOR produced a message that suggested there will be greater productivity at workstations around the world. The message: "This account has been suspended.
Either the domain has been overused, or the reseller ran out of resources." The domain:

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Because you can never get enough information from Google on getting laid. I get this info every day. It lands in my bulk mail folder.

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Digging Cool Waters

IT RAINED IN CASHEL! Yesterday, 450 jobs rained down on Cashel and every square metre of my back garden got a litre of water sprinkled on it from the sky. So I'm digging the ground for a garden while digging The Cool Waters Band in my earbuds. Loving it! You can listen to my podcasts in Wimpy's player.

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Bonus Link -- The Cool Waters Band opens Educast #62 where we talk about technoculture.

Which Superhero Are You

WITH SUPERMAN in cinemas, XMen in the hood and Batman Begins in my DVD collection, I needed to know my superhero genome. Which superhero are you? Answer 47 questions (be honest about the bras--notice how I'm more Catwoman than Batman) and you will see whether you deserve a cape.

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via Metafilter after learning John Walkenbach was Superman.

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Burncaster Needed

THERE HAS TO be an inexpensive way to automatically burn-to-archive the gigs of listened-to podcasts that now occupy the majority of space on my 250 GB hard drive. I need a terabyte on my desktop sooner than I thought and since that kind of storage isn't in the short-range pipeline, it's time to cut to CD before I run out of space next month.

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Irish blogger gets broadcast funding

UPDATED 26 JULY 2006: This post floated to a high-water mark on this blog after more than 110 people read it within 24 hours of its posting. Fewer than 10 posts a year on this weblog reach that high-water mark of visibility, without being wrapped with porn, sex, and promises of thongs or nipslips.

CONN O MUINEACHAIN goes from award-winner Irish blogger to winning broadcast funding for his podcasts. His application to the BCI was in the list of approved projects under the "Sound and VIsion" category.  Check out An Líonra Sóisialta (The Social Network), a series of 64 short episodes over 13 weeks, which aims to introduce the radio-listening, Irish-language community to the world of online social networking. This could lead to a speaking assignment for a Tipperary Institute multimedia graduate.

Cashel Just Got 450 Jobs

A FEW DAYS AGO, when the IDA was rummaging around for some maps of Cashel, we thought there was something afoot. It turns out that Cordis Corporation, a Johnson & Johnson company, is to establish a state-of-the-art development and manufacturing facility on the southeast side of Cashel. If plans run their course, the investment will create more than 450 new high-tech positions during the next three years. You can bet some of those employees will live up the street from me.

Best dictaphone

ALTHOUGH I HAVE NOT used every dictaphone on the market, the one I can strongly recommend is the Sony ICD MX-20 digital dictaphone. I recommend it because no fewer than 1000 people come looking here every month to things I have written about the clever device. Oftentimes, they're looking for software to update their two or three year old Sony dictaphone. Other times, they're interested in the audio recording qualities. I've started telling podcast listeners when I'm using the MX-20 without any external microsphone in specific podcast segments. If you have half an ear, you can tell that yourself. For example, the lady on the street at 40:10 of Underway in Ireland #37 [32.7 MB 96kbps MP3 file] is recorded with the MX20 in my Bihn Bag. The comments section starting at 42:30 is recorded with an external mic, the white MXL that I call my iPod mic. Then the credits, starting at 45:32 are recorded with no mic. They are recorded on the Sony ICD MX-20 that I bought with no subvention.

Setting ethics through NDAs

THE BUSINESS SOFTWARE Alliance is not on my list of friends because I distrust their business practises. It seems that others have the same issues as well. Perhaps one way of MDs attacking the tipster programme offered by BSA (where you could get rewarded by tipping off BSA to the presence of unlicensed software) is to force employees to sign an NDA that prohibits the discussion of business practises outside of the business. So if your company uses unlicensed software, you cannot talk about it outside of work without violating your NDA.

3G Mobile Tips

JAMES CORBETT offers essential tips for 3G connectivity. It's essential technology if you intend to replicate broadband while on the move throughout Ireland. His advice works with Vodafone or O2 because he describes how to tweak system settings.

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James Corbett -- "Two tips for squeezing more 3G out of the Vodafone datacard"

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