Inside View

Fast Neat Average Friendly Good Good

WHEN IN COLLEGE, an ordinary meal merited this reaction on a feedback form: "Fast. Neat. Average. Friendly. Good. Good." You can probably guess the categories for each of the responses. Now, Scoble offers a reading shorthand:

U, J, K, J, Shift-S, J.

Guinness Wins Top Spot

AMAZON UNSPUN, half-baked and newly-launched, is a community-based ranking system for lists. Guinness is ranked as the best beer in the world. Other winners:

• Dumbest Celebrity is Paris Hilton.
• Best Pickup Line is yours to see.
• Ireland is rated #7 to win Rugby's world cup and also #7 holiday destination.

Your Security Means Our Surveillance

IN PAST COCKPITS where I worked (proof at left), everything audible was recorded in 30-minute loops. As time went on, the loops got longer so before I logged my 3000th flight hour, even my Atlantic crossings were taped, top to tail. Everyone knew that all they said in the cockpit went onto the voice recorder. It was part of the workplace. In my current workplace, most people object to surreptitious recordings. Fair enough, casual conversation rarely evolves into matters affecting national security and most snippets captured in crowds have nothing to do with public safety. So, I wonder if readers object to their friends carrying location tracking and audio recording devices now that they're as easily acquired over the counter?

Why Aer Lingus Will Tank

IN HIS OPENING ADDRESS during IT@Cork, Eddie Hobbs provided one word of advice about Aer Lingus: "Sell". He was reading a page from Antoin O Lachtnain's blog. Months ago, Antoin pointed out the real issues behind the Ryanair bid for Aer Lingus stock and the reality of trying to operate as a player on international routes. When Ryanair fails to take a controlling interest in Aer Lingus, it will sell its holdings to minimise losses. And when that happens, Aer Lingus stock value will tank.

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Antoin O Lachtnain -- "Ryanair shows Aer Lingus How It's Supposed to Be Done"

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Location-Based Services

WE LIKE KNOWING where we are and one place that knows more than most is the O'Reilly Where 2.0 Conference in San Jose, California, for a few days in May 2007. Technologists, strategists, CTOs, CIOs, researchers, programmers, geographers, artists, activists, business developers, and entrepreneurs will congregate to explore mapping tools and location web services. It's pricey but it's California and a little California goes a long way for friends around these parts.

It's Fun To Stay At The

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via Outhouse Rag.

VoteTube

VoteTube USES INTERNET video to get political ideas across. As explained by Simon McGarr and Antoin O Lachtnain, the site revolves around a competition for the best video--political videos--at VoteTube.org. From Antoin: "We’re not looking for fancy film crews to enter this. We believe anybody can pick up a video camera and make a simple video saying what they think, in a pretty interesting way."

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Antoin O Lachtnain -- "VoteTube"
Simon McGarr -- "VoteTube Up and Running"

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Patching Granny without Vista

WHEN ALL THE BUZZ about Vista hits full volume, it's easy to miss the fact that some of your hardware just won't run the new operating system. That's especially true in most Irish primary schools. What to do? IT team members might look at Apollo's PDF based sandbox because it can isolate internet access, protecting the legacy operating system from the threat of Bebo bullies and YouTube skin flicks. If you don't have the money to upgrade your operating system and you want to avoid hardware snags, why go through the costly Vista upgrade cycle and repeat the security worries of the last ten years all over again, much less the application compatibility issues? You can actually get all the visual swish factor of a vectorised interface through Apollo, without breaking unexpected things in the process.

The Right to Record

MY TENDENCY TO WRITE things into my Moleskine journal while chatting with friends most often leaves everyone satisfied. It's as though people feel their time is respected more when people take notes of important things. However, if I expose my Sony digital dictaphone--or go so far as lay it on the table in clear view--the mood changes. And why is that? Moreover,

AddThis

MY BLOG IS TOO cluttered at the moment and that's the big reason I don't have a lot of little buttons that help people add my site to their online respositories. However, I like the one-size-fits-all solution offered by AddThis. It supports most bookmarking services and feed readers. You can either use AddThis on your webpages or inside email messages. Plus, you can track things with the button.