NO CLOUDS IN THE Cashel sky and 10 things spotted in the Sunday papers, not counting Sue Denham's reference to Twenty Major and Sarah Carey in the same sentence. Guess who has the book deal. Guess who has the personalised dot-ie domain name.
1. The world's first hydrogen fuel cell car will sell for less than EUR 100,000 but only in Japan and America. It's available through Honda, travels 270 miles at speeds of up to 100 mph and produces only water vapour from its exhaust.
2. For all the excitement of the Rugby World Cup and the climax of the Formula One season, true sports fans knew that there was really only one event in October and that, of course, was the eighth annual North American Wife-Carrying Championship in Newry, Maine. Keith Cardoza and his girlfriend Julia Stoner held off 33 other couples to win this year, finishing the 278-yard course, which includes two three-foot hurdles and a 35ft mud pit, in just over a minute and beating their nearest rivals by less than half a second. They now go ahead to the world championship in Finland in July and, perhaps more importantly, walked away with the traditional prizes--five times the lady's weight in pounds in cash ($675 in this case), and her weight in Bud Light, which worked out as nine 12-packs.
3. John Naughton explains why Facebook is a site on stilts. And he says "YouTube videos look much better on an iTouch than they do on a computer screen." But he has some gripes about the iTouch, the latest device to emerge from the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field.
4. Damien Kiberd points out that "moves by 10 of the biggest EU countries to change the way corporation tax is calculated in Europe will go ahead next year, threatening the €7bn in taxes that Ireland earns from business profits and sparking a financial crisis for the Irish governnment."
5. The other Damien explores an idea for a government API for use around Ireland. He explains the value of opening an API to Ordnance Survey Ireland, an idea mooted more than a decade ago on the Irish Internet Association's Webmaster Shoptalk mailing list. As then, there would appear to be no government or industry advocates for such a wonderful idea.
6. Across Ireland, people hear warnings of tight fiscal policy ahead. The Sunday Tribune documents how presidents of University College Dublin and University College Galway "were in receipt of unauthorised allowances, flouting national pay policy." We're talking about people being paid more than €240,000 annually (more than George Bush and most government ministers), getting company cars, and contributions made to their pension funds at rates approaching 40% of their salaries. That's nice if you can get the gig.
7. My mobile telephone operator made a profit of around €4m a week in 2006 and if my data charges are anything worth mentioning, O2-Ireland will enjoy another bumper year in 2007. O2 customers made an average of 238 minutes of calls a month in 2006, around four hours a month. They sent almost 1.5 billion text messages as well.
8. Pat Phelan's prediction, made three months ago, that a major player would enter the virtual mobile phone market, comes true tomorrow.
9. If you get legally married at home in Ireland, you cannot bar someone from out on the street attending the ceremony. That's what we heard from Lara Quinlan, the southeast Registrar and it's being carried in the mainstream press now.
10. I wonder if I want my four brothers to glean their impression of Ireland through the eyes of David McWilliams. I fear their vocabulary skills are not up to scratch.
1a. Emma Smith -- "Up, up and away, the hydrogen car is here" in The Sunday Times InGear magazine, 28 October 2007.
1b. Brendan Montague -- "World's first mass market hydrogen car is ready to roll" in The Sunday Times News section, 28 October 2007.
2. Alpine Zone News and Observer Magazine (with photo) -- "Run for your wife", 28 October 2007.
3. John Naughton -- "Microsoft makes Facebook a club you don't want to join" in The Observer Business and Media, 28 October 2007.
4. Damien Kiberd -- "EU Tax Change to Hurt Ireland" on the front page of the Sunday Times, 28 October 2007.
5. Damien Mulley -- "APIs: A roadmap to better business" in Tribune Business, 28 October 2007.
6. Kevin Rafter -- "Pay freeze for university heads over illegal salary top-up" on the front page of the Sunday Tribune, 28 October 2007.
7. Gavin Daly -- "O2 rings up €188m profit" on the front page of the Sunday Business Post, 28 October 2007
8. Adrian Weckler -- "Tesco Mobile to Target Foreigners" in The Sunday Business Post News, 28 October 2007.
9. Kieron Wood -- "HSE: home weddings open to public" in The Sunday Business Post, 28 October 2007.
10. David McWilliams -- "Tradition, nostalgia and lineage are the way forward" in the Comment & Analysis section of The Sunday Business Post and those concepts form part of the thesis of The Generation Game
