Inside View

AMPing up practical skills @LimerickIT

I WORK WITH a wide range of creative students on three campuses of the Limerick Institute of Technology. This year, I'm taking a page out of my 1998 notebooks as we share techniques about making rich media content that shows up in less than two seconds on mobile phone screens.

First Look at Responsive Typepad

Screenshot from InsideView.ie by @topgold as seen on a Nokia Lumia 1520.

A WELCOME NOTE from Say Media informed me of the Snap Template for Typepad. This marks the first time I have seen the option for a responsive template with Typepad services and I hope to discover the responsive capability works with advanced templates too.

The Internet and Web Technology module I teach at the Limerick Institute of Technology gave quick and dirty treatment to responsive HTML. I think there is scope for a line item of responsive design as part of the final continuous assessment project in the first year #webtech module. In reality, most web hosting platforms offer basic responsive services one click away from a default design. The real talent emerges when people can create responsive design for inline media, email and web.

[Bernie Goldbach teaches #webtech in the Limerick Institute of Technology.]

Setting up New Laptop

I'VE A NEW DELL M2400 LAPTOP running side-by-side a Dell D620 and realise it will take several days to pull all my required programs onto the rippingly-fast Dell Precision laptop. Part of its speed is down to Windows 7. Most of its speed comes from being free of bloat. Besides Microsoft Office and Visual Studio 2005, I've just the basic Windows accessories. I'll be intested in discovering what legacy programs and shell extensions fail to install. Because I want rocket speed to complement the Firewire services that will connect to this lightweight baby, I'm going to use a clever mouse with this laptop. Here's the first hour's tick-off list of programs installed on the new laptop:

Three to Watch

UPDATED 5 JAN 09 with a photo, hyperlink and a citation of a third guy, Shane McAllister.

MY WEEKEND NEWSPAPERS tell me that I should be continue watching two guys who feature in my regular flow of online activities. The Limerick Leader fingers Patrick Collison (at left, seated in the centre) and The Irish Times cites Aodhan Cullen. Patrick has shared entrepreneurial ideas at Limerick Open Coffee on the heels of selling his start-up Auctomatic. Aodhan's Statcounter powers the stats package behind my blogs.

The Irish Times says, "At the age of 28 Aodhan Cullen is already a seasoned technology entrepreneur. At 12 he started his first business typing CVs for his Dublin neighbours and at 18 founded Statcounter.com, a free advertising-supported service that boasts over two million members and generated a profit of €750,000 last year. It allows websites to track the number of visitors they attract and other important data such as how they found it. Statcounter, which Cullen runs with his wife Jenni, is totally self-funded and has been rebuffing approaches from US investors. After investing heavily this year, 2009 will see them competing with the big boys."[1]

Irish Small Business Tech Trends

IN A SURVEY of Irish IT infrastructure, Business Plus magazine finds "technologies that used to be out of the range of SMEs are now coming within their orbit." [1] After asking a wide range of solutions providers what they're recommending to improve their clients' business functions [2], no Irish business consultant interviewed recommended a blogging platform (unless you count Sharepoint), the establishment of a presence on a social network (i.e., Twitter, LinkedIn, IGOpeople), and obvious Irish cloud computing solutions (i.e., OnlineMeetingRooms, PutPlace) also go unnoticed. Those interviewed normally flog their expertise and their paid services. When viewed year-on-year, these kinds of stories show readers where the engine of Irish enterprise (the SME sector) is placed. Here is a cursory listing of "technology trends SMEs should be aware of:"

Personal Web Proxies

KILKENNY -- Both Russell Beattie and Danny O'Brien have been talking about Personal Web Proxies. The idea is on my personal watch list.

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Danny O'Brien -- "That proxy thing"
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Smallest Website

GUIMP -- Go visit the smallest Website on the planet. Then learn what Intuitis is all about.

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Image from the front page of Guimp
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Why PDF

KILKENNY -- Adrian Weckler launches mini-rants from his soapbox column in the Sunday Business Post and last Sunday's column was no different as he rounded on PDFs. After reading his diatribe, I started to think that Weckler may never have used the Adobe Portable Document Format for anything except to read material on the Web. If that's the case, I think he needs to discuss with marketing staffs why the PDF is their format of choice when presenting the company image in the framework of a printable document. I think he should sit down with CFOs who use information in their PDFs to set down terms and condition for licensing of software products. Then he should consider the opinion of the 27 Internet co-ordinators employed by county councils and hear how their use of PDFs cuts the cost of licensing expensive mapping software.

While some may argue that the PDF file abuses bandwidth, confuses search engines and locks up browsers, there are compelling and revenue-generating reasons to promote the Portable Document Format in today's connected world of collaboration.

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Adrian Weckler edits Computers in Business for The Sunday Business Post. Bernard Goldbach teaches best practise in web development for Tipperary Institute.
Sent as mail2blog by Nokia 9210i O2 connection at the Kilkenny Train Station.
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Web Hosting Ireland

HOST ie -- Along with 800 other clients, I depend on the reliability of web services provided to me by Novara Technology Group. My blog content sits on Compaq DL320 & DL380 servers in one of Ireland's leading data centres, Nevada Tele Web Hosting Ireland. I've spoken to several of the Host.ie engineers and I believe they have some of the best Linux hosting in Ireland. I can see from my server logs that their 24x7 monitoring is backed up by sophisticated management services. The combination gives me confidence in maintaining uninterrupted operations of my blog.

Novara runs a fully Cisco switched network, equipped with some of the finest hardware I have seen in a single serviced location. Their capabilities span from hosting and back-end services that have served me well as a long-time blogger.

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Fully redundant Compaq server hardware from Host.ie depicted in the picture.
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Towards transparent electronic voting

KILKENNY -- Major concerns about the electronic voting mechanisms continue to be expressed in Ireland. Some of the concerns echo comments made on other continents. I believe more consultation should be done before electronic counting mechanisms eliminate the transparency needed by tallymen in Irish elections. The software used to record votes needs to be opened at the source code level for several reasons: (1) to ascertain whether passwords are embedded in source code, (2) to evaluate the level of encryption in the system, (3) to analyse reasons for denying printouts of ballots cast being made for individual voters.

Antoin O Lachtnain raises additional issues concerning layouts of ballots, tallying methods and polling stations. All deserve to be part of an informed national debate because the envisioned system does not inspire confidence.

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There have been several calls to vet voting machines by Irish software developers. These calls need to be followed up by informed debate.

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Wired News and Open -- "More calls to vet voting machines"
Antoin O Lachtnain -- "Electronic voting: putting voters first"
Sent as mail2blog by Nokia 9210i O2 TypePad connection at the Kilkenny Train Station.
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