Archive for 'Technology'
Techie updates have moved
Posted on February 9, 2010, by Conor O'Neill, under Technology.
I know the tech stuff annoys the foodie readers here and vice versa. So last week I started up a new Posterous blog over on conoroneill.net. It is much more high volume than this blog and consists mainly of pointers to interesting tech stuff, opinions thereof and the odd funny bit. So basically pretty much anything except food/Bandon, which will remain here.
I’ll do the odd cross-reference when it makes sense. And hopefully the volume here will improve over the Spring as I get into a gardening groove. next post up is one on Jimmy Doherty’s “From Crop to Shop” which may be one of the most educational programmes about food broadcast in the past ten years.
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Your Next Handheld Computer?
Posted on December 10, 2009, by Conor O'Neill, under Technology.
Fantastic mix of features in the PsiXpda. For those who loved Psions, this will suit you. For those who work in the corporate world, your IT department will love it, as it runs XP!
The PsiXpda handheld computer in action at Le Web from Conor O'Neill on Vimeo.
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Time to build a Cork Computer History Museum
Posted on November 14, 2009, by Conor O'Neill, under Cork, Technology.
We have buildings all over Cork, empty. We have a recession. The hospitality industry is crippled. We need something that encourages tourism, makes use of some of that property and points the way to the future.
Can I suggest a Cork Computer History Museum?
What’s one of the biggest attractions in Silicon Valley? The Computer History Museum
What’s one of the biggest tourist draws in London? The Science Museum.
What’s one of Cork’s main tourist attractions now? The Butter Museum.
Where is the biggest cluster of successful tech companies outside of Dublin? Cork.
Randy Jordan has assembled one of the most incredible collections of classic computers anywhere. From IMSAI to Osborne to DEC PDP and Apple Lisa, he has it. Randy has offered the collection to be housed by those who should jump at the chance. They didn’t get it.
Those of us who do _get_ it have despaired when talking to Randy about his computers and the fact that they are almost never seen. The mini-collection he showed today at BarCamp Cork III blew our minds.
Watch this video:
Then think about the thousands of people who fly in and out of Cork every week and work for tech companies. Think about the brilliant but now sadly delayed idea of transforming the Cork docklands into a new tech hub. Think about all those tourists looking for something different. This could be the first step. A building full of technology that shows us the past so we can figure out the future.
Do you have a building lying idle and a vision for where you want Cork to be in 10 years time? Step up to the plate.
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Laptops at Le Web 2006-2010
Posted on November 8, 2009, by Conor O'Neill, under Technology.
I’ve gone to Le Web every year since 2006. It’s the stand-out event for those working in the Web in Europe. Every December I head over to Paris and come back wit h a head full of ideas and plans.
Ewan Spence is another regular at it and it’s pretty much the only time we see each other every year. He has a great post over on his blog about what computer to bring this year. It seems like we are all going more and more lightweight each time (well our computers are anyway).
It inspired me to take this set of photos.
Le Web 2006:
Le Web 2007/2008:
Le Web 2009:
Le Web 2010?:
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Facebook and You
Posted on August 28, 2009, by Conor O'Neill, under Business, Technology.
The stats around Facebook in Ireland are staggering, they are racing towards 1 millions active users here. That just blows my mind. Some are predicting they’ll have more pageviews globally than Google by next year!
Whilst I initially didn’t have much time for it, coming from the open blogging world, bit by bit its value for me has grown. Even at the simplest level, it is the only site where many people I know from school and college ever congregate online.
In our business, LouderVoice, we have hooked ourselves into Facebook so that when people review products/services on our clients’ web-sites, those reviews can be published to Facebook too. It’s an amazingly powerful marketing tool. You can see it in action here. That system can be placed on any web-site in as little as 10 minutes.
If you are on Facebook or you are thinking of joining, why not become a fan of LouderVoice there? You’ll see a sample of the best content from our site and customers posted there along with questions, ideas, polls and competitions.
If you are a small business, then you should really consider creating a Facebook Fan page. It only takes a few minutes and can be a great way of interacting with customers and fans. You only have to look at the success of the Hairy Baby one to see how well it can go!
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West Cork Tweetup
Posted on March 24, 2009, by Conor O'Neill, under Cork, Entertainment, Ireland, Technology.
If you had never heard of Twitter before, the relentless coverage of it on RTE and elsewhere recently must surely have changed that. It’s a simple system for messaging people who follow you but in a completely public way. You can pick whose messages you see by default too. Here’s a quick snapshot of those I follow:
One of the nice aspects of Twitter is that it leads to real-world interactions too. There are regular meet-ups called Tweetups where people can have a few drinks, maybe a bite to eat and have a bit of proper social interaction.
Ann Donnelly is organising West Cork’s first ever Tweetup in Clonakilty this Friday. It’s on in the Courtyard Bar in Clon from 8pm. If you are on Twitter or want to find out more about it or just want to meet with some friendly people then why not head on over? All details are on the blog.
Here are some of the West Cork (I’m including up to Ballincollig and Macroom in West) Twits that I know about: Ann, Mike Kane, Matt Kane, Anthony Creswell, Catherine, Simon Whelband, Calvin Jones, Walter Higgins, Me, Randy, Margaret Jordan, Gordon Murray. If I’ve missed you, leave a comment with a link to your profile!
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How safe are your pictures and documents?
Posted on February 26, 2009, by Conor O'Neill, under Technology.
I’m sure you bought a USB stick or portable harddisk with the best intentions in the world but how often do you actually backup irreplaceable files? How would you feel if those wedding pictures disappeared in a puff of smoke?
That’s why I consider online backup a must-have. I only recommend two services and the one at the top of my list is PutPlace. This low-cost solution by an Irish company is simple to set-up and then you just forget about it. All of your important files are kept safe on Amazon’s amazing storage system S3 and you can recover what you need with a few clicks.
The important thing about PutPlace is that it for consumers. So whilst HP gives up and shutters Upline, PutPlace goes from strength to strength.
Backup is boring but the day you lose those files is the day you wish you’d signed up for PutPlace. My buddy Joe, the founder, will even give you 3 months free. Just use the discount code “joe”!
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I do love a bargain
Posted on February 3, 2009, by Conor O'Neill, under Technology.
I’ve mentioned Twitter many times on this blog. Bit by bit, it is going mainstream. It’s a great way to hang out online (or on your phone via SMS or mobile web) with people you like and who can fit their thoughts into 140 chars.
But Twitter has a ton of practical uses too, one of which is saving money. My buddies in Nooked have created a ryanair_ork account there which publishes some great special offers regularly on Ryanair flights from Cork.
Signing up on Twitter only takes a moment, then just “follow” ryanair_ork and enjoy the savings.
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Foodtalk on Newstalk
Posted on January 7, 2009, by Conor O'Neill, under Entertainment, Food, Technology.
I just got a mail from the lovely people in The Good Things Cafe in Durrus to tell me that the awesome Carmel was on the Foodtalk programme on Newstalk Radio.
Foodtalk is hosted by one of the best food bloggers anywhere, Caroline Hennessy from Bibliocook.
If you want to listen online and subscribe so that you get each broadcast, then there are a bunch of different ways of doing it.
On your PC, one of the best tools is MediaMonkey. Install it, tell it about Foodtalk, leave it running in the background and it’ll automatically download the new episodes so you can listen at your desk.
If you have a newer car stereo or (like us) one of the replacement Lidl/Aldi ones, then you can copy those audio files onto a memory card or USB stick and play them in the car when you like.
Lots of the newer phones with Wifi also have podcasting capabilities. The Nokia N95, N95-8GB, N96 etc come with the software built in. Owners of the E51, E63, E71 etc can download it from here. You have to manually tell the application to check for new episodes but it takes care of the download etc once you do that. You can listen directly on the phone or plug it into the line-in on your stereo or car-stereo.
If you have an iPod, I’m sure it’s all very similar.
Note that most of the radio stations, in particular RTE, have a ton of podcasts you can get like this. I recently listened to all of a year-old series about De Valera I grabbed from the RTE site on my N95-8GB.
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Retro Fans Rejoice
Posted on April 27, 2008, by Conor O'Neill, under Entertainment, Technology.
I just heard about this site yesterday and it’s absolutely wonderful. They have a ton of the old ZX Spectrum games available to play online and your scores are included in various league tables. A perfect 21st Century improvement to 20th Century games.
Most of your old faves are there, I’ve just been playing the ever-brilliant Jet Set Willy. I love just clicking around and being reminded of many happy hours as a teenager in the 80’s.
Sure it’s nostalgic but it’s also bloody good fun. When the graphics were that bad, playability became the number one aim and that hasn’t diminished over the years.
So are you the best ZX Spectrum player in the world?
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Recipe and Gardening advice by SMS and Web
Posted on March 29, 2008, by Conor O'Neill, under Food, Gardening, Technology.
We’re just playing around with a few ideas on a site called Jaiku this morning (they were bought by Google a few months back). The idea is that you can have discussion channels on particular topics like technology, politics, Bandon GAA, whatever. What makes it (and other great sites like Twitter) so powerful is that you can interact with it entirely through SMS on your phone.
So this morning I created two non-techie ones that I thought might appeal to my more foodie readers. The first is #recipes and the second is #gardening. In both cases the idea was that they could be used for requesting advice (in addition to general chitchat).
The #recipes one was suggested by Michael Kiely and he thought it would be great if you were out shopping and spotted an ingredient and wanted suggestions for mini-recipes so you’d know what else to buy whilst you were there. A quick SMS, a bit more shopping and you might get some suggestions back by SMS.
I thought of the #gardening one and it could also be used in a similar way to #recipes when in a Garden Centre and wondering e.g. is X worth buying, it Y over-priced etc.
Of course you can use both channels on the web too (and obviously type a lot more than 140 characters!).
There are two flies in the ointment. The first is that it’ll need more people on these channels to make them work and the second is that joining Jaiku is officially closed at the minute. Both can be solved in one fell swoop by heading over to Jaiku Invites, setup by Ciarán Rooney and requesting an invite to join.
Give it a go. It’s just a bit of fun and I’ve already had two suggestions on how to cook the fennel bulbs I bought on a whim in Lidl during the week. Any problems using it, just pop a comment here.
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Have a Small Business and need IT help?
Posted on March 19, 2008, by Conor O'Neill, under Business, Technology.
I know there are tons of small businesses out there struggling with IT, even basics like anti-virus and e-mail. Unfortunately, lack of knowledge can often mean you aren’t even aware that there are better and cheaper ways of doing what you are doing.
Last Autumn, the County Enterprise Boards launched Tech-Check to address this widespread problem. It’s a simple but highly effective initiative to help businesses sort out their most pressing technology problems.
For €150, you get up to two 3-hour sessions with an IT expert who will go through every aspect of your IT usage and needs. They then come back with a report highlighting your highs and lows and a small set of specific recommendations to improve things.
Disclaimer: I am one of the people used by the Cork CEBs to provide this service.
Unfortunately, the uptake on Tech-Check has not met expectations. I think there are a few reasons for this and I hope I can clarify things a bit.
- It’s not for IT companies, it’s for any small business (from 1-50 people) who needs guidance on any aspect of technology whether it’s mobile phone usage, internet access, security or even getting a small web-site up for less than €250
- You are getting far more than €150 worth of consultancy, it is very heavily subsidised and I think the value for money is amazing
- The CEBs are very sensitive to conflicts of interest and the consultants cannot offer their services to actually implement the suggestions they make
- The feedback I have received from clients so far has been phenomenal. I’ve advised everything from one man training businesses and solicitors to multi person sports centres and they have all ended up with better setups and in some cases, saving lots of money.
- You do not need to know the first thing about IT or technology to apply for a Tech-Check. The less you know, the more help we can provide.
Ignoring the fact that I help provide Tech-Checks, I genuinely think this is the smartest thing to come out of the public service in years. There are thousands of businesses who can benefit and your entire investment can be just €150. I think you’d be nuts not to sign up, even if you think you don’t need it!
Contact:
- West Cork Enterprise Board
- South Cork Enterprise Board
- Cork City Enterprise Board
- North Cork Enterprise Board
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Creative Camp comes to Kilkenny
Posted on March 6, 2008, by Conor O'Neill, under Technology.
As someone who grew up in Kilkenny from the age of 6-18, I was very excited to see that Creative Camp is on this weekend. Not only that, but it’s on in the wonderful Kilkenny Castle where I spent many a day trying to find secret tunnels as a kid.
If you are wondering what it is all about, the idea is that the attendees are the presenters. It is in the BarCamp tradition of “unconferences” where the agenda for the day is very much made up on the day. You might think this is a recipe for disaster but the success of BarCamps in Cork, Waterford, Dublin, Belfast, Galway and PodCamp would suggest otherwise.
PodCamp was held a few months back in Kilkenny and was particularly interesting since it broke out of the “techie geeky” community and had many attendees and contributors from the world of media and the arts.
The aim of Creative Camp is to continue on in that vein and really get a broad cross-section of those in technology, arts, media and creativity to meet and exchange ideas and experiences.
If you are in the South East on Saturday, I highly recommend that you attend. It is completely free but it would be polite to register so they have some idea of numbers. The success of each *Camp is dependent on active participation by all who attend.
Some of the topics that have already been suggested for the day include:
- Outsourcing your development workload to free your creative time
- Branding an Arts organisation from the inside
- GPS For Developers
- Writing and promoting your book with social media
- How To Blog Like A Boy
- The Art Of Software Development
- Creating a vibrant, connected Arts Community in the South East
- How Friends Communicate
- GPS Drawing
- Building and working in a distributed startup
- Creative Ways To Reduce Your Carbon Footprint
- Personalisation and the Social Web
- Women & Technology – grabbing the blogosphere by the balls
Why not wander down and see what it is all about?
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Final Science Week Post: Best Invention of 2007?
Posted on November 17, 2007, by Conor O'Neill, under Health, Technology.
How many people are going to plump for the jesusphone in their posts? If Steve Jobs is responsible,it must be magic. Except it’s not, it’s a very nice UI on a phone design that was out of date in 2006 in Europe. So if not a fashion accessory then what? I think the Science Week people really mean “new product” when they say “invention”, otherwise I’m going to have to go a read some science journals to find the latest cure for cancer.
2007 hasn’t been a great year for ground-breaking innovation since most things I’m familiar with have just really been refined. I haven’t heard about one thing that make me stop and go “wow that’s incredible”. I might do so when CUH stop sending out hand-written appointments and use a fancy thing called a computer and Microsoft Outlook to schedule x-rays.
I mentioned BiancaMed in a previous post and I’m going to nominate one of their developments as the Invention of 2007. In fact their whole product line should get the gong. I don’t just say this because I was in college with Conor Hanley and Conor Heneghan, their developments are the first step in an entirely new approach to medicine. Expect these guys to exit for a huge amount of money in the coming years (or buy GE Healthcare!).
The BiancaMed Overnight Sleep Monitor sits on your bed-side locker and measures your breathing patterns with no contact whatsoever. It can provide critical data to diagnose sleep apnea and other sleep disorders and medical conditions. It will be able to send that information via mobile phone to a back-end system that your medical practitioner can log on to and analyse. It is genuinely revolutionary and there will be a multitude of spin-off products from this including baby monitors and fitness equipment.
As someone who has slept badly since he was 6 years old I’d love to get access to this and maybe finally get to the bottom of it. As a parent, I know many people will pay a LOT of money for a baby monitor which may help avoid SIDS.
A bit more impressive than a poxy phone, isn’t it?
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Science Week: Invention which helps work
Posted on November 16, 2007, by Conor O'Neill, under Technology.
Today’s Science Week Question is an easy one “Which invention has helped you most with your working life?“. Of course it is the internet. The highlights of my history with it are as follows:
- 1990: Learned it existed when I started Masters in UCD
- 1991: Figured out email, Usenet news, Gopher. Discovered ftp.funet.fi and the world of shareware
- 1992: First job in S3. Email only. Figured out ftpmail to download programs overnight on 14.4k modem
- 1994: Found out about the web. Used Mosaic for the first time
- 1995: Discovered Free software, FSF, GPL, Open Source OS called RTEMS and GCC.Yahoo, Excite, Altavista, Lycos
- 1996-2000: Web developed and so did I. Online purchasing, Google, Yahoo mail, IOL, indigo, eircom.net, ISDN, Netscape, Mozilla, Internet Explorer, Geocities, homepages, animated gifs
- 2001-2003: Startup with ISDN only. Discovered SEO, dmoz, blogging, RSS
- 2003-now: Live it and breath it 16 hours a day. DSL, mobile, ATOM, Reviews, Semantic Web, Web 2.0, Social Networking, IM, Skype, Firefox, Widgets, Flash
The greatest invention in my lifetime and my job would not exist without it.
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Science Week: Next gadget purchase
Posted on November 15, 2007, by Conor O'Neill, under Technology.
Today’s Science Week Question is “What’s the next gadget that you want to buy?”
The next gadget I buy hasn’t been created yet. It’ll be when Nokia take the N95 and the N810 and merge them into one product.
This:
plus this:
It will have:
- Quad Band Phone
- 5MP Camera with xenon flash
- HSDPA 3G Data
- Wifi
- Bluetooth
- Stereo Bluetooth Audio
- GPS
- Touch Screen
- Slide Out Keyboard
- Run a variant of Linux
- TV Out
- Accelerometer
- Massive Battery
- Take massive memory cards
- Offer full PDA functionality and sync with both desktop apps like Outlook and online apps like Goog Calendar
- A music player designed for podcasts (remember last spot, bookmark, speedy seek within track)
- VOIP
- SIP
- the same dimensions as the N810
- A price tag of less than €400
I don’t ask for much really, do I? Actually, this device would make me the ultimate “mobile warrior”. The need for a laptop would almost disappear for a lot of my travel and I would have a swiss-army penknife of gadget functionality.
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Science Week: Invention of the future
Posted on November 14, 2007, by Conor O'Neill, under Health, Technology.
Today’s Science Week question is “What invention do you want to see most in the future“. This is an easy one to describe but it’ll be a long time coming. I want to see an inexpensive non-invasive home medical diagnostic machine that can detect and diagnose a wide range of problems on its own and via a data-feed to the relevant medical experts.
The benefits of such a machine could be enormous
- Massive reduction in GP queues
- Reduction in incorrect self-medication (e.g. anti-biotics for viral infections)
- Prompt addressing of potentially dangerous conditions
- Diagnosis by subject-area experts globally rather than by potentially incompetent local hospitals
- Blue Sky: Your own portable MRI with “lump” detection
We are starting to see this sort of thing appear here and there, from equipment for diabetics to portable defibrilators to the awesome sleep-apnea equipment by the BiancaMed guys. Some day we’ll get to the point where your health isn’t in the hands of a dysfunctional bureaucracy and you’ll control your own destiny.
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More Science Week Stuff
Posted on November 13, 2007, by Conor O'Neill, under Technology.
Looks like the Science Week guys are hardcore! They’ve hired Edelman to help with PR. I like the idea they came up with. Basically Irish Bloggers have to answer some stuff about their favourite inventions as blog posts during the coming week and we might win a Wii.
Today’s question is “What was the favourite invention from your childhood”.
This is an easy one. The home computer, specifically the Sinclair ZX Spectrum.
An entire generation of software developers and electronic engineers exist because of this awesome machine and competitors like the BBC Micro, Commodore 64, Dragon 32, Oric 1, Atari 400/800, TI 99/a etc
Until the arrival of the Spectrum (and slightly earlier ones like the ZX81, ZX80, TRS-80), the most advanced thing most people had seen was electronic tennis on the telly. I still remember heading up on a school tour to Dublin, going into Tomorrow’s World in the Grafton Arcade and touching a ZX81 for the first time. My parents then bought me a 16K Spectrum for Christmas 1982 and my world changed forever.
Forget all the games we used play and copy using a precursor of bittorrent called tape-to-tape-recording. For me, the Spectrum experience was about programming and building add-on cards. I learned Basic, then Forth and then Z80 Assembler.
I had my 15 seconds of fame by having three games published in Sinclair magazines. I was half way through my masterpiece when college intervened. I did Electronics in UCD because of the Spectrum (I didn’t like the look of Cobol and RPG on the Comp Sci syllabus) and here I am now, still working in tech and still getting excited every day by the incredible things people build.
I enjoy seeing kids using gaming consoles and playing flash games on the web but I wonder will they ever have the excitement we did back in the 80’s when we saw the output of this:
10 FOR n=0 TO 255
20 PLOT n,88+80*SIN(n/128*PI)
30 NEXT n
Who knows, maybe the OLPC aka XO will do the same for Africa. I still have my doubts.
12 Comments
3G Doctor Signals the Return of House Visits
Posted on November 7, 2007, by Conor O'Neill, under Health, Technology.
I don’t normally mention posts that I write on blognation over here but I think this one is probably of great interest to many of my local readers and those in more rural locations in Ireland and the UK.
A company called 3G Doctor in Kerry provides a service whereby you can get a video consultantion with a qualified doctor using your 3G phone.
I’ve written all about it here. I’d be interested to hear what you think and whether the 3G coverage is good enough yet so that it is useful to the people who need it most.
For those who think 3G phones are outside their budget, the fabulous Sony Ericsson K800i is little more than €100 on pay monthly upgrade. That’s barely two visits to the doctor.
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How to feel just a bit stupid
Posted on August 25, 2007, by Conor O'Neill, under Gadgets, Technology.
I’m very technical, I can figure most things out given sufficient time, but sometimes I just don’t get it. Take for example my recent purchase of a Nokia N770 Internet Tablet.
It is a fabulous piece of kit at an incredible knock-down price of €107 plus VAT and P&P. I believe it was over €400 when it was released. It’s basically a little hand-held computer with a touch screen that works over Wifi or your mobile connection (via bluetooth). I’ve totally got the hang of it and use it every day.
Except it came with this:
And I just couldn’t figure it out. I decided it was part of a stand of some sort but appeared to be missing the other parts.
So I gave up and left it at the edge of the desk. Yesterday I was on a phone call and was playing with it absent mindedly. Then this happened:
Oh for the love of god:
I blame Nokia 
