Teknovis

The software developed by two Irish companies is currently being used by the Syrian Government to monitor and block communications within the country, according to Syria regime ‘using Irish technology’.

The companies are AdaptiveMobile and Cellusys. I had a quick look at both of their web sites, and neither company appears to be publicising this! This seems strange, given how topical Syria is these days!

Perhaps these two companies are not proud of this particular sale and produce use!

Actually, if I attend Mobile World Congress this year I might visit their stands to discuss this!

Tags: AdaptiveMobile, Cellusys, Mobile World Congress

I read a very interesting breakdown of the income per Irish county in Capital rule: People from Donegal have lowest income in Ireland.

I am not surprised that the top three are:

1. Dublin (30,891€)
2. Kildare (27,498€)
3. Meath (26,312€)

What I find more surprising is that these are the only three counties where the county average is greater than the national average (26,192€). I think it is another sign of the growing divergence between the economic powerhouse that the greater Dublin area is compared to the rest of the country.

Tags: Ireland

Enterprise Ireland are hosting an event this week relating to software for smart energy meters. Full details are available in New Niche – Software Apps for Smart Energy Meters (EI Event).

Tags: Enterprise Ireland

I use Pulse on my Motorola Xoom. I love it, and it is possibly the most used application on my tablet. The combination of Pulse and the tablet has definitely enabled me to become more knowledgeable in everything from current affairs to hobbies!

Unfortunately, there are one or two limitation of the application that really annoy me :( I commented about this last week on Twitter, and the good people who develop Pulse read my comment and asked me to suggest how the application could be improved. So this is why I am writing this :) (I also love that Twitter enables interactions like this to occur between the application developers and the users.)

Catagories

Imagine that I am interested in following feeds that fall into seven categories, for example, Economics, Politics, Sport, Travel, Lifestyle, Technology, and Property. Currently, Pulse allows me to have a maximum of five categories! So inevitably this limitation forces me to mix completely unrelated feeds together :( This looks wrong, and it makes it difficult to find the feeds that I want when they are bunched in with unrelated feeds.

The fix to this is very simple – allow an unlimited number of categories! There is plenty of space across the top for more categories! If this space become full, then let the user swipe to move from category to category (just like moving from port to post within a feed)!

While I am writing about categories, I remember that it used be possible to click on the category title to hide the row of categories. This was great, because it freed up some extra screen space. Unfortunately this feature has been removed :(

Feeds

Imagine that I am interested in following more than ten feeds within a single category. Actually, for three of the five categories that I have on Pulse there are more than ten feeds that I would like to follow! Currently, Pulse allows me to have a maximum of ten feeds per category :( Since I am limited to five categories, I cannot divide my categories any further to overcome this limitation :( This is particularly annoying when I follow several feeds that are updated infrequently :|

To fix this simply allow an unlimited number of feeds per category!

Screenshot

The diagram below (that I took from APP OF THE DAY: Pulse review (Android Honeycomb)) shows how both of these improvements could easily be incorporated! (Click image to see larger version!)

Pulse Improvements

I do not see any technical reason why these limitations exist. My guess is that somebody hard-coded a number into an array somewhere!

It is probably worth remembering that these comments are coming from somebody who uses Pulse on an Android tablet with plenty of processor and memory resources, and a really fast WiFi Internet connection.

Hopefully this is useful!

Tags: Motorola, Pulse, Twitter

Another (after Tablets At Work) nice tablet infographic (click image to see larger version):

Tablet Use

This one is taken from How we use our tablets (Infographic).

Wikipedia is going to be free for Orange users, according to Wikipedia Wants to Be Free — for Mobile Users, in Africa.

Technically it is a really simple, but I love the idea of sharing knowledge freely with people who may not otherwise have access to Wikipedia. It also has great potential for generating good press coverage.

Tags: Orange, Wikipedia

Morning!

Registration for the Irish Collegiate Programming Contest (IrlCPC) opened a few minutes ago!

It sounds like a really good event, and this year it is being held in UCC.  (Interestingly, last year’s photos show that the attendees all look exactly like the stereotypes you would associate with such an event. That is a pity in terms of trying to broaden its appeal!)

Tags: UCC

The story of how the gang behind the Koobface worm and botnet was exposed is contained in The Koobface malware gang – exposed!.

It is fascinating reading, and it almost reads like a novel!

Actually, it reminds me of the time I discovered a local prostitution ring, but that is a story for another day… :D

I must read How to Mitigate Risk During Software Development the next time that I am involved in an outsourcing project!

Smart Futures is an initiative designed to encourage students to pursue careers in technology.

Smart Futures is a national campaign for second-level students in Ireland highlighting career opportunities in information and communications technology (ICT) in association with e-Skills Week 2012. It includes a digital content competition, an online careers fair from 23-27 January 2012, and regular updates on our blog about the sector, career stories and competitions.

It is a really good idea, and I think that it is very necessary! There are some very well known companies behind it, including Cisco, Ericsson, HP, Microsoft, Openet, SAP.

Tags: Cisco, Ericsson, HP, Microsoft, Openet, SAP