Mar 21 2011
Amazon, Microsoft, and many more see Dublin as an ideal location for their data centres according to Dublin Emerges as Cloud Computing Hub.
Some of the linked articles are also very interesting, such as Colocation Dublin that lists all of the data centres in the Dublin area.
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Mar 01 2011
I read an interesting article today that was making the case against merging the Irish Universities. I had been in favour of this, but based upon the numbers presented I think that I need to rethink!
The article is The claim that we have too many universities is simply wrong, but note that it is written by a former president of DCU.
Feb 18 2011
Ouch – German ‘plagiarism’ minister Guttenberg drops doctorate.
Of course, somebody in Ireland did something similar in Ireland within the last 10 years…
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Feb 17 2011
It certainly has been an interesting week from a tablet point-of-view. Firstly, I borrowed an iPad, and I have been giving it a good testing. The user interface is very nice, and the browsing experience has been excellent. I only encountered one website where the Javascript driven menus would not work for some reason. My only complaint with the device is that it starts to feel rather heavy when resting on your stomach :o
I also got to play with a Motorola Xoom (see Motorola Xoom for more details). During my brief encounter the device seemed to be as desirable as I had imagined ;)
The other big development (from the 10″ tablet point-of-view) was that Samsung launched the Galaxy Tab 10.1. For more details see the images or the features.
Galaxy Tab 10.1
I spent some time playing with it also, and I cannot say that I noticed any significant difference between this and the Motorola Xoom. Perhaps this is not surprising given that they are both based on the same chipset, and they both have the same operating system.
I did read some complaints about the plastic build, but I did not find this problematic. Indeed, I liked the circular recessed area on the back because it made holding the device from any angle very comfortable.
Perhaps the only disappointment this week was that HTC did not launch a 10″ tablet :|
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Feb 13 2011
I am becoming very disheartened with the Mobile World Congress :( I am looking at the website, and I am finding it very difficult to achieve the following:
I hope that information is more available tomorrow!
Feb 11 2011
Some Friday afternoon humour (click to see large version) …
The Procrastination Flowchart
It is almost scary how true it is!
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Feb 08 2011
It is election time in Ireland at the moment, but I am not going to discuss politics. However, I can still write about the political manifestos as long as they relate to technology. The policies that caught my attention today come from the Irish Green Party, and they are contained in We will recover if we play to our strengths.
The first interesting policy is:
Transfer all public services to cloud computing
This really makes me wonder if the author understands what cloud computing means! “Public Services” in the election context generally means tangible services that are available to the public, such as policing, health, and education. I am unclear how health care will be provided by cloud computing :D
Seriously, is it meant that all government computing will be performed in the cloud? This raises many interesting questions:
If I was a cloud provider, I would probably be very excited about the opportunities here (as long as I ignore the political opinion polls).
Another policy that caught my attention is:
Invest €70m in web training for 20,000 unemployed people who can then work to web-enable Irish business
Hmmm… I think that I would instead focus on improving the take-up of science and computing for those already in education at all levels.
Provide access for the private sector to Government data
Interesting… Was the Green Party not involved in curtailing Freedom of Information rights during the last few years?
Finally, the last policy that caught my attention is:
Roll out ultra fast broadband Exemplar network nationwide
The Exemplar network is very exciting (see Exemplar Network), but I do not think that it is ready for a nation-wide commercial deployment yet. Also, I do not think that this would be the best usage of this technology.
I think that the cynics will wonder why the Green Party did not do these wonderful things during its time in power :|
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Feb 04 2011
I heard of the concept of Google Bombs long ago, but I only discovered today that this was their name :)
Some of the cited examples are very funny :D
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Feb 03 2011
Facebook is becoming location aware on mobile devices in the EU (or at least in the UK, Germany, Italy, France, and Spain).
For more details see Facebook Deals Launches in Europe.
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Feb 02 2011
Today I came across the first commercial deployment of an mPayment solution. At least I am not aware of any others! The service is being supplied by Orange, and more details can be found in Orange customers of Everything Everywhere get mobile payments.
I think that this is a very exciting area, and it is certainly something in which I am becoming increasingly interested. I think that there are huge opportunities for the telcos in this area, since they effectively already maintain electronic purses (or wallets :) for all of their customers. Most importantly, this is an area in which it is very difficult for over-the-top players to compete (although Apple‘s App Store has shown that it is possible).
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