I am going to continue my series on Irish companies (and organisations) that are involved in standards organisations, and today I am going to focus on the GSM Association. This is appropriate timing for doing this, because the GSMA Mobile World Congress is happening soon in Barcelona. I have never attended this, but I would like to ;)
The GSM Association has several types of membership, and these are described in Types of Membership. I am going to focus on the Associate Membership type, and the members with this type of membership are listed in Associate Members.
The Irish companies that are currently members are:
The non-Irish companies that have technical operations in Ireland that are currently members are:
As always, it is sometimes difficult to tell what sort of a presence some of these companies have in Ireland.
There are also a number of Irish companies that are working in the same area as the GSM Association, but these companies are not listed as members. Enterprise Ireland supports these companies, and it rents a large stand at the GSMA Mobile World Congress which these companies can use. More details about this can be read on the 3GSM Ireland web site. The Irish companies that Enterprise Ireland is, or was, supporting that are not listed as members are:
I am really surprised, and impressed, with the number of companies in these lists!
Tags: Accuris Networks, AdaptiveMobile, Alatto, Alcatel-Lucent, Altobridge, Ammeon, Anam, Arantech, Asavie, AskMoby, BT, Cellusys, ChangingWorlds, Cibenix, Cicero Networks, Cinnara, Cisco, Critical Path, Enterprise Ireland, Ericsson, ezetop, Flextronics, GSM Association, Idiro, Intel, Intervoice, Ireland, Jinny, Lycatel, Macalla, Martin Dawes Systems, Microsoft, Mobile World Congress, Motorola, NewBay, Nortel, Nubiq, Openmind Networks, Option, Prime Carrier, RadioFrame Networks, RedKnee, Rococo, S3, Sentry Wireless, Siemens, Spain, Tango Telecom, Valista, Vimio, WeDo Technologies, WestGlobal, Xiam, YQ
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This week Google launched a new version of Google Maps for Mobile that enables users to share their location information with their friends. So basically it realises a FriendFinder LBS! This is something that I worked on before, but neither the technology nor the market were ready at that time :(
The new software is known as Latitude, and there are both desktop and mobile versions. The privacy features seem fairly basic, so I am sure that it is only a matter of time until there is some controversial security breach!
I will try and install and review Latitude here soon! In the mean time, you can read more details about it in Google will tell your mates where you are, and you can download it from Introducing Google Latitude.
However, Latitude has been dismissed by Irish company Locle for not being social enough! Locle has an application that enables users to locate their friends. However, its application is intended to be significantly more social because it will integrate seamlessly with both Facebook and Twitter. For more details about this see Competitor to Google Latitude pitches to Facebook and Twitter.
Tags: Facebook, Google, Locle, Twitter
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Many years ago I did some functional programming in Haskell. I was using it mainly to solve cryptographic problems, and it was very suitable for this. I really enjoyed it, and I think that I was good at it (even if I am praising myself)! However, I never spent any more time with functional programming.
I have an ex-colleague (and friend) who is still very interested in functional programming. I think that someday this ex-colleague will manage to find a reason to start using it in work :o This ex-colleague recently brought an article about functional programming to my attention. The article is It’s Time to Get Good at Functional Programming, and it provides a very brief, but good, introduction to functional programming. It also describes several functional programming languages that make good starting points to learn more.
The main thrust of this article is that functional programming will become increasingly important as chip manufacturers increase performance by adding more cores to processor chips rather than increasing their speeds.
Actually, after reading that article I feel that I would enjoy reviving my functional programming skills :)
Update
I came across Why Haskell will take over the world by a UCD lecturer.
Tags: Haskell, UCD
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The Irish economy is in a very bad condition at the moment, and significant numbers of job losses are being announced every day. Indeed, January was the worst month for job losses in the last 40 years according to Jobless rate could hit 400,000 – Cowen. In a frighteningly short time Ireland has gone from having one of the best economies in the EU to having one of the worst economies in the EU.
Initially the job losses were mainly in the property sector, and the associated sectors. This was mainly due to the Government inflated property bubble bursting. Job losses then quickly spread to associated sectors such as banking, construction supply, and household goods.
Next some of the companies involved in the information communication technology sector started announcing job losses. One of the main reasons behind these job losses was the loss of competitiveness due to the high cost of doing business in Ireland. The failure to adopt the Lisbon Treaty has also been quietly mentioned by some multinationals as a reason for losing confidence in the Irish economy. For example, Dell is moving 1,900 jobs to Poland (see 1,900 jobs lost at Dell in Limerick), and IBM is moving 120 jobs to Singapore (see IBM seeking 120 voluntary redundancies). Although these job losses are unfortunate, they are not surprising given that they appear to be very labour intensive.
Today Ericsson announced 300 job losses in Ireland. The truly shocking thing about this is that these jobs are all very skilled Research and Development jobs. Furthermore, Ericsson is moving these jobs to a country with a lower cost of business. For more details about this see 300 jobs to go at Ericsson.
This raises some very important questions. Why did this happen? How does this reflect on the Irish knowledge economy? How secure is the Irish knowledge economy?
Contrary to all of this bad news, I also read today that Irish companies raised more venture capital in 2008 than they did in any other year since 2002. The total amount raised was over 240€ million by 93 companies, and the most successful sectors were:
- Drug delivery and medical device sector (16 companies raised 46€ million)
- Telecoms sector (9 companies raised 38€ million)
- Pharmaceutical and biotech sector (23 companies raised 42€ million)
For more details about this see Private funding for tech firms on the rise in 2008, survey shows.
Tags: Dell, Ericsson, IBM, Ireland, Poland
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I have a regular land line to my house, and I buy both my voice and my broadband data services from Eircom. In general, I am happy with the price and service levels.
I subscribe to one of Eircom’s bundles that gives me free unlimited national and local calls, and this provides me with significant savings compared to paying for my calls on a per minute basis.
I rarely need to pay for any additional calls for two reasons:
- I use my mobile phone to call other mobile phones (I rarely need to call mobile phones in other operators’ networks)
- I use Skype for all my international calls
However, the single greatest category of phone number that I regularly need to call that results in an increase to my phone bill is 1890 numbers. These numbers are intended to be non-geographical low cost numbers. Unfortunately, Eircom charges me for calling these numbers because they are not deemed to be national numbers. It is both annoying and petty!
In order to avoid these charges I started using the national numbers for organisation that have 1890 numbers. Most organisations list these somewhere on their web pages, often as the International Number. I think that a company must have a national number in order to obtain a 1890 number.
I recently came across a very useful web site, SayNoTo1890, that provides the national numbers for all known 1890 numbers. These numbers are well categorised, and they are updated regularly.
This is a great recession beating tip in my opinion ;)
Tags: Eircom, SayNoTo1890, Skype
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Like many people, I have a very large collection of MP3s on my computer. I diligently ripped most of them from the original CDs, and I ensured that the ID3 tags were set correctly. My ripping software automatically gets this information from a database on the Internet, and I am really only interested in the artist name, album name, song title, track number, genre, and cover art.
I share my MP3s with my family, so the MP3s get played on several different computers using different MP3 players, and they also get played on several different types of mobile devices. Everything works really sweetly because all of these MP3 players can read the ID3 tags.
When I bought my HTC P3600 PDA, which runs Windows Mobile 5.0, I also bought a large miniSD card to hold a selection of my MP3s. I was really annoyed the first time that I played an MP3 on it, because the default MP3 player does not use the cover art contained in the ID3 tags! This is another sad instance of Microsoft ignoring a well established standard!
After doing some searching on the Internet I found a simple hack that works if all of the MP3s that share a cover art are in the same directory.
- Extract the cover art image from the MP3. This is easy to do using the MP3 player on my computer.
- Save the image as
Folder.jpg in the directory containing the MP3s that share this cover art. The image will usually be approximately 300px by 300px.
Unfortunately, this does require some effort every time that I want to add new MP3s to my PDA :(
I have since discovered that the MP3 player in Windows Mobile 6.0 does not use the cover art in the ID3 tags, but the same workaround described here enables it to display the cover art!
Tags: HTC, Microsoft, PDA, Windows Mobile 5.0, Windows Mobile 6.0
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I just read about a company called OpenTable that has started its IPO. OpenTable is an Internet based company that enables customers to make restaurant reservations. The company is based in San Francisco, so it is mainly aimed at US cities. However, some EU countries are included.
What I find interesting about this IPO is the timing. A year or two ago it would have been perfect, but in the current economic climate I am less sure! I think that its strength must be in its market opertunity, because I am not aware of any technology that gives it a competitive advantage.
The full details about OpenTable’s IPO can be read in OpenTable files for first venture-backed IPO of 2009.
Tags: IPO, OpenTable
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I have a few female family members and friends who have all recently bought cosmetics from Lily Lolo. They were all very happy with the web site, the value, and the goods! The positive comments regarding the web site are especially significant since some of these females are not very technology savvy!
So I thought that I would give Lily Lolo a positive review on their behalves :D
Tags: Lily Lolo
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I remember reading a while ago that some of the record companies were taking legal action against Eircom, because Eircom would not police and prevent illegal P2P music sharing within its network. I think that Eircom would have been mad to do this!
Like many other people, I think that the record labels are still living in the past by spectacularly ignoring the realities of current technology!
So I was very interested in reading this week that this action has been settled out of court. The agreement seems to centre on the record labels detecting illegal downloading themselves without any special access to Eircom’s network. They can then pass the relevant IP addresses to Eircom, and Eircom will serve the offending user with a warning. If the record companies detect that the user persists in sharing illegal music files then Eircom will disconnect the user.
I think that this is a big win for Eircom, and a big loss for the record companies, for the following reasons:
- Eircom does not need to modify or police its network.
- The record companies must do the policing themselves. I am sure they would have loved to pass that burden to Eircom!
- The record companies will not get any special access to the network. So, they will have as much detection abilities as I do!
- Consequently, it will be relatively easy for users to avoid detection.
- The record companies will not get access to any personal details of users who are performing illegal downloading.
The full details about this are in Big four music labels and Eircom in landmark piracy settlement.
Tags: Eircom, ISP, P2P
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I just read TechCraver Review: BlackBerry Storm. Wow! The Blackberry Storm just seems to be getting more and more bad reviews! Actually, I do not think that I have seen or heard of a single review that was predominantly positive!
Blackberry Storm
The most common complaint seems to be that the touch-screen interface is far too slow, and that the text appearing on the screen while writing a message significantly lags behind the finger movements!
Perhaps this is best summarised by Stephen Fry in Gee, One Bold Storm coming up…
Watching someone writing an email on a Storm is like watching an antelope trying to open a packet of cigarettes.
The main idea of this PDA was to introduce touch-screen technology to Blackberry users who were looking longingly at the iPhone! I bet many of them will still buy this device, and then they will try not to be disapointed :o
Tags: Blackberry Storm, PDA
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