September 30, 2007
Polish – Irish Community Launched
Krystian has just launched a new forum in English aimed at getting Irish and Polish people to interact.
Archive | September, 2007
September 30, 2007
Geek Tip – Find out more about an AS number
I was just chatting to Niall about RIPE assignments and members and he gave me a nice little command to check data.
You need to run this in a shell:
whois -i origin AS39122 -h whois.ripe.net
If the RIPE member in question has been keeping their data current you should get back information on all their IP assignments (or is that allocations? I always mix them up!)
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September 30, 2007
New OS Releases Coming Soon
Both Apple and Microsoft are working on releases of their operating systems.
Apple’s release is scheduled for the end of October, while Microsoft’s server 2008 has been delayed several times.
I hope to be playing with a release candidate of Server 2008 over the next couple of weeks. I’ll probably put it on a virtual machine of some kind… or maybe even on a spare server in the office …
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September 29, 2007
Podcamp In Kilkenny
Niall and I are in Kilkenny for the day at PodCampIreland.
We should have got here about 10 am, but we ran into car issues, so didn’t get here until after 11!
We should have got here about 10 am, but we ran into car issues, so didn’t get here until after 11!
There are several familiar faces in the room, but there’s also a lot of new ones!
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September 27, 2007
How To Vote in the Net Visionaries?
I’ve just been looking over the list of nominees for this year’s Net Visionary Awards and I’ve been trying to work out who I should vote for…
Best Blogger – It would have to be a toss up between Keith and Grandad. I know a couple of the others on the list, but I don’t read them regularly so I can’t really vote for them.
While it’s hard choosing between Keith and Grandad I’d probably err towards Grandad as he’s made me laugh so much over the last year. It’s also great to see someone of a slightly older generation not only starting their own blog but also getting other people blogging.
Best Online Banking Service – I’ve no idea. I don’t use any of the banks listed. I really don’t understand why they even have this category. If it was broader ie. “financial services” you could get a lot more interesting stuff in there, but how many banks are there?
Best Podcaster – Conn O Muineachain. He deserves it
Education Contribution – Bernie Goldbach. (congrats on the new arrival by the way!)
Paul Whelan from Biology.ie would be another choice
E-Government – No idea. Sorry!
Innovation – This is a really tough one, as I know quite a few of the nominees personally. David Curtin and his team successfully launched Enum in Ireland and that is true innovation. Newaddress.ie is a really cool service, so Kevin deserves credit (they were nominated previously, but I don’t think they won). Martin Langedijk’s work with Teamwork has made life a lot easier for a lot of businesses including my own! Alan’s someone I respect and who has been doing quite a few interesting things over the last year or so – keep an eye on him!
Internet Entrepreneur – Obviously I’d have to vote for myself – though I never actually win!. If you don’t want to you could do worse than looking at the likes of Derek Quinn, who was also involved with NewAddress and is probably plotting something new already … Pigsback is a cool idea, CentralR is useful and all the other ones listed are either already cool and useful or have lots of potential. There’s just so many of them to choose from! (Maybe you can just pick me and keep it simple! 
)
Internet Marketer – Dave Davis. I’ve no experience of the others. RaboDirect has been very successful with their online marketing, though they were nominated for this last year as well when someone else was involved (I think!) . Mark Tarbatt’s Generator is an interesting business and unlike some of his competitors he actually does provide quotes when you ask for them!
Mobile Internet Damien Farren from DotMobi
I’ve mentioned them several times on here and over on both my domain blog and the company one. They’re doing cool stuff with the mobile web!
Online Trader – Even though I / we are nominated the list is impressive and I really don’t think I should be there. Someone like Geoff Boyle from 123 is much more deserving
Social Contribution – This is always a tough category. Trying to narrow it down is not easy! A lot of the time the nominees are the unsung heroes. The guys and girls that have helped the rest of us in some way (and by “us” I mean people in general)
Damien Mulley has given generously of his time over the last few years in so many ways that it would be hard to know where to start.
Andy Osborn has been slaving away on taking BodyWhys to the next level and it seems to have been paying off.
Paul Clerkin’s work with Irish architecture site Archiseek is amazing. You don’t have to be into architecture to appreciate that it is a labour of love.
Politics.ie is a fantastic resource, so David Cochrane deserves to be on that list.
Technology Journalist – I’d go with Mulley on this one again, though Eamon McGrane makes that decision difficult.
Web Designer - Oh how I hate this category! Take your pick! Alan, Peter and Darren have all done work for me in either a personal capacity or for the company over the last year, so how I’m going to vote in that category…. God only knows!
Web Developer – I know several people on that list (quelle surprise!) but I am at a loss as to who I’d vote for. I know who I won’t vote for, but that doesn’t reduce the list enough!
If anyone has any suggestions on how best to vote please let me know!
NB: Anyone can vote. You DO NOT need to be a member of the IIA
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September 26, 2007
Net Visionary Nominee Logos Courtesy of EdenWeb
Peter from Edenweb has made available a set of nominee logos for the IIA Net Visionary Awards
Nice work Peter!
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September 25, 2007
Classic Video – Internet Helpdesk
September 25, 2007
WordPress Release Raises Privacy and Security Concerns
The latest release of WordPress was made public earlier today. Since I’ve stopped using WordPress I wasn’t aware of it until I caught up with my RSS feeds a short time ago.
Whether the new release brings enhancements or new features won’t really matter to anyone, as the new release brings with it a new “phone home feature”:
Our new update notification lets you know when there
is a new release of WordPress or when any of the plugins you use has an
update available. It works by sending your blog URL, plugins, and
version information to our newapi.wordpress.orgservice which then compares it to the plugin database and tells you what the latest and greatest is you can use.
How?
Well it seems that it sends a lot more data back to WordPress than is actually necessary and the lead developer, Matt Mullenweg, doesn’t seem to have a reasonable explanation for this.
There’s a couple of posts about the issues this raises and a very long discussion of it on the a mailing list (worth reading!)
The key point being raised time and again is that people aren’t given an option to opt-out of sending the data. It might also be seen as breaching EU privacy legislation according to one contributor.
UPDATE: You can disable the call home function via a 3rd party plugin. If you read the mailing list thread there’s one or two options mentioned.
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September 25, 2007
Mobile Monday Fun
I went along to Mobile Monday yesterday evening. I don’t know what I was expecting. I was more or less prepared to politely smile at boring presentations and demos. I probably wasn’t expecting to be as impressed as I was!
There were three companies presenting their products and services last night and they were all fascinating.
First up was Mobile Aware’s Rotan Hanrahan who showed some demos of what some of their clients are doing.
The second presentation reminded me of the Firefly phone, but was a hell of a lot cooler.
Sentry Wireless have come up with a firewall type solution that allows users to restrict who can phone or be phoned from a particular device. The advantage it has over Firefly is that you don’t need any proprietary hardware as the solution works at the SIM level. The first application of the technology is a product they call KidSafe.
Of course there’s no reason why the technology could not be employed in other realms…
The last of the three presentations was from Mobile Complete. It really blew me away!
I’ve mentioned Litmus / SiteVista in the past when talking about browser testing.
Imagine taking this kind of testing to the next level and beyond.
That’s what the guys in Mobile Complete have done.
Their system allows you to gain complete access to a huge array of mobile devices remotely using an ASP model.
During the demo last night one of my friends was actually able to send an SMS to the test phone in the docklands!
You can find out more about the testing suite of Device Anywhere on their site (and test it for 3 hours for free!)
After the demos we adjourned to the bar …
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September 25, 2007
Excel Can’t Do Math?
I’m not into spreadsheet software that much. I use Excel and the Open Office equivalent to do simple things that make my life that bit easier (like most people!)
It seems that Excel 2007 has issues with maths. While it can probably deal with most simple calculations without issue it is kind of worrying that it thinks that 850 multiplied by 77.1 is 10000!!
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