Inside View from Ireland

Clever Tech Levels

TPM -- "The neocons are right: this is the first time stateless actors with no territory to protect, no interest in protecting individuals, capable of using modern technology, let alone nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction ... You don't need weapons of mass destruction. So the combination of technology, sophistication, laptop computers in a cave in Tora Bora. They can orchestrate that. We've never faced that before."

Comment spam round 5

TYPEPAD -- About the time that I pulled links to comments off my front page (and shed a half dozen persistent comment spammers), Six Apart started doing clever things to eradicate both comment spam and trackback spam. Typepad now links comment URLs indirectly and that further deflates another reason why spammers use comments sections. Behind the scenes, Six Apart are doing some clever things that result in blocking thousands of spam attempts every day. Leveraged with the 434 IPs (and counting) that I have blocked from commenting here, I feel I'm ahead of the spammers by using Typepad.

Global PR Blog Week

THE NEW PR -- I play a minor role in a global PR blog week running online from 12-16 July 2004. It's much like a PR Webring, only more sophisticated.

Open Source and Irish Tech

NSD -- Michael Tiemann, RedHat VP, talks to an Irish audience in the Alexander Hotel at 3PM on Monday, 12 July 2004. Tiemann has interesting views and he presents his talk for free.

Rent the Brooklyn Bridge

GOTHAMIST -- The Irish Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism thinks Irish film crews should cop on to the need to reduce their rates because large studios have opted for other filming locations. Perhaps those Irish studios should take a lesson from New York City. The Hollywood Reporter gives some interesting facts in the story about "Location report: New York."

10 Patents to Kill

WIRED -- The Electronic Frontier Foundation has named the top 10 patents it wants killed, or at least redefined. The short list came from 200 suggestions and all 10 patents are in some way illegitimate and are being used to limit free expression.

Harley hearse

HARLEY-DAVIDSON FANS can finally take their final ride in style. In a Harley Hearse. Or wearing a Harley Hearse t-shirt. Tombstone Hearse began building hand-crafted Old West-style casket carriers that are pulled by a modified Harley-Davidson Road King.

"We take a regular bike and turn it into a motortrike with special gears to pull a heavier load," said company co-founder Dave Follmar. "We can accommodate most caskets, including oversized units."

Tombstone's hearse is designed with the traditional amenities but features a glass-enclosed carriage with curtains and tassels. Four gold lanterns adorn each corner and it's fitted with a black vinyl top. Tombstone's drivers are dressed in white tuxedo shirts, string ties, black pants and cavalry-style knee-high boots with a single spur.

"For any guy or gal who has sat their butt in a Harley seat all their lives, it doesn't seem fitting to lay them in the back of a Caddy for a farewell ride," Feather said.

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AP -- "Company Creates Harley-Davidson Hearse" that rent from $500 to $600. Traditional hearses range from $125 to $475.

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Awake at wheel

MINDJACK -- I have a Primera neighbour who likes the car because it has a camera that shows what you're about to run over when you're reversing. I think the camera should be up front, integrated with intelligence and trained on the driver so it could activate a wake-up alarm when it sensed "nod off." That's the purpose of EyeQ.

Google PR Calculator

OUTER-COURT -- You can use the PHP code below to develop a checksum. Once you have that, you can dynamically find out the PageRank for a page by reading the values returned by the following URL:

http://www.google.com/ search?client=navclient-auto&ch=[checksum here] &features=Rank&q=info:http://www.example.com

Room to Think

BRW -- Designer Mark Armstrong, who designed the Sydney 2000 Olympic torch, says that there are no new ideas: "It is all about cross-linking and connections." One of the key triggers for the Olympic torch Armstrong designed was a curved Aboriginal hunting boomerang artifact he noticed in a gallery one day when he went for a walk to think. He's a strong believer in getting out and about, and says that most workplaces are designed to give you "no thinking space at all." But what should you be thinking about when you have the space you need?