Inside View

Flash Personalcasting

CLONMEL HOTSPOT -- One of the goals in the Writing Skills course is to observe first-hand and then to quickly share those observations through personalcasting. We have adopted "St Patrick's Day in Ireland" as one theme. Some short extracts appeared earlier as text comments. Effective personalcasting also involves recorded sound, accomplished today by integrating an MP3 to a SWF. Production time constrains us to individual five minute sections where we write bullet lists, record snippets, export them through software, and upload them to the Internet. Five minutes time is less than many people use to find the loo and return to their pub seat after the parade on Patrick's Day, so it's an effective benchmark. This is our first attempt at time-limited personalcasting, so the results reflect our baby steps, appearing at lunchtime.

Kilkenny People late February

KILKENNY -- The lead story in The Kilkenny People for the end of February announces "Martin Comerford named as Kilkenny captain." Another article explains "hundreds of new homes for the city." A total of 240 homes will be built at Smithlands South. Two items appear below the fold.

Paging back

KILKENNY HOTSPOT -- Looking back in time through my inbox on this date, I can see some things worth revisiting.

Gender computing

D2R -- Diego Doval concludes "talent for computer science seems to me to be constant regardless of gender." Diego has encountered as many high-quality women programmers than men programmers--although there are more sweaty men programming. He also sees something we are producing through the degree programme at Tipperary Institute. "In recent years ... as software (and hardware) have become more oriented towards art, social and real-world interactions, I've seen more women on that side of the fence." The best students in our multimedia degree programme have been women. The best student projects I have supervised have been completed or led by women.

---

Diego Doval -- "gender and computer science" with comments.
Chris Gulker doesn't like the photo above this posting. It's from Scripting News where Dave Winer explains it's perfectly acceptable photojournalism.
x_ref125ws

VOIP of the people

WSJ -- We do not need to constrain VOIP like our copper wire telephone system. As John Sununu says, "Our goal should be to allow this new technology to evolve, which will dramatically reduce the cost of voice communication to a level commensurate with that of any other bit of data transmitted over the Internet." In Ireland, we should fence VOIP against misguided constraints, thus providing some certainty to the marketplace.

---

John Sununu -- "VOIP of the People"
x_ref101jm

Open Source Travel Guide

WORLD66 -- Write about travels on this Open Source Guide at World 66. Create your own visited states map. Mark your opinion about places in Ireland for others to experience. In my actual use, this Wiki works quickly. It might be worth part of a student project, if only to experience a Wiki in action.

---

World 66 -- visited States
x_ref125ws x_ref119

Irish Schools Broadband Initiative

KILKENNY -- Noel Dempsey, the Minister for Education and Science, maneuvered around several road works on the streets of Kilkenny on last night on his way to a two-hour community meeting. Minister Dempsey brought a few ideas to the Kilkenny meeting that revealed the government had €18 million in mind to use for filling in the road works with something more than crushed gravel.

Like several other cities around the country, parts of Kilkenny’s streets are sliced open for the laying of a community broadband ring. These fibre optic cable systems serve up high-speed Internet access to those connected to the newly laid cables. Minister Dempsey announced how the broadband rings would help to connect every primary and secondary school to broadband Internet services.

Checklist for Crisis Communication

CLONMEL HOTSPOT -- The recent accident involving a Dublin Bus that jumped the curb and injured passengers provides a timely example of the need to exercise a well-tested checklist for crisis communication.

Expect virus attacks on phones

NOKIA -- One of the big dangers of always-on computing is the exposure to rogue probes and virus attacks. You face the same issues with an always-on phone in yur purse or pocket. I think it's simply a matter of time before someone targets Nokia phones. There are many more Nokia phones than any other brand in Ireland. They comprise an enticing traget of opportunity.

The simplest form of attack is "bluejacking" a phone that has an open Bluetooth connection. You could use the open phone to make your own telephone coonnections. We've done that already in Clonmel by dialing out to the Internet on another phone to check my blog. The Nokia Communicator 9500 offers a more lucrative target. Get access to the Word documents on a Government Minister's 9500 and you could read the inside tension at the Cabinet table. This is really the only way to get under the curtain that cloaks current Irish government decsion-making. The used Communicator that I bought from Rory McLoughney in Thurles had buckets of faxes, fragments of spreadsheets and snippets of e-mails from dozens of clients requiring interior design work. I wouldn't be surprised if a future "reclaimed" Communicator contained virus-infected documents,

---

Nokia -- Communicator 9500 info, including Nokia 9500 Communicator SDK 1.0 Beta for Symbian OS 7.0s, Nokia Communicator MIDP SDK 1.0 Beta for Symbian OS 7.0s, and Personal Profile Plug-in 1.0 Beta for Nokia Communicator SDK, white papers and documents explaining how to migrate existing Nokia 9200 Communicator applications.
x_ref1334

Irish hospitality

UNDERWAY -- Where else but in Ireland could a shivering student board an inter-city bus and be given free bus travel because she lost her money? At the pub the nght before. In many ways, Bus Eireann serves the small towns of Ireland by keeping its small-town perspective. It's heart-warming, really.

---

Sent mail2blog using Nokia Communicator O2 Typepad service.
x_ref17