Archive for September, 2005

Palm’s steady path into decline

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 28/9/2005
in Technology
. 0 Comments

PocketPCThoughts has an excellent article tracing the steady decline of Palm’s OS over the last five years. Most of the diminution seems to be attributed to PalmSource’s failure to produce the long-promised version 6 of the Palm OS.

This failure coupled with OS 5’s inadequacies led inevitably to palm looking elsewhere for an OS supplier - hence the new Windows based Palm Treo 700w and the death of the Palm OS. Shame.

Via Scoble

RSS event in IT@Cork

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 28/9/2005
in Blogging, Business blogging, IT@Cork and Technology
. 6 Comments

I am organising an IT@Cork event around business uses of RSS to be held in the NSC on October 25th at 6pm.

The provisional title for the event is:
RSS for non techies:
Advancing brand and market awareness using simple internet technologies.

More details as they become available.

Stormhoek guilt

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 27/9/2005
in Blogging, Business blogging and Technology
. 1 Comment

I’m feeling guilty.

Hugh sent me a bottle of Stormhoek wine (with no obligation) and I haven’t done anything about it.

The bottle is in the fridge, unopened.

Why? It is white wine and both Pilar and I prefer red. So it sits there in the fridge, with its personalised label (nice touch), unmolested.

It should probably have been made clearer to the recipients that they would be receiving white wine - this way they could say “Actually, thanks Hugh but…” if they don’t like white. Alternatively if both red and white were sent out (indiscriminately), it might have been an idea to allow people to choose when signing up.

What are we to do with this wine? We can hardly serve it up to guests (”here have some freebie wine we wouldn’t drink…”!).

Now it occurs to me that Robert has expressed an interest in trying this wine and he’s coming to our place for dinner in November, so how about it Robert - would you like to help us out and try hugh’s wine in our place?

Rip-off broadband

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 27/9/2005
in Broadband and Technology
. 13 Comments

Jeez are we being screwed for pricing of broadband in this country, or what?

I’m currently looking around at the best offerings for dsl broadband and the offers are around 40 euro for 2mb broadband - while in the UK, BE are offering 24mb broadband for £24 per month! £24 is roughly equal to 36 euro.

So, in our nearest neighbouring country, consumers can get broadband at 12 times the speed we get here for less than we are charged here? How is that possible?

Plus they get an upload speed of 1.3mb - roughly 10 times what most Irish providers are offering.

Well, at least the Irish ISPs will respect me in the morning!

The even lighter side of blogging

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 27/9/2005
in Technology
. 3 Comments

I posted a cartoon yesterday by Alex Gregory which appeared in the New Yorker on Sept 12th and is now doing the rounds of the blogosphere (see below)

blog cartoon © Alex Gregory-cartoonbank.com

FrankP (the illustrator of the funny cartoons on bifsniff.com) decided that the cartoon would work better with a little re-wording (see below for Frank’s re-worded version)
edited blog cartoon © Alex Gregory-cartoonbank.com and Frank Prendergast

Personally, I think the wording on Frank’s is clearer - the original cartoon is ambiguous and it is possible this ambiguity which has led to its wide appeal (everyone takes their own interpretation and finds that funny!).

I prefer Frank’s version - what do you think?

Oh and as Frank said:

I have no idea of the legality of reproducing and editing the said cartoon, so if the owner/creator contacts me I’ll take em off straight away!

Broadband in Rushbrook

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 26/9/2005
in Broadband and Technology
. 10 Comments

I am moving into a new house in a couple of weeks in Rushbrook, Co. Cork and I need to get a broadband connection there (with a static ip preferably) and at least 2mb down.

I haven’t been following the state of Irish broadband providers for a while now since I got my own connection a couple of years back from UTV.

The house has an Eircom landline.

Anyone got any recommendations on a good (i.e. reliable) provider who won’t fleece me on cost?

UPDATE:
I checked the Smart Telecom website and my new house doesn’t qualify for their offer, so it looks like the eircom broadband business starter offer is the one I will be going for - it is 2mb down /128kb up, 35 euro per month (ex vat) and 8.26 euro setup. It seems to be the cheapest of the 2mb options I could find.

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