Monthly Archive for June, 2006

Any questions for DL Byron?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 13/6/2006
in Interviews and Podcasting
. 0 Comments

D.L. Byron is an inventor, author, the Principal of Textura Design, now he is evangelizing Standards-based design.

An entrepreneur and an inventor, he also consults with clients, co-founded the Blog Business Summit, and publishes a network of successful blogs, including Boeing’s (one of the first business blogs).

I’m interviewing D.L. over Skype this week (day and time tbd) for a PodLeaders podcast. If you have questions you’d like me to put to him, feel free to leave them in the comments and I’ll ask him.

Wireless broadband providers in Cork

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 13/6/2006
in Technology
. 174 Comments

I’m looking for recommendations for wireless broadband providers in the Cork area.

I have a dsl connection currently (3mb down, 384kb up with a static ip), but I want to get rid of the landline (and the landline rental) so if anyone can recommend good providers, I’d be verry grateful.

Google to launch PayPal killer?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 12/6/2006
in Search Engines
. 7 Comments

Forbes is reporting that Google is planning to launch Gbuy - an online payment system which would be a direct competitor to PayPal.

If recent Google launches are anything to go by, PayPal doesn’t need to worry too much just yet. Google has proven very effective at getting the hype out there for any new product it launches but very few of its recent launches have lived up to the hype (Google Pages anyone?).

Of course, the story which broke over the weekend about Ebay (the owners of PayPal) launching eBay AdContext, will allow Web sites to embed simple snippets of code that can then automatically act to showcase items for sale on eBay’s site in exchange for a cut of the resulting eBay sales means that increasingly Ebay and Google are becoming direct competitors.

Loren Baker, of Search Engine Journal, commented:

If an AdWords ad includes an icon depicting a GBuy merchant and this improves the ‘click-thru-rate’ then those advertisers should enjoy ranking above other competition in the Google search advertising

Interesting times ahead!

Sleep deprivation sucks!

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 12/6/2006
in Personal
. 4 Comments

I had forgotten how debilitating sleep deprivation can be but boy am I feeling the effects of it today!

Our newborn, Enrique, was sleeping very well the first couple of weeks, waking only once a night to be fed. But the last couple of nights he has been waking three times a night to be fed - ouch!

My head hurts, I feel groggy and I haven’t even had the couple of drinks which would normally be the pre-cursor to those symptoms.

Hopefully it is only a growth spurt and he’ll settle back down to a more humane regime again soon. Otherwise expect the posts here to become even more garbled than usual!

Congratulations Robert

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 11/6/2006
in Blogging and Podcasting
. 2 Comments

Robert Scoble, Microsoft’s most prominent blogger is leaving Microsoft to join John Furrier’s PodTech.net.

Robert himself has said that

I love Microsoft and Microsoft did not lose me — at least as a supporter and friend. I am not throwing away my Tablet PC or my Xbox or my other Microsoft stuff

So his departure appears not to have been acrimonious.

That he has decided to join PodTech.net should come as no big surprise. John Furrier, CEO of PodTech.net, has been growing the network at a phenomenal rate (including landing $5m of investor funding a couple of months back).

For Robert this will be a natural extension of the work he was doing already on Channel9 - video blogging. The difference this time is that instead of just video blogging what Microsoft’s teams are developing, he will now be video blogging whenever he comes across something interesting in Silicon Valley.

This is a huge loss for Microsoft but hopefully they have learned a lot from having Robert on board and they will continue to change for the better (they have a long way to go yet before they win back many people’s trust).

So congratulations Robert to you and Maryam. This is a big move for you both, and I wish you nothing but the best. You deserve no less.

Edited to correct the spelling of Silicon - thanks Eoghan for pointing that out

IT@Cork Web 2.0 conference

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 10/6/2006
in IT@Cork and Web 2.0
. 7 Comments

The IT@Cork Web 2.0 half-day conference took place last Thursday (June 8th) and the reviews have been overwhelmingly positive! Close to 130 attendees turned up despite it being the hottest day of the year so far.


Photo credit Donncha O’Caoimh

The structure of the conference was:

  • Shel Israel explained what Web 2.0 is
  • Salim Ismail detailed how Web 2.0 technologies can be used within the enterprise
  • Fergus Burns recounted his experiences setting up a Web 2.0 company in Ireland
  • while Walter Higgins and Rob Burke both demonstrated how to write Web 2.0 applications using freely available development tools.

The high level of audience participation showed that the crowd was very interested in all that was being said.

The biggest eye opener of the day for me was Rob Burke (of Microsoft)’s presentation. Microsoft were the main sponsor of the event and despite that, Rob (the poster boy for nice guys!) didn’t try a hard sell of Microsoft products. Instead he demoed Atlas, Microsoft’s free framework for developing standards based Web applications. Rob coded live and browsed the resultant website with Firefox! If Microsoft keep giving demoes like that, they are in serious danger of shirking their Evil Empire moniker!

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