Archive for January, 2007

Off to HostelWorld

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 28/1/2007
in Technology
. 6 Comments

HostelWorld is one of the world’s larger travel companies and their annual conference is a big affair.

This year the Hostelworld conference is on in Dublin on Jan 29th and 30th.

They have asked me to give a talk on the opening morning to the conference delegates about Web 2.0 and its affects on their industry. I’ll also be participating in a workshop in the afternoon.

It promises to be an interesting event.

Now I better go and do up a presentation!!!

Why do I blog?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 28/1/2007
in Blogging and Personal
. 0 Comments

That is the question Darren Barefoot is trying to get answered in his short 16 question survey.

There are prizes for participating in the survey and even more prizes for mentioning the survey in your blog (ahem!).

I’m not 100% sure why I do it but I imagine there’s a 12 step program…

Via Eoin

Welcome Eoin

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 28/1/2007
in Blogging
. 0 Comments

Noted Trinity law lecturer and sometime radio pundit on all things legal, Eoin O’Dell has taken the wrappings off his blog finally!

Eoin has been blogging on a private blog for the last several months now but on Friday Eoin took the username and password off his blog and now everyone can read his thoughts on:

privacy, defamation and broadcasting; some cases on freedom of expression, privacy, restitution and copyright; and some random musings about life, the universe and everything

Well done Eoin, we need more people of your calibre joining in the conversations on the blogosphere.

[Disclosure - Eoin and I were in UCC together but afair I haven't met Eoin since the early 90's]

Site moved to new server

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 26/1/2007
in cix and hosting
. 5 Comments

I moved this site onto a new server last night (since my former hosting company told me they no longer wanted my business).

I have to say, it seems to be far faster as a result (not really surprising - there are far fewer sites on this server). Let me know if you come across any problems.

The server is in the new CIX data centre in Cork. CIX is not finished yet but when it is, it will be Ireland’s first fully redundant data centre outside of Dublin

[Disclosure - I am a director or CIX Ltd.]

Online mind mapping software

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 25/1/2007
in Web 2.0 and flash
. 6 Comments

Via Matt Wilson I came across Bubbl.us - a site for making mind maps, if you are into that kind of thing.

Reasonably easy to use but the interface is possibly a little too clever. I’d have liked a pen tool to allow me to draw links between bubbles and a little more flexibility with respect to what can be linked to what.

As you can see below, my mind is pretty empty!

Bubbl.us

HD DVD DRM cracker interviewed

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 25/1/2007
in Open Source and drm
. 7 Comments

There is a fascinating interview with muslix64 today on the Slyck.com site.

muslix64 is the guy who cracked HD DVD DRM when he released the open source application BackupHDDDVD just before Christmas. HD DVD is one of a pair of new formats of High Definition DVDs (the other format is called Blu-ray).

muslix64’s application will allow people to bypass the DRM on DVDs and access the HD DVD’s movie content directly.

As the proud possessor of several DVDs which were bought in the US and won’t play on my DVD player in Ireland because of the regionalisation built into DVDs, I’m delighted this has happened.

The sooner the movie studios realise that all the money they are pouring into DRM is wasted because 1) they are annoying their customers and 2) people will find a way around it anyway, the better.

As muslix64 said:

The reaction time of the community will be way faster than the reaction time of the industry.

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