Archive for August, 2007

Embedding Google Calendars

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 31/8/2007
in IT@Cork
. 6 Comments

Spectacular!

I’ve just noticed that it is possible to embed Google Calendars in a blog post or website!

This is going to be very useful for events like the it@cork conference, or multi-week events like the blog training course I delivered a few months back.

I’m sure there are lots of other applications. What would you use it for?

Buffalo TeraStation 2tb Home server review

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 31/8/2007
in hardware and review
. 7 Comments

I bought a Buffalo TeraStation 2TB NAS box the other day. It arrived today - Wohoo!

Buffalo TeraStation 2TB NAS up and running

The NAS box has 4 x 500mb drives in an external box (see above). The box has an ethernet port at the back allowing it to be plugged into the router and accessed across my entire home network.

The 4 x 500mb drives come pre-configured as RAID 5 (giving approx 3 x 500gb usable space) but it can also be configured as RAID 0 or RAID 1 through a simple web interface.

1.36 TB Available!

Check out the bottom of the window above - 1.36TB Available!

I’m now busily copying my music, video and photo collections onto it so I can free up that space on my laptop.

Copying iTunes onto TeraStation

The drive is refreshingly quiet, has a simple web-based configuration tool and took all of about 10 minutes from unpacking to mounted on my Mac desktop!

Thanks Branedy for the recommendation - hopefully this will work better than the Western Digital MyBook I bought a while back which was a DOA!

Senior telecoms architect for hire

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 30/8/2007
in Personal
. 2 Comments

I don’t normally do this kind of thing but I am making an exception in this case.

My brother-in-law has recently started looking for a new job. He’s an extremely high-powered telecoms guy, currently based in the US.

From his cv, his career highlights include:

  • Management of telecom technology development, deployment and operations teams with up to 50+ staff and cost centers with yearly budgets of up to $40M
  • Successfully managed development & deployment of 30+ products & technologies
  • Worked in both vendor & operator environments, with both startup & growth organizations
  • Combined SS7 signaling networks of three ATT divisions, saving 10’s of millions of dollars

his professional experience includes roles such as:

  • Director of Architecture, Design and Planning - Managed Services Division
  • Senior Director and Chief Architect of Multi Media Division and
  • Sr. Dir. of Network Technology Development and Architecture

and accomplishments include:

  • Direct the design, planning and life cycle management aspects of the hosted and managed services from multiple Geo diverse Data Centers
  • Managed two directors and a team of senior architects. Led the overall technology architecture & QE activities for the wireless data, messaging & enhanced voice services for the consumer & enterprise segments and
  • Directed several Sr. managers and was instrumental in the formation of the Multimedia division. Led software development, testing and deployment of the J2EE based mMode / wireless portal and related data, messaging and location based applications

So, if you know anyone who could benefit from talking to my brother-in-law, drop me a mail at tom@tomrafteryit.net and I can arrange an intro.

Cork-based telecoms firm raises €5m

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 30/8/2007
in Telecoms, Web 2.0 and startups
. 0 Comments

Pat Phelan’s Cubic Telecom have released details of €5m worth of investment they have received. Cubic Telecom is the parent company of the Roam4free and Yak4ever brands.

From the release Cubic has raised a

EUR3.5M investment from private backers in order to develop a suite of innovative global mobile and home phone products under the Cubic Telecom brand, together with its own international virtual carrier network. A further EUR1.5M has been raised to fund a series of international launches of products and services in the coming six months.

As I mentioned a few weeks back, Cubic Telecom are also the only Irish company to make it to the final 100 of the uber prestigious TechCrunch 20.

Starting school today!

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 29/8/2007
in Personal
. 8 Comments

My older boy Tomás is starting school today. He has been looking forward to it all summer.

First day in school

I’m proud and happy and sad all at the same time.

My little boy is growing up.

mobiseer (mobile social bookmarking) needs more work

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 28/8/2007
in social media
. 4 Comments

Nubiq have just launched the beta version of their second product - Mobiseer. Mobiseer is a social bookmarking tool for your phone.

I wrote about their earlier product, Zinadoo - a website creation tool for mobile websites, last May.

Mobiseer is available via the web and also on your phone’s browser at mobiseer.mobi.

I must say the idea of having your bookmarks available and synchronised across both my computer and phone browser is quite appealing so I decided to try mobiseer out.

I created an account using my computer. Created a bookmark and then attempted to log in via my phone’s browser. Unfortunately, this is when things started to fall apart!

When I attempted to browse to the .mobi site, I kept being re-directed to the .com site. The .com site has a handy note telling me about the .mobi site which, annoyingly, wasn’t a link - mind you if it was it would probably have re-directed me back to the .com once more!
mobiseer on Nokia E65

Ignoring that for a minute, I attempted to login but unfortunately no matter how many times I tried, the application wouldn’t let me login from my phone. I entered the correct account details but no matter how many times I clicked the “Log me in” button, nothing happened.
logging into mobiseer on Nokia E65

Conor seemed to have a more positive experience with mobiseer on his N70 and he wrote a much more detailed review over on Blognation.

When they do get these wrinkles ironed out, mobiseer will need a Firefox plugin for adding bookmarks to make it as easy as possible for people to add bookmarks.

Tom Raftery’s Social Media is Digg proof thanks to caching by WP Super Cache!