Monthly Archive for November, 2007

Flash competition

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 19/11/2007
in mobile
. 0 Comments

Fellow BlogTalk 2008 organiser Thomas Burg is running a pre-launch games contest over on his new Playoo site.

The competition is to create flash lite games for mobile phones and there is a top prize of $10,000 and a total prize fund of $25,000!

Mobile phone gaming is going to be a huge area and Flash Lite would seem to be an ideal delivery mechanism.

Adobe have a page on their site listing the mobile handsets which support Flash Lite.

Good luck to all the participants

Another device?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 19/11/2007
in Technology
. 6 Comments

Amazon are set to release an electronic book reader called the Kindle today according to NewsWeek.

The device sounds cool, in theory (built-in wireless over EVDO, email, long-life batteries, search, lots of storage, etc.) but do we really want another device to be carrying around?

Especially at the price point being talked about ($399).

I’m already carrying my phone, laptop, iPod and sometimes my dSLR camera. I say sometimes because at this point I often make a choice - which one can I manage without.

I can’t imagine forking out for a Kindle. Especially not when I can get much of the promise of the Kindle on my iPod (and more besides).

Having said all that, I think Tim O’Reilly makes a great point when he says:

I’m rooting for Jeff and the Kindle. I’m not sure that he’s going to win his bet that people will use a single-purpose device rather than reading on a multi-function device like the iPhone and its successors. But I’m also not sure he needs to. Even if some other device becomes the reader of choice, Amazon will still become one of the leading sources of the books that feed it. All Amazon needs to do here is move the industry forward, and I think that’s already been accomplished.

CIX open day

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 19/11/2007
in cix, cork and data centre
. 1 Comment

Cork Internet eXchange (aka CIX) are having an Open Day on the morning of November 29th at 10am.

This will be your final opportunity to have a gander around the innards of a data centre in the making. After the 29th, ducts will be closed and off-limits areas will be off-limits!

If you are interested in having a look, drop me a mail so we have an idea of numbers (tom@tomrafteryit.net).

See you there.

[Disclosure - I am a director of CIX]

UPDATE - edited to correct my email address - thanks James

Test post from my iPod

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 18/11/2007
in Blogging
. 9 Comments

This is a quick test post.

I am writing this post using the Safari browser on my iPod.

Seems like it is going to work! Mad.

Apple releases 10.5.1 update to Leopard

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 16/11/2007
in Mac, apple and os x
. 3 Comments

Apple released an update to OS X 10.5 (Leopard) today. The standalone update is 110mb but when I downloaded it this morning through Software Update it was a 38mb download for my machine.

According to the Apple info page on the update, it:

includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility and security of your Mac

The page goes on to include details of fixes for Airport, Mail, iCal, System and Finder as well as other fixes.

Personally, I love Leopard. I know some people have had issues with it but I have had the opposite experience. The upgrade to Leopard has actually fixed two previous problems I was having with 10.4 and my laptop is now running faster too. Hopefully 10.5.1 will resolve most of the early issues people have had with Leopard.

Are you an Irish startup seeking funding?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 16/11/2007
in startups
. 1 Comment

When I was in Berlin last week I met with Yoav Leitersdorf of YL Ventures. Yoav is looking to invest in interesting Irish startups. In his own words:

YL Ventures (www.YLVentures.com) is a venture capital fund that is focused on ‘exiting’ to strategic acquirers at good bite-size valuaitons of $20m-$50m rather than the typical $500m+ for most VCs. YL Ventures delivers excellent, concept-proven European & Israeli technology companies that it has invested in and helped grow & validate from the Internet, telecom (mostly mobile) and digital media sectors (and occasionally network security and enterprise software).

Recent press is available at http://www.ylventures.com/news.html, note especially the write-ups in Czech Business Weekly and blognation Italy.

If you are an Irish startup and are interested in getting in touch with Yoav, let me know in the comments or directly on tom@tomrafteryit.net and I’ll do an intro.

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