Tag: technology

Listen and Learn

Last night I went along to a meeting of bloggers and politicians arranged by Green TD Ciaran Cuffe. A tour of the Green party offices was followed by a round table discussion involving between about twenty bloggers, Cuffe, John Gormley and Deirdre de Burca. Eventually, we got to the point: How can politicians best use… Continue reading Listen and Learn

Sunset

First the recession, then killer pig flu, and now it looks as if my favourite software is doomed. OpenOffice exists as a project of Sun Microsystems, and Sun just got taken over by Oracle Corp. Sun has two jewels that Oracle wanted: Java, a programming language designed to run no matter what your operating system,… Continue reading Sunset

Inconceivable

The Friday Irish Times front page, which went to press an hour or so ago, has a picture of environment minister John Gormley chatting with some national school children. Gormley’s other official duty today was to announce the scrapping of misguided government plans to introduce evoting. Back in March, Gormley conceded it was ‘inconceivable‘ that… Continue reading Inconceivable

Media Bites

News has never been more immediate, with twentyfour hour rolling news channels, talk radio, websites, instant feedback through email, blogging, even twitter. And yet, for many in the industry, things have never been as grim. It’s not just that media groups face the same problems as everyone else, be it debt leverage, shellshocked pension funds,… Continue reading Media Bites

Computer Virus, World Fever

A devastating computer virus is set to wreak havoc on computers today, as the ‘Conficker’ virus takes effect on thousands of machines in Ireland and worldwide. PC makers are warning users worldwide not to switch on their machines for 24 hours, as the rogue ‘time bomb’ program is designed to cause computers and monitors to… Continue reading Computer Virus, World Fever

Rain Cloud

Cloud computing took a hit today. Gmail, the free (to most) online email service from Google, suffered a two hour outage today, just after 930am GMT. Some used were also locked out of Google Apps, which required a Gmail password to access. As of the time of writing, Google still has not said what caused… Continue reading Rain Cloud

Any Colour You Want…

I’m in the market for a new computer. Maybe. It depends on whether my laptop can be repaired economically. I’ve spent the last few days shopping around, and it’s been an education. My requirements are relatively modest, a midrange laptop, big enough to handle my everyday workload, small enough to lug around on the road.… Continue reading Any Colour You Want…

Santa Claus

I bought a new toy today, although I’ll only get to play with it for a couple of days. My parents, both approaching seventy, decided they want to check out the internet, so for Christmas I bought them an Asus Eeebox. The minidesktop comes with a 1.6 GHz Atom processor, 160 Gb disk, a gigabyte… Continue reading Santa Claus