24 August 2002

I couldn't have a job because that would stop my grant. THURLES, Co Tipperary -- The small town of Thurles is more famous for its hurling team than for its job culture. Yet there are equally famous principles in Thurles that form the basis of 21st century Ireland. Take the concept of residents getting real jobs -- something that local politicians hope would happen to dampen the raging unemployment that typifies this area. After working with dozens of twentysomethings from North Tipperary, I've little success when trying to instill an entrepreurial desire in local people. "Now I couldn't have a job because that would stop my grant," was today's comment. So in one breath, a recent college graduate took up position in the dole queue, right behind another family member who confidently led the way to another generation of State support. This attitude comes on the heels of figures from the World Economic Forum on Competitiveness that shows Ireland has fallen from 11th place in 2001 to 14th in 2002. EU performance figures reveal Ireland is mediocre. You get more for your international investment in China or India. Low-end ICT jobs will be sucked out of Ireland for other places in the global marketplace. The biggest reason this will happen -- rising wage demands in Ireland. And the only way to stave off this inevitability is for real commitments from employees and company directors. x:26121

Distance Education Group Opens to Public CHRONICLE.com -- The Alliance for Lifelong Learning, a nonprofit distance education company run by Stanford University, the University of Oxford, and Yale University, has a new name and is open to the public. Now called AllLearn, the company's courses were formerly only open to alumni of the three supporting universities. The venture, similar to Columbia University's Fathom project, will make about 50 distance courses available. Tuition for each course is $250, and each course will last between five and ten weeks. A spokeswoman from AllLearn said the group always intended to make the program available to the public. Others claim the decision evinced the venture was not as successful as its founders had hoped. x:109

Home Wi-Fi for Entertainment Hub Most home Wi-Fi items are audio products. One of the earliest was Audiotron from Turtle Beach. You plug it into your stereo system and it lets you play Internet radio or MP3s from PC hard drives. Audiotron has an Ethernet port so you can access networked PCs and share a broadband Internet connection. RioCentral, a similar device from SonicBlue, can plug into an Ethernet network via a USB-to- Ethernet adapter -- and possibly via a USB-to-Wi-Fi adapter. Sharp Electronics has LCD TVs that use a video sender system that employs Wi-Fi for the network transport. A recent in-depth survey of 10,500 Internet households by Parks Associates found that a surprising number had home LANs -- 3,800. Perhaps even more surprising, 10.7 percent of home LAN users in the study have a television set connected to the network and 11.8 percent have a digital audio receiver. Some of these home entertainment systems plug into Motorola'a Broadband Media Center (BMC) 9000. x:1012

Let Websites Tell Stories SANTRY HOTSPOT -- Everyone loves good content. We should learn how to make our Web sites tell interesting stories. x:125

Emergency wireless network on tap for DC area INFOWORLD -- An IBM eServer pSeries UNIX provides wireless emergency access for public safety. This is a secure wireless communications system that will serve more than 40 police, fire and other emergency services in Washington, D.C. and its Virginia and Maryland suburbs. The project, valued at $20 million and funded by the federal government, involves building a network that will handle 10,000 users and, according to IBM, will surpass security standards set by the FBI. The network will connect local agencies' current communication devices, and enable an officer, for example, to inform all necessary agencies from the scene of a hazardous waste spill on the beltway around the city. According to the Washington Post, Motorola is protesting the award of the contract, saying its proposal was not fairly evaluated. x: 1014