17 October 2002

South Tipperary Web Presence Sneak Peek -- I just got a look behind the curtains of the South Tipperary County Council Web site. Two newly-hired IT specialists crafted an original information site, taking some very courageous steps forward in making public information more accessible to the taxpayers. This is definitely 21st century Web work and a fine example of sending tax money effectively. [x: 26121] emailed to blog from Nokia 9210i over Vodafone HSD.

Event: e-Forum Breakfast EVENT -- e-Forum Breakfast, Guinness Storehouse, Dublin, 0800 5 Nov 02. Mary Hanafin and Chris Horn take your €35 and talk about the state of the Nation's Information Society. [x: e1]

Event: Sedona Conference 24 Oct EVENT -- Sedona Conference, Clontarf Castle, Dublin, Ireland, 24-26 Oct 02. The role of digital media in the educational sector will be the central theme. Over 100 delegates from around the world are expected to attend. The opening speaker is Edward de Bono, management theorist. Other speakers include Jerome Morrissey, director of Ireland's National Centre for Technology in Education, Chris Horn from Iona, and Stephen Heppel, Apple Master. [x: e1]

Changes in Yahoo RESEARCH BUZZ -- A quick look at the changes in Yahoo and a handy directory too. [x: 109]

Resource: Typographica TYPOGRAPHI ca -- It's a Coolstop Daily Pick and excellent for anyone interested in typography. [jenett.radio]

Support for Comments in Newsfeed RADIO -- After I updated my Radio Root, I started getting a "comments" hyperlink in some of my News Aggregator stories. It's part of a Radio Update.

Myths of Web Accessibility DIVE INTO MARK -- As Mark Pilgrim writes in Dive Into Accessibility, "virtually all accessibility guidelines are about adding, not subtracting. Have an image? Add alternate text. Have navigation? Add a skip link. Have those wacky dynamic Javascript menus? Add regular text links. Whatever kind of exciting stuff you have now, keep it, but add this too."

I Wanna Be a Bear Ruth Maher -- Wants to be a female bear in her next life. "If you're a bear, you get to hibernate. You do nothing but sleep for six months. Before you hibernate, you're supposed to eat yourself stupid. If you're a bear, you birth your children (who are the size of walnuts) while you are sleeping and wake to partially grown, cute, cuddly cubs. If you're a mama bear, everyone knows you mean business. You swat anyone who bothers your cubs. If your cubs get out of line, you swat them, too. If you're a bear, your mate expects you to wake up growling. He expects that you will have hairy legs and excess body fat. Yup, I wanna be a bear! emailed to blog from Nokia 9210i over Vodafone HSD.

Basic Info on Patents MACLACHLAN ie -- An Irish patent application is effective only in the Republic of Ireland, but if applications in other countries are filed within a period of one year from the date of filing of the Irish application, then the original Irish application date can be claimed as a "priority" date under an International Convention to which most developed countries adhere. You can file a patent directly with the Irish Patent Office in Kilkenny. If the filing has a technical description of the invention, accompanied by drawings, you will establish a priority date. This kind of application is insufficient to achieve the grant of a patent, as it lacks so- called patent "claims". The claims are the legal language which define the scope of the monopoly being sought for the invention. At any time within the twelve month period, the applicant has the option of completing the basic priority application by filing claims, or of filing a new application claiming the priority date of the initial application. So this means one could modify filings in a minor way and still ensure patent protection.

Blogging for Dollars Jonathon Delacour -- "Given the paltry stipend one receives as a tenured faculty member of the University of Blogaria, the professoriate's ongoing fascination with the Blogging for Dollars controversy should hardly come as a surprise. AKMA, The Happy Tutor, Steve Himmer, Tom Matrullo, Mark Pilgrim, Shelley Powers, Dorothea Salo, Jeneane Sessum, Halley Suitt, and David Weinberger have all weighed in to the debate." [x: 109] [r: dive into mark/further reading]

Extroverted Mathematicians Along the Dublin Grand Canal Karlin Lillington -- While walking along the Grand Canal with herd of geeks, Karlin distinguished between an introverted mathematician and an extroverted mathematician. "An introverted mathematician looks at his shoes while he's talking to you, while an extroverted mathematician looks at your shoes while he's talking to you."

Tim Kirby and Knowledge Sharing KIRBYCOM -- Tim Kirby picks up the theme of "knowledge sharing" by pointing to a "personal knowledge sharing and its use in research," an essay by Sebastien Paquet. [x: 109] e-mailed to blog from Nokia 9210i over Vodafone HSD.

PHP BB OPEN -- Ken Gunderson from Team Cool swears by the PHP BB, since "PHP pretty much spanks Perl these days." So we're going to use it as the back end of a training site. [x: 109] e-mail to blog from Nokia 9210i over Vodafone HSD.

Spam Certified as Virus-Free OPEN -- Ross Cooney had a bad SPAM day yesterday. One of his clients got hijacked when using their dial-up Internet connectiion. They got hit when their cmail open relay took delivery of about 5,000 emails advertising a great way to save money on mortgages. They then used SMTP auth to relay the emails through Cyber Sentry and guess what happend? The spam was certified as virus-free as it was dispatched from the Dublin screening servers. [x: 109] e-mailed to blog from Nokia 9210i over Vodafone HSD.

Ridiculously Easy Group Forming Community Server WiKi -- They are talking about Ridiculously Easy Group Forming and discovering it's like good blogging.

Spam Kills the Internet Horst Prillinger -- The Aardvark speaks: "Spammers are the worst kind of parasite. If they're not stopped soon, we can forget about the Net as a viable communications network." [jenett.radio]

RSS in Knowledge Management John VanDyk -- "I'd be interested in talking privately with anyone who is using RSS for knowledge management. I'm putting together a session for a national symposium in April on RSS."

Virtual Bandwidth Dave Winer -- ESPN uses RSS enclosures. I don't know how they work, so I'll read Don Park's note about big binary objects as RSS items. Radio has this feature. Radio Enclosures now use a new distribution model, one that gets rid of the click-wait for large media objects. Winer terms it "virtual bandwidth."

Cellular WiFi ROAMAD -- Here's technology that allows cellular WiFi. You can build a WAN using 802.11b. I wonder if any Irish operators are considering this kind of platform? "RoamAD has already deployed the first stage of a metropolitan-wide (100 km2) Cellular Wi-Fi network that provides end-users with secure non line-of-sight mobile broadband connectivity to the Internet, office networks and the PSTN. Within the RoamAD network, end-users already enjoy ubiquitous coverage and the ability to roam with 100% committed bit rates of anything up to 330Kbps."