10 November 2002

What a Way to Run a Railroad DUBLIN -- In the pissy rain, stumbling around the traffic cones in Harcourt Street, I wonder why Dublin closed down the Harcourt Street train line. These days, we queue for hours in Dublin traffic jams, the legacy of Ted Andrews' decision to close the Harcourt Line years ago. Some would say there was little demand for the Harcourt Line service and that's why it shut down. Today, the carriages would be overflowing if they were running. Last week, I walked over the Clonmel railroad bridge as a slow train chugged underway below. These days, if you take that same train from Waterford to Limerick, you will be treated to 24mph service in carriages creaky with age. Your trip features a 63 minute wait on the Limerick Junction platform as you await a connection to Dublin. As a frequent user of public transport, I know the fastest way to Dublin from Clonmel is by bus. Only a 0630 bus from Clonmel will connect to any train heading to the capital. Ther should be a serious investigation of maintaining public service for the private sector. This would mean upgrading rail service, promoting its existence, and offering a sensible transport option to those living outside of Dublin's commuter belt.   [Comment on Shoptalk]

MMS Swarms DUBLIN -- We are only a few lines of code away from MMS-enabled Smart Mobs. The camera phones would herald in new kinds of group behaviour enabled by MMS applications. In the States, the popular wireless blogging website Hiptop Nation acts as a central blogging site for owners of the Sidekick device, a portable handheld data communications device recently introduced by Danger. The Sidekick supports wireless AOL Instant Messaging, email, SMS text messages, and web access. Users of the Sidekick can post wireless public blogs on Hiptop Nation via their Sidekick device, as well as upload photographs from the Sidekick's digital camera. On Halloween, October 31 2002, Hiptop Nation sponsored a >photo-scavenger hunt competition across the US. Participants were users of the Hiptop Nation blog site who were placed into competing teams, and participants coordinated their actions as well as acquired and uploaded photographs across the US exclusively via their Sidekick wireless devices. The hunt lasted for 24 hours. x:109 [Howard Rheingold and Cory Doctorow]   [Comment on Shoptalk]

EPIC Warns Colleges Against Monitoring P2P EPIC -- The practise of colleges monitoring P2P file sharing is "incompatible with intellectual freedom." EPIC warned universities that students deserve a measure of academic freedom. This warning continues a running battle between EPIC and the recording industry. During the same week, Holly on The Stones Underground List revealed how bouncers at the Stones concerts were telling people to turn off their cell phones, because of copyright infringements. x: 153 [jenett.radio, t e c h n o c u l t u r e , "Idiocy" and Infoworld]   [Comment on Shoptalk]

Please Let Me Share My Map of the World with You David Gurteen -- Well-versed in Klogging and Knowledge Management, David has already spoken to the UK Online User Group in London. We should incorporate his thoughts into Xi Blue's short course on Essential Web Journaling. x:109 [The Gurteen Knowledge Website]   [Comment on Shoptalk]

Google Answers GOOGLE/answers -- Although it's still in beta, Google Answers works well. You can make money with it. As John Robb explains, "within an organizational context questions could be posted to a specific category weblog, aggregated by a information expert via RSS, and posted to a questions weblog with answers. Readers of this weblog could extend the answers with comments and additional data. Questions, answers, and comments would then naturally become part of the firm's Knowledge Base." Companies need this because most people have problems searching and finding information. x:114   [John Robb's Radio Weblog]   [Comment on Shoptalk]

Root Causes of The Celtic Tiger David McWilliams -- "The catalyst was lower interest rates, more widely available credit, demogrpahics and an American boom as well as good fortune, institutional maturity and a few very brilliant people, not simply the lowering of income taxes."   [Comment on Shoptalk]

Resource: Conference Backdrops GRAPHIC DISPLAY SYSTEMS -- Fancy a conference backdrop?   [Comment on Shoptalk]

Waypath Project WAYPATH -- I clicked into the Waypath Project, since seeing it mentioned by Dave Winer, Slashdot and Karlin Lilligton. It's an attempt to network the weblog community, connecting weblogs that share common themes, ideas, and topics. It's like tracking a meme. The Waypath Project's Related Weblog Navigation engine analyzes weblog entries to determine their core conceptual makeups, compares them with one another to find out how related they are, and presents you with its best guess as to what's related to your original input. This isn't a refined search algorithm but I think it's a rudimentary hypeindex measurement tool. And it also quickly found 31 potential members of my weblog neighbourhood. I think there are a lot of interesting projects underway that use Google's API. According to Smart Mobs, Marc Smith, a sociologist-geek who works for Microsoft Research, has connected an inexpensive barcode scanner to a handheld computer with a wireless connection, and has installed code that connects the info returned from the universal product code database to the Google search engine. The UPC database provides salient information about the product linked to a bar code. It's all part of AURA, a research project to explore ubiquitous computing using off-the-shelf technology. People who register at the site can send their scans — and their comments on their scans — to a website. Their comments thus turn up within days, open to everyone with Google access, as results of keyword searches relevant to the scanned object. The US Information Awareness Office wants this kind of functionality to "break down the stovepipes" that separate commercial and government databases, allowing teams of intelligence analysts to hunt for hidden patterns of activity with powerful computers." All these things need to be discussed in Xi Blue's Search Engine Strategies Course. x:109 RTMark's CueJack John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness Office   [Comment on Shoptalk]

Ireland's Economy Needs Immigrants KILKENNY, Ireland -- In nearly every European counry, immigration is the most emotive of contemporary issues. There is a small amount of overt racism, which I observed first-hand at Dublin airport. There are more widely-held suspicions that immigrants will be a drain on public resources (my American passport was endorsed by British immigration to block this prospect). On radio talk shows, some Irish callers believe immigrants will transform society in some ill-defined but detrimental way. I believe immigration can bring great benefits to Ireland. I think immigrants bring dynamism, not deprivation. I salivate for Chinese food and Turkish kebabs. I enjoy trading stories with Romanians and Lithuanians. Niall Stanage, editor of Magill, reports that in Britain, immigrants made a net fiscal contribution of STG 2.5bn in 1999-2000 &em; a 1 per cent income tax rise would be required to raise the same sum from the indigenous British population. In Germany, the first words of a report delivered last year by a high-level commission were "Germany needs immigrants." A recent copy of The Economist concluded "The potential gains from liberalising immigration dwarf those from removing barriers to world trade." It will take progressive thinking to deliver balanced policies of immigration into Irish society. I don't think the process has started with the current Irish government. "Refused Leave to Land" "Auld Triangle Going Jingle Jangle" by Karlin Lillington, 23 Sep 02. Ireland's Racist No Attitude, Topgold Blog, 25 Sep 02. "Get a Work Permit or Go to Jail" by Bernie Goldbach, Irish Examiner, 27 Sep 02. "Dublin Has Become a Magnet for Technology and People," Alan Cowell in The New York Times, October 31, 2000.   [Comment on Shoptalk]

How to Publish Radio Categories to Different FTP Locations RADIO -- For several months, Tim Kirby has been chided me for not being able to figure out how to publish radio categories to different locations, so I am going to set aside time to make this happen. Today. x: 109   [Comment on Shoptalk]