21 November 2002

Sighting: Garringreen Neighbourhood Access Point GARRINGREEN NAP -- We have established a WiFi Neighbourhood Access Point (NAP) in Garringreen, Johnswell Road, Kilkenny, Ireland. It's tied to a 2Mb EsatBT DSL line and it's a weak signal, emanating from a LinkSys Netrouter. But it's browseable from the pavement and ready for an external antenna mount. [G! 27 hits]   [Comment on Shoptalk]

Running Costs of Truly Mobile Office GARRINGREEN, Kilkenny, Ireland -- I have started calculating the running costs of a truly mobile office. I place my October 2002 Vodafone bill into to the pile -- all €462 of it. And I will use Vodafone's free bill-checking phone number in an attempt to cap my monthly spend below €500. [G! 225 hits]   [Comment on Shoptalk]

MyLifeBits: Microsoft's Life Database NEW SCIENTIST -- I have many fun memories of the Golden Gate. And if New Scientist is correct, my memories - dubbed "MyLifeBits" in a Microsoft superdatabase - could hold a huge amounts of information, catalogued and easy to search. I have lost so many shoeboxes of photos each of the 15 times that I've moved. The packrat piles of documents and scattered tapes hide special memories from so many places. Blogs like this are one way of recording important things. It will be interesting to see how MyLifeBits evolves at Microsoft's Media Presence lab in San Francisco.  I think it's always worthwhile to improve searchability of multimedia databases. [New Scientist and Google Sci/Tech with G! 45 hits]   [Comment on Shoptalk]

Sighting: Compact Flash Card SYNCHROTECH -- I need another PC Card for my IBM TransNote computer. I like the PCMCIA ATA CompactFlash memory cards because I can slip them between my Fuji digital camera and the TransNote. Since they're solid state, they have no moving parts. They are less prone to fail, so you don't get decimated if you crash a 60GB HDD containing priceless photos. And they're so compact. They increase the data storage of my notebook and camera without taking up space themselves. CompactFlash Cards were designed specifically to be a mass storage device. The cards include an on-board intelligent controller so they are 100% compatible with all operating systems and applications that support IDE disk drives. [G! 106,000 hits]   [Comment on Shoptalk]

Vehicle Telematics Frost & Sullivan -- Mobile-enabled cars are getting more prevalent. Here are some of the prominent companies involved in vehicle telematics: Volvo DynafleetScania Infotronics Daimler-Chrysler FleetBoard NavTech TeleAtlas SiemensVDO Automotive Bosch Motorola Magneti Marelli Vodafone Webraska ProSyst IBM Acunia Gedas Minorplanet Systems Expect the European commercial vehicle telematics market to grow from €169.5m in 2001 to revenues of €4.7bn by 2009, with nearly 5.4m mobile-enable vehicles. And those numbers would not include vehicles with Intellisign Personalcast systems onboard. [G! 3680 hits]   [Comment on Shoptalk]

Bernie's Machine Calls Tim's Machine SANTRY -- Tim Kirby has a Dell Inspiron sitting in my Nokia 9210's address book. Whenever I send information to his Inspiron, it appears on his weblog. I think this is rather effective machine-to-machine communication. It's also a very good example of repopulating the Web with personal content. At Waterford Institute of Technology, most of the Coke machines are smart enough to tell service technicians whether they need more soft drink. Actually, the technician has to call the machine first, then look at a database containing information about the stock level. I think that if the soft drink machine had embedded chips that enabled it to call for replenishment, the machine could make more money. Those kind of embedded chips would cost no more than €10 and they would be much cheaper if installed at point of manufacture of the Coke machines. [G! 116 hits] We're looking at an incredible potential to enable and expand communication between people and machines. I've started by allowing my Nokia Communicator to talk to Tim's Dell Inspiron. I suspect we'll establish an automated feature where the two machines talk without any human involvement.   [Comment on Shoptalk]

Internet Users Impatient with Search Results iPROSPECT -- According to a recent study on search statistics from iProspect, three-quarters of Internet users use search engines. However, 16 percent of Internet users only look at the first few search results, while 32 percent will read through to the bottom of the first page. Only 23 percent of searchers go beyond the second page, and the numbers drop for every page thereafter. [Nua Surveys and IASLASH]   [Comment on Shoptalk]

Ringing Up Revenues from Mobile Data GUINNESS STOREHOUSE, Dublin -- Vodafone now offer content creators 60 percent of the revenue streams. Ringtones, logos and games amount for most of the revenues but in the long term, business use will create the most value. At least once a week during a morning train journey, I listen to a faceless nurse babble on her mobile phone to a long distance colleague. That connection would be well-served by a mobile data application.   [Comment on Shoptalk]