29 December 2002

Excellent Products for Mobloggers ZDNET -- If you're a moblogger, you should cast your eye on the best products of 2002 because most of the recommendations will deliver years of productive use for those working the mobile Web. [Alex Kidman]

Housebreaking My New Dog in Seven Days [day seven] GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- Well, less than 12 hours remain on the seven day clock and my mixed Samoyed stray named Holly still pees on papers in the house, even when the papers are placed next to an open door. She won't relieve herself while on short or long walks, even when accompanied by a companion Pomeranian who goes everywhere. I think we're looking at another week of housebreaking for the puppy.

Bookshelf: The Twenty-First Century: A Coat Hanger Culture? GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- I remember 1903 as the year of the first flight and the year my grandmother was born but there were other notable events too. Albert Parkhouse picked up and bent a piece of wire to fashion the world's first coat hanger. Mary Anderson drew up designs for the first windshield wiper. Edouard Benedictus accidentally discovered how to make a shatterproof windscreen. Binney and Smith launched the world's first box of colour crayons. Other notable centennial celebrations in 2003 will be the world's first canned tuna, the registration of the Pepsi-Cola brand name, and the building of the first Harley-Davidson in a wooden shed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Bookshelf: The Millennium Atlas Jonathan Leake -- The Millennium Atlas: Petroleum Geology of the Central and Northern North Sea is a 22lb tome that could be Britain's heaviest academic publication and one of its most expensive at STG199 a copy. The atlas describes the geological development that has led to the petroleum deposits in the North Sea. It shows that 540m years ago southern England, Wales and Southern Ireland lay close together about 2,000 miles from the South Pole. They were part of the supercontinent Gondwana that also included South America and Africa, Antarctica, Australia and India. ["We're being sent to Siberia" by Jonathan Leake in The Sunday Times, December 29, 2002]

Sighting: Antarctic Waves ANTARCTIC WAVES -- Here is a fun musical program that encourages learning, creativity and technical know-how. The CD-ROM helps you to create music by manipulating scientific survey data that has been transmogrified into sound. You can rearrange solar pings against the ocean floor into rhythmical patterns. The pitch of gurgling ice floes can be harmonised as if on a keyboard. [James Knight]

No Irish IT Floatations in 2003 Sunday Business Post -- No Irish technology firms are expected to go public in 2003, according to a straw poll of venture capital funders and corporate financiers conducted by The Sunday Business Post. [Gavin Daly]

Irish e-government tender remains stalled Sunday Business Post -- A multimillion-euro plan to offer public services online has stalled on selecting a shortlist of prospective service providers because the tenders have come in above the original costing targets allocated by the government. I would be concerned about the degree of protection given to all the records gathered under the Irish government's plan. In Arizona, where I once contemplated retireing, thieves have compromised the files of TriWest Healthcare Alliance, a private firm that runs the Defense Department's TriCare HMO program for the military in 16 states. Tens of thousands of Arizonans had confidential information compromised during a Dec. 14 break-in. Thieves made off with computer equipment and data files that contained plan beneficiaries' names and addresses, Social Security numbers, phone numbers, medical claims histories and, in some cases, credit card information. [Gavin Daly]

Silicon Technologies Europe Receives Government Subsidies Sunday Business Post -- Silicon Technologies Europe Ltd is based in offices at the government-subsidised Shannon Development Clare Business Centre in Ennis. Dylan Creaven has a hand in the company's stated assets of €4.16m. Creaven also has a hand in conspiring to cheat the British Inland Revenue of STG 162m of VAT. What I would like to know is can you get VAT back on aircraft leasing arrangements. One of the mobile phone traders arrested by British VAT investigators had the personalised automobile registration plate of JU51 VAT (JUST VAT) and another car he owns bears the plate ABU 51T (ABUSE IT). The owner had run a scheme to exploit the zero VAT rate for trading partners in the EU single market. Creaven is not unique. "Assets of €70m in VAT fraud probe" by Barry O'Kelly in The Sunday Business Post. Barry O'Kelly: The big VAT call in The Sunday Times, May 25, 2003. x_ref1481