TiVo to go please!

Apple and TiVo are teaming up in the US!

Well…. sort of.

TiVo Inc. is expanding its video recording service so users will be able to transfer recorded TV shows onto Apple Computer’s iPods, according to an Associated Press report. By adding support for the MPEG-4 video format, TiVo hopes to capitalise on the immense popularity of Apple iPods.

TiVo automatically finds and digitally records up to 300 hours of programming you want—your favorite show, every Coppola movie, home improvement programs, Dora cartoons, whatever you choose—all while you’re out living life. Plus, pause, rewind and slo-mo live TV.

Two downsides to this?

No TiVo in Ireland…. and no video iPod for Ken! Though I’m working on the latter…

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Whois Ajax?

Reading through some posts over at TechCrunch this morning and came across this addition - AjaxWhois.

It seems there are more Ajax tools popping up all over the place, but I gotta say, I like this one. I’m a regular ‘whois’ user at whois.org, and I’m pretty impressed with the Ajax offering, in particular with speed of information retrieval.

You simply enter your domain name (no need to click any buttons) and it searches on the fly, returning your results if the domain is available or not. If it is taken, you are given the option to perform a ‘whois’ with instant results, or alternatively backorder the domain for when it becomes available.

I gotta say… thats one useful tool to have!

Making A Name For Yourself

Doing my lunchtime drive through blogs that I subscribe to, I came across this interesting article on MacManX.com which raises the issue of handles (internet nicknames / alter ego’s) vs real names.

I’ve got to agree, handles are a pain, you’ve no idea who you’re dealing with - sure, it gives you that anonymous factor but where do you distinguish the handle from the person behind it.

Anyway, go check it out, take a look, worth the read and the insight!

Blogging Set For Cork Conference

Update : You can pick up a podcast interview with Robert Scoble, conducted by Tom Raftery, by clicking here.

Reading a copy of this month’s ComputerScope magazine (and Technology Ireland magazine)… normally sits on the desk, does the rounds of the office, and then comes back to me so I can read my own copy… but this little article is of interest, to myself anyway - and to anyone reading this blog you should find it similar!

It goes..

THE opening address at the it@cork annual conference, on Wednesday 30 November in the Rochestown Park Hotel in Cork, will be given by Robert Scoble, techinal evangelist at Microsoft USA and one of the world’s best known bloggers.

Scoble, who will talk about ‘Blogging for Business’, has been widely credited with helping to create a slightly more positive perception of Microsoft, particularly amongst software developers who make up a large part of his audience. In addition to his opening address, he will discuss emerging trends in software at a technical forum in the afternoon and is due to attend an inaugural bloggers’ dinner in the evening. According to it@cork, the conference is now shaping up to be the largest ever gathering of Irish bloggers.

Speaking before the event, Scoble said that corporate blogging is changing how companies talk with their customers.

Do it wrong and you could end up with negative PR..

Do it right and you’ll have happier employees, better products, and more informed customers. It’ll be interesting to learn about the blogging that’s happening in Ireland and I’ll bring some of the top tips I’ve learnt working for Microsoft

The conference is divided into sessions on governance, standards and certification, looking backwards to the future, and growing Irish technology business. The speakers include author and management guru Charles Handy, Paul O’Callaghan (CIO at Pepsico), Michael Brophy (CEO of Certificiation Europe), Mike Stephenson (Computer Associates), Joe Gantley (Cork Airport Authority) and Dr Jim Mountjoy, founder of Euristix and a co-founder of Baltimore Technologies.

Anyone interested, head over to itcork.ie…

Pricing: Full conference fee is €275 for it@cork members, €375 for non-members. You can also attend the afternoon technical forum on a stand-alone basis for €125.

Riya : Next Best Thing?

Google are out shopping again so it seems and rumours are abound that they’ve just purchased Riya, a tech startup in the US specialising in facial recognition software. When one company spends $40,000,000 on another very small company, it has to raise a few eyebrows. It raised mine, and for those of you who don’t know what Riya is, here’s the lowdown.

I first took an interest in this line of software through a project in Waterford IT last year which involved adding facial profiling to a dating website (getting a match to someone of your tastes based on their facial features as opposed to their own attributes), but this is pretty clever material.

Our face recognition technology automatically tags people in photos so you can search for just the photo you want. In your album. In your friend’s album. On the web.

Sounds like magic stuff, certainly gives it a similar sound to Flickr based on the whole tagging element - but here’s where it gets interesting.

Riya users train the software, which requires a downloadable Windows client, by identifying, or tagging, individuals in their photos.

As Riya learns who’s in your pictures, it begins to auto-tag the snaps itself, quickly scanning the rest of your photos and identifying each person it recognizes. Riya also uses text recognition to read street signs and other text in photos.

Not only that, but it can decipher genders, locations (based on street signs), family connections and more.

Photos can and will be made either public or private. My only worry about this type of service is the information thats available. If Riya recognises other people’s tags and not just your own, then we got ourselves an invasion of privacy to a global level. You wouldn’t need to ask for names any longer, just take someone’s photo, upload it, and *presto* - Riya tells you who they are and if the person next to them in the photo is a relation or not…

Nevertheless, its miles off, it’s still alpha - but Google can see its certain potential - can you?

Base : A Second Look

Earlier in the week, possibly only yesterday (time has no meaning any more!) I posted that Google Base had launched. Upon delving into the depths of base and exploring existing content as well as my own little profile page it occurred to me that this could get pretty big.

Perhaps, a little too big. Fair enough, content can exist for the 31 days, but if every Google user submitted one article alone you’ve got a wave of information to sift through to get something worthwhile.

In an interesting article I read this morning at ZDNet, I would like to just highlight the following which I completely agree with.

Google could in fact be building the world’s largest database of structured shite.

Well worth a read for those of you interested in Google Base. Click here for the article…

OPML Irish Directory

I’ve been tinkering around with OPMLManager.com on suggestion from James Corbett of the Eirepreneur blog and have decided to make my contribution to the Open Irish Directory by managing a node on Irish Film.

So now you’ll think

• What the hell is OPML?
• What is the Open Irish Directory
• What the hell is a node?

So here goes!

OPMLOPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) is an XML format for outlines. Originally developed by Radio UserLand as a native file format for an outliner application, it has since been adopted for other uses, the most common being to exchange lists of RSS feeds between RSS aggregators.

The OPML specification defines an outline as a hierarchical, ordered list of arbitrary elements. The specification is fairly open which makes it suitable for many types of list data.

OPMLManager.com

OPML Manager is simply brilliant. As in simple and brilliant. The simplicity is deceptive because its a very powerful enabler. Not only is it a web-based, AJAX enabled OPML editor but, crucially, it’s an OPML host. That means that anyone can now contribute a node to an open directory project like indiePodder or the Open Irish Directory

Open Irish Directory

OID is a directory of all things Irish, and open in the sense that anyone can contribute to it. Think of it as a catalog of links, hierarchical, with individuals managing the nodes (sub categories of links) and their content (the actual links). Check it out.

Anyway… go check it out!

13 Reasons To Switch To Firefox

While out doing the browse on the tea break, this little ditty surfaced. Nice take on the whole Kill Bill theme… but moreso, it provides 13 reasons to switch to Firefox In summary….

1. You’ll only see porn when you want to.
2. Your kids will only see porn when they want to
3. Your computer won’t spend its free time telling the world about Viagra soft tabs.
4. Mozilla doesn’t inflate prices and use the money to vaccinate children in Africa.
5. If we knew web designers would hurl themselves off it, we wouldn’t have put the Golden Gate bridge so close to San Francisco.
6. Keep squinting and your eyes will get stuck like that, stupid
7. It will make Bill Gates soooooooooo mad.
8. Mozilla has never made a talking paperclip.
9. Ritalin is fun, but A.D.D. is not.
10. It’s like switching from dating a 14-year-old to dating an 18-year-old.
11. Reduce your weekly family & friends tech support load to 8 hours.
12. More effective than throwing pies.
13. Because the Department of Justice Lacks Balls.

For the matching descriptions and explanations, which are worth a read in themselves, check out Kill Bill’s Browser

Back To Basics

A busy week for Google, so it seems. But when is it never busy in that place?

Their latest offering is Google Base (beta). Another free service if you’ve got a Google account or gMail address. What are they running with this time? “Help The World Find Your Content”.

To be perfectly honest, its hard enough to find my own site on Google. I can find my ICQ profile from 1998. I can find my deviantART print store. No sign of my domain there. But thats another matter altogether. What I’m more interested in is that if people keep continuing submitting their sites to Google and you can’t find them - how on earth are you expected to find that Chicken Korma recipe you wrote yesterday, or that ad you posted looking for a temp for the office?

Social tagging!

Is Base a jazzed up version of del.icio.us?

Google Base enables you to add attributes that better describe your content so that users can easily find it

So I tested it out myself. Base allows you to submit ‘people profiles’, so I throw Ken McGuire up in a profile… a short while later, bang - there I am. Search ‘Ken McGuire’ on Base and you’ll find me! Search on Google and you’ve no chance.

What kind of items can you put into Google Base?

• Description of your party planning service
• Articles on current events from your website
• Listing of your used car for sale
• Database of protein structures

At least it works in the sense that your details are published almost immediately. Whatever you post, does expire after 31 days max, which is good for keeping content fresh - though you can choose to reactivate it at a later date. It’s supposed to integrate with Froogle but if it can help improve a search result on Google then I’m all for it!

Update:

I’m impressed with the relative speed and ease at which material goes up on Google Base. They are touting it as a great research tool for students, parents etc (isn’t that what the Internet is!?), I just hope it doesn’t become overcrowded with junk. Want to see my little entry…. click here.

API-ece of the Pie

So yeah…

eBay are finally opening up their API’s eh? No more charges on developers looking to access them. Good news for certain projects? Good news for certain developers? Or have eBay finally woken up to the realisation that allowing that extra openness is just good for business.

The upside for eBay?

• More sales, more conversions, more exposure…
• New ideas, new business opportunities for the great marketplace that is!

The downside? Well, I’m not sure if its a downside at all but it does mean for certain that there’s gonna be an awful lot of new auction sites popping up - but its all good for eBay. They’ve enough money to throw around these days anyway, buying VeriSign, buying Skype…. at least they’re giving something back to the community even if they’ll surely reap the rewards for it now!

WebServices are the way forward, there’s surely no doubting that. Having been involved in developing simple web services over the last 12 months you get to see first hand the benefit of having them in place. Amazon do it, Flickr do it, eBay had been doing it - but at least now they’re doing it for free!

Interesting times ahead….

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