Riding The Lines

Have a go of this one….

Linerider

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Young People Of Ireland - Register To Vote

Plugging ourselves here as much as being able to register to vote but if you’re in Dublin today, take a stroll to Film Base in Templebar where Dick Roche TD is going to launch RegisterToVote.ie as sponsored by Fianna Fail. We’ve been responsible for the design of their leaflet/poster/web campaign. The campaign is aimed at young people to get them onto the electoral register ahead of next year.

The literature and poster campaign, launched by Environment Minister Dick Roche TD, will also feature a website, www.registertovote.ie, where young people can find out how to get themselves on the electoral register.

The cathaoirleach of Ógra Fianna Fáil, Dún Laoghaire TD Barry Andrews, will also attend the launch.

Venue: Film Base, Curve St, Templebar, Dublin Date: Tuesday, October 23, 2006 Time: 1pm

Vodafone Reveal Disney Mobile For Kids

The war rages on as to whether children should have mobile phones - radiation problems, camera phone and sms bullying, increased risk of theft etc. but Vodafone has gone and released the Primofonio in Italy in association with Disney.

The key aspect of the phone is security, parents having administrator access to the phone to set up the child’s contact list or restrict (down to four numbers) the people that may be called from the phone. Barring is also an easy option with parents being able to block incoming and outgoing calls to and from numbers not listed amongst the contacts.

It is already estimated in Italy that 50% of children between the ages of eight and thirteen use a mobile phone so I guess it makes sense in certain regards, particularly in the younger age group. Why you would give a child of eight a mobile phone though is a little beyond me.

According to Paul Bertoluzzo, Vodafone’s GM (this coming from an Italian translation)

There isn’t a phone on the current market that exists purposely for families with specific characteristics of emergency - we have decided to give life to a device that possesses exclusive characteristics of simplicity and emergency

Very loose translation but Vodafone apparantly opting for the safety route amongst young mobile users.

Ubergizmo has a picture here, with Vodafone’s release here (in Italian).

O2 Announce Long-number Deal with TynTec

Press release just in from O2 (UK), looks like they’re outsourcing their SMS services, or at least their long-number service. The deal was struck with carrier-grade message operator TynTec which will see TynTec provide a long-number SMS management system for O2. The long-number SMS service (7+ digits) effectively allows for service and application commands to be sent and integrated into a corporate working environment.

Long number SMS reception can be used by corporates for any application where staff or customers need to communicate with the business via text messaging. For example, by integrating incoming messages into the relevant applications, companies can enable users to text in to receive data such as schedule information, product and delivery status or live company information such as share prices.

E.g. You text a particular number to your company network and have your work schedule returned via your mobile. Long numbers are the cheaper alternative to short codes (where you hear everywhere - “Text your name to 53000 etc.”) and are free of premium text charges. The use of long numbers means that companies can now have their own mobile codes as opposed to sharing them across a network. (Think IPv4 vs IPv6).

Speaking on the announcement earlier, Iain McCallum (O2) said

SMS long numbers are a great tool for businesses looking to offer their customers an SMS interaction channel. Whilst short-codes have their place, long numbers can offer a similar functionality at a fraction of the cost and without some of the limitations. By outsourcing our long number SMS reception facility to TynTec we can ensure that our customers get a great level of service without the need for us to make major investments in non-core technology within our own network

Help Yourself With Email

The next Help Yourself session kicks off at 6pm this Wednesday in Harry’s Bar in Langtons and runs for an hour. Guest speaker on the night will be head of marketing and sales for the Hibernian Hotel, Michael Reuter, who will be speaking on the benefits of the Hibernian’s mailing list and lessons they have learned from using their mailing list.

Keith will also be looking at email in general with some tips on the “do’s and don’ts” of email, email etiquette, attachments, spam etc.

Check out more at HelpYourself.ie

Note to Michele…. consider yourself reminded

Sony Ericsson Moving On Up

I’ve got a fond spot for Sony Ericsson having used their P900 for almost 18 months prior to this year so its good to hear that they’re moving on up in the world, having overtaken LG to move into fourth spot of the world’s handset manufacturer’s ranks while moving up to second place in the Taiwan market behind Nokia.

Its been four years now since Sony and Ericsson first got together, both companies having ceased making their own mobiles back in 2002 to concentrate on joint mobile production, since then the company has gone from strength to strength in terms of mobile production current league tables clearly backing that up, SE showing a 43% year-on-year increase in sales to ship almost 20 million handsets in the third quarter of this year alone.

Why 802.11n Won’t Solve Media Problems

A little education for your Saturday with a nice article from WirelessWeek.com titled ‘What They Don’t Tell You About 802.11n’.

As it stands, the most common WiFi standard amongst mobile phones is 802.11b with some handset owners lucky to find 802.11g (the ‘b’ standard being much slower than ‘g’ for those who want to know the chief difference). 802.11n is supposed to be another 10 times faster than 802.11g while up to 50 times faster than 802.11b.

While b and g operate on the 2.4ghz frequency, 802.11n operates across 2.4ghz and 5ghz.

From Wikipedia…

In January 2004 IEEE announced that it had formed a new 802.11 Task Group (TGn) to develop a new amendment to the 802.11 standard for wireless local-area networks. The real data throughput is estimated to reach a theoretical 540 Mbit/s (which may require an even higher raw data rate at the physical layer), and should be up to 50 times faster than 802.11b, and well over 10 times faster than 802.11a or 802.11g.

So, theoretically then, something that is 50 times faster than what you might be using (like going from dialup internet connections to broadband connections) should solve or reduce any issures with wireless video or media transmissions. Then again, it might not.

A Little Grazing On The Side

Kudos to James for the mention of Mobileblogr (don’t know about “Ireland’s most prolific blogger but some day I’ll try make sense of it all!) and for again alerting me to the benefits of Grazr.

I’ve been looking for a convenient way to tie my little growing blog network together (currently totalling 8 active blogs and one or two inactive ones which might get new leases of life in the future) so I thought I’d give their sidebar widget a whirl to advertise the feed for Mobileblogr, get a little blog-to-blog interactivity going.

Of course, I remembered by Opmlmanager.com account and threw together an opml file (available at http://www.kenmc.com/kenmc.opml) to group together all the feeds from the 8 active blogs, allowing you to jump in and out of each of the blogs from the main kenmc.com sidebar, likely rolling out across LiverpoolAccess.com, TheFootballTimes.com and Mobileblogr over the weekend.

Talk about convenient!

Why I’ve never created a Grazr before I don’t know…. even when flicking through them on other blogs!

All I’ve to do now is work out a few theming kinks I might have introduced prior to adding the Grazr and we’ll be sorted…

Eircom To Roll Out WiMax

Eircom, in trouble of late over the Smart Telecom incident (for those unaware, Smart pretty much folded its broadband and phone service when Eircom pulled the plug over unpaid bills), have announced that they are to broadband-enable another 100 exchanged through 2007, adding broadband support to over 120,000 phone lines as result.

The interesting news though is that Eircom will be using WiMax technology to get around broadband issues in certain areas, WiMax being rolled out in each of Dublin, Waterford, Cork, Limerick and Galway to supplement existing DSL services.

According to RTE, Eircom’s “introduction of WiMax now is seen by the industry as an admission that too many lines were failing over traditional broadband delivery methods.”

Full story at RTE Business.

iQ Boot Camp Draws To A Close

The iQ Boot Camp by iQ Content draws to a close today up in The Morrison in Dublin. Must say, had a very nice email from Lar Veale in relation to the bootcamp which has had “really positive” feedback over the series of workshops. Maybe next time around for me! (Also see my previous post here, iQ Bootcamp For October)

Anyone manage to get there, either for one day or more? Some nice 3-hour sessions had over the three days by the looks of things, with the keynote speakers delivering their own presentations this afternoon before hitting the cocktails tonight!

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