December 2005 Archives

Wordpress 2 has been released, so the big question now is whether to upgrade immediately or wait until things settle down.

The other evening I wanted to watch a DVD on my new laptop. When I originally setup my desktop PC I installed all the required libraries and codecs for DVDs etc., without keeping any record of where I got them from.

Why is it that anytime there is a bank holiday the shops go crazy? I can understand that people need to buy their "last minute" Christmas presents etc., but do they really need to buy that much food??? You'd think the shops were closing for a week or two. On my way out of Carlow the other afternoon we tried to get into the local Tesco, but there was a tailback. Today I ventured over to the new shopping complex in Midleton... Not the best idea I've had this week, admittedly, but unfortunately it was necessary. The place was packed with people hording for the "break"... Considering that most shops will actually be reopening on the 26th or 27th....

I've posted a couple of times in the last few months about my mixed feeling towards Google. Yesterday I was contacted by an American journalist who was doing a story on Google's customer service - or rather the lack thereof. Yesterday evening was also the evening that I was heading out to meet some of the guys for a pre-Christmas drink, so I replied to the journalist's email very quickly without doing any further digging. This morning when I fell out of bed I got several news alerts for both my name and that of the company. It transpires that the journalist was writing for eWeek and my comments are in one of the articles there: Googleites Gripe About Sloppy Service

I'd heard that adsense were rolling out the "seasonal" ads to publishers, but I hadn't seen any until this morning when I was checking search.ie It's quite cute

Frank has provided a new ranking button for any member sites ofIrish Blogs. I put it live about 10 minutes ago. I hope you all like it.. If you don't ... well .. em ... I like it and so does Frank, so .. em .. well .. I'm not going to change it :)

Localising your website to better serve specific markets makes sense, however it is something that is often overlooked by even the "big names" in e-commerce.

One of the more commonly asked questions on both mailing lists and fora is related to e-commerce, or more specifically accepting payments on your website. I've put together this brief guide in order to help webmasters, or at least point them in the right direction. If anybody has any additions or corrections please let me know.

The IEDR made a couple of announcements over the last couple of weeks that are of interest to companies and individuals operating in the Irish internet industry.

Rss feeds can be a little boring. Although you can syndicate your blog's content you may feel that you are missing out on some of the interactive elements that readers can get directly on your blog.

There must be something in the air! Nominet recently rebranded and now IEDR are to follow suit.

A couple of months ago I mentioned RTE's plans to offer streaming video. In a related announcement they have become the first associate member of INEX, the Irish Internet neutral exchange.

My old Dell laptop finally died a few weeks ago. It had been on its "last legs" for quite some time, but when the screen refused to display anything the other week I knew it was no more

The IrishBlogs.info sites (planet / main site / faq) are all getting a minor facelift thanks to Frank's new logo and matching favicon

Unless your site is for a very select number of people whose choice of browser is restricted, such as may be the case on a company network, website developers / publishers / designers need to take into consideration the cross-browser aspect.

I've noticed a slightly different type of blog comment spam over the last couple of weeks. Whereas before you had the "classic" drugs and sex related junk or the overt "Visit my site" rubbish, there is now a new type of comment spam. They seem to be more topic based, but their comments are equally as useless as the other spammers. For example I posted some time ago about mod_rewrite and SEO techniques. I got what looked like a "pingback" from another blog. The other blog made zero reference to my post either directly or indirectly, but had pinged me anyway. In other instances the other blog is on a specialised subject, but rather than actually say anything of merit they are merely trying to get their link into the comments.. Quite annoying really

Unless you have been on another planet for the last few weeks you will be aware of the release of Narnia, which is based on the writing of CS Lewis.

According to the latest report from WhoisIreland.com the shift away from the traditional ISPs to HSPs (hosting service providers) continued throughout 2005.

I would love to know what the criteria for the Golden Spiders judges was in selecting the Cork City website for a prize. It certainly wasn't for it's design! Try viewing the damned page with the announcement

From DRI : "Next Tuesday, the 13th of December, the European Parliament will vote on a Data Retention Directive [1]. This proposes to extend data retention to the Internet, and will result in your ISPs logging every email you send, every web page you visit, and everything else you do online and storing that information for several years. We urge you to email, fax or phone your MEPs [2] as soon as possible to express your opposition to this measure, which will introduce mass surveillance of every man, woman and child in the EU. As to what you should say, it is best if that comes directly from what you consider important. However, Privacy International and EDRI have adopted a position [3] (which DRI has endorsed) setting out five key criticisms of the Directive. Feel free to copy and paste these if you wish. 1. This Directive invades the privacy of all Europeans. The Directive calls for the indiscriminate collection and retention of data on a wide range of Europeans' activities. Never has a policy been introduced that mandates the mass storage of information for the mere eventuality that it may be of interest to the State at some point in the future. 2. The proposed Directive is illegal. It contravenes the European Convention on Human Rights by proposing the indiscriminate and disproportionate recording of sensitive personal information. Political, legal, medical, religious and press communications would be logged, exposing such information to use and abuse. 3. The Directive threatens consumer confidence. More than 58,000 Europeans have already signed a petition opposing the Directive. A German poll revealed that 78% of citizens were opposed to a retention policy. The Directive will have a chilling effect on communications activity as consumers may avoid participating in entirely legal transactions for fear that this will be logged for years. 4. The Directive burdens EU industry and harms global competitiveness. Retention of all this data creates additional costs of hundreds of millions of Euros every year. These burdens are placed on EU industry alone. The U.S., Canada and the Council of Europe have already rejected retention. 5. The Directive requires more invasive laws. Once adopted, this Directive will prove not to be the ultimate solution against serious crimes. There will be calls for additional draconian measures including: * the prior identification of all those who communicate, thus requiring ID cards at cybercafes, public telephone booths, wireless hotspots, and identification of all pre-paid clients; * the banning of all international communications services such as webmail (e.g. Hotmail and Gmail) and blocking the use of non-EU internet service providers and advanced corporate services. Helpfully, we in Ireland are in a unique position to lobby our MEPs - because the Government has already stated it is so opposed to this particular draft that they will bring a case to the European Court of Justice to block it if the European Parliament approves it. Thus even MEPs from the Government Parties have no reason to support the proposed text in Tuesday's vote. It is not too late to stop this law: please join us by contacting your MEPs to say no to a surveillance society. [1] http://www.ispai.ie/051202EUDR.pdf [2] http://www.ispai.ie/Irish-MEPs.doc [3] http://wiki.dataretentionisnosolution.com:81/images/8/86/Finalstatement.pdf"

Nominet, the UK domain registry authority, has just completed a corporate rebranding. It will probably take members a bit of time to get used to the new navigation, but the new look is quite clean and tidy.

I recently posted about the importance of maintaining accurate information in domain whois. Earlier today (yesterday if you want to be really pedantic) the GAO (US Government Accountability Office) released its report on INTERNET MANAGEMENT- Prevalence of False Contact Information for Registered Domain Names. (pdf)

Yesterday, at 11am CET the .eu sunrise one started. According to a press release from Eurid the following were the most requested domains in the first day:

1. sex.eu
2. hotel.eu
3. travel.eu
4. jobs.eu
5. hotels.eu
6. casino

The fact that a domain has been requested does not mean that it will actually be granted. The process for handling the initial registrations is anything but simple and automatic (like .com) so it will probably be some time before we know who has been granted what... If you hold a trademark now is the time to secure your .eu domain!

Justin Mason has announced the release of SpamAssassin 3.0.5.

The debacle surrounding data retention in Europe (and Ireland) has been dragging on for the last couple of years.

As Christmas will be upon us all very soon it is only natural that people are organising presents - both personal and corporate.

Over the past few days we seem to have attracted a number of "charming" clients who must think we are mentally defective.

A new magazine, 03, was recently launched to cater to:

.... IT professionals with current or planned future deployments involving open source, or those interested in the cost saving benefits of using open source solutions in an enterprise environment. O3 should also appeal to the small business owner who is interested in a strong, secure and scalable IT infrastructure without incurring high deployment costs

For further details and to download a copy see their site

A lot of small to medium sized businesses do not have dedicated IT staff. They may outsource to an IT services company, but more often than not somebody is "elected" as the resident "IT expert" as they know slightly more than their colleagues.

A demo version of Quake4 for linux is now available. See here for more details

One of the downsides of automated domain registration systems is that there are no checks on trademark infringement.

The EU domain will enter sunrise 1 later this week, so if you hold a trademark you really should make sure that your request is submitted. If you don't have a trademark you can still apply during the sunrise 2 period if you hold a "prior right". Of course .eu isn't the only "show" in town. A lot of people seem to forget about other regional TLDs. If you are selling into other EU country markets then it makes sense to protect your brand as much as possible.

Some of the photos from the IIA Netvisionary awards are now online. After seeing my photo I've vowed to go on a diet and get more exercise. I look like a beached whale! (Paul suggested a beached penguin.. )

When I spotted a post on another blog about Dell accepting PayPal payments I got quite excited, however it transpires that the new payment method only applies to US customers at present :(

According to a press release from Free Software Foundation France, the French government is on the point of banning free software.

The SugarCRM team announce that v4 beta of the Open Source CRM is now available for download.

I don't care how much money a company spends on marketing. If their service is rubbish it will not help.

It's nice to see local government making practical use of technology. Cllr Damien Blake is recommending that people check the Donegal electoral register directly online. Are they the only local authority to have put the register online? Seemingly not, but it's not the sort of thing that seems to be publicised.. I usually get these really annoying letters through my letterbox expecting me to jump through hoops instead of offering me a simple solution .. EDIT: Just checked the entry for me and submitted an update request as they had spelt my first name incorrectly. Only question now is - will I ever get an acknowledgement of the update ?....