If you’ve not booked your ticket to the Digital Festival that’s on in Dublin on February 24th then perhaps this discount that they sent on might entice you.
The discount code is BFSDMULL which brings the ticket price down to €275+VAT @ 21%. So that’s 100 euros off. I’ll be availing of that myself. Some people I greatly respect and admire will be speaking.
As the current financial crisis demonstrates, many people are bad at thinking about risk. Expert gamblers, however, seem to be an exception. They are less prone to the cognitive biases that affect most of us and as a result, they can think about risk more clearly.
In the next lecture of the 2010 College of Science, Engineering and Food Science (SEFS) Public Lecture Series at UCC, Dr Dylan Evans will present his initial findings from recent interviews conducted with expert gamblers and outline some ways for thinking more wisely about risky choices.
The lecture titled: “Risk Intelligence” – How expert gamblers can teach us all to make better decisions” will be delivered on Wednesday, February 10th at 8pm in Boole IV Lecture Theatre.
Dr Dylan Evans is Lecturer in Behavioural Science in the School of Medicine at UCC. He is the author of several popular science books, including Emotion: The Science of Sentiment (Oxford University Press, 2001) and Placebo: The Belief Effect (Harper Collins, 2003) and writes regularly for The Guardian. He is a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association, and a Member of the British Fulbright Scholars Association.
Slide twenty five caught my attention. Online search engines such as Google and free content sources such as Wikipedia are now as trusted as TV news coverage and articles in national newspapers in Ireland.
Gathering of Twitter users to meet up with Shel Israel on Tuesday, February 23, 2010, 7:00pm Berkeley Court Hotel, Dublin.
Twebt (twitter event, blind tasting) is a wine tasting on twitter. Watched it happen on Twitter last night amongst the Irish winerati. Lovely idea. More details from Brian on it.
Already an iPad fund in the UK. Would love to see an Irish iPad app fund for educational apps.
An Irishman with an odd accent tells us how to live on no money at all.
Very interesting take on domain names and jurisdictions. Kentucky trying to shut down a gambling website that hosts in the UK and registered the domain with a UK company.
It starts at 2pm in Dublin City Centre.
What you need is a phone with web access, a team and knowledge or access to knowledge.
Cash prize for the winners too. Full details of what will be asked of you will be on the Twitter account.
Update, these were the clues:
Where is Suzanne walking? Frankly I haven’t a rashers. She’s awfully
good looking though.
Near broken spears and swans in flight we saw a vision. We were tied
up all winter.
Where Moore met Parnell sounds like under a little sign you go
downstairs to have a bite with a Polski wuj.
Harry jigs on, mixed up. He brought water into town but died in bath.
Where saol’s for sale two dogs show the way.
What will Damien give me, what does he have in store?
It’s a stitch up! There’s a singer on top of my brother, on Charles
Chetwynd. I’m beside myself with worry.
Shake up a regal she moth then have a hot one, you’re nearly there.
That new device from Apple (avoiding putting it in the blog post title or body to avoid Googler traffic during the hype cycle) is going to make using the web easy for people who up to know found using a mouse, keyboard and a browser a tad intimidating. Webstats show that iPod Touch traffic has been quite strong and growing and this larger version is going to bring a whole new demographic online who might never use such an onbnoxious pointing device. A device without a “real” OS so no need to install patches, no need to shut down properly, no need to figure out all the shite UI gotchas and so on. A thin piece of glass that we touch and the full blown web and all the data she carries.
I’m sure it’s killing those that want the web acessible only via oily machines and those that somehow “deserve” the web but tough. The majority of people don’t give a shit that you can’t modify the device or Jobs owns their functionality. The same way most people don’t add a big fuckoff exhaust and go faster stripes to their car. Apple’s obsessive paranoia about control gives us devices like the iPhone and the iPad and the proponents of openness give us … the Nexus Phone two years later and One Laptop Per Child. Out of the box, Apple devices work for the greatest number. That really must take the power away from those that are called upon by the family to sort a driver for some device.
A tweet that sums up the massive potential for the device is this:
I’ve been pretty vocal about my dislike towards the iPad but I still want one. Imagine – not having to carry anything to class but a slate!
iPhones and iPod Touches are already being bought en-masse by educational institutions. Bye bye school labs and awkward desk setups. Schoolbooks and courseware direct to the device. Art galleries use iPod Touches for multimedia tours. Tate Modern has a great one. Apple from feedback knew the screen on the touch was an issue for lots of further uses of the device so this new device will fill a gap. It will probably impact on the Touch. Apple has shifted 20 million iPod Touches so far.
So, democratisation of the web. Is it open platforms that need an engineer or is it easiest route to get to the web, even if in a “closed” device?
