Archive for February, 2007

Are Magnet moving out of the consumer broadband market?

Thursday, February 8th, 2007

Edit: Suspicion confirmed.

IrelandOffline got a few calls/emails in the past while from individuals asking why Magnet are not taking their orders. It isn’t like they are overcapacity in the exchanges they are in. Now after the articles in SiliconRepublic and ENN yesterday, a careful reading might suggest they are just going to sell to business customers.

This bit is interesting:

He said that the company is committed to offering services to businesses and consumers exclusively on a local loop unbundling (LLU) basis and would not be content with reselling broadband for the incumbent, which he likened to selling customers “stale old chips in a new bag�.

Netsource is part of Magnet now and that’s exactly what they do.

Then there’s this:

“We will do this through focusing on our original fibre-to-the-home strategy but also on quality business broadband products. We are going to take all our resources and focus them on those two areas,� Kennedy said.

So fibre to the home in Magnet controlled housing states and apartment complexes and business broadband via LLU? I really am not seeing anything that actually mentions their plans for the consumers using their non-fibre assets.

Fluffy Links – February 8th 2007

Thursday, February 8th, 2007

Having a Bebo profile is fine but do the politicians have to spam you on it?

Conor O’Neill has these “notions”. 🙂

Passion for the work, not the company.

How to be cheap.

Via PlasticBag.org is IMfied. Tried it and seems interesting enough. Add them to GMail chat or MSN or AIM and you can use the service to set up reminders and create ToDo lists.

Skype accesses your BIOS details? Whyyyy?

A snake massage? Arghh.

Text is linear. This has been all over the shop (web) the past few days. Finally got round to seeing it. Great video but I think it would have had less of an impact if the music wasn’t there. Very positive music pushing you to the ending.

I call bullshit on ComReg (As usual)

Wednesday, February 7th, 2007

The poodle released figures for calls to their consumerline service.

October to December 2006 – 5200 calls.
For July to September 2006 – 4,600 calls
For April to June 2006 – 4,200 calls
For January – March 2006 – 4,000 calls

Now from October to December was the time when 45,000 people were terminated from Smart and there was a holy outcry from all corners of the Island. Yet there was an extra 600 calls? But looking at the growth rate, it seems that 5000 calls would have been expected too. Fishy fishy.

I tried to do an FOI before on the stats for the ComReg consumerline. They told me they did not have a system in place to actually calculate the calls and log them properly. Perhaps that has since changed, but given the predeliction for the regulator to lie consistently in their reports, I don’t trust these stats and one would have thought (even with the lines being dead) that more than 200 people would have phoned into ComReg and expressed their pissed-offness.

Food in work on Valentine’s day

Wednesday, February 7th, 2007

Almost as good as the Google canteen, this is what we have for Valentine’s day

Freshly steamed asparagus , citrus & Chive Crème Fraiche € 2.60
Baked Chicken Supreme Stuffed With a Prawn Mousse , Served on a Bed of fresh Spinach , baby Potatoes & a Crayfish Veloute € 3.80
Trio of Chocolate Mousse € 3.50

Fluffy Links – February 7th 2007

Wednesday, February 7th, 2007

Breastfeeding site gets legal letters over a pretty tame t-shirt. Fair enough. I just love the name of the site though. “The Lactivist”.

Seems printers were printing secret codes on our documents so the spooks could monitor us.

Helpful sign for prostitutes.

You are bidding on a mistake.

Gay Straight Guys

The Chicken Fight is back! (thanks Andrew)

Drug Test Dail Eireann – Stick the button on your blog

Tuesday, February 6th, 2007

Drug Test the Dail Get your button for your blog now if you want to get your TDs and Senators to submit themselves to a drugs test. Buttons in many sizes available from Bifsniff.com. The EPS source is also available in case anyone wants to make stickers and t-shirts.

Too many BarCamps spoil the broth?

Tuesday, February 6th, 2007

Cork. May

Dublin. When?

Galway. July 07/07/07

Ideally I’ve love to see BarCamps move away from just general tech and focus on a specific topic. Such as BarCamp Bank:

BarCampBank is a community of people interested in disruptive innovations in the world of banking and finance

Rashomon available for free

Tuesday, February 6th, 2007

Via We Make Money Not Art:

Rashomon is out of copyright so you can watch it online:

Shouldersurf with me

Tuesday, February 6th, 2007

Seems there’s some mini-competition to add as many subscriptions as you can to your feed before the awards.

Don’t forget you can get email subscriptions or RSS/feed subscriptions to this blog too. This should give you a glimpse into my thoughts and what I am looking at. But to expand on that you can always view my public bookmarks here and you can view my LinkedIN (Networking) profile here.

Here too is the feed for the Irish Blog Awards.

Fluffy Links – February 6th 2007

Tuesday, February 6th, 2007

Gamma Goblin found a Garda fetish site. Haha!

Via Iain Dale is news that the Tories will scrap ID Cards, if elected. But replace with what?

Seems many French are moving out of France to enjoy better working and living conditions elsewhere.

Squirrels! WTF.

Telecommuting isn’t working in our highly connected world because we are too connected. Very good points I had not considered. We interact with more and more people every year thanks to tech so it makes sense that a lot of the work we do now is maintaining these relationships.

Origami remote control. Cute but a bitch to click through channels quickly, I bet.

And yet another web project from Rob.

Treasa recommends Gareth Pearson.

Gay B&B owners in the UK are against new anti-discrimination laws which would oblige them to offer their rooms to straight couples. Oh my. Reminds me of the gay club in Cork that turns you away for being straight or looking straight. I know a girl that had to “dress more lesbian” if she was to get in. Charming.

Ice ice baby. Scary ice.

Stephen Colbert – The Most Poetic Fucking Thing I’ve Ever Heard