Damien Mulley

How many in the list has Ireland got?

HP has decided to do something about printing content from websites and blogs. At long last. They’re realised a lot of these 2.0 websites and most existing sites don’t print well and annoy the hell out of a lot of people so they’re developing plugins for blogs and websites so you can easily print pages or individual blog posts with ease. They’ve signed up BoingBoing into a beta test of this new print widget for websites. This is now the print option on BoingBoing.

People may already be familiar with their online mini-Publisher service on the main Tabblo site. Their developers toolkit for doing this kinda thing is released on June 29th and you can sign up on the site to get access to it. They’re also doing stuff so you can easily add captions to images. Seems quite basic but a great idea as it will encourage people to print off more of their work. Caption of the Day is their show site.

There will also be a plugin available for Movable Type powered blogs available on June 29th. Where’s the one for WordPress? Their own developer blog/site runs on WordPress like.

From a press release, you can see why they want to get into this game:

HP will seek to capture a significant share of the 53 trillion digital pages estimated to be printed in 2010 alone – an opportunity valued at more than $296 billion.

Content from the Internet accounts for nearly half (48 percent) of all printing done at home. Yet, many of the most popular destinations on the web – such as blogs and travel sites – have limited or non-existent printing capabilities. In an effort to broaden and improve the web-printing experience, HP is creating technologies to make it easy to print content from the Internet in a useful format.

HP also own Snapfish.com, an online photo printing service and also recently bought Logoworks so they seem to be getting into more of the content creation side of things too. Good. I think they should go into it a lot more and buy one of those online note-taking or scrap book type sites. Go to a webpage, take a snapshot, add some notes and illustrations and send to the printer. HP should turn the web into a colouring book, if you will. The tech is there, the raw materials for mashups is there and there are plenty of creatives there. Maybe the toolkit will allow people to do this?

I’ve done the various link love posts here before and I hope I’ve covered most people that stop by here, but if not, give me a shout in the comments or an email and tell me you want to be linked to.

Now, main point of business. Paige of Harrison has sent some blog love the way of some bloggers she likes. So, of the bloggers you like, how about you highlight three (or less) of em, unknowns mostly around here or to a wider audience (they don’t have to be Irish bloggers) and maybe write a bit about them and I’ll stick up your mini-reviews every afternoon til we run out of them. Terms and conditions apply. Mulley.net is a trading name for Mulley Communications and is regulated by NotThoseDumbassesInThatRegulatorHeIsAlwaysGoingOnAbout.

Sweary wants to share the link love. Get your free link from her.

Eeeek. Using Favicon to make you think you are on a safe site.

Lithuania gets 1gbps Fibre to the home.

Via Kottke:

“When there is a blackout in New York, the first articles appear in 15 minutes; we get queries in two seconds.” No matter how hard CNN or Digg or Twitter works to harness their audience to break news, hooking up Google search queries to Google News in a useful manner would likely scoop them all every time.

The Apple geeks get very geeky and fanboyish with the iPhone ads.

One way to go.

Immendorff was discovered naked having his nipples licked by a retinue of seven young filles de joie, while 11 grams of cocaine lay ready for consumption … trial the following year, Immendorff admitted cocaine possession, and having organised 27 similar orgies between February 2001 and the date of his arrest. In the light of his confession and his terminal illness, he was put on probation and heavily fined.

Via It feels very odd downloading a legal movie from a site called The Pirate Bay.

Mr. Woo Robots:

Boogie Nights – Star Wars Edition:

More on this.

Someone said it reminded them of the Brent dance:

The BBC were not impressed when someone snuck a Goatse like image past them and it was put on their TV show and on the website before the laughing started.

Image:

See the clip:

Bullshit alert. The Observer falls for the Carlow wireless town LIE.

John Ward uses a widget called plugoo so you can IM him. You don’t need to log into a website to get messages, unlike meebo.

The new iPhone ads are pure UI porn. Hubba.

I’ve joined Dopplr thanks to James. If you want an invite to the beta, then give me a shout. I may have given out about their presentation at Reboot but the product seems nice.

Classic interview with the Ocean’s 13 cast. They all seem like genuine friends.

Timmy Worstall was told the logo for the London Olympics looks like Lisa Simpson giving a blowjob. He couldn’t see it and then someone made an animation:

John Doerr: Seeking salvation and profit in greentech – A video

Sanctuary Webisode:

Dasher, a new way of interacting with a computer:

Thanks Aer Lingus. Thanks to Piaras up there in Cork Airport who left a note to keep an eye out for my bag. It arrived tonight via BMI from Birmingham. Now, why would Aer Lingus give a shit about an SAS customer, who lost his bag in Dublin, who Sky Handling Partners were mishandling and whose bag was delivered to Cork, not by them but by BMI? Makes a change that airlines and people in airlines still give a damn even when it isn’t their customer. I can be sure Ryanair wouldn’t do this and as can be seen SAS really couldn’t care less.

Day three and SAS (Scandinavian Airlines) tells me their customer support line is only open from 9am to 10am, 12pm to 2pm and 4pm to 530pm. They insist you only email them or fax them if your bag is lost cos they care that much. I think I’ll fax them a picture of this blog post. Hello you cunts, by the time you read this it will be four days of not having my bag. Sky Handling Partner says now my bag is not in Dublin and it is NOT in Birmingham but perhaps it is in Cork. No, maybe it isn’t there either they have now said. Sky Handling Partner still won’t let me talk to their supervisor because she only works during the day. Time to start registering domains…

Day three of no bag. It seems they say my bag is in Cork yet nobody in Cork Airport says it is. In their infinite fucking wisdom, yesterday my bag was in Dublin when they told me it was flown to London. From Dublin they thought the best route to Cork is to ship if via Birmingham and then Birmingham to Cork. It never got to Birmingham. They don’t know where it is. Cunts. I’ve asked to speak to a supervisor and they’re giving me the run-around.

I got cross with the man on the phone. Not many people have seen me lose it. All of Cork Airport did when I called him on my phone. My phone that is about to die because the charger for it is in my fucking missing suitcase. They tried to pass the buck to Aer Lingus who I called to and were amazingly helpful. Thanks Piaras from Aer Lingus Cork. At least he was able to figure shit out. It seems like it never went to Birmingham as it never was put into some special status that bags without traveling owners have. He thinks it is still in Dublin, the dickheads in Sky Handling Partners don’t know where it is. I don’t appreciate being constantly lied to by Sky Handling Partners and SAS are going to get the full brunt of my anger in the morning. What quality control?

So says John White of PA Consulting. Is this the same PA Consulting that are rolling out the Government ID Cards in the UK?

An opinion piece in Computers in Business this week once again harped back to the bullshit line that it is a demand issue and not an availability issue when it comes to broadband in Ireland.

There has been a fair measure of good, old-fashioned Irish begrudgery in the ongoing debate on broadband access in this country. It’s largely been a one sided blame game so far.

Actually, before IrelandOffline beat all the naysayers with the reality stick, eircom, ComReg, DCMNR and the eircom yesman that call themselves TIF were all blaming the lack of broadband on the people, saying they didn’t want it. It took a long while but now they are all seeing that the issue is about availability not demand. People rabidly want broadband, even ComReg stats show that. Chambers of Commerce of Ireland stats showed that and recent O2 surveys showed it. People want broadband and cannot get it. This is still the biggest issue. Not begrudgery, reality. I love how people try and dismiss anyone that gives out about constant bullshit as begrudgers.

This looks bad, and indeed it is bad. But what the bare statistics fail to show is how well we’ve been doing recently. Ireland had among the strongest growth rates during 2006, adding more than 5.8 subscribers per 100 inhabitants. That placed us in the top four in the OECD and on top of a doubling of penetration levels the previous year.

Here we go. ComReg logic. A growth rate of 100% when the current penetration rate is low is much much less of a jump when another country and a high penetration rate has a single figure increase in growth. 100% of 1 is nothing to 10% of 60. Basic maths.

This means that 75 per cent of the population have access and only 12.5 per cent have decided to take it up. Why aren’t the other 62.5 per cent interested? This is the most important question that we have to answer in relation to broadband penetration.

Now this is just fucking dumb. Most countries will not reach 100% penetration rate because WE ALL DON’T LIVE BY OURSELVES. How dare Mummy, and sister and brother not get broadband when Daddy already pays for a broadband connection.

Now another point. 12.5% of the population have broadband and given that just 75% can actually access broadband, it means had we 100% availability like most countries, adjusting for that means 17% penetration. Which reaches the EU average.

Among the main barriers to these people availing of broadband access are probably cost, lack of IT knowledge, access to technology and lack of relevance. In each of these areas, the government can take steps to help improve our performance.

It’s availability, it was availability and it still will be availability. But for a consultant that needs to sell crap, availability will not make one money.

The cost issue is an interesting one. You can now get pretty good broadband access for around €20 per month. This is a lot less than some people spend on text messaging but is still seen by many as too high.

€20 a month for those already paying for a phoneline. €50 a month plus install costs if you get a phoneline just so you can get broadband. Let’s be clear. This is how most of the population is able to get broadband. MOST of the population cannot get wireless broaband like the one Digiweb offers for €20 a month.

For example, a partnership between government and industry could run roadshows, visiting shopping centres and other public spaces throughout the country offering 15 minute internet classes, with an incentive of entering a prize draw on the internet.

Ooooh and we’d need consultants for that!

A grant should be introduced for purchasers of personal computers of a certain specification. The grant could only be availed of once in a three year period and would be equivalent to the Vat element of the cost of the PC.

Cos €400 for a Dell computer is way out of reach of everyone, is it? FACT: PC Penetration is in-line with many other EU countries that have a broadband penetration figure double our own.

The relevance issue could prove more difficult in that many people find their dial-up access is al l they require for their limited level of internet usage. However, if the government were to begin setting up content-rich sites for the public which required broadband access for full functionality, this too might be addressed.

That’s it! That’s how you solve the broadband crisis in Ireland. Make websites harder to download and bigger so those on dialup are even more fucking screwed. Hurt dialup users. Yeah. It’s like saying printing more books will increase the literacy rate in Ireland.

I believe that this is a fundamental requirement to getting the 100 per cent coverage that we all aspire to.

But you yourself has said it is not an availability issue, that implies not a coverage issue. Which is it?