Eircom's NGX and IGoPeople
I had a visit last week to
Eircom's bright and shiny new HQ near Heuston Station in Dublin. Of particular interest is their new demo centre dubbed NGX. I attach some pictures taken with my iphone.
Related to this: I understand from that Campbell Scott (former head of Products and Services at O2) has left his role as Head of Consumer Products in Eircom to set up an interesting start up
IGoPeople. This is a social networking site that enables consumers and brands to interact. I believe it is very close to launch and you can
sign up for the beta.
What's the connection? Campbell contributed to the design of NGX during his time at Eircom.
Labels: Eircom NGX igopeople
Trinity Research and Innovation ICT OpenDemo
I have been busy organising, with Tara Tracey (Industrial Liaison Manager at TCD), a
Open Demonstration of ICT technologies available for Commercialisation.
We will be showcasing the latest exciting technologies developed by TCD researchers in Information Technology. The format will be open demos, so no more Death by powerpoint but rather hands on demos located in the rather cool and funky Science Gallery with refreshments served to fuel the interaction. I took the picture above with my iphone.
Examples of the types of technologies to be shown include:
* web 2.0 animation tool
* automatic image annotation through cross modal learning
* software defined radio toolkit for next generation cognitive radio networks
* hand wash monitoring device for hospitals and food industry
* p2p video streaming on t'interweb
* video based adaptive e-learning
* token based payments system for VOIP on WiFi
* building a wholesale hosting exchange
* spam prevention through email microcharging
* game authoring tool for mental health therapies
* sentiment index for financial markets
* p2p web search
* immersive experiential selling tool
and lots more.....
To register to attend please go to the registration page on the site.
Searchme
Checkout
www.searchme.com. Nice interactive visual search. wher you can scroll through thumbnails (well let's call then "hands" as bigger than "thumbnails") of the sites like the pages of a book.
On subject of search we all saw in ireland much hype about the "Irish" challenger to google
cuil.com. Not so cuil I am afraid as the search results are dismally poor when compared to Google. Try seraching fro soemthing obscurish or google-whackish and compare. I tried searching for "xeritel" par example.
Another thing: why is black the new white when it comes to search backgrounds?
Stephen Barrett's teanm here in Trinity College have devloped some very interesting next generation P2P search technology. Watch this space
Labels: searchme cuil
Nokia Mosh - worth a try
Nokia's
Mosh multimedia community hasn't been a huge success. How do I know this ? well for one the site boldly displays number of registered users - I believe I was member number 62,250. Also the fact they don't use www.mosh.com but the rather more cumbersome http://mosh.nokia.com doesn't help either.
Anyway the idea is great - a community driven mobile and fixed portal for mobile content
and applications. I downloaded the (free!) client and after playing around with it for a while it is the applications section that really seem interesting. Mosh is a great source of of freeware for your mobile. My one grip with the UI is that you can't search by device so it is a bit hit and miss.
Mobile firefox on the way
As expected for a while: Mozilla have finally
announced that a mobile version of Firefox is on the way.
I have been onsite at Vodafone Ireland for last 6 months
It's been quite a while since my last post. Reason being I am working onsite at Vodafone Ireland for last 6 months as independent IT consultant. Very interesting seeing things from the buy side after several years designing and building mobile applications that you think a MNO *should* need.
I can't say too much about what I am doing working in Vodafone. Basically working on the Technology Operations side in the areas of channel management including: web, retail stores and call centre.
Anyway I have been busy but I hope to make a few more posts in the near future.
The open source handset is here ... almost
Thanks to Jan-san from
Mobiliser for telling me about the forthcoming open source handset from the
Openmoko project. The device as shown below is being manufactured in Taiwan and will cost around USD350. To quote from Jan-san's
blog The "OpenMoko really is about Free Software from the bottom to the top of the software stack (no binary-only kernel modules, no binary-only GSM communication libraries, no proprietary libraries, no pre-installed proprietary userspace applications)".
So essentially it is a linux based 2.5G phone where developers can start to develop innovative apps that can utilise freely at will any of the phone's functionality. Contrast this to the closed approach from Herr Jobs and his nouvelle iPhone.
A question will this handset have a valid IMEI that will allow it to register on a GSM network?
Innovative Mobile Ordering and Payment System
I have being working on a project to provide the IT systems to an innovative startup here in Dublin called
NextDayNow.
So what's so unique about this venture? You order via text (actually a free text number 50015) from a catalogue based in your local convenience store (see images below from the "Londis" store in Fairview, Dublin). You then pay at the convenience store counter and receive a conventional mobile phone top up voucher. Once you text the voucher code back to
NextDayNow the the goods then arrive in the store the nextday. Simple!
Advantages:
- No Credit card required (Credit Card penetration in Ireland is remarkably low especially amongst younger people 18-25)
- Convenience Store can provide a wide range of goods that it would normally not make sense to keep in stock such as MP3 players, game consoles/software , inkjet cartridges etc.
- Perhaps most important of all - Trust. Punters tend to trust their local convenience store more than a website, as it is a concrete building with real people they can talk to at anytime.
The systems has been live now for several weeks and the take up has been great with many people buying purchasing high ticket items such as Sony PSPs etc.
If you live in Dublin check it out in the following locations:
XL Stop & Shop - Clontarf
Spar - Tonlegee Road
The Emerald - Donabate
Londis - Fairview
Village Shop - Malahide
Spar - Hilltop SC, Raheny
Rickard's - Rush
Londis - Rush
Spar - Swords Manor
many new locations coming on stream including stores in counties Louth and Meath.
