Category: Technology

RTE are reporting that MindLeaders.com, a US-based e-learning company has been snapped up by Thirdforce, based in Blackrock, Dublin (with locations in the UK, Australia and New Zealand as well).

The deal is worth US$9m in cash with a further US$9m in shares as the story goes.

In a statement to the Irish Stock Exchange this morning, Thirdforce said the consideration comprises of $9 million in cash and $9 million by the issue of new ordinary shares in the merged company. The company also intends to raise up to €13m through a share placing at a price per share of €0.19, with the proceeds of this placing used to fund the acquisition.

What or who are MindLeaders.com?

MindLeaders is an employee and individual performance-improvement company with nearly 25 years of experience in the technology-based, self-paced training field. We provide personalized learning that supports organizational success. Our e-learning tools cover topics ranging from networking in an enterprise environment to personal use of the pc and from healthcare privacy issues to business skills.

They also provide over 2,000 online training courses online. Overall it looks like a good buy for company who have had some ups and downs in the past year or so.

I took a delivery of a Linksys WRT54GS router just before the weekend which meant I could finally connect up all the computers / laptops / consoles in the house to the web. Seen as I’ve do most of my work at home to one side of the bedroom it also meant that in-between sites or updates to different projects I could start dabbling more in Xbox live (mcguireken if anyone is interested).

I’ve been reading of Conor O’Neill’s tweets on modding an original xbox and while I never got around to putting the Aladin mod chip I bought for my own original Xbox (traded in against the 360), I have been giving thought to modding the 360 and doing a little more with the console.

Until I read that they’ve banned modified consoles off Xbox Live. Isn’t half the fun of an Xbox the fact that you can modify them? Replace the dashboard, upgrade the hard drive, add some water-cooling, completely ‘geek it out’? I don’t see how extra disk space or a modified dashboard is going to corrupt your online play, so why ban people willing to try it?

Anyone using a modded Xbox (180 or 360) online or see a way around it?

Update: Engadget has screens from the story from before the weekend.

This one first caught my eye late in 2005 and it has taken until now to get it off the ground but from this weekend onwards you’ll be able to place pre-orders for the Optimus Keyboard. 200 keyboards are expected by the beginning of December this year with a further 200 by the end of the month with 400 going into production in January of next year.

Word has it that the keyboard itself is going for over US$1,500 so it might be a little out of reach just now. By a little I mean f’n loads.

They might not want to bend over for Viacom, but in light of recent trouble with the Thai government or for a wanting of some peace surround recent YouTube law suits, Google have decided to ‘draw the line‘ over 12 videos that appeared on YouTube deemed insulting to the King of Thailand or the Thai government.

Four of the videos in question were pulled in breach of Thai law, six were removed by their previous uploaders while two of the videos remain on YouTube, Google deeming they haven’t broken the law.

Not a bit pointless seen as YouTube is already unavailable in Thailand and Google and some of the major players are already heavily censored in the far east? Think the Irish government would kick up a storm about videos like this, or this?

Must be a busy weekend in Google land, you can imagine the fun their lawyers have been having, what with the Premier League slapping them with a class action suit in the US, something which will likely spell the end of premier league highlights on YouTube.

The latest action against “deliberate” and “rampant” copyright infringement by YouTube was filed on May 4, 2007, by the Football Association Premier League Limited (the “Premier League”) and Bourne Co. (“Bourne”) to:

The Premier League describes itself as the top division of English soccer that is viewed by audiences in over 200 countries worldwide and estimated at 2.59 billion people. Bourne describes itself as one of the leading independent publishers or music in the United States with notable classics “Let’s Fall in Love” and “Smile.”

I hold an e-season ticket for LiverpoolFC.tv, something I enjoy as I get access to all the Liverpool highlights, goals etc. throughout the season but I’m not going to fork out 60 quid for every Premier League club each season to get highlights, my alternative as a resource therefore to look them up on YouTube – whether coming from BBC, Sky, French football networks, Chinese football networks or otherwise. But, given that YouTube make money from the videos thanks to the new bond with Google, the Premier League have become a camp of very unhappy bunnies and have challenged YouTube to a battle in court. Interesting days ahead on this story.

Listening to Today FM on the way to work this morning and they’ve got a pretty good competition going if you’ve got kids at primary school level. The daily winner gets themselves a nice new Dell Inspiron laptop (missed the model number), while the runner up gets an iPod Nano. Not a bad ole deal. Any doting dads that fancy a new laptop (I might suggest you ask for an XP laptop instead of a Vista one – pffft) might want to have a listen to the radio this week on Today FM after the 8 o’clock news and sport (morning) for the details.

I haven’t spotted any details on their site so keep an ear to the Ian Dempsey breakfast show in the morning…

Always good to see people who don’t know what ‘give up’ means and I reckon Pat Phelan is certainly one of those. That, or its all those crates of Red Bull have gone to your head, but judging by Pat’s latest blog post it should only be a matter of days before AllFreeCalls.net resurfaces out of the murky depths of the deadpool. I’ve used AllFreeCalls.ie for calls to the States and was pleased with the pure ease of the service so hopefully the .net edition can get its feet back on terra firma before too long.

I’ve always had a desire to go mad on the house technology wise – computer in every room, server in the garage downloading new music and movie clips daily, VOIP phones for the house, an RFID reader in the fridge to read RFID tags instead of barcodes to let me know when to shop (lazy but interesting if I can telnet into my fridge from work to see what was available for dinner…).

BUT!

All of these things cost money and you can’t have everything you want at once. I should be picking up a new TV this coming Friday, finally replacing the broken Sony widescreen thats been in the corner for the bones of the last three years. What I wouldn’t mind getting in addition to it is Apple TV.

Apple TV launched yesterday, pretty much as a set-top box allowing you to send your movies, music, podcasts etc. via wifi to the included 40gb hard drive. Take one teeny-tiny remote control, hook Apple TV up to your own TV and you’ve got a short and sweet entertainment system without the fuss of masses of cables.

You are going to need a widescreen TV and a copy of iTunes would be handy too – Apple TV syncs itself with every iTunes update so as soon as you buy something through iTunes it can be picked up at the tv. The system also works the other way, tell Apple TV to go off and download a particular movie, track or clip from the iTunes store and away you go…

After watching in awe of the clips belting out full screen on John’s iMac yesterday, I think the US$299 price tag is paltry. Of course in typical bloody fashion, a $299 price tag in the US means a €299 pricetag on European soil. Still, looks to be a fantastic investment, particularly for someone who prefers TV from the computer instead of forking out for Sky Digital or another expensive monthly TV service.

Meant to post this one earlier on in the week (sorry Paul), but I got back from Sligo on Monday lunch time to find a nice surprise in the post for me. I’m no Guinness drinker by any stretch of the imagination but never let it be said that Paul B doesn’t stand by his word.

You might remember the FeedBurner madness that went on prior to the Blog Awards, divided into a few rounds the winner of the first round would get a pint courtesy of Paul. While I never got a chance to catch up with Paul at the awards (or loads of other people for that matter) I did get pint in the post, so cheers for that one Paul.

Hopefully next time it will be a cold pint of Heineken from a glass 🙂

Seriously – does anyone actually think the price tag for launch is worth the money for the Sony Playstation 3? Picked up an email this afternoon from Play.com offering this particular package (not an affiliate link) which clocks in at over 800 quid. Speaking to someone in Xtravision during the week, they’re not allowed (seemingly) to sell the console on its own and will only be offering bundle deals for the first few months.

A console with the 60gb HD, 3 games…. for that price.

Can they seriously justify over 800 quid? I’d get a half decent HD ready TV, Xbox 360 and something class of a decent game for that price. God help parents around confirmation and communion time I tell ya….

By the way – it’s just over a week to the release date…

So, Eircom, and presumably (I’m presuming), Meteor as the mobile arm of Eircom, have been granted the country’s 4th 3G license – the one that was supposed to be taken by Smart Telecom before they went belly-up big style.

Comreg confirmed the deal is worth €44m up front with the remainder spread over the next fifteen years, provided of course that Eircom meet a few targets including 33% demographic coverage by the end of next year.

Guess things are on the up for Eircom. A turnaround in their developments going forward, a big push on customer services (seen as they’re always harping on about it on the radio with their new CS head guy) and all since their sale last summer. I’ve still no interest in returning to Eircom as a home phone provider, and have questioned their business broadband in the last few months (I’ve found Chorus to be more reliable) AND I’ve certainly no plans to change mobile provider – but all the same – its great to see the introduction of more competition.

It was around this time last week that I was disappointed with the Skype video call quality in a KKM online meet but tonight it was the turn of Xbox live, yet again.

I had previously tried the whole ‘Live’ experience with a month’s free trial in January and I let it expire after playing just one or two rounds of Pro Evolution 6 online. I decided to give it another bash earlier tonight, this time testing WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2007. Now, while connections with players overseas seemed to work well enough gamewise (France, Germany, US), the audio quality and hideous latency and echoes struck again which really does hinder the in-game banter. This was noticed playing locally, moreso than across foreign waters.

Out of four local games (as in connecting to someone literally a two minute drive up the road), the first game ended in a draw and signed the other player out of Xbox Live, the second game sent him back to the menu and crashed my console, the third game experienced some mild lags in gameplay while the gameplay was fine for the fourth but for the almost complete lack of audio for conversation.

Does anyone get much enjoyment or pleasure out of Xbox Live? While it is a good service, there are some things I do like to do face to face with someone and console gaming is included in those things. I shelled out 20 quid to renew the subscription earlier this evening but on the back of taking a while to get started, battling through the incessant ‘button bashers’ I’d question whether I’ll do it again in three months, or even get the full use out of the 20 quid.

Mind you, you could have sold a house full of tickets for the final match we had when it finally took off. I’d consider myself a wrestling fan, more along the lines of the late 80s, early 90s before TV really took over but when myself and this particular player get together you can be promised an electric game. Single match clock counter ran to 33 minutes before we finally got a winner but after that I was done.

I can tolerate a small lag in a network game when played online (you would be used to it after years of Championship Manager and Football Manager) but it is the audio part that really annoyed me. In the end I resorted to the mobile phone as I at least knew the phone would carry a conversation. Maybe its just the game in particular, maybe its just me but I’ll give it one more go during the week. Bad enough that the games cost an arm and a leg and you still have to pay up to sixty quid a year for access to the online gaming environment but its worse still when the games lag (even on a 3mb connection) and the audio is unbearable.

Any Chorus 360 gamers around or NTL 360 gamers around with any tips?

Simple as that. Needed to make a few calls to companies in the US this afternoon, said I’d give All Free Calls a whirl and try save a few pennies. Rang the 1890 number on the landline and within a half minute was connected through the operator the first company of the US.

Now, that particular company could learn a thing from All Free Calls. You ring a number, you get a simple instruction in 4-5 seconds and away you go. You ring the US, direct to a technical department, you’re bombarded with sales adverts for things you’re looking for support on – not needing to buy again – and so spend a few minutes before actually starting to navigate through the menu.

If it has saved me a few pennies, I give it a thumbs up. Purely for efficiency and ease of use if not just for the fact that it works, exactly like it says on the tin.

Almost forgot I’d give this one a mention by SkyCon kicks off today in Limerick. The conference is being hosted by Skynet, UL’s comp soc as part of its 15th birthday celebrations and runs today, tomorrow and Sunday. Two familiar names I see on the list of speakers include Michele Neylon and TJ McIntyre but there’s a host of techie speakers there for the weekend’s enjoyment. There’s also a birthday banquet kicking off in a few hours… full details of the programme of events here.

3 Ireland today announced that they’ve beaten Comreg’s deadline of 2008 to provide at least 85% population coverage for their 3G network a whole year early, great news for the latest comer to the Irish mobile market.

3 are currently delivering mobile broadband speeds of around 3.6mb a second, the fastest on the Irish market.

67% of the current smartphone market is being driven by Symbian in terms of software, with 50% of Symbian driven handsets running on Nokia handsets. Not only that, but over 64,000,000 smartphone handsets shipped in 2006. Nice run with the stats!

Check it out.

Here’s one particular service I’d be interested in if I was a Vodafone customer – the mobile operator are about to launch a specially tailored eBay site for their customers.

3 already offer an eBay setup as part of their X-Series and Vodafone are about to join in the game, initially starting in Italy before moving more European-wide.

Been a good week for Vodafone after earlier securing a deal with News Corp to integrate MySpace with their new line of mobile handsets.

Anything Apple can do Microsoft want to do better. Notice, I said want to do – not can do. Via MobileCrunch comes news that potentially, the Zune might be heading down that phone route as well….

Sounds impressive I tell thee.

The latest in the line of ventures from Pat Phelan hits the public today, AllFreeCalls.ie having launched with the hope of ending the rip-off of Ireland’s telecoms providers.

Great to have the Irish blogging community on that one. I’ve already moved on to my second hand to count the blogs covering the launch today.

How does it work?

…once you phone our access number, the remainder of the international call is free when you have a telecom package otherwise you still only pay the local or national rate which can be as much as 92% cheaper than dialling direct…

More at Roam4Free…

Nokia have unveiled a new mapping service, allowing free use of “smart2go” mapping and routing services.

The platform contains more than 15 million “points of interest,” including sights, restaurants and accommodations around them. Customers can select locations and send them through multimedia message, Bluetooth wireless technology, infrared or e-mail.

It’s said to be good for 150 countries, if I can see the Irish one and it turns out to be decent, I’d be pretty happy. Don’t think I’ll be going back to Windows Mobile in a hurry tho…