Ken McGuire

Tag: irish

  • The Adventure of The Hidden Microfilm

    Saturday night was spent in the company of the Vultures cast and crew in Kilkenny as a select bunch of us hit one of Kilkenny’s taverns for the premiere of the latest installment of the Vultures webcom, The Adventure of The Hidden Microfilm. Watch it above via Blip.tv or check out VulturesPI.com.

    The Pinkertons are closing in on the increasingly frazzled and paranoid detectives of V.P.I. when a mysterious fugitive shows up on their door. The fugitive has stolen a microfilm from the Pinkertons. This fugitive is in possession of a secret microfilm belonging to the rival Pinkerton agency. Except he doesn’t know exactly where he put it. Although he suspects it might be inside him. And it could be a floppy disk or a USB key either. He’s really not sure. Can V.P.I. strike a blow to the Pinkertons before they’ve even opened? How do they get the microfilm from the fugitive? And really, who is this Natalie Blaise we keep hearing about?

    Vultures, written & directed by John Morton & Paddy Dunne, is the story of three private detectives who run a small scale private investigation agency in small town Ireland. The moderately successful business is called Vulture Private Investigations and specialises in dealing with divorce cases, fraud, missing persons, animals and plants and occasionally, just occasionally, they’ll be served up something that approximates a mystery.

    Ross, as director, has more here.

  • Tuesday Push: Tuesday Push

    Pushing
    Creative Commons License photo credit: Valerie Everett

    Some say you should crawl before you can walk, walk before you can run, look before you leap. On a Tuesday, it’s nice to push before you’re pushed. The Tuesday Push is a chance to shed the light on a company or service in Ireland, introducing those getting the push to the Irish blogosphere, tech readers, blog readers, tech journalists and the public at large. As the site itself says, it is “a way for the small but growing tech community in Ireland to make some noise about ourselves by picking a good example of an Irish Tech Company and highlighting their product(s) every second Tuesday”.

    While it’s nice to see companies getting “the push”, it’s nicer still when they push back. It’s all about the community involvement. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Or in this case, it’s technology startups in Ireland helping each other out. Since it’s launch last year I’ve managed to push a few of the names including Twitter Mosaic (Sxoop), DownloadMusic.ie, IGOpeople to name a few.

    One of the great things about the growing tech community in Ireland is just that, the community. The spirit is seen in blogs, comments, through Twitter, LinkedIn, referrals, BarCamps, PodCamps, BizCamps, CreativeCamps and the likes. We’re great at helping each other out, which is why Tuesday Push is a great initiative for having the community highlight the rising stars within.

    Of course, not everybody can get featured. The service in question has to be unique, has to be new, has to be different. Not sure what I mean? Check here for details.

    I’ll keep on pushing where and when I can. Maybe some day I’ll need a push with something. But I’ll keep pushing because it puts another mark on the map for Irish tech companies. And it’s not only me that’s doing it. Dozens of great posts have been written about the ten companies featured since last July, across dozens of blogs, who have hundreds of readers each… do the maths.

    Request a Tuesday Push here.

  • iPhone Announced For O2 Ireland Later This Morning

    Apple iPhoneSo O2 have confirmed that they are the exclusive Irish carriers of the Apple iPhone. This was pretty much a given considering O2 are the exclusive carriers in the UK.

    Scouting around the blogosphere this morning, Engadget are reporting that the iPhone will

    • retail at €399 inc. VAT for the 8gb model
    • retail at €499 inc. VAT for the 16gb model
    • will go public on Patrick’s weekend (launching March 14th)

    The suggested price range is quite reasonable, all things considered. It also places the phone in the immediate price bracket of the Nokia N95, the first gen of which O2 are still shipping – though recent conversations I’ve had with O2 reps and other Irish bloggers suggest the N95 8GB model’s arrival is imminent.

    I’m still set on swinging for the N95 8GB model but we’ll see what comes out of this morning’s announcements.

    Update 1: Announcement to be made at 11:15am in O2’s Dublin HQ (via Damien Mulley)

    Update 2: Pocket Lint are reporting that “Three new iPhone tariffs will be available from O2, starting at €45, all of which will include anytime minutes, texts and a 1GB data bundle.”