in darkness – let there be light

Posted by Ronan on Oct 26, 2008 in innovation, random, technology | 0 comments

wow – the hour goes back and BAM it’s dark at 5.30! I cycle a lot and past experience tells me – darkness and cyclists doesn’t go hand in hand. In fact cyclists and traffic, regardless of light conditions, are locked in a never ending war. Often the cyclists win the battle by scooting past traffic and jumping lights, other times traffic wins, like the occasion last Friday when a white van trying to pass a car turning right squeezes me into the curb and knocking me off.
So what can we cyclist do to be more visible? Well wearing bright luminous jackets with reflectors is a start, having lights is also a must, but there is something missing that will make drivers notice you and give you the space you have the right to occupy. I started searching around the various sites for the answer (secretly hoping not to find it). I’ve found it here at the James Dyson Award. Reactiv by an innovator Michael Chen.

The jacket uses an accelerometer that senses movement to change the colour of the LEDs in the back from green (accelerating) to red (braking). It has amber LEDs in the arms which are activated by a tilt switch behind the elbow. These light up when the arm is lifted, indicating the cyclist is about to turn.

It should be for sale by Christmas .. if you come across it – please let me know!

EnterpriseStart program (week 1)

Posted by Ronan on Oct 25, 2008 in startup, technology | 2 comments

Over the next 6 weeks I’m going to blog my experience of the EnterpriseSTART programme run in LIT. Well week one is over and here is a brief summary.

Donncha Hughes introduced the program, the EAC and what we should expect to have at the end of the course. After the introduction we did a short exercise – explain your idea to your neighbour and get them to share it with the group. This really makes you focus on what you have and how to communicate it effectively .. i.e. it ensures you have a good pitch that other people can understand in 30 seconds.

Jerry Moloney from Enterprise Ireland gave a talk about EI in the Shannon area and how it funds entrepreneurs – ok – so I’ve seen/heard this presentation in various forms and with having quite a bit of interaction with EI in the past year there wasn’t much new material here (for me anyway). For others I’d say it was a valuable presentation.

Our TTO kept asking us – who is your team? who would you like to have onboard? At first we thought we could do this by ourselves and dismissed the question on occasions. Over time it became clear we couldn’t do it alone and so we started to identify our weakness and find someone to fix it. Graham Royce gave a good presentation on the entrepreneur and re-iterated this sentiment with a really good example. Sir Fredrick Henry Royce. Royce was an engineer with an idea to make cars (better). He teamed up with Rolls, a guy with loads of money, and Claremont who was the business brains behind what became the luxury car manufacturer Rolls-Royce. Royce couldn’t have done it alone – he needed people around him to make his idea into a commercial one. It made me think – does the combination of money, business and engineers make a winning team ? I hope so.

The presentations from Gramham on the competitive advantage and opportunity really struck a chord, especially after a conversation I had with Shane from Mobanode (a cool company based in the Enterprise Acceleration Center) this week (more on that conversation at a later stage). Opportunity is everywhere and comes in many different guises – you just have to look and grasp it. If you take an opportunity and your fortunate to get your company up and running – maintaining advantage is a never ending process – one of many processes that entrepreneurs must do concurrently.
The day was wrapped up with an interesting case study presented by Brian Kelly from Calibration Technology.

To be honest, I was a little unsure what to expect, who I’d meet and what I’d take away from the EnterpriseStart program and yes it’s only week one but I’m looking forward to week2. The program has even turned up a couple of interesting people that could utilise/complement our technology.

Flock – What is it all about ?

Posted by Ronan on Oct 17, 2008 in web 2.0 | 0 comments

So there is yet another web browsers on the scene. Flock.

So what is it? well according to the wiki blurb  -

“Flock is a web browser built on Mozilla’s Firefox codebase that specializes in providing social networking and Web 2.0 facilities built into its user interface.  On June 16th 2008, the latest version of the browser, Flock 2 (based on Mozilla’s Firefox 3), went into open beta.“

Is it any good?  Well it’s firefox for social networks, you get all your facebook ( and every other  social network ) updates shown in a handy “people” sidetab.  You have your email setup so it’s accessible with a push of a button. You can blog directly from the browser without having to login to WordPress, Blogger etc. (in fact this blog entry came from Flocks Blog Post app). You can clip all your favourite bookmarks, get twitter updates, pownce on things, digg stuff – the list goes on and on..

Will I stay using it ? don’t think so. It’s not for me (it’s almost social network overload!!) but I am sure some people will love it!

Clever Zyliss Ad – The best a potato can get

Posted by Ronan on Oct 15, 2008 in random | 0 comments

- I almost want to buy this..  almost.

The job market

Posted by Ronan on Oct 15, 2008 in ireland, random, startup | 0 comments

- via connie

Shredder Alpha (Email Client)

Posted by Ronan on Oct 11, 2008 in technology | 0 comments

I’ve been using Shredder Alpha 2 for the past while on the desktop – the next generation of Mozilla Thunderbird. At a first glance it doesn’t have major improvements over Thunderbird 2 – however I have noticed it handles junk mail better, works much better with IMAP connections but really it’s a bit behind gmail (and Gmail Better 2).