Where does the time go? It’s absolutely flying by. Things are good  but I think I need a break.

Not so long ago the country was crippled by frost and ice – nobody could go anywhere.  Then the deadly ash cloud covered the country and again people were grounded & having to stay put. I’m just wondering what’s next to hit Ireland!? Dust storms? Locusts? Unlikely. They better stay away because I need a break. It’s been over 2 years since I went away for 10 days and switched off. (that means no laptop or blackberry) so it’s high time.

It’s hard to think this time last year I was UL worrying about lectures, students, papers, publishing etc. it’s now a distant memory. It was a tough decision to leave but I’m glad I did. Had I not, I’d still be in UL worrying about lectures, students, papers, publishing etc.

It’s been a terrific year for the Cauwill with things going from strength to strength. Just last week I was delighted to see two more hotels coming online and using the technology as part of their booking – it  made me smile.

The year has brought great challenges and we’ve been learning new (technical & business related) stuff  everyday. LEAP has been good too and I’m glad I did. The year has been a roller-coaster ride with lots of lows including sleepless nights, worrying, having minor-to-major panic attacks when something goes wrong, stressed to max, wondering when were  going to sign a customer, wondering if anyone would ever use the service. But of course on the flip side, the highs have been great including successfully delivery a quality product, securing and getting paid by customers,  receiving a thank-you note from users who love the service and of course let’s not forget InterTrade Ireland Seedcorn

Since we’ve won it’s been really busy.. for sure we’ve had some knock-backs but all-in-all it’s been positive.  You need to be able to take the highs with the lows in this game.

For those entering, I’ll be posting a blog on our experience last year, what we included in the business plan & presentation.

Anyway.. that’s for a little later in the meantime I need recommendations for a vacation! Answers on a postcard please

Had loads of fun getting Nokia Maps on my n82. I had an original version and automatic updates would constantly give the error

Unable to Install. Component built in.

Grrr…

so after much reading around I’ve put the following together..  kudos to http://betalabs.nokia.com

DISCLAIMER:

The following will reset everything (EVERYTHING!!) and you will need to re-install apps again (ovi will help !). The following will  install Maps 3 and restore your contacts.

1. Sync contact list with Ovi
2. If you want – Back-up your memory card but exclude the Cities folder and qf file
3. Hard reset  - Enter  *#7370# on the standby screen (This could take up to 6 minutes to reset.. white screen for quite a bit.. be brave.. don’t remove the battery!)
4. Format memory card (you can do this via Tools>Utilities>Memory.. Options Format Card). Buhbye memory card.. THIS WILL WIPE EVERYTHING!

5. Get operator settings for network connectivity (02 will send them OTA to open use code is 1234) 
6. Open Maps and exit
7. Connect phone again via USB and Run Maps Updater. Update and wait for licence and voice navigation 
8. Open Maps after it’s updated. Make sure the application does open and it does the removal of old maps (which was created by step 6)
9. If Maps opens but shutdown by itself, remove memory card and open maps without memory card.
Then delete the cities and qf files using a PC. Put memory card back in and reopen maps.
10. Synch with OVI for contacts again 
11. Reinstall any application and settings you have previously
12. Download new maps..

Enjoy.

The blurb : With Voddler you can watch movies and TV shows the way you want, anytime. Voddler is easy, legal and available around the clock ..

Before I could it to work I had to configure the firewall correctly to allow inbound/outbound permissions but still it didn’t pass the startup test completely. It worked fine though.  The UI is a bit clunky but once you get the hang of it ..it’s fine. Enter and ESC with the nav keys pretty much do everything. You can see the UI designers have TVs in mind.. everything is BIG ! I kinda like it!

Because Voddler originates from Sweden  subtitles are on by default. You can turn them off in the settings.

The video quality of the movies is excellent as is the sound quality however the movie selection is s a bit limited at the moment but still I’d happily watch most of the movies currently listed.  Voddler also has TV series listed, I haven’t investigated them too much right now but from the first glance they looked to be a good mix of stuff.

The moves are listed as FREE and then there is a Premium section… as you would expect.

Before the movie starts you get to watch some advertisements, which is fine and understandable.  I haven’t watched a movie in it’s entirety to see if advertisements occur in the middle of it. If you exit a movie and come back in – it picks up where you left off (again with a few advertisements prior to it).

Overall – I like it! 8/10

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..  so I purchased spotify premium. Spotify Premium, like the free version, is awesome. So I’m thinking – “hey, let’s download Spotify to the  iPod touch and connect this to my 1930′s McMichael radio ” .. but alas not possible.  Is it because of connection problems I hear you ask? No the radio has a gramophone input I’ve re-wired for 3mm audio jack . Spotify, albeit listed in App Store, isn’t available in Ireland.. why oh why are you trying to thwart me!?

Anyone got a workaround to achieve the following.. but in Ireland?

Gmail is great. I love it. Use it all the time but one of the really annoying things about Gmail was the ‘On the behalf of’ message that would appear in some email clients, MS Outlook,  if I sent a message from a non-gmail account via Gmail. It looks a little unprofessional.

That in theory has been resolved with the new Settings to nominate you smtp server to send mail out other than Gmails smtp.

Finally says he! But Houston we have a problem. TLS is not supported.. so back to square one. Nice but no cigar Google! Can we now have the option to turn off TLS ??

What’s BerryBuzz?

It’s a tiny piece of software for BlackBerry phones that lights up the LED to notify you’ve got email.. so what’s the big deal? well BerryBuzz allows you to assign colours to the various email accounts. For example one email account could be set to green, another cyan, another orange, another blue and so on. You can also change the default colour for phone calls.

So at work/home I turn off all email programs (postbox mainly) and when the BlackBerry Lights up – a quick glance and I can determine whether I should check or not.. i.e. emails have been priortised. I’m sure you can do it with other (windows) programs but hey BerryBuzz does it so well.

If you decide to use different fonts in presentation you have to assume  other computers won’t have them installed.. so embed them.
Here is the HowTo:

1. Click the Office Button
2. Click Word/PowerPoint Options (bottom of the menu)
3. Click the Save feature at the left pane
4. Under the Preserve fidelity when sharing this document section
5. Check Embed fonts in file and Embed only the characters used in the document options
6. Click OK
7. Save the documen

Well today was first day of LEAP.. 14 new companies walked into the boardroom of  EAC in LIT at 9am this morning and we started our adventure. It was great to see quite a few of the STARTERS on LEAP and of course it was good to meet  some new faces.  As I left, I wondered  – where will we be in 12 months? What state of mind will be in? What will the be the state of our companies?  Will we have customers? Will we be standing on our own, or will we have created partnerships and be driving to the next level? Who knows.. but one thing for certain the next 12 months will be filled with  lots of highs and lows.  The road will be rocky that’s for sure but  I’m hoping to balance out the high with the lows  on all fronts. Of course there will be time for coffee to discuss the rocky road

I’m giving a talk at 3dcamp entitled “The Consequences of Locating Stuff”

I see Location Based Services today represent only the beginning of a series of technological innovations that can potentially impact society in many ways at various scales, ranging from new modes of business operations to the possible invasion of personal privacy.

That’s the talk at a very high level – come along and sign up to attend 3dcamp in University of Limerick

When: Saturday 6th June 2009

Where: Engineering Research Building, University of Limerick

Start & Finish: 10am start, 5pm’ish finish

Topics

• virtual worlds (Second Life, the Metaverse),
• mirror worlds (Google Earth and Virtual Earth),
• 3D modelling (Blender, Sketchup),
• mapping mashups, GPS,
• Location based Services (LBSs),
• haptics and augmented toys (eg. Wiimote hacks),
• ambient intelligence,
• interactive art installations
• …and all things 3D.

Might be a bit late – but the Digital Media Forum is meeting in Limerick Tonight .. 7pm Absolute Hotel

The Digital Island Meetups are networking events for companies in the Digital Media Sector and investors, service providers and customers. They are places where the online connections are turned into real faces and real business opportunities. Digital Island Meetups are free thanks to InterTradeIreland and our other sponsors. Come along, network and meet people

Advanced notice on a barcamp event. : 3Dcamp is back -  6th of June 2009. Pencil it into your Diary/Outlook/Google calendar

3Dcamp will focus on:

• virtual worlds (Second Life, the Metaverse),
• mirror worlds (Google Earth and Virtual Earth),
• 3D modelling (Blender, Sketchup),
• mapping mashups, GPS,
• location based services (LBSs),
• haptics, augmented toys (eg. Wiimote hacks, Nabaztag),
• ambient intelligence,
• interactive art installations
• …and all things 3D.

more info will follow…