I got a new digital TV box (Xoro DTV-M5)  which is capable of receiving Saorview channels from the ever friendly guys over at  TvTrade.ie and I have to say I’m very impressed with it.

It’s a receiver capable of  displaying HD at 1080p,  digital teletext (Mheg5), subtitles, pause &  record (you’ll need to use your own USB key), view pictures & play movies (AVI) from external storage devices.

The box construction is sturdy, not the prettiest thing you’ll ever see but is quite compact. The remote control is functional and standard compared to a lot of boxes like this. The front of the box has USB slot (for external storage devices), a LED channel display, a channel up/down and a power button.

Around the back, are the SCART & HDMI outputs which is great for old and new TV’s. (see picture for other inputs/outputs).

Setting it up was really easy – connect antenna, connect hdmi to TV and plug in. Starting the box for the first time requests you to scan for channels.  It found all the Saorview channels (Tv/Radio) in a few minutes. Just so you know - I don’t have an antenna mounted on the house so I used my trusty small whip antenna which worked just fine once it was outside the house. As you can see from the photos in the gallery the strength wasn’t that great but the quality was good and I didn’t have any glitches with the picture.

Only RTE2 is broadcast in HD at the moment and you can really noticed the difference between SD and HD.  The 7 day EPG works as you expect and it’s easy to navigate no problems here.

Plugging a USB key into the port on the front enables the PVR features, hitting pause works well and is handy if someone rings you in the middle of watching the Father Ted or something You can rewind, skip forward just like regular PVR.

The only problem I came across was with the USB key and recording. My USB key is quite old and was nearly full with about 400Mb free but it caused the box to freeze on one occasion. The remote couldn’t turn the box off so I had to unplug and restart it. I found a different key and couldn’t recreate the problem so it might have been the key.

The USB key happened to have a video file and it played just fine – the box supports a wide range of video formats: mpg, avi, vob, dat, asf, mkv, rm, wmv, tsf, and qt.

I didn’t try viewing pictures, nor did I try all the games.. only tetris but who really plays these kind of games on tv anymore? I also didn’t try the recording of programs listed in the future – when I do I’ll update the blog post.

TvTrade.ie have a real gem here with the Xoro DTV-M5. It delivers exactly what it promises and it’s a bargain with the current promotion of this new Digitial TV receiver!

The only downside of the box is that it doesn’t have a satellite FTA receiver built in – but at that price it would be impossible to squeeze it in and I can’t really complain as this box packs in so much already.

9/10

I’ve had the BlackBerry Torch for about a month now and I have to say – it’s a keeper. It’s now my main day-to-day phone. I get about 2 days between charges which is good considering the large touch screen.
The phone is in my preferred form factor: touch screen slider with a full qwerty keyboard (much like the palm pre I love so much). (9/10)
The keyboard isn’t as good as the one I’m familiar with to on the BB 8900 but still it’s a pleasure to type emails/messages on it.  (9/10).
The trackball has been replaced with a trackpad which works really well for navigation and scrolling. (9/10)

The touch screen is responsive and quick. It still doesn’t handle ‘pinch-zoom’ in the browser as well as Apple devices which is disappointing but all in all the screen is good compared to the terrible BB Surepress Storm attempt. I was expecting the resolution to be higher but it’s okays for the job. (7/10)

The call quality is very good, the headset works really well – so well that most people don’t realise I’m driving which is nice.

The phones charges off USB (most of nokia’s phone still fail here!) and nice and quickly (8/10) the camera is okay to take daytime photos. The flash isn’t great and a lot of photos I took in poorly lit areas didn’t come out too well. (7/10)

The top 3 things I like about the phone – (1) the single message inbox which shows all my emails and social network messages. (2) The universal search i.e. just start typing to find what you’re looking for (app/contact/email etc.) (3) The voice command feature is just fantastic. Spending a lot of time in the car, with a press of the button the phone asks for a command like ‘Call Ian, mobile 1′ and it will dial @ricei in and instant. The voice dialing just worked straight out of the box with no training  at all. (9/10)

Apps

The app store is okay but not great. (8/10). Apps are easily found and installed.
BlackBerry has most _but_ not all the regular apps. Here is a flavour of what I’ve installed: Facebook, Twitter, 4Sq, Opera, Rove Mobile SSH (handy for checking our cloud instance), Google Maps, Gmail, Gist, Linkedin, HulloMail, DropBox, DriveSafe.ly and QR Scanner.

I keep my phone on silent for new emails/text/SN updates etc. so I rely on the LED notification. RIM doesn’t allow you to customize it but BeBuzz is a small app that allows you to customize the LED colour to suit your needs. It’s really handy with one quick look I can see if it’s a Cauwill mail (blue),Google Mail(red), @twitter/facebook (orange), text message (green) etc.

Just a quick mention to drivesafe.ly which reads your emails and SMS out loud to you while driving makes things a lot safer. (9/10)

The native social network apps integrate nicely with your existing contacts by updating them with photo’s, email, phone numbers etc. from all the networks into one comprehensive address book. (9/10). Sweet.

BlackBerry Travel is terrific for keeping all travel related info in one place.  It automatically picks up email confirmations from hotels, airlines and creates a new ‘Trip’. It pulls information like weather etc. about your destination, who in your Linkedin network is there and things around your hotel destination. It also pulls flight information too.. just awesome!

So that’s a round up of BlackBerry apps I’ve got installed – however BlackBerry is missing some key apps like: skype, spotify, plendi, xero .. Get on it developers and get them released!!

Games
No angry birds to be honest I haven’t found any games worth playing on it. (1/10)

iGap is drawing to a conclusion, just one more session on funding which will be delivered by  Brian Caulfied @BrianCVC . Brian, who gives VC’s a good name, is one of the main organisers of iGAP along with Ray Walsh (EI) and Sarah Buckley (EI).

iGAP is a programme that is designed specifically to help early-stage internet companies to develop that clarity and to give them tools to help them to execute on the strategy they have defined.

It’s the “clarity” bit I’d like to explore a little more. At Cauwill we have a great product that works well internationally. We have (international) customers in the travel sector some of which pay, others are very slow to pay   Before embarking on iGAP we identified a few concerns with the sector which would prevent growth & scaling. iGAP  confirmed our concerns and has helped us to formulate a plan to tackle a new sector i.e. get our value prop and promise statement for the sector,  how best to approach it and the best route  to market. We had a tendency to build things first and then go  to market. iGAP helped to us to step back from the product & features and focus on a strategy before building/coding anything.

So how did iGAP change the way we do things?

I firmly believe it’s a combination of quality speakers and the format of iGAP that makes it a success. I’ll get back to the speakers in a moment but I’d like to focus on the format.

• Training – I hesitate to call it training.. it’s more than training. Speakers provide insight into their businesses, how they run things, how they set the team up and how things work in web businesses.
• War Stories – we get to hear from those ahead of us about how they got there.. and in some case what they did wrong to cause the company to fail. for example Colm Lyon of Realex Payments, Ray Nolan of Worky.com, Feargal Mooney of HostelWorld, Niall Harbison of Simply Zesty, David Lenehan of Polldaddy and others too numerous to mention here but thank you all for coming in and talking to us.
• Networking – everyone on iGAP is encouraged to network, get to know everyone one the programme and the past programme. iGAP also run several events/panels in parallel where more networking is possible. They even had the Telegraph in and several iGAP companies got profiled on it. A common thread with a lot of the speakers was that b2b business can be very personal and finding the right person is half the battle.
• Open and Sharing Environment - after ‘training’ we go to our cohort groups which is run by the facilitators. Here we openly discuss the day and discuss the ‘homework’. Companies bounce ideas off each other and a lot of good stuff comes out of the cohort meetings. We are all in the same boat so it’s easier to row together and share our pains than remain in isolation. Some of the feedback at times can be brutally honest.

I know many such management training and incubation programmes exist, we were on LEAP which was good for us at the time, but iGAP is different because it focuses specifically on the needs of internet businesses.  Over a period of seven months, six modules were led by international lean start-up and customer development experts such as Eric Ries, Scott Rafer, Paul O’Dea , Justin Knecth, Sean Ellisand Oren Michels .Over the programme they addressed issues such as lean startup theory, product market fit, monetisation strategies, internet customer acquisition, business development using APIs, etc.

Here is a quick synopsis of the content covered by the speakers

Paul O’Dea : Provided the Business battle card. This a great way to get an overview of the your business in 5 questions:

• What do you want to be famous for?
• Who are selected customers?
• Where is your measurable value?
• Why should customers choose you rather than your competitors?
• How will you get your product to market?

Eric Ries : What can I say? This guy has changed the way we do things in Cauwill. We love the lean startup theory and before we do anything we pause and think  - how can we do this the lean way? If you’re reading this – thank you so much Eric.  #leanstartup #MVP

Scott Rafer :  Scott dealt with the business models and understanding your customers sales funnel. The better you know your customer – the better chance you have in closing out a deal with them. “Startups fail because they lack customers and a profitable business model” – Steve Blank

Sean Ellis : Delivered content on Marketing and Customer Acquisition. Really enjoyed this talk. Everything in the presentation is based around the Startup growth pyramid. At the base of the pyramid is correctly finding product market fit. He provided us with a set of questions and one very tough task – asking your customers how they would feel if they could no longer use your product. It’s a horrible question because we live a world where we (startup companies) think our product is super cool and everyone should love/use it .. we just don’t want to hear potentially bad stuff from customers. You know what? This was a great (tough) task and helped us to improve our product market fit.  Do it here http://survey.io

Justin Knecht : I was too ill to attend Justin’s talk, but catching up from Ian and hearing his thoughts on the module this was also another great presentation with real insights into user centric design. I’m currently going through the slides so I’ll update this post with my thoughts at a later stage.

Oren Michels : Up there with one of the best speakers I’ve had the pleasure of listening to. This guy is all about biz dev. Very clear delivery on how to be stronger with customers and help prevent the sales funnel from filling up with ‘Barney Deals’. Oren mixes in stories from The Valley which are very entertaining! The timing of this talk was just serendipity.

iGAP has provided us a framework to structure our decisions and do things faster. It’s not rocket science but it is definitely some form of science – mixed with a bit of luck. We still have things to fix but we’re confident that with a clear focus and sticking to a good strategy we’ll be fine.

From  November, viewers who have HD, either via Freesat, Freeview, Sky or Virgin, will be able to tune in to the new, dedicated BBC One HD channel, which will simulcast with BBC One. Like its standard definition counterpart, BBC One HD will broadcast 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

It hasn’t made the regular Sky EPG so you’ll need to tune it in. It’s really easy – here’s how on a Sky HD box.

1/ With your digibox turned on, press the “Services” button

2/ Select ‘Options’  and then scroll over to  ”Add Chnls”

Set

Update: (July 2011)
Frequency: 10847
Polarisation: Vertical
Symbol: 23000 (used to be 22000).

Press the Yellow ‘Find Channels’

Select BBC 1 HD and Press ‘Select’ when complete.

You’ll now find BBC 1 HD in the ‘Other Channels’ . Just in time for Match of the Day (which is just amazing in HD!).

Part 3 of the guide covers: the Operations, the Key Risks, the Financials, the Funding and the very important Exit.

These sections really bring the plan to a close and it’s focused one major thing: Think Jerry Maguire – think “Show me the Money!”.

You need to show the money (twice).

1. Money that company will make from the product year to year
2. The amount of money the company will be turning over in 3 / 5 years

Remember you are inside the mind of an investor.. if they are going to but €MONEY into the company they will want to see a return of, say, 10 times €Money. You have to be realistic. You can’t sell an iPhone App to every owner of an iPhone. You’ll get a % (a two digit number if your lucky). Investors are very smart and will therefore spot any flaw.

The last section is “The Exit”. For us (and presumably others) this was a very short section – we clearly stated what we wanted to happen in 3 years. The investor wants to see an exit otherwise no matter how good everything is they won’t invest. Scroll down to see an answer investors like to see.

Tomorrows post will conclude the series and have a word document template with even more comment!

7    Operations

Being a software company we don’t really buy stuff in as part of the production process so there is no real supply-dependencies. This section for us was pretty short.  We do everything in house so there was major outside dependencies except for some 3rd party software.

7.1    Location

Where are the super heroes located? Store house needed?

7.2    Equipment

Shovels? Spades? Clouds?

7.3    Licensed 3rd party software

If you use other software list it here.

8    Key Risks

Spell out the risks
•    Cloning?
•    Speed to Market?
•    Funding & Finance
•    Key personnel ?
•    Scaling

Give clear statements to how these risks can be mitigated. These risks can be fixed, a lot of the time with money – so the next section and this section are closely linked.

9    Financial Plan

So you have outlined a plan showing the product, why it exists, who will buy it, how much they will pay for it. Behind this plan is the team of superheroes and it will cost money to execute the plan. This section does 2 things:
•    Shows how much money the company can make using your outlined business model(investors like to invest in companies that make or show great potential in making money)
•     How tight/mean/lean your company can run on

9.1    Shareholders/Ownership

•    If the superheroes have shares  indicate %
•    Who else has shares?

9.2    Royalties

If applicable.

9.3    Profit and Loss Summary

We put a condensed version of our excel sheets in here. (3 years). Expanded versions were in the schedules below
Year 1                            Year 2                           Year 3
Sales revenue
Less cost of sales
Gross profit
Less expenses
Net Profit(Loss)
Less Tax
Net profit(Loss) after Tax

9.4    Balance Sheet

We put a condensed version of our excel sheets in here. (3 years). Expanded versions were in the schedules below

10    Funding

Now that you’ve shown how much money the company make in 3-5 years but you need a small amount (in comparison to year 3/5 profits) to get there.
How many rounds of funding will be needed?
If there has been previous rounds:
•    How much money have you put in to the company yourselves?
•    How much money has other people put in so far?
If you need money now (and let’s face it you are entering the seedcorn competition to win investment)
•    How much money do you need now? (200k? 500k?)
•    What are you going to do with this money? (Top-tip on what you should NOT spend investment money: your salary, new car etc. )

10.1    Achievements to date

To help the reader/investor believe in your business plan, state you achievements to date.
•    Get on an EPP?
•    Win any awards?
•    Spin out of a knowledge provider?
•    Got customers?

11    Exit Strategy

Right answer: “Trade sale for cash ( with revenue streams of X million euros) in Y years. ”
Wrong answer: “We don’t want to sell the company. It’s our baby”.

So we got to play with a Nokia n900 phone for the past week. Well, it’s not really a phone – It’s more like a small tablet PC!
Yes it makes phone calls, yes it sends and receives SMS’s but let me explain why it’s a Tablet PC and not a phone.

Under the hood the n900 has ARM Cortex-A8 processor with up to 1Gb of Ram and 32GB internal storage, 3.5mm AV connector
TV out (PAL/NTSC), Micro-USB connector, High-Speed USB 2.0 Bluetooth/WIFI/Integrated FM transmitter and the quickest Integrated GPS with A-GPS I’ve ever seen on a nokia. Not to mention it has a full qwerty keyboard, a good 5mp camera but unfortunately the device is let down a little by the dodgy touch screen. The stylus does improve the touch screen but not something I would use all the time so I’ve been left tapping the n900 a couple of times before I get the desired response. Anyhoo – that’s a lot of spec for just a ‘phone’ – this thing is capable of running XP for heavens sake!

The operating system, Maemo, is built on Linux so you get all the benefits of a Linux OS – It’s not every day you can open one can open an x-term on a phone and ssh into your cloud! sweet!

The user interface is pretty good – nice and swishy. Nokia have kept some of the Symbian look and feel (most notably under the main menu) but the rest of the system is what you expect from a modern phone, errr, tablet pc.

Here is a list of my favourite apps so far

• Facebrick
• TweeGo
• Angry Birds
• Stellarium
• Hermes
• Firefox
• Foreca Weather Widget
• rootsh
• wifiEye

Some of the downsides:

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

So when I first got the Palm Pre I thought it was the worst phone I ever owned.. it’s now 5 weeks – has my opinion changed?

Hell yah!

My biggest two problems with the phone were battery related. The batter problem blinded me from the greatness of this phone. I got so frustrated with the phone because of :

1/ Opening/closing the phone or throwing it on bed would cause the phone to go dead

2/ Using the phone to get auto-retrieve email/tweets etc would drain the battery in less than 16 hours

So, to fix number 1/ slide a piece of plastic between the battery and the case. This will prevent it from moving around and stop the phone from going dead!

To fix number 2/ Set the email retrieval to  auto, likewise with Tweed. In ‘Location Services’ set the Auto Locate to OFF and Background Collect to OFF also.

These two simple changes (ok DIY fix)  make the phone very usable! I now get (sometimes over) 2 days out of the phone.

The phone is pretty nice. The User Interface is fast and clean. The touch screen is really responsive (and yes I have used a iPhone/Touch). The ability to have multiple programs open, as cards,  and easily switch between the cards is very cool. While the phone is in it’s closed position, there is a single button the maximises or minimise applications. When clicked it allows you to swish left or right  between the cards. Flicking an application upwards (out of the screen) closes the application.. I really like this!!

For a full information of all the features.. check out this 10 minute review

Here is some of things that get to me but not a deal breaker.  Comparing it to other phones;

- it’s keyboard (but I love the fact it has a qwerty keyboard) is a bit cramped compared to the 8900 BlackBerry Curve

- the browser isn’t as fast as the iPhone

- the camera isn’t as good as the Nokia N82 one

- It doesn’t have _proper_ navigation software like Nokia Maps on the N82.

The Palm Pre has a nice feel about the it. Very smooth, fits nicely in the hand and doesn’t appear too big while in the pocket.  I’m a tactile kinda of person and I love sliding up the phone to reveal the keyboard and the satisfying clunk noise it makes when you close the phone.

Palm Synergy makes asks you to select and sign into the services you use – like gmail, twitter, facebook and linkedin. Synergy then goes off and links all your contacts (from the various services) and merges then into your contact list. It brings all the emails, phone numbers, picture etc.  This is just fantastic and saves you such much time.. 10/10 for the synergy app alone.

Now that web OS 1.4 is out which promises improved battery life –  I think this could be a winner!!

8/10 for the Palm Pre phone

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.