Twitter via SMS (text) messaging is now available to customers of O2 in Ireland, although sending them incurs a cost of 11c. Up to 500 incoming tweets per month are free however.

To start, have Twitter verify your mobile phone at http://www.twitter.com/devices. Then go to O2 at http://short.ie/a65hji to get all the details on terms and conditions.

If you’re a smartphone user, you may not be overwhelmed by the offering, as you likely already have a twitter client. But if you’re a regular mobile user, or you’re roaming, it’s still good to have this option. Also the incoming messages won’t eat into your anaemic Irish data plan

Thankfully, you can select who you wish to receive tweets from and at what times during the day. Nothing worse than spam on your mobile.

There are a series of commands that you can use on your mobile phone to control Twitter and you can find them on the Twitter Help Page.

There are lots of local businesses using Nortel PBX systems around here. They better wise up – Happy Thanksgiving!

Nortel Networks – Top wireless turkeys of 2009 – FierceWireless.

If you are a startup company in the Athlone area then you may be interested in visiting the Radisson Hotel, Athlone, On Saturday, November 14th, 2009, between 11am and 2pm.

FK Development, part of the FK Group, with offices in Moate, Co. Westmeath, will be presenting details of the several properties they have in their portfolio, located around Athlone and also Mullingar.

Part of the attraction is the ability to occupy these premises for a rent-free period, though the press release is not more specific. The other part of note is they will offer practical advice as to how to obtain public funding and assistance for your business, although to my mind a visit to your library will give you much the same information.

But hey, it’s a chance to network, which for any startup is no bad thing, so I’ll probably go.

This is a one hour podcast of our weekly show on Athlone Community Radio -” The Thursday Mix”.  Studio guest was Jeff Reid of Indianapolis, Indiana who is visiting Ireland for his wedding to local girl Paula. Best wishes to them both.

We did a lot of plugging for the Sharon Shannon gig which was happening later that night and turned out to be a worthwhile effort, although they sure could have used a platform on the stage as it was nigh on impossible to see the assembled musicians.

Podcast: The Thursday Mix – June18th, 2009 (29MB)

One minute clip from the gig later that evening;

Preparing for our slot at Athlone Community Radio. Our show is one hour long and goes out on Thursdays from 7 to 8pm. Uploaded by www.cellspin.net

Below is the text of an article that appeared in the New York Times regarding High Speed Broadband. The U.S. company Liberty Global is examined, which you likely know is the parent company of Chorus, aka NTL, aka UPC, the dominant cable operator in Ireland.

What caught my eye is the fact that Liberty Global charge €60 for 60Mbps internet service in the Netherlands. Meanwhile the closest offering they have in Ireland is €40 for a 20Mbps service.

Let’s see now,  €1 buys 1Mbps in the Netherlands, but that same €1 will only get you 500Kbps in Ireland. So the price in Ireland should be €20 for 20Mbps, but in reality it is 100% over-priced compared to our neighbours.

I know out VAT rates are higher in Ireland, our insurance is more expensive and our salaries are higher. But to the point that they are double? No way. More rip-off economics at work here.

Read it and weep…

If you get excited about the prospect of really, really fast broadband Internet service, here’s a statistic that will make heart race. Or your blood boil. Or both.

Pretty much the fastest consumer broadband in the world is the 160-megabit-per-second service offered by J:Com, the largest cable company in Japan. Here’s how much the company had to invest to upgrade its network to provide that speed: $20 per home passed.

The cable modem needed for that speed costs about $60, compared with about $30 for the current generation.

By contrast, Verizon is spending an average of $817 per home passed to wire neighborhoods for its FiOS fiber optic network and another $716 for equipment and labor in each home that subscribes, according to Sanford C. Bernstein & Company.

Those numbers from Japan came from Michael T. Fries, the chief executive of Liberty Global, the American company that operates J:Com.

His larger point: “To me, this just isn’t an expensive capital investment,” he said.

The experience in Japan suggests that the major cable systems in the United States might be able to increase the speed of their broadband service by five to 10 times right away. They might not need to charge much more for it than they do now and they’d still make as much money.

The cable industry here uses the same technology as J:Com. And several vendors said that while the prices Mr. Fries quoted were on the low side, most systems can be upgraded for no more than about $100 per home, including a new modem. Moreover, the monthly cost of bandwidth to connect a home to the Internet is minimal, executives say.

So what’s wrong with this picture in the United States? The cable companies, like Comcast and Cablevision, that are moving quickly to install the fast broadband technology, called Docsis 3, are charging as much as $140 a month for 50 Mbps service. Meanwhile other companies, like Time Warner Cable, are moving much more slowly to upgrade.

Competition, or the lack of it, goes a long way to explaining why the fees are higher in the United States. There is less competition in the United States than in many other countries. Broadband already has the highest profit margins of any product cable companies offer. Like any profit-maximizing business would do, they set prices in relation to other providers and market demand rather than based on costs.

Pricing at Liberty varies widely by market. In Japan, its 160 Mbps service costs 6,000 yen ($60) per month. That’s only $5 a month more than the price of its basic 30 Mbps service. In the Netherlands, meanwhile, it charges 80 euros ($107) for 120 Mbps service and 60 euros ($81) for 60 Mbps. Mr. Fries said that he expected these prices would fall over time.

“Our margins go up,” he said. “But we are delivering more value.”

Cable executives have given several reasons for why many cable systems in the United States are going very slowly in upgrading to Docsis 3. There’s little competition in areas not served by Verizon’s FiOS system, which soon will offer 50 Mbps service. And some argue there isn’t that much demand for super-high speed.

Mr. Fries added another: Fear. Other cable operators, he said, are concerned that not only will prices fall, but that the super-fast service will encourage customers to watch video on the Web and drop their cable service.

The industry is worried that by offering 100 Mbps, they are opening Pandora’s box, he said. Everyone will be able to get video on the Internet, and then competition will bring the price for the broadband down from $80 to $60 to $40.

Aren’t you worried that the prices will fall too? I asked.

“Maybe,” he said very slowly. “We’ll see how it happens. We want to keep it up there for now. It is a premium service.”

PC Magazine thinks so….

Dell’s Alienware division will lay off employees from a number of its business units as the once-independent division becomes more closely tied to Dell’s main organization and significantly expands its reach.

In a memo forwarded to ExtremeTech, Alienware general manager Arthur Lewis outlined a number of divisions that contained “redundancies” with Dell’s main operations, including support organizations such as accounting, finance, operations, IT, procurement, and others. Alienware will also close its manufacturing operations in Miami and Athlone, Ireland, leaving Dell’s own manufacturing operations and ODM partners to build the Alienware PCs.

Alienware also plans to offer branded software and peripherals, the memo added.

Alienware spokeswoman Winnie Wong confirmed the memo as authentic, but said she could not say how many employees would be affected. The Lewis memo indicated that the changes, including the layoffs, would be completed by the end of Dell’s third fiscal quarter, which ends Oct. 31.

For Alienware, however, the moves are somewhat like pruning for future growth, as the company expands the countries it plans to serve by about a factor of seven. With the launch of Alienware’s next-generation “Quicksilver” notebook product, Alienware’s products will appear in 35 countries supporting 17 languages by February 2010, Lewis added, including the Nordics, Spain, Italy, Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea, and parts of the Middle East, South America, and Latin America, including Brazil.

Both Alienware’s Lewis and Wong indicated that the layoffs would come as a natural consequence of expansion. “This is obviously putting two teams together into one unbeatable team,” Wong said. “It’s [serving] 35 countries versus 6 countries; we previously wouldn’t be able to do it with the existing infrastructure.”

The new product line will include a “fresh Alienware industrial design that provides a consistent language across all products,” Lewis stated in the memo.

Alienware’s decision would seem to run counter to the opinions expressed by Alienware chief executive Nelson Gonzalez, who explained Alienware’s acquisition by Dell in a 2006 guest editorial.

At that time, Gonzalez did indicate that Alienware would take advantage of Dell’s manufacturing. “We believe that this acquisition will offer our customers the best of both worlds — an Alienware that takes advantage of the world-class business practices and operational efficiencies that have made Dell one of the most respected companies in the world, while preserving the DNA of the Alienware brand and product strategy portfolio,” he wrote.

But, Gonzalez added, “The Alienware and Dell executive management teams have agreed that this acquisition could only succeed if Alienware is structured as a separate division which will continue to make its own product development, planning, marketing and customer support decisions. The ability to make standalone business decisions about the Alienware brand and product portfolio will be the key to our continued success and both the Alienware and Dell management teams recognize that the uniqueness of the Alienware culture and our special customer bonds are pivotal.”

However, Alienware’s Wong said that the Alienware brand would continue to operate independently. “We will still build the brand, still have our own position to represent the Dell gaming brand,” she said. “A lot of the products’ messaging will still be intact.” Lewis will still oversee product development, she added.

The memo was part of the process of educating employees about the changes, she said.

“These changes, while difficult, are necessary if we are to succeed,” the Lewis memo added.

An infestation of parasites on Lough Ree is set to cause serious damage to both the natural ecosystem and anglers who are dependent on its fish stocks.

Shoals of “red shrimp” which can resemble a red cloud were spotted in the lake over last weekend, and the infestation was confirmed yesterday.

There is no way of knowing how the parasites came into the lake, and there is no real known method of controlling them.

Martin Mc Enroe from the Shannon Regional Fisheries Board is appealing to the public to report sightings of red ”hue” which signals the shrimp.

He says the situation will impact local anglers who wil not be allowed fish on non infected waters in the country. Mr. McEnroe is also calling for more regulation of plants, trees and boats coming in to the country.

- Shannonside.ie

RONAN McGREEVY

Mon, Feb 23, 2009

DETAILS OF this year’s HSE Community Games have been announced by the organisers.

They will take place at the Athlone Institute of Technology because Mosney is having a face-lift.

The events this year take place from May 22nd to May 24th, and from August 14th to 16th and August 21st and 23rd.

The announcement was made at the annual general meeting of the games in Trim, Co Meath, on Saturday.

The meeting also announced that The Irish Times had won a national media award for its coverage of three national final weekends of the games.

HSE Community Games spokeswoman Margaret Bolton said it was important for events like the Community Games to get national news coverage despite the pressures of space and resources.

“To be afforded any coverage in a national newspaper is fantastic; to get the volume of coverage from The Irish Times was exceptional. The coverage we got was priceless.”

More than 6,000 young people take part in the national finals. However, the organisation has more than 20,000 volunteers nationally, and 500,000 children participate at community and county level.

The games were given a silver health quality award by the National Youth Council on Saturday for the promotion of a healthy lifestyle. They have broadened their remit to promote healthy living from their traditional role of promoting sport.

National youth council assistant director Deiniol Jones said: “The health quality mark is by no means an easy undertaking.

“HSE Community Games has invested in training, policy developments and the establishment of support structures and a framework that prioritises health promotion work as a standard of quality on an organisation-wide basis.”

© 2009 The Irish Times

You have been warned, originally uploaded by *regina*.

I came across this pic on flickr and thought it was worth a post. I’m pretty sure this is the wall at the entrance to Burgess Park on the Strand and not a million miles from this sign I came across in 2008.