Cross Dominant

Bottom Feeding US Conference Organisers always Good for a Giggle

#“Bottom Feeding US Conference Organisers always Good for a Giggle”

Dear Conor,
Your company was recently nominated by our esteemedadvisory boardas a company of interest for the blah blah blah event. The number of talented entrepreneurs and the quality of innovative start-ups represented among the 200+ nominees are promising indicators of where the next big ideas in marketing, technology and communication will originate.
Given your nomination, we would like to invite you to stay connected with blah blah blah by extending an invitation to purchase a conference pass and join us at the blah.

Oh that's put me in a good humour for the day.

Waiting for Tesco to invite me to purchase shower gel after my nomination by them as a very clean person.

Creativity not Consumption - Origo a 3D printer for everyone

#“Creativity not Consumption - Origo a 3D printer for everyone”

Hello, I am Origo. I am a 3D printer for ten year olds.

You can draw your very own things in 3Dtin and Ill build them for you in plastic.

Right now, I am just an idea. I will be as easy to use as an Xbox or Wii. Ill be as big as three Xbox 360s and as expensive as three Xbox 360s. I will sit on your desk and quietly build your ideas, drawings and dreams.

via origo3dprinting.com

Every Primary and Secondary school should get one per class when it is released.

How GitHub Uses GitHub to Build GitHub

#“How GitHub Uses GitHub to Build GitHub”

Slides

via zachholman.com

Great deck.

Ooh I like - Samuel L. Ipsum Placeholder Text

#“Ooh I like - Samuel L. Ipsum Placeholder Text”

Check it out athttp://slipsum.com/

Facebook's EdgeRank should be renamed CletusRank

#“Facebook’s EdgeRank should be renamed CletusRank”

Top story in my stream right now according to Facebook? Robin Wauters picture of a beer bottle as he watches TV.

Yep, critical breaking news according to Facebook’s Cletus.

As I just said on Facebook:

The reason newspapers are dying is because people don’t want others picking old news for them………..so Facebook decides it wants to pick old news for me.
This isn’t a “ooh I don’t like the layout” complaint, this is fundamental to users being in control of what they see on the internet.
How funny is it that the only way I can see that very interesting F8 update is in the tiny News ticker on the right?
If I plug Facebook into Tweetdeck, do I get my chronology back?
@conoro on Twitter if you are looking for me. I’ll be the one reading what I choose to read.

I think we passed Facebook peak 3 weeks ago.

#“I think we passed Facebook peak 3 weeks ago.”

I normally don't get overwrought about Facebook changes as they rarely affect me much. e.g. the Subscribe thing is a poor imitation of Twitter so I simply don't use it.

But removing the option to show all stories chronologically?

That's just not on!

I called Facebook peak at 21m users. Never one to learn from my mistakes, I'm calling it again at 750m users, or whatever they were are at three weeks ago.

Also, whilst I'm at it, they should buy Turntable.fm and forget all those other music things they are announcing tomorrow.

And Boxee.

And Hulu

And make them all global and let us pay for shows using Facebook credits.

Globally.

The HTC Sensation is........no I'm not going to say it

#“The HTC Sensation is……..no I’m not going to say it”

It's been three weeks since I won a HTC Sensation in some Vodafone Ireland competition I don't remember entering. Thanks Vodafone! I thought I'd do a quick update about it.

Overall? Fabulous! Seriously, it's an awesome phone. If you don't drink the Steve kool-aid (hell, even if you do), this is the joint best phone on the market (along with the Samsung Galaxy S II).

Headline specs are very impressive:

Dual Core 1.2GHz CPU
4.3" non-AMOLED Screen
Lots of memory
Usual WIfi, Bluetooth HSDPA
8 Megapixel dual LED-flash camera
Graphics co-processor
Capacitivebuttons only
Decent battery

The phone is extremely fast and the screen is gorgeous. However, with my girly hands, the screen is almost too big to hold. It's very hard to stretch to press the home button with your thumb.

Of course, I headed straight over to XDA Developers to see if I could unlock it, root it and remove the pointless Sense Skin that HTC overlays on Android. My timing was great and they had just managed to do all of that. However, it looks like the non-Sense ROMs aren't quite stable enough yet.

Then I found Android Revolution HD which is a modified version of the standard software with better kernel, lots of tweaks and improvements, and most importantly, it allows the CPU to run at 1.5Ghz, which is the speed it was designed to run at. The CF Bench App shows that the phone with that firmware blows everything else away and is the fastest phone on the market.

HTC did a bit of a marketing stunt with the Sensation. They launched it at 1.2GHz. Now they have announced the XE version at 1.5GHz and "Beats Audio". How funny is it that the hackers on XDA already have a version of Android Revolution HD which is at 1.5GHz and has Beats audio! i.e. HTC are basicallyreleasingthe same phone again, with different software.

Any disappointments? The lack of NFC is the only major one I can think of. It'd be great if HTC released an updated back cover with NFC added. Also, the bundled Class 4 8GB Card is rubbish and you can see the phone visibly stutter when accessing big audio files on the card. I've ordered a 32GB Class 10 from 7 Day Shop. I already have a spare battery which I haven't needed much.

For fun I also bought an MHL cable for it. This plugs into the USB port on the phone and accepts a HDMI cable at the other end. You can then play HD video from your phone on your LCD TV. I've used this several times when travelling and it works brilliantly.

If you are in the market for a new smartphone, this is the one you want.

App Inventor suitable for younger kids too (and mention of wee project I'm working on)

#“App Inventor suitable for younger kids too (and mention of wee project I’m working on)”

First the wee project. In October I'mkickingoff a small pilot in my kids' Primary School. I'll be "teaching" App Inventor for 30 mins a week to each of 5th and 6th class. The idea is to run it to Christmas and then pause/review to see if it's worth continuing and expanding. Our Parents'Association and the relevant teachers and Head are fully behind it.

The biggest challenge is putting together a curriculum that can get kids of everyability, aptitude and tech-savviness feelingcomfortableand productive on App Inventor. The idea is not to create a bunch of programmers but to encourage creativity in a technology area that is incredibly exciting. This is a rural country school where many kids do not have constant access to computers at home and most will not have played with a smartphone before.

Whilst I had great success playing with AppInventor with our eldest kid, he is atypical in that he lives in a house filled with computers, has his own laptop and smartphone and is very technically savvy. My worry is that I'd try and do too much with the schoolkids over the couple of months. I am very concerned that we leave no-one behind and that everyone benefits from the experiment. Obviously the whole thing will be entirely opt-in so that parents who don't want their kids playing with mobile phones (albeit phones that have no SIMs and initially have Wifidisabled) can opt-out.

So today I sat down with two laptops and two phones with my 7 y/o daughter and 9 y/o son. Both are pretty tech-savvy too but I was hoping their age would balance this and give me a better idea how a 12 y/o non-tech-savvy kid would do. They both found the first tutorial very easy and immediately saw what was possible and what they could change. I thought the blocks editor (the programming bit) would throw them but they completely got the idea of Button.OnClick Sound.Play etc. Their two apps can be seen attached. One plays the Moshi Monsters Lady Goo Goo song, the other plays a Spiderpig remix. I loved the fact that they both immediately went to Google Images and YouTube to find the material they needed (theoriginaltutorial was a cat that went miaow).

I learned some good lessons fromtoday'sexercise. [a] Give no freedom of choice in the initial tutorials i.e. everyone uses the same images/sounds or else it takes forever [b] Test and re-test the phone setup - we had big problems with the phones not auto-updatingthe apps as the kids changed them [c] I need to find a simple way for non-technical kids to understand actions like right-click, save-as etc [d] There may be issues around "why bother do this if I don't have my own phone?"

The curriculum will be based on all the existing tutorial material out there, just tuned for a 10-12 y/o audience. I'll be putting everything up on the PA site (and maybe the code up on Google Code) as I work through it. I'll also post the results of our review at the end. A fixed hour a week during school hours (plus creating the curriculum etc) is a bit of an ask but I really want to do it. Being in a home-office a lot of the time makes it easier. Eventually I hope to do train-the-trainer so the school is not totally reliant on me having a fixed time free ad-infinitum, but for the minute I should be able to do it on my own with the help of the teachers themselves. If you are involved in any voluntary stuff like this, any tips would be appreciated.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Right, I need recommendations for dirt-cheap diesel Land Rover type thingy

#“Right, I need recommendations for dirt-cheap diesel Land Rover type thingy”

Yesterday I read rumours of early winter snow in Ireland. We've had a couple of winters of either "surprising" snow or horrible floods in Bandon. It's time to embrace my inner mucker and buy a proper farmer-style SUV. I'm not talking silly frou-frou soccer-mom pretend-off-roaders, I want something that can go up a vertical cliff in low gear and do 4000 mpg on diesel.

The preferred specs are as follows:

Less than 5k
Mileageirrelevant
Diesel
Full-time proper 4WD
Possibly low-ratios selectable
Maybe lockablediffs
Possibly 7 seats
Can go through Irish floods without noticing them
Can drive on snow without noticing it
Can also do the Cork-Dublin return run in one day without me going deaf or losing my fillings/sanity
Can do 120kph cough comfortably
Utterly reliable (my 10 y/o 120,000 mile Mondeo has never once let me down)
Must have 8-track player with Demis Roussos carts :-)

Whilst I've long hankered after one of those black Land Rover Defenders with the exhaust going out the roof, my guess is that they fail on 10, 11 and 12?

So oh Twitter/Facebook/Posterous gurus, what do you recommend? Some big old Japanese yoke? I've heard you can get 2003 Range Rovers for 13k so I assume I can get something lower down the food chain for the target 5k or less. Also any recommendations for where to buy?PreferablyMunster.

Oh and what's the story with insurance/tax on some big diesel behemoth? Did the Greens make it difficult? What mpg do these things do anyway? I can do Cork-Dublin return on a tank of petrol in the Mondeo.

Webcast Recording of 'What's Next for App Inventor?'

#“Webcast Recording of \“What’s Next for App Inventor?\“”