Prototype of a Person

3 Ireland: Homophobic?

Damien points out today that a number of Irish gay discussion sites are blocked by 3 Ireland when you try to access them via 3G on one of their handsets. Curiously enough their argument for doing so is because these websites are deemed unsuitable for children. However, as noted back in 2007, when 3 took down it’s “walled garden” to allow full Internet access from your handset they introduced a policy of only allowing Internet access if you registered with them and if you were over 18. So there is no need for this at all because children can’t access Internet from their handsets full stop.

Also, another point - you can infact access plenty of “unsuitable” content from your 3 handset. It’s simple really, turning off the “safe search” in google image search will bring up all the pornography you could want on your tiny 2inch screen.

3 Ireland need to remove this ban immediately or face a massive backlash from not just the gay community, but from the blogging community too.

Graduates of I.T Should be Teaching ICT in Secondary Schools

The Irish Times reports today that €252 million euro will be available to schools in Ireland over the next 5 years for computer equipment (link). The National Centre for Technology in Education claims that this is an inadequate fund and it will not be enough to bring schools towards the EU average level. A draft copy of a report questioning this €252 million euro ICT fund makes a number of recommendations that in my opinion are completely disingenuous. Peter Mac Menamin the general secretary of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland points out that thousands of teachers had gone to the trouble of getting ICT training but that the lack of commitment to ICT means that…

“It is like learning to drive - and then sitting into a car with no wheels.”

Essentially the argument is that the lack of high-speed internet connections and modern computer equipment has stopped these thousands of teachers being capable of correctly teaching this subject.

However, even if half the computers in Irish schools are over 4 years old (the Irish Times article points out), this could not possibly stop someone from teaching basic practical computer skills. You also do not need a high-speed Internet connection to teach ICT, yes it would be preferable, but there are plenty of music teachers and language teachers in Irish schools that would greatly benefit from having modern audio equipment, but are more than capable of continuing to teach their classes with the equipment provided to them (i.e. a piano or a tape recorder).

“The Republic has one of the lowest rates of ICT usage in education in the developed world”

Does the report point out the fact that the ICT training provided to teachers is possibly inadequate? That ICT is still not a Junior or Leaving Certificate subject? (Interestingly enough, Greek, Hebrew and Classical Studies continue to be). As ICT is not a subject at either Junior or Leaving Cert. examination level, there is no need to be qualified in the field. If you want to teach English, Irish, French, Maths etc., you must first have your primary degree in these topics and this is not the case with ICT. Yet, it is a topic that is difficult to teach and requires plenty of experience. Otherwise you end up teaching a class of students irrelevant information, rather than the practical ICT skills needed in a modern workplace. Yes, there is the Junior Certificate cycle subject “Technology” but this seems to be a mixed bag of technical drawing and some kind of model making and electronics.

Why can’t part of this €252 million euro be used to provide schools with 1 full-time ICT teacher? Why not allow I.T graduates to get their Higher Diploma in Education and then employee them full-time. They would also be able to provide much needed technical support and ICT consultation, ultimately saving schools money as they would no longer have to pay unnecessary fees to outside firms when a computer crashes or a piece of software needed updating. I.T graduates could also save schools money by implementing the open source software initiative.

I would argue that it is not like sitting in a car with no wheels. It is more like taking a short course in French, and then being asked to teach it to a mixed class of students who already speak it fluently, and those who only know how to say…

“Il est sur ma page de Bebo.”

Take, for example, my own experience with ICT in secondary school. Yes, we were lucky enough to be provided with two computer rooms with rows upon rows of computers, an adequate Internet connection (that sometimes worked) and a couple of the math and science teachers were sent on ICT skills training. The actual ICT classes we received taught some basic typing skills, using Microsoft Word to create an assortment of projects, the ins and outs of computer hardware and how to use “skoool.ie”. Not exactly the most practical set of skills.

However, as lucky as we were, the teachers that had been sent on these ICT courses were usually too busy with their main classes to actually teach us and we’d be left in a room full of computers with nothing but mischief to get up to. Even when a teacher was present, they were completely unaware of the fact that I had taught the class not only how to write and reply to the boys from the local boy’s secondary school, but also how to make sure the teachers didn’t find out about it.

According to my younger brother, still in secondary school, not much has changed since I’ve left school. Just like me before him, he gains nothing from these ICT classes and has instead channeled his boredom into finding plenty of non-Bebo methods of sending “innocent” messages across the Internet to other secondary school classes, albeit classes full of teenage girls.

The Music Industry is Anti-Innovation

I’ve been following the “Big Four vs Eircom” story today and getting very annoyed over the whole thing. Coincidentally, this month the MP3 Player is 10 years old, and 10 years ago the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) tried to ban the sale of the first mass-market MP3 player (Diamond Multimedia’s Rio PMP300). Diamond countersued, and won, claiming that the RIAA’s actions were an attempt to impede the growth of a market (digital music), which it didn’t control.

Rumour has it that in the late 90’s Sony were in the process of developing a hard drive based MP3 player, but pressure from Sony Records (members of the RIAA, and were obviously anti-MP3) meant the project was shut down. Then Apple came along in 2001, launching the iPod, thus reaping the oh-so-many benefits. 

Clearly the music industry bosses are just bitter.

They can’t keep up with the market and they certainly can’t control illegal downloading. There is no technical solution to filtering and banning peer-to-peer file transfers and Eircom can’t and won’t do it. There’s no point in trying to control the digital music black market, it will always exist and always HAS existed. What the music industry needs to start doing is offering consumers better value for money and incentives to start buying CDs again.

I mean, for god’s sake, they’ve had the last 10 years to think about it.

Over the last few years I’ve seen some fairly awful attempts to engage the consumer for example: full albums available on 64mb SD or MiniSD cards, access to secret sections of an artist’s website only if you purchase the CD, “bonus” DVDs that are really just teasers/trailers, etc.

I honestly don’t understand why I can’t just walk into HMV and connect my MP3 player via USB and pay to instantly download a full album that comes with a nice little book full of lyrics and artwork. I like lyrics and artwork. Yet, so many bands neglect to include lyrics in the album sleeves. So, why would I bother buying the CD if it doesn’t offer me anything extra, except for being another plastic dust collector on my shelf?

USB Amnesia

Today is another day I breathe a sign of relief that I BACKUP my work. My second USB memory key in the last 6 months has become corrupt. Half of my files either don’t function (if they are media based) or are completely goobildy-gook (if they are text). The first USB key - at least I suspected - had become corrupt due to the plastic housing on the key breaking. Damm you college computers for having USB ports at the exact same height as my KNEES!

The second USB key has become corrupt, but totally out of the blue! That’s what I get for buying cheap (bargain?) memory, from Hong Kong, on eBay. I wonder how long my 2-week-old 2GB of laptop memory is going to last? *cries*

Life in Cold Blood

I had a lazy moment on Sunday where I ended up watching the first two episodes of the new series of America’s Next Top Model. If it weren’t for my reality-tv-obsessed younger sister my comfortable-shoe-wearing self wouldn’t be seen dead watching anything Tyra Banks related. But, I cannot possibly deny the marvel of watching pretty young girls bullying each other into submission until they’re all crying (does crying shed pounds?), fumbling, wrecks.

Last night, as I tried to relax after a rather unpleasant dentist visit, I had the choice between a new episode of the above, or watching Life in Cold Blood (which I had caught last week and thoroughly enjoyed). I chose the later because, well, I love David Attenbourgh far more than any skinny girl who-has-had-the-worst-life competition. I’m sincerely glad that I did and was “rewarded” with an extremely vivid dream involving the ownership of two pet frogs that I was determined to keep wet (although there was no water available) or they would die.

What made a big impression on me last night was the news that amphibians the world over are being threatened by a highly contagious fungus. Also, according to many biologists we are entering the sixth mass extinction, but amphibians in particular are declining at a far greater pace than any other species. Personally I think that amphibians are one of the most fascinating species on the planet - their reproductive cycles are remarkable in complexity (which at this point is probably their greatest downfall) and they are so incredibly adaptable and diverse in nature. It is a pity that in such a short period of time there may no longer be any amphibians left in the wild.

There is a somewhat depressing and yet fascinating article about this issue on the Open University website.

Fishing for Jobs

I have started looking for a new job (yes, again!). The severe boredom of the office I currently inhabit has me feeling like I’m stuck in a Groundhog Day-esque nightmare. Of course, I’ve been reminded by my peers that all jobs feel like this once the novelty of that “new job feeling” wears off, but I just don’t want to believe that. There simply MUST be an interesting, challenging (please for the love of god!), and rewarding job out there for me (am I being too naive?). I suppose it would be easy for me to wait until I have my Masters completed to begin job searching again, but my Groundhog Day is as unappealing as the thought of living at home for another year and a half.

I’ve learned quite a few things about job hunting since finishing my degree, some good and some bad (mostly bad).

A really handy tip whilst job searching is to register with Monster.ie and make sure to change the title of your CV regularly - it’s like hooking bait to entice the hungry recruitment agents (I assume their systems alert them everytime someone updates their CV). Over the past few weeks mine have included “Bored Graduate Seeks Challenge”, “Bored Graduate, Passionate about Technology, Seeks Challenge” and more recently “Graduate, Seeks Challenge, NO SALES”.

Unfortunately, recruitment agents have one major (very major) flaw, it’s that they are only capable of what I like to call “selective reading”. It’s almost as if they completely ignore the entirety of your CV and only focus on what is relevant to the jobs they themselves are trying to sell. For example, I spent months trying to get out of retail sales (successfully - horray!). Unfortunately I have over 5 years sales experience and although I’ve been working in an office environment for almost a year now the recruitment agents still go wild trying to make me take sales positions. The other annoying thing about recruitment agents is that they’ll waste your time. For instance, even though I have “E-mail contact preferred” listed on my Monster CV, they still call me, in the middle of my working day, and even when I ask them to e-mail me the details, so many of them insist on setting up a meeting with them instead. This, let me tell you, is another waste of everyone’s time. The best thing you can do is 100% insist that they send you a job spec (a long winded description of the job) before even going near their offices. Make sure that you are interested in a position they are recruiting for and that you can actually gain something from them and not the other way around.

Another lesson I have learned about job seeking in Ireland is that employers expect you to be a highly qualified individual with at least 2 or 3 years experience in your field, and this is for an entry level position. Seems to me like the job market is highly competitive at the moment. What I want to know is, where are all these people coming from with years of experience that are willing to re-start their careers in another company?

From abroad?

Could these guys please direct me to their old companies? Maybe they would be more willing to take a chance on an Irish graduate seeking some experience. And although I really don’t want to leave my partner, my family, my friends - I might just have to, and I recently applied for a User Experience Research internship in London. So, cross your fingers for me.

Pain As You Go on the Three Network

Read the replies to the science week inspired question “What change would you make to an existing piece of technology” here and Johnny K’s here. If someone would like to keep the ball rolling please do. We all need inspiration at some point – I’m quite a sporadic Blogger, science week was the most I’ve ever written in such a short space of time, of course there was that extra piece of motivation too.

Speaking of changes to existing technology…

This was going to be is a long-winded post explaining how annoying it is being a pay-as-you-go customer on 3 Ireland - I mean come on, if a network can’t even get their basic pay-as-you-go service right then how can you trust them to get anything else right?. I’ve decided to condense these issues into bullet points so as to reduce the cognitive constraints on those from the network that might possibly end up reading this.

• Please make it easier to top-up my phone. O2, Vodafone and Meteor provide you with the ability to top-up by text message, by online/phone banking, on their individual websites and from ATM machines (you can probably top-up by homing pigeon too). 3 provides none of these services and to this day I still have difficulty getting 083 credit, especially from those automatic machines that are everywhere. You can call their customer service department in Mumbai where you can request to top-up by credit or laser card, but this process takes about 20 minutes as it requires the customer service person to call you back. Not everyone has a credit or laser card either, so this is a bit of a pain.
• Please offer free web text messages. This is probably the handiest service all the other networks offer to their customers. I can’t imagine any short of cash college/school student would give these up.
• Please sell your sim-cards by themselves. Self explanatory.
• Please provide me with the settings for my sim-free phone. 3 don’t offer any handsets with a qwerty keyboard, I’d love to be able to buy any phone I want.
• Please upgrade your coverage. I’ve heard this phrase “piggy backs” about 100 times from 3, this is the concept that when you move out of coverage you “piggy back” onto another network. In reality what actually happens is – your phone loses coverage but your handset tells you that you still have coverage, but in reality you’re not able to make or receive calls. This happens often (it’s not my phone, because it happens to Jen too). Anyone that works in the Jervis Centre in Dublin City Centre will tell you – you 100% cannot use your 3 Network phone anywhere in there, it’s rather bizarre actually.
• Please start selling upgrades to pay-as-you-go customers. If you’re already a pay-as-you-go customer and you want a new phone on Three all that lovely free credit is completely lost to you for loads of really boring reasons. If you’re on O2, Meteor and Vodafone they practically reward you for upgrading your phone.
• Please sort out your automated phone menus. When you call customer service you must first listen to about 1 minute full of recorded messages, there is no ability to skip through them, none at all. When you’re calling up to top-up you can’t skip through the recorded messages either. It’s very frustrating.
• Please reduce the cost of calls. Self explanatory.

For all of the above reasons I shall be moving to Vodafone in the New Year. The only reason I have stayed with the Three Network was because of the full Internet Access on my phone. Now Vodafone have this, but if I want to I can use any phone on their network (I could even get an unlocked HTC handset (a.k.a an XDA) and use it with lovely full Internet access, not that awful O2 imode). Although, if the Samsung F700 comes out anytime soon (why that advert in the Metro recently?!) I’ll be getting that on Vodafone bill… because, I’ll need to make sure it’s insured won’t I?

Related: Damien Mulley is currently testing the 3 Skypephone.

Update: The F700 didn’t launch soon enough for me and I ended up changing to Meteor and I’m actually saving a fortune, I’ve downgraded phone wise (no more mobile internet) which is a pity, but having mobile internet access is really not worth the really expensive call charges.

Michael Creagh does a Titanic on the Irish Famine

I came across a link on Facebook’s Marketplace for a movie called “The Hunger” by Michael Creagh, curiosity made me click the link.

It seems this “advertising creative” (creative what though?) has spent 4 years working on a script for a movie loosely based around the Irish Famine, which apparently has always been known as “The Hunger”, which to me sounds more like the title of one of those woeful Sarah Michelle Geller attempts at a horror movie.

“Having committed to the famine and done my research, I was still missing a story. What kind of story could best communicate the tragedy of the Famine in film language? One day I came across an old passage in a book that described the relationship between Ireland and England as a love affair between a vulnerable passionate woman and a strong but neglectful man. It was then that I realized that the story of the Great Hunger must be told through the age old medium of the love story.” - Michael Creagh

Heartbreaking, isn’t it? I wonder if he can get Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet involved somehow. Or better yet! Ben Affleck.

Of course only someone that calls themselves a “advertising creative” could employ such a blatant Hollywood device on a topic so sensitive for many. Rather than take a historical event and producing a movie that encourages debate and learning they’d rather manipulate you with Notebook-esque characters. It’s almost as if the massive loss of life and suffering simply isn’t enough to draw the audiences in.

“The Irish Famine was one of the most formative catastrophes, not just in Irish history, but in World history. Yet, 160 years on, it still has not found it’s place on the silver screen. We believe a market exists for this movie among the huge diaspora in the USA, Europe and Australia who claim descent from Famine survivors.” - Michael Creagh

So his motivation to attempt, yes attempt, to make this movie is because “a market exists”. A market in emotional manipulation perhaps?

The famine is an extremely sensitive chapter in Irish history that I really do not think will benefit from a Hollywood make-over that would do nothing more than stir anti-English sentiments that have more recently been absent.

A thought provoking, intelligent movie that would aim to teach a lesson from history (rather than capitalise and exploit) would be much more appreciated by the “huge diaspora”.

Thankfully, this is only a script, for now. Let’s keep it that way.

Caveat Emptor - Irish iPhone Early Adopters, Part 1

It was an easy prediction for me to make (even back in January) that the iPhone would (eventually) launch in Ireland on the O2 Network. Seeing as the iPhone is launching in the U.K in November exclusively on O2, it’s an even easier prediction to make now. But O2’s data packages are very expensive - ask anyone who ever attempted to use their ill-fated iMode to do anything productive. For instance 25MB of data is currently €19.99! To put this into perspective, 1MB is approximately 20 webpages. Not websites, pages. So much for that “mobile internet device” we’ve been promised.

Speaking of which - I’ve finally hit the 1GB download allowance (a.k.a fair usage policy) on the Three Network. Considering its taken me 6 months to do so, and at only €20 for the privilege, I’m very impressed. 1GB went a very long way - from checking my email every available second using the fantastic Gmail Java Application, to looking up cinema times, browsing Bebo and even the occasional “attempt” at cheating in quizzes. If I was on O2, this would have cost me over €800.

I’m uncertain as to whether my next Internet bundle purchase will last as long, as they are supposed to expire after the allowed 1 month but if my previous experience is anything to go by it should be fine. This is just another fuel to my disappointed over the iPhone being released without 3G capabilities. Not only would have it been cheaper to run (on the Three Network at least), it would have made my mobile browsing a much more enjoyable experience.

Using EDGE technology is slow and O2 are quoted as having only 30% coverage in Europe. In the UK, O2 have attempted to overlook this issue by offering free access to over 7,000 wifi hotspots. I can’t imagine them being able to pull off a similar deal in Ireland - especially when the major wifi hotspot provider is Eircom.

All usability studies show that fast response times are essential for web usability. The lesson from this? If you want Internet on the move that is actually usable rather than frustrating, don’t even bother with an iPhone - it’s a glorified widescreen iPod, overpriced and over-hyped. I’m not slating the device itself, as it does boast a very user centred design. The user interface is beautiful and intuitive. A list of its strengths and weaknesses can be found here. (It does fail to mention the lack of multimedia messaging (MMS) capabilities though). Also check out “Living with the iPhone” over on Infosync.

My advice to you, prospective Irish iPhone buyer - try to get an unlocked one online, choose whatever network you want for voice and txt, then forget about connecting to the Internet unless you’re at home in your own personal wifi network, otherwise this thing will cost you a fortune in monthly voice, text and data from O2. And no, there won’t be any pay-as-you-go iPhone out there.

Or, you could just buy an iPod Touch. It’ll definitely work out cheaper.

Google and MySpace: The good, the bad and the ugly.

Google has paid out $900 million to provide search results and ad listings on MySpace.com (read more…). Basically, this means that MySpace users will be able to use Google Search without having to leave www.myspace.com - entering any term into the search box directs myspace users to a page similar to this one, the Google ads appear in the form of sponsored listings in the search results. This will be of major benefit to Google as an additional source of traffic and ad revenue. Almost 100 million MySpace members will access Google’s search tool from the network, thus viewing ads relevant to their search terms.

Google will also provide contextually targeted placements on MySpace pages. Unlike the search box functionality, this has yet to be implemented. Considering Google’s policies on not administering pop-up advertisements (and the Google Toolbar that actually attempts to blocks pop-ups – emphasis on the attempt, as my own Google Toolbar still allows Dell ads from MySpace to appear) this suggests an end to pop-ups on MySpace.

Personally, I’m hoping it is also an end to “interesting” animated banner and skyscraper ads for online dating websites - for example this monstrosity. Also, ads that are misleading and direct the user to install rogue anti-spyware/adware/malware products. Currently, these ads still exisit on MySpace. Just recently Google has started warning people when search results could potentially lead them to malicious code, if these ads continue to appear on MySpace, perhaps these warning signs should be displayed when your search term is “myspace”.