Will Knott

Part of this post is for a Tuesday Push that is, namely Decisions for Heroes, and partly for a push that should be, Kildare Street.

Decisions for Heroes is a project that Robin Blandford has been working on for a while. And talking about it. In fact I assumed that the product has been launched a few months back. I was wrong; today is launch day.

And he’s built something amazing – technology that will help rescue teams save more lives. Its essentially a project management tool combined with an incident reporting mechanism that’s able to monitor team histories and readiness and raise alarms for expiration or under manning conditions.

What makes it different is that it is designed for a particular niche; rescue teams. Are the exercises and training reflecting the actual calls? Or the actually locations? Are there enough cliff climbers on-call this weekend? Are there certifications that are about to run out? This kind of thing actually saves lives. Its been studied, over 1,800 rescuers from Ireland, UK, USA, Greece, and Australia helped to trial and shape the development of the software. But one stands out. Robin is a volunteer member of the Irish Coast Guard (a cliff rescue climber to be precise) so he has seen first hand what is needed, and what is the most useful way to get that information across.

I’m sure that the basis of D4H can be used in more business-like settings, or indeed in logistic based industries.

And from saving lives, we move to a performance management technology that may cost the careers of a few politicians.

Created by John Handelaar Kildare Street is, almost simply a database. A database of what is being said in both Houses of the Oireachtas, by whom, when, how often and the complete text of what they say so it can be parsed for content. Based off the UK project, theyworkforyou.com, you can keep an eye on your favourite politician, or all the politicians in a constituency, or even when a particular word or phrase is spoken in the Dáil or Seanad Éireann debates or in written answers or questions to the Dáil.

There are a few bugs still in the system (it is a beta and since Irish addresses are vague it can misidentify a constituency, particularly when one side of a road is in one constituency, and the other side is in another constituency. It happens), and there is up to a 24 hour delay between the speech in the chambers and the text of the speech hitting the system (not a fault with the system but with the source; debates.oireachtas.ie.

Its useful to find out which TD or Senator has stayed quite all along (the records go back to 2004), and finding out how they actually voted on subjects of concern to you. Then you can challenge them when they call around asking for your vote.

Do challenge them. Right now, I’m wondering if there is a version for the MEPs.

Two people who should be praised for being heroes and making a difference.

Will Knott

If you are looking for me tomorrow, I’ll be at the OSS Bar Camp in Kevin Street, Dublin (with my badge bag, makes me easy to spot I suppose)

At the moment, I’m too tired. I had a long drive last night.

Driving in sub-zero temperatures, freezing fog forming overhead, hanging under road lights like dew filled money spiders webs; it felt like hidden, fragile beauty forming overhead, only to last until the dawn.

I feel tired. I feel that you’ll be interested in “we feel fine“. Jonathan Harris’ We Feel Fine is an exploration of human emotion on a global scale. Simply, it parses blog posts for the words “I’m feeling” or “I feel”. It seeks emotions using cold technology.

I’ll let this TED video explain what he means.

Some RSS readers may need to click through to see the video content.

I feel I can leave it right here. Good night,

Will

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• We Feel Fine

“Iarnród Éireann (IÉ) feels that it wouldn’t be in the public or the company’s best interest to install the current wireless technologies on its fleet for customer use due to the limited lifespan of said technologies.” — Iarnród Éireann’s own F.A.Q.

Image via Wikipedia

Now a state body such as Iarnród Éireann (or Irish Rail) if you prefer) being behind the times when it comes to technology is not too surprising, but given that there are huge drops in not only 3G broadband but GSM coverage along the main Irish rail routes the company has a potential killing on their hands.

Even if a current mobile broadband carrier offered to install the local technology on even their First Class (City Gold) carriages and you’ll find that the number of business users would increase. I mean, you have just given a very valid incentive to pay for a “City Gold” ticket! Remember that “cloud computing” is an option used by a lot of companies. For that to work an internet connection is needed. On a almost three hour train trip from Dublin – Cork you can get a lot done. A similar time (usually with a change of train) exists on a Dublin – Limerick trip. Sligo takes even longer. When you have a captive audience, use them.

What would you pay for a “single trip” password to use the internet connection on the train? Either sell the “scratch card” style access for the rest of the train or offer it in the same way that you used to have smoking carriages.

As for the five year limit… you CAN have multiple wireless services on the same train. You are missing out on a chance to make a lot of money Irish Rail (and the mobile carriers are missing out by by leaving “coverage holes” on the route).

Buck up boys. Buck up.
Will Knott

The idea struck when Carl availed of a cheap flight to Cork and took his Sat Nav GPS device with him. He also took a camera so there will be more photobloging soon. Given that I was going to meet him a few days later at TechLudd he lent me the device for the trip.

Image by Will Knott via Pix.ie

This Cork-Dublin trip was the first time I had actually used a GPS Satellite Navigation system the way it was intended and I’m wondering if I might suggest a few things (and this might warrant giving away a business model, but I think only Apple could use it. If so, I want one). If this already exists… tell me about it please.

Driving along with both a Sat Nav and an MP3 player (full of podcasts) talking at me it occurred to me that having an integrated unit which would pause the audio to give directions would be wonderful. I think it could work in much the same way that the iPhone or some Nokia devices pause playback when a telephone call comes through the device; integrating a hands free phone would be useful for pedestrian use around a city anyway.

In fact it might make sense to integrate a hands free phone in to the device (see the Nokia and Apple angle folks?). Given the cost of these things, and how tempting they are to thieves, it makes sense to have a reason to put it in your pocket.

However the nasty part of owning a Sat Nav is not the annoying voice (it can be fixed) but, as Adam explains, the cost of the maps. So how about incremental updates via “the cloud” and wireless access?

Imagine the scenario. You want to drive from Cork (say for the Learning Festival this fortnight) to the Ice Cream Ireland book launch at the end of April. Later to the 3D Camp event in Limerick in June. Then to the Open Coffee Club BBQ in Terryglass, Co. Tipperary in either June or July. And maybe even a quick trip to London in July, or San Francisco in April. If you want up-to-date Sat Nav maps you would have to check for an update, and buy a map for the entire country (if its available). But what about an incremental update.

In April you plan your trip from its starting point (Cork) to your destination (Killarney) and the Sat Nav calculated both the route, and what map data is available. It could then use that calculated route to check if there has been an update in that area (say 20 miles within the calculated route) by checking in to the “iTunsMaps” or “KlubNocia” online store and see if there is an incremental map update (or 2) and offer to sell you the maps updates on the calculated route for 1.99 (be it Dollars or Euro).

You are not getting the whole map, but a single route. Similar to buying a single track and not the album. And you are choosing to update the route based on the age of the stored route (and the update naturally).

In addition, a pedestrian probably wouldn’t need the whole country map while he or she is in one city (the quick trip to San Francisco). So downloading a city Sat Nav map (with points of interest, an event guide for that week and free wi-fi hotspots) could cost the same as a single album would.

Straining the point, the current map sales model is akin to being forced to buy a 50 year anthology every time you want to hear a single track.

Given the advances in mapping database systems (yes geographic databases of geography do exist, its Sat Nav data) such modular updating could be useful. You could even automate it for a road trip (and hope the connection lasts to let you know that the old road is now a dead-end with a wall across it)

So guys. Think it could work and is a viable model for a business?

take care,
Will

Demotion is something of a kludge. I wanted a word which started with D. So “Demotion” covers being fired, leaving a job, redundancy and in a limited case… death. Simply put, demotion covers anything to do with leaving a job or letting someone’s job go.

But loosing information? Yes.

It’s not yours

Everyone know that, unless you own the company, the computer at work is not theirs to own, in much the same way that the company car does not belong to them, and that the telephone provided by the company does not belong to them. Yet in the same way that a company rep can fill the company car assigned to them with their stuff, many people customize their work computer and fill it with at least a little of their data.

Which isn’t a good idea. While a representative can request a little time to remove any personal belongings from the company car, the same shouldn’t be expected from the company computer. I know of one case where the staff left their desks to a meeting in the canteen, and upon being told that the company was laying them off, returned to their desks to find that they were locked out of their computers. Anything not on removable data was trapped in there.

With the ubiquity of USB Flash disks and cloud computing, no one has an excuse to have their personal information on the machine. But what if it’s not just personal data.

All your database

How would you feel if your boss asked you for every email address and phone number you had accumulated over the course of your employment? This is what happened to Junior Isles. He worked for 9 years as a journalist and helping with putting on conferences for PennWell. When he left to set up a rival company, PennWell issued an injunction on the three requiring them to “return all the claimant’s property including any information in paper form or stored on any computer”. Isles had uploaded the details of hundreds of contacts into Microsoft Outlook on his desktop when he joined the company. Under UK law a journalist can retain his journalistic contacts. Every time he got a new contact, he added it to Outlook. PennWell claimed that these numbers were company property. Isles went to the high court. He lost.

Had Isles kept his journalistic contacts separate from his other work-related numbers, he would have been able to take them with him. His mistake was to mix the numbers up with non-journalistic ones – those with whom he worked setting up conferences – which should have remained with the company.

The technology used is no defense either. Be it on paper, SIM card, cloud or PDA. It means that legally your employer owns the details of your LinkedIn or FaceBook account if you mix personal and company contacts. And if you do, well its your own fault for doing it.

An untried and nested consequence of this is a small company using cloud computing. Using Google Docs, GMail and a VoIP solution such as Skype, it is possible to create a reasonably cheap office environment. If an employee uses and does all his or her work on these systems using their own personal id, then, legally, the company owns their electronic identity and not the person. The lesson is if you find yourself in such a situation, create a new id. Or use multiple profiles on the same machine. Either that or make sure your contract specifies that you keep all data stored in such accounts when leaving the company.

But let us assume that you have correctly separated (and kept separate) work and play. Lets assume that you leave the company with all your data intact. It is still possible for the company to loose data.

Tarballs

When someone leaves a company, everything that the person learned in there goes with them (which is why you have “no competition” clauses in contracts). Frequently when a person leaves a corporation, everything that the person created is also destroyed. The corporate e-mail account is erased. The machines used are re-formated. This means that unless someone searches for the data and takes it off the machine, its lost.

Even is the data is carefully stored away, its not always possible to get everything back…

What use is building a great home-grown billing system if it’s not documented by the implementer? All over the industry are people who make themselves irreplaceable by refusing to detail what their data means.

I’m sure many contractors have been given a tarball of ‘code’ that someone wrote before moving on, and asked to ‘make it go, it just needed some final tweaks’. Alas, without a database schema, some insight into what was being attempted, it’s invariably easier to start from scratch again.

– John Looney

Password unavailable

If someone leaves in an ordered fashion, then data is somewhat recoverable. If someone walks away unexpectedly from the company, there is some recourse. When an employee dies, well you can’t ask them for their old passwords. While a company should have some “back door” (or even an alternative “front door”) in to their systems, some companies may face similar problems as next-of-kin due to security and procedures of third party providers. Besides. Can you remember a password you last used a few months ago?

While not everything is cut-and-dried, remember to keep work and play separated.

Take care,
William Knott

With kind thanks to John Looney of Google (for the tech and social angles) and Simon McGarr of Tuppenceworth.ie (for the legal questions and answers) and for all the people quoted above for providing their perspectives.

tags : 4 Ds of Information loss, 4ds,legal, demotion, fired, quit, redundancy, cloud computing, personal information, contacts, electronic identity, multiple profiles, documented