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

I wish I could tell you more about the Dragons’ den presentation that Dr. Keith Nolan made at the Open Coffee Club BBQ, but I can’t.

Mainly because I’m not too sure what his business is. I know that it involves use of the radio spectrum (and that was because one of the judges needed an explanation. Its something to do with dynamic spectrum access systems, cognitive radio and networks (and either policy-based systems, or regulating the policy). he has tried explaining things, but I’m not going to copy and paste something without at least a basic understanding. But his blog and site should explain this to the radio hardware fans.

The main reason was I was busy trying to get a net connection working at the back of the room, when this surprise presentation arrived. I do know that his presentation was also testing out some equipment (and broadcasting the the Derg Inn across the road), but I didn’t get to play with it.

Anyway, i need to hurry up and hit send (while I have power and connections) and check out the floods.

take care,
Will

Update : Aug 2 2008

Keith Nolan from the Centre for Telecommunications Value-Chain Research in Dublin spoke about their software-defined radio platform that replaces many of the hardware elements of wireless communications systems with software.

Software-defined radio involves taking the components of a wireless communications system that have typically been implemented in hardware and are instead implemented using software on a laptop, desktop PC, or other embedded processor device.

This approach was originally initiated by the US military who wanted to create a single radio device that combined the functionality of over 10 different military radios in one device and could operate over all frequency bands (e.g. from shortwave to radar frequencies).

Instead of taking the hardware from each radio (e.g. walkie-talkie, satellite radio, naval radios, cockpit communicators, etc) and creating one enormous all-hardware device, the idea was to use a single common piece of hardware and switch between the different radio standards in software that simply operated using a processor inside the device.

This reduces the size and power consumption of the device. As new wireless standards emerge, they can be easily added to the radio by simply involves updating the software.

This approach now applies to a huge range of consumer devices from mobile phones, wireless broadband, to mobile content-streaming services. A software-defined radio approach reduces development and testing time, development costs, slashes the time to market, and adds value to new products.

Keith described how he and his team have developed a software-defined radio system that allows people to implement many different types of radio standards in software using a single piece of hardware. This system called Implementing Radio in Software (IRIS) also enables developers to create new innovative wireless and wireline standards to cope with the increasing pressure on the airwaves and use them more efficiently, and to help get new products out into the marketplace as quickly as possible.

More Open Coffee Club BBQ photos, this time from the Dragons’ Den.

This is E. Alana James, Ed.D. of Reinventing Life facing down the Dragons.

She is opening a consulting business whose purpose is to facilitate the NGOs or charity organizations’ communication process to include dynamic web interaction and social media tools.

The result of a few hours of consulting can be a redistribution of communication and communication methods, so that clients, funders and all interested parties gain easy access to the benefits of the organization. This redesigned process will result in increased support, especially important during low economic times and will make use of free or open source internet technologies.

I should have more from the den tomorrow,
take care,
Will Knott

at Open Coffee Club Barbecue in Terryglass

Let me know if you don’t want to be identified.

take care,
Will Knott

Meet Emer,

The disclosing Sabrina Dent is Emer’s mammy. And both attended the Open Coffee BBQ in Terryglass.

I expect the details of OCC BBQ II will be with us shortly.

Well that was fun. Head knackering fun, but fun none the less.

The Open Coffee Club BBQ took place last night. And thank you to Evert Bopp for setting up the event, getting the people in Terryglass, and supplying the food.

Actually, getting the food and the chef in one place. The meat was supplied by SulMeat.com, a Tralee based supplier is responsible for the ribs, smothered in Deborah Hadley’s own Spicendipity Two Brew BBQ sauce before cooking (so good, bones were nibbled). She also supplied the brownies (that mostly the kids found), the mix for which is also available. I’m sure we’ll find out how the Belfast co-working boys handle the cooking.

Conor O’Neill is also responsible for the first BBQ sitting during the talks.

The technical bits and talks beforehand were really good (waiting for the slide packs to become available), and I’m currently annotating the photos I took, including the competitors of the “Dragon’s Den” contest, won by the talented Daudi Kutta of Pitchside Products for his GAA design products.

The meeting people and associating online tags with faces (Do I really look like my twitter avatar?) around the glowing coals was also fun. But eventually the cold got to most of the crowd.

Now, I need more sleep,
take care,
Will Knott

One of the little things that happen at the Cork Open Coffee are the demos. On April 27 the attendees got a pre-release demo of Pat Phelan’s new project … Twitterfone.com

Image by netzkobold via Flickr

The idea is rather simple. Ring a local telephone number (currently US, UK and Ireland) and leave a 15 second voice message. Be careful what you say (or cough as Michael Arrington discovered), and your message is converted to text in a tweet on your twitter account. In addition a recording is also available (via a tinyurl), which is handy if your message doesn’t fit in to 140 characters of less. Yes we talk that fast in Ireland.

Its a useful service, especially if you are in a crisis situation and can’t talk for long.

I’ll be honest when I say that I’m dying to try it out, but given the sudden tidal wave of registrations it might be a little while.

And Twitterfone’s look is a Sabrina Dent creation.

take care,
tweet safely,
Will Knott

The video conference between the three Open Coffee sessions went sort of well. There were a lot of sound problems. Which makes sense. If you have a crowd, you have speakers. To talk, you need microphones. However a microphone picking up the output of a speaker causes a problem. At best, echoes. At worst feedback. And the session was dogged with echoes. After the main session, those of us that remained in the session had a nice discussion about the ASUS EeePc and installing a touch screen on it. John assured that he would blog every step, I’ll link to it when I get the details.

Image by geognerd via Flickr

Still getting the video to work was something of a surprise for me. You see I upgraded to Adobe Flash 9 (latest version). I’m on Firefox 2 (latest version) for Windows XP. And they don’t like each other. Things work well for a while, but fairly quickly flash video just stops working. I suspect that one is tearing a memory leak out of the other, but I can’t tell which. I do know that I’m not the only one seeing this problem. This might explain why it’s being opened up.

All I know is that it takes a reboot (and an upgrade of Real Player for some reason) to get videos on YouTube, reviews by Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw and (flash) embedded audio files to play. So I’m throwing in the music videos I’ve come across (I miss the days when I could say stumbled upon and not have people assume I’m talking about a certain site).

First up is the slightly surreal (in a Coca-Cola advert sense) music video (which has embedding disabled) for “Love Song” by Sara Bareilles.

And the completely loopy (in an old folks community visit to Silent Hill way) video for “I’m Good, I’m Gone” by Lykke Li.

take care,
Will Knott

At 11am on May 1st three cities are going to be linked in Open Coffee and inspiration.

OpenCoffee Club was started in London to encourage entrepreneurs, developers and investors to organise real-world informal meet-ups to chat, network and grow. The Cork Open Coffee meetings tend to take place every second Friday, in Dublin, Limerick and Waterford, their meetings tend towards a Thursday. And not only are their three sessions taking place at the same time tomorrow, but they are going to be linked. And New York is joining in too.

And you can join in too.

The three OpenCoffee sessions are going to be broadcast online thanks to Joe Garde of OnlineMeetingRooms and Bernie Goldbach of Tipperary Institute (Update : And Mary Rose Lyons who is looking after the broadcast from the Dublin end). Also thanks to Chuck Boyce of ChuckTV on Blip.tv finding out about the meet on Twitter (thus proving a business use if ever one was needed) means that the Irish OpenCoffee sessions are going to be part of the wider technology community.

Attendees should have a “Twitter style introduction prepared” (or a killer 90 second pitch ready) and join in. The details for joining the online sessions are on Mary Rose Lyons of Brightspark Consulting’s site. But if you are able to attend the sessions in person, it will probably be worth it.

And be prepared for a little Twitterstorm (and probably a Jaikugale) tomorrow morning.

take care,
Will

Would you call around to someone’s house and work there? Think of it as a book club for mobile workers. That Mulley Man brought up something interesting in his Fluffy Links (TM or it should be by now), namely Jelly.

Jelly is casual co-working. The site arranges invitations for people to work from a member’s home for the day. The organisers provide chairs and sofas, wireless internet, and interesting people to talk to, collaborate with, and bounce ideas off of. All the benefits of co-working with fewer facilities? Well it would be nice, but I’m trying not to imagine an open coffee session at someone’s house. But I like the idea.

As for the video below, well I thought about work and recently came across Freemasons Remix of “Work” by Kelly Rowland. Well it fits the subject, but I don’t think I could use a laptop where the video was shot; I’d be dancing. And I’m a bad dancer.

take care,
Will