John Ryan’s Blog

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

According to a reader and commenter on johnmryan.com, 3 Ireland are preventing it’s mobile phone customers from accessing johnmryan.com on their mobile phones. This is something I cannot confirm for myself, as I am no longer a three customer, so if anyone else can confirm this for me?

There has been a somewhat heated and ongoing commenting session (for the lack of a better word) on one of my posts in which I briefly mentioned what people will miss if they switch to 3 Ireland. Although the post is a short post, readers of my blog have been using it as a somewhat discussion forum for discussing 3 Ireland. Some of 3 Irelands customers are sharing their views on the mobile phone network, there are a few positive, with the biggest comments relating to the customer care (or lack thereof) as well as restrictive and controlled internet access.

The post and 40 comments are here.

Is free speech gone out the window?

I got this comment today - somewhat different than the usual spam…

hello , my name is Richard and I know you get a lot of spammy comments ,
I can help you with this problem . I know a lot of spammers and I will ask them not to post on your site. It will reduce the volume of spam by 30-50% .In return Id like to ask you to put a link to my site on the index page of your site. The link will be small and your visitors will hardly notice it , its just done for higher rankings in search engines. Contact me icq (number removed) or write me E-mailREMOVED@yahoo.com , i will give you my site url and you will give me yours if you are interested. thank you

Today I decided, ‘why not give another search company a chance’, I only use Google, because I am so familiar with it, and to change search providers would be an inconvenience, so I said today I will change my default provider to ‘Live Search’. So I went into internet explorer and changed my settings to Live search, and clicked ok, but for some reason it continued using Google and ignored my request, then one of those little pop up balloons informed me that Google had blocked my request, and this window ( see above) popped up. Now, as you know many people know how to use the internet, but there a majority of users who are terrified of these requests and will just click ok, in the fear that if they change a setting there PC will explode and they will be picking bits of computer of their face for the next year.

Maybe its time people look at other search engines and what they offer – if only to give them a chance, before Google owns everything? The new ask.com looks good, anyone interested in trying it out?

I have to say this sounds pretty interesting on October 15th is to be Blog Action Day where bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind. That is the issue that is our environment. It is a very interesting idea, and I will be very interested to see some Irish Bloggers participate. Read more…

Shai did not tag me ( i dont know her) but here goes

1) When it comes to social situations “Fake Nice” is something that drives me crazy, people who try to come across as super nice and friendly, but you know that this is a façade, and that their real personality is not something you want to see.

2) I love to travel – but to date have only been to a handful of places, New York, Brussels, Paris, London.

3) Internet technologies is my real passion.

4) I am a news reader on a local radio station.

5) The smell of fish makes my physically ill – but I can eat prawns and tuna….

6) I love US sitcoms – especially the really crappy ones.

7) I know some people who read this site and think I don’t know!

I want to eventually run my own company.

Alas, it seems to be ture

I joined Facebook about two weeks ago, for the simple reason – everyone else was talking about it on their blogs - perhaps that is the key to the success of these sites, the more height profile bloggers that join the networking site, the more that try it out.

The first thing I noticed, and this is probably just the artistic side of me, is that you cannot add your own colours or theme to the website, although, perhaps, this is because the target audience does not seem to be the teenage community that is Bebo. Having said this, you can however move the panels (squares of information) around your profile as you wish.

The idea of social networking websites (as far as I can tell) seems to be targeted at maintaining and creating contacts, friends, business colleagues, and so on – expanding your network. This is the part that makes the site so popular; you can also display your past career, as well as you accomplishments in an attempt to gain employment or to meet similar contacts. By joining a network you can meet similar minded individuals, you can also create your own group and allow people to join. You can even buy and sell services and goods on the site, I predict that this will be expanded exponentially in the near future, with the success of the site.

The real fun part for me is, however, the applications; there is a multitude of them. These are little programs that can sit on your profile and allow you to display information, for example you can add your flick photos, display your DVD interests, or what books you’re interested. There is even a little map program that allows you to show what countries you have or want to visit.

If you have tried out Bebo – and felt that it was a little too teenage/ young adult (whatever) for you, or thought MySpace was the internets dumping ground for badly designed profiles and lurking spammers, then give facebook a try.

Minister Kileen believes that Ireland will adopt to digital terrestrial prior to the EU deadline of 2012, stating “I believe that Ireland must move much quicker than that. I expect the development of a national public service and commercial deployment of digital terrestrial TV services in mid 2008, to ensure that Ireland doesn’t get left behind in the coming broadcasting revolution,”. Richard Delevan would disagree with him though, he states in his most recent article:

“Ireland has yet to produce anything like a sensible plan to move towards digital, and there will be plenty of arguing about how to get there and who should pay? What kind of boxes will there be? How much will you have to pay to get one? There is, however, what may be an even bigger question: what to do with the airwaves we’ve been using for TV for the past 50 years?”

So will it work, possibly, but with caution hopefully, new channels have been added to the test scheme, both sports channels from Setanta Sports. Chrrently the offering of channels and radio stations include:

TV – RTÉ 1, RTÉ2, TV3, TG4, Ch6, BBC3, BBC4, CBBC, Cbeebies, BBCNews 24, Sky News, Sky Sports, Setanta Golf, Setanta Ireland, Extreme Sports, UKTV History.

Radio - Radio 1(FM), Radio 2, Lyric FM, R na G, Radio 1 (AM), Today FM, Newstalk, Dublin’s 98fm, SPIN 1038, East Coast FM, DAP ALL 80’s, DAP Mocha

Of course most of these channels and much more are already available via a satellite or cable/MMDS system in Ireland from UPC or SKY, but this terrestrial service will replace the old analogue service, which will be eventually switched off, if all goes to plan. In the UK this switch off will affect those people who can currently avail of free BBC using an aerial in Ireland, once switched off the reception will be dead.

Technology Snap – happens to everyone… even thought it’s a term I made up myself, just five minutes ago! A Technology Snap is when you suddenly get a spout of very back luck - when it comes to technology.

Things start to go wrong. Some people claim that this is simply a random series of bad luck, some claim it’s the result of life pressures, but whatever the reason – technology Snap is not a pleasant experience. Here is my technology snap, feel free to share yours.

This all happened together within a month

- Spilt tea on my partners Nokia – the expensive one with metal casing – Phone destroyed.
- Broke my partners Laptop – because the software package (I was asked to install) was badly designed.
- Lost my iPod (bought got a new one for my BD)
- Work PC stopped working (an IT fault this time)
- Lost data on my server

Despite this I am happy the snap happened because, we got new phones, faster (but cheaper!) laptop and I got a Video iPod, and my work PC is much faster – go productivity.

Oh and I joined Facebook - review coming soon!