As you may know, TV Dinners is what Americans call ready meals. But how about a video dinner? I was chatting to a friend the other day to see how he was getting on during the big pause. He lives with his family in Belfast but his mother lives alone in Armagh. To make his mum feel less isolated he came up with a novel solution. Every night at dinner time he video calls his mum on his tablet, then …
The Orange Order has been given a £300k grant from the Ulster-Scots Agency for their ambitious plan to create a virtual Twelfth. Due to the Covid-19, all Orange parades have been cancelled. But the Order is hoping to use the latest Virtual Reality technology to give at-home members the experience of parading. The project is the brainchild of Banford Abernathy, founder of PurePet, a company that creates VR systems for training vets. Banford said: Three generations of my family have …
Máirín Murray, co-founder of Tech for Good Dublin, calls on us to walk in the footsteps of medieval monks to harness our collective intelligence and technology for social good to make tools that serve and empower our communities. To forge new connections. To hammer out practical solutions. To shape technology towards new positive purposes. Together, she argues, we can change our world for the better, and make a positive dent in the universe.
I’m a Nolan addict. There, I said it. Recently Nolan Live clipped off an interview with Shaun Woodward where the former SoS spoke of the potential for Northern Ireland to return to violence if Stormont doesn’t get it together over welfare reform. Here’s that 28-minute interview with Shaun Woodward in full: listen to ‘Ex-Secretary of State sounds violence warning over Stormont crisis #BBCNolan’ on audioBoom Nolan followed this up on his radio show the next day, asking ‘what if Stormont …
In the Irish Times, Karlin Lillington makes a pertinent point on coverage of Apple’s recent launch of “two phones, a payment system and a watch” – “a non-existent product that, for now, remains vapourware”. From the Irish Times The idea of an audience of journalists and analysts giving a standing ovation at a product launch is, frankly, alarming. The job of a journalist is not to cheerlead, but to ask hard questions. To be sceptical at product launches. To confirm …
My old friend from River Path has a book out today (his first, hooray!). I’d be lying if I told I’d read the whole thing right through, yet (I’m waiting for a free copy, rather than reams of white paper!!). But I have been talking with Mark on and off about the project for much of the last two years. If you want to get to grips with what’s happening in rapid development of Africa, Mark’s work is generally both …
By far the most fascinating point in the BBC’s new replacement for Hearts and Minds, The View [catchy title, eh? – Ed] was this sequence in which Bro McFerran Managing, Director of Allstate Northern Ireland, cuts to the chase, pointing out that the campaign for lower corporation tax and long (and thus far rather sterile) dialogue between the Stormont Executive and HM Treasury is somewhat beside the point. In his view, technology provides a viable route to economic growth in …
Following Alan’s piece on libraries, I picked this ‘advertorial’ from Google plus this evening… about how a US county library system is cutting costs and improving flexibility in their free at the point of delivery services by enabling the whole library service act as a functioning unit as opposed to the one discrete library… Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a …
Here’s something to keep you occupied over the weekend. [Will there be a quiz? – Ed] Possibly… The BBC magazine has an short and interesting, but un-embeddable, audio slide-show of Melvyn Bragg’s Radio 4 five-parter, In Our Time: The Written World. The British Library has more online information about the texts and technology featured in each of the programmes. From Chinese oracle bones, the oldest items in the library, to 17th and 18th Century news books, news pamphlets and newspapers. As …
…and other assorted images. Spotted by Crooked Timber’s John Holbo. “The National Library of Ireland is on Flickr, contributing public domain photos to the Commons.” I’ve picked out a few. The first is a steam tram outside Chichester Park on the Antrim Road, Belfast, circa 1897. And some horse-drawn tram cars at Rostrevor, County Down, circa 1878. Finally a view of High Street, Belfast, again circa 1897. Pete Baker
Lots of teeth gnashing over how to manage cuts to the budgetary provision allocated by London for running Northern Ireland. Regardless of their real value, at least some proposals have been produced by Sinn Féin and the DUP. Meanwhile, the UUP and SDLP have yet to wake up to the fact that they are not actually in opposition, though, and are yet to grace the public domain with some constructive suggestions. While Brian has noted that a few modest balloons have went up for revenue raising, nothing can actually paper …
An eminently sensible article by John Naughton in The Observer setting out nine big ideas, or steps, towards a better understanding of the internet. 1 Take the long view 2 The web isn’t the net 3 Disruption is a feature, not a bug 4 Think ecology, not economics 5 Complexity is the new reality 6 The network is now the computer 7 The web is changing 8 Huxley and Orwell are the bookends of our future 9 Our intellectual property regime is no …
Mark Pack from the LibDem voice blog spoke at an RSA event last week which discussed the degree to which the Internet influenced the outcome of the election. In terms of its basic promise, ie to make politics less hierarchical, he notes just how quickly scale and structure form themselves around what are essentially egalitarian tools like Twitter.
