Nokia's New Teaser Campaign - jadesphone.com

I was watching the tv earlier and although I try to never watch the ads, I ended up catching a well-worked teaser ad from Nokia. At the end, it directs you to Jadesphone.com to see more. The whole premise of the ad is that if you found someone else's phone, would you look through it, knowing that it may contain texts, pictures, audio or videos that are personal to the owner?

The question certainly peaked my interest, so much so that I visited the site straight after. The tagline that "my phone knows everything about me" has some truth in it, as the mobile phone is now something we carry with us 24 hours a day and is never turned off. Obviously, it will hold information that is highly personalised to us and as the functionality and storage increases, the more of this information there will be.

The site promises to unveil something on October 13, at 5pm, so I'll just have to tune back in then to see what it is. As the phone just looks like the Nokia 7610, it must be an additional feature, like better gaming, additional security or another new service. Why would an existing phone need to be "unlocked" anyway?

Little Boots - Wearing My Rolex

Found this version of Wiley's - Wearing My Rolex and thought it was great. I had already downloaded the original so it was interesting to see this version. When I logged onto the Little Boots website, there's a splash page and then it prompts you to enter your email address. This is so she can send you a free mp3 download of her latest track. No other info is available on the site. Great idea.

The Road to Triathlon - July's Sport Totals

June was a write-off with my shoulder injury and being away in China and France. I did do some stair running (tough going!) in China in the 34 story building I was staying in, but that just about kept the food off. Only properly started back the second week in July, so the totals aren't too bad, all things considered.

The totals for the month of July were:

* Bike: 300 KM (up 61km on May)
* Run: 55 KM (down 4km)
* Swim: 2300 Metres (down 11400m)
* Soccer: 3hrs (up 2hrs)
* Golf: 9hrs (up 5hrs)
* Mountaineering: 6hrs

August has already started better and looking forward to the Carlingford Olympic Triathlon on August 30th, 2008.

Realistic iPhone3 3G Commercial

This guy called Enda Crowley giving his take on the new iPhone 3G ad. Probably a little more realistic.

Banksy - Graffiti Artist

Found this guy's site when I was reading another blog this morning and was really impressed. It showcases an english graffiti artist's work around his local Bristol and beyond. It is very clever and creative stuff. Here's a few pics to give you a taste of the work the guy does but you can see it all at Banksy.co.uk.

I found this quote by him and thought it was insightful in terms of graduates today.

"The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little". — Banksy

This one to the right was painted on the wall of an STD clinic in Bristol. Through popular demand, the City Council have left it there. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an RSS feed on his site so I will have to keep checking back for more updates.

Download Firefox on June 17th to break Guinness World Record

Version 3 of the Mozilla Firefox web browser will be released here on June 17th, 2008. The company are trying to break the Guinness world record for the amount of software downloaded in one day. One of the new features is automatic warnings when you arrive at a webpage page which has malicious code. So as well as being even more secure, it will be interesting to see which sites are actually giving you all that junk spyware. It's also meant to be faster, more customisable and have a better bookmarking / toolbar system.

As I'm over in China at the moment, I have to wait till June 18th before I can start my download.

The Road to Triathlon - May's Sport Totals

The totals for the month of May were:

* Bike: 239KM (up 150km)
* Run: 59 KM (up 29km)
* Swim: 13700 Metres (up 10500m)
* Soccer: 1h (down 1hr 45mins)
* Gaelic Football: 10h 10mins (up 35mins)
* Golf: 4hrs (down 4hrs)

Great month's training including a Bobby Behan weekend, Final Sprint Triathlon and TriAthy. Since then, I dislocated my shoulder playing gaelic football so I've been out of action since June 5th.

The Road to Triathlon - April's Sport Totals

The totals for the month of April were:

• Bike: 89 KM
  
• Run: 30 KM
• Swim: 3200 Metres
• Soccer: 2h 45mins
  
• Gaelic Football: 9h 35mins
• Golf: 8hrs
• Surfing: 1h 30mins
  

Another bad month...enough said. I've started May much better, so hopefully I can crank up the volume in time for TriAthy.

The Road to Triathlon - March's Sport Totals

The totals for the month of March were:

• Bike: 111 KM (Down 16km on February)
• Run: 50 KM (Down 16km)
• Swim: 6743 Metres (Up 1193km)
• Mountaineering: 3hrs (Down 1 hour)
• Soccer: 2hrs (Down 45mins)
• Gaelic Football: 11h 35mins (Up 9h 20mins)
• Golf: 7h 15mins

I was meant to be increasing the training this month but it all went a bit wrong. Most totals were down on February's and so far April is not looking much better. Getting worried as I have to swim one mile in a river in about 6 weeks time in TriAthy.

Securing a Belkin Wireless Network (belkin54g)

After preaching about security recently to a group of students, they pointed out that I still haven't secured the wireless network in my house. The irony of it all eh. I decided to see how many of my neighbours could connect to my network. Off I went out the front door with the laptop on a field trip. Turns out that only about five or six houses could sniff out the network...as well as passing traffic. Is that bad???

Anyway, in case anybody else is wondering how to secure a Belkin Wireless G Plus Router. You type in the URL http://192.168.2.1 into your web browser. On the Wireless section on the left hand side, click on the Security button. There are a few security options here but the simplest is to select WPA and type in a password of your choice. After that, the router will reboot and from then on if any new user wishes to use your network, they will be prompted to enter the password.

The Road to Triathlon - February's Sport Totals

The totals for the month of February were:
      Bike: 127 KM
      Run: 75 KM
      Swim: 4750 Metres
      Strength: 4h 35mins
      Gaelic Football: 2h 15mins
      Mountaineering: 4hrs
      Rowing: 1mins
      Soccer: 2h 45mins

Need to do more but don't have a whole lot of motivation for long lonely runs and solitary cycles. Must get myself a training partner.

MacBook Air - Slam Dunk or Air Ball?

I have in my possession the new Apple MacBook Air, "the world's thinnest notebook". Now I don't own it, I am merely sending it back to the manufacturers to be repaired as my cousin, the owner, is out of the country. He bought it in LA this week and when he was registering in the airport it stopped working...not a great start.

So a quick non-techie opinion on the pro's and con's of this much-vaunted MacBook Air are:

Pro's

• It's super thin - really this machine is as thin as you could ever imagine a laptop being. Although I'm sure it won't be long before it is surpassed, probably by another Apple.
  
• Looks very cool - which make you look cool by default
  
• Powerful machine -2GB DDR SDRAM, 1.6GHz or 1.8GHz processor
  
• Adequate screen size - 13.3inch is plenty big for the average mobile user
• Keyboard lights up when its dark
• Extremely portable - the thing almost fits in an A4 envelope
  

Cons

• 80 Gig hard drive - not that big these days so it wouldn't be long before you'd need an external drive or desktop to store your music, video and other multimedia.
  
• Limited connectivity - no ethernet connection to connect to LAN, with a wire. Have to get an adapter if you want to connect to one.
  
• No optical drive - i.e. no CD or DVD drive. If you want one you can pay extra and get an external drive, but this is Apple specific so it won't work with any other brand of PC or laptop.
• Only 1 USB port - could be messy if you wanted to use a memory stick and a mouse and maybe connect to a printer etc etc. You could always carry around a usb hub, but then you're starting to look like a pack horse and ultimately reducing its portability.
  
• Can't customise it while purchasing to add or remove capability, the way you could with say a Dell laptop.
  
• No connection for a projector - you'd have to pay extra for another adapter. See above!
  
• Relatively expensive - pound for pound or euro for euro it works out more expensive than others in the same range. Then again Macs usually are. You can get your hands on one for about £1150 or my cousin got his for about $1800...better value especially with the weak dollar.

Will any of these cons turn off an Apple user from going out and buying one...absolutely not. They're in the Apple cult and in fairness if I had a few quid to spare I'd probably get one too. It was great showing it off in college over the last few days.

North / South Conference in DkIT

Dundalk Institute of Technology (DkIT) hosted a major North/South Conference last week, where members of the Irish Government and the Northern Ireland Executive held talks on a wide range of issues, from the future of the peace process to commercial relations between the two states. It was significant for the town of Dundalk and especially the college as it is the first such gathering to be held in the Republic outside of Dublin.

The front of the college was closed off to college staff and students unless you got your hands on one of the exclusive security badges. It was a great opportunity to showcase the college, and in particular for the Event Management, Hospitality and Professional Cookery students who prepared, organised and cooked at the event. Apparently, it was a great success.

Have a look at the clip on RTÉ at http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0207/northpolitics.html. Click on the little icon of the camera beside the word 'Thursday' under the main heading to see the video. You also need to have Real Player installed, which really annoys me. Why don't RTÉ just embed their videos on the relevant page?

The Road to Triathlon - January's Sport Totals

Aiming to complete an Olympic Triathlon in Athy (TriAthy) on May 31st so I have to start proper training this month. Last month's totals will be a good benchmark on what to beat by the end of February.
      Bike: 17.7 KM
      Run: 44.5 KM
      Swim: 5125 Metres
      Strength: 4h 35mins
      Gaelic Football: 1hour
      Golf: 3h 30mins
      Rowing: 10mins
      Soccer: 2h 00mins

Hospitality Student Blogs

Here are the blogs that the students have set up for one of my courses, E-Tourism. Let's see what the next twelve weeks brings.

• linzib.blogspot.com
• sherspot.blogspot.com
• madbanana86.blogspot.com
• bowsey.blogspot.com
• bumblebee86.blogspot.com
• purpleturtles2008.blogspot.com
• suzanne85.blogspot.com
• chocolatelover2008.blogspot.com
• grace-rira2008.blogspot.com
• alan-rooney.blogspot.com