Community Alive

Community Alive takes place in the County Library, Tallaght from 1st-4th October. There are a series of events with helpful information and practical workshops on how to get involved in your Community.
The event is free and open to everyone in the Community.


Community Alive from Wayne Gaffney on Vimeo.

I swear to blog! Bloggers are now mainstream

The activity of blogging is now considered a mainstream activity and is here to stay, said Technorati in its annual State of the Blogosphere report, with some one million posts a day going online.
Technorati said that not only are blogs hitting the mainstream with 184 million blogs worldwide and some 346 million readers, but 95pc of the top 100 newspapers in the US have reporter blogs.
The 2008 report surveyed more than 1.2 million bloggers who have registered with the Technorati index, and found that the lines between what is a blog and what is a mainstream media site are becoming less clear. Read More

Courtesy: Silicon Republic

Big blow as LHC knocked out of action for a year

Instead of recreating a Big Bang, scientists the globe over who were anticipating a new era in scientific discovery instead got a Big Blow yesterday, when it emerged CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be out of action until next year.
Last week it emerged that a 30-tonne power transformer which helps run the massive LHC at CERN on the French-Swiss border malfunctioned, affecting the cooling system on the world’s largest scientific experiment. Further complications arose when a helium leak was discovered. Subsequent investigations into sector 3-4 of the 27km tunnel have indicated that the most likely cause of the incident was a faulty electrical connection between two of the accelerator’s magnets. Read More

Courtesy: Silicon Republic

Community Alive Week 1st - 4th October

Community Alive takes place in the County Library, Tallaght from 1st-4th October. There are a series of events with helpful information and practical workshops on how to get involved in your Community.
The event is free and open to everyone in the Community. Read More

YouTube Bans Videos Of Weapons

Video-sharing site YouTube has changed its UK policy to exclude videos which show weapons being used to intimidate people. The move, which does not affect the rest of the world, comes amid growing concern about knife and gun crime in the UK.
YouTube has certain guidelines which are used to vet videos appearing on the site.
White material cannot be vetted as it goes up, the company checks any video which is reported to it to see if it contravenes guidelines.
The change will not be retrospective, meaning that YouTube in the UK is not currently clear of videos showing intimidatory violence, as if they had been reported previously they would not have gone against YouTube policy. Read More

Courtesy: Sky News

You're on a loser with Irish websites

Further evidence of how Irish customers are being fleeced comes from another reader's experience of renting a car at Holyhead. "Despite their advertised sales prices (which never seem to meet their promises), fares for ferries between Ireland and Britain are ridiculously high (compare them to the fares between Britain and France or Holland), and for a short trip (or even a longer trip) it makes no sense to take the car," she writes. "So we went as foot passengers and rented a car."
The only rental company with an office in Holyhead terminal is Hertz, she says, "but beware of booking through Hertz's Irish site - I was quoted a staggering €278 on www.hertz.ie, while for the exact same rental of their basic economy car, for the same period of five days, with the same pick-up and drop-off points, the Hertz.co.uk site quoted £118, which worked out at about €149." Read More

Courtesy: Irish Times

Hewlett Packard to cut up to 25,000 jobs

Hewlett Packard has announced it is cutting 24,600 jobs worldwide over the next three years.
This is about 7.5% of the company's global workforce.
The company employs around 4,000 people in Ireland, with staff in Leixlip, Dublin, Galway and Belfast.
A spokeswoman for HP Ireland said it has no knowledge of how many, if any, jobs will go in Ireland as a result of the global cuts. Read More

Courtesy: RTE

Google is planning profound changes to advertising model

Google is understood to be planning major changes in how it delivers advertising, including alterations to its AdWords system, and also developing mobile ads customised to location and preference. New research suggests that advertising in the social media landscape could hit US$7.3bn in 2013.
As Google celebrates its 10th anniversary this month, the company’s search business encapsulates hundreds of thousands of advertisers with millions of products and services.
A crucial aspect of this is the company’s AdWords business, which endeavours to ensure correct ad placement according to keywords following a Google search, so that ads are delivered to the right audience in a timely and measurable way. Read More

Courtesy: Silicon Republic

Mad scientists plan an even bigger bang with a bigger Collider

If you thought the kerfuffle over the switching on of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) this week and the threat of an Earth-sucking black hole was bad, then think again because scientists are planning an even bigger particle-smashing machine some 40 to 50 times larger.
The LHC at CERN has only just kicked into action and the large-scale experiments which a certain group of scientists fear could bring about the word’s demise will take place over the coming weeks and months.
But results-hungry scientists don’t intend to stop there and are planning a massive particle collider called the International Linear Collider that will make the LHC seem like a child’s toy. Read More

Courtesy: Silicon Republic

Google’s Blogger ‘follows’ Twitter’s lead

They say imitation is the most sincere form of flattery and messaging site Twitter must be very flattered since search giant Google has decided to add a ‘follower’ mode to its Blogger blogging tool.
The search company has introduced a new gadget that allows readers to follow their favourite blogs.
To follow a blog with the Followers’ Gadget on Blogger, users click the ‘Follow This Blog’ link. They can also show support for the blog by following it right from their Blogger Dashboard or in Google Reader. Read More

Courtesy: Silicon Republic

Has Ireland really passed the one million broadband user milestone?

According to the latest quarterly report from ComReg, if you count in mobile broadband, the total number of broadband subscribers at the end of June in the Republic of Ireland stood at 1.05 million people. Excluding mobile broadband, the total was 832,590 subscribers.
The news was hailed by the Minister for Communications Eamon Ryan TD as evidence that competition in the telecoms market is finally beginning to work.
“Exceeding one million broadband subscriptions is undoubtedly a huge achievement,” the Minister said. “We are definitely making great strides in broadband penetration in Ireland and continue to grow. Read More

Courtesy: Silicon Republic

E-learning giant creates 450 Dublin jobs – €350m investment in R&D

E-learning global player Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) – formerly known as Riverdeep – is to create 450 jobs at a new R&D headquarters in Dublin, it emerged today.
Riverdeep had its origins in Dublin in 1995 and under the leadership of businessman Barry O’Callaghan became a global brandname in the e-learning business.
In November 2006, Riverdeep merged with Houghton Mifflin bringing together expertise in education textbooks and interactive digital curriculum. Read More

Courtesy: Silicon Republic

Interactive website for kids is right on the money

A new non-commercial website www.moneyville.ie has been developed, which is aimed at raising levels of financial literacy among Irish children.
Supported by National Irish Bank, the website is a learning tool designed to help parents and teachers educate five to seven year olds about money in a fun and informative way.
The idea is to provide children with a basic understanding of money, how they can prioritise and save it so they can eventually manage their own finances. The site was developed in association with leading experts in e-learning, including media researchers, child psychologists, representatives from teacher training organisations and online media experts. On top of this, it was fully tested by children around the country. Read More

Courtesy: Silicon Republic

Businesses warned of internet registry scam

Irish businesses are being warned not to fall for a scam from a company calling itself Internet Register Ireland.
Internet Register Ireland is a trading name used by a German company called DAD Deutscher Adressdienst GmbH.
If a business signs and sends back the letter it receives from DAD Deutscher Adressdienst GmbH, it will be liable for a sum of €958 for a listing in their directory, as well as entering into a three-year contract. Read More

Courtesy: Silicon Republic

Google Chrome first look: it’s fast, very fast

I’m usually quite reticent about installing new browsers on my machines. Generally, they shake the order of things around enough to frustrate me to the point of being cranky and inevitably going back to my trusty Explorer.
While I wasn’t baffled by the revelation that Google had developed its own browser – it was a logical move – I had reservations about how it would pull it off. First thoughts? It has done so with a relative ease that should in turn make software rivals uneasy. Google Chrome is a sturdy operating system that appears simple, but ‘under the bonnet’ is complex. Read More

Courtesy: Silicon Republic

eBay wants to do world of good by going green

Online auctioneer eBay plans to chase the hearts – and pockets – of eco- and socially-minded shoppers with the launch of a new ethical marketplace.
The company said the new e-commerce marketplace World of Good will only sell products that will have a positive impact on people and the planet, “empowering consumers to align their social values with their shopping.” Read More

Courtesy:Silicon Republic

Ireland's Olympians return home

Olympians Homecoming : Ireland's Olympians completed the final leg of their journey home after the Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt landed at Dublin Airport this evening, complete with a tricolour flying from the cockpit window.
The plane carrying the Irish athletes, including the three boxing medal winners, was escorted by three fire and rescue tenders as it taxied to Pier C, where hundreds of friends and family waited to welcome their heroes home.
Medal winners Kenny Egan (silver), Paddy Barnes (bronze) and Darren Sutherland (bronze) came down the front steps of the aircraft to much applause before meeting with family and friends. Read More

Courtesy: Irish Times

Keeping data safe and private

WIRED: New technologies are beginning to show how we might have more independent, safer and more private lives online, writes Danny O'Brien

WHOM DO you trust? That's the question that users (and businesses) should be asking - with the entirety of their personal data and their backups in the balance.

From home-spun programs written to dump your computer's hard drive on Amazon's servers, to enterprise-level systems that backup an entire company's digital assets far from the office while its employees sleep, everybody wants to save their data offsite using the internet. Some might even store data on the internet that they don't keep in their offices, for ease of access from any location that has internet access. Read More

Courtesy: Irish Times

You can fool some of the people

NET RESULTS: Adults allow themselves to be duped by websites requesting bank and credit card numbers, writes Karlin Lillington
A COMMON complaint I hear from teachers, whether they are working with young children or young adults, is that students today lack digital media literacy skills.
This does not mean that they are not digitally literate. These are the generations that grew up with and regularly use the internet, downloads, uploads, podcasts, websites, weblogs, social networking, chat and the rest.
The concern, in a world where one UN survey shows that children spend about twice as much time absorbing information from electronic media such as the internet, television and video games as they spend in school, is that they do not have very good skills at interpreting information from online sources. Read More

Courtesy: Irish Times

eBay insect fossil is new species

A scientist who bought a fossilised insect on the web auction site eBay for £20 has discovered that it belongs to a previously unknown species of aphid.
Dr Richard Harrington, vice-president of the UK's Royal Entomological Society, bought the fossil from an individual in Lithuania.
He then sent it off to an aphid expert in Denmark, who confirmed the insect was a new species, now extinct. The bug has been named Mindarus harringtoni after the scientist. Read More

Courtesy: BBC NEWS