News this morning that the Irish Times will shortly be launching an iPhone app. Surprised it has taken so long to be honest. It will see the newspaper catch up with their main rival, The Irish Independent, which has an app available for some time now. As the article points out, with Vodafone offering the iPhone in the Irish market from next week there’s going to be a lot more eyeballs to catch.

The first line in the article in the paper says :

As more newspapers launch apps, they are trying to avoid eating into their core business

The big challenge the Irish Times and other newspapers face is that when you offer an app for a few euro that has all the articles from the print edition, there is no need to visit the newsagent. This ability is already available of course. All a person needs to do is add the Irish Times RSS feeds to their news reader and bobs your uncle.

That’s not the whole story though. When I consume news on a mobile device (in my case the iPhone), I skim through articles and find the ones that interest me. Same way with the printed newspaper. There’s a lot in there I’m not interested in but I have to buy the whole newspaper anyway. I don’t want an app that dumps every page of the print edition into my hand. I’d like a more intelligent app. One that knows what I’d like to read. Something with the intelligence of my6sense.

my6sense is an iPhone app that I’ve been use for quite a while now. Over time, it learns what type of articles and news I like and presents those relevant articles to me. I can still see all the news items from my feeds if I wish, but the app does such a good job I don’t feel as if I’m missing anything. This description from another my6sense user says it all:

“… I have been using a tool to filter hundreds of feeds, thousands of posts! The results are so tailored and specific to my needs, they are as if handpicked by a mighty army of mind reading Oompa Loompas bent on making me the most informed man on earth.”

What I’d like to see the Irish Times do with their app is make it intelligent by offering a premium version. A premium version with a monthly sub that would offer the following:

• Newstand account on the Irish Times website along the lines of Shelfari. It would allow me to flag articles of interest and store them on a “shelf”. When I get home in the evening, I can read the articles full screen at my leisure.
• Like Shelfari, the Irish Times could offer a community feature on the site where I can see who else is reading the same articles as me and allow me to connect and discuss issues if I so wished.
• Daily/Weekly/Monthly digests. I would love a properly formatted version of the articles I’ve found interesting compiled into a downloadable file that I can view on my ebook reader, iPhone or iPad (when it arrives).
• Print on demand. If I want a printed version, I should be able to go into my local newsagent and get a personalised copy of the Irish Times printed while I wait.

Bottom line is that newspapers should think beyond dumping everything from the print edition into another format. They ought to be offering a way to shape the news and tailor it to fit the individual. Maybe then they can start to make some money from their online efforts. Until then, I’ll stick with my6sense and an instapaper account. It allows me to create a truly personal newspaper that I can read on multiple devices.

Video above I posted on my posterous account earlier. The guy at 21 seconds is clearly Irish and does an impression of Borat for the camera. RTE crew had to have copped on that he was taking the piss. Funny guy though.

I stumbled on a post by Big Mental Disease about the parade in Durrow. Blink and you’ll miss it but it looks like the guy playing Tiger Woods for the day has “blackened up”. Is this a total no no nowadays? Is there not a free pass for it on a day when the world goes round wearing leprechaun costumes and shouting “top o’ the mornin’ to ya” ?

You have to hand it to Paddy Power – he knows how to do publicity. The bookmaker unveiled the “world’s longest free standing billboard” yesterday on Cleeve Hill overlooking Cheltenham. It’s bigger than the Hollywood sign in LA. Speaking at the unveiling, Paddy said :

“Cheltenham is the biggest and the best race meeting in the world so we wanted to build a monument to reflect and celebrate that. Everyone knows how much the Irish love Cheltenham, so we are delighted to finally have built them a sign to celebrate what many people call the Irish people’s second home in true Hollywood style.”

Some Vital statistics about the sign:

• 270 feet long (82 metres)
• 50 feet high (15 metres)
• Almost 100 tonnes in total
• 60 man build crew
• 3 years in the making
• Over 1000 man hours to design and build
• Landmarks dwarfed by the Paddy Power sign:
• At over 270ft wide that’s longer than the world’s largest free-standing billboard in Manila, Philippines (160ft)
• Taller and bigger than the Hollywood sign (45ft by 200ft)
• Longer than the famous Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset (180ft)
• At over 50ft high that’s taller than three double-decker London buses stacked on top of each other

Pity he didn’t make it a DISCOVER IRELAND.IE sign instead. You know, for the good of the country and all that. Still, there’s nothing to stop Fáilte Ireland going one step further and finding a suitable location and beating Paddy at his own game.

UPDATE from the comments below :

“I don’t know where you got your facts from, however they are wrong. i with the other crew from utopium lighting i built that sign. It is 85m long it took a 10 man build crew and it was about 3 weeks in the making. so get it right”

Paddy Power obviously losing the run of himself and getting the facts wrong.

Maths was never my strong subject in national school. I struggled. I was labelled a “slow learner”. While the rest of my classmates worked away on incomprehensible maths problems, the teacher took myself and some others to a separate part of the room for special attention. In secondary school, physics and maths were still my Achilles heel. I loved English though. I was a good student overall. A bit above average I guess, but not a star pupil by any means.

I will never forget the day I collected my leaving cert results. A big day in the life of any teenager. I arrived in to the principals office. The head brother (I went to a De La Salle school ) looked down through my results and pointed out my disappointing maths and physics scores. Nothing about my wonderful result in English. I left feeling deflated. I’d done the best I could. My mood wasn’t helped by the fact that as I left, a “star pupil” was next in line. I could hear the enthusiastic voice of the principal as he congratulated the maths, physics and everything else superstar on his results. I walked home under a cloud.

Roll forward to today, I find myself thinking again about education. The various reports about grade inflation and the need for science and maths in schools is a topic exercising many minds. The former head of Intel, Craig Barrett, spoke at an economic think tank in Farmleigh about one of the reasons the company came to Ireland. It was education.

He told the audience that the Irish aren’t as clever any more and we needed to do something about it. Fair enough, we need to sit up and take notice on hearing  a wake up call like that.  Unfortunately, there is a danger in listening to someone like him that we lose sight of the people that actually matter in all of this – the student. Is it unrealistic to want an education system that is truly interested in unlocking the potential of each and every child rather than preparing them as cogs in the machine of American imperialism? Is it right to force a child along a career path that maybe they don’t have the aptitude  or real passion for? Shouldn’t we aspire to living in a country where every child is equally valued and cherished no matter what their academic ability or how much money is in their parent’s bank account?

You may have heard of Gillian Lynne, the celebrated ballerina, director and choreographer. She is famous for her work on Cats and the Phantom of the Opera (the longest running show on Broadway). The following is an extract from her Wikipedia entry:

Lynne had been underperforming at school, so her mother took her to the doctor and explained about her fidgeting and lack of focus. After hearing everything her mother said, the doctor told Lynne that he needed to talk to her mother privately for a moment. He turned on the radio and walked out. He then encouraged her mother to look at Lynne, who was dancing to the radio. The doctor noted that she was a dancer, and encouraged Lynne’s mother to take her to dance school.

One wonders how many people are doing jobs today because they were pushed into it?

Maybe, just maybe, the key to Ireland’s future recovery is allowing the dancers to dance and the singers to soar.

Image by mandaloo [cc]

This new ad from Fáilte Ireland has grown on me. The music, by The Heathers, is a great choice – dynamic, energising and different from what you’d expect in an ad like this. With hotel prices in Ireland now the cheapest in Western Europe, there’s never been a better time to take a break at home. The fun definitely starts here.

What’s that all about? It’s called a hash tag and is used on Twitter to identify a tweet as being about a particular topic/event or cause.

In this case, the hashtag is yet another in a long line of internet responses to child rape, abuse and torture covered up by church authorities. Crimes so sickening that they don’t even bear thinking about.

The sad thing about these responses is they are all about the church and not the victim. You only have to look on Facebook as a guide. Expel the Papal Nuncio from Ireland has over 5,150 fans. Supporters of the ISPCC ? 375.

I blogged some time ago about what stirs Irish passions on Facebook and you can see the graphic there which illustrates the same point.

My view is that if you’re going to get exercised about a cause, do something to help those who need it rather than make it all about your own belief or non-belief system. The most vocal voices on the Irish blog and Twittersphere about this issue are intolerant of anyone with a belief system and believe themselves to be of higher intelligence. Take yesterday’s Sunday Independent as an example of the sneering attitude I’m talking about.

Emer O’Kelly, writing about the issue of Good Friday drinking says :

“Take 100 people; offer each of them a ticket for a rugby match between Leinster and Munster on Good Friday. How many of them would prefer to take up the offer rather than go to church that afternoon for Good Friday services, in commemoration of the hour when tradition holds that Christ died on the cross? Probably 99.

The one who would genuinely prefer to go to church is possibly suffering from a slightly unhealthy religious mania.”

An “unhealthy religious mania” to make a free choice in a democratic society to attend a religious service or not.

She makes valid points in the article too, but it’s tainted by her opening comments. They demonstrate an utter disdain for fellow country men and women (of which there are more than she or the media would have us believe) that choose to go to church on Good Friday. Men and women that recognise the wrongs in the church but also believe the church is more than the bishops and priests who run it.

Hashtags on twitter and facebook groups that focus on the perpetrators of a crime rather than the victim are plain wrong. Using child abuse as a way to seek the removal of the catholic church in Ireland is a supreme act of selfishness with and deserves no support.

Support the ISPCC, One in Four or the Alliance Support Group in a practical way. Get angry about children at risk TODAY.

The removal of one minute of a bell ringing on RTE isn’t going to take away the pain of a child abuse victim or heal any broken hearts. What it does do is take away focus from the people who are forgotten in all of this – the victims.

Begosh and begorrah, ‘tis yerself is it? soft mornin’ so it is. Slainte. Diddlyi dee di. How’s your shillelagh?

3 more sleeps until St. Patrick’s Day. Are you ready to shake your shamrock and dress as a leprechaun? They are totally up for it Liverpool at Medication.

“Shamrocks & Shenanigans! The big green one comes to Med on a Wednesday! The black stuff will be flowing! The Leprechauns will be leaping! Will you find your crock of gold?”

Image owned by stunned [cc]

I’ve been keeping an eye on the price of the Sony Reader Touch and see that D.I.D. Electrical are offering it for €249.95 in store this weekend. Oddly, if you buy it direct on the website it will set you back €278.95.

The Power City price has been pegged at  €249.95 for a couple of months now. Today I noticed that it’s now selling for €232.45, presumably in reaction to the D.I.D. offer.

If you’ve been thinking about investing in an electronic reader I don’t think you can go wrong with the Sony offering. At this price, I think I may upgrade my old PRS-505.

Found out about this new website, ThinkIrish.ie,  on Twitter and I really like the idea. So much so, that I’ve put a little doohickey in my posts with a link to the site.

Quite simply, it’s asking people to switch €20 per week to Irish goods and services. Doing so could create up to 20,000 jobs.  Already I see some shouts of PROTECTIONISM rearing it’s head on Twitter too. All I would say to that is, this campaign (as I see it) has nothing to do with protectionism. It’s not seeking to limit choice or throw up trade barriers. It’s asking us all to think about what we’re buying and do our best to buy Irish.

Anyone that reads here regularly will know I’m not a Johnny come lately to all of this. I’ve posted a few times trying to get a bit of blog momentum going on related topics a couple of times e.g. The Opposite of Ryanair , I Love Ireland, and Why I won’t be pre-ordering Grandad’s book. Sadly, because of my limited influence in either the blog or twittersphere – none of these gained any traction – but it’s time we thought more about the choice we make in this country and drop the typical Irish attitude of doing nothing but moan about the state of things.

I just urge any Irish person reading this to make an effort over the coming weeks and months to switch some purchases and help make a difference because every switch will make that difference.

Fascinated this morning by an article in the Feb 15 & 22 edition of The New Yorker about mules. I’ve never given any thought to mules before and my knowledge of them is limited to two facts:

1) They’re like donkeys

2) I can be as stubborn as one at times

After reading the 6 pages and 14 columns of the article I now realise that mules deserved better from me. I really should have made an effort to get to know them better. I think you should too. So here are the best bits from “Riding High. Mules in the Military. By Susan Orlean”

• A mule will carry up to 136 kg, seven hours a day, twenty days straight, without complaint.
• Mules have an inviolable commitment to self preservation, which is often misinterpreted as stubbornness. In truth, it is probably a form of genius. A horse will eat until it founders and dies; a mule will only snack, even if it happens upon an open bin of oats.
• Mules are the hybrid result of mating a male donkey with a female horse.  They have an uneven number of chromosomes and are therefore sterile. Every mule is sui generis; it leaves no legacy beyond itself, no radiating gene pool to mark its visit to this world.
• Once upon a time in America, a young man without mule handling experience would have been the exception.
• George Washington had a herd of mules – one of the first in the US. They were sired by an Andalusian donkey named Royal Gift, which he had received as a gift from the King of Spain.
• The mule population of the USA has been on a roller coaster ride since the highs of over 5 million in 1930. The Amish population explosion between 1982 and 2008 saw a big increase in demand for mules.
• A 2008 study of mule cognition at the University of Sussex fond that mules, over all, not only understood things better than either horses or donkeys but were also better at following instructions.

That’s the great thing about the New Yorker. You just never know what you’re going to learn from it, and when those little tidbits of information might come in handy. I know that next time some says I’m stubborn as a mule, I can say that, actually, it’s a form of genius.

Image above owned by argo 72 [cc]