Copacetic

Holy Cow, sunshine after days of pissy rain and wind. Keep it coming!

EI is running a one day Software Process Improvement Conference  that will be presented in both Cork and Dublin. Its free, and you can register online. However you will have to use IE to register as the page doesn’t render properly in Firefox.

If you are an old UNIX hacker like mean you’ll have come across the du command. Its short for Disk Usage. Well du is fine for C programmers but the rest of us probably would prefer a gentler, friendlier tool. Enter stage left JDiskReport a wonderful little Java utility that scans your disk at any point you choose in the file tree and generates nice graphical report of disk usage in either a bar pie chart,

or as a bar chart,

You can also get a date modified distribution,

and a file size distribution,

Final sweet spot, it runs on just about anything.

Myhome.ie an excellent example of a defensible business that doesn’t need patents. Its got the estate agents on the hook and the punters are following. Very difficult to compete against and even more difficult to dislodge. However if I was to start a myhome.ie clone tomorrow here is what I’d add in order to compete.

1. Add free text search based on Street name, area, county. Use smart search capabilities to guess the appropriate search
2. Allow users to personalise search by geography so that searches are limited to on or more geographic locations (e.g. clontarf, Dublin) and a specific price zone (€800K to €1.2m) or house type (terraced) or other feature (south facing, back garden, off street parking)
3. Place search screen next to AJAX map of search area and blip properties on and off the map as search criteria are entered
4. Mousing over a house location on the map pops a DHTML window with a thumbnail of the property and the price. You can click from here to the brochure
5. Attach a PDF copy of the brochure to the web description
6. Provide an RSS feed for houses meeting my search criteria and support the use of multiple searches for this feed
7. Post selling prices of houses on the web when available
8. Allow searching of history of house sales (e.g. when was this house sold before and for what price)
9. Shrink the top banner and in general make the adverts more inobtrusive
10. Produce price graph and stats for areas and house types

I spent this morning a the ISA Conference 2006. I had hoped to have a bash at live blogging but there was no WIFI so I was reduced to taking notes. It was a fairly sedate affair with only Pat Brazel managing to get a few laughs out the audience. The theme was new models, new approaches but the speakers spoke mostly about old models and old approaches. The topic of new models was addressed much more credibly at the recent Web 2.0 event held by Enterprise Ireland.

My notes are on the sidebar. Fergus Gloster of Salesforce.com had a few interesting things the say about SAAS and Pat Brazel did a very quick and useful presentation on acquiring companies and being acquired.

The rest is leaving my memory as I type this, bye,bye…

The Irish Computer Society: Open to all but I would expect the onerous joining requirements (and complicated math:-)) to limit membership somewhat. It appears to lean towards academics given its emphasis on third level qualifications. You can join as an individual (well affiliate member) it will cost you €130 and for that you get subscriptions to a few magazines (ComputerScope is the only one I recognised) and a free ICS email account. They also offer a reasonable number of discounts which can add up. You get add some initials after your name (AMICS, MICS, FICS).

The Irish Internet Association: This is a business assocation for Internet businesses based in Ireland. Its focused on companies. Entry level costs are €220 and for this you get to participate in the activities of the IIA.  Other benefits are loosely described on about us page but no details are supplied. You get a listing in their journal and on their members page but given this is a search page this is a dubious benefit (if I know the company name, why wouldn’t I just visit the company website directly?).

The Irish Software Association: The ISA is an employers association and is actually heavily affiliated with IBEC. They don’t post costs for joining on their website (how coy!) but the price for startups is €400. Prices do rise on the basis of the number of employees in the company. Key benefits are access to employer HR data, surveys and the like.
So if you are an individual in the IT world and would like to join a society the ICS is probably your best bet. If you sell stuff over the Internet or are an ISP then the IIA is what I would go for. If you employ people in the IT sector then the ISA is the one for you.

I bought (an extortionate) €7 WIFI card at the Crowne Plaza Hotel today, only to discover once I logged in that their WIFI firewall blocks access to POP and SMTP. So, its impossible to send an email or recieve one without logging into a web client.

As Basil Fawlty would say “What is the point of bleedin’ WIFI if you can’t get to your email“.
I left a complaint with desk, but I doubt it will make past front desk to anybody who can do anything about it…

I see the Google Map for Dublin now has the port tunnel clearly marked. Anybody who tries that route is in for a rough trip, its not open for another 3 (or six or nine depending upon who you talk to) months.

Mike Arrington is having a bad week. First everybody hates his new web design for TechCrunch then his web designer spits the dummy and resigns because he posts an alternate design to CrunchNotes.

Web designers eh, can’t live with ‘em, can’t shot ‘em!