I used to use this tool all the time when I needed to teleconference peoplein different timezones. Its a web page that you can store current time for all the major capitals around the world.

Ace King, check it out!

From boing boing, the perfect way to fold a tee-shirt. My friend Sean showed this to me a while ago in person. Unbelieveably simple, and I can confirm that it works everytime.

Sarah writes an affectionate piece about Garret Fitzgerald today. Now she is a card carry member of Fine Gael, but all the same I can’t help agreeing that Garret is that rare thing, a genuinely sincere, good person who accidentally fell into politics and never really recovered from the experience.

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Russell Beattie describes the chaos associated with the home digital environment.

He’s a little ahead of the curve for Ireland, but we’re getting there. As usual our problems will be compounded by over charging which seems to a pandemic problem associated with Ireland’s economy.

I spend a lot of my time downloading and evaluating software. Over the years I realise I’ve accumulated a set of indicators that allow me to rapidly assess the quality without getting into the full horror of detailed evaluation. Here’s my top list in no particular order,

• Platform support: Broad platform support immediately says “I’m mature”, product should run on at least Windows and Linux. If it runs on OS-X then you know they have really thought about portability.
• Installer: It should have one. RPMs or equivalent for Linux, .MSI files for windows. The installer should run without giving you a grand jury Q&A and should have sensible defaults. It should provide the option to install in a non-default location and it should work in that location. The uninstaller should work as well, needless to say. Installer’s called install.exe get a failing mark. likewise setup.exe.
• Use of Colour: If the first thing that strikes you is that you weren’t sure your computer could render that many colours, then you are suffering from “my first GUI” syndrome. Apple is the past master in the use of colour. Grab a Mac and take it for a spin if you need some guidance.
• Opening Screen:If I have to go hunting around the menus to work out what to do with the friggin product, you lose. The number of times I install a new product run it up and am left thinking what now? Do something with those vital first 5 minutes of contact when you have the users undivided attention. You can always turn it off later. Offer training, tutorials, a flash demo, an example, anything but that blank screen.
• Preferences Dialog: When I get the blank screen I immediately cut over to the preferences dialog. If there isn’t one, we are probably going to exit the evaluation fairly shortly. A non-existent preferences dialog or one with one radio box says “we haven’t had enough users or used it enough ourselves to want or need variation in how the product is used”.
• Fonts: Joe’s law of font size states that the size of fonts in a product are directly proportional to the products maturity. Anybody remember those Brain damaged Java 1.1 AWT GUIs.
• Window Resizing: What happens when you resize the window? If half the content disappears or the layout explodes, time to test the uninstaller.
• Online Help: If the help is good it can remedy all ills, if there is no help then this product better be easier to use than a teaspoon.
• Toolbars: Icons in toolbars follow Joe’s law of font size pretty closely. I’ve never been a big fan of icons, I’ve been using Word for about ten years and I still have to mouse over then icon to work out what it does. So if you have to have icons, make ’em small and make sure they can be configured with text labels (see preferences dialog commentary above).
• Do the key features work: I downloaded flock but stopped using it because I couldn’t blog from it (one of the key advertised features). Try the stuff that should work easily, if it bails on that then its for the bin.

If you get this far and its still installed. Then you probably have something worth more serious evaluation.

Things you need to know about Irish VCs:

• Nobody has made out like a bandit yet. This biggest IT success in this generation, Iona didn’t take a penny from Irish VC companies, worst luck.
• They are nervous of being a leader in any market and will look for preliminary validation in UK, Europe and the US.
• They tend not to micro-invest (amounts below €100,000) and they won’t make you a single round company (i.e. invest €5,000,000 or more in the first round). The micro-investment limit is a function of the size of the market and the macro-investment is a function of my first point
• They pretty much know as much about the US investment market as you and me (which is to say, not much)
• They aren’t all bastards, thieves or arseholes (insert favourite invective here). They mostly want success just like you. There are some bastards in there though, just like any business. Caveat emptor
• They are not your business partners, they are shareholders, its different
• They are trade sale specialists and very few have any experience of an IPO. If you pitch that as an exit expect raised eyebrows at the very least
• Expect due diligence to take at least three months and often six. Expect the detail of the process to be both annoying and invasive, learn to live with it
• The decision to invest will not be based on your 30 page business plan, although the decision not to invest maybe
• No serious investor attend First Tuesday
• A personal introduction from a shared colleague beats a royal flush

A pretty good list of the Irish VCs can be found on the Irish Venture Capital Association Website.

So there I am installing Microsoft Office for Mac. Nice installation program, couple of forms, no sweat. Then you punch in the product ID and the installer pops a dialog with a product support ID that you are supposed to keep in case of problems. But the dopey developer forget to set the text to be selectable so you can’t cut and paste the ID anywhere sensible.

Dumb and Dumber…..

I’ve just started playing with a tool from performancing.com that adds a cool little text editor (very Web 2.0) into FireFox to allow you to blog entries. Its got a better interface than WordPress (I’m still on 1.5.2) and seems to have some support for del.icio.us tags. It also allows me to select from the predefined categories, which is where writely.com lets you down. Best of all its free.

Another good reason to delay migrating to flock.

These are the things I want from an Internet Bank and AIB doesn’t do this for me at the moment.

• See all my previous transactions for a least 6 months back on all my accounts
• Download my transactions in .csv format
• Issue and stop standing orders
• View all my standing orders from all accounts on one page
• View all my direct debits from all accounts on one page
• Email my personal banker to initiate bank transactions
• Request cheque books, PIN numbers
• Search my transaction history (I mean for feck sake, this is 2006!)
• Annotate each transaction with a note
• Use the back button (and it sure as hell isn’t AJAX causing this problem)

I should point out that while working at CR2 in 1998 we built all of these features into a product called BankWorld.

Anybody know if Rabobank does any of this? They have been banging on about their Internet Banking on the radio of late.