TechWire

I'm off on holidays. Back on July 31st.

Lord Mayor of Dublin backs free city-wide wi-fi

The new Lord Mayor of Dublin, Vincent Jackson, has come out in favour of free, or very cheap, wi-fi built by the city. And he says that if councillors such as Naoise O'Muiri and Lucinda Creighton keep their campaigns up, it has a good chance of actually being funded as early as this November. I talked to him earlier this week about the issue.
"Looking around the council, I think that there will be very few people saying no to this," said Jackson. "It's not a lot of money. It's a very positive thing for everybody. It would be great if Dublin was to the fore of this."
"It's not a lot of money by today's standards. If it were to result in an advantage to investing in Dublin, it must be considered. You only have to look at how much the IDA spends at the moment attracting jobs. This is not a lot of money by comparison."
"It's important that Naoise [O'Muiri] brings it up in November. That's when the estimates are published. There are a lot of negotiations and debate in the eight weeks before that over funding and where money is to be sourced for various issues."
"We're no longer a low cost economy. Research and development is the way of the future."

This idea may be gaining momentum. (Picture taken by NoirinP.)

Casio's new 10 megapixel digital camera

Who says film is superior to digital? Casio Ireland is about to launch its EXZ1000 compact digital camera with a staggering 10 megapixels on board. Its 2.8 inch screen is just shy of the best LCD screens around, too. No Irish price has been confirmed, but it's €380 on pixmania.com (including delivery), so we're thinking about €475 to €500 in Irish shops.

Update: the confirmed Irish price is €500. It's available from The Camera Centre (Grafton Street), Conns Cameras, the Galway Camera Shop, the Digital Camera Centre (Cork) and other, mostly independent, outlets.

Imagine's new €20 broadband+phone service

Imagine says it wants to up the ante on cut-price entry level broadband. From today, it is offering a 1MB (bit-rate) broadband connection plus free national phone calls (to landlines only) for €20 per month. Or you can have 20 hours of 1MB broadband plus the free national calls for €10 per month. Bear in mind, though, that there's line rental -- €24 -- on top of this. A connection charge of €50 also applies. One interesting facet to the new service is that all customer interaction -- from signup to billing -- is online. This is a bit more impressive than Digiweb's most recent €20 broadband-plus-phone deal because that service's free calls are restricted to calls between Digiweb Metro customers, of which there are very few.

Xtravision bids to make ads compulsory viewing

Xtravision appears to be loading non-skippable ads on to some of its rentable DVD titles. A very poor M&Ms ad infected one DVD I rented last week.

Cork City has no plans for free wi-fi

As Dublin City councillors come out of the woodwork to push proposals for a free citywide wi-fi network, Cork's city manager has no such aspirations. "No, that's not on our agenda," said a spokesman for the Council. "But we were ahead of Dublin anyway. We had a network in place with Smart Telecom since 2004."

Sony's new Vaio TX3

I'm generally a fan of Sony Vaios -- they look great and handle beautifully. Just released on the Irish market is the new TX3. It's slim and light (1.25kg) and has an 11 inch widescreen. It has a claimed battery life of seven hours and built-in cameras and microphones. It also has a few new security features, such as a fingerprint reader (which, in my opinion, is overhyped as a feature). It's priced at €2,350 and €2,660, depending on the model spec.

Where to get a Nokia repaired

Something wrong with your old Nokia? Don't fancy the official repair distribution path? One shop in Dublin's Camden Street fixes certain problems for what seems like a small fee. FM Mobiles fixed a 6310i -- a model still going strong, despite its age -- that was continually dropping calls. It charged just €25. The shop also gave the mobile a general sprucing up.

Dublin City Council "not interested" in city-wide mesh/wi-fi broadband

Why can't Dublin follow cities like San Francisco and others in considering a free, or almost free, broadband network? It could be built and rolled out cheaply. I understand that the City Council has recently been approached on the issue by a major network provider. But the Council (a) doesn't get it (b) isn't interested and (c) doesn't think anyone else would care enough for it to be worth its while, according to an executive in the network provider.

Update: Semper Idem has extra background on this, specifically relating to a question put by a Labour councillor to the Dublin City Manager in February. The manager appears to suggest that there's no need because "competition is increasing and on-going reduced charges are evident" within the private sector. Semper Idem also points out that a Fine Gael councillor, Lucinda Creighton, has been pushing a city-wide wi-fi network based on the Boston model.

NTL Ireland's 'new' broadband offer

It seems that NTL has dropped its condition that new broadband subscribers need take out a TV subscription, too. This blog received a call from one of the company's telesales agents this morning advertising the cable operator's latest offers. Asked about the service's terms and conditions, the agent specifically pointed out that a TV subscription was not required. But its website is not clear on the matter, only saying (in the small print) that "if you are not currently an NTL TV customer, additional subscription charges may apply". It would be nice if the company has actually changed its position, as its broadband packages are cheap and fast.