TechWire

Why Facebook matters

Want to know how fast a group on Facebook takes off? How about zero to a million in 10 days? My 'groups' section currently exhibits a set-up called '1,000,000 Strong For Stephen T Colbert' (the US political satirist). Here are the stats of its membership figures:

10,000 Members at 10:22 PM (EST) 10/17/2007
50,000 Members at 4:48 PM (EST) 10/18/2007
100,000 Members at 12:54 AM (EST) 10/19/2007
170,000 Members at 4:58 PM (EST) 10/19/2007
200,000 Members at 9:43 PM (EST) 10/19/2007
250,000 Members at 11:58 AM (EST) 10/20/2007
300,000 Members at 7:44 PM (EST) 10/20/2007
350,000 Members at 4:43 AM (EST) 10/21/2007
400,000 members at 5:11 PM (EST) 10/21/2007
450,000 Members at 12:16 PM (EST) 10/22/2007
500,000 Members at 5:11 AM (EST) 10/23/2007
550,000 Members at 3:59 PM (EST) 10/23/2007
600,000 Members at 8:06 PM (EST) 10/23/2007
650,000 Members at 11:24 PM (EST) 10/23/2007
700,000 Members at 11:34 AM (EST) 10/24/2007
750,000 Members at 5:31 PM (EST) 10/24/2007
800,000 Members at 9:40 PM (EST) 10/24/2007
850,000 members at 4:22 AM (EST) 10/25/2007
900,000 Members at 3:24 PM (EST) 10/25/2007
950,000 Members at 9:11 PM (EST) 10/25/2007
1,000,000 Members at 5:54 AM (EST) 10/26/2007
1,100,000 Members at 3:06 PM (EST) 10/27/2007

Wow...

So this is what a Tesco mobile looks like

Those who turned up to the launch got "complimentary phones". Mine is a Samsung J600 (left). As for the service, it'll be e13 per month for unlimited calls and texts to another Tesco Mobile. They're not going much for web stuff (GPRS phone only) and it's 1 cent per kb downloaded, which is very expensive (there is an alternative €1 per day browsing package).

Friday fun

Tesco Mobile launches tomorrow

At lunchtime. Pricing details and phone ranges revealed then.

Eircom's 25Mbs broadband plans

Spent an hour and a half with Geoff Shakespeare, Eircom's chief technical officer on Tuesday. In a nutshell, Eircom is pledging to upgrade a third of its broadband lines to VDSL (25Mbs to 100Mbs) by 2010. It will also, he says, upgrade "well over half" of all its broadband lines to ADSL 2 standard (12Mbs to 24Mbs) in the same time period.

Free wi-fi from Eircom (for six months)

...but only for Eircom broadband subscribers. Still, it applies to existing customers, so if you've already an Eircom account (which is most broadband subscribers), you now get free wi-fi until April 22nd, 2008. Eircom has about 300 proper public wi-fi locations, with about another 800 less-than-practical wi-fi locations (restaurants, pubs, phone boxes). Information on the offer here.

Facebook dossers unmasked

Damien has an interesting post about Facebook's Irish stats (131,000 people here using it now, apparently). In addition to the usual gender and demographic breakdown, it lists users by employer. Hence, the biggest dossers in Ireland are Microsoft employees, followed by Google, IBM and Accenture. Expect to see this in tomorrow's or Wednesday's paper, by the way: I'd say John will be all over it in the Times.

Napzap

Not that you should be driving when drowsy. But if you must, put this device on your ear and it'll blast an alarm if it detects your head drooping. €10 from here.

Fighting tips for small men

Here. It's a "bag o' nasty tricks" according to the product description.

Ryan on broadband, Eircom, MANs

Spent 45 minutes with Eamon Ryan in his office yesterday (interview to appear in Sunday's paper). He said the state was committed to "ubiquitous" broadband, even if it had to be permanently subsidised. He said a few other interesting things, including thoughts on "leapfrogging" certain unscheduled towns and areas into phase 2 of the MANs.