TechWire

Perlico offers 3Mbs broadband for €6 per month. Not.

This would be a sensational offer, were it in any way true. €6 per month for a bundle, including a 3Mbs broadband connection? Amazing! Fantastic! Revolutionary!

Instead, the real price is €46 per month.

I don't know how they get away with these ads.

IEDR (.ie) registrations up 26%, 34,263 new names registered last year

Not much to comment on this, except to note it. It's hard to draw a firm conclusion as Irish business is starting from a relatively low online base. But a rise of 26 per cent has to be good news, as is the fact that the IEDR is making a profit. Here are the key points from the IEDR's press release:

-- .ie registrations up by 26.8% net

-- .ie domain prices reduced by 20%

-- Turnover increased by 7.4% to €2.5m

-- Operating profit and interest income totalled €433,647

-- .ie maintained market share in 2008 compared to .com and .eu

Conor Lenihan

I was at the launch of the government's smart economy report yesterday. Three people spoke: Eamon Ryan, Conor Lenihan and Barry McSweeney (director of National Knowledge Society Strategy).

Here's a funny thing: Lenihan was impressive. He was calm, assured, knowledgeable and put the report -- a lengthy tome -- into an easily digestible context based on real figures and the current state of the economy (including several mentions of An Bord Snip). In short, I was impressed.

Why am I saying this?

Because I wrote a column a few months ago questioning his suitability for the job of junior minister with responsibility for the information society. Then, when he rang me up to rant about the column, I blogged about it.

I stand over both of those pieces and I'd write them again under the same circumstances.

However, I do believe in giving credit where credit's due. So as far as yesterday is concerned, Lenihan did very well. There was no guff, no waffle, no sidestepping reality.

No, I haven't been out to lunch with him. And no, I'm not sleeping with his assistant. And no, I'm not looking for an interview (which almost any journalist could get anyway.)

Just believe in being balanced.

BT says bye bye to consumer broadband in Ireland

BT has abandoned the Irish consumer and small business broadband market. Instead, it will focus on what it sees as a more viable broadband market, big companies.

BT will transfer 84,000 consumers and 3,000 small businesses over to Vodafone, which now becomes a big player in the Irish broadband market.

And here's an interesting line from the release: "The value of the gross assets that are the subject of this transaction was €4.8 million at 31 March 2009."

No matter what way this is spun, this is a significant vote of no confidence in Irish consumer broadband by one of its biggest players.

Want: Sony M10 digital recorder

Holy crap, I'd like one of these.

From the release: "the palm-sized compact device offers the budget conscious musician the perfect tool for composing or recording sessions and live performances. It also works as a personal music player."

"The new recorder is 96 kHz/24-bit capable with electret condenser stereo microphones, 4 GB of internal flash memory and a microSD/Memory Stick Micro™ (M2™) Slot1. Key features include a built-in speaker, cross-memory recording, digital pitch control, digital limiter, low-cut filter, track mark functions, a 5-second pre-recording buffer and A-B repeat capability. The PCM-M10 comes supplied with Sound Forge Audio Studio Recorder Edition software."

$400 in the US, which means about €420 here when it's released.

Sony! Send one of them in for review!

Nokia, the Ovi Store and a lack of vision

Tomorrow, I hope to get a Nokia N97 to test for a while (I've briefly looked at it before).

Nokia is spending a fair sum promoting and advertising this touchscreen smartphone. What interests me is why it is not spending the same effort on building up and promoting its Ovi Store.

Ovi Store? What's that?

Well may you ask. It's Nokia's online application store -- its version of the iPhone's App Store. So far, it has less than 10,000 applications on it. Apple has 65,000 (and growing at breakneck speed).

What Nokia doesn't seem to get (fully) is that the App Store is now THE reason why a significant number of people plump for the pricey, network-restricted iPhone. It's not the megapixel count.

I've been banging on about this for some time. I'm wondering when Nokia is going to treat the Ovi Store like the absolute priority that it should be (ie more important than any individual handset launch).

Two thirds of Irish women judge a man by his social networking page: survey

According to a survey conducted by Behaviour & Attitudes (among 171 adults, aged 18-25), 64 per cent of young Irish women "would refuse to go on a date with someone if they didn't like the look of their social networking profile".

What the survey, which was commissioned by Samsung Mobile Ireland, didn't examine was these girls' standards. Given that most end up on dates anyway, the standard of what they 'don't like the look of' must be very low, judging by the state of most blokes' Bebo and Facebook sites.

Meanwhile, the survey also claims that almsot half of young Irish men would prefer to receive a call from the low-brow talent contest judge Cheryl Cole than anyone else. Rosanna Davison came second.

Apple claims 1.5 billion App Store downloads, 65,000 apps; Jobs aims jibe at Nokia, Palm, Rim

According to Apple, 1.5 billion applications for the iPhone were downloaded in the online store's first year.

But Apple CEO Steve Jobs (who is obviously still alive) used the occasion to level a potshot at Nokia, which is trying to garner interest in its Ovi online application store.

“The App Store is like nothing the industry has ever seen before in both scale and quality,” said Jobs (in a press release just issued by Apple). “With 1.5 billion apps downloaded, it is going to be very hard for others to catch up.”

Jobs is right. Nokia needs to wake up right now and push the Ovi store like they've never pushed anything before. The App Store is the next iTunes and Apple is cornering the market. Nokia, Palm and Rim (as well as Sony Ericsson, Samsung and LG) need to get the finger out immediately.

PR firms' (lack of) online engagement

Damien Mulley and Klara Golez have a well researched post here about Irish PR firms' levels of online engagement. They list each PR firm and goes through whether they have a website, Facebook page, Twitter account, RSS feed and other appropriate measures. It looks fairly shocking at first. But in fairness, it only reflects the reality of ordinary companies in Ireland: Irish business is very non-tech friendly, in general.

Eircom outage a result of being 'deliberately targeted', says Eircom

There have been lots of reports and rumours circulating over the past week about attacks on Eircom's network. This morning, Eircom has addressed one aspect of this -- an outage that occurred yesterday -- with the following statement.

"Last night Eircom.net customers experienced significant congestion while browsing the web.
While it is too early to confirm, Eircom believes that it is related to an unprecedented volume of traffic deliberately directed at our network which has caused difficulties for customers over recent days.
Service has been restored to our customers since late last nights. Our technical specialists have been and will continue to work to around the clock to determine the source of the problem.
Eircom has been in contact with other operators in the Irish market to collaborate and pool technical expertise in this area."

Why journalists tapping into mobile voicemail is sometimes justified

The scandal going on in Britain with News Of The World journalists tapping into celebrities' mobile voicemail accounts throws up some interesting ethical questions.

Without a doubt, tapping into a celebrity's unprotected voicemail to root for gossip is wrong and should not be tolerated. But can tapping into voicemail ever be justified?

I believe that it can be, in certain (very limited) circumstances.

Before I go any further, the obvious disclaimer: I have never done this. And another disclaimer: this is obviously a personal view and does not reflect my employer (this is a personal blog).

Le me explain a circumstance in which I believe a journalist tapping someone's voicemail may be justified.

Suppose a journalist is trying to expose a corrupt government minister. Suppose this minister has accepted a huge bribe to facilitate the building of a town on completely unsuitable marshland: a town that will wreck residents' lives.

Supposing the journalist gets a reliable tip from a whistleblower that the corrupt developer has left a confirmation voice message in the voicemail account of the corrupt minister. And suppose that this is the only way to expose this horrendously corrupt act.

Is the journalist justified in accessing the voicemail to record the conversation to expose the massive corruption? Or is the right to privacy so strict and absolute that, given the choice between the corruption going unpunished or violating the minister's privacy, the minister's privacy prevails?

Given this particular choice, I believe that the intrusion is warranted.

This does NOT mean that it's okay to tap into Glenda Gilson's mobile account to see who she might be shagging. And yes, there is a line. And yes, I am drawing it somewhere between exposing a corrupt minister and rooting for gossip about celebrities' sex lives.

Samsung Jet S8000: 30 second review

Overall, this is, by far, Samsung's best effort to date. The operating system is much improved, with new shortcuts to find phone contacts, one-tap zoom-in controls on the phone's browser and a fast 800Mhz processor under the hood.

The 5-megapixel camera, although not Samsung's best, is impressive. There's a 3.5mm jack on board (thank Christ). And the quality of the Amoled screen is very high.

It has couple of new gimmicky features, such as a 'Find Music' function that can record a few seconds of background music, analyse it and tell you the song's name and singer (it doesn't work a lot of the time).

Despite the improvements, the touchscreen technology still lags the iPhone (I've photographed them together to give you a sense of the phones' size). You need a really firm press on the screen and it sometimes skips or breaks off. It's workable but still not optimal. Texting, too, still presents one or two niggling challenges.

Lots more on all of these issues this weekend in a substantial review in the paper.

O2 Ireland gets the Palm Pre: official

O2 Ireland confirmed this morning that it will carry Palm's hotly anticipated Palm Pre.

There are no pricing details available yet and the operator is only saying that it will be on sale before the end of the year. If it wants to catch the Christmas market, though, O2 will need to launch by late October.

Palm has set up a notification service as to when the mobile will become available.

UPC gets served with legal papers from big music labels

Wondering what was happening with big music/Irma and the ISPs? Last week, BT was served with legal papers by the four big music labels. Yesterday, it was the turn of UPC (Chorus NTL).

Here's a statement from UPC on the matter:

UPC can confirm that is has been served with a plenary summons by solicitors acting on behalf of the four Irish music labels (EMI, Warner, Universal and WEA).  It is regretful that the rightsholders have decided to pursue with their threat of legal action against UPC. The company is now preparing its defence and intends to vigorously defend its position in Court.

The plenary summons served follows a recent out-of-court settlement with Eircom and solicitors acting on behalf of the four Irish labels (EMI, Universal, Sony and WEA) whereby they wrote to a number of Irish Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in an attempt to impose a similar three strikes ruling on each ISP.

UPC has made its position clear from the outset -- it will not agree to a request that goes beyond what is currently provided under existing legislation. There is no basis under Irish law requiring ISPs to control, access or block the internet content its users download. In addition, the rights holders' proposal gives rise to serious concerns for data privacy and consumer contract law.

Irish and European law maintains a careful balance between the rights and obligations of copyright owners, internet users and ISPs. The three strikes policy that was agreed in private with eircom as part of the settlement, and any attempt to impose in upon the industry generally, seriously undermines that balance.

It is unfortunate that the rightsholders did not take up UPC's suggestion that it convene a stakeholder forum in which their concerns could be addressed. UPC indicated that it would be willing to participate in such a forum provided all relevant parties that have a vested interest in this matter were included (eg ISPs, the Data Protection Commission, the National Consumer Agency and relevant Departments of the Government).

UPC has always taken a strong stance against illegal activity on its network. It takes all steps required by the law to combat specific infringements which are brought to its attention and will continue to co-operate with rightsholders where they have obtained the necessary Court Orders for alleged copyright infringements.

It is regretful that the rightsholders have decided to go down the legal route as both sides share a common goal which targets to eradicate piracy.