TechWire

The Cork lad with 165,000 Twitter followers

Thought David McWilliams was a big cheese on 'Irish Twitter' with his 17,000 followers?

Meet Cork-based youngster Cormac Moylan. A consultant with his own company, Moylan is the owner of @MacTrast, a Twitter account with an astonishing 165,000 followers (and just two accounts followed). Although not the biggest following on 'Irish Twitter' (see the celebrity lists here), the scale of the following is an unbelievably powerful platform to help launch a young business onto the next level.

So how did he do it? What can he use it for? I asked Cormac a few questions about how it was done and what he plans to do with it this year.

How long have you been tweeting?
I started tweeting from my personal account in mid 2008. I setup @mactrast (up to 4 months ago it was called @mactweeter but I changed names) on the 12th of November at 2.04PM. The first tweet was a very insightful "setting up my Twitter account" tweet.

What kind of growth have you seen along the way? As in, how many new followers do you get a month?
In November the account grew by 4,842 followers. On average I get approximately 184 new followers each day.

Do you have any idea what percentage of your MacTrast following is Irish? Would it even be 10%?
Irish followers make up fewer than 2% of the total. The UK and US account for approximately 55% of all followers.

Did you deliberately pick Apple as a topic to tweet about?
Yes. As I got more into using Twitter I began using RSS less and less to keep up to date about Apple and other tech news. To compensate for this I created a few Twitter accounts and I set them to private so that only I could follow them, I then configured the accounts to tweet news stories each hour. I basically began using Twitter as my RSS reader. It worked a charm. So much so, in fact, that I thought others might benefit from following the accounts too. I removed the privacy and the @mactrast account took off. It completely grew organically. I watched the follower count go from 1 to 20 in a week and I was chuffed. I watched it jump to 1,000 a few weeks later and was amazed.

Do you think that the reason your MacTrast account has so many followers is that it is about Apple-related news, how-tos and other stuff?
The account has so many followers because Apple users are fanatics. They're loud, they like to show off, and they swarm on Apple news. This resulted in the account going viral through retweets. My followers have helped to make @MacTrast [one of] the most popular sources for Apple news on Twitter.

How much time do you have to spend on the MacTrast account every day?
Zero. It's 100% automatic. The account syndicates content from a few handpicked Apple blogs that post amazing content. I check in every now and then to glimpse at the retweets and replies and maybe post a link but I don't have to spend any time on the account in order for it to be active.
 
Do companies ever approach you to try and get you to tweet about stuff? If so, have you ever done them the favour?
All the time. If the product is good I will tweet about it. @MacTrast is a traffic machine. A mention on the account could easily result in a ten fold increase in traffic for a website.

Does the large Twitter following translate into good business for your consultancy? If so, much? Have you won any significant business because of it?
I don't offer any services from the account. It's a pet project that grew legs.

What’s next for you, business-wise?
I'm investigating a few opportunities that can leverage the full potential of the account and offer something that is unique to the 165,000 followers. At the moment I am not earning a penny from the account. All that will change in 2011.

Facebook shares, anyone?

In tomorrow's paper, I'm writing about how the hoo-haa over Facebook's $50 billion valuation is leading to a flurry of heightened social media valuations and funding announcements. In other words, we have a good old-fashioned bubble on our hands.

But did you know that you can buy Facebook shares today? It's done on the grey market, through online platforms such as Sharespost.

In fact, you can buy Facebook shares in an auction this Monday. Because this is the email I just got from Sharespost (and no, it's not fraudulent spam):

"We thought you might be interested in the auction of the shares of Facebook Common Stock our affiliated broker dealer will be having on Monday, January 10th.

There will be a minimum of 175,000 shares of Facebook Class B Common stock committed for sale at the auction. The reserve price will be $27.00 and the auction will be conducted on a sealed bid basis. Buyers at the auction will be prequalified by the broker dealer in advance and will purchase through a single investment vehicle, such that each Seller will contract only with this single entity. Further information about this offering will be sent to you on Monday, January 10th."

That reserve price of $27 is far lower than the $40 to $60 that the stock is currently trading at on Sharespost. Nevertheless it's almost 30% higher than the reserve on the last Facebook stock auction in December.

Obviously a lot of people are trying to buy shares (which are given to Facebook employees through options, including staff at the company's Dublin headquarters) in advance of an expected IPO.

Although Facebook is definitely not a puff of smoke -- the WSJ has reported that it made a $355 million profit for the first 9 months of 2010 -- I would be very wary of investing in such a hyped company.

Irish operators' wifi dongle plans: a comparison

Looking for a 3G wifi broadband plan? It's a byzantine task trying to compare Irish operators' pricing and data plans. So here's a chart comparing Irish operators' (i) prepay wifi dongle plans and (ii) billpay wifi dongle plans.

 

Mobile operators sell two kinds of mobile broadband devices. One is a stick that slots into your computer's USB port. The other is an oval dongle (see picture above) that generates its own wifi signal. Up to five devices (laptops, iPads, smartphones, desktops) can use it at the same time. This is the one I'm focusing on in this post.

Note: this is aimed mainly at novices and beginners. In other words, where there has been a choice between various 30-day access packages, I've chosen the cheapest one available, based on an assumption that novices are less likely to be power-users. I've added in the higher data options in the fine print section below each table.

(i) PREPAY WIFI DONGLE BROADBAND PLANS

Operator                   3            O2         Voda     Meteor    Emobile

Dongle price:           €70         €60        €60        €70*         €60

1 day access            €5           €4           €3          €3           €3

1 week access          €10          --           €10         --             --

1 month access        €15         €20         €20        €20           --

Out-of-bundle MB      €1          €0.02*     €0.19    €0.02*     €0.02

 

(ii) BILLPAY WIFI DONGLE BROADBAND PLANS

Operator                    3         O2        Voda      Meteor    Emobile

Dongle price:            €10      €30        €40*        €40          €40

1GB                          €10        --            --            --             --

5GB                            --         --            --           €17           --

10GB                          --         --           €20         €20          €20

15GB                         €20      €20         €25*         --             --

20GB                          --          --            --           €25           --

30GB                         €26*       --            --            --             --

Out-of-bundle MB      €0.05   €0.02     €0.02       €0.02       €0.02

* Now here's the fine print (including data caps) on PREPAY plans:

3 Ireland: 1 day access up to 500MB. 1 week access up to 2GB. 1 month access up to 1GB. HIgher-priced 1 month packages are also available for up to 20GB (€35). 3 also has a current offer where pre-pay broadband dongle comes with 1GB of free data pre-authorised. However,  wifi dongle is currently out of stock. O2: 1 day access up to 500MB. 1 month access up to 5GB. Out-of-bundle charge of 2 cents per megabyte applies until the session is over and then you must take out a new full-price top-up. O2 also offers a "free 24 hour pass" when you initially sign up. O2 also has a special dangle purchase price of €80 with €40 credit. Vodafone: 1 day access up to 500MB. I week access up to 2GB. 1 month access up to 5GB. Add-on data allowances of 500MB (€3), 2GB (€10) and 5GB (€20) are available on prepay plans. Meteor: dongle is €60 if purchased online. 1 day access up to 500MB. 1 month access up to 7.5GB. Free access to Eircom public wifi hotpots with subscriptions. Meteor's high speed broadband access coverage is limited to large urban areas. Emobile: 1 day access up to 500MB. 1 month access up to 7.5GB.

* And here's the fine print on BILLPAY plans:

3: 30GB tariff of €26.24 is a promotional tariff, ends Feb 28th. O2: purchase price is based on 18 month contract. For 12 month contract, €50 purchase price applies. For 6 month contract, €60 purchase price applies. Vodafone: 15GB (€25) plan also gives higher speed, free modem ('up to' 14.4Mbs download) on 18-month plan. A reduced rate of €17 per month is available to Vodafone bill pay phone customers. Meteor: Prices based on 12-month contracts. For 18-month contact, 20GB product falls to €20 per month. Wifi dongle costs €20 extra if bought with 5GB or 10GB plans. Free access to Eircom public wifi hotpots with subscriptions. Emobile: 12-month contract applies

So which one do I use?

I've used wifi dongles from 3, O2 and Meteor, on and off. Of these, I've found 3's dongle probably to be the fastest and the widest in reach. Meteor gives a great perk in the form of free wifi at Eircom public hotspots, but its own high speed 3.5G coverage is far more limited than its rivals. I only recently started using O2's Hotspot wifi dongle and have found it to be a reasonably decent service.

OTHER ISSUES/QUESTIONS

1. How wifi broadband dongles work with your computer/tablet/smartphone: when you turn the dongle on, it emits a wifi signal (based on the sim card housed within it). You will see the dongle's wifi signature in your device's wifi detector. Simply choose it, enter the given password and you're connected. Up to five devices can access this wifi signal at the same time. The dongles are rechargeable: you will get between 3 and 5 hours use from a single charge, generally.

2. Where do they work? Anywhere that you find a 3G mobile phone signal (which is all urban areas and most towns or large villages). I have used dongles with little problem in remote West Cork (Beara peninsula) and rural Mayo (Erris and Belmullet).

3. Do they suffer form the same constrictions as mobile phone signals? Yes. So for example, they work less well in basements or deep inside a large building (unless there are extra transmitters in the building, such as a shopping centre). So if you normally have difficulty picking up a strong mobile phone signal in your home or your office, you will also have difficulty using one of these devices for your internet access.

4. What speed to they connect at? Generally 'up to' 7.2Mbs (download) and 'up to' 5Mbs (upload). (Some connect 'up to' 14.4Mbs.) In practice, it's about half that speed in urban areas and can be as little as a tenth of the advertised speed.

In general, I've been pretty happy with 3G broadband, mainly because I move about a lot. But it may or may not be the right service for you. 

8 Must-Have Apps For New iPad Owners

So you got an iPad for Christmas.  Nice, isn't it? Now comes the fun bit: looking for apps to use on the tablet.

There are over 300,000 of them out there: everything from spycams (currently the top-selling app) to fertility advice clinics. The App Store's charts will give you a good idea of some quality apps. But here are 8 apps that I've found to be truly excellent at various stages over the last six months.

When you're finished reading through them, why not take a look at my review of 15 quality business apps for the iPad?

1. Google Earth
The iPad was made for Google Earth. And vice versa. No other device shows off the application in as stunning a way. For the novice, it is an amazing thing to see the program zoom in from space to the driveway outside the house you are standing in. The application now incorporates Street View too, a brilliant way of researching other cities.
Price: free


2. Flipboard
Flipboard is a beautiful app that turns website feeds into magazine-style pages. Instead of scrolling, you 'flip' the page. You can customise it to suit whatever content tastes you have (its optional tech feeds include All Things Digital, TechCrunch and Engadget, for example). It'll take a little while to get the hang of customising it and will mainly appeal to frequent iPad users. But it's one of the loveliest, most creative apps out there.
Price: free


3. Angry Birds HD
It is the most successful game on either the iPhone or the iPad in the last 12 months. It's easy to see why: there are no high-octane laser cannons or RPG quests. Just a a few pissed-off birds looking for revenge on some cheeky pigs that have stolen their eggs. They get it by hurling themselves against the pigs' flimsy structures, using a giant catapult. What could be more fun? Very little, it would seem. The iPad version costs more than the iPhone version, but is worth it.
Price: €4


4. Facepad / Friendly
Bizarrely, Facebook has not yet made an app for the iPad. That has left the job of keeping you updated on Facebook to a number of alternative apps. While we've already mentioned Flipboard, either Facepad or Friendly would be the two best options for a standalone Facebook app. The Facepad, which has just launched is the simplest, cleanest-looking app. However, it's not optimised for the iPad's specs, so the screen is a tad blurry. Friendly is very nice app, giving you its own user-interface on your Facebook news, photos and friends.
Price: both free


5. Twitterrific
If you have a Twitter account -- and it seems very many of you do -- you've got to have a Twitter client for your iPad. There are some very nice paid Twitter apps. Osfoora HD has outstanding functionality and used to be a firm favorite of mine. But it kept crashing. And freezing. And crashing again. So it's back to (perfectly usable, efficient) basics with Twitterrific. Whatever you do, don't rely on Twitter's iPad app. It stinks.
Price: free


6. Pages
The iPad comes with Notes, a basic note-taking applications. It's fine. If you're looking for something with a little more power and flexibility, Pages is my choice. Based on Apple's word-processing program of the same name, it lets you easily incorporate images and other rich features into documents. And you can easily upload or email the pages out.
Price: €8


7. Documents To Go Premium
This is one I featured in the business apps roundup, but it's worth mentioning here, also. While Pages is a great standalone word-processing app, it doesn't incorporate Microsoft Word documents into it to work on. You can with Docs2Go. Not only Word, but Excel and Powerpoint, too. Not only that, you can synchronize the whole thing with your desktop computer's Microsoft Office suite.
Price: €14


8. Google
Yes, Google has its own iPad app. Granted, there's a (small) Google search panel in the default Safari web-browser app. But the Google app allows you to stay signed in using your Gmail or Google Docs account and keeps you updated if new communication comes in.

How I got on with six weeks of UPC's 100Mbs broadband service

For almost two months, I have had the holy grail of broadband services in Ireland: UPC's 100 megabits-per-second (Mbs) Fibre Power package.

As the trial period comes to a close, I can only say that most of the time, the service delivered what it said on the tin.

That's right: "most of the time". For, even though I achieved blazing hot speeds of up to 108Mbs (I've heard of others getting up to 120Mbs), the service sometimes played up a little. As in, occasionally cut out for no good reason. In fairness, few broadband services are perfect all of the time, so the occasional service interruption can be overlooked: I'm willing to give UPC the benefit of the doubt.

I did observe that the speed and signal strength fell off dramatically, if I was using the service over wi-fi. In the same room, the laptop clocked 60Mbs, a 40% fall-off (with about 5Mbs upload speeds). But two rooms away (about six yards), that fell to 30Mbs. Don't get me wrong; 30Mbs is a great broadband connection. But it's a long way off 100Mbs. In fairness to UPC, broadband speeds always fall off a little over wi-fi. To me, 70 per cent seems like a lot, though.

By comparison, my current broadband service terminates in the same room as the UPC package. It is a 6Mbs service. But two rooms away, it clocks 3.5Mbs, a fall off of just 45% (and not 70%). And that's on a mature broadband service with several other people in the area also using the technology.

So what did I use the 100Mbs service for? Do I now have a library full of high definition films, downloaded in minutes from The Pirate Bay?

Nope. By and large, I used it for the same stuff I use my 6Mbs connection for. Uploading photos. Web-browsing. Some light streaming. You know, regular home stuff. This may show my impending stuck-in-a-routine, old-fartness. Or it may be indicative of what most people do: I'll let you decide that. But I would certainly struggle to make a strong argument for a broadband service much faster than the one I have at present. 

Granted, I am starting to download films from iTunes a bit more, but that's mostly in advance for trips away: it doesn't make a huge difference whether it takes 7 minutes or 27 minutes. And I do dip into Xbox Live a bit, too: the extra speed certainly helps for downloading games. But as they're not really much cheaper than buying the boxed game, and I can't trade in a digital download, I don't generally choose new release downloads over DVDs.

Perhaps if there were a lot more mass-market TV or movie downloading services online I'd get real value out of 100Mbs. For example, I'd certainly go for a HD film-on-demand streaming service straight to my TV, which would take something in excess of 20Mbs to guarantee.

But without something like that, it's hard to see a pressing need for anything over 10Mbs. 

In conclusion, I can say that you'd want to be a fairly extreme downloader to really get your use out of this 100Mbs broadband service. Or have a really big family, all of whom use the service at the same time. Or use it as part of your small business. After all, €87.75 per month (well over €1,000 per year) is a lot of money for your broadband. (It's €80 per month if you also subscribe to a UPC television package; there's a 'reduced' €80 connection fee, too, when ordered online. UPC says that the service is now available to about a third of its installation base.)

Oh, and don't expect anything like 100Mbs if you're hooking up a wireless router: you'll be lucky to get close to half that speed.

 

Irish tech companies to watch in 2011

2010 was a good year for Irish tech.

Not because of any breakthrough companies or deals (of which there were few), but because of the continuing evolution of Irish companies towards creating something meaningful and original. (This hasn't  been in our DNA for at least 50 years, in which time the emphasis by parents, schools, colleges and society has been to join the professional, agricultural, marketing or developer classes rather than creative industrial activity.)

A few Irish entrepreneurs are starting to create benchmarks that, I believe, will bring Irish tech onto a new level in 2011.

Here are two companies, in particular, to watch.

1. Jerry Kennelly/Tweak.com
The Kerryman who created a stock photo service (Stockbyte) and then sold it for €110 million is back with a superb new online service. Tweak.com is a DIY marketing design service, allowing users to create their own flyers, posters, pamphlets and other sales materials. But this is no micro-business platform. Currently in beta, it's a slick, thoroughly professional job. It's the kind of standard that Apple would give you if they entered this space. Kennelly is thought to have invested over $10 million in the service and it really, really shows. This will threaten design companies and up the standard of sales and marketing design, generally.

2. Datahug
This could be a massive year for Connor Murphy and Ray Smith, the two Irish youngfellas who came back from the US and Australia, realising they had an idea that could really tempt large professional firms. Their beta service analyses incoming and outgoing company emails, IMs, IP calls and other corporate communication. It then divines which relationships are really crucial to the company. For example, it gives strong indications of which people in which other companies are the key contacts that are associated with getting deals moving. Done right, this software is worth megabucks.

ps in yesterday's paper, I offered 10 predictions about what was going to happen in the tech world, generally, in 2011.

Christmas gifts on a budget: Samsung Galaxy Europa (Android)

Android smartphones are hot property this Christmas. It's not hard to see why, with close to 100,000 apps available.

Normally, these sophisticated handsets will cost you well over €200, unless you're willing to enter into a lengthy bill-pay contract (in which case you'll get them from free).

Samsung has come up with a budget-friendly version called the Galaxy Europa. It skimps on top-end features, sporting a meagre 2 megapixel camera and a plasticky casing. But its 2.8-inch touchscreen does a better job than most entry-level smartphones and it does a good job with Facebook, Twitter and web-browsing.

Price: €90 (locked, pre-pay) from Meteor

Christmas gifts on a budget: Archos 1 Vision 4GB MP3 player

iPod schmiPod. If you're on a tight budget and looking for an entry-level MP3 player with a screen and enough memory for well over 1,000 songs, this MP3 player is a good choice.

It can take songs in almost any digital format and lists them on its 1.5 inch colour screen. At this price, it's hard to go wrong.

Okay, the operation isn't as smooth as an Apple MP3 player. And there are no fancy features, such as photo-viewers, album-art or fitness software synchrinisation.

But here's its killer feature: €30 (€50 for an 8GB version). That's about a third of the price of an entry-level, colour-screen iPod.

You'll get it for €30 from Gamestop shops nationwide or from Pixmania.ie (including delivery charge).

Christmas gifts on a budget: Canon's A3000

Two years ago, a 10-megapixel digital camera would have cost you €200. Today, you can get it for as cheap as €50.

For €72, Canon is offering a good entry-level camera (the A3000) that takes really decent shots. The A3000 is noteworthy because it doesn't rely on a clatter of disposable AA batteries, like similar entry-level devices.

Instead, the 10-megapixel model has a rechargeable battery. It can also shoot videos (in standard definition) and sports a nice 2.7 inch colour screen viewer, anti-shake technology and face-detection (up to nine people per shot). As entry-level digital cameras go, this is a great buy.

It's available in Argos (and probably one or two other places).

HTC HD7: 60 second review

I've been using HTC's HD7 for a little while, now. I've found some pros and some cons with the phone and the new operating system from Microsoft.

Here are the system's pros:

1. The interface is initially pleasing. It's bright and clear.
2. The touchscreen is pretty flawless. It's no different from HTC's high-end Android phones. And that's good.
3. The battery life is surprisingly okay. This phone has a 4.3 inch screen, normally battery-drain hell. But the HD7 easily lasts a full day with moderate to heavy use.
4. It uses the standard Micro-USB charging system. That means that you can share chargers with loads o father people. No more emails around the office with: "does anyone have a skinny Nokia charger?" (Incredibly, Nokia has stuck with its own charger for the N8. Grrrrr.)
5. The photo and video quality is decent enough. The HD7 has high definition video recording. Increasingly, this makes a difference.
6. The operating system integrates your contacts really nicely. Facebook friends, for example, are added to the list.

Now here are some of the cons.

1. The number of apps available is lamentable. Going from an iPhone or an Android phone, this will hit you with a shock. No more Angry Birds when you're on the loo. No sharing files via Evernote.
2. Lack of content-sharing. On an iPhone or a Nokia, you're often able to instantly share photos, videos or other content to the most popular social networking services. Much less integration on Phone 7.
3. The Twitter apps are rubbish or non-existent. Twitter's own Phone 7 app is muck. It'll take you ages, for example, to work out where exactly the 'replies' section is. Okay, this is only important if you use Twitter. But I do.
4. The operating system can slow up. If you're trying to switch between apps or reverse your way out of an app, the HD7 is noticeable slower than either Android or iPhone. Okay, it's just a second or two. But still.
5. Xbox Live is limited. One of the great promises of this phone is its integration of your Xbox Live account. But when you try to use your account to download games, you'll find that loads aren't available 'for your territory' (Ireland). Booo.

For the purposes of this post, I've mixed in comments about the HD7 (the hardware) with Phone 7 (the operating system from Microsoft), as this is what you'll get when you go in to buy the phone.

Touchscreen gloves for the big freeze

Cold weather and touchscreen smartphones do not go together hand in glove.

Every time you need to take a call, you have to take a glove off. Why? Because wool just doesn't work on a touchscreen. Luckily, one canny manufacturer has stitched special conductive lining into the thumb, forefinger and middle finger of this pair of 'faux wool' (acrylic) gloves. The result is a fully functional phone and non-frozen fingers. They cost €15 including delivery from Firebox.com.

Alternatively, if you're still not getting a purchase on your touchscreen, you can try these forefinger-less gloves from Etre. They cost €35 (including delivery).

15 decent business apps for the iPad

The iPad is really starting to get down to business. There are loads of genuinely handy day-to-day work apps available for it, now. Here are 15 really decent work and productivity apps that I have found useful. (I've listed them alphabetically.)

1. Airsharing HD
It's all very well having a Dropbox, Evernote or Gmail account. But wouldn't it be great to be able to simply access your home or work computer remotely on your iPad? Then you could open, edit or copy over any of the documents or files you have on your stationary computer. That's more or less what Airsharing HD does. It allows you to wirelessly ‘mount' your iPad as an external drive to your main machine.
Price: €8

2. Bloomberg
If you like to keep an eye on the markets, this is the best iPad app out there. It provides instant access to every major stock market around the globe, including the Irish Stock Exchange. You can look any stock up to see its current and historical performance, as well as check any news headlines relating to it. The app also offers podcasts, currency information and a general news feed.
Price: free

3. Box.net
Along with Dropbox and Evernote, this is among the best cloud storage apps available for the iPad. Because it's accepted as a mainstream service, many other apps and services now synchronise with Box.net files and accounts.
Price: free for 1GB of storage, premium subscriptions available

4. Desktop Connect
One of the biggest productivity applications for the iPad is remote desktop sharing.That means being able to switch on your iPad and view the contents of your home or office computer. There are dozens of such apps for this task in the App Store. It's quite easy to set up and can prove very useful.
Price: €12

5. Documents To Go Premium
As good as Apple's iWork suite is, Microsoft Word and Excel are still the dominant currency in office productivity software. This fact makes Documents To Go a very useful app. It allows you to create, view and edit documents in Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint. It also allows you to synchronise these iPad files with your desktop's Microsoft Office suite and a range of popular online storage services, such as Google Docs, Dropbox and Box.net. This vies with Quick office Connect Mobile Suite for the accolade as the best Microsoft Office synchronisation app available for the iPad.
Price: €14

6. Evernote
The most popular online note-taking application works just as well on the iPad edition as it does on your computer or your smartphone. It also means you can access all of your notes, memos and documents (from years back, too).
Price: free

7. Financial Times
Europe's largest business publication has launched a special iPad edition of its newspaper. Access to the news content is based upon the same principle as its website. Those who register (supply a name and e-mail address) get access to most of the news sections. To read in-depth features, columnists and special reports, there are varying subscription rates, but the app itself is free.
Price: free


8. Instapaper
Getting on a plane? That means you won't be able to catch up on your online reading. What this app does is to record and save web pages you visit in a nice, readable format. You can open them up again offline later. It is very useful for getting access to your online newspaper subscription.
Price: €4

9. Keynote
Keynote completes the trio of iWork applications (alongside Pages and Numbers). It is the Mac version of PowerPoint. Its strength is in the templates it provides for multimedia presentations. These beautifully incorporate images and videos, as well as the usual bullet point slides.
Price: €8

10. LogMeIn Ignition
This is another, more straightforward, take on controlling a remote PC using your iPad. It basically allows you to take complete control of a PC somewhere else. You can create and edit documents, and even print from it. Instead of using a mouse, you can either point to where you want the mouse to click or leave it in the centre of the screen and move items onto it. This is probably the most user-friendly remote desktop apps you can get.
Price: €24

11. Numbers
Numbers is Apple's answer to Excel. As is the norm, it is a lot more user-friendly and pleasant to look at than Microsoft's popular spreadsheet application. It synchronises nicely with a host of web-sharing and print options.
Price: €8

12. Pages
Apple's answer to Microsoft Office is its iWork suite of applications. This is made up of Pages (Word),Keynote (Powerpoint, OneNote) and Numbers (Excel, Access).Apple is selling a modified version of each for €8. As a word processing program, Pages is a cinch to use and makes great use of images and online sharing.
Price: €8

13. PrintCentral For iPad
One of the iPad's acknowledged weaknesses has been its lack of external connectivity to peripherals such as printers (even though this has been improved a bit with 4.2's Airprint). If your printer is wi-fi connected, this is a brilliant way to get around the iPad's printing restriction. You can connect your iPad to any wi-fi printer, anywhere in the world. You can print virtually any type of document, including high resolution photos. A brilliant, indispensable app for those with a need to print off documents.
Price: €8

14. Side By Side
Another iPad weakness is the lack of real multi-tasking ability. For example, if you want to write documents or take notes while researching something online, you must exit the browser or app to open the word processing app. Side By Side is a very useful way around this issue. Aimed at multi-tasking when online, it divides the screen in two so you can browse on one side and open a productivity app (such as Google Docs or Evernote) on the other. Really handy.
Price: 80 cents

15. Webex
Cisco's online meeting tool is widely used among multinationals and corporates. It shows participants (via webcams) and allows them to talk, type and share documents live on air. The free iPad app allows you to be invited into a meeting that is scheduled or organised by someone else (who has forked out for a pricey Webex subscription). It will not put you into the picture of the meeting, however, as the iPad has no camera.
Price: free

3 Ireland's market share falls steeply in revised Comreg figures

*Note that I've updated the drop in market share from 50% to 37% (see below).

Ouch.

Following the revelation that 3 Ireland had been misreporting figures to Comreg earlier this year, the regulator has been busy revising all of its market statistics.

It has just released the new, revised statistics on its website. And it shows a fairly steep drop in 3 Ireland's market share compared to its original statistics.

3's market share was reported as being 9.2% (including mobile broadband) and 6.1% (excluding mobile broadband) of the Irish market. The real figures, say Comreg, were 5.8% (including mobile broadband) and 2.4% (excluding mobile broadband).

That's a whopping 37 per cent fall of its reported market share, including mobile broadband statistics. It's an even steeper 60 per cent fall in its phone-only market share (excluding mobile broadband services). The main benficiary seems to be Vodafone, which is now up to over 42% market share.

[Update: I originally quoted a fall of 50 per cent in that portion of 3's market share figure that includes mobile broadband; that was off the mark and a product of my gammy maths. The correct figure is 37 per cent, as 3 Ireland has correctly pointed out.]

* Both sets of figures quoted relate to Q1, 2010.

MacBook Air: first thoughts

On Friday, the new MacBook Air arrived (see unboxing, below). I have been using it ever since. It is a thing of elegance. Maybe even of beauty.
Yet for all of its slimness and sleekness, it is a hard machine to love.
First, some background. When you purchase a new MacBook Pro, or even a MacBook, there is a small thrill every time you open it up. You're reminded of the pleasant features that set it apart from a PC laptop.
This is the first Mac I've ever owned where I don't get that little thrill. And I think it's because of the smallish, 11-inch screen.
What I am saying is that an 11-inch screen does not feel big enough for an Apple laptop. At least, it is not big enough for what I like to use a Mac for.
It is good for writing, which I do plenty of. It is fine for iTunes (which I use less and less).
But it is a compromised experience for browsing the web (which is every log-on session) or using iPhoto, iMovie or GarageBand. These latter features are the reason that Macs stand out from PCs. To me, anyway. Compromise their functionality and you may as well be using a PC laptop.
There is another aspect of the MacBook Air which is a little worrying.
Macs usually deliver specs that reach the high end of what computers can do, power-wise. (This is one reason you pay a lot for them.) Apple doesn't do piece-of-shit netbooks.
And yet, my 11-inch MacBook Air has a 1.4Ghz Intel processor. Dual-core, admittedly. But 1.4Ghz is definitely a compromise: you wouldn't want to messing about too much with your smartphone-taken HD videos or your 6MB high res photos. Neither do you want to be running too many programs at the same time.
I'm not saying that the Air can't multi-task: it can. And I'm not suggesting that it should do the job of a graphically-muscular MacBook Pro. But there are more and more tasks in everyday mainstream life that take a little more firepower than 1.4Ghz will deliver. And if that is the case today, it is certain to be the case in four, three or even two years time.
This isn't meant as a full review of the MacBook Air. That will come in the paper in a couple of weeks. Just a few rambling initial thoughts.

Unboxing the new MacBook Air (11-inch)

MacBook Air: unboxing at work from adrian weckler on Vimeo.