techno-culture

No, no connection between the Irish dotcom multimillionaire and the Silicon Valley VC multimillionaire (yet!?) outside the tenuous one of sharing some newsprint space today in the Irish TImes. I interviewed both for this Friday’s Business This Week section. You can read Ray Nolan on the inside story of the $340m sale last week of [...]

Tags: hostelworld, ray nolan, tim draper, VCs, WRI

Some have been very crabby about the One City, One Book concept but I have to say I really like it.  I enjoy the background chatter about the book on various radio programmes, which is kind of like dipping in and out of a novel on your bedside table, and I like that so many libraries and [...]

Tags: Bram Stoker, Dracula, Dublin, One book one city

As part of an international celebration of Ada Lovelace, the pioneering woman technologist and polymath, the daughter of poet Lord Byron and the very tolerant friend and admirer of the volatile Charles Babbage, I would like to salute not just one woman scientist or technologist but a whole bookful of Irish women. The book is [...]

Tags: ada lovelace day, ENIAC, Kathleen McNulty Mauchly Antonelli, Lab Coats and Lace

For having an extended family, on both sides, that I love spending time with. For the same stories that we wait all year for, that get retold annually over the turkey, and always make us laugh, even though we know every word. For the generosity of others. For passion. For conviction. For friends, new but [...]

This is my column in today’s Irish Times. I sat next to a financial analyst from Atlanta on my flight from San Francisco to Vegas, and he was the one who tipped me off about the state of the Palazzo. I filed that away as an interesting angle for a column, if I could get [...]

…there’s a free bar and no queue. Last night an event with fodder and grog  kicked off the CA exhibit area and I never saw more then five people waiting to be served — by two barmen. Needless to say the two ‘Irish’ journalists — actually me, a Canadian/American and Ian Campbell for the Sunday [...]

I am out in the weirdest city in the world for 5 days  for work, at a Computer Associates conference — some of the nicest hotel rooms anywhere, but if you don’t care for gambling and big shows and very expensive shopping, there’s nothing to do after you’ve seen the Liberace Museum (recommended!). The casinos, and that [...]

No doubt the European Commission will be outraged to find out that even as they were fussing over Ireland’s low 12.5% tax rate, the country has secretly been charging those multinationals only 11%. Haven’t they? Well, John McCain just said so in the first presidential debate.
I must say that while that’s a small difference, this [...]

Tags: Irish tax rate, McCain

That was the big announcement out of Oracle OpenWorld, and the centre of Larry’s keynote. Oracle and HP are teaming to produce the Exadata storage server and a grid array in a box called the Database Machine that utilises the Exadata plus some database servers. Oracle is claiming the Exadata gives minimum 10x speed increases [...]

That’s the big buzz at Oracle OpenWorld and a lot of products are showing web 2.0 features or are completely based around them. Social networking elements are central to a new product, Beehive, introduced yesterday, which is enterprise collaboration software that draws on discussion board, IM, email and other networking technologies. I’m listening to a talk [...]

Well, virtually at least. I’m out in San Francisco at Oracle OpenWorld and the organisers are pushing social networking engagement big time. Bloggers are separate but equal members of the press corp with badges that clearly state ‘blogger’ not ‘press’ (though if you are press and also a blogger you get a little orange ribbon [...]

This Saturday, the 20th, with free talks and demos and games at the Digital Exchange, Crane St, the Digital Hub, Dublin. This starts at 11 am, and runs to 5 pm, with chat and adult beverages after in the Longstone pub. More info and you can sign up here, though I am sure you can also [...]