Household Charge Protest

Household Charge Protest, a set on Flickr.

My photos from the Household Protest in Dublin yesterday

St Patricks Day 2012

St Patricks Day 2012, a set on Flickr.

My photos from the Dublin St Patricks Day Parade. 85 might seem like a lot but it took me hours to cut it down to this many from over 1100 :-)

Sean, leave it

I have to wonder what Sean Gallagher thinks he's going to achieve by calling for a public inquiry into the tweet that was read out during the Frontline Presidential Debate? Ok it was wrong and his campaign was completely derailed by it but what good will an inquiry do him now?

In the aftermath of the election it's become clear that the tweet was a fake and that Gallagher was hard done by. The BAI found in his favour and he could easily claim it proved his innocence. If the election was run now he might do better but he still wouldn't win, in the end many people were put off by the whole Fianna Fail connection not just the question of wether or not he'd picked up a donation for the party. That said if he did decide to run for the Dail then he might actually have a shot at it. A high profile, intelligent candidate he'd get enough former Fianna Fail voters on his side to get a quota from somewhere.

So why keep the issue in the headlines now? What would a public inquiry achieve except to provide employment for some of the Mahon Tribunal lawyers about to be released from the teet of that golden calf? It will also draw attention to his involvement in Fianna Fail, the logical defence for RTE on the tweet issue is to explain that it was an easy mistake to make given Gallaghers involvement in Fianna Fail and then follow it up with more examples of Gallaghers party activities. Innocent or not if the media keeps showing us pictures of him with the likes of Ahern and Cowen or at party events eventually the public will begin to see him as just another Fianna Fail failure and he'll scare away those who would vote for him as a man different from the others.

Maybe it's time for someone in his campaign team to take him out for coffee and say "Sean, leave it, you can fight the battle at the next election".  

These ones go to 12

I was trying to explain the benefits of my new stronger nespresso capsules to people in work this morning. About half way through I realised I was standing there saying how great they were because unlike the others capsules these ones go to 12...

Netflix is here

Netflix launched in Ireland yesterday and I was quick in to sign up. Of course the fact that the first month is free and after that there is a month by month subscription of just €6.99 meant there really isn't much of a down side at the moment (at least not one I can see). I get to try the service for free, and if I don't like it I just unsubscribe before February 8th. Usually I'm one who believes if it sounds too good to be true then it is too good to be true but this one seems an exception. 

The TV at home was already reserved for some standard programming delivery but I did manage to grab a few minutes to check out the integration on my Apple TV which worked perfectly. Its a little hard to believe Apple allow Netflix to integrate so well on its device, however since Apple don't offer a TV service here and Netflix seems to offer older movies I guess the overlap in this market is not as bad as I would imagine it is in the US. With Netflix apparently in some difficulty in the US market perhaps it would be a candidate for a take over by Apple? 

The Netflix sign on process was tightly integrated with Facebook but if you log out of Facebook the option exists to sign up via email. I didn't realise this at the time but after signing up I went into Facebook and changed the Netflix apps access. Later I found an option in my Netflix account to disconnect from Facebook so I did that as well and the Facebook suggestions disappeared from my feed. People who I am friends with on Facebook may still see my ratings if they are also subscribed to Netflix as well but I dont add people on Facebook that I dont know and I've probably discussed movies or TV shows with most of them at some stage.

The one thing I was a little dissapointed with was the choice of shows. The volume is a little low. There are some there that we intend to watch and were about to purchase on DVD or iTunes Canada to catch up on earlier seasons (Breaking Bad and Dexter). Cracker was also on TV on Sunday night and Lauren had not seen it before. Those are there and should easily justify a Netflix subscription for a few months. There are also several movies we'd happily watch so we have no problem paying for the service until we've run out of those shows but then I don't know. The Co-founder of Netflix, Reed Hastings, was on the radio early this morning and when asked about this problem he spoke about how great shows like Prison Break and Breaking Bad are but didn't give any indication on plans to add new ones.

I havent had the opportunity to actually spend a long time watching anything so I cant really give an opinion on the quality of the service. In theory it should work and I'm not a HD/audio nut so my sole criteria is that it streams without stutter. That is more a feature of my broadband connection, Apple iTunes does work, most of the time, only going down when my connection goes down so I would expect Netflix to do the same. IF it doesnt then I'll be unsubscribing.

Still I shouldn't complain, I've now got the opportunity to watch several shows I wanted to catch up on, for free or far cheaper than the DVD or iTunes price.

The Euro on an Odyssey?

There is a new €2 coin being released to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Euro. Something about the common design struct me as familiar and then I realised, it's Discovery from 2001 a Space Odyssey

Doolin

I figure with a New Year I should try to catch up on some of the photos sitting on my computer for the last couple of months. To start here are a few photos from a trip to Clare and Doolin.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone, I hope Santa was nice to you all.

iTV

I like to keep an eye on the Apple rumour and gossip sites to see what new technology I will be lusting after in a few months. The current favourite product that doesn't exist yet but is being designed by rumour is an Apple iTV. Like all things Apple, if it's on a website and someone has a "reliable" source who says the new product "will have feature X,Y and Z" you can be reasonably certain that is is either all made up or a proof of concept device that wont actually make it to development so the security teams stopped watching it.

Apple have a track record of producing products that answer a problem in a way that no one expects and I hope that this will be the case an iTV. Personally I don't see Apple producing a range of large screen TVs. They would be entering a market that is saturated with good products already available at every size, price and quality range. How would an Apple screen be different from a Sony screen? The problem is not the physical TV itself but the content and how it is managed and controlled. We may be better looking at existing the Apple TV 2 for an idea of how any iTV could work.

First content will need to be addressed. The current Apple TV is useful for renting movies or streaming content from my MacBook or iPad but I cant get TV on it in Ireland. If Apple enter the TV market in a strong way they are going to have to improve the content that is available outside the States. Apple could sign a deal with the studios to provide world wide access to their shows and the back catalogues at a reasonable price for the viewer then they would be onto a winner. Next they are still going to have to make it possible for the local channels to get content onto the box. For example, I may not watch RTE much but I'll still want to watch the news and special shows like the Late Late Toy Show live and not on an RTE Player type service.

Second, how that content is managed will also need to be looked at. My broadband like many others is not the fastest so movies take a while to download, even for streaming. The user will need to have the ability to store some shows locally either downloaded or "recorded" in advance and can be viewed on demand. The Internet is great but Internet providers are not. You don't need to be able to store 100 hours of The West Wing for those days when you are bored but you do need to be able to press a button and watch tonight's episode of The Walking Dead when you get home late. Waiting for a download to complete or the stream to buffer is going to ruin the experience.

How its controlled is a more fun but potentially more annoying issue. Voice recognition with Siri is not going to work on its own, especially when you want to browse randomly through the channels. Try sitting in front of the TV tonight browsing channels and every time you press channel up say "Channel Up". You'll get pissed off very quickly, though not as quickly as the other people in the room with you.  The existing Apple Remote is quite nice and simple but it is difficult to type in anything. A combination of the two would work but the more interesting controller would be a Kinect type motion sensor. Waving your hand left or right in a page turning motion to spin through a coverflow of channels and shows. If you have an iOS device look at the coverflow of music and imagine if each cover was showing a live feed of a TV channel. Then there could be a press type motion to select the channel. If the volume is too loud just gesture down with your hand as if you were telling a friend to lower their voice. Other motions would need more work, off/mute/pause but perhaps that's where Siri would come in.

(Update: I wrote most of this post last night and then this afternoon I saw this patent application from Apple)

If Apple produced that devcice similar to the existing Apple TV 2 hockey puck, with a microphone, video/movement sensor and access to a huge online library of shows I'd buy it in a heart beat. That way Apple could deliver a new TV experience to a mass market without having to produce the TVs themselves.