Sugru + Old Mondeo = Yay

#“Sugru + Old Mondeo = Yay” My ancient old Ford Mondeo (2001) is still going strong. In some ways I hate it for doing so. It’s an appliance and I don’t like appliances, I like things with character. Prior to it I only bought Citroens (BX, AX, Xantia) and I loved them dearly. But they were unreliable piles of junk assembled by drunks. Then, once we had kids, an appliance became necessary. »

Author image Conor O'Neill

'Games You May Like on Facebook'. That'd be None. Why are Ads so broken in 2012?

#""Games You May Like on Facebook". That’d be None. Why are Ads so broken in 2012?" If Facebook paid even a minutes notice to the intention graph rather than the social graph, they’d see that I relentlessly click Hide on all mentions of games. Then maybe they could avoid wasting their valuable screen real-estate pimping something I will never ever ever click on. I also had a look at some of the ads on FB today. »

Author image Conor O'Neill

Running a business in the Cloud with Amazon Web Services #AWS

#“Running a business in the Cloud with Amazon Web Services #AWS” These are the slides from a talk I gave back in March to the UCC SME Cloud Incubator Workshop. It goes through all the details of our use of Amazon Web Services with some mentions of other cloud providers too. Running a business in the Cloud with AWS from Conor O'Neill »

Author image Conor O'Neill

Google using Google+ to up-sell Google Apps

#“Google using Google+ to up-sell Google Apps” I saw this in the control panel for one of my Google Apps for Your Domain accounts today. The value-add for paid accounts on Google Apps has always been very poor. $50 per user for a few tweaks most people don’t need. This could change things, particularly for those who want to use Google+ as a replacement for Yammer.   »

Author image Conor O'Neill

Nerdy Derby - Looks like a blast

#“Nerdy Derby - Looks like a blast”  The Nerdy Derby is a no-rules* miniature car building and racing competition inspired by the Cub Scouts' Pinewood Derby. With a larger, more undulating track and no restrictions on the size of the cars or materials participants can use, the Nerdy Derby rewards creativity, cleverness and ingenuity. The first-ever Nerdy Derby will take place at World Maker Faire New York on September 29th and 30th at the New York Hall of Science in Queens. »

Author image Conor O'Neill

My mind is blown - Met Eireanns radar image converted to #OpenData

#“My mind is blown - Met Eireann\u0092s radar image converted to #OpenData” Brendan Cunningham has just left the most exciting comment this blog has ever received. He has thrown some serious smarts at the Met Eireann radar image of rain and converted in to actual numbers you can use! That vector data with rainfall values is now up on Google Fusion Tablesand is updated every 15 minutes so now it can be integrated with GIS and other location based services. »

Author image Conor O'Neill

Sibal, Fionn and Sofra use littleBits for the first time

#“Sib\u00e9al, Fionn and S\u00edofra use littleBits for the first time” Last night, just before bedtime, I handed over littleBits to our three younger kids. They had never seen or used it before and I wanted to gauge their reaction to it. Overall they loved it and it was the first thing Fionn looked for when he got up this morning. Sibal also snuk off with it for a while on her own last night after the others had gone to bed. »

Author image Conor O'Neill

Amazon Glacier looks ideal for cheaper long-term storage/backup

#“Amazon Glacier looks ideal for cheaper long-term storage/backup” Amazon just announced Glacier: Amazon Glacier is an extremely low-cost storage service that provides secure and durable storage for data archiving and backup. In order to keep costs low, Amazon Glacier is optimized for data that is infrequently accessed and for which retrieval times of several hours are suitable. With Amazon Glacier, customers can reliably store large or small amounts of data for as little as $0. »

Author image Conor O'Neill