#“My requisite Netflix Ireland & UK linkbait post”
It’s been over 36 hours and I haven’t blogged about Netflix launching on this side of the pond yet. Twitter was non-stop about it yesterday and rightly so. I’ve seen every extreme of opinion expressed there so I thought I’d lash down a few thoughts and findings.
We are probably the perfect target demographic for Netflix. We cut the cord on Sky back in September after we got sick of paying for a pile of old crap we never watched. »
#“A Rural Irish School’s App Inventor Pilot. The Story So Far.”
Last May I started playing around with the idea of doing some sessions on Google App Inventor in my kids' Primary School. I’d had great success trying it out with three of my own kids aged 12 to 7.
If you are not familiar with App Inventor, it is a way of building mobile phone applications for Google Android phones using a simple graphical blocks approach. »
#“Summary of Setting Up Your Own Private App Inventor Server For Your School”
It turns out that the setup of a private App Inventor server is easier than I thought. If you are used to Amazon EC2, it’ll be a doddle for you. The Google App Engine bit is absolutely trivial. Full MIT documentation is here.
Go to appengine.google.com and sign-up with a GMail/GApps address. Create an App. This only means giving the App an name. »
#“Just in The Nick of Time - Our School’s Own App Inventor Setup”
Now to kick the tyres a bit more and make sure all is ok. One big worry is that 15 pairs of kids simultaneously using it will boot us out of the free tier and into the pay tier. »
#“Time for an Irish Technology Industry Lobby?”
The concern that many people have over the upcoming legislation aroundthe Charleton judgementwent into high gear when it was announced recently that The Data Protection Commissionhad instructed Eircomto halt its three strikes policy against music piracy. This fear was compounded by the relevant Junior Minister being shockingly dismissive and flippant towards anyone who expressed concern on Twitter. Finally, in the same week, initialACTAlegislation was weaseled through the EU Council byhiding it in an Agricultural & Fisheries session! »
#“HP ePrint App for iPad - Why HP was right to exit Tablet Biz”
App Store - HP ePrint Home & Biz. I helped my Dad setup printing from his iPad to his HP wireless printer over the Christmas. The easiest way is just to email the private address of the printer using the HP ePrint service. But I spotted that they have an iPad App too and I installed it. »
#“Mini-Review of Google App Inventor Beginner’s Guide by Ralph Roberts”
The nice people in Packt Publishing sent me a free review copy ofGoogle App Inventor Beginner's Guide by Ralph Roberts recently. As someone who adores App Inventor, I was thrilled to see the book being published. I'll do a full review later as I haven'tfinishedit yet but I wanted to get some initial thoughts out there as I think the book is worth buying. »
#“Just had a Horrible Thought. Could I move from Posterous to Google+?”
I've always loved the easiness of Posterous but it still has enormous problems with comments and Social Logins and I'm getting really tired of it. The lack of an official Export feature (yes I know about the API) always worries me too. My default would be to switch to good old self-hosted WordPress plus something like Amplify for sharing interesting pages as posts. »
#“The Death of Boxee”
Boxee finally told us what we all knew was coming, they are dropping support for PC/Mac/Linux. And with that, we now know they are done. I predict they will either shut up shop before this time next year or be sold for chump change by their VCs. Rumours that they are already hawking themselves around to CE companies sound reasonable.
Boxee got all of its buzz and online promotion from early adopters like me who loved their fork of the XBMC code-base. »
#“The Technical Magic of Playing a Song in Our Car in 2011”
In the olden days (as my kids call the 90s), we turned on the radio in the car and played music or stuck a tape in a tape deck. In recent years we'd plug a phone, iPod or USB stick into a car stereo. Now we are messing with streaming more. It's still as patchy as hell in Ireland with all the mobile blackspots on our motorways but we had a reasonable amount of success yesterday doing the M8-M7-M3 run. »