iPhone Stencil Kit

Excellent idea for iPhone developers, great for drawing out design with pen and paper before going near Xcode. $16.95 to puchase, plus shipping: http://www.designcommission.com/shop/iphone-stencil-kit/

If you're a Photoshop kinda person, this PSD template may be more useful: http://www.teehanlax.com/blog/?p=447

Magnet Broadband

Got my Magnet broadband setup last Friday, very impressed with it so far, nice fast constant speeds and excellent up speeds. I really like their boost feature on their website, it basically checks the maximum speed your phone line can handle. Tried it, mine maxes out at 14Mb/s, not bad but not the 24Mb/s that Magnet can deliver in some areas, I only signed up for the 10Mb/s which is good enough at the moment.

UPDATE 25 June 2009:

The wireless modem that is provided by Magnet, is just that a modem, not a router (my mistake). It is not like what you receive from BT or Eircom. So if you want to play with settings, hook up printers, use static IPs, you will need to purchase a router for this. I have mine hooked up to a Belkin N router which works great, no problems.

Also the IPTV option, I don't know the ins and outs of IPTV but this needs to be wired to make it work. Over wifi it just breaks up all the time, but wired is good, although not as good quality as on Sky or UPC. Magnet can provide a wifi booster for TV, not sure how it works it's still G wifi, but it will cost an extra few Euro a month. It will be interesting to see what Magnet do with this service in the future, currently RTÉ 1 & 2, TV3, TG4, E3 and MTV are provided. I don't think it'll hit main stream until BBCs, ITVs, Channel4s, and some 24-hour news channels are added. They will also need to provide a set top box to the TV and not charge for the wifi booster or try it out on N wifi.

After three weeks with the service I have found the quality of the broadband great, really great. I have had UPC back when their max was 6Mb/s (got 4), have Eircom 3Mb/s service (got 1.3), and Magnet has always been 10Mb/s and upload of 1Mb/s. Magnet Support are easy to get through to on the phone, and they are active on Twitter @MagnetNetworks and Boards.ie, their phone support is very direct too.

Take a giant LEAP

This is me two years ago this week after hiking up to Angels Landing at Zion National Park in Utah State. Can't believe it was two years ago that Louise and I spent three months travelling around the United States and camping at 11 national parks, visit http://www.hikingtheusa.com/ for more details and photos.

Anyway that was 2007, this past week I have moved to Limerick (back again) to begin the LEAP programme at the EAC in LIT. The focus of LEAP "is a year long milestone driven enterprise and management development programme hosted by the Enterprise Acceleration Centre @ Limerick Institute of Technology that assists men and women entrepreneurs to establish their businesses."

Over the next year I will focus on taking EdWare.ie to the next level and develop the business further with a huge focus on export driven sales. I'll try and keep you posted on events.

Google Maps - M7

Google Maps is great, and will be the future for GPS devices as GPS moves from solo device to cell phones. I love this with Google, noticed it during the week. The new M7 from Nenagh to Limerick was due to open in May 2009, Google have it implemented already, although the road doesn't actually appear on the maps unless you do a direction route and then the route shows it. So I guess the db side is updated but not the visual. The latest news on the road from the NRA.ie is that it's been delayed by a max of 6 months, so expect it to open later this year.

Just shows how on the ball Google are as discussed in an early post regarding new Irish motorways:

http://lukemcurley.blogspot.com/2008/07/google-maps-again.html

FG Broadband

Just reading the Fine Gael (FG) policy document: A “NewERA” for the Irish Economy, see PDF.

Interesting ideas for broadband, although I'm fearful that their case for state supported and Eircom nationalized infrastructure could destroyed current private broadband providers: UPC, DigiWeb, Magnet and others who have invested heavily to supply broadband. They need to create a better policy or they will destroy these providers, and scare off future private investment.

Something I did find odd was on page 8 of their document titled 2. Broadband 21, they hope to provide "every home and business in Ireland, with speeds of between 50 and 100 Megabytes per Second (Mbps) available to 90% of the population by 2013". Yes you read right under FG they promise to deliver 50-100 MEGABYTES (MB) of broadband, not megabits (Mb). That's 800 Mb/s broadband, even faster than a USB2 connection, currently Eircom broadband tops out at 7 Mb/s.

I suspect that FG don't know the difference between megabytes and megabits, which is kinda telling as they called it Mbps, not MBps, all very confusing, which is fine, as it confuses the hell out of me too. I would be very surprised if FF or Labour new the difference, but FG it's in your government policy! This really suggests that the broadband section wasn't written or read by anyone who has any idea about broadband, which is very worrying indeed.

Stay in the Euro

This is a quick response to a recent article by an Irish economic entertainer. I'm not an economist, two semesters at UL, while very good, doesn't count.

Where does one begin in relation to the article regarding Ireland leaving the Euro, and the magic benefits.

Reference was made to Iceland regarding their recent collapse and their low inflation, Iceland is not the same as Ireland, we are dependent on oil for our energy. Iceland gets almost 100% of their energy needs from natural resources (hydroelectric and geothermal), only has a population of 300,000 and their largest export is fish, yes fish! They are still largely an agriculture exporter. Also I think it is very fitting that Iceland is voting to begin accession talks with the EU this Friday.

About the devaluation. So lets say Ireland decides to pull out of the Euro (EUR), we set up our own currency, we'll call it the Irish Yoyo (YOO). So first of all the value, initial: YOO 1.00 = EUR 1.00, the Irish government decides to devalue by say 10%, now the value is YOO 1.10 = EUR 1.00, so now everyone has 10% less buying power and all our bank accounts and pay will show 10% less, if you had EUR 1,000 in your bank account it is now worth only EUR 900. So would our domestic savings take flight and leave Ireland, I'm pretty sure they would for anyone that could move it.

With our own currency we are now in the international currency market, so lets follow what happened to the British Pound recently, a 25% fall against foreign currency. So now the value is YOO 1.37 - EUR 1.00, this is if we drop like the Pound, but we could be hit a lot harder. Our salaries are suppose to stay the same as otherwise what's the point of the devalue, and would otherwise lead to run-away inflation. So if you earned EUR 30,000 you will now earn YOO 30,000. But its value in Euro is now only EUR 22,000.

So what does this mean for us, petrol that currently costs EUR 1.10 per/ltr will cost considerabley more YOO 1.50 per/ltr. The increase in oil prices will have a knock on affect to transport costs, agriculture, manufacturing, energy, and more. All imported products will be affected the same way. Also consider that your pension or savings is now worth a lot less in real world terms.

Export advantages do exist, but inflation may remove this. Inflation could be a big issue and run away interest rates to combat this would drive up mortgage repayments. So what happens to the billions the banks owe, this was touched on briefly in the article, but basically it would involve the collapse of the Irish banks (bread and butter of economic development and democracy) as their international payments on loans could not be met. The Irish government may also have problems repaying their loans, which could cause the government to default on debt, but there will be no ECB to save us, instead the IMF or Russia may have to step in.

The other area that would be greatly affected is the knowledge base here, and resulting brain drain. The cost of employing highly skilled workers will jump. Why would a software developer, scientist or engineer stay in Ireland and be paid in YOO currency? The US multinationals will also find it very difficult to employ European staff at their European HQ based here, let alone the headache of dealing with weekly currency fluctuations.

I've only highlighted a handful of issues that spring to my mind here, I don't think leaving the Euro is any benefit to Ireland, and it may actually be a complete disaster.

HD vs SD TV

As covered in previous posts about HD I'm back on the topic today.

So why cover it again? Mainly because HD is still not popular in Europe, although many HD capable televisions have been sold, very few channels are broadcast in high definition.

I started off writing an article and then I had a quick look back at an article from 2006, and well nothing has really changed in the three years, so just read that. HD all explained.

http://lukemcurley.blogspot.com/2006/07/hdtv-facts.html

Although I did find this nice graphic from blu-ray.com which is useful for explaining HD. As for blu-ray, if they don't release a $99 player soon the standard will never go main stream, being replaced by downloads from Xbox, PS3, iTunes and torrents.