antoin@eire.com

The sovereign French people have rejected the European constitution. The constitution was supposed to form the bedrock of future European development. I don’t think many people in Europe appreciate what a big hiccup this has caused.

In fact, it turns out that not many people in Europe appreciate much about what is going on with the European Project, or even care about it. That is the core of the problem the European Union has to deal with, and the European Institutions themselves have to shoulder most of the blame for the mess they’ve gotten themselves into.

Now the European institutions have to pick up the pieces and figure out how to communicate their message directly to the people of Europe. The Internet and technologies like weblogs will be critical to doing this.
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The An Post (National Post Company) group of unions have come out with a report today which is strongly in favour of introducing a postcode system in Ireland. I happened to be at the press conference to launch the report today. It contains some interesting information about the company’s situation.
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The government has issued its proposal for moving forward on postcodes. The report that has been prepared covers most of the bases on the issue and puts forward the different types of solution that might be possible. Michael Everson and I have been working on this area for some time, as part of our work with NSAI/ICTSCC/SC4, and we made a short submission to the working group. See also my previous blog trilogy, ‘Coding the Post‘, ‘More benefits of postcodes‘ and the culmination in ‘Regulator publishes Postcodes report‘.
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Darren Lightfoot writes about the how easy it is to open a Kensington Microsafe laptop lock. This mirrors the situation with Kryptonite bicycle locks, which it turned out could be opened very easily indeed without even needing any tools. I’m not sure if it’s really that serious, but he’s right that Kensington have to wake up and pay attention.
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Web services security guru Mark O’Neill writes about how Google have literally taken over the browsing experience for mobile-phone web users:

‘I tried to bookmark the page but couldn’t, since what was seeing was not the Vordel website, it was how Google had rendered the Vordel website. In fact, there was no way to leave Google, since each link was being rendered through Google. I’d entered the “GoogleNet”. ‘

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Mature cities put a lot of thought into their transport systems, even if they can’t afford to put much money into them. Look at Curitiba, which has a modern public transport system that cost very little to establish. Dublin Airport, on the other hand is a disaster area, because simple, obvious design issues haven’t been considered. Not only that, but the airport company actually profits from its own inefficiency.
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America’s paranoia is Ireland’s opportunity. The Crusade against Terrorism is stopping Microsoft from hiring the computer scientists it wants to hire in America. Ireland should help Microsoft bring the employees it needs to Ireland, if it can’t bring them to America.
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