antoin@eire.com

Ireland’s second FON hotspot is now in operation at the Digital Messenger offices on Lower Grand Canal St, dublin 2. There is already a FON hotspot at Lower Ormonde Quay.

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“A new group - jumping on the bandwagon - trying to make a name for themselves” - Dick Doyle of IRMA describes Digital Rights Ireland today on Newstalk 106

Irish VoIP company Blueface has introduced a new section on its web interface, that lets you set your phone number up so that it rings in two places at once. So I can set it up so that when a customer rings my Dublin number, both my phone in the office and my mobile phone (and my home phone as well, if I want) all ring, and the call goes through to whichever phone is answered first. I can add and remove phones from the system just by dragging and dropping them on the web page. This is the way all phones should work!

FON has gotten some coverage on Linux.ie. That’s cool because FON is a great example of commercially applying the open source model and using Linux in a concrete, understandable way. That’s because the access points that underpin the whole system are based on the Linux platform, and as such, are available under the GNU Public Licence. And like GNU/Linux, FON is all about sharing resources to create added value for the community.

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The crisis in the Irish health service is bad and is getting worse. Three things happened in the media today that struck me about this.

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Silicon Republic reports on Digital Rights Ireland’s open letter questioning IRMA’s approach to dealing with music piracy. Join the Digital Rights mailing list to keep up to date. Disclaimer: I am a director of Digital Rights Ireland.

I’m posting this while logged on from the FON access point in Ireland, at Ormonde Quay in Dublin. FON is a scheme for sharing wi-fi on an international scale. Bernie wrote about the launch on Wednesday. The premise of FON is simple: pay for broadband at home, have bandwidth everywhere. We’ve established the first FON spot in Dublin, at a central location. We;’re still testing to make sure everything is working, but it’s all looking good. Martin Varsavsky has asked me to be ‘chief fonero’ for Ireland. We’d love to get more people on-line before the official launch of FON in the Emerald Isle. If someone can point us at a good supplier for WRT 54G APs, that would be helpful too!

You should sign this

Digital Rights Ireland (of which I am a director) has published a concise guide to dealing with SMS spam you receive on your Irish mobile phone (although much the same principles apply in other European countries). It explains the role of Regtel and the Data Protection Commissioner, and the penalties that can potentially be imposed.

The rumour mills were buzzing for the last two weeks about BT being on the cusp of an important strategic acquisition. But as it turned out, they took over Cara instead. Cara is basically a hardware and software reseller with a services arm. It has been kicked around from owner to owner over the last ten years.

As far as I’m concerned, BT buying Cara is a bit like buying an ice cream while you watch your house burn down.

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