antoin@eire.com

Digital Rights Ireland has invited Suw Charman of ORG to Dublin to meet and to speak on the topic of government and privacy in a digital age. Come see her this evening at 6.30 pm in TCD. We know the notice is short but please come and give us your support.

I’m at an NSAI meeting today about the future of standards for wireless LAN. Basically, the issue is this. There are two proposals, one from the Chinese (called WAPI) and another from the West (802.11i, proposed by the UK). These have to be voted on at the relevant international standards body, and ICTSCC has to make a recommendation about how Ireland should vote.

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The aspoke.com initial offer has been a big success and we’ve sold a lot of laptop skins! We’ve also had an opportunity to work through our production systems. We’ve improved our printing system and introduced new finishing procedures, so the product is getting better and better all the time.

Our initial special offer (EUR 18 including taxes and post and packing anywhere in the world) ends this weekend. The price will go up to around 27 euros. So go on, if you’ve been thinking about it, get your order in now!

Adrian Weckler makes some observations about how grans and kids are getting ripped off on pre-paid mobiles.

In fact, the appeal of the prepay phone isn’t the cost. People don’t buy prepay because it’s cheap. They buy it because:

- they are unbanked/have no credit.

- they want to keep control of how much they are spending on their bill. (this is at least part of the reason why average revenue for prepay customers is higher than for billpay).

- they don’t want a printed bill arriving at their home, for whatever reason.

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Dublin City Council has a pretty decent planning permission search service. It’s been around for a while, but the user interface has really improved over the last few months. There are still some difficulties accessing the scanned documents that accompany every application, but it’s definitely getting better. The software comes from a company called SwiftLG

Digital Rights Ireland is looking for your support. We urgently need money to support our work. We’ve achieved a lot so far, but we need your help to go further. Go to the DRI ‘Support’ page to make a donation.

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Martin Varsavsky thinks that he has upset the Wall Street Journal by announcing the FON funding round on his blog before it appeared in the Wall Street Journal.

Ireland’s favorite podcaster, Tom Raftery got to do a short (shorter than planned) recorded interview with Martin Varsavsky of FON. Martin wasn’t able to answer all the questions in the time so I posted up some answers to the questions Tom and his readers has posed.

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My friend Martin Varsavsky has announced a major partnership and EUR 18m fundraising deal for FON that will change the way we think about mobile computing. That’s a dramatic thing to say, and it’s been said before, but this time it really is true.

FON will basically mean that any Internet user who wants it can have mobile access wherever they want it, wherever there is broadband access available locally. They will be confident that they can get the access at a reasonable price, or for ‘Linus’ participants, for free. (A Linus is any user who shares his/her WiFi in exchange for free access throughout the Community wherever there is coverage.)

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O’Connell Street, Dublin’s most important thoroughfare now has a FON hotspot, located at Funland, near the Spire. There should be good reception from it on the east side of the street, opposite the GPO.