The hard truth about the Irish knowledge economy:

In a further blow to the ailing economy, Google has decided to abandon plans to locate up to 100 software engineering jobs in Ireland because it was unable to find enough qualified candidates here.

A little over-dramatized in the Evening Herald but a very serious issue. We are not turning out enough engineers and we are not attracting enough engineers from abroad.

Vote for the Golden Spiders

I was on the judging panel for the Golden Spiders for this year. It was very interesting. The judging process is pretty thorough, but it’s certainly not perfect. Anyway, you too can be a Golden Spiders judge by participating in the public voting  for the Social Networking and Community Website.

The organizers are pretty open to ideas about how to get the community more involved next year. Any thoughts or views?

Reviewing the signage on Ireland’s motorway system

This article on the UK Design Museum site tells the story of the British motorway and general road signage system, designed by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert. It begins:

Determined to illustrate the haphazard state of British road signage at the turn of the 1960s, the graphic designer Herbert Spencer drove from central London to the recently opened Heathrow London Airport and photographed each of the road signs that he came across along the way.

Perhaps it is time for someone to do something similar for the drive from Naas via the M50 ring-road to the Airport. It would certainly be an interesting project to do over a few Sunday mornings.

HCI and table-top computing

A well-thought out set of research on the topic, involving Stanford and Microsoft. Not just idle curiousity, related to a project I’m currently working on.

Video conferencing

This is a good article about why video conference does and doesn’t work.

courier company left package in wheelie bin

A boards.ie poster says that he lost his parcel when the courier company left package in the bin. Now, this points at a big problem with home delivery. You aren’t always home to receive. But imagine if your courier (or tesco delivery guy or whatver) could let himself or herself in, under controlled, observed conditions? Would that make life easier?

SherryFitzGerald website relaunch

The design of the new Sherry FitzGerald website is something I had a hand in with Image Now. It has a nice distinctive look. There are a couple of UI and search engine niceties that have to be looked at, but I think it’s looking pretty good.

tesco.com carries ‘Making an Impact Online’

My forthcoming book will even be available in Tesco!

OOXML – Ireland recommended to abstain

There is an article in today’s Irish Times about OOXML in which I am quoted. I was asked for a comment on this in the afternoon yesterday. A number of people have asked me about the position I took this morning. Basically, the slightly longer story is that the reason we are abstaining is because there was not a large enough majority in favour of voting for conditional approval (there was a simple majority, but not the two thirds majority we had agreed would be required). The other people voting wanted to express approval without any reservations whatsoever.

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My first book

A&C Black are publishing my first book. It’s all done now, pretty much ready for the printer, so I feel I can mention it a bit. Every so often I get the feeling that I have left something important out of it.