thursday miscellany

you know summer is nearly over when the news starts rolling in.

for the record google has been continuing its expansion out of web search. it's im and chat client has been getting mixed reviews.  have only started playing with the new desktop but it looks nice. of course we're long over-due a google backlash.  And completing the google round up i liked this wired piece about how the company keeps its enemies close.

Irish Times Blog Listings? - as someone who works for ireland.com and also freelances for the tech pages in the times, i have to say this is hilarious. you could write a script to generate the stories that jmcc comes out with.

Hub still home to digital dream - good summary of where dublin's digital hub is at

250 jobs to go in Dundalk plant closure - why aren't we all up in arms that companies are leaving ireland due to out high cost base. it is all our collective responsibility. instead we mumble something about it being inevitable and continue to charge each other rip-off prices.

Carly Fiorina to write book - but will she dish the dirt. unlikely seeing as she's only 50 and is probably looking for another tech job post-HP

Comments

[Dave]

How funny that you stand up for your publication on a day that it writes an article this bad [1].

You should get Dick on here to answer some questions on the article. Potato has done a pretty good job of pointing out some of the major flaws[2].

[1] http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/front/2005/0825/1206892474HM1GOOGLE.html

[2] http://planetpotato.blogs.com/planet_potato_an_irish_bl/2005/08/irish_times_and.html

[AughrimJohn]

Thanks for the feedback Dave, but I wasn't necessarily standing up for the publication, just laughing that the JMC story is PURE speculation, which he's been renowned for since his Hackwatch days.

Don't particularly want to get into the ins and outs of Dick's piece but suffice it to say it was written for the front page of a national paper and what is assumed to be a total non-technical audience.

[Damien Mulley]

"it was written for the front page of a national paper and what is assumed to be a total non-technical audience."

Surely since it is educating the wider audience it should take even greater care about checking that the facts are accurate. Even the most non-technical person should be told that these are free phonecalls to other users of the system not anyone in the world.

Would the article be so blasé with facts if it was about pensions or health issues?

[AughrimJohn]

Damien, totally agree with you - the piece makes it sound like telephony as opposed to "chat" with other users. Also the line about only being available in the US is also wrong as we know. however, some of the other stuff that i've read on this which suggest the story is riddle with inaccuracies are wide of the mark. for instance, gmail has now been opened up after being in beta for over a year - see here http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/08/sign-up-for-gmail.html - which is where the piece about mobiles came from. and isn't google trying to become a "communications company" - that doesn't mean a telco in this day and age.

[Damien Mulley]

The invite only still stands but you can request an invite directly which gets sent to your mobile, if you are in the states.

For those outside you still need to know someone. At long last they detail this as the reason for invites. I had thought it was do they could monitor the communication trends of groups of associates.

I wonder does Google remember your mobile number if you ask for an invite this way?

[Damien Mulley]

*forgot to add that the invites are an anti-spammer device.

[Bernie Goldbach]

Carly's ghost writer crafted some of the most uplifting speeches during her stint at the head of HP so I would be surprised to read that the book is a bitchfest between covers.

[John McCormac]

There is very little speculation in my post John.

The IT's technology section on the web has a blog listing. Including some kind of blog listing in the IT's print technology section would make it somewhat more relevant. Would that be so strange?

As Damien pointed out, it is ironic that the IT managed to drop such a huge clanger on the Google Talk story. It is even worse than when the IT ran the Pro-Spam article in 1999.

HackWatch was always different from the ordinary tech press in that it extrapolated from facts rather than just recycled press releases.