The DOBlog

Amazon. The f*ckers. Yet again they decide to clumsily shaft the residents of the 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland. Their Amazon Prime service has been launched and I was all clicky-fingered ready to sign up and pay my stg£49 to get this useful service.

However, I forgot just how crap Amazon are at geography and how they seem to be incapable of recognising that

• ‘Northern Ireland’ is just one part of a larger island
• Ireland is a large, literate country with reasonably high disposable incomes
• ..and a lot of their business is actually based here (customer services in Cork, a data centre in Dublin
• Deliveries shipped to Belfast or Derry often are transited through Dublin airport

So, I trundled through the terms and conditions of their service. Deliver to ‘Mainland UK’, delivery to ‘Other United Kingdom Locations’ which includes the Channel Isles and British Forces Posted Overseas, but not a whit of delivery to the Republic of Ireland.

So, I decided to see if they have any logic that prevents people in the Ould Sod from signing up, much like they have checks and balances to stop us buying software or computer games or electrical goods.

Ehhh… nope, I’m allowed to right through to the bit where I’d have to part with cash irrespective of what address I use.

So, Amazon will take money off me for a service that they can’t/won’t deliver (no pun intended), because they are not using information they have about me (my address) to prevent me parting with cash, or they can deliver it (ie Prime deliveries to Irish Republic) but they have bungled their Terms & Conditions because they’re idiots, like those people who claim Oscar Wilde was British.

I’m fricking angry now. Must go have a coffee to cool off.

Mulley - if you’re reading a Nintendo Wii will calm me down nicely.

The quest of The Raiders of the Lost Wii draws to a close.

What was the best invention of 2007? Invention, rather than product development is how I think of this. The Nokia N95 might be a contender, but it is simply an evolution of existing things. Likewise the Iphone. Neither are particularly unique.

My friends’ kid the O-meister is new, novel and unique - even though he is based on features from two slightly obsolete models which have been cunningly combined.

Perhaps an invention could be an existing thing brought about in a new way? Like how we used to cook dinners on a stove, with pots and now we just bung something that looks vaguely like food in a microwave and get back something that tastes vaguely like the slimy residue of the Slugs of Evil in return. Yummy.

I’d have to go with Monkey cloning. Yes, cloning isn’t new. Technically we’ve been doing it the old fashioned way since the dawn of time. However there is something “Island of Dr. Moreau”-ish about cloning monkeys. However, I’m not citing this as the best invention of 2007 simply because of the possible benefits to medicine from being able to clone and ‘grow’ spare parts for the body or the range of treatments that it may make possible for illnesses such as MS (which a friend of mine struggles with) or Parkinson’s disease (which has probably robbed the world of a 4th Back to the Future movie). I’m not voting for it because it opens the possibility of cloning other higher mammals while we perfect the technology for use with humans. Animals such as whales, dolphins, lawyers and accountants. All coming close to humanity but not quite reaching it yet.

No, I’m voting for this because, at the current level of the technology, the process is inefficient. It took many thousands of monkey eggs to make the one viable clone embryo. This means that there is scope for a lot of exciting future developments in the field of biotechnology.

But that’s not the reason…

…no, the reason is that it gives me the chance to remind everyone that…

…
…
… “You can’t make a monkey without breaking a few eggs”.

Hmmm… perhaps I should have wished for that time machine after all. I keep missing deadlines for the Science Week thing.

Today’s question is “What invention has helpd you most with your working life”

As my job centres on computing and computery things many people would expect me to say “the computer” or “d’Internet”. But Babbage’s calculating engine and its descendants are just fripperies when compared to other inventions that I might mention.

Booze is another possiblity, given its ability to unlock creative thought processes so that complex problems fall away in a “moment of clarity”. But I suspect that , overall, it may have hindered me more than helped given the fuzzy headed hangovers and general making a tit of myself at Christmas Parties when I was a younger man (ie up to last Christmas).

However, when I think about the nature of my job and my working life since mid-way through college, I realise that the majority (if not all) of my career has dealt with clearly defining and structuring problems in a way that results in clearly defined and structured solutions becoming possible. Take away my computer and I can still do that. Take away my booze and I can still do that, but I’ll have a much more muted celebration afterwards (”yippee, mine’s a tea please”). Ultimately my career has been about structure and communication.

To that end I’d like to nominate a combination invention… the dry-wipe whiteboard and the non-permanent marker. With these I can

• do complex analysis of problems
• define project structures
• prioritise work plans for my team
• diagram for my Masters students the complex set of transactions that resulted in the collapse of enron
• Map root causes of process failures
• Draw funny faces
• Write project acronyms or codenames that will never see the light of day, but which everyone in the meeting finds hilarious
• and so many more…

And then when I’m done or when I find we’ve gone down a dead end I can just wipe the whole lot off. When I have a notes worth doing something with they can then be transcribed to Word, MSProject or PowerPoint and a fully formed idea can then be communicated to others.

Also, I must not forget the smell of the markers.

A close second place would be flipcharts and post-it notes, for similar but less ecologically friendly reasons.

Yes, there are lovely technologies out there that I could nominate. However most of them simply technologise the type of creative process that can be had with a humble whiteboard and marker.

Just for the LOVE of GOD and ALL THAT IS FRICKIN’ HOLY please don’t use permanent markers on the whiteboard. People who do should be shot, treated with the best medical care until they are able to stand up again and then be shot a second time.

Curses. I missed the deadline for yesterday’s competition over on Mulley.net to win a Wii in National Science week.

I will not make the same mistake twice. Today’s question is “What invention would you like to see most in the future?“.

Given I missed yesterday’s deadline I was tempted to go for a TARDIS or similar time travel machine (not a De Lorean as Simon would probably try to open the gull wing doors to make it fly, thus not breaking the “rules of the game”). However I dismissed this as that would open up the whole time travellers paradox… If I’d posted and been in with a chance to win the Wii would I have wished for a time machine to bring me back in time to post and win the Wii and if I hadn’t would I have won or would the original timeline have continued on.. (ohhh my brain hurts after that).

I then thought about Giant Killer Robots (ideally made of gold). However Roosta beat me to it. Curses. Perhaps I should ask for my time machine?

However a more mature pondering of the question made me consider my commuting and the implications for future family life (I live in Wexford, work in Dublin) and my carbon foot print (I tend to travel to the UK and US a few times a year to speak at conferences) and the fact that it took a colleague 2.5 hours to get from Swords to the city centre yesterday due to the buses - or specifically the lack thereof.

So the invention I’d most like to see in the future is a transporter like wot they have on Star Trek. My commute to the office would be a lot shorter (speed of light vs speed of bus eireann), I could zip back to wexford for lunch with the family, work late for my wage-masters and be back home for tea and tucking in etc. And my colleague would be able to get from Swords to Dublin before he has to turn around again and retire.

And I’d never have to deal with Ryanair’s baggage allowance or Baggage manglers handlers ever again.

Yup. Transporters it is. And interestingly we are getting closer to this technology… extend the range and move from simple matter to slightly overweight bloggers.

I’ve been playing around with e-Touch meeting room from Onlinemeetingrooms.com for the past while. To put it bluntly… this product does exactly what it says on the tin.

• It is a meeting room
• It is online
• It just works

Recently an event I was involved in as a speaker had a problem. A speaker had a last minute problem travelling to the event. In conference land this is usually a crisis situation. The conference organiser called on me to see if I could do a second presentation at the conference, but was concerned as the speaker who was to travel had been ‘ticked’ as one they wanted to see by a lot of delegates. I would very much be a ’surrogate band’ and people might not welcome the change in running order (particularly if they’d paid mainly to see that presentation).

Being a cheeky bugger I dropped a quick email to Joe Garde in Onlinemeetingrooms.com to see if he might be able to help. A few additional facts are important here. I emailed him around 18:30 on the Friday of a Bank Holiday weekend. The conference started on Monday in the UK. Monday was a Bank Holiday in Ireland (where Joe is based) and the speaker was due to present on Tuesday afternoon.

This left a window of Monday to sort something out that we could be confident would work.

Joe phoned me on Saturday morning and we discussed options (while I furiously texted the conference organiser in the UK to let him know what was happening). With Joe’s help a clear plan formed… we’d use the OnlineMeetingRoom system to video link the speaker into London from Dublin. Ideally we’d need a wired broadband connection, but Joe and I were confident we could make it work.

Over to London with me… Monday afternoon we did a test (24hrs before the presentation). Over the hotel’s wifi network. No wired broadband available…

Worked perfectly. No fuss or hassle, no installing equipment (I had a webcam in my bag and the roadies… sorry AV professionals took care of figuring out the hook-up to the PA). The roadies liked it so much they wanted to get in contact with Joe as they do a lot of conferences and seminars that it could add value to… I do hope they buy it.

Fast forward to the day of the presentation… room full of people, nervous conference organiser and conference chairperson… me very calm and confident because I knew we were using good kit that just works.

…Presenter comes on from Dublin, audio good, video good, presentation content good. Slide timings a little off because I was running the powerpoint in London to keep as much bandwidth for video and audio as possible and got distracted by how well things were going.

…everyone happy. Kudos for everyone all round.

Looking back, I could have done one or two presentational things better but the kit worked. That was the main thing.

I work in Telco and I’ve seen a fair share of ‘cutting edge’ tools that just don’t cut the mustard when the shit is hitting the fan. My experience with the e-touch Online Meeting room has always been excellent. When the chips were down the tool just worked. And Joe helped out co-ordinating on the Dublin end to make sure that the presentation went as smoothly as possible, which on a Bank Holiday was support above and beyond the call of duty.

It is so straightforward even my pointy-haired boss could use it…

Now that’s good kit that just works.