I am a web designer & developer based in Galway, Ireland. Information on my work is available from my company site: Ambient Age Web Design.

I am also completing a PhD in Information Systems. My research is on the Adoption of IT Standards for technologies to support Ambient Intelligence.

Update to TwitEye – feeding you good ideas

July 8, 2009 – 8:00 am

Yesterday I made some design tweaks and added some new features to TwitEye, the little web app I launched a couple of months ago.twiteye-logo

TwitEye streams ideas for new applications and services based on questions asked by Twitter users, so, for example, “is there a service that lets me translate news feeds into different languages?”. At the moment it is categorising requests related to applications, software, iPhone apps, plug-ins and different services. The idea behind it was that the “idea” isn’t the most difficult part in getting a new product or service together; it’s what happens with the idea that counts.

twiteye-rssThe latest update to the service is the addition of an ideas blog & RSS feed which will publish a selected idea each day from the stream. With a lot of applications that have limited functionality or aren’t doing something that I immediately “need”, I generally take a look at them once, think “oh, that’s nice”, and then forget about them. The addition of the RSS feed is a way to share some of the good ideas that are coming through the TwitEye stream, without people having to come to the site & watch the stream flow by (although there can be some good stuff in there if you do).

The app itself is at TwitEye.com, and you can find the ideas blog and the link to the daily idea RSS feed at twiteye.com/ideas/ (and if you’re not up for the full commitment of an RSS feed you’ll also get the updates through @twiteyeapp on Twitter!).

The best way to further improve it is through feedback & comments, so don’t be shy…

By Dave | Posted in Web Applications, Work | Comments (0)

FineTuna ~ Tuesday Push

June 9, 2009 – 2:24 pm

FineTuna is a web application for sharing and collaborating on images. It’s a nice idea (with an odd name), and another really nice & simple design by the folks in Spoilt Child (this is the second service they’ve had Tuesday Pushed – here’s the first one I did). It’s a good thing when an app can sell itself in 7 words, and FineTuna does just that: “Add comments to any image and share”.

fine-tuna-home

The idea behind is is that you can upload an image directly, or by a web address, add your comments, and FineTuna sends a link to it off to someone else by email for review….easy.  There’ s a screenshot of a quick one I did below when I was checking out the service (see the original here).

finetuna-twiteye

As a way of showing people design work as you go it’s a handy tool. I also installed the Firefox plugin which is really useful – it allows you to send screenshots from your browser into FineTuna for commenting; if I was going to use the service again, it would be because of this tie-in.

Having said that, I think there are a couple of areas that could be improved:

  • Because the url to the image is public, I wouldn’t be comfortable sharing commercial design works-in-progress in a way that’s publicly accessible; I’ve seen a few other people mention too…so offering this as a paid service could be a good way to bring in some cash;
  • I’m terrible at drawing using a mouse (a sometimes shaky hand). Some basic shapes, such as lines & arrows would make the marked-up image look a lot better than my shaky hand-drawn efforts;
  • I saw mentioned on Twitter that a desktop app that ties in with the service would be useful. I’d definitely agree. An alternative service is Skitch, but because I don’t use a Mac, I can’t use Skitch…a FineTuna alternative I could use would be great!

Now, off you go and check out FineTuna.

The Tuesday Push

The Tuesday Push is a community-driven approach to promote innovative Irish tech companies & services. You can nominate your company or product (if it fits the guidelines) using this form linked on this page.

Have a look at some of the other Irish services that got a Push on this blog.

By Dave | Posted in Tuesday Push, Web Applications | Comments (2)

Decisions for Heroes ~ Tuesday Push

May 19, 2009 – 1:06 pm

Decisions For Heroes - Rescue team management and analytics.
This time around, the Tuesday Push is the newly launched Decisions for Heroes . Their pitch is:

We’re helping emergency services save more lives by making better decisions. Decisions for Heroes is a collaborative rescue team management tool, that helps record and analyse rescue operations

When they say they’ve launched a web application “that saves lives”, it gets you thinking! It does look like they’ve got something that is useful, helpful & worthwhile. I haven’t played with the system itself, but based on the comprehensive system tour given on their site, it looks like a fantastic piece of work.

The service is the first product launched by Bytesurgery, a Dublin based digital media company, who’s founder Robin Blandford is a mountain rescue volunteer. Creating an application based on your own experience gives you a great insight into the needs of those you’re serving, and judging by the early uptakes of the service by rescue teams around the world, it seems to have worked well here.

I saw a very good 120 second pitch by Robin to a panel at Future of Web Apps in Dublin, where he said Decisions for Heroes “was like BaseCamp for Danger” (one of the panel was David Heinemeier Hansson, part of the company behind Basecamp). Based on how he described the market’s size and needs in that pitch, it looks like he’s got a great niche to target.

I particularly like that the application is targeted at a market outside the technology area – there aren’t many web applications that are so far removed from the office environment; it’s something that I think will start to happen more and more as the technologies & the SaaS approach to delivery continues to mature.

Generally when doing these Tuesday Pushes, I try to give some areas for improvement with the application or the interface design. As I haven’t played with the system itself, it’s difficult to do this. I will say that having looked at the screenshots, they’ve gone for a clean & simple design which will suit their users perfectly. It’s summed up in a line on their homepage that says “Nobody likes reading manuals, so we’ve made things really easy“; that’s the perfect way to approach how an application should look & function. Nice work Decisions for Heroes.

[Edit]

Forgot to mention – nice foresight by them too on buying the mis-spelling of their domain name decisionsforheros.com (which is what I linked to earlier on Twitter  :) ).

The Tuesday Push

The Tuesday Push is a community-driven approach to promote innovative Irish tech companies & services. You can nominate your company or product (if it fits the guidelines) using this form linked on this page.

You can see a listing of other Tuesday Pushes done on this blog.

By Dave | Posted in Tuesday Push, Web Applications | Comments (1)

RevaHealth ~ Tuesday Push

May 6, 2009 – 9:23 am

RevahealthYes, yes. It’s Wednesday. As that’s out of the way, this time around the Tuesday Push is RevaHealth. In their own words, RevaHealth is a:

…healthcare search engine. We gather the information you want about health clinics in the UK and Ireland, and further afield, and display it all comparably.

I’ve come across RevaHealth in the past when looking for a dentist in Galway. It is handy to have a listing of lots of them all in once place; the only problem with services like this, however, is that as not a  lot of Galway dentists seem to have signed up, it’s difficult to compare prices. The same is same of reviews (in Galway) which is a shame. I suppose this is a difficulty of building this type of service, you need to bring in users to get clinics involved, and visa versa. Having said that, there are reviews of services in some of the other cities I took a look at.

The foreign services sections on the site is really useful (and they have a handy information pack on Dental Tourism (pdf)). This is something that I’ve investigated before (before I heard of RevaHealth), and I found getting useful information, such as others’ experiences, very difficult. (I got a frosty reception from my dentist when I asked for advice on going elsewhere for cheaper services!).

The site itself is fairly well laid out. I found some issues with the results pages, for example, I found myself using the browser’s back button to get back to the search listing after viewing individual clinic details. I also think that a useful addition would be to make the Google Map on the search results page (in the tab “Dentists in Ireland Info”) clickable. At the moment, you can see the clinic name, but can’t get to the clinic’s details by clicking on it.

Although I’ve concentrated on dentists, RevaHealth provide listings for a wide range of health care clinics throughout the world; a full listing is on their homepage. Given the scope of the services being offered by RevaHealth, I think they’re a useful addition to niche search.

The Tuesday Push

The Tuesday Push is a community-driven approach to promote innovative Irish tech companies & services. You can nominate your company or product (if it fits the guidelines) using this form linked on this page.

I took a break from Tuesday Pushing activities for the last couple of pushes for a few reasons, but you can see a listing of other Tuesday Pushes done on this blog.

By Dave | Posted in Tuesday Push | Comments (4)

It’s Alive! TwitEye.com

April 23, 2009 – 8:35 am

twiteye_thumbLast night I put up the first version of TwitEye; it’s a simple service that gives ideas for new apps, plugins or services based on questions being asked by the people on Twitter. My first impressions are that at the moment, there are lots of ideas for iPhone apps coming through.

If you’re looking for your next big idea, TwitEye could be a good place to start. I’ve already had some suggestions for improving it which I’ll be adding in over the coming days. If you’ve got any more feedback, I’d love to hear it.

You can read more about the thinking behind it in the Introducing Twiteye post, or check it out for yourself at twiteye.com

By Dave | Posted in none, Web Applications, Work | Comments (1)

A Town of Fiction

April 16, 2009 – 2:11 pm

Atlantis Collective HomepageI just posted over on my work blog about a new site launch – The Atlantis Collective. A couple of guys I know are involved in the group and they’re launching their first book of short stories – Town of Fiction – on April 24th in Massimo, Galway. It’s an open invitation, so if you’re about, all are welcome!

They’ve published the book themselves, and it’s for sale online for €15 through originalwriting.ie. You can read some of the excerpts on their site, as well as some unpublished short stories by the members of the group.

It’s a good read!

By Dave | Posted in On Reading | Comments (0)

MyMunster.com – Tuesday Push

March 10, 2009 – 5:21 pm
The 2005-06 final at Millennium Stadium in Car...
Image via Wikipedia

This time around, MyMunster.com is getting the Tuesday Push treatment.  MyMunster is a social network for Munster rugby fans; given all the success the team’s been having in recent years, I’m sure they’ve got a  lot to be talking about on it. Their pitch is:

On mymunster.com you can discuss matches, enter competitions, and check out our library of cool Munster rugby photos and videos

I know from speaking with Ant (one of the team running the site) that they’ve got a large and active community going. It looks like they’ve got a novel business model too, where users can buy credits to enter competitions – they also say that buying credits helps support rugby development in the province.

Not being from Munster, I haven’t played too much with the site in the past. It’s recently been redeveloped, and now allows users to interact using a model that’s similar to Twitter’s in some ways – you have followers & follow people; you can post messages publicly, and reply publicly or privately to people.  There are also message boards, and a space to hold video and photos. Read More »

By Dave | Posted in Tuesday Push | Comments (0)

A Good Nerd Week in Dublin

March 3, 2009 – 10:34 am

There are a few events on in Dublin this week that are of interest to those working in the tech sector. On Thursday, Web2Ireland are running API Wars & Opportunities; a mini-workshop for the web community to discuss:

  • using APIs for business development
  • building mashups/widgets/etc
  • apps on mobile platforms – iPhone, Android, nokia, etc
  • using enterprise 2.0 platforms – force.com, IBM, etc
  • developer infrastructure – Amazon, Google App Engine

Later that afternoon, the Web2Ireland folks are running Facebook Developer Garage – ” a place to explore, get gritty, tinker, experiment, and test out ideas for Facebook Platform”

On Friday, the Future of Web Apps conference is in Liberty Hall. Tickets are €175 and there’s a good schedule of talks on for the day.

Saturday is Bizcamp, which has over 200 people signed up to attend and a good line up of talks. Registration for it is closed, but there is another one coming up in Limerick on March 21st

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By Dave | Posted in none | Comments (3)

Eircom, IRMA & Blackout Ireland

February 26, 2009 – 9:02 pm
An advertisement for copyright and patent prep...
Image via Wikipedia

Ok, so there are lots of links in this post, because of how active this topic is at the moment. To get a good view of what’s been happening, I think all are well worth a read.

Over the last few weeks there have been moves by IRMA (Irish Recorded Music Association) to have certain sites on the Internet blocked by ISPs (Internet Service Providers), starting with Eircom. Letters have also been sent to Irish ISPs (as reported by Blacknight, who got a letter but isn’t an ISP). There’s an article on the Register about the content of the letter.  The first I saw of this being reported was in a front page story in the Sunday Business Post by Adrian Weckler.  Adrian puts it simply on his own site:

Irma is drawing up a list of websites it doesn’t like and Eircom will block them to all of its customers. And Irma is demanding that other ISPs do likewise, on pain of being sued. [as quoted by Digital Rights Ireland today]

It is a little disturbing that a lobby group representing commercial interests have the power to censor, if all ISPs comply, the Internet usage of an entire country.  IRMA will still need to go to court to get an order to block a site, and I wonder what threshold of copyright infringement makes it alright for a site to be censored? If one person views copyrighted material on a site, does this mean the site is no longer accessible to an entire country? Or 10 people?

Another question is, as Damien points out, what if a copyrighted news article is reproduced on a site such as Boards.ie, does this mean that it too will be added to the blacklist? A thread on the Enterprise Ireland Mailing list recently discussed a letter received by a business being pursued for €1200 by Getty Images for use of an unlicensed image on a website. In the future, will such cases of copyright infringement be resolved by having access to the website blocked to all Irish people? Were businesses within the country to feel the effects of this decision, there may be a different attitude to the path to copyright protection through mass censorship currently being walked.

BlackOut Ireland

There is a campaign being run by BlackOut Ireland in protest at these actions. There  are more details about what can be done to protest these decisions in their blog.  You will find them on Twitter at twitter.com/blackoutIreland ; you can track other related activity on Twitter by searching for #blackoutirl. Digital Rights Ireland also suggest sending a letter to Eamon Ryan, and they good enough to provide contact details for him at the end of their post.

All this comes in addition to the agreement that after 3 allegations of copyright infringement through illegal file-sharing, a user’s Internet connection can be disconnected. Again, Digital Rights Ireland have details of why they see this as a bad deal for users.

In response to  similar actions taken by the government in New Zealand, there were widespread protests to the enacting of a law that:

…calls for internet disconnection based on accusations of copyright infringement without a trial and without any evidence held up to court scrutiny. This is due to come into effect on February 28th. [source].

The situation in New Zeland was also covered in a This Week in Tech podcast.

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By Dave | Posted in Privacy | Comments (1)

Tuesday Pushing the Tuesday Push

February 24, 2009 – 11:25 am
Brush up business with paint paste paper and push
Image by Frankenstein via Flickr

So, this time around the Tuesday Push is….The Tuesday Push. The  idea started in July last year as a way of drawing attention to new products & services being developed by the Irish Tech community; it’s:

…a way for the small but growing tech community in Ireland to make some noise about ourselves by picking a good example of an Irish Tech Company and highlighting their product(s) every second Tuesday. This co-ordinated way of highlighting our abilities will hopefully get tech companies heard a bit more and also foster more community spirit as we help each other out by getting everyone greater attention.

Since it started, 10 companies have been promoted on blogs around the country (I’ve covered 9 of the 10). Those getting a push need to be offering a unique product or service, and should be taking part in the push themselves (…the idea is for a co-op mentality, rather than just taking advantage of some cheap marketing). For companies starting out offering something new, getting a bump in coverage, having people use and review their offerings, and getting lots of links gives a great way of promoting & improving their services.

So, if you’re an Irish Tech company that’s offering something new and have a blog, contributing to the promotional effort and putting your name forward for a Push of your own is worthwhile (just take a look at the feedback of some of those that have had a push). There’s also a new Tuesday Push site.

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By Dave | Posted in Tuesday Push | Comments (0)