Alexia Blogs

Google is letting users ‘fine-tune’ locations on Google maps. Don’t get me wrong. I like Google Maps, it’s just that I like Local Live more. It’s more accurate. By allowing people edit maps, Google is hoping to improve on accuracy.

Despite assurances from Google that map data won’t be abused, I’m skeptical. Google are planning to stop abuse by locking down of businesses already listed in Google Local Business Center, manual reviewing of locations moved by more that 200 yards and a similar mechanism to the ‘report spam’ operation in Jaiku.

Protection of business locations already listed in Google Local Business comes off as small potatoes. It currently only covers 25 countries including Ireland. How can Liechtenstein be covered and not Greece or Brazil? Not to mind, the up and comers in Eastern Europe like the Czech Republic, Poland or Romania. Or East Asian trading hubs like Thailand, Korean and Singapore.

Manual reviewing of locations? That sounds like an enormous job. Something that a team would need to be indefinitely committed to. How are these reviewers going to be trained? What’s to say that their qualifications lead them to be the best arbitrars of location? They must be cartographers, as the data necessary to approve many of these locations will require deep local knowledge.

Is there a time estimate on the approval? Perhaps, the suggested fix will join in a perpetual march to approval queue hell. If so, this will kill the appetite of community map-fixers that are making valid edits. They’ll get sick waiting for their fixes to be approved.

Reporting bad map-fixes is a good idea. Irate map users will be only too happy to vent. I believe some sort of review system should sit here too.

You want to counter this, Google - open you Local Business Center to more countries. Make the process more transparent. Offer incentives for big community map-fixers. Give them a taste for contributing to the map habitat. Build a real transcontinental community and be open about it.

Todd Bishop of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has some interesting statistics demonstrating that the Nintendo Wii and the Xbox 360 have shipped about the same number of units worldwide as of September. The Xbox 360 was just 200,000 units ahead of the Wii. Of course, the 360 has been shipping a year before the other consoles.

The numbers show that Sony’s PS3 is as sick as a dog with only 5.6 million units. A far cry from the lofty ship numbers of the first and second generation PlayStations.

It looks to me like many PS gamers have jumped onto the 360 show, with non-traditional players have been wooed by the Wii. I love my Wii bowling, me. Wii love goes far. Christmas is in the air and there’s a scrum developing for consoles already. That’s not to say that the 360 isn’t attractive. Rock Band is looking like it might be fun. Europe will have to wait until February, though.

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Community Technology Preview (CTP) has gone live. New features include T-SQL Intellisense and a Resource Governor to manage resources like CPU and memory. Flavours include x86, x64 and IA64. Check out the downloadable companion books too.

I remember some time ago twittering about Microsoft Unified Communications. It’s a sweet set of comm tools that integrate IM, conferencing and phone services. Well, Microsoft Ireland have organised a half-day training event for IT and communication professionals in Unified Communications. Products to be walked through include Office Communicator, Office Live Communications Server and Office Live Meeting. It’s being held at the EPDC2 building in the South County Business Park, Leopardstown on December 5th. More details here.

Ooo - two MS links.

Wisebread with some tips for Black Friday shopping.. I wish that Paddy’s Valley was one-and-a-bit weeks earlier..

John hacks together a Linux media server.. careful not too near the curtains

RTE News needs whatever beans these guys eat.

In another turn for the books, Facebook has caved to griping users that want to kill the ‘is’ from status updates. I kind of like the composition karate it enforced on members. The Machinist agrees with?me.

There’s an appetite out there for another Dublin Tweetup before Christmas, but we are running out of weekends fast. The original idea behind DT3 was that we would have it at a weekend before Christmas, but that looks like a non-starter. I started a thread over in Jaiku at the weekend to start our planning chat.

So, what do you think about when DT3 should happen? Would you come along to one on weekday before Christmas? Join in on the Jaiku thread or drop me a comment here. Let’s get chatting.

The web to slow to a trickle in three years? That has to mean more heartache for Irish consumers struggling today on puny 2/3Mbps services, right? Think about slicing our share of the Transatlantic corridor into a smaller piece of the pie, ‘cos that’s what’s going to happen..

The Facebook newsfeed effect - Kristen from Mashable spies LinkedIn adding feeds tracking what your contacts do just like Facebook.

Architects present plans for Limerick to get it’s own tram system? Okay, I can understand the push for urban renewal. But, Limerick traffic really has nothing on Dublin jams. Transport isn’t the real issue here. Indigenous enterpreneurship is.

Suzy has a sharp eye and reports on IrishElection.com’s fresh new set of clothes. Very nice.

Started Christmas shopping yet? Check out the New Yorker’s top ten DVD boxset and CD lists.

Is Facebook buying it’s largest Chinese rival in order to shoehorn its way into China?

Dell follows Apple into the all-in-one PC form factor? The new?XPS?One is angling this market.

What is it about the new M&S ads that makes me love them? Liking the new faux 50’s Christmas one. Perhaps it’s the mix of music and narrative.

Ryan Adams ‘Now That You’re Gone’

Just this weekend, I undertook a long-distance train journey. As the availability of rip-roaring mobile broadband is little more than vapour-ware in Ireland, I topped Molly up with lots of extra feeds.

Curiously, I checked out a few newspaper feeds to add them to my collection of reading material. All the biggies. The Irish Independent, the (London) Times online, the New York Times and the Washington Post. After adding these feeds to Outlook, I discovered to my chagrin, that these feeds just push out the deck header to the feed pipe.

So, is this meant to act as a teaser and drive folks to click through to the newspaper site? Are we just bait targets? Sorry, I forgot that we are just small humanoid units built only consume media bootstrapped with advertising.

Pushing newspaper content out is smart. Newspaper publishers, offer more incentives for readers to visit your site. Link up related topics or material from the same columnist and push these out with your feeds too. You’ll soon find that your valuable readers will bounce back onto your portal. Pushing out content onto the web ought to not be a by-the-numbers exercise. IT and web publication needs to move from being viewed as a negative in the hallowed circles of ink journalism to being a fresh canvas to brand your news voice and promote your branding.

Too many publications make the mistake of ignoring the online reader. Web users are often the most well-informed readers. They consume a vast amount of content from myriad sources. Making them you fans by pushing out full content feeds is easy, making them a part of your regular readership family may be more work. Adding web-only content and offering free searches of archives are two ways in which newspapers can capitalise on web user’s eyeball time. The New Yorker (while not a newspaper) is doing the former and the New York Times is doing the latter after much heralded announcement.

It seems like such a small step to ask for newspaper content feeds to be fully populated. Yes, visitations to paper sites will drop, but the ubiquity of that content will dramatically rise. Newspapers, you want us to read you - make it easier for us.

One of my favourite parts of popping back to Limerick is picking up a copy of the Limerick Post. I adore the way that it pairs gaudy commercial features with local arts endeavours. It makes for a heady mix. Just this past weekend, the Post ran it’s front page with a headline story claiming that full-time taxi drivers were losing business to part-timers.

The story by Lorraine Carey, points?out full-time taxi drivers are experiencing a loss in business caused by part-time moonlighters who drive out-of-hours and at weekends. What is do I say? Tough shit. It’s about time that taxi-men who have held us commuters at mercy for years, were challenged. They have had it they own way for much too long.

The story goes on to flax about how how taxi drivers are concerned on two counts - safety and finances. Raising concerns about safety is tantamount to scare-mongering. Taxi drivers contend that part-time drivers who drive after work are unsafe. All this crying over passenger safety while convicted criminals continue to hold taxi licenses. Just how safe are we from taxi drivers themselves? Sound like a classic smoke-screen of protectionism to me.

The real reason is financial. The opening of taxiing to new licensees has giving consumers extra choice. New entrants to markets means more competition. Slipped standards make for messy cabs. Discerning customers won’t jump into a cab that looks like a warzone driven by a slovenly serial killer-type, when there’s suitable cab around the next corner. And, actually on that? Are there really that many extra taxi cabs on the streets? Perhaps they are all in Limerick, because on the average Saturday night in Dublin, they are about as easy to source as black opals.

What the taxi drivers aren’t saying, is that many of these part-timers are renting the plates on the cheap from taxi drivers. The Post article makes reference to the fact that a plate can be bought for six thousand Euro. Part-time drivers can easily rent a plate for a couple of hundred Euro and start business straight away. No fuss. Forget digging for six grand, cha-ching. An industry can’t bitch about moves to liberalise their sector, while benefit too - right?

Virtually every part of the private sector has felt the pinch of competition. Look at the liberalisation of transport.? Private bus companies have jumped in and supplemented routes whose nationalised links are oversubscribed and inefficient. Disagree with? me? Try catching a bus to Cork or Limerick at a weekend or near Christmas. To find the best value services to national city hubs, I suggest you drop by your nearest third-level student union. On notice-boards next to ads seeking roommates or advocating safe sex, you’ll see the posters for private bus companies offering direct routes at reasonable prices.

You may scream that’s comparing apples to oranges, as I’m taking public bus transport as an example. That doesn’t affect people who have a financial interest in the protection of industry. You forget that each and everyone of us tax payers holds an interest in the healthy balance sheet of the Bus Eireann. I, for one, welcome the introduction of sensible competition to shake up bus services.? Taxi drivers ought to be thankful that new entrants are revitalising their industry. It needed a shake up and now it has it.

I want to see wider government initiates to stave off protectionism in our market economy. Ireland Inc has thrived on being an offshore magnet. Fuelled by a low corporate taxation regime instituted and preserved by successive governments, it has hit above it’s weight on attracting international investment. Progressive free market economics cannot only exist in our international affairs, it needs to come out of the arrivals lounge of Dublin airport and into as many sectors of the economy as is practicable. Progressive thinking brings innovative and sound economic benefits to consumers.

Could the web editors of the Irish Independent be a little less callous please? Putting a story about the loss of 140 jobs at the Bulmer’s factory in Clonmel beside a piece on how our economy could ride out spiralling debt seems to me, to be in?bad taste.

What about the families of these workers? Will they be able to pay off their debts in two-and-a-half years? Okay, so they will be the ones scrambling for work with two piles of burning money. One for Christmas and the other for keeping a roof over their families’ heads.

What level of proofreading goes into reviewing the web edition before publication? The pieces are fine when viewed in isolation. Like dangerous chemicals, create a big punch?when put together. Think hydrochloric acid.

[Just as this timed post went out, I checked Independent.ie. The content has changed, but the opinion is still valid. So I'm leaving it as is.]