28 January 2011
Daniel Karrenberg's facinating article in similarities between Internet industry and Financial industry
The ISP Industry and the Financial Sector - Amazing Similarities
A really interesting article, as you can see from the diagram.
In the last RIPE Labs article on this subject How Does the Internet Industry Compare?, we looked at ways to compare our industry with other industrial sectors, and identified a number of characteristics that an industry must have in order to be comparable to the Internet industry. It seems the financial sector or monetary credit industry shares many of these characteristics and in fact behaves much like the Internet industry.The three main factors that determine the cumulative distribution of resources in both industries are:
- centrally administered coordination policies
- commercial strategies and competition between each industry members determines how fast each of them grows
- the absolute size of the user base and the varying demands of individual users.
26 January 2011
TSSG's new building has an energy efficient data centre
The Telecommunications Software and Systems Group (TSSG) at Waterford Institute of Technology has a new energy–efficient data centre to support its network-based research projects in the area of telecommunications networking.
Right now, TSSG is working on an average of 40 to 50 research and development projects. It has been recognised as one of the top 10 European institutes driving ‘future internet’ research.
Kedington Group has designed the centre at TSSG, which has an IT power load of 300Kw, with some cabinets engineered to house 30kw of IT equipment. It deployed Rittal LCP technology, which uses chilled water (at 15°C) and will provide free cooling 72pc of the time, for the new data centre.
18 January 2011
W3C Unveils HTML5 Logo
The W3C have unveiled a HTML5 Logo: W3C News Archive: 2011 W3C
W3C unveiled today an HTML5 logo, a striking visual identity for the open web platform. W3C encourages early adopters to use HTML5 and to provide feedback to the W3C HTML Working Group as part of the standardization process. Now there is a logo for those who have taken up parts of HTML5 into their sites, and for anyone who wishes to tell the world they are using or referring to HTML5, CSS, SVG, WOFF, and other technologies used to build modern Web applications. The logo home page includes a badge builder (which generates code for displaying the logo), a gallery of sites using the logo, links for buying an HTML5 T-shirt, instructions for getting free stickers, and more. The logo is available under "Creative Commons 3.0 By" so it can be adapted by designers to meet their needs. See also the HTML5 logo FAQ and learn more about HTML5.
The logo itself is not the main important thing, it is the richness of HTML5's features that help make media (audio and video in particular) easier to access in a standardised way on the web.
HTML5 also promises to help level out the differences between the various mobile devices, providing a common web-based layer of functionality that can be targeted by all mobile apps. Currently companies like FeedHenry (where I am CTO) offer a client-side API abstraction that helps cross-platform mobile app development and deployment, utilising web technologies. HTML5 will hopefully make more of these differences irrelevant over time, making it even easier to develop cross-platform mobile apps that work across a wide range of devices, using standardised web technologies (approved by the W3C).
The TSSG (where I am Executive Director Research) are members of the W3C and support these standardisation activities.
UPDATE 2011-02-21 Ian Jacobs of the W3C has blogged on the interesting discussions the unofficial release of the logo to the public has generated, see Ian Jacobs' Blog Entry.
17 January 2011
World IPv6 Day
The Internet Society, ISOC, have announced an Internet Society - World IPv6 Day on 8th June 2011.
On 8 June, 2011, Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, Akamai and Limelight Networks will be amongst some of the major organisations that will offer their content over IPv6 for a 24-hour "test drive". The goal of the Test Drive Day is to motivate organizations across the industry – Internet service providers, hardware makers, operating system vendors and web companies – to prepare their services for IPv6 to ensure a successful transition as IPv4 addresses run out.
Please join us for this test drive and help accelerate the momentum of IPv6 deployment.
6 January 2011
Review of Ireland's Mobile Broadband Options
TechWire: Irish operators' wifi dongle plans: a comparison
A good article for beginners who have no clue which option to go for, but also interesting to see all these facts assembled together.