According to the FON maps, there are active hotspots at the railway station in Wexford and at the Wexford Harbour Boat Club. That’s pretty neat.

Pjotographs of Kevin’s live cooking experience at the Dublin Fringe Festival. Kevin Thornton is a leading chef, with a restaurant on St. Stephen’s Green. I wasn’t there myself, but it sounds like it was quite something. Kevin is starting to blog, hopefully he will write more about the Fringe show (and will bring it to more venues).

According to the new FON maps, there appear to be more active FON hotspots on the north side of the city than on the southside … Redress the balance! If you can install a FONera in Dublin 2 or 8, let me know and I will get you a free FON router. (Don’t worry, we will have a Northside offer too …

Just leave a comment if you want to avail of this offer.

This video item about FON is a very good explanation of the benefits and the issues involved. Well done to William and Jean-Bernard from FON France!

Article from The Register from a few weeks ago.

Ryanair wants to take over Aer Lingus, which was floated in a fairly whimsical and happy-go-lucky way by the government last week. The unions and the governments are askance – they don’t like the idea of selling the company to Michael O’Leary.

If you ask me this is the result of the triple Irish vices of ignorance, begrudgery and hibernocentricism.

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FON is a great solution for providing wi-fi broadband in a hotel, cafe or other public space in a secure, controlled way. You can make money, and the investment is minimal (as low as 5 euros). There’s a thread on boards.ie about this. If you have a cafe or hotel and are interested in providing wi-fi access, let me know.

Smart Telecom, which was the biggest unbundler of the Irish local loop has entered a major restructuring, after running out of cash. It’s sad to see a business fail after so many people have worked so hard to develop a pretty good product at a decent price. What are the lessons?

– you need deep pockets to take on an incumbent operator, especially if you aren’t part of an international group.

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Martin puts it succinctly in his comparison of the N80 smart phone and the Apple iPod.

The N80 is a social device, the iPod has this wanker element to it that I dislike.

There is a serious issue to think of here. Why is the iPod so popular, when other devices such as PDAs were a total failure in the mainstream market? The answer seems to be that the iPod had emotional appeal, it gave people what they wanted, while PDAs were cool and logical and provided what they really needed. People just didn’t want them.