eBay.ie: Kevin Thornton will cook in your kitchen, in aid of People in Need, an Irish charity. You can also visit Kevin’s blog.

Here’s my latest entrepreneurial venture, the Swords Express, a frequent regular service from Swords (the third-biggest town in Ireland) and Dublin city centre. At present, it can take up to 90 minutes to get to Swords from the city. By using the Port Tunnel, we hope to halve that. I think this service could make a big difference to Swords. I hope I can find ways to get the support of the local community to make this a big success for them and for us. If anyone out there can help or has any comments to make, that would be much appreciated.

Bernie reviews my book, and says very kind things. You can buy it on Amazon.

From the footer of the easyhotel.com confirmation email:

Intellectual Property: The easyGroup of companies has built up a significant reputation in the name “easy” and has a number of trademark applications and registrations in many countries. easyGroup cannot permit others to use the “easy” name without the group’s rights being prejudiced. It follows that no use should be made of the name “easy” (or anything similar to it) without our consent.

That’s easyToUnderstand. They’re definitely not looking for easyMoney. I know it’s easyToForget to capitalize your company name too.

My book just arrived in the post. I am very happy to see it. Finally, the Internet is a safer place for small businesses.

This map shows Chueca in Madrid, which is now 90 percent covered by FON. The whole project cost only thousands of dollars and is sustained through and by the community. [via MV] [link to El Mundo article in Spanish]. It certainly worked out a lot better than the Earthlink/Google project in San Francisco. [link]
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My forthcoming book will even be available in Tesco!

Silicon Republic has an article about the Ireland OOXML decision. It is mostly an accurate reflection, but one point needs to be clarified.

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According to this press release, Microsoft welcomes Ireland’s ‘no with comments/conditional approval’ vote and NSAI’s consultative committee unanimously agreed to the conditional acceptance of the Office OpenXML standard.

I am glad that Microsoft welcomes the decision. However, the account above was not what happened at the meeting of ICTSCC last week as I recall it. In my recollection, Microsoft voiced a sustained objection to voting in this way. Microsoft was supported in a call for voting ‘yes’ by representatives from ICTIreland, Intel and CP3. There was nothing unanimous about it.

Also, to clarify, the committee involved, the ‘Information and Computing Technology Standards Consultative Committee’ does not have the final say in voting on standards. Its role is purely consultative, to provide advice to the NSAI in accordance with Section 10 of the National Standards Authority of Ireland Act 1996. The making of a final decision lies with NSAI itself.