you want to start something?

I left Bangor this morning at 6 am and after picking up some lost souls in Belfast, made my way south to the BizSpark Innovation Accelerator being held in the Radisson SAS Royal Hotel in Dublin.

The talks have been useful to me – though the panel on “Building an Innovation Economy” fell into the usual tricks of complaining about the local state aid agency (for those of us in the North, it’s InvestNI, for those of us in the South, it’s Enterprise Ireland, for Scotland it’s Scottish Enterprise). The percentages, the amounts, the timing, the bureaucracy and the lead time for funding were discussed at length and generally no-one said anything positive. Of course people want larger percentages of money with lower requirements for match funding, with larger amounts available at specified times with less red tape and less lead time for due diligence.

Of course people want these things.

I want a Moon Pony with a built-in toaster.

Tags: Commentary by mj
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When User Experience experts have a “UXFAIL” event on their website, it gives me a little smile.

Reading Christian Lindholm’s blog about Mobile User Experiences, I felt urged to comment. Quick tap, hit Post and …

So, what’s wrong with my data?

Is it because I’m Irish?

Tags: Annoyances, Commentary, Made me laugh, UI by mj
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Today I was complaining about the poor suite of features in the default Mac OS X Twitter client, Twitterific.

@IanRobinson pointed me at this from Otter Software

which also has the bylines…

Spring 2009 will see the arrival of a new way to integrate your Address Book with Twitter.

and

In the summer of 2009 we will be launching Digestive, a fresh approach to Twitter.

Now I’m all excited…

{You can follow Simon Wolf on Twitter)

Tags: Commentary, Cool by mj
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Tonight is the February 2009 NiMUG meetup being held at Windsor Lawn Tennis Club in Belfast. The topic tonight will be iPhone development (because last Thursday night, 20 people gathered in Roast on the Lisburn Road and bumped heads together about iPhone development – so it seems timely).

Tomorrow, the 24th February, is the Innovation Accelerator being held in the Radisson SAS Royal Hotel in Dublin’s city centre. It’ll be rounded out by an XCake Dublin meetup for people interested in iPhone development in the Sky Suite of the Radisson at 7 pm. I’m going down for the full day.

On Wednesday the 25th, 4IP is hosting some New Media Workshops at NIScreen in Alfred Street. Designed for indies and individuals in Northern Ireland, this is a morning of discussion around the elements and ingredients of projects and platforms that can change the face of public service media, with a view to putting forward a proposal to 4iP. The content of these workshops is up for discussion.

Tags: Commentary, Cool, DigitalCircle, Do Something Now, Social, Startup by mj
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I don’t think I’ve mentioned that my better half’s blog dressjunkie.com has reached the final of the Irish Blog Awards – She’s only been running her blog since November last year but already has more readers, more comments and more subscribers than I do. I’m incredibly proud. She’s an incredibly strong contender and much more readable than my oft-ill-informed rants from here!

We won’t be going down to Cork for the awards (as @dressjunkie works) but we’ll be having our own mini-celebration up in Belfast when we’re with @theronster and @karenquinn. Apparently the bubbly will be out whether there’s a win or not. I love the attitude!

Good luck to the other folks who made it to the finals. We’ll be watching Twitter and living vicariously off your achievements!

Tags: Commentary, Cool, Made me laugh by mj
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