Silicon Valley 50 Magazine Announced....

6 THE IRISH TIMES Business This Week
Friday, March 18, 2011
Technology&Innovation
Garda bid
to block
sites raises
concerns
Tech execs: magazine names top Irish-American technology executives
Service providers fear effects
of move to tackle child porn
JOHN COLLINS
INTERNET SERVICE providers
and civil liberties groups have
raised concerns about efforts by
An Garda Síochána to introduce a
blocking system aimed at preventing Irish internet users
accessing sites containing child
pornography.
The National Bureau of Criminal Investigation has written to
ISPs asking them to nominate a
contact who could help implement
such a system.
In the letter, Det Supt John
McCann says members of An
Garda Síochána will “investigate
and identify those domains and
sub-domains being used to distribute ‘child pornography’” as
defined under Irish law. When
internet users try to access these
sites the ISP is requested to display a special “Stop! page”,
explaining the material requested
is illegal under Irish law.
A copy of the letter seen by The
Irish Times says the authorities
will not seek information identifying ISP customers but they will
seek information about other sites
visited by these customers in an
effort to identify other domains
that may warrant being blocked.
The letter was sent last
December 28th.
ISPs are concerned that this is a
unilateral action by Garda with no
legislative basis. At least one
ISP has told the Garda that negotiation about the system should be
done with a representative body
such as telecoms group Alternative Operators in the Communications Market (Alto) or the Internet
Service Providers Association of
Ireland rather than dealing with
individual service providers.
The introduction of blocking
lists in other jurisdictions has
proven highly controversial. In
2009, WikiLeaks published details of the list of sites blocked in
Australia. While it included sites
containing images of child abuse,
the list also included poker sites,
WikiLeaks entries and the web
pages for a Queensland dentist
and dog-boarding kennel.
Last month, the civil liberties
committee of the European Parliament voted down European Commission proposals on web blocking and voted instead for measures to tackle the production of
child pornography.
“We don’t support bilateral
agreements with the Garda in
advance of an EU directive on the
matter which may be not be as draconian as this system,” said Ronan
Lupton, chairman of Alto. “Such
agreements may also detract from
Ireland’s attractiveness for investments in the digital media sector.”
Solicitor and head of Digital
Rights Ireland, TJ McIntyre, said
studies had shown that this type of
blocking was very easily evaded
and failed to address the main concern, “which should be removing
this material at source”.
“This is an area where legislation is required, not a private
agreement with no judicial oversight,” said Mr McIntyre.
Some in the industry are concerned that if ISPs agree to block
child pornography, they could subsequently be asked to block access
to other types of material, such as
that protected by copyright.
Despite legal efforts by the Irish
Recorded Music Association
(Irma), only Eircom implements a
“three strikes” system where subscribers found to be repeatedly
sharing copyrighted music are cut
off from the internet.
KARLIN
LILLINGTON
NET RESULTS
Students are flocking to
Kerry in their thousands
to learn the business of
entrepreneurship
Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Irish Technology Leadership Group president John Hartnett at the announcement in Washington yesterday
of the Silicon Valley 50, which recognises the top 50 technology executives of Irish descent. The executives will be recognised at an
event in California next month. Amongst those included are Niall O’Connor, chief information officer with Apple; Barry O'Sullivan,
senior vice president of Cisco; and Lorraine Twohill, vice president of global marketing Google. Photograph: Marty Katz/DC Photographer
Video service will allow companies to
create free 10-second online adverts
ADAM MAGUIRE
AWARD-WINNING video advertisement service FoxFrame will
become available to users early
next month, according to its chief
executive Gráinne Barron.
The web-based application will
initially offer a “fremium” model
where businesses can create a 10second clip for free, with a full
service starting towards the end of
the year.
FoxFrame, which recently won
the 2011 Docklands Innovation
Award, aims to make it easy and
cost-effective for SMEs to create
Creating
the Edge
Entrepreneurs hold the key
to Ireland’s recovery.
The 2011 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year®
Programme is challenging Irish entrepreneurs to
seek out new business opportunities within an
increasingly globalised marketplace.
Energy, ambition and commitment to the spirit of
enterprise are integral to achieving success in these
challenging times. As innovators who are looking to
the future, rather than the past, Ireland’s dynamic
entrepreneurs are spearheading the drive towards
our next era of prosperity. Now more than ever,
we must acknowledge, celebrate and reward these
inspirational individuals.
If you are an entrepreneur, or if you know one,
we want to hear from you.
Closing date for applications is 31 March 2011
CALL 01 2212250 for a nomination form.
VISIT www.eoy.ie to make an online nomination.
In association with:
video online adverts. It allows
users to select from a large library
of stock videos and images, to
which they can then add text,
branding and transition effects.
“Getting an ad produced is
extremely expensive and, even
though the costs have come down,
many small businesses still think
they are for the elite,” Ms Barron
said. “The point is not that this will
be cheaper for certain businesses
but that the likes of the SMEs just
weren’t making adverts to begin
with – now they can.”
Ms Barron, who has been in video production all her working life
with companies including NBC
and Windmill Lane Studios, said
this automated process would help
to keep the cost below ¤1,000 and
users would be able to preview the
clip before paying.
FoxFrame will also make it easy
for companies to publish the clip
through the likes of Google or
download it to use in other promotional material.
The product has been in development for some time. Ms Barron
said there were still issues but initial feedback was positive. The
main focus was to develop a tool
that was easy to use and which
would in turn lead to a high
volume of sales.
“Our aim is that, if you can
drag, drop and type, you can make
a professional video that is lowcost. The product is not scary and
it’s not technical. There’s a lot
going on under the hood but it’s an
easy drive,” said Ms Barron. A
future phase will allow users to
upload and add their own content
to the video.
Ms Barron said big companies
including Google had shown an interest in FoxFrame and the Docklands award has helped generate
even more buzz.
French games firm 2.3m download new
relocating to Dublin Microsoft browser
ADAM MAGUIRE
Some are concerned if ISPs agree to block child pornography,
they could subsequently be asked to block access to other types
of material, such as that protected by copyright.
Get them
young enough,
the possibilities
are endless
MOBILE AND web-based games
developer 2PaperDolls is relocating from Paris to Dublin next
month, according to chief executive Louis Ravenet. The company
is about to acquire space in the
Irish capital and is hiring staff to
complement those moving here to
run the operation.
About nine people will travel to
Ireland to work in the office with
three Dublin-based jobs listed on
the company’s website.
“The technology and gaming
sector in Dublin is an amazingly
exciting one,” Mr Ravenet said.
“The talent of the people that are
here and the openness and cooperative spirit means it is the
right place for us to be.”
Mr Ravenet specifically singled
out Havok co-founder Steve
Collins as an example of Ireland’s
ability to produce notable technology players. He said the investment and support provided by the
likes of Enterprise Ireland made it
extremely practical for start-ups.
“The sector here is at the end
run of a long investment from the
Irish Government so the talent and
infrastructure is here. It reminds
me of what Google found when
they first arrived here; there’s a
youthful, rebel confidence that
appeals to us.”
Mr Ravenet said the cost base
was also attractive, especially
when compared to locations in Los
Angeles and Paris. Property in the
city was a “bargain” and people
were looking to do deals.
2PaperDolls will focus on developing games for the web as well as
the iOS and Android platforms.
Mr Ravenet said HTML5 was the
future of this kind of development
and Dublin was at an advantage in
that regard.
“When you start trying to understand where people are placing
their bets, Dublin has been
HTML5 early on in the game.”
The company’s first product,
Mind of Man, will be released within two to three months of the Dublin office opening and is described
as the “surreal meets Twitter”.
Mr Ravenet said the business
plan of 2PaperDolls was to build a
community, iterate games rapidly
and develop franchises based on
what is successful. Developing social media gaming tools for small
firms was also planned, while different revenue models would be
tested.
However, Mr Ravenet, who has
founded a number of successful
technology companies, including
iCommunicate,
which
was
acquired by Microsoft, was keen
not to have too rigid a plan. “We
like ambiguity, we know we want
to do something that’s fun, fast,
easy, interesting and universal.”
CIARA O’BRIEN
MICROSOFT’S LATEST internet
browser was downloaded more
than 2.3 million times in the 24
hours after it was officially
launched, as the company tries to
regain some of the market share it
has lost to Google and Mozilla.
Internet Explorer’s senior director Ran Gavin disclosed the figures in a blog post on the Windows teamblog.com website.
With 40 million downloads in
beta, expectations are high for
Internet Explorer 9. The finished
version of the browser became
available on Tuesday, boasts hardware acceleration that improves
video and audio performance, supports HTML 5, has stronger privacy controls and improved handling of web applications.
Brian Kealy, western EMEA lead
for Internet Explorer, says: “IE9 is
far and away a much richer experience than any other browser. Most
browsers use the CPU to drive delivery of web pages, visuals and graphics. That ignores the graphics
processing unit, which is the
engine you use when you’re
watching a DVD on your machine.
“IE9 activates that other 90 per
cent of your PC to drive the experience you have on your internet,”
he adds. “It’s vastly different and
much faster than anything you’ve
seen before.”
Software applies social networking
concept to world of business
GORDON SMITH
THE IRISH Blood Transfusion Service has signed up to use the webbased procurement management
software of BigDogg Technologies.
The Dublin company is also getting interest from US customers.
SourceDogg, the start-up’s software, had a test launch last year
with the backing of several trial
customers, including the Moritz
Group. Released towards the end
of 2010, its take-up has been faster
than expected, according to chief
operations officer Mark Scanlon.
SourceDogg applies social networking concepts to the procurement process, Mr Scanlon said.
“Facebook is the expert in connecting people, not software companies. Traditional software is
good at replacing people with processes, but you can’t do this in people-centred areas like sourcing new
suppliers. You need to include people – the buyers, the rest of the staff
in the buying organisation and
really importantly, the suppliers.”
The idea is to make collaboration between people, departments
or companies easier, as it allows
professionals to form buying
groups, share peer reviews and
community ratings. Suppliers can
list on the system free of charge.
SourceDogg is delivered over
the internet as a cloud service, eliminating set-up charges and saving
organisations from buying hardware or paying for software licences. BigDogg claims the software
reduces the time involved in administration for the tendering process.
To develop its software, the company asked 12 procurement directors from the public sector and
from private firms what features
they would like to see in a procurement system. “We did that before
a line of code was written,” said
Mr Scanlon.
SourceDogg is predominantly
aimed at small- and medium-sized
companies that do not have the
budgets or the internal IT staff to
use more expensive software for
managing their procurement
process. Its business plan anticipates 50 per cent of revenues from
overseas customers by the end of
this year, rising to 85 per cent
after 2012. BigDogg employs six
people and expects to have 12 fulltime staff by the end of 2011.
Purchasing manager for the
Irish Blood Transfusion Service
Paul Behan said the software had
reduced the administrative burden on the organisation. “We’re
looking to achieve efficiency in our
processes and an added benefit is,
it’s in line with the new Government policy.”
BigDogg received angel investment last year of just under
¤100,000 and is close to completing a funding round of almost
¤600,000. Mr Scanlon said this
would last through to break-even,
with the company expecting to be
profitable by next year.
BigDogg owes its name to
co-founder John Quigley, a former
Irish basketball captain who
picked up the moniker while
playing professionally in Europe.
The IE9: Microsoft is trying to
regain lost market share
Users can put websites, or even
a single site page from a site, directly on the Windows 7 taskbar,
allowing them to check e-mail,
update social networks or keep up
with breaking news easily.
Internet Explorer is still the
most popular browser, although
competition from Mozilla, Google
and Opera has seen its market
share decline in recent years.
Microsoft hopes IE9 might be
the version that stops users abandoning its browser software. The
company took on board the feedback from beta users and more
than 2,000 tweaks and changes
were made to the software before
it was finally ready to ship.
Mr Kealy claims IE9 is the safest browser. Microsoft has introduced tracking protection, which allows users to control what data
they share online and with what
sites through adding tracking lists.
WEBLOG
G
IVEN THE goings-on
down south in recent
years, don’t be too
surprised if Kerry soon
becomes known as the
entrepreneurial county.
Quietly over the past half
decade, some 3,000 second- and
third-level students in the
kingdom have gone through a
home-grown entrepreneurship
programme that aims to give them
the confidence to start a local or
global business, or bring a similar
level of drive and resourcefulness
to a future employer.
The Young Entrepreneur
programme (youngentrepreneur.
ie) is a challenging, standalone,
interactive course that requires
the full commitment of a student
as well as a school (or the school
is refused participation). Students
are placed into workshops,
examine business case studies and
get guidance from business
leaders from the area.
The programme runs months,
starting with a high-energy
introduction in September before
storming through business plan
development and presentations,
concluding with a range of
winners who receive support and
seed funding for developing their
ideas into a real business.
The main driver behind the
programme is Kerry entrepreneur
Jerry Kennelly, who sold his
digital stock photography firm
Stockbyte to photography giant
Getty for $135 million in 2006.
Kennelly is a bundle of energy,
not a person content to just sit
back and enjoy his own financial
success. To start with, like most
entrepreneurs, “serial” precedes
that designation. He recently
launched an online design
business called Tweak.com, aimed
at democratising high-end design
for small to medium-size
businesses.
He is equally passionate about
the entrepreneur programme,
which sits alongside the
Kerry-based Endeavour
programme (endeavour.biz/).
Discuss Young Entrepreneur
with him and he is quick to point
out it isn’t just him, but involves a
variety of sponsors and
supporters. They range from
telecommunications entrepreneur
Denis O’Brien (who flies in to talk
to students for the awards
ceremony in May) to the Institute
of Technology Tralee, Shannon
Development, the Tom Crean
Centre, Kerry Group and others.
Then there are the local business figures and entrepreneurs
who give months of their time to
work with the 15- to 23-year-olds
targeted by the programme.
It is hard to imagine a project
this ambitious and comprehensive
– run as a not-for-profit, at no
charge to participating students –
working effectively, much less
going at full throttle for six years,
without someone with Kennelly’s
personal dedication and
commitment behind it.
In order to grab the students’
attention and speak in the
sophisticated media language the
current generation is used to, the
programme uses a multimedia
approach, incorporating music,
video and high-production values.
None of that comes cheap or
without dedicated effort.
The end result, Kennelly hopes,
will be real change – for the
students, for the Kerry area, for
the nation and Irish society.
Over the past decade, “Ireland
got fat,” he says, and became too
“obsessed with consumption and
went for the easy buck”, looking
to make money off property
investment rather than hard
work, intellectual capital and
good business ideas.
The programme is designed to
reverse that, to encourage
students to think for themselves,
to solve problems and to view
entrepreneurship not as
something restricted to a more
privileged class, or even requiring
special brains or university
degrees. Instead, it’s about selfconfidence and self-reliance, he
says, coupled with learning the
basics of business and how to
fund a good idea.
“We’re teaching them to be
disrupters,” he says with
satisfaction, not to just wade
through school in order to get a
boring job or feel pushed to go
into the professions. Kennelly
feels the latter was a choice that
symbolises everything that went
wrong with the Celtic Tiger, a
kind of default, high end,
money-making lazy career option.
Instead he wants 17-year-olds to
think about creating their own
jobs, maybe their own company,
maybe even a global company.
It’s not
about
pushing
them to be
entrepreneurs,
but to learn
that people
have a choice
“
“It’s not really about pushing
them to be entrepreneurs, but to
learn that people deserve to have
choice. It gives choice about being
self-employed. There has been
appalling career guidance in
schools in terms of choice.
“There is never any suggestion
that people might work for
themselves, but there is the fact
that it’s a really interesting way to
run your life, to control your life.”
The most exciting and
rewarding element for Kennelly is
seeing just how committed and
capable the students are.
Some come up submit business
plans and make elevator pitches
that are of a much higher quality
than some he has seen in
applications for the Endeavour
programme. And to those who
think a 15- year-old is too young to
be thinking about
entrepreneurship? Just the
opposite, Kennelly says.
It’s the perfect time, before
schools and university work push
many students into a more
narrow channel of thinking about
what they can do and what is
possible.
INSTALL
READ
The soundtrack
of your life
Drinking at work in
Silicon Valley
The Soundtracking app was
launched at South by
Southwest Interactive this
week and could prove to be the
essential music discovery tool.
With an interface similar to
photo sharing app Instagram,
Soundtracking allows you to
tag songs – whether playing on
your iPod or something you’ve
just heard on the radio – and
share them with your
followers.
You can listen to previews of
songs tagged by those you
follow with links to iTunes to
buy them. Simple and clever,
it’s perfect for music lovers
pressed for time.
soundtracking.com/
Businessweek highlights the
fact that Mad Men-style
drinking at the office is
becoming common in Silicon
Valley’s start-ups, where
Friday afternoon beer kegs are
a common sight.
While ad agencies in the
1960s were alcohol-soaked at
all hours of the day, the article
points out the practice reflects
the long hours worked at
start-ups. And of course some
companies have an iPad app to
tell you how much you have
drunk.
is.gd/FW4mbC
Compiled by
John Collins
WATCH
Kinect self
awareness hack
College Humour has some fun
with the numerous videos of
hacks of Microsoft’s Xbox
Kinect device with this video of
a geek who gives his “self
awareness”. Cue Terminatorstyle machine rebellion which
predictably ends with the
Kinect hacking into the US
nuclear arsenal and destroying
the world.
is.gd/Deom85
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