New Tech Post - video

Shopkick: Earn Redeemable 'Kickbucks' [VIDEO]

Ina O Murchu — Wed, 18 May 2011 19:09:18 +0000

When you enter a shop that is using the shopkick platform your phone, iPhone or Android, detects the shopkick device and you earn 'kickbucks.'

These points or credits can be used to redeem rewards not only in the store but Facebook credits as well.

Report by Ina O'Murchu

Rich Moran discussing Genius Clusters [VIDEO]

Rich Moran — Tue, 17 May 2011 14:38:17 +0000

Transcript of Rich Moran sharing his thoughts on how Genius Clusters might work.

My name is Rich Moran. This is my dog, Reilly.

Reilly, look over here because you’re part of this. I wanted to talk about genius clusters. They are getting a lot of attention. I wrote a New Tech Post article about it. A lot of people have written to me and wanted to talk further about it.

Some of the people in Ireland have mentioned that we don’t need genius clusters. What we need is to prevent any stupid clusters. I don’t want to talk about that so much as I want talk about more ideas about genius clusters.

Reilly is actually a genius. He’s one of the smartest people I know. He just doesn’t talk very much but he’d be in my genius cluster.

So, I have an idea and here’s the idea. I know how busy the government is; dealing with pensions and cost-cutting and EU and bankers and lots of things like that. So, I intend to leave the government entirely out of genius clusters.

What I want to do is start a parallel universe. In this parallel universe there is no government involvement at all. There’s just a lot of smart people getting together and creating clusters. It might be startups, it might be spin-outs, it might be out of the university system but it is not part of the government.

My idea for genius clusters is to be part of this, (aside to Reilly; there’s all sorts of people walking around here.) Is to be part of the Irish innovation world that is unencumbered, that is full of life, that is full of ideas, full of interesting people that want to help the country, who want to build companies and might want to make a lot of money.

So, a genius cluster: If I was going to start one, I might with...maybe in Ireland it would be Liam Neeson. Because he seems to be a guy who gets a lot of things done. Every movie I see with him he not only has a lot of ideas but, sorta, knows how to get to the crux of the matter that the right things happen.

So, my genius cluster might include him because he gets things done.

I would probably add some people who are under 30 years old in my genius cluster. I bet Ireland is full of them in universities and in pubs and in lots of other places, who have big ideas, who want to get things done and don’t want to be encumbered by all the typical constraints of today. They are just interested in being in this parallel universe.

So, let’s create this parallel universe. Let’s create some genius clusters. I am wide open to ideas. I am open to coming over there and being a leader of a genius cluster. I’ll bring Reilly with me but what I don’t want to do is get stuck in the mud like it seems we are right now.

So, let’s create this parallel universe. Let’s create some genius clusters.

I’m Rich Moran, this is Reilly.

To participate more or perhaps create a genius cluster of your own you can join the Genius Clusters Facebook page.

You can follow Rich on Twitter @workvoodoo

Direct flight from Ireland to Silicon Valley [VIDEO]

Ina O Murchu — Wed, 11 May 2011 22:00:26 +0000

Ina O'Murchu reports on the letter handed into the Irish Government to petition of for the direct airline route from Ireland to Silicon Valley to be reinstated.

The Facebook Like Button A Year On [VIDEO]

Tom Murphy — Tue, 03 May 2011 10:39:08 +0000

It is just over a year since Facebook launched its like button. We take a look at how effective it has been in that time.

Report by Ina O'Murchu

44 Billion Apps to be Downloaded in next 5 Years [VIDEO]

Tom Murphy — Mon, 02 May 2011 12:07:07 +0000

Recent research speculates that based on current trends over 44 billion apps will be downloaded in the next five years

Report by Ina O'Murchu.

NB: Some wind noise in parts.

Mindfield Festival of Ideas & Interview with Sugru Inventor [VIDEO]

Tom Murphy — Sun, 01 May 2011 11:17:48 +0000

Ellen Dudley is a co-Founder of Crowdscanner — "Turning networking into people discovery." You can read more about the work of Crowdscanner at "Social Devices Become Social Themselves."

You can also read more about Jane's work at "Sugru: A Wonder Stuff for Hacking Things Better."

Ellen is interviewed in this video of a hackquarium. A workshop where people can come together to explore the possibilities of Sugru.

Presidential Support for the Visa Act of 2011 [VIDEO]

Tom Murphy — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 08:27:18 +0000

SFI Partners with DCU Ryan Academy [VIDEO]

Tom Murphy — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 13:51:32 +0000

Facebook Expanding [VIDEO]

Tom Murphy — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 17:38:19 +0000

Twitter May Be Coming to Ireland [VIDEO]

Tom Murphy — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 13:03:45 +0000

New Tech Post welcomes Twitter to Ireland should they decide to come and we point out that there is plenty more opportunities for investment.

A related article you may be interested in reading: Tom McEnery: The Restructuring Of Failure

iPhone and Android Tracking Files [VIDEO]

Tom Murphy — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 14:21:48 +0000

For more background to this story you can read this article: "iPhone: Tracking or Logging?"

President Obama visits Facebook [VIDEO]

Tom Murphy — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 14:12:24 +0000

Tunepresto: Using Algorithms to Create Music for Videos

Tom Murphy — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 08:07:11 +0000

It has never been easier to make your own videos. A decent camera can be picked up for a fraction of the cost of a fully loaded professional camera. Editing can be done for very little additional cost on your desktop with software such as iMovie for the mac or Microsoft’s Windows Live Movie Maker 2011. As minimally functional as they are, they pack enough features to get started and turn out a something worthwhile in a relatively short time..

But when it comes to adding a music soundtrack to your video it can be become a real challenge to find a suitable piece of music. The options for those that are not so musically inclined or are unwilling or unable to pay royalties for material under copyright options can suddenly become very limited.

Even if the payment of a royalty fee is waived seeking permissions and searching through audio libraries can feel like an extreme process to undergo when all you want is a soundtrack for a video that you are going to share with some friends on YouTube or Facebook.

For those with a talent for music there is always the option of creating your own soundtrack but such ability seems not to be distributed equally or fairly amongst the population at large leaving the not so gifted with little hope in the realms of self-composition. So what to do?

Tunepresto is a web-based music maker. It generates original copyright free music to match your video or your slideshow presentation. How it works is really simple from the user’s perspective.

You upload your video or enter your YouTube URL and the Tunepresto software analyses the video.
The user then selects a style of music from the range of styles that are available on the system.
The software then generates a piece of music that exactly fits your video.

If you like it you can then download it and get the combined video and music file.

The idea for Tunepresto came when Siún Ní Raghallaigh, a television producer and her co-founder Justin McCarthy, a video editor, were chatting about what a pain it is to deal with copyright music and wouldn’t it be great to just press a button and have a music track composed for you.

As Siún says, “We were coming from a professional background and we were targeting a professional market. But whilst everybody thought it was a great idea the take up was a slow. So we decided to do some more market research.

“We learned a hard lesson. Our idea was not for the professional market. Our target should really be the consumer market. We refocused and changed the whole way we were approaching Tunepresto, the way we were marketing it and how we were targeting it.

“Part of what we discovered from the market research we did with our existing customers was that while we packed the desktop product with loads of great features all they wanted to do was press the compose button.

“We had put in a timeline, we had put in markers, you could change instruments and loads of different things but the majority of customers would just press compose. So we said, let’s do some of the decision making in the background as to what it produces but still use the same basic composition engine.

“We now have a one click solution, so to speak and we will be market led as to what we make available after that. If we add more features we want it to be what the user wants not what we think they want.”

Tunepresto have developed an algorithm that when presented with a video containing certain elements that it has detected in the video it can then generate a musical composition appropriate to the information presented to it.

Siún explains, “This is not pre-recorded music. This is not music loops. This system is actually making original music. It is generating the music based on the information that it is extracting from the video and the selection the user makes in terms of style of music. It is making new music to suit that particular video.”

MUZU.TV: Official Video Music from the Original Artists

Lisa Jackson — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 09:22:44 +0000

Launched in July 2008, MUZU.TV has one of the largest music video hosting sites on the web. It allows users access to videos, interviews, exclusive footage, music news and more. All the videos on the site are the legal and officially approved versions as MUZU.TV works directly with record companies and artist's representatives to ensure the authenticity of the material made available. With the strength of YouTube and the proliferation of other music websites, what makes Irish-based MUZU.TV different?

Ciaran Bollard, CEO and co-founder of MUZU.TV believes, “There are lots of music sites out there and a lot of them are focused on audio. Then there is YouTube which would be our biggest competitor. YouTube has a mixture of user content and content from the music labels. Our service is dedicated to music fans so all the features and functions of the site are tailored to music fans so it offers a very different and unique experience.”

“Just by looking at the service you can see that immediately. It’s only focused on music content. It hasn’t got user-generated content. Clearly fans like that because we’re growing by 20% month on month.”

The MUZU team works with individual record labels and artists to promote the site. Ciaran explains, “you’ll see on most of the major artists’ pages, like Cheryl Cole who has millions of fans, you’ll see posts about MUZU on her page. All the major artists’ pages will post about MUZU because we have this initiative called the ‘Video Fight Club’ where we put an artist up against another artist and they have this competition over who has the best video.”

The site also maintains its competitive edge by launching new initiatives like the ‘Video Fight Club’ on a regular basis. The most recent is ‘MUZU Live and Loud’.

Ciaran explains, as in the first week for instance, “There’s going to be two major artists Jessie J and Ellie Goulding. We’ve two exclusive live sessions and these will be up against each other and Jessie J and Ellie Goulding’s fans will vote as to who’s the best.”

Other recent initiatives include:

A ‘best of live’ catalogue.
‘Gig In Your Gaff’ competition where an artist will play live in your living room. It recently featured The Wanted.
Live streaming in-studio, recently featuring Rodrigo y Gabriela.

According to Ciaran, the MUZU catalogue currently has approximately 80,000 music related videos. It streams 10 million videos a month, mostly from UK and Ireland viewers. MUZU’ers have the ability to post comments below artists’ videos. With so much content, MUZU.TV is conscious of filtering.

Ciaran says, “We’re filtering comments as much as we can. It’s very difficult to react very quickly to all the comments that happen but the main thing is that the content on the site is not inappropriate content. The actual video content is all appropriate and we also use age filters as well.

"On our site we only focus on professional music-based content. Users cannot upload to the site, apart from uploading to, let’s say The Scripts’ channel. They can upload to the fan TV section and become a fan TV contributor but the band actually approves that content.”

The site generates income from advertising served in and around the music videos. In addition, MUZU.TV has created a partnership with Group M, a leading vendor of online advertising worldwide.

Ciaran explains that, “We’re very careful that we only serve a pre-roll ad (an advert that runs before an online video) for every one-in-three videos. There’s a balance. You’ve got to be able to support the business from a revenue perspective but, at the same time, the user experience is crucial.

"It’s all about offering the best consumer experience that we possibly can. We try to make the advertising very targeted to the age and genre that somebody is watching so it’s relevant advertising.”

MUZU is currently based in Dublin, Waterford and London. It had its beginnings in the DIT Hothouse, an innovation and technology centre located at the Dublin Institute of Technology.

Ciaran remains a huge supporter of the programme. He feels it “is a fantastic way of supporting somebody who is in a current corporate job and wants to get out of that but still has a mortgage to pay and bills to pay.”

He says that, “What’s good about Hothouse is:”

You can network with other entrepreneurs in the same position.
You can get a grant which helps support your income for the first year of starting up your business.
It gives mentoring around your business plan.

With MUZU.TV recently expanding into France, Spain, Italy, Germany and Benelux this specialist music website conceived by Irish entrepreneurship and built with Irish technology has carved a niche that seems to be ever-expanding.

Paddy Cosgrave Talks about Dublin Web Summit [VIDEO]

Ina O Murchu — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 06:12:29 +0000

The next event of the Dublin Web Summit series takes place on the 8th of March. They are being held roughly every four months to reflect the need to stay current with the rapidly changing tech environment.

Previous speakers from overseas have included Jack Dorsey, Chad Hurley, Dave McClure amongst others. Irish speakers in the past have included Iain McDonald from Skillpages (formerly Weedle), Kirstie McDermott and Darragh Doyle.

In the video Paddy elaborates further on the need for the Dublin Web Summit or something like it. He also provides more information on the following points.

More on the need for the events to be frequent
Providing space for the tech community to come together
Opportunities for networking
The possibility to learn new things
Because of the ongoing changes in the political climate this event will be more focused on how Ireland can enhance its position in the global tech sector
A brief explanation of how further events in the DWS series will work over the coming year
Announcement of the first speaker for the March event

The inaugural session begins at 5pm on March 8th and you can find more details about speakers as they are announced at the site for the Dublin Web Summit. You can also purchase your tickets there as well.

The Virtual World of Gifted Kids [VIDEO]

Tom Murphy — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 17:35:07 +0000

Click on image to see the children interact with Gifted Kids Virtual World

At the Gaelscoil Eoghain uí Thuairisc in Carlow, Ireland where lessons are taught in Irish they are implementing the use of 3D technology for the learning support of gifted children. This is the first time that this technology has been used in Ireland to teach part of the school curriculum. The interactivity and detail of the 3D technology means that anything you can do or build in the real world can be replicated in this virtual world.

Gifted children who, at the most conservative estimate, make up 5% of the entire school population are taking part in a pilot programme devised by the school in conjunction with Irish software company Daynuv, and Giftedkids.ie, an association specifically set up to advocate for provisions to be made in the education system and elsewhere for the needs of gifted children.

Bríd Uí Mhaoluala, who runs the project for one hour every week in the school with the children helped to devise the pilot program. She has been working with gifted children for over ten years and she welcomes the lack of need for any real learning curve when initially engaging with the software. She says, “I’m not a computer whizz. I am the sort of person who presses the button without reading the instructions to see what this thing does. But if we can do it here any teacher can do it and that’s the most attractive thing about it, I think. It’s accessible to any teacher who wants to try it.”

She gave the children minimal instruction in how to get started and in a very short time they were way ahead of her in terms of understanding the capabilities of the software and their inventiveness in what they were able to create. The exceptional nature of gifted children, even within the educational community, can be the source of many problems as Brida explains, “Some teachers can be a little bit scared of exceptionally abled children and don’t want to admit that they don’t know how to do it but you need to pack your ego [away] and say, Right, you are going to get this more quickly than I did. You’re probably going to be better at this then I would. So run with it.”

James Corbett, co-founder of Daynuv (an Anglicisation of the Irish word 'deanamh' which means making,) a company that provides virtual worlds for education says, “It’s an open source platform called OpenSim which is an open source version of Second Life. What it does is give you a 3D space which, on first blush, looks like a gaming environment that you see on a console.

"It’s a 3D space, you have six degrees of movement, up and down, left and right and in and out of the space. But unlike a game it is not a pre-programmed environment it’s something you can decide exactly what you would like it to be.

"So, what the kids initially get from us is a clean slate, sixteen acres of land that they can terraform, build their own terrain. If they want to build mountains or valleys or rivers or lakes then they can build that. On top of that they can use building tools to build whatever they want. First and foremost it is a platform about building and constructing unlike a lot of console games which are about destructing. It’s...about collaborating.”

Margaret Keane is a strong supporter of the Gifted Kids Virtual World project. She runs Giftedkids.ie which describes itself as “An Online Survival Guide for Parents & Teachers of Gifted Children in Ireland.” It is specifically set up to advocate for provisions to be made in the education system and elsewhere for the needs of gifted children.

Margaret explains the original genesis of the idea, “We were looking for something that we could bring into the classroom because we were getting a lot of requests through the website saying, “We want to know what this information is, we want to know what the characteristics are. What do we need to to look out for? We have [children with] this range of special abilities and we don’t know how to support them.” So they’re looking for practical solutions.”

She met with James and it was agreed that there would be a certain kind of synergy in combining their efforts and Bríd became involved through her participation on the GiftedKids.ie forums.

Margaret says, “I was very excited by the fact that you can use this technology to support the entire curriculum. You can link to all sorts of learning objectives.”

But as important as it is to acquire knowledge and practical skills the Gifted Kids Virtual World technology also acts as a vital communications tool for the children when they are away from the school.

Margaret points out, “That’s where it really helped the social skills because a lot of these kids find it hard to find a peer group within their school or even within their classroom.”

With the inbuilt messaging capability the children can still participate in the Gifted Kids Virtual World from their homes and continue collaborating on the various projects they are working on together.

We made a short video and you can see and hear the children describe for themselves how they interact with both the application and each other. It is only six minutes long and is a testament to the power that 3D technology can have if properly applied.

The pilot programme is expanding and very soon 20 schools in total will be involved. The software is made freely available to schools but sponsors are needed to pay for server and administration costs. 3D technology has moved from the gaming console to the classroom and is facilitating the education of our gifted children. One can only imagine the possibilities if it were made available for all our children.

There is also a flythrough video of the 3D environment in Gifted Kids Virtual World available for viewing here.

Margaret and James would like to offer a special thanks to Social Entrepreneurs Ireland for their part in helping to make the Gifted Kids Virtual World project possible.

091 Labs Has A New Home [VIDEO]

Tom Murphy — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 00:48:59 +0000

091 Labs (the Galway Hackerspace) has a new home at the Exchange Building, Foster St., Galway, Ireland. For more background, you can read this article or view the official announcement. Click on the image below to view a short video about 091 Labs' new space.