Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

This book has been recommended to me by a friend. Anyone read it? Please use the comment feature below to let me know!

It occurs to me that many people starting up an online business are getting too worked up about one perceived obstacle - that of setting up of a merchant account. But there are cheap and easy ways for EirePreneurs to take online payments. Paypal now accepts payments denominated in a number of international currencies, including the Euro and Sterling. And as Paypal was recently bought by eBay you can rest assured that it's going to be around for the long haul! As well as Paypal we also use 2CheckOut to accept payments to our online greyhound racing marketplace - GlobalGreyhounds. It only accepts payments denominated in US Dollars but as we have a large international audience that is not a problem for us. I can highly recommend it.

And after months of hype Microsoft has finally launched it's tablet PC drive. I'm quite positive about this new form factor myself. I think the techonology exists to make the whole thing work this time around and I can easily see the attraction in being able to curl up by the fire surfing the web in portrait mode on my WiFi enabled tablet :)

Here's an interesting about turn in PDA land. "Sendo, one of the earliest hardware partners for Microsoft's Smartphone, will instead license the Symbian operating system, which is backed by all the major handset makers. It will also license Nokia's Series 60 user interface, designed for Symbian." [CNet News]

Wow! The InnoGear - Duex mp302 claims to be, "The world’s smallest all in one 128MB MP3 and WMA Player, Real-Time Voice Recorder, and Portable Data Storage Device; all this packed into the size of a pack of gum". MP3 players are one device where the pace of development is now almost more of a hindrance than anything else. Why? Because for nearly a year now I've been seriously considering purchasing one but each time I see a great new type of player I start to imagine just how much better they will inevitably be in a few months time (more memory, smaller, better LCD displays, maybe bluetooth, etc, etc).

The new Nokia Observation Camera is one of those things that puts my mind into overdrive thinking about all the possibilities!

"The Nokia Observation Camera will send a picture to your MMS-capable mobile phone or to your e-mail address. You can also have pictures sent automatically when motion is detected, or at preset intervals."

For starters, just imagine all the non-security type situations where CCTV systems have been installed simply because there wasn't any real alternative. For example, many farmers use such systems to monitor calving cows. How much more flexible it would be to use a Nokia 7650 to accept regular still images from this observation camera. The farmer would be limited to monitoring from his living room, via the TV screen, but could do so from anywhere, anytime - down the fields in the tractor, up the road from the local pub, etc.

I think the South African tourist board should be paying Karlin Lillington for convincing me, along with many others of her readership, I'm sure, that South Africa must figure in our future travel plans. She's obviously been bowled over by what she saw and despite all the negatives she aludes to the positives are what shine out in her report.

I've been using the new 'flat rate' (off-peak flat rate that is!) service from UTVip for the last few weeks and even though it's great to be able to concentrate on getting work done rather than watching the clock, I must say I'm a little disappointed with the quality of the connection. I nearly always have to try dialing-in a number of times before getting a connection and when I do it's usually as slooooow as molasses. I'm going to give them a chance though because I can imagine that they have been inundated with new customers and they've been very responsive to complaints on Boards.ie. With alternative packages coming out from other providers though I'll be tempted to move in the new year if things haven't improved.

I've been using the new 'flat rate' (peak time flat rate that is!) service from UTVip for the last few weeks and even though it's great to be able to concentrate on getting work done rather than watching the clock, I must say I'm a little disappointed with the quality of the connection. I nearly always have to try dialing-in a number of times before getting a connection and when I do it's usually as slooooow as molasses. I'm going to give them a chance though because I can imagine that they have been inundated with new customers and they've been very responsive to complaints on Boards.ie. With alternative packages coming out from other providers though I'll be tempted to move in the new year if things haven't improved :(

Cripes, just realised my blogs have been conveying the wildy inaccurate impression that I'm some kind of an insomniac! I've change time settings to reflect my boring normality ;)

Calls from IOFFL (Ireland Offline) members to exert pressure on the Government *through* the multinationals and idigenous big companies. Not a bad idea methinks.

Palm's new Tungsten T certainly seems to be earning plenty of plaudits. I used to use a Palm V, courtesy of a company I worked for, and must say I really liked the form factor and user friendliness of the device. If I was to buy a PDA in the morning I think I'd definitely go for a Palm device over a Pocket PC based one.

Crikey, now there putting mobile phone transmitters in lamposts! New Scientist reports that, "The infrastructure arm of British Telecommunications, BT Wholesale, is currently testing the concealed low-power masts in Cardiff, Wales."

Mind you, I've heard somewhere before that there are already micro masts in many of the Shell Station price hoardings around Ireland.

Now this is definitely the best online 'utility' I've come across in ages. And thankfully it's also free! FindSounds.com is a free site where you can search the Web for sound effects and musical instrument samples. Excellent!

All of us on the GMIT EPP are using Quick Topic, the "free web forum and collaborative document review groupware" for group discussion. It's one of few really great services on the web which are still free. There used to be lots of this kind of thing back in the dot boom days! Nifty features include email digest and RSS feeds which, like any other RSS feed, can be aggregated in your ..... wait for it.... RSS aggregator ;)