Web 2 Ireland

Silverlight is impressive – Microsoft are really going up against Adobe and flash.

The “amazon s3” like streaming service is also clever – Silverlight Live – it really hones in on the weakness of Flash on video delivery and also youtube for media streaming/storage.

Demos were very cool – i expect to see plenty of innovation and businesses spawn from this toolset – certainly cuts out on operational costs in getting started on “media related” businesses

Post-Graduate Scholarships
UCD School of Information and Library Studies (SILS) UCD School of Computer Science and Informatics (CSI)
Applications are invited for one PhD scholarship (3 years) and one MSc scholarship (2 years). To commence September 1st 2007.

Project Title: OJAX++: A Next-Generation Collaborative Research Tool
Funding Agency: Science Foundation Ireland

Project Details:
The aim of the proposed research is to investigate how concepts from the Social Web and recommender technology can be applied to the research environment in order to facilitate dynamic collaboration and the sharing of ideas among researchers. It will be illustrated via the creation of
OJAX++, a next-generation collaborative research tool, using Web 2.0
technologies such as Web Services, Ajax, collaborative tagging and recommender functionality.

PhD studentship:
Topic: Social Web
Requirements:
* Honours degree (preferably first class or 2.1) in Computer Science or related field.
* Or honours degree (preferably first class or 2.1) in another subject plus relevant technical experience (eg Web technology, JavaScript, Ajax, Java, Ruby or Python)
Stipend: €17,000 per annum (with increase in year 3) plus (EU) fees.
Contact: Dr Judith Wusteman, School of Information and Library Studies
(SILS)
UCD Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland.
judithDOTwustemanATucdDOTie

MSc studentship
Topic: Recommender technology
Requirements:
* Honours degree (preferably first class or 2.1) in Computer Science or a related field.
Stipend: €17,000 per annum, plus (EU) fees.
Contact: Dr Lorraine McGinty, School of Computer Science and Informatics UCD Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland.
lorraineDOTmcgintyATucdDOTie

For further project details: See

http://www.ucd.ie/wusteman/OJAX/OJAX++furtherDetails.doc

–
Dr Judith Wusteman
UCD School of Information and Library Studies
University College Dublin
Belfield
Dublin 4
Ireland
Tel: +353 1 716 7612
Fax: +353 1 716 1161
URL: http://www.ucd.ie/wusteman/

Some Irish folks at Mix07 this week. Tom Raftery, Rob Burke, Sean Foley (Microsoft), Walter Higgins (Pixenate), Eamonn Fallon (Daft.ie) and Fergus Burns (nooked) [Any others ping us a comment]

Will keep you all posted as the week develops…

The MySay folks have rolled out their cool service – the industry renowned Mashable has a great piece of coverage: MySay is Twitter for Talkers

Signup folks….

The Web 2.0 Expo Berlin, is scheduled for November 6-8, 2007, will be held at Fairground Berlin, Germany.

Details here

How many web2ireland companies/entrepreneurs planning to attend ?

Jeremy Liew from Lightspeed Venture partners has posted up his presentation from web2expo.

Its a must read for any startup entrepreneur – covers business models, revenues, and building scale.

Yahoo! are doing a hackday in Europe.

Tom Coates has all the details A Hack for Europe! (plasticbag.org)

How many Irish hackers can we get over

We’ve registered paddysvalley.org as a domain for the main sign-up page for the PaddysValley tour of Silicon Valley. Please enter your details on the simple form there. You can also see who else has signed up.

We just issued this press release to over fifty news organisations and all County Enterprise Boards:

An ad-hoc group of Irish business people have decided to form their own delegation to tour Silicon Valley and create closer bonds with companies and people in the mecca of the computer world. The tour nicknamed “PaddysValley” will head off at the start of November, taking advantage of the new air routes from Aer Lingus.

Tour organiser James Corbett stated ‘The general idea is that it is hard to attract inward investment and start collaborations when our startups are over here in Ireland while the largest group of investors and tech companies are concentrated in Silicon Valley. As a result it is hard to convince Valley investors and potential partners why they
should come to Ireland when they have such rich pickings over there. With this current situation it was decided we should visit them, or as I like to put it “if you can’t bring the Valley to Paddy, bring Paddy to the Valley” ‘

Conor O’Neill of LouderVoice is a strong believer in the ability of European start-ups to compete at a global level. “It is crucial for us to build our networks and our profile in the places that matter. Silicon Valley remains one of the places that matters most. An important job for all Irish entrepreneurs is to get out there, meet all those who we have admired for so long and learn from them”. He added “We must continue to build a start-up culture in this country and PaddysValley is one of the ways we can do that.”

It is hoped that the group will meet some of the big names of Silicon Valley as well as host an Irish night where Irish businesses will demo what they are doing to the Silicon Valley executives, venture capitalists and Irish ex-pats. So far 17 Irish companies have signed up for the tour but the organisers stress it is open to everyone and they’d welcome anyone who wants to come along.

More details are available on the Web 2.0 Ireland website at: http://web2ireland.org

Irish Web companies have been getting a lot of International attention of late with a detailed writeup about them on tech website ReadWriteWeb: http://url.ie/3o4 showing what the Irish have to offer.

Contact Details: Conor O’Neill is available on 087- 979 0297 and conor AT argolon DOT com