http://www.firstpartners.net/blog We build the ugly bits of websites Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:38:36 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en On the recent twelve pubs of Christmas event I had a discussion with the distinguished ex-president of the chamber of commerce (you know who you are – Graham!). Given this event involves 12 pubs , in one night, the following has been translated back into English. The main thread of ... http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/business/government/2009/01/06/irish-economy-%e2%80%93-can-us-rats-save-the-sinking-ship/ What's going on? CIE is talking about cutting services and 400 jobs, yet the private bus operators (like Matthews Coaches) are waiting (since last year) for official permission to run express services down the M1 and through the port tunnel.  Pump all the money into the banks that you want, behaviour ... http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/location/dublin/2008/12/08/cie-says-im-taking-my-ball-home-you-cant-play-with-it/ I've just tried to make a donation via the SVP website. Unfortunately the site does not work with non IE Web browsers (such as Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome). That means about 1/4 of the people wishing to donate are being locked out. Normally at this point I'd rant about whatever corporate ... http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/location/ireland/2008/12/03/svp-dont-want-your-money-but-what-can-i-do-to-help/ Just watching the X-Factor (long story) and it hit me - the solution for Irish Democracy (or at least getting people to vote) is to merge it with the TV Show. Even if the vote doesn't go the way of the experts, the Judges get to save one option for the next ... http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/location/ireland/2008/11/29/irish-voting-meets-the-x-factor/ 'Credit Crunch' might be the favourite buzzword of the moment, but 'Security' and 'Software as a Service' are not very far behind. Ok, they're a long way behind 'will I lose my house' or 'will I have a job tomorrow', but you get the idea. So I'm proud to associated ... http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/business/security/2008/10/12/security-in-your-software-as-a-service-saas-application/ What if Ireland really did get a chance to vote Obama or McCain in the forthcoming US Presidential election? While this Irish Times article suggests that we're more Memphis than Massachusetts (think about that - Dana as an Irish version of Sarah Palin), now we're going to find out what ... http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/location/us/2008/10/06/irelands-chance-to-vote-obama-or-mccain/ I knew it was going to be bad but I didn’t think it was going to be as bad as this. And personally, I’m disgusted at bailing out the banks. The same banks that threw suitcases of cash at the housing developers that made first time buyers life hell during the ... http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/business/government/2008/10/01/nationalisation_of_irishbanks/ Apologies for not gettting this posted by the closing date. But the 'closing' date on these things tend to be flexible, so if you're interested if worth checking out the NEPP site. Mulley has already blogged about similar programmes at hothouse (docklands), sepp (south east) and m50 (Tallaght IT)  if you're located ... http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/location/dundalk/2008/09/16/start-your-own-business-dkit-north-east/ IT@Cork have got good speakers from Eclipse, Springsource and Sun, and a Bargain at 130 Euro .. More details are available here. Java@cork 2008 Tuesday, September 9, Radisson SAS Hotel, Little Island, Cork Featuring speakers from SpringSource, Sun Microsystems, Eclipse Foundation and much more… Agenda OSGI and the Enterprise Ben Hale, SpringSource Lucene - Open Source ... http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/people/2008/08/21/javacork-2008-%e2%80%93-1-day-java-conference/ I recently got into a conversation about corporate blogging. The sort of conversation that starts with 'what is a blog?' and ends with 'it'll never work here'. And, as always, the killer argument for corporate blogging popped into my head 5 minutes too late. A tractor in a field yesterday Many years ... http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/business/2008/08/18/why-corporates-should-blog-reason-one-of-many/ Heard on the Doirt Girl 1: I can't believe my car is only worth 15 thousand but the car loan is still 20. It's so unfair. Girl 2: What colour is it? Girl 1: Red Girl 2: That's ok then. And women are normally more careful with money. We're all doomed. http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/business/2008/08/11/the-economic-crisis-from-the-horses-mouth/ Stressed? No time to talk to people? Losing sleep over tomorrow's work? You don't have a lot of time to read this, so I'll keep this short. Have a task / todo list. On Outlook , Excel , wiki or paper. Daily, pick off most important tasks and allocate time for ... http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/gtd/2008/08/04/time-management-for-really-really-busy-people/ I like LInkedIn a lot, and have written about the business social networking tool before, so I'm not going to repeat myself. There is one small change I'd like them to make - you have only the black or white option of either showing , or hiding your connections. I think there ... http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/people/2008/07/28/dear-mr-linkedin-will-you-show-me-yours-if-i-show-you-mine/ I thought I was good at shameless self publicity. But Alan O'Rourke is even better at it. And he's got a great business idea in Toddle (a very easy to use tool that allows people to send out dramatic, relevant emails). The above picture is from the Irish Independent writeup on ... http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/location/drogheda/2008/07/15/toddle-drogheda-man-about-to-take-over-the-world/ I've been very lucky in the 9 years that I've been working for myself. Lucky in the opportunities to travel and the people that I've met. Lucky in I'm doing something I love - playing with and building the latest technologies.  Lucky on the financial side of things that it's ... http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/business/enterprise/2008/07/08/and-now-for-something-completely-different/ Idea from Elly and Robin. From Wordle (a beautiful Java Applet) http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/business/cv-2/2008/07/02/cv-as-tagcloud/ Don't you hate it when you spend months (or years) working on a pet project / book / mad take over the world idea, then somebody comes out with something even better? Yep, it's just happened to me. Years working on the idea of the 'Wisdom of Crowds' (even prior to ... http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/business/knowledge-management/2008/06/30/collective-intelligence-in-action/ From the BBC. The best quote from the news report: The driver of the Lexus declined to be interviewed. http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/location/belfast/2008/06/27/solution-to-dublin-parking-crisis-found/ You know the Irish Economy is hurting when Sainsbury's Supermarket in Newry (in Northern Ireland) has to close it's doors at 7.30pm on a Saturday due to too many shoppers from the south trying to get in. For those of you that don't understand the above line: It's unusual for an ... http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/location/dundalk/2008/06/26/you-know-the-irish-economy-is-hurting-when/ Web 2.0 is great - it allows users to get involved on your website. Allthetopbananas.com shows not how to do it. Just be lazy and not bother to tell your website that Cork is not near Drogheda (for our non-Irish-based readers, they're at opposite ends of the country, about a 4-5hr ... http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/location/ireland/2008/06/23/how-not-to-do-web-20-no-cork-is-not-near-drogheda/ In a reminder that it's now been more than 1 year since Barcamp Dublin, Barcamp Belfast is on this Saturday, 21st June. Looks like it's going to be bigger and better than last year's event. Belfast hasn't moved any further away from Dublin in the last 12 months, so I can ... http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/people/events/2008/06/17/barcamp-belfast-2008/ Tom has a good post on the jBPM (JBoss workflow) community day held at the Guinness brewery in Dublin. Warning - slides may contain pictures of people drinking beer. How to combine (jBPM) Workflow and (Drools) Business Rules - here's the summary. Slideset is available on this blogpost. Workflow (e.g. JBoss ... http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/location/dublin/2008/06/15/how-to-combine-workflow-and-business-rules-in-5-easy-steps/ Update: It looks like 862,415 Irish people (53% of the electorate) don't read this blog and voted no. Note to self: must increase blog readership. Looks like we're all going to find out what the consequence (big or small) of a No vote is. I don't normally talk about politics on ... http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/location/ireland/2008/06/10/lisbon-no-voter-converted-to-yes/ Update: Shortcut to slides (pdf, with notes following) here. Speaking at the JBoss jBPM community day tomorrow and I'm nervous. I'm nervous because I'm standing up and talking to a group of people that really know their stuff about JBoss workflow. And talking about a project (JBoss Business rules) which has ... http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/technology/java/2008/06/05/jboss-business-rules-and-jbpm-workflow-presentation-dublin/ I'm not going to explain what workflow is as I've probably blogged enough about it already. But the JBoss Workflow (jBPM) guys are coming to Dublin on June 6th. If you're into workflow (and if you're doing any sort of software for large business you should be) then this ... http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/business/knowledge-management/2008/05/14/jboss-workflow-invading-dublin-free-community-conference/ Lots of things going on behind the scenes at FirstPartners. One of which is the Spring Framework training course that we're giving on Wed 30th May in Bewley's Hotel, Ballsbridge, Dublin. Interested in going? - you can book here (via Trigraph). Can't make it? We'll probably do a follow up. What ... http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/technology/java/2008/04/29/agile-projects-using-the-spring-framework-training/ Originally posted on the O'Reilly Books OnJava blog.  My fellow Java Developers. Two years ago I wrote an article on ‘Web 2.0 and Enterprise Java - move over Struts‘ looking at what was likely to replace Struts 1 (then and now a de facto web standard). How did our predictions ... http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/technology/java-server-faces-jsf/2008/03/13/web2-with-javastruts2-spring-mvc-flex-javafx-and-google-web-toolkit/ ... Kieran from Ice Cream Ireland. Photo by rymus on pix.ie http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/business/irishblogawards/2008/03/08/and-the-winner-for-best-irish-business-blogger-is/ No apologies for over simplifying this : If you're in business you need computer systems to support your team. Systems to find previous dealings with a customer, systems to allow your team to work together, systems to stop people finding out things that they shouldn't. Once your business passes the 100 employee ... http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/technology/java/2008/03/03/spring-belfast-and-spring-dublin-two-of-the-biggest-java-events-of-the-year/ I've just been to the opening session of the Irish Web Technologies Conference 2008. The one at which Fergus Burns tore into Irish Govenment Support (or lack of it) for the Web startup sector. To be fair, it's probably nothing that he hasn't already said face to face, but if the ... http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/enterpriseweb20/2008/02/27/irish-web-technologies-conference-iwtc-2008/