Mícheál Ó Foghlú's Weblog

Android Phone

This is an excellent site showing details of All Android Phones.

IdeaGen hosted by ArcLabs (TSSG) on Thursday 2nd December 2009 (5pm-7pm)

I have written some background notes on the topics discussed at IDEAGEN on 15th October 1009 in the TSSG, WIT. There is a follow-up event (aimed at for those who attended the first session) on the evening of Wed 2nd December 2009, so these notes could help kick-start some discussions and brain storming. That could be useful notes for those not familiar with the topics, or provocative for those that are.... I just spent 2h or so doing it, so it is not a very studied piece of academic writing, but a set of notes and pointers.

Download PDF Notes

Jonathan Brazil on his new Android Hero

Well, as a personal comment on my recent blog post about smart phones, I thought I'd cross link to one of the TSSG researcher's personal expereinces with the HTC Hero smartphone, that runs Android 1.6 at present: When jbwan met: HTC Hero.

I predict that Android phones are going to be very big in 2010.

Irish Future Internet Forum

Miguel Ponce de Leon: Irish Future Internet Forum 2009

Irish Future Internet Forum will be on in the Dublin Digital Hub on 3rd December 2009, free registration.

See you there.

IMS-ARCS @ Digital Hub - Stakeholder Meeting

This morning I attended the stakeholder meeting of IMS ARCS (http://www.ims-arcs.org) project.

This is an interesting project partly because of the funding mechanism. It is an Enterprise Ireland ILRP, Industry-Led Research Programme. These programmes are defined by a group of industrial partners, who then use Enterprise Ireland funding to fund the research activity in Higher Education Institutions in Ireland. This can be seen as the Irish equivalent (on a smaller scale) of the EU Technology Platforms (EUTPs http://cordis.europa.eu/technology-platforms/).

The project is also interesting as it tracks a major trend in telecommunications: the emergence of the IMS platform (IP Multimedia Subsystem) and the dominant paradigm for fixed-mobile convergence, and for the migration of telecommunications networks to the use of Internet protocols.

The TSSG has used its existing expertise, and the new expertise and market intelligence gathered during this, and other projects, to help create a national IMS testbed. We will be launching this testbed formally early next year.

Smartphone Battles

It is fascinating how in a short space of time the Android platform is emerging as a major challenger to the iPhone in the smartphone market, and also indeed how quickly the iPhone itself became a dominant player in this market. This ZDNET article by Jason Perlow neatly sums up these trends, if slightly provocatively. A good starting point for debate on the future handsets, which is also a big part of the future of the Internet.

(Graphic from ZDNET article by Jason Perlow)

TSSG EU FP7 ICT Call 5 - 41 proposals submitted

This day last week say the extended deadline of EU FP7 ICT Call 5. This is the call, like Call 1 before it, where most topics of relevance to the TSSG come up. I am very pleased to say that the team in the TSSG really engaged with the process, and was involved in the successful submission of 41 project proposals. That's just under one proposal each for every researcher in the TSSG who is funded by EU funding (we're about 150 in total, and around 60 are funded from EU funding). Of course, the rest of the organisation gave considerable support as well, and we had one proposal that came from the commercialisation part of the TSSG, thanks to all of you.

Already the TSSG are the most successful research centre in Ireland at winning EU funding, with 16 active EU FP7 projects as of today (funded mainly through ICT Calls 1, 2, 3 and 4 over the past 2 years). We would have the expectation of at least some successes for these new proposals that have been submitted, and we await the results of the extensive review process. The larger Integrated Projects (IPs) have a review process that allows for clarifications with the proposal team at a panel meeting in Brussels; this should happen some time in Jan 2010 for highly ranked IPs.

The TSSG is built on successful project proposals, without funded projects we have no income and no way to pay our staff. So I am very proud of the huge efforts put in by the whole organisation, and in particular by the core EU funded researchers, who helped achieve this major milestone.

2009-11-19 UPDATE:
After a full audit of submissions there another one I didn't know about when I originally posted this information, so the total is actually 42 submissions with the TSSG as a partner (covering objectives 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.6, 3.5 and 9.2). There has been some interesting public analysis of the submissions to the call posted already http://www.euforskning.no/post/submissions-Call-5.aspx. This shows how many of each type of proposal were submitted under each of the strategic objectives of the call.