The only shame is that the very best talent like this has to leave Ireland to achieve success. Building a company like Stripe is nearly impossible in Ireland and it’s such a shame that while we have all the biggest internet companies in the world here for tax reasons the brightest smartest entrepreneurs are overseas creating the next big things. I’d love to see the day where Irish VCs could take a punt on talent like this and breed a whole eco system of talent that stays here in Ireland. Those days are a long long way off though.

Online payments have always been a pain especially for developers (who Stripe target) to integrate in to their sites so I fully expect the lads to go on and deliver an exit in the long run for themselves and their investors. Couldn’t happen to two nicer or more talented guys.

With a 32-inch LED-backlit screen and measuring only 55mm in depth, the screen can either be placed like a table or mounted up on a wall. The main draw is that the device incorporates what FlatFrog call Planar Scatter Detection (PSD). The start-up’s patented technology brings what they describe as “true multi-touch functionality to large and flat screens.”

What they define as multi-touch is 40 simultaneous touches, allowing multiple users to operate it at the same time. Due to this multi-touch ability, the device is able to recognise touches if you’re wearing gloves or using a soft stylus. So if it’s placed out in the cold, or if the device is used as a drawing tool, users can still perform touch specific actions even if your touch takes up a larger than usual area.

Among the other features included is that it’s platform independent so users can install a number of different operating system (Windows 7 & 8, Android, OSX and Linux) onto the tablet.

FlatFrog already offer a number of different possibilities for its screen, suggesting a number of personal and professional uses such as a gaming device, an information kiosk, education, hospitality and even as your coffee table. However, they have not yet revealed how much these devices will cost so unless you’ve money to burn, don’t expect to make room in your house any time soon. Commercial use, however, could grow if the device fulfils half of the promises it’s makes.

The Hiriko, the Basque word for ‘urban’, was originally a MIT concept car that had been in development since 2006, but recently a working model of the Hiriko was unveiled in Brussels a few days ago. Consisting of four independent electrical motors – one dedicated to each wheel – the car can reach a maximum of 90km/h and travel a distance of 120 km on a single charge. Drivers also have the option to set a speed limit on the car so that they don’t break a city’s speed limit.

However, the car’s main appeal is the ability to fold itself up, creating an upright parking manoeuvre that allows it to park in the tightest of spaces. Also, it has the ability to spin around on its axis for virtually no turning ratio, due to the four electrical motors it has. This also gives it the ability to move sideways and parallel park which will save its drivers a lot of time and effort trying to manoeuvre into a tight space.

The Hiriko is to hit the European markets at the end of 2013 with Spain being the first country to get its hands on it. Other cities that will see the car during its trial run include Berlin, Boston, Hong Kong, Malmo and San Francisco. With its cost estimated at €12,500, the Hiriko is a car we could be seeing a lot more of in the future.

Many traditional marketers carry skills like copy writing, branding and strategic media buying – all of which can be easily projected onto the web – but technical skills are just as important. Strong developers have become the new startup rockstars and beautiful design is now a prerequisite for any new app or product being developed.

While a step into the unknown world of code or HTML may be daunting, it’s a great time to start, as multiple intuitive, interactive, user friendly and low-cost learning sites begin to crop up. In general, students won’t be designing e-commerce sites, or developing web apps within a week, but what you will get is a good grounding in a powerful skill, and another important string to your bow.

Don’t Fear The Internet

A brilliant starting point for those with little or no HTML experience, Don’t Fear The Internet is a beautifully designed, free tutorial site specialising in basic training for non-web designers. A new video is posted regularly, using irreverent examples to help beginners understand how to manipulate HTML, CSS and some PHP to build a basic site, and you’ll begin with a very basic, but informative, overview of how the web actually works.

Codeacademy

A free site combining gamification principles like badges and rewards with the tedious – but worthwhile – process of learning to code, Codeacademy has become renowned for making the skill of simple programming possible for anyone, rewarding users for each course completed. The education startup offers an interface that prompts users to solve coding problems, and is incredibly interactive, allowing you to learn in-browser, a common omission of standard video learning sites.

Codeacademy launched “Code Year” in January, which invited users to receive one programming lesson per week in 2012, and has seen user numbers grow to over one million in the past week. High profile users of the service include the Mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg and The White House both users of the service, and now there’s also a new course creator tool in beta.

Treehouse

A startup founded by Ryan Carson (the brains behind the Future of Web Apps conference, and Think Vitamin, an influential web design blog), Treehouse stems from Carson’s own experience of education, and his feeling that millions of people can’t afford a quality technical education, or if they can, it’s out of date immediately when they graduate.

With three separate strands, encompassing web design, web development and iOS development, Treehouse is again based on gaming principles, video and interactive testing, with badges available for each area. The site offers Gold and Silver plans ($49 and $25 monthly) and promises agility in teaching which you won’t find in a university classroom.

Carson has said he hopes to disrupt traditional education with Treehouse, and plans are afoot to combine the service with the HR functions of large multinationals to offer pay scales and career opportunities based on successful completion of goals on the site.

Tuts Plus Premium

A sister site to the huge Tuts+ network of educational blogs and tutorials, Tuts+ Premium is an online marketplace of educational resources, from ebooks on Photoshop to courses on JQuery. Mainly focused on design, a yearly membership costs $15 per month, which gives you access to all the material behind the Tuts paywall (ebooks, video courses, tutorials and source files). The free 30 day introduction to HTML and CSS is highly recommended for beginners, or for those looking for a taster of what to expect if they purchase membership.

Lynda.com

A little like Tuts+, Lynda.com is a huge resource of software training videos, and is perhaps most useful for intermediate users with a basis in their craft, who are looking to improve on more certain specific areas. Lynda focuses on keeping skills current as technology advances, and offers thousands of videos on numerous topics, via different instructors.

One critique is that there are quite a lot of similar videos, and finding an instructor to suit you can be time consuming, but the monthly sub. fee of $25 is definitely worth it if you’re looking to maintain your skills and learn new ones via the massive database.

One of the main trends for the web this year will be the increasing freedom of educational information, and with many feeling that traditional educational systems are outdated when it comes to teaching students the basics, it seems that resources like the above are destined to grow.

After downloading and selecting your area through an app, the device then translates that data physically and reflects the temperature outside. The neutral state of the cube is about 85°F (30°C), which is perceived as neutral by the skin. The cube then adjusts itself by the number of degrees that forecast differs from typical room temperature (73°F/23°C). Touching the cube gives you a perfect indication as to how hot or cold the weather is now or the next day so you’ll be able to tell whether you’ll need to keep that coat or not

Between Page and Screen is a book that has no words or text printed on it, instead it only contains abstract geometric patterns and a web address leading to its site. As long as users have a browser and a webcam, they will be able to read the book where the patterns allow poems and text to appear before you. The animations which appear move with the book and create the equivalent of a digital pop-up book

The book explores a series of letters written by two lovers struggling to map the boundaries of their relationship, and the poems that appear fill the space between the reader and the screen. People viewing this may see the book as a novelty but that would be missing the point, it’s not intended as a commercial project, but a new way of tackling and injecting some  a familiar medium. The fact that the book relies solely on augmented reality

The book was written by Amaranth Borsuk and the site was developed by Brad Bouse. Originally published as a limited edition book, the book is now available to buy from Siglio Press for $24.95.

So in a rare move, a number of the biggest names online including Google, Facebook, PayPal, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and AOL, have come together to combat phishing and spamming scams, under a technical working group called Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC.org).

The news of the collaborative effort was announced today, but efforts have been ongoing for quite some time, as the DMARC site details that: “DMARC.org draws upon a history of private industry collaboration with 18 months of dedicated work, to outline an enhanced vision for email authentication that can scale up to today’s Internet needs.”

Wired report that it was PayPal – who has been much maligned by spam attacks – that began working with Google and Yahoo back then in order to “set standards for Gmail and Yahoo! Mail that would prevent fake PayPal messages from hitting a user’s inbox” and the three ended up blocking “over 200,000 fake PayPal messages a day”. Now there are 15 big names on board working together to combat these cyber scams, using the DMARC protocols as a standard in a bid to improve email authentication.

So hopefully this new alliance will have an effect in reducing the masses of spam emails that make their way to email account holders, by using a “standards-based framework”, which aims to enable email senders to “introduce email authentication technologies into their infrastructure”. With so many big names onboard, it seems likely that this effort will go some way towards reducing spam and phishing campaigns, which is a good thing for both businesses and consumers.

Nokia

Ten years ago everyone seemed to own a Nokia 3310, but now it’s their new Windows phones which are struggling to compete in the smartphone market, according to Reuters, with the company reporting a 73 per cent fall in fourth quarter earnings.

This is despite selling over a million Lumia phones, and Nokia are still hoping to gain on their current position, with CEO Stephen Elop stating in the press release of the results that “In the war of ecosystems, clearly there are some strong contenders already on the field. And with Lumia, we have demonstrated that we belong on the field.”

It has also emerged that Microsoft paid Nokia $250 million to use Windows Phone on its handsets, indicating just how serious they are about making this competitor to Android and iPhone work.

Nintendo and NEC

Nintendo, the brand that created the much loved games consoles of the 80s and 90s as well as popular hand-held devices such as the DS, reported its first annual loss of its history today, estimated at $575 million. This indicates a major shift in the gaming landscape, with many people now playing games on their smartphones. Nintendo need to connect to what consumers want to become a brand that people will actually spend money on, rather than becoming a nostalgic reminder of their childhood.

In more bad news for Japanese businesses, the 113 year old electronics firm NEC, today announced it is to cut 10,000 jobs following a loss of $1.25 billion, with BBC reporting that NEC attributes the loss in its mobile phone business to its rivals increasing their share in the market.

The losses at Nintendo, NEC and Nokia illustrate just how tough it can be to maintain a strong foothold in the tech industry – with new startups coming up all the time – as well as the difficulty of keeping up with the competition (namely Apple) and not only give consumers what they want, but forsee what they’ll want in the future.

However it’s not all plain sailing for Apple, who have been scrutinized by the media over the working conditions of those who make their products. However, despite the issues faced by these companies, the battle between the big tech brands will no doubt be a fascinating fight to watch in 2012.

General Motors (GM) Research and Development challenged students and researchers from the FUTURE Lab at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Israel to come up with new ways to help rear seat passengers, particularly children, have a better experience while they’re on the move. The result was the Windows of Opportunity (WOO) Project, which created new ways for passengers to be entertained and educated while they’re travelling in-between destinations.

Because the project based its work on psychological studies that found car passengers often felt disconnected from their environment, the Bezalel students created concept apps to be displayed on the car windows. Some of them included Pond, an app that allows passengers to stream and share music with other cars on the road; Spindow, an app that allows passengers to peek into other users’ windows around the globe in real time, and Otto, an animated character that responds to real-time car movement, weather and landscape.

Speaking about the project, GM’s R&D lab group manager for human-machine interface, Tom Seder said:

“Traditionally, the use of interactive displays in cars has been limited to the driver and front passenger, but we see an opportunity to provide a technology interface designed specifically for rear seat passengers…Advanced windows that are capable of responding to vehicle speed and location could augment real world views with interactive enhancements to provide entertainment and educational value.”

So far there aren’t any plans to introduce these smart windows to future vehicles, but if any company decides to produce them, the technology is there for them to get started. When they do, expect the days of drawing shapes from the condensation that forms on your car window to be numbered.

Image courtesy of Mr Ush

This year marks the centenary of Alan Turing’s birth and so far there seems to be surprisingly few events planned to commemorate this. Arguably the founding father of computer science, and having met a particularly controversial death, there seems to be very little knowledge about him outside of the computing industry, and even sometimes, within this industry. As this should be the year to celebrate him, throughout 2012 we will have a number of posts dedicated to Alan Turing and I wanted to start at the very beginning, with 5 things you should know (or didn’t know) about Alan Mathison Turing (1912-1954)

The Turing machine

Though Turing excelled in computer science and maths and made many contributions to his industry, one of the most lasting impact he made on the technology industry and the computers we use today, can be found in the Turing machine. The self-named machine was introduced by Turing around 1936, and also came to be known as the Universal Machine. At the time it was a computer proposed by Turing, existing only on paper. Essentially, these ‘machines’ ran on the basis of algorithms (the term he used and that is still around today), to enable the computers to perform a large number of mathematical equations, or computations.

While this is his first real foray into computer science, history then intervened and following this, Turing then worked as a codebreaker for the British government during the second world war, working on German ciphers. Here he made major breakthroughs such as deciphering the German naval Enigma and also worked on the electronic computer Colossus, which was the first recognisable electronic computer.

The man behind the Apple logo?

Though this is unproven and some believe it as urban legend, it seems highly likely that Alan Turing was the unwitting inspiration behind the Apple logo. While some attribute the design of the Apple logo to what it means in terms of health, simplicity etc.. there seems to be a much darker, yet poetic explanation for the logo. 2 years after Turing was subjected to chemical injections to ‘treat’ his homosexuality, he died of cyanide poisoning, and many believe he took his own life, though this hasn’t been confirmed. Next to his bed on the ground, lay a half-eaten apple which was believed to have been dipped in cyanide. Though Jobs never confirmed the rumor that this was the inspiration behind the Apple logo, it seems a surprising coincidence that the last mark left by the Father of computer science was an apple with a bite removed.

Developed the Turing Test

While Turing made many contributions in computer science, including during his time at Bell Labs in the U.S. (where he worked on the ACE computer) it’s perhaps worth bringing his work into the context of the 21st Century and something that we encounter nearly every day : the CAPTCHA code (when a website requires you to enter a word to prove you’re human). Though Turing was not responsible for this exact device for determining whether a user is a real human or computer, it is an extension, or a reversal of the Turing Test that he developed around 1950. He developed the test as part of his work into exploring artificial intelligence, in order to determine to what extent a computer could be deemed to think for itself, i.e. to think like a human. The test was called the ‘imitation game’ by Turing at the time, and involved an interrogator posing questions to a human and a computer. The responses were relayed via text messages and if the interrogator could not tell them apart, then Turing concluded this meant the computer could be called ‘intelligent’. Extending this logic, the CAPTCHA code was later developed in 2000 and actually stands for :

Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers And Humans Apart.

He died too young

The treatment of Turing, who was a homosexual at a time when it was forbidden in the UK, would be bad enough, but it has a particularly bitter taste given the contributions he made under the British Government during the Second World War. Ultimately he was given two options : prison, or ‘treatment’ by female hormones. Turing opted for the latter, and 2 years after this treatment began (when he was also restricted from working at GCHQ) that he supposedly commited suicide. In 2009 Gordon Brown made an official apology for the treatment of Turing and indeed he is now being honored, in the year of his centenary, through the distribution of an official stamp to honour Britons of Distinction. Though his death may or may not have been a result of his treatment by the government, looking at the contributions Turing made up to the age of 42, it is a sad loss for the industry that he was not able to contribute more – the effects of which we would still be seeing today.

His pursuit of education

When someone has made such a contribution to society and industry, it’s also worth looking at the person behind the work, and what drove them. Genius such as this is rarely found without sheer dedication, and this can be seen in Turing’s early education.  In 1926 when he was due to start at Sherborne School, that a general strike was on and he couldn’t use public transport to travel to school. Not to be put off, Turing cycled the 60 miles from his home to school, even staying overnight at an inn to complete his journey.

Applicants from all over the world will be able to submit their 15 minute videos of any genre to the Your Film Festival channel on Youtube from February 2nd, then the videos will be whittled down to 50 semi-finalists by the Scott Free production company. From there, Youtube users will then vote for their favourites, making this step in the festival process quite democratic and audience driven – then the ten finalists will have their films screened at the prestigious Venice Film Festival. One winner will then be crowned by a jury headed by Ridley Scott, who will receive a production grant to work with Scott’s team for the value of $500,000.

The festival will provide an opportunity for aspiring film makers to make a name for themselves, as the competition is free to enter and the films will have to opportunity to gain massive exposure due to Youtube’s massive global reach, and provides a new pathway to the established Venice Film Festival. The decision to engage with both an established Hollywood director and highly respected international film festival on Youtube’s part indicates how collaborations between traditional and new media will become the way forward if both sectors are to thrive.

Vimeo have already established a relationship with the Sundance Film Festival in the US, with an announcement on their blog today detailing that a number of Vimeo users’ films will be shown at the festival this month, while funding platform Kickstarter also has films going to the festival. All this indicates that the web continues to be a place of opportunity and innovation for artists, and that the traditional established festivals are recognising the potential that the web has as a breeding ground for creativity.

The BlindSpot is a prototype white cane that utilizes a GPS-enabled smartphone and accompanying ear piece. Reported on Co.Exist, one of the main features of the cane is if any of the user’s friends check in on Foursquare nearby, they are alerted to their presence via an audio message. The message in question details how far away they are, right down to the number of steps it’ll take to reach them. Users have the option to ignore, call the person or best of all, find them using tactile navigation.

On top of that main feature, the Blindspot cane also prevents users from walking into inanimate objects irrespective of its position. So even if the object is located at eye level where sweeping the cane wouldn’t allow the user to find it, the cane will detect the object and alert the user through the bluetooth earpiece allowing them to navigate around it.

The idea won second prize at the James Dyson Awards and at the moment, Chew is looking for a partner to produce the smartcane on an industrial scale.

There’s even a shutter feature which produces a pair of shutters to stop light from coming in. However, the coolest thing about this window isn’t the novelty factor, but that it’s only transparent from one end. That is, anyone walking past the window outside won’t be able to see through it, meaning that checking your Twitter feeds can be done with privacy.

We may be a good year away before the first batch of interactive windows go on sale but even if the venture isn’t successful, the technology itself is something that will certainly find other uses.

The use of video is a more direct and engaging experience than reading a course description on paper, and although intended for Harvard students, the videos also function as an advertisement for the university and the professors featured, and indicates that the university is keeping up to date with the latest web sharing platforms. It seems likely that where Harvard leads, other universities will follow, and many universities have already found ways of using online services to enhance their teaching. The engagement between universities and technology will continue to be a source of innovation and most likely will mean more open relationships between universities and wider society.

This development has been planned over the past seven years and will mean a whole new way of understanding and using the internet, with the possibility that the likes of .com, .org, .gov and .co.uk, top level domains that so many people take for granted as the defacto options might no longer be the most popular addresses, when the option for new and exclusive gTLDS exist.

To give an example of what the changes would mean for millions of second level domain names already in existence, take this address www.simplyzesty.com. The second level domain name in this case refers to ‘simply zesty’, but if a top-level domain name were acquired, ‘.simplyzesty’ could replace the ‘.com’, thus becoming the gTLD. Then second level domain names could be registered at this domain name, e.g. www.ciara.simplyzesty. It takes a bit of getting used to the idea that this could be an internet address, as the expected .com or .org is not there.

Those wishing to avail of a new domain name will have to purchase the names for the sum of $185,000, however some financial assistance is available through a support programme which would allow the applicant, such as those from developing economies, to pay just $47,000. This fee may seem high, but for a business the right to own an official domain name is extremely important, as it is a part of their brand and how they are represented to the public.

These new addresses won’t be appearing soon – they will most likely begin to appear in 2013 – as the application process takes many months. Also this is an optional process as the current 22 top level domains will still exist.  Nonetheless it’s an exciting development  and looks set to open up many more as yet unknown possibilities for companies, organisations and individuals in the online world.