World class rugger stripped to it's bare essentials!

Were you all watching the rugby world cup recently? You were? Wasn't it exciting, gripping stuff? Cool, well me too and well done to those Kiwis, but did you watch the Nude Blacks [almost] all male rugby team? You did? ...Oh you didn't....oh OK well I can tell you now that they got thrashed by the all female Spanish Conquistadors rugby team.

It seems the Kiwis have been playing nude rugby for the past ten years and decided to get the Official Tournament off to a resounding start by staging their own 'Alternative World Rugby Tournament' in a town called Duneine [I gather somewhere in Kiwi land]. The score was 20 to 25 to the girls but they were not sure if the positive score had anything to do with the girls promising to remove an article of clothing every time they scored a try? Anyhow the girls were warned before the match that they were not to hold onto their oponents tackle in a tackle and the guys were told to make sure the women didn't grab their balls as well as the ball! In the end however it was all clean good natured fun from what we hear.

During the match a spectator, who was clearly also a Harry Potter fan, was apparently heard to say, "I would like to stick my wand in their chamber of secrets!".

So what has this got to do with technology and the Internet you may ask? Well bugger all! But I'm here to keep you amused as well. Anyway if you'd like to check out the Nude Blacks' tackle techniques or if you've always wanted to know how people play with odd shaped balls, why don't you check out the game for yourself on Youtube, just click here: The bare essentialls

NFC...National Football Conference?, National Flight Centre?

So who has heard of NFC? NFC I hear you say....National Federation of Call Centres? National Federation of Children... hardly? Not for Christmas? Ok so how about Near Frequency Communication? So at this stage you're either saying, "What the hell is that when it's at home?" or "Yah I wasn't born yesterday of course I've heard of NFC!" Well up to eight months ago I was one of the - "What the hell is that when it's at home?" - people. I had stumbled across it because of a talk I gave on business opportunities using QR Codes back in January which led to my meeting other people who were thinking of opportunities surrounding QR Codes and, well NFC devices. Just to bring everybody up to the same level of understanding here I should point out, for any of you who might be dazed and / or confused, what exactly we mean by QR Codes. Quick Response or QR Codes according to Wikipedia is:

"... a type of matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code) first designed for the automotive industry. More recently, the system has become popular outside of the industry due to its fast readability and comparatively large storage capacity. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded can be made up of any kind of data (e.g., binary, alphanumeric, or Kanji symbols).

Created by Toyota subsidiary Denso Wave in 1994 to track vehicles during the manufacturing process, the QR code is one of the most popular types of two-dimensional barcodes. It was designed to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed.

The technology has seen frequent use in Japan; the United Kingdom is the seventh-largest national consumer of QR codes."

Irish readers will be familiar with QR Codes in their national papers, such as the property section in the Irish Independent newspapers. So NFC devices are, in effect, the electronic 'data chip' equivalent of QR Codes. Instead of a visual triger, an embedded computer chip pushes data to a 'reader'. Wikipedia describes NFC thus:

"Near field communication, or NFC, allows for simplified transactions, data exchange, and wireless connections between two devices in close proximity to each other, usually by no more than a few centimeters (Near Field)" and "Many smartphones currently on the market already contain embedded NFC chips that can send encrypted data a short distance ("near field") to a reader located, for instance, next to a retail cash register. Shoppers who have their credit card information stored in their NFC smartphones can pay for purchases by waving their smartphones near or tapping them on the reader, rather than using the actual credit card."

If any one has any experience using a passive NFC device for any particular purpose or knows of any examples please leave a comment. It's quite likely that I will have more to say about QR Codes and NFC opportunities in the future.

Steve Jobs 1955 - 2011

Well it seems only right that I say something in response to the death of Steve Jobs, however I'm no expert on his life and times. Nevertheless one lesson that sticks out for me, especially in the context of the sort of business model he has created in Apple is that whether or not your actual products and / or services are unique, one way of ensuring you grow and keep your customers is to ring fence your business. With Apple products and services when you buy the products you are rquired to sign into an iTunes account to match all your music and other media files with your new prodcuct. If you start off with an Apple service such as iTunes they work best or only with Apple technology items.

Recently on our Enterprise Innovation course we went through a process of brainstorming for business ideas. Some of our group came up with an idea for ring fencing a garden centre business, (no pun intended). If we were to develop a club which used our garden plots in our garden centre we would have a permanent list of customers that would have to buy from our garden centre business to develop their graden plots, which could have vegetables, fruits or flowers, whatever. Extra services such as training could also be offered. Just like Apple we'd ring fence our business and provide ourselves with a guaranteed customer base.

The ability to recognise trends quickly and know when to give up on something and try another direction is also an important lesson that Jobs has left us.

Now let's hope Apple can survive and thrive without its mentor. If it does it'll be a true testament to how extraordinary Steve Jobs really was.

R.I.P.