tom murphy

"* What does the product offer that is different to current products in the market place? The possibility for difference lies across three overlapping areas, price, design/functionality, desirability. * What space would it be marketed in i.e. cheap budget phone or high end phone? Apple's iPhone is expensive but Samsung's offers aren't cheap either. So unless you had something that was demonstrably more marvellous than either the iPhone or the Galaxy one would have to look at finding a way to do it cheaper and probably more appropriate to the wallets of the billions who haven't got a Smartphone yet. As phones are software driven providing functionality in an easy to use design the issue becomes making a phone that is both cheap and desirable. * If marketed as a budget phone how would you achieve buy in from both local and global phone operators?- Currently Vodafone have the "Smart" budget phone manufactured by Alcatel- Orange in the UK have the San Francisco made by ZTE blade That they..." - tom murphy

"Hopefully that will be the case. I think in realising that so much or what seems remote in nature and not applicable to conditions here is actually quite possible, although not necessarily easy. It means folks can focus on the organisation of resources that exist, which allows for a relatively inexpensive undertaking as compared to out and out innovation and its research and developments costs." - tom murphy

"Making a phone as this article shows http://www.newscientist.com/ar... is easier. Making a smartphone is a different order of complexity but self-evidently not impossible. The really hard work has already been done. But I was using smartphones as an example of what people here in Ireland or elsewhere can do simply by means of self-organisation. How an 'Irish' smartphone would work in a global market is open to conjecture and performance but there are all sorts of ideas that only need to be expressed through trial and error that could be very successful." - tom murphy

"Sure, that's true enough. Predicting fashion is like predicting the weather. (The weather in Ireland anyway:-))" - tom murphy

"When big players like Google offer these services for 'free' there is very little incentive for others to enter the market. The 'free' alternatives to Google Reader are really much of a sameness really. When companies have paying customers there is a tendency (alas, not widely shared) for them to listen to what people want and respond appropriately. They know their can take their money elsewhere. The prevailing model which seems to work quite well is to make services free for a limited use and then charge for full use. Evernote seems to be thriving on this model. It is how they make their living so they are appropriately incentivised to make sure their customers don't walk. For (the accountants at) Google services like GR are vile abominations if they do not serve to bring in paying customers in some ways. As for the user experience, a scannable list was great to look things up but it was painful to have up on the screen and it was fiddly and Google didn't care to remedy that. Why..." - tom murphy

"As the article mentions there are certain good things on television. There just isn't anything like enough of it to force a blanket charge on either people's homes or on the devices they use. There is no inherent superiority by virtue of a broadcaster being funded publicly that justifies the imposition of these sort of taxes by the back door. I understand that without government support, the high capital costs of setting up a broadcast service were unlikely to come from the private sector in a country with a small population, and the money had to come from somewhere. If you can find evidence for the greater benefit argument I would be interested to read it but all the research I have come across (and personal observation) points in the opposite direction. On the matter of content. Everyone is entitled to their opinion of what constitutes quality in a news service. For most people, unfortunately, it comes down prejudices and biases being reinforced. But speaking as someone who spent 28..." - tom murphy