Technology « Thurles Information

Sean Kelly Wins MEP Of The Year Award

MEP Sean Kelly – (Photo G.Willoughby)

Munster MEP Sean Kelly (South Constituency) has been named ‘MEP of the Year‘ for Research and Innovation, at a prestigious awards ceremony in Brussels last night. The Ceremony was organised by the Parliament Magazine & winners are chosen exclusively by fellow MEPs who vote on a shortlist of nominees.

Speaking after the event, Mr Kelly stated he was “honoured” by the recognition, especially since it was for a subject so close to his heart. “I have always been passionate about innovation and have enjoyed using my position as an MEP to prioritise research and development opportunities across the EU.”

Mr Kelly believes Europe must now focus on becoming the absolute world leader in Research Development and Scientific Innovation & it is the responsibility of politicians to encourage and support growth in this sector, through funding grants and positive effective policies.

Mr Kelly is currently the driving force behind a major Brussels conference planned for next year to encourage Irish researchers and their European counterparts to draw down more EU funds for their work. Mr Kelly will also host the March 2013 conference EU Science, Global Collaboration which will highlight funding opportunities under the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme. In addition, Mr Kelly is currently co-authoring the European Parliament’s forthcoming report on Data Protection.

Mr Kelly was born in Knockataggle, Kilcummin, Killarney, County Kerry in 1952 & was educated at Kilcummin National School, Tralee CBS and St. Brendan’s College, Killarney. He qualified as a primary school teacher in St Patrick’s College of Education, Drumcondra and then attended University College Dublin, where he received a B.A. and Higher Diploma in Education.

Mr Kelly, a regular visitor to Thurles, was a former popular President of the GAA .

SSD Price Wars Benefit Consumers

An interesting SSD (Solid-State Drive) Price War has begun in the last few weeks which will hugely benefit technology addicts like ourselves. SSD’s are super-fast hard drives for your PC and their prices have dropped dramactically in the last few weeks. The price war was sparked because of dropping Flash Memory prices and some of the bigger players in the SSD market such as OCZ & Crucial etc have decided to slug it out in an all-out price war in order to become the dominant supplier of these drives. The fact that SSD’s have now broken the €1 per gigabyte mark is fantastic news for consumers and now means that SSDs are almost half the price they were just a short time ago.

What is a Solid State Drive?

An SSD, or Solid-State Drive, is a small 2.5″ hard drive that uses NAND Flash Memory similar to the popular USB sticks that almost everyone uses today and they do not have any moving mechanical parts in them, unlike the traditional spinning-platter Hard Disk Drive (HDD) found in almost every PC today. The traditonal HDDs have a lot of disadvantages when compared to SSDs;

HDDs have mechanical parts that are prone to wear and tear
HDD performance varies depending on where the data is stored on the platter
Dropping a HDD accidentally usually means instant death of the drive

SSDs are superior because they use NAND flash memory so that data access is almost instant no matter where the data is on the drive, this also means never having to defragment your SSD. And with no moving parts they don’t suffer from the wear and tear a normal drive would.

The only slight downside of the SSDs at the moment is their relative storage size when compared to the usual hard drives found in PC’s at the moment. SSDs normally come in 64GB, 128GB, 256GB sizes upward etc. This might sound like a backward step to some people (who download a lot of stuff) but for everyday normal PC users, having a super-fast SSD installed would give your PC a major boost in speed. Imagine Windows and programs loading in seconds, not minutes!

Top 5 SSDs For Your PC or Playstation

I’ve compiled a list of the Top 5 SSDs on Amazon that have, or are currently, dropping rapidly in price. It’ll be well worth checking out how these prices vary over the next few weeks.

#1 Crucial M4 64GB SSD – The Crucial M4 64GB is a great value SSD. Although it’s only 64GB, it is a fast drive with up to 415Mbps read speed. It would be an ideal intro to the world of SSD. The price has dropped to €80 at the moment but that may drop even further.

#2 Crucial M4 128GB SSD – Similar to the one above, except bigger, the Crucial M4 128GB is probably the best deal out there at the moment. Pricewise it’s less than €1/Gigabyte which is great value for this fast SSD. The price has dropped by half and is now approximately €115 at the moment for this M4 128GB but stock is selling fast and prices are likely to vary as they become more scarce.

#3 OCZ Agility 3 120GB SSD – OCZ drives are reliable and fast SSD. At 120GB it is a decent size with fast performance to match. The price is also approximately €115 at the moment.

#4 Corsair Force 120GB SSD – This Corsair Force SSD offers sequential read speeds of up to 550 MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 510 MB/s. The price is also approximately €115 for this drive and also likely to vary over the coming days and weeks.

#5 OCZ Vertex 4 128GB – This Vertex 4 is one of the latest ones released by OCZ, which is why it is more expensive than the other ones mentioned here, but it does offer up to 535 Mb/sec sequential read speeds. The price is approximately €150 which is a lot more expensive than the others, but it is one to watch over the next few weeks as it’s likely to drop down in price soon, fingers crossed.

Remember, if you do happen to order one of these SSDs from Amazon, remember to select the FREE Super Saver Delivery option at the checkout for the free shipping.

Tipperary Second In San Francisco Best App Ever Awards

The Irish Horse Welfare Trust (IHWT)

The Tipperary “Grey Horse Apps,” which can be downloaded for both iPhone and Android, has won second prize for the ‘Best Doing Good’ App in the 2011 ‘Best App Ever,’ awards held in San Francisco, California.

The ‘Save a horse’ App was developed to support the work of the Irish Horse Welfare Trust, latter established in 1999, to assist the current plight of horses here in Ireland.

A total of more than 7,240 Apps were nominated for the 2011 Best App Ever Awards and more than 1.5m votes were cast globally.

Elaine Heney, GreyHorseApps.com producer, (whose website appears to have been compromised this morning, so Warning do not go there just presently) is absolutely thrilled with the win and states she is greatly honoured that she has been able to support and further raise awareness of horse welfare here in Ireland.

The ‘Save a horse,’ app for iPhone and Android can be downloaded by horse lovers, completely free.

Anonymous Hacker Group Target Irish Websites

Anonymous Group Target Ireland

In the wake of last week’s revolt against the Stop Online Piracy (SOPA) Act and Protect IP (PIPA) Act, there’s a fascinating battle starting to unfold here in Ireland, as activists promise to attack the Irish Department of Justice website and other government websites today in protest.

This appears to be happening as I write. Internet activist group “Anonymous” has carried out many online attacks against high-profile websites for some time now and are promising to hack the Irish Department of Justice website, tonight in a recent ‘tweet.’

The threat comes following Sean Sherlock, Minister for Enterprise, Jobs and Innovation, announcing he intends to enact a radical new law curtailing access to websites in Ireland, without a vote in the Oireachtas.

Within the last few minutes Oireachtais.ie is also gone down, and a list has been posted on the internet of all TD’s Telephone numbers inviting you to contact them to voice your opposition to this Irish SOPA bill.

BT Young Scientist Exhibition 2012

Students from across Tipperary are well represented in Dublin’s RDS, for this years 48th BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition.

In recent years the number of entries to this competition has increased dramatically, reaching an all time high last year when 1735 projects were submitted. Following submissions all entries are screened to select just over 520 projects which then go through to compete. The event each year attracts some 40,000 people, thus making it one of the largest events of its kind in Europe, and the world.

In all 21 projects from Co Tipperary are participating in this years event, which displays in total some 520 projects from all the 32 counties of Ireland.

One projects representing Tipperary comes from the Presentation Secondary School here in Thurles, whose participating students have studied ” Food Packaging Versus Taste.”

The event, which began yesterday, will run until 5.30pm on Saturday next, so do drop in and take a peep.

The winner of this years event will be announced at a ceremony, sponsored by BT, on Friday 13th next.