Startup Weekend Opens Offices In Europe And Mexico Time to take over the world!

We're extremely excited to continue our regional and global expansion plans with our newest office in Mexico! Two awesome local staffers, Melina Ortiz and Gustavo Moreno, will power the Startup Weekend scene in Mexico while working closely with the rest of the core team in our Seattle headquarters. This comes on the heels of opening our awesome London office on the Google campus there and an important partnership with Mercy Corps. Opening the office in Mexico is really exciting because it is another big step in our plans to increase the number of events being hosted around the world and ultimately, support entrepreneurs. “The most important thing we could be doing for society, our economies, and the world right now is helping more people become successful entrepreneurs. We’ve had demand for more than 2,000 events this year in over 100 different countries. Regional operations will allow us to scale faster and continue to feed a fundamental shift in communities that are trying to create more vibrant startup ecosystems.” - CEO, Marc Nager

The Games and your business

The motto for the London Olympics has been revealed as "Inspire a Generation", but is it as inspiring for business leaders as it is for the audiences watching and the people participating?

Join us for this live global broadcast  which will bring together experts in the past, current and future Olympic host cities (Beijing, London and Rio) to debate the impact of the games on the economy,
society and consumer attitudes.

REGISTER HERE>>
http://response.economistconferences.co.uk/LP=139

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WHEN AND WHERE?
The webinar will take place on July 11th at 13.00 BST (GMT +1) and we welcome business leaders from across the globe to join us.

http://www.economistconferences.co.uk/the-games-opportunities-for-business/home?elq=5abd1bd8e9dc418c825b9d9274085301&elqCampaignId=391

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NEWLY CONFIRMED SPEAKERS INCLUDE...

* Rob Speyer, President and Co-chief Executive Officer, Tishman Speyer
* Mario Van Der Meulen, Creative Director, frog
* Stefan Szymanski, Professor of Sport Management, University of Michigan

AND WILL BE JOINING...

* Sir John Armitt, Chairman, Olympic Delivery Authority
* Eduardo Paes, Mayor, Rio de Janeiro
* Phil Smith, Chief Executive Officer, CISCO UK and Ireland; Chairman, UK Technology Strategy Board
* Ma Guoli, Former Chief Operating Officer, Beijing Olympic Broadcasting; Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Infront China

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT FOR MY BUSINESS?
Our speakers will outline the exciting and interesting implications for you and your busienss and share interesting insights on how the impact and legacy of the games can vary with culture and geography.

Menshn.com adds more chat categories.

Here is an update on the 'talk topics' Now available on Menshn.com:-

'Politics and football were a bit limited, so we've opened menshn up to loads of different talk topics (26 and counting!). Everything from bigbrotheruk to environment to syria to men to 2012olympics.

We let our users decide which rooms to create, and we close down rooms that don't have a minimum level of activity within a day of opening to ensure there are no empty rooms.

So whatever you're interested in - come back to http://menshn.com and talk to like-minded people this evening'

Apply for Dublin Beta

Dublin Beta Demo Application

Demoing at Dublin Beta gives you the opportunity to showcase your startup in a room of 300+ tech-savvy peers. Demoing is an excellent way to:
• Attract new users
• Garner buzz and attention
• Receive extensive product feedback
• Interact with investors, bloggers, and members of the press

Demoing takes place across the venue, throughout the night. There are no formal presentations. Instead, you'll receive a demo table, and from there interact directly with attendees.

Read More and Apply here

Why we should support the Petition for Richard O'Dwyer

I have been following the case of Richard O'Dwyer a UK student, whose website hosted links of copyright material similar to search engines in the UK. As our readers may know we cover a considerable amount in Northern Ireland and also London, when it has an effect on the Irish Tech scene as a whole. I feel this is something we must support. If he has committed a crime then it should be punishable here in the UK and not in a foreign jurisdiction.

I have asked permission from Silicon Ireland to bring this to the attention of our readers, and invite those in Norther Ireland to support his case via the change.org site. Thank you Pete.



For you who do not know the story - here it is:- BY Wikipedia Founder - James Wales.

'Richard O'Dwyer is a 24 year old British student at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK. He is facing extradition to the USA and up to ten years in prison, for creating a website – TVShack.net – which linked (similar to a search-engine) to places to watch TV and movies online.

O'Dwyer is not a US citizen, he's lived in the UK all his life, his site was not hosted there, and most of his users were not from the US. America is trying to prosecute a UK citizen for an alleged crime which took place on UK soil.

The internet as a whole must not tolerate censorship in response to mere allegations of copyright infringement. As citizens we must stand up for our rights online.

When operating his site, Richard O'Dwyer always did his best to play by the rules: on the few occasions he received requests to remove content from copyright holders, he complied. His site hosted links, not copyrighted content, and these were submitted by users.

Copyright is an important institution, serving a beneficial moral and economic purpose. But that does not mean that copyright can or should be unlimited. It does not mean that we should abandon time-honoured moral and legal principles to allow endless encroachments on our civil liberties in the interests of the moguls of Hollywood.

Richard O'Dwyer is the human face of the battle between the content industry and the interests of the general public. Earlier this year, in the fight against the anti-copyright bills SOPA and PIPA, the public won its first big victory. This could be our second.

This is why I am petitioning the UK's Home Secretary Theresa May to stop the extradition of Richard O'Dwyer. I hope you will join me.

- Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder'

Support the Petition here

Preview Programming Windows 8 Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

Preview Edition: Programming Windows 8 Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

This first preview contains the first four chapters of what we expect will be an 18-chapter e-book. In the summer we'll release a second preview version, which will contain 8 - 12 chapters. In the fall, we'll release the final version. Also watch for Introducing Windows 8: A Product Preview for the Network Administrator, coming out in late summer.

LingleOnline wins inaugural ‘Language Technology Innovation 2012’ award

Innovative English Language Learning Start-Up,  LingleOnline, wins European Innovation Award

LingleOnline wins inaugural ‘Language Technology Innovation 2012’ award

at LT Innovate Summit in Brussels Dublin, Ireland, Friday June22nd 2012: LingleOnline Ltd goes from strength to strength as the start-up was presented with the inaugural award at the ‘Language Technology Innovation 2012’ event in Brussels.

Lingle is an innovative technology that allows English language teachers to automatically
generate exercises, lesson and resource materials from current news articles. LTInnovate gathered top executives of European companies involved in developing products using speech, translation or intelligent content technology and at its summit in Brussels this week. Lingle was awarded ‘Language Technology Innovation 2012’ at the event showcase.

Ian Butler, CEO of LingleOnline said: “We are delighted to have received such a prestigious award and to have been as a new, innovative technology provider that can help teachers achieve their goals and remove barriers from implementing best teaching practice. The award will enable us to take the next step forward in bringing our product to market and, along with our recent collaboration with the British Council, we feel confident that LingleOnline will continue to grow.”

Belfast Pub Summit 2012

As many of you know, the powerful and wonderful Nichola Bates has pushed to get Paddy and the Web Summit crew to Belfast. Starting at 6pm tonight. It is a first and I hope that many will attend the event.

The importance to have the Belfast tech community represented and promoted in this way is just great. What is so important to remember is that many people give up their time to get these events and projects going, and often with little effort from mainstream media or government agencies.

So please get behind the event and get your startup noticed by the great and good of the Irish Tech scene.

Let Curiosity Be Enough

Part 2 of S Pavlina's article.

Let Curiosity Be Enough When only curiosity is present, it's tempting to demand that it justify itself with the promise of practical value. But curiosity doesn't work that way. We begin with a desire to explore and experience something new, but it's merely a seed. We can't predict what will become of that seed until we plant it. These seeds may grow into fountains of value years later. Or they may remain side hobbies or casual interests. Demanding advance validation from these seeds is like telling to baby to go out and get a job. You have to nurture the seed for years to see what becomes of it.

Recently I decided to follow my curiosity without knowing where it will lead. I've been feeling the urge to refresh my programming skills since I haven't done any serious programming in about a decade. I don't have any specific projects lined up. I just felt an intuitive nudge about it.

So this weekend I started playing around with Xcode, a development tool for the Mac, iPhone, and iPad. I learned the syntax of Objective-C and went through several online tutorials. I wrote my first little iPhone/iPad app to draw a fractal and posted a picture of it on my Google+ page. I'd never written an iPhone app before, so it was rewarding to do that for the first time. It was easier than I expected.

Where will this lead? I have no idea. Maybe I'll write an app that ties into my personal growth work. Maybe it will remain a side hobby. Or maybe I'll lose interest within a week or two and explore other interests. I'm not demanding any sort of payoff from this. It's enough to honor my curiosity. Partly I feel that the excitement is in not knowing where this will lead. Sometimes it's nice to enjoy some mystery in life. Not all desires can be formed into goals.

When I pursue interests out of sheer curiosity, they do often lead to valuable connections and payoffs down the road. However, there's also a powerful present moment benefit to such pursuits. When you follow your curiosity, you can experience some potent psychological rewards along the way. First, you have the pleasurable anticipation of knowing that you're going to learn something new, and secondly you have the satisfaction that comes with each new insight. This helps you feel good in general, even when you're not pursuing that particular interest, and this can greatly improve overall quality of life.

What are you curious about? What would you like to learn just because it interests you?

Have you been demanding that a curiosity-based interest justify its place in your life, such as by guaranteeing a financial payoff?

What would happen if you could dive in and pursue a new interest merely to satisfy your curiosity and honor your intuition? Could you let that be enough? Years down the road, you may indeed find that you can connect the dots, just as Steve Jobs did. But for right now, could you let go of any psychological baggage and do it just because it might be interesting in the moment?

Ireland’s National Space Center have signed a memorandum of understanding on bilateral cooperation in space exploration.

Photo Copyright @NASA

(RIA Novosti)

Russia’s Federal Space Agency Roscosmos and Ireland’s National Space Center have signed a memorandum of understanding on bilateral cooperation in space exploration.

“The memorandum reaffirms the strive of both countries to promote the development of bilateral cooperation in the area of space exploration in the framework of 1967 Outer Space Treaty and other international treaties on peaceful space exploration,” Roscosmos said in a statement on Thursday.

The document also outlines basic principles and conditions of Russian-Irish cooperation in scientific space research, satellite navigation and Earth remote sensing.

Ireland joined the European Space Agency (ESA) in December 1980 to become the 11th member.

The country contributed 15.6 million euros (about $20 mln) or 0.4% to the ESA budget in 2012.

A growing number of Irish companies are becoming active in the European space program, with a strong focus on technology innovation.

In November 2011, Russia and Ireland signed an agreement at the 8th Russian-Irish Joint Economic Commission in Moscow to work together across a range of Space and Physics related programs.

Read More

Upstream Commerce Ensures Magento eCommerce Retailers have Access to Real-Time Competitive Intelligence

Upstream Commerce Ensures Magento eCommerce Retailers have Access to Real-Time Competitive Intelligence

Gathering millions of data points, solution provides comprehensive pricing and assortment analysis for medium to large online retailers

BOSTON, MA, June 26, 2012 – Upstream Commerce today announced the integration of its Retail Intelligence Suite with the leading e-commerce platform, Magento™, a division of eBay. For the first time, Magento users will be able to easily track their competitors’ prices and assortments in real-time to give them a competitive advantage in today’s crowded online marketplace.

Upstream Commerce’s Retail Intelligence Suite includes the recently-announced Assortment Intelligence tool, as well as its flagship automated Pricing Intelligence tool, which currently tracks millions of products and has billions of quality intelligence data points. The Upstream Commerce solution is a sophisticated cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) technology that uses advanced artificial intelligence, semantic analysis, data-mining, and image-recognition algorithms. Customers worldwide are using the Upstream Commerce Retail Intelligence Suite in the United States, Europe and Australia, including leading companies on the Internet Retailer 500 list.

As a result of the integration with Magento, Upstream Commerce will automatically extract product, pricing and assortment data directly from the Magento platform and import it into the Upstream Commerce system, matching and comparing it with data collected from competitors. Future capabilities include the ability for retailers to change the prices in their storefront directly from the Upstream Commerce system, as well as competitive intelligence data appearing directly in Magento’s admin panel. This will deliver a full actionable cycle where data is automatically extracted from Magento, analyzed in Upstream Commerce's application, and delivered back to Magento.

“Upstream Commerce is proud to apply its advanced intelligence gathering technology to the Magento platform users to help retailers compete more effectively," said Upstream Commerce CEO, Amos Peleg. “This integration is yet another step toward making real-time automated competitive intelligence capabilities broadly available to the online retail community.”

The Upstream Commerce Retail Intelligence Suite is ideally suited for Magento businesses with annual revenues of $1 million and above. For a demo of the solution, please visit: http://upstreamcommerce.com/demo. 

menshn.com launches in US before election coming to UK

Update:

As of midnight yesterday the site is now live in the UK for Euro2012.

Conservative MP Louise Mensch has launched a social network to rival Twitter. The parliamentarian, who has some 60,000 followers and has in the past been accused of tweeting too much, has said that Menshn.com targets Twitter users who enjoy engaging on the micro-blogging site but find it "frustrating."

"This is an idea that I've had since Christmas. I've been a passionate user of social media since the days of AOL chatrooms, and that was the inspiration really," Mensch told the Guardian.

"We were both frustrated at the way Twitter doesn't focus on topics. We both love Twitter, but if you want to focus on the election there's no obvious place to do that online. Twitter is just too random," said Menshn.com co-founder Luke Bozier. "We wanted to encourage people to have conversations rather than broadcast their thoughts."

The site aims to be available in the UK in time for the Olympics, though no official date has been set.

Read more: 

http://menshn.com/

Connecting the Dots

Our guest blogger S Pavlina writes:

Connecting the Dots During his 2005 Stanford commencement address, Steve Jobs told a story about connecting the dots. He noted that sometimes we can't predict how we'll be able to apply our knowledge and skills later in life. For instance, Steve learned about calligraphy at Reed College, with "no hope of practical application." Years later, he used this knowledge to include advanced typography and proportionally spaced fonts in the design of the Mac's operating system.

Steve said that he couldn't have predicted this outcome in advance, but 10 years later he was able to connect these dots looking backwards. By then the long-term value of that calligraphy class was obvious. Follow Your Intuition Another point he stressed during that speech was that in order to set yourself up for connecting the dots, you must follow your intuition. When he first enrolled at Reed College, he had to take required courses that didn't interest him. Then he dropped out and sat in on classes that truly interested him for another 18 months. To choose these classes, he followed his intuition. When I was 10 years old, I was exposed to my first glimpse of BASIC programming. At the time I didn't know what intuition was, but I became very interested in computers. I used to save up my money to buy programming books at the bookstore. One of my favorites when I was 13 was Dr. C. Wacko's Miracle Guide to Designing and Programming Your Own Atari Computer Arcade Games.

I had no idea where this would lead. I didn't set out to become a programmer. I was simply motivated by curiosity and wonder.

I ended up learning to program computer games before I'd really had a chance to play many of them. Most of the early games I played required typing in BASIC programs by hand. Then I could run those programs and play the games. Since I had the source code, I was able to learn how simple games were constructed. I'd try to imagine how the game would work while I was typing in the code. Since I couldn't type very well, I picked up a lot of early game programming techniques by typing in other people's code one line at a time. I learned to type in BASIC long before I learned to type in English. I had no idea that years later I'd be writing my own computer games and selling them to people all around the world. All I knew at the time was that I was very curious about programming, and I wanted to learn more. I went to college and picked up degrees in computer science and mathematics, but on a practical level those were largely worthless. I was already working on my first commercial game project while I was still in college, and it was selling in software stores like Comp USA shortly after I graduated. I was able to do this work because of what I learned between ages 10 and 18 on my own. I gained more practical value from Dr. Wacko's book than I ever did in college. I went to college for logical reasons, but the payoff came from following my intuition.

I don't think it's always true that we can never connect the dots looking forward. I was able to do that with public speaking. I expected I'd eventually start doing my own workshops, and so I made a commitment to learn public speaking. I practiced for 5 years before I did my first 3-day workshop. I could see that coming up from many years in advance. It was a predictable outcome.

I still agree with Steve Jobs that sometimes we can only connect the dots with the benefit of hindsight. Life has many twists and turns, and we don't always know where our paths will lead.

I believe the core lesson here is how important it is to follow your curiosity. This is a bit different than the advice to do what you love. How do you know you'll love something if you've never done it before?

I doubt Steve Jobs knew in advance that he'd enjoy typography. I didn't know in advance that I'd enjoy programming. But the curiosity to try it was there.

IRISSCERT Warns Irish Internet Users to Be Disconnected From Internet on July 9th

IRISSCERT Warns Irish Internet Users to Be Disconnected From Internet on
July 9th

Dublin, Ireland  - 22nd June 2012

IRISSCERT is warning that some Irish computer users are facing disconnection
from the Internet on July 9th due to their computers being infected with the
DNSChanger Trojan.  In November 2011, in an operation dubbed "Operation
Ghost Click", the FBI shut down a criminal gang called Rove Digital who used
the DNSChanger Trojan to hijack the web traffic belonging to infected PCs.
The criminals used the malware to change the DNS server settings on the
infected PCs to point to DNS servers under the control of the criminals.

"DNS-Domain Name System-is a critical Internet service that converts
user-friendly domain names, such as www.fbi.gov, into numerical addresses
that allow computers to talk to each other. Without DNS and the DNS servers
operated by Internet service providers, computer users would not be able to
browse websites or send e-mail."

This allowed the criminals to control and redirect all web traffic from the
infected PCs to where-ever the criminals felt like.  When shutting down the
criminal gang the FBI realised that shutting down the criminals' DNS servers
would in effect disconnect the infected PCs from the Internet as they would
no longer have any DNS servers to direct their traffic.  To deal with this
situation and allow time to clean up the infected computers, the FBI
obtained a court order allowing the Internet Systems Consortium to employ
legitimate DNS servers using the IP addresses belonging to the criminal
gang.  However, this court order will expire on the 9th of July 2012 and any
computers still using those IP addresses in the DNS settings will not be
able to browse the web.

IRISSCERT are aware that a number of Irish PCs are still infected with the
DNSChanger and could be effectively disconnected from the Internet on July
9th.  IRISSCERT urges people to check and ensure their PC is not infected
with the DNSChanger Trojan.  To check if your PC is infected IRISSCERT
recommends you visit the website of the DNSChanger Working Group
http://www.dcwg.org/ which has an easy to follow step by step guide to check
if your PC is infected and what to do if it is infected.

Andy Whelan spokesperson for IRISSCERT said "On a daily basis we see a large
number of PCs in Ireland that are infected with the DNSChanger Trojan and we
are concerned that come July 9th they will no longer be able to browse the
Internet. We urge people to go to the website of the DNSChanger Working
Group http://www.dcwg.org/ to determine if their PC is affected and to
follow the steps outlined to fix their computer if they are."

Andy Whelan went on to say "We would like to remind everyone that prevention
is better than the cure and people should take some rudimentary steps to
protect their computers by;
.       Using reputable anti-virus software
.       Ensuring their anti-virus software is working and up to date.
.       Keep their computer systems and software up to date with the latest
software patches.
.       Do not click on links or attachments in emails unless absolutely
sure they are genuine.
.       Use strong passwords on their system and for any websites that they
use."

Silicon Ireland opens a News Desk in New York, USA

                                              

Silicon Ireland opens News Desk in New York

On our recent trip to New York, Silicon Ireland opened a news desk to report on startups.Our aim is  to directly link Ireland tech with the New York Tech and beyond, predominantly New Yorks Silicon Alley. We have seen many links between our 2 countries, and it is amazing to open a News desk. Its official opening will be July 2nd 2012.

So what does this mean, well like the recent move by 'Redeem&Get' to make a move into the US market, it is important for Silicon Ireland News to be able to report and follow how they get on.

We will update you further in the coming days, and will also introduce our team and contact info for startups coming to the US and also US startups looking at Ireland as a European centre for tech, or as we say a Silicon Valley of Europe.

We aim also to extend our startupacademy to New York in Sept 2012.

Belfast Pub Summit - Get tickets Now

BELFAST PUB SUMMIT

26 Jun 18:00 - 20:00

Join Nichola Bates of Emerald Valley II, Kieran O'Connor of Lough Shore Investments, and Paddy Cosgrave, founder of the London and Dublin Web Summits, on Tuesday June 26th in Belfast for drinks with an incredible gathering from the global tech community in The Black Box.

Silicon Ireland will cover the event, and we will update you if you cannot attend. 

There will be some *FREE* demo space for startups at the event. And in a very un democratic fashion they have decided that Loughshore will  give away 3 spaces, Emerald Valley II will give away 3 spaces &
Digital Derry will give away 3 spaces. If you, or a startup you love, would like to be considered for one of these places just drop them an email.

They are looking  for startups that are really new and haven't had any significant exposure in startup land!

Get your tickets here