o2sms

o2sms is a useful program to send SMS messages using the websites of Irish mobile operators. Despite its name, it supports all four major Irish operators – o₂ Ireland, Vodafone Ireland, Meteor Ireland and Three Ireland.

I created this program and maintained it for several years, but I have since left Ireland and so have little interest in continuing to maintain it.

So… I have moved the project to SourceForge. Hopefully this will diversify maintainence and ensure continued development should I drop off the planet :) If you want developer-level access, please contact me.

Dartmaps to Appear in MOMA

My Google Maps real-time DART mashup, dartmaps has appeared in print in The National Geographic, on the radio on NPR and even on television.

All of these were as part of “tech” articles or programmes, appealing mainly to geeks and GIS types. However, now Dartmaps has entered the world of the arty farty. From February 24th 2008, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City are running an exhibition titled “Design and the Elastic Mind“, which features Dartmaps as one of its exhibits. From the blurb:

The exhibition will highlight examples of successful translation of disruptive innovation, examples based on ongoing research, as well as reflections on the future responsibilities of design. Of particular interest will be the exploration of the relationship between design and science and the approach to scale. The exhibition will include objects, projects, and concepts offered by teams of designers, scientists, and engineers from all over the world, ranging from the nanoscale to the cosmological scale.

I’m not sure how Dartmaps fits into all that, but someone somewhere must have decided it does. The exhibit takes the form of a video recording of the site in action and a short descriptive text.

I couldn’t make the opening party and I probably won’t make it there to see it at all. But if anyone is in the city between then and May 12th, then be sure to pop in and take a gander :)

Edit March 9th, 2010: the installation is no longer live, but here is a video screencast of dartmaps in action:

Dartmaps Screencast from Mackers McMackers on Vimeo.

Da Ali G Translata

Mackers’s unofficial Ali G Translata translates English text to Ali G lingo using various pattern matching and dictionary techniques.

Popular during the Ali G craze of 2001, this site featured in many British tabloids and on national radio stations attracting millions of visitors in a few short weeks.