Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day using a free Irish translator on your smart phone

To celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and Seachtain na Gaeilge, Maithu, a small Irish company, has launched two FREE Irish language applications for the iPhone and Google Android App stores.

The 'Get the Focal Irish Translator' is a two way Irish-English, English-Irish Translator with a database of over 13,000 words and terms which live in your pocket. It is quick and accurate, can be used for completing that Irish assignment, reading articles as Gaeilge, or filling in a ‘cúpla focal’ here and there. If you're looking for help with speaking Irish, Muithu also offers a full version which contains pronunciations for all translations.

According to Kerrill Thornhill, “We launched the free version of the 'Get the Focal' app for the iPhone and Android app stores about 6 days ago, there have been over 350 downloads of the free app to date: 280 on the iPhone, over 70 on Android. The paid version of the 'Get the Focal' app was launched in September last year. There have been several hundred downloads of the paid app to date, generating reports from iTunes account is not very user friendly so that's about as accurate as I can be at the moment.”

Kerrill tells me you can download the iPhone version here. I tried it, it is indeed very easy to use.

You might try it for your next speech at South Boston’s Saint Patrick’s Day pre-parade political roast. The best received speaker on Sunday was Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein president, who spoke of the long struggle for peace in Northern Ireland, opening and closing his remarks in Irish.

“We want equality. We want peace, we would not have progress, which we’re making in the process back home, if it wasn’t for the encouragement, assistance, and support of people here,’’ said Adams, who received two standing ovations.

Go raibh míle maith agat, (Thanks a mil), to Kerrill for this free app.

Bad joke: Back when the Irish Tiger was growling loudly, some wits suggested that Ireland was indeed becoming bilingual: English and Polish. Now that the recession has reduced immigration; we might need a new joke.

3,000,000,000 Downloads, App Store Growth Boggles The Mind!

While preparing a proposal for a series of University lectures, over the weekend I looked up some figures for the growth of the Apple App Store. I wanted the numbers to be solid and verifiable; what I came up with was 100,000 Apps leading to 2 billion downloads. This morning, I sent off my proposal to several of my colleagues for review.


This afternoon Apple announced that it is now 3 billion downloads. I’m not hurt by the increase, other than to worry that the industry is changing faster than I can update my presentation.

Last time I talked to my former IBM colleague, Jim Maguire, he was still travelling the world teaching a course on IBM OS/360 Job Control Language that he had first prepared in the 1960s. His comment: “the best thing is it never changes.”

The essence of Apple’s press release is here:

CUPERTINO, California—January 5, 2010—Apple® today announced that more than three billion apps have been downloaded from its revolutionary App Store by iPhone® and iPod touch® users worldwide.

“Three billion applications downloaded in less than 18 months—this is like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “The revolutionary App Store offers iPhone and iPod touch users an experience unlike anything else available on other mobile devices, and we see no signs of the competition catching up anytime soon.”

iPhone and iPod touch customers in 77 countries worldwide can choose from an incredible range of apps in 20 categories, including games, business, news, sports, health, reference and travel.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

Note:  The first version of this post left out three zeros, claiming downloads in millions, rather than billions.  It is always dangerous to be both the writer and the editor.

Nokia App Store This Month?

Forbes is reporting today that Nokia is preparing an App Store second in size only to Apple's for roll out later this month, thus opening up vast opportunities for a new group of independent developers.

Though Apple, Research In Motion and Google already offer similar services, Nokia's launch promises to be the biggest app store opening yet and could re-shape the mobile applications market writes Elizabeth Woyke,

The store, which the company is calling Ovi Store after the Finnish word for "door," will debut with a catalog of 20,000 items. In comparison, Apple and RIM launched their stores with a few hundred apps, although Apple claims 35,000 apps today. Google's store opened with a few dozen.

“Users can access the store two different ways. It will ship pre-loaded on the company's new flagship handset, the N97, before July, and be included in phones released in the future. Consumers who own other, recent Nokia phones will also be able to download the store from the Web onto their handsets. The idea: People will buy more Nokia devices if they are paired with great services.

“The store is so large because Nokia is stocking it with a broader selection of digital content. The company says there will be lots of entertainment and media files, including an entire category of short videos and "mobisodes." The store's 20,000 items will be across all of these categories, not just apps.”

iPhone: the Dreadnought of the 21st Century?

I found such a well written post on the iPhone by MG Siegler in TechCrunch that I felt a need to send you a couple of excerpts.

First a few facts: “People can downplay the actual number of iPhones in circulation all they want — the fact of the matter is that it has changed things. While there were some third-party mobile app developers before Apple’s App Store, they received almost no attention, and as such, it wasn’t really a viable business. Now, everyone and their mother is flocking to develop for the App Store. And every major mobile player is rushing to make their own app stores. But Apple’s already has over 35,000 apps — and in a few short hours, there will have been one billion apps downloaded in just 9 months.”

Now a strong opinion: “The fact of the matter is, that iPhone is simply the best all-in-one device that I’ve ever owned. I cannot imagine my life without it now. I would be lost — sometimes literally — without it. I say that because I know that of the 21 million iPhone owners out there — there are a great deal who feel the exact same way. That may be annoying, and may even sound pretentious to those who don’t own an iPhone — but I’m giving you my honest take as someone who has owned and/or tried a lot of the so-called “smartphones” out there.”

As I write, MG’s post has generated 125 comments, some of which are very insightful. Take a look.

As for Dreadnoughts, The British battleship HMS Dreadnought had such an impact when launched in 1906 that battleships built after her were referred to as 'dreadnoughts'. The arrival of the dreadnoughts sparked a technology-based arms race, principally between Britain and Germany but reflected worldwide, as the new class of warships became a crucial symbol of national power.