Data Protection Commissioner, Billy Hawkes has slammed certain State bodies for their attitude towards the protection of vital data. His annual report for 2009 tells how an area of “some disappointment” for his office has been the reluctance of “some State bodies to take sufficient account of data protection issues” when framing new legislation or applying existing law.

'The development of appropriate controls governing access to patient databases, including directory services, should be a priority for the HSE.'

“In some such cases, I have, reluctantly, felt it necessary to bring concerns directly to the attention of the legislature,” he added. The Health Service Executive, rather unsurprisingly, figures heavily in Hawkes’ criticism during the report, with the Commissioner saying, amongst other things, that “the existing controls on patient database development within the HSE are insufficient to prevent the development of ad-hoc databases”. Continue Reading

Film adaptations of video games seem to have a certain life cycle. Popular game attracts movie studio with plot and characters that seem just right for the big screen; all concerned with project tell anyone who will listen that this will finally be the adaptation that proves good movies can be made from video games; adaptation goes into development hell; finally, one of two things happen: either (a) an atrocious film is produced or (b) nothing happens at all and the whole mess is forgotten about.

Looks like the big screen version could be years away.

Taking all the above into account, it should surprise absolutely no one that the much-anticipated movie version of ‘Gears of War’ looks like it’s in serious trouble. Producers are said to be weighing up whether to jump ship or to start all over again with a new director, new script and far less money that originally anticipated.

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Researchers behind a survey of almost 3,000 people across the water have claimed that their result point towards the wasteful spend of £52 billion a year by Britons on gadgets that they simply “don’t know how to use”. The products that baffled the Brits include Blu-ray players, HDTVs and DAB radios.

Inspector Gadget, no doubt surprised and disappointed at the Sky-sponsored survey.

Indeed, the average Briton only uses half of the functions available on their gadgets, according to the by research by One Poll, who conducted the study on behalf of Sky HD.

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One of the things we’re very much aware of in the Komplett offices is the dwindling amount of free time that people find themselves with these days. The fact is that an awful lot of people spend their hard earned cash on games and, very often, end up not finishing or even really playing them for any significant time at all.

Sure, you've got a monstrous rig, but when was the last time you finished a game?

Considering the amount that people spend on keeping their hardware up to date, to play the latest games at high resolutions or, in some cases, just to keep the old benchmarks impressive. Still, we were curious to see to what extent people felt they got value for money out of the games they opted to pick up, what the average gaming spend in Ireland might be and just what kind of games people got value for money from.

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One study, 27,000 people, 52 countries involved and little or no obvious result. US research agency Neilsen has released a huge survey where it asked if consumers would pay for online news and entertainment they now get for free. The answer? Ahem… “maybe”

“As expected, the vast majority (85%) prefer that free content remain free. Yet there are opportunities to be found in the details. Indeed, when asked to focus on specific types of content, survey participants are more willing to at least consider paying for particular categories, especially if they have done so before,” noted the report.

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In a move that way well be replicated at masses around the Irish nation this week; in the UK, senior Christian figures in both the Church of England and the Catholic Church are backing calls for parishioners to cut their carbon footprint this Lent, with one of the main suggestions being to give up your smartphone, e-reader, MP3 player, notebook, netbook and even your TV.

Pancake Tuesday followed by tech-free Wednesday?

Now before you choke on your pancake, the suggestion is to give all them up for one day rather than go 40 days without them. Though you do have to give up sweets for the full duration. Obviously.

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What with this being a grey old Monday morning I thought some Kevin Smith might be in order. The Clerks director addressed the MacWorld 2010 Expo late last week to talk about… well himself mainly but also technology in film with numerous questions about 3D being fired at him not to mention any usages for the iPad in making movies (a planted question at an Apple event? Never!).

Kevin Smith: 20 minute Q&A = free Apple gear galore

“Will the iPad change filmmaking? Well, it will probably be used to kill someone in a movie at some point,” he said according to TG Daily. “Yeah, the dead guy will have an iPad sticking out of his head. Somewhere Jobs is like, ‘hey, that’s not what we want’.”

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The National Library is, as one staff member pointed out to me on a recent visit, “the memory of the country”. The staff member in question, Elizabeth Kirwan (whose official title is that of assistant keeper, preservation), swore she’d never used the phrase before but said it summed up the importance of a rather fantastic new exhibition in the Library-owned buildings of 2-3 Kildare St.

School kids will hopefully get to see the new exhibition in their droves… so maybe wait ‘til they’re on the bus to head in;o)

There are eight million artefacts contained within the Library, however, the topic of interest on the day I met up with Kirwan is two Microsoft Surface touch-screen displays which uses the company’s SilverLight application. They take up a central role in a Library collection on the Bog Commissions and, dubbed ‘discovery tables’, they allow visitors to forensically examine details and images of every object in the exhibition with details on many more Library artefacts included as well.

Granting visitors the tools to search by date and location before examining letters, pictures and other pieces of interest up close simply by using the touch-screen capabilities, the Surface computers are undeniably impressive though they do have their kinks (more on that later).

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A report released today shows that Sweden has ripped the title of top tech users in the world away from the US while Ireland, complimented for “strong business connectivity” overall still lags way behind the world leaders. All this info comes via the Connectivity Scorecard, which was created by London Business School professor Leonard Waverman in 2008. The Scorecard measures 50 countries on dozens of indicators, including technological skills and usage of communications technology.

The results are then ranked in marks up to ten, in which Sweden scored a scorching Henrik Larsson-esque 7.95 for 2009, and we ended up with a more Clinton Morrison-style effort, and a final connectivity score of 5.7 out of ten for last year.

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Late Tuesday night, Google announced and simultaneously sort-of-launched its latest push into the social networking game, the fairly simply named Google Buzz.

Of course, as with many of Google’s other, more interesting ventures, it wasn’t made widely available immediately, likely for fear that something on the technical side might not be able to support all of Google’s Gmail users deciding they’d like to see what the new service was all about. Still, despite the fact that some estimates yesterday put the total number of Gmail accounts with access to Google Buzz at around the 1% mark, it seems that those who wanted access to the service found a way to get access.

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Globalisation and the pace of technological development have been pinpointed by a leading criminologist as the main causes for burglars turning their backs on their ‘profession’.  Yep, the poor lambs are having to put away that crowbar and face the prospect of ‘re-skilling’ for petty crime instead, as the burgling industry comes to its knees.

This July, James Treadwell of the University of Leicester’s Department of Criminology will present his case to British Society of Criminology, claiming that the increasing miniaturisation and commoditisation of technology has meant a fundamental shift, in the UK anyway, away from burglary and towards mugging.

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Kill, maim, destroy, whichever way you want to put it, in the run up to the release of the iPad, and to a certain extent in the immediate aftermath, the death of the e-reader was forecast with zeal. Everyone suspected that whatever Apple had up its sleeve was bound to be better than the somewhat Tonka Toy look of Amazon’s Kindle and even leave any of the contenders that covered vast swathes of the CES show hall in Las Vegas this January in a cloud of touch-screen-enhanced dust.

A New York Times editorial even predicted three reasons why the iPad will “kill” the market-leading Kindle, citing how “content is changing, but the Kindle is not”; that “the Kindle’s technology isn’t evolving fast enough”; and finally that the Kindle is “too expensive for a single-purpose device”. This actually counts as one of the more balanced editorials of those few days at the end of January when the world speculated on the new Apple device.

Steve Jobs’ demo though hasn’t after all stopped the burgeoning e-reader market from swelling over the last few weeks, with Amazon purchasing a company that may well revolutionise their offerings in this space. Then there’s tyre company Bridgstone getting in on the act with its own e-paper technology to rival current market behemoths E Ink.

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