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Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) has ruled out introducing commercial digital terrestrial television (DTT) until after analogue television services are switched off at the end of 2012. The BAI said it would review possible dates for the launch of commercial DTT at the end of 2011, at which point it might seek fresh expressions of interest. A competition could be held in 2012 with a view to commercial DTT coming on stream in 2013, it said.

In a statement, the BAI also indicated that it intends to ask the Department of Communications to give it the power to mediate between future commercial DTT operators and RTE NL, which controls the transmission network.

For more information see www.bai.ie

RTÉ’s Chief Financial Officer has said that it has spent €40m putting the Digital Terrestrial Television infrastructure in place. Conor Hayes was speaking this morning at the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Communications, Energy and Natural Resources.

Mr Hayes told the committee that RTÉ wants to make two complimentary digital systems, DTT and free-to-air, available to replace the analogue service. Mr Hayes said RTÉ is working against the clock to achieve analogue TV switch-off, which is planned for 31 September 2012.

He said that by October of this year, RTÉ would have a national TV free-to-air multiplex operational, which would be capable of being received by 90% of the population. Mr Hayes said the total spend on the project will be €70m for the two multiplex platforms. Originally, it had planned for six multiplex platforms.

Head of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland Bob Collins told the committee that unfortunately the project has not proceeded at the pace it should have. Households without satellite or cable television services will have to upgrade to DTT.

via RTÉ News

Well maybe “far from good” is a little extreme, perhaps “not as good as I was expecting” would be more appropriate. It just doesn’t make as good a headline!

I upgraded my iPhone software to iOS4 as son as it was available and started sorting out my pages of apps into neat folders of apps. So far so good. And everything else seems to be great, that is except the multi-tasking (dare I say it out loud)

While the multi-tasking itself is a welcome addition, Apple have dropped the ball in terms of how apps are closed, or sent to the background. People have been used to a single tap on the Home button to close an app for years. Now Apple have changed this basic fundamental functionality of the iPhone (and iPod touch etc.)

The main problem appears to be that most people will forget that this will only send the app to the background. It wont close it. I have done this numerous times myself already. And what then is even worse that you have to hold the task bar until the minus icon appears, then you can close the app. Ridiculous!

Apple, please fix this asap.

First of all, last year I think, Boxer was awarded the contract for the Irish DTT rollout. They took too long and eventually pulled out from the contract. The government then awarded the contract to the second placed consortium, who also did not take up the offer. Finally we thought it was going to land in the lap of the third, and final placed consortium from the original bidding process. But guess what, now they dont want it either.

Now we have a looming analogue switch off deadline, and no one want to run the commercial DTT!

Communications Minister Eamon Ryan is to meet the Broadcasting Authority, ComReg and RTE next week in a bid to kickstart the collapsed Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) project.

A spokeswoman for the minister said last night he was “disappointed” that the Broadcasting Authority’s process to find a commercial DTT operator had failed. She added, however, that public service television would switch over from analogue to the DTT system by the EU’s 2012 deadline “come what may”.

via The Indo

Is there anything they cant (or wont) do?

Google TV is already installed/included in some new tv sets and you can also get it in a separate set top box.

Apple finally announced the exact date of iPad availability in the U.S.: It’s Saturday, April 3, for Wi-Fi models, while models with both Wi-Fi and 3G will be available in late April.

As far as other countries go, all models of iPad will be available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK in late April.

If you’re interested in pre-ordering your iPad, you can do it from March 12 onwards; U.S. customers can pre-order both Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + 3G models from Apple’s online store or reserve a Wi-Fi model to pick up on Saturday, April 3, at an Apple retail store.

via Mashable

Google’s latest addition to their search is Stars. Basically this allows people to remember the good results they got for a particular search term. So for instance, a lot of people would search for facebook login when they want to login to facebook. This worked fine when facebook.com was returned in the results near enough to the top. However the problem occurred when Google indexed someone elses site or blog post (like this one) and it came up in someones search for facebook. For the non-techy, this lead to considerable anguish, as they couldn’t login to facebook.

So now with Google’s stars, they can always find facebook.com when searching for facebook.

Click here to login to facebook

Vodafone Ireland have announced that they will be officially selling the Apple iPhone from March 25th. Every plan (see table of plans and prices below) comes with unlimited free Vodafone to Vodafone calls & texts and 2GB of data.
On Perfect Choice Access + 150 and above, you also get inclusive minutes & texts to any network.

You can also pre-register for the iPhone, just click on the button below to give Vodafone your details.

The latest buzz (sorry!) on the interweb is Google Buzz (http://buzz.google.com/) is the new all singing and dancing facebook/twitter type thing, from Google.

So while everyone is clamoring to get a piece of the Google Buzz action, spare a thought for the poor Google Wave. Wasn’t that supposed to be the social media’s next best thing? It didn’t stay around for long, is anyone still using it?

And has anyone used Buzz yet?
What are your thoughts?