Brian Greene

pictures from the ICTU “Congress” protest march 09.02.13

CAHWT from DNE 

RTE “The company (Twitter) said they could not comment specifically on whether Irish accounts were affected by the hacking incident” So RTE asked were Irish accounts involved? What a silly question. Yes they were. Mine too. Twitter doesn’t have a database for Ireland.

RTE “Both newspapers (The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal) reported this week that their computer systems had been infiltrated by China-based hackers, likely to monitor media coverage the Chinese government deems important.” The hackers would use Google to search this coverage, except Google is blocked in China.

http://m.rte.ie/news/touch/2013/0202/365849-twitter-says-a-quarter-of-a-milli…

My name is Brian Greene. I make technology work for a living. I live in Baldoyle Dublin 13 with the rest of the family. As a father of 3 school going children I am concerned by the media reports of bullying in Ireland today. Either we are amid an epidemic of bullying or the media are pursuing a moral panic on the topic. Either way we have a problem that is growing.

Often the medium for the bullying is the internet via “social media” sites. Cyber bullying is a reality but should we blame the messenger or in the case the medium? Technology has been getting a bad rap when it comes to bullying. Whereas the underlying problem is the lack of updated etiquette for children and adults alike in modern online media. I love technology and have been working in computing for the past 23 years. If technology can be seen as the problem, could it also be a solution to bullying?

Wanting to create a safer space for my children and a better use on technology to actually challenge bullying (online and offline) I stumbled upon the idea that has become Tuairisc (the Irish word for report).

What if every school website had a form where it is cool to report bullying? Where schools that are open to hearing about incidents of bullying can easily receive alerts about bullying that is occurring in the school environment.

Well I thought about 4,000 schools, making 4,000 forms of varying detail and complexity. Then I looked and some of those 4,000 school websites and it struck me that one form tailored to 4,000 schools would do the job even better.

So I built Tuairisc.me. Secure, confidential, centrally upgraded, highly available, cloud hosted and EASY to install. I needed it to be easy to install on every type of website. So it works with Weebly, WordPress. Joomla!, static HTML and various other sites. A simple one line of unique HTML code is placed on each school site and you are ready to go. If a school has no website, no problem. We provide a link to your own form that can be mentioned in notes sent home in the mála scoile (schoolbag).

Then I hope the forms are not used. There, like insurance, for when bad things happen. But when they do (and they will happen) there will be a friendly accessible form to make a bullying report with.

And what price point should this service cost? after swift consideration I decided that the ‘form to email’ service should be FREE for all schools in Ireland.

That is the story of Tuairisc so far. The service goes live on February 1st 2013.

How can you help? Tell

Tell a school about Tuairisc
Tell your teachers about Tuairisc
Tell parents about Tuairisc
Tell me what you think about Tuairisc version 1.0

Thank you for you interest in this project

https://tuairisc.me/

Barney McKenna died April 5th 2012
Con Houlihan died August 4th 2012
May they rest in peace.

For labour long, with sighs and tears,
To its oppressors knelt.
But never yet, to aught save fears,
Did the heart of tyrant melt.
We need not kneel, our cause no dearth
Of loyal soldiers’ needs
And our victorious rallying cry
Shall be we want the earth!
** WE ONLY WANT THE EARTH **
James Connolly 1907

To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources in view of the fact that the digital switch over/analogue switch off is complete, his plan for reuse of what are known as white spaces in the broadcast spectrum in and around the new digital transmission and across the part of the spectrum used previously by analogue; and if he will ensure that the spectrum is put to best use for citizens and not sold off to private telecommunications companies in long licences..