Google launched a new toy today called ‘public data‘. It allows you to mess around with stats and graphs and make boring stuff interesting Like unemployment rates for example…

Here’s what it’s like to be under 25 and male in Ireland going back as far as the mid 80’s. If you’re under 25 and male in 2010, there’s about a 39% chance you’re unemployed. So you better get ageing quickly if you want a job!

Same stats only for the females aged under 25.

Now we have the over 25’s (both sexes)…

Here we have both sexes and age groups combined…

Finally, here’s how Ireland’s unemployment rate compares to our old enemy (UK) and one of our newer eastern European friends (Poland)…

As you can see from these graphs, we’ve been hit hard & quickly. Much more so than most other EU countries.

On the flip side, Poland’s unemployment rate has dropped from 18% (Feb 2005) to 9% (Jan 2010) in the last 5 years. In the same period, ours has risen from 4.2% to 13.8%. Fascinating stuff. Thanks Google, for making boring stuff a bit more interesting.

Go ahead and check it all out for yourself… there isn’t much data at the minute but no doubt it’ll grow over time.

Last month i blogged about how theleavingcert.com had been punished by google for failing to have proper meta tags and descriptions on all pages. Less than a month later, we’ve got our top spot back…

It all started because i was messing around with new features and somewhere along the line our SEO plugin stopped working without notice… most likely a conflict with another bit of code but i really didn’t care HOW it happened, i just wanted to get it fixed.

Losing ground to competition is not good no matter who you are or what area you’re in. Not only might you lose traffic or new readers because of the drop in rankings but more importantly you give competition a sniff of what it’s like at the top. They gain in confidence, start thinking “hey, i must add some new features or content now that i’m top of google, i’m going to be getting more visitors” and most likely that’ll strengthen their position and leave you playing catch up.

So from the moment i discovered we’d been relegated in google, i made it my mission to get back to the top of google asap. The acid test was a search for ‘leaving cert’. It’s the most searched for ‘leaving cert’ related term (not surprisingly). We’d been at no.1 spot for some time in google.ie and perhaps even google.com, i can’t remember. But last month, after my cock up, we slipped backed to about 7th.

Today, here’s how things stand;

As you can see, normal service has resumed, we’re back to no.1 and no.2 in google.com. Over the past month we’ve worked hard on the site and churned out plenty of articles which i know is the best way to get the attention of google and of course readers. Now that we’re back on top, we can take it easy and put our feet up until someone overtakes us. Or not Enda & myself (co-pilot on theleavingcert.com) will be sitting down this summer and putting together bulletproof plans for the site for the following school year (2010/2011). It will be the first year the site has gotten ‘proper’ attention so it should be pretty dangerous next year. Up until now i’ve worked on it in bursts and just kept it ticking over, but it’s slowly starting to become something i work on daily or almost daily.

I recently bought my first portable hard drive (portable as in passport size, not the ’small brick’ size). I also have a pretty fancy usb stick, so i’ll run through the pros and cons of each under 5 different headings and try to come out with a winner.

1. Storage Space (verdict: portable hard drive)

photo credit: darkomen

Right now, portable hard drives can store more than usb sticks. You’ll find 64GB usb sticks these days but 1TB portable hard drives aren’t uncommon either.

Portable hard drives win the storage space war.

2. Durability (verdict: usb stick)

photo credit: GrungeTextures

A couple of years ago, i bought a super fast usb stick. A month later it snapped in half as i was about to use it. It was listed as being ultra durable, but obviously it couldn’t withstand all the mountain climbing and extreme sports i do Moral of the story?

Don’t read the packet. A manufacturer will tell you something is bombproof if they’ve buried it 100ft under ground in Afghanistan for a day. Look for reviews and proof it has survived bombs. As the old internet forum saying goes… “pics or it didn’t happen”.

Although i’ve never bombed my usb stick or portable hard drive, i’d probably favour the hard drive over most usb sticks simply for the fact that usb sticks have a tendancy to snap whereas hard drives can’t. Although for this unique comparison, it’s hard to see how my plastic coated hard drive can win over my ‘aircraft grade aluminium’ usb stick

3. Ease of use (verdict: usb stick)

photo credit: the mad LOLscientist

This is a massive deal for me. The way i measure this is i ask myself if i was being held a gun point and told i had 60 seconds to grab data and copy paste it on to my storage device, what would i choose? A pretty twisted way of thinking but it ensures you make the best choice.

With a usb stick, some of them have covers. Some flip around, some have a push button, mine has a screw on cover. That takes time to remove. With a portable hard drive, you must like have a usb cable. That needs to be connected to the PC and the hard drive itself in most cases.

The usb stick wins this one. It takes less time to plug in and eject and is smaller and lighter, so therefore it’s easier to use.

4. Speed (verdict: portable hard drive)

photo credit: photographphil

Read and write times anyone? Most people probably don’t even look at them but there are big differences. Usually the faster the drive, the more it costs Typically a usb stick will be faster at reading, slower at writing, so in a ‘gun to the head 60 seconds to transfer’ situation i’d favour a portable hard drive. It really depends what you’re doing though. Personally, i’d always prefer fast write time over fast read time.

5. Value (verdict: portable hard drive)

photo credit: NotoriousJEN

A 64GB usb stick will cost you about €70 but you’d have change out of that if you were to buy a 500gb portable hard drive. My 16GB usb stick cost about €65 as did my 320GB Portable Hard Drive.

Hard drives in general have more space but usb sticks are handier to use. It depends where you’re using it and how often, but for me i’d prefer a Passport 320GB hard drive than a 16GB usb stick. That’s because i can pretty much throw anything on to my portable hard drive and not have to worry about running out of space. It doubles as a portable backup facility. So in terms of value for money, the portable hard drive has to win this one.

And the winner is…

photo credit: gavinzac

The portable hard drive by a 3:2 vote. Other things worth noting are that the portable hard drive is much less likely to be left behind or stolen simply because it’s bigger and more noticeable. The usb stick also needs room to slot directly in to a free usb slot. If you have a bulky usb stick, quite often you’ll have to unplug another usb device to allow the two to fit side by side, but of course you don’t have that problem with a portable hard drive because you have a nice slim cable and extensions at either end.

Here’s a few pictures of my usb stick & portable hard drive. I got a little carried away with the old camera but it’s amazing how you can turn simple every day stuff in to art work

Most of the time, ideas for blog posts ill come naturally to me however i do have to force ideas every now and then. Here are 10 places where i get inspiration / ideas / news from…

1. Digg.com

photo credit: Laughing Squid

Digg.com – It’s a bit like an organised twitter feed which will tell you what’s hot right now. It’s lost a lot of its charm over the past couple of years but i still find myself visiting it when my mind goes blank and i need some ammunition for new posts.

2. Delicious.com

photo credit: Obstschale

delicious.com – I always find something new and interesting on delicious and find myself using it more and more. Whether it’s design resources or top 10 lists, there’s always something to inspire.

3. Facebook.com

photo credit: mandiberg

facebook.com – Only as useful as your friends list. I have a pretty active friends list which means my latest news is bombarded with crap most of the time (farmville, mafia wars updates etc..) , but it’s still a great place to find new stuff.

4. Twitter.com

photo credit: adria.richards

twitter.com – Again only really useful if you follow ‘good’ people. I follow loads of designers, freelancers, companies etc… so they’re always tweeting about latest tech news, new sites, creative tips etc…

5. Boards.ie

photo credit: smemon87

boards.ie – You know that pixmania price blunder? Found it on boards. I find the odd gem or two there although twitter has sort of diluted it’s value for me in terms of sourcing breaking irish news.

6. Tech Blogs

photo credit: c__

Because i blog quite a bit on technology, i read plenty of big tech blogs. Top 3 on my list would be;

• mashable
• engagdet
• lifehacker

7. Analytics / Stats

photo credit: smemon87

It’s important to keep an eye on stats and you’ll see me blog about stats regularly. In fact i’d say i check stats (of some sort) daily. It helps you monitor progress and everybody loves to see interesting stats, even if they say they don’t. Google Analytics is what i use to keep tabs on all my sites.

8. Bookmarks

photo credit: laihiu

I use google bookmarks & a chrome plugin to make it easy to bookmark sites. Quite often i’ll forget about things i’ve bookmarked, so it’s always a nice surprise to revisit bookmarks and come across something useful.

9. Blog Comments

photo credit: borkweb

I read every single comment on this blog, even if i don’t respond to them all. More often than not any feedback provided is ‘right’ and i end up using it. You can’t keep everyone happy but this current theme was designed based on feedback and based on my own opinion.

10. Life Experience

photo credit: My.Aegean.gr student initiative

Probably the easiest thing to blog about. You have to be careful not to reveal too much, especially when you’re writing negatively about something or someone. I’ll always try to keep things non personal or generic whenever i’m criticizing something. The last thing you should be doing is bad mouthing individuals in public… it’s the lowest sort of criticism. But negative experiences are usually what you’ll find yourself writing about most, mainly because they’ll tend to write themselves and you just have to act as an editor before you hit that ‘publish’ button.

I’d stick money on it the first thought that entered your head when you read this post was not to praise me or this post, it was to nit pick over a spelling mistake or something i’ve said that you disagree with or the image at the top… and that’s normal. When you leave a comment the first thing i’ll do is disagree with it, then gradually look at it from your point of view and mix that with my own, then leave a response

A room full of PC’s in my college are using IE6. That’s ok with me if it’s deliberate and for research purposes or teaching people web design problems  / limitations etc… but if you’re using IE6 along with an old operating system and old computer, well that’s just not cool…

And these are PC’s which we’re expected to do work on. Running software to analyse traffic and so on. Things are so bad that i tried to take a screenshot of the image below and save it in MS paint, then copy it to a usb key. I couldn’t. System crashed.

It’s happened before in the same room… i’d be working away on something and the system would freeze up or applications would close without warning. So in 2010, this is the sort of crap we’re putting up with in college, doing an IT course.

The defence? The IT department is moving in to a new building, so all funds and energy are being invested in to that. New equipment, new rooms, new approach… that’s the sales pitch. No doubt it will help lure in future students, but it’s all too late for students leaving this year or that  have left over the past few years.

Ok, you can say a bad workman blames his tools but how many of you at home are using IE6 (a dead browser) and a 10/11 year old computer to do IT based work? That’s the problem… we can’t be expected to produce cutting edge work or technology with old tools.

Right now i have to question doing ANY computer based work in college. It’s just not up to scratch. Whether it’s the wireless network or labs like the one i’m talking about, it’s all painful to use. Yet we’re expected to work with this stuff day in day out.