Forest

Image: Forest, this photo is available to licence on EyeEm.

#147

Friday, February 22, 2019

In This Edition:
Opportunity rover, Google Docs API, dialect quiz, instant page loading, OKTA business apps, 270 degree fisheye and Big Dunc on Irish!

Brexit is going well then! The two Johns form The Guardian have posted another great video in their on-the-street Brexit series. This time they speak to lots of people in Northern Ireland about what a hard border might look like. It is an enlightening watch.

Opportunity Rover

Image: NYTimes.com

The New York Times have published a nice data visualisation of the 14 year journey taken by NASA's opportunity rover over 28 miles of the surface of Mars.

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Google Docs API

Image: Google.com

Google have released an API for Google Docs, allowing developers to build solutions for bulk document creation, content management and workflow management.

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The Dialect Quiz

Image: New York Times

The New York Times also published a fun British-Irish Dialect quiz this week. Based on the answers given to questions about phrases, words and their meanings, the quiz plots a heat map of where it thinks you are from.

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Instant Page Loading

Image: Instant.page

Instant.page is a 1kb library that you can add to your site which pre-loads the next page before a user clicks on a link. The code tests the hover time over a link, and only beings the pre-load when the hover time is over 65ms.

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Okta Business Apps Survey

Image: okta.com

Okta have released their business apps survey which shows the most popular apps used by businesses this year, overall and broken down by categories such as HR, accommodation, transport, banking and news. Microsoft Office 365 is king.

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270 Degree Fisheye

Image: C-4 Precision Optics

The team at Lensrentals have built the world's widest hyperfisheye lens, which can capture an image at 270 degrees, it can see behind itself!

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Big Dunc on The Irish Language

Image: Former Munster Player Duncan Casey

Former Munster player Duncan Casey, now at Grenoble, has an excellent piece in The Irish Examiner this week about how being abroad has made him appreciate the Irish language more. He describes his experiences with his Pacific Island team-mates at Grenoble, some of whom grew up in New Zealand, but all of whom are fluent in their respective island languages. He talks about how impressive it is that the culture of those islands are upheld and treasured as their people move around the world.

This leads to the question of why the Irish aren't the same. We all become more Irish when we leave, and speak the cúpla focal ar ár laethanta saoire, but a lot of us don't treasure our native Gaeilge. Duncan poses the question about how it is taught in schools, or rather why we all end up hating it in school. Having lived in Wales for the past few years, I find it inspiring to hear a lot of people speaking bi-lingually in Welsh and English. Granted, Welsh is stronger in some areas and not every Welsh person speaks Welsh, but it is much more wide spread, and the areas much bigger, than Irish is in Ireland. We are so lucky to have such a beautiful native language, and being taught it as children has distinct benefits. It has inspired me to want to re-learn Irish and I started using Duolingo in the same way as Duncan describes in his piece. I started listening to the excellent Motherfoclóir podcast. I watch Munster matches on TG4 when I can, and by watching more of TG4 whenever I'm in Ireland, I discovered Beidh Mé Ar Ais!

As it is with all new endeavours, you have to commit time and ideally make it into a habit. This is where I've faltered so far, but reading Duncan's piece, and seeing the news of the Russian professor who is working to save Irish in the Kerry Gaeltacht this week has re-energised me. DCU offer a free 4 week online course in learning Irish which might focus the mind, and between that and Duolingo, in the words of Sinéad agus Osgur, beidh mé ar ais!

About Found This Week

Found This Week is a curated blog of interesting posts, articles, links and stories in the world of technology, science and life in general.
Each edition is curated by Daryl Feehely every Friday and highlights cool stuff found each week.
The first 104 editions were published on Medium before this site was created, check out the archive here.

Daryl Feehely

I’m a web consultant, contract web developer, technical project manager & photographer originally from Cork, now based in London. I offer my clients strategy, planning & technical delivery services, remotely & in person. I also offer freelance CTO services to companies in need of technical bootstrapping or reinvention. If you think I can help you in your business, check out my details on http://darylfeehely.com

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