Sonru’s Edward Hendrick  has been shortlisted for the Innovation Award at the Irish Internet Association’s Net Visionary Awards 2010,  the winner of which will be announced at the IIA Congress on May 20^th.

The judging panel shortlisted five companies for the much coveted Innovation Award but there can only be one winner but the good news is you can help. The winner will be chosen by public vote, and Sonru are asking for your support by casting a vote for them online at http://www.iia.ie/net-visionary/vote/6 . It’s free to vote and registration is not required.

Edward Hendrick, Founder & Director of Product Development of Sonru commenting on being shortlisted said ‘Everything we’ve achieved in the past 18 months has been the result of client and peer feedback which has fed directly into product development, we’re now inviting our customers, contacts and friends to voice their hugely positive feedback again but this time in the public arena.’

This will be the third accolade for Sonru in the past 2 months having won the Bank of Ireland Bright Ideas Challenge Grand Final held in the House of Lords, College Green, Dublin on March 3^rd and the Innovate!2010 Dublin Pitch Slam, hosted by Microsoft BizSpark and Enterprise Ireland on March 8^th.  Fergal O’Byrne, CEO of Sonru added ‘Winning these awards is a tremendous validation of both our business model and our products. We look forward to capitalising on this and furthering our global ambitions.”

Sonru is an automated online video tool. It has applications within the Recruitment, Education, Training and CRM sectors. Sonru provide secure, shareable video interviews. The tool can be used anywhere that remote video can bring efficiencies to a business process. Sonru has received support from SEEPP/WIT, Wexford County Enterprise Board and is a high potential client of Enterprise Ireland.

Alexandra College one of the first schools to use this new technology, has been using Sonru’s online interviewing software this year to assist Leaving Certificate students with preparation for their modern languages oral exams.

If you like more information about Sonru for Schools please see the website or contact Peter Hendrick of Sonru at peter@sonru.com.

Five days in and one major bug has been discovered on the iPad. For reasons as yet properly addresses by Apple, wifi on the device is proving to be buggy.

Many users, myself included, are reporting dropped wifi connections and wifi not working even when connected.

Apple support is suggesting advice along the lines of “switch it off and switch it on again”, which is creating much ire on the blogosphere.

I’d argue that it’s a new device and it’s bound to be problematic in some areas. Also, it’s likely to be a matter of days before Apple releases an update to deal with the issue.

For me, resetting network connections and renewing lease did the job.

The iPad launched in the US yesterday and analysts are suggesting that 700,000 were sold in-store in one day. Add this to the estimated 500,000 preorders and that’s a successful launch in anyone’s language.

The iPad won’t be available in Ireland until late April or early May. However, I was in coral springs in Florida and popped over to the Boca Raton Apple Store last night to pick one up. When I arrived there was about 40 people queuing. Sad to say there was a real buzz of excitement amongst the gathered nerds and the store staff. You got the impression that most of the customers would have agreed to sell their own mothers to get their hands on an iPad.

I’m glad to report that I managed to get a 64GB iPad. The price seemed reasonable because the 16GB model is likely to cost around the same in Ireland.

The product itself lives up to the hype. For techie people and Apple fans, it really is a thing of beauty. Internet access is incredibly fast; interfaces for Gmail and lots of other sites are sleek; the iBooks eReader and book store are excellent (if a bit pricey, but there a thousands of books available for free too); video playback is sharp and fast; and the overall experience is remarkably personal.

The one major drawback of the iPad right now is that it does not support Flash. Steve Jobs and co. Have instead opted for HTML 5 support. While there is more going on here than Apple is letting on – an attempt to oust Adobe and corner yet another market? – chances are that more widespread HTML 5 support on websites will come along in time. However, for consumers this means that right now a lot of the most popular video sites – veoh, megavideo etc – simply will not work on the iPad. Even standard work-arounds for this issue on the iPhone and iPod Touch will not work – for the moment at least – on the iPad.

Despite this, the iPad is a major winner and will be copied and copied again. It’s also a game-changer and I feel confident in saying that the home and education computer market (and likely many others) will never be the same again. I

The Apple iPad is close to being released.  It hits stores in the U.S. on April 3rd (available for pre-order now) and is likely to be available in Ireland in late-April or early-May.  There have been no indicators yet as how much it will sell for here, but the smart money suggests €499, €599 and €699 for the WiFi only model.

The device is being heralded as the saviour – and the future – gaming, computing, publishing and education.  Apple is known for producing game-changers – the iPod and the iPhone being the most obvious – but Steve Jobs has had a few failures over the years.

What do you think?  What’s the likelihood of every 2nd-level student in Ireland using an iPad (or similar device) in school to access books, homework, research etc. in the next two or three years?

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Did you know that the open web – the part you can search using Google et al – is 167 terabytes, while the Invisible Web – the part of the WWW that’s not indexed by the search engines, including password-protected library sites, private networks etc – is estimated at 91,000 terabytes!

So how do you access the Invisible Web. There are a number of websites that will allow you to search these sometimes invaluable resources. One in particular that is an excellent service for students is Infomine. Infomine has been built by a pool of libraries in the United States. Some of them are University of California, Wake Forest University, California State University, and the University of Detroit. Infomine ‘mines’ information from databases, electronic journals, electronic books, bulletin boards, mailing lists, online library card catalogs, articles, directories of researchers, and many other resources.

You can search by subject category and further tweak your search using the search options. Infomine is not only a standalone search engine for the Deep Web but also a staging point for a lot of other reference information. Check out its Other Search Tools and General Reference links at the bottom.