Cillian O'Brien
Welcome! I'm a quality assurance guy in the tech support/customer service industry, former e-business/politics student, and closet Man United fan. Here you'll find links to all my social network pages, blogs etc. Feel free to contact me using the link at the bottom of the page. Thanks for visiting!
The background image is owned by Oliver Hunter and is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.
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Posts
I’ve been playing Max Payne 3 on and off for the past week and one of the things that really sticks out is the amazing soundtrack. Here’s a song called Tears that’s recognizable from the launch trailer.
This is based on The Power of Habit by Charles Dugigg. It’s a cool video. I tend to like things with kinetic typography but it’s got some interesting ideas as well. I’m looking forward to reading the first chapter on my Kindle.
I came across this a few months ago and it popped up again today. It’s from one of my favourite blogs You Are Not So Smart, and it perfectly sums up why
weI get nothing done in our free time.“… productivity is a game of cat and mouse versus a childish primal human predilection for pleasure and novelty which can never be excised from the soul.”
The name came from a Wu-Tang Clan name generator, courtesy of The Huffington Post. Other suggestions included:
- Shriekin’ Wizard
- Violent Dominator
- Wacko Wanderer
- X-cessive Commander
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Tweets
- @Twilligerz Worst management failure since That Guy
- finished Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card http://t.co/C27QzDdv9x
- @Chernobyl Thanks for the RT
- Is that the Viper on the new Three ad? Anyone?
- Blackrock Brawlers Fight Night in aid of @Chernobyl fast approaching. Tickets available. Donations much appreciated. http://t.co/yJYmHtSzRSMay 06, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- @shelbouse If you want to get a sense of what's out there you could try indeed.ie. It's an aggregator for the main recruitment sites.
- finished Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams and gave it 5 stars http://t.co/DyJg2wnYij
- Got a new gumshield from http://t.co/Edp3i0e18m - infinitely superior to "boil and bite" - far more comfortable, much easier to breath with.May 05, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Just made a donation to @CRYIre. A friend of mine was participating in their run today in Monagea. Great cause.May 04, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Got some great help from @JustEatIreland chat support. Genuinely very nice people to deal with.
- RT @colmtobin: Only €180 to go. Come on you people... http://t.co/z9yzDnc87CApr 30, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Doing White Collar Boxing in aid of @Chernobyl You can donate at http://t.co/XFUPLm04BI Donations hugely appreciated. Also selling tickets.Apr 30, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- finished Wool (Wool Trilogy 1) by Hugh Howey and gave it 5 stars http://t.co/nwvuXncxVb
- Suarez in talks to appear on the next season of True Blood.
- @Chernobyl That's great - thanks!
- Doing a White Collar Boxing night in aid of @Chernobyl and I'd very much appreciate any support or RTs. Thanks! http://t.co/XFUPLm04BIApr 17, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Dan Ariely: What makes us feel good about our work?: http://t.co/K1Qp5WQYfj via @youtube
- Attended a wedding hosted by @BarnabrowHouse yesterday. Fantastic venue and the staff were very nice. Well worth a visit.Apr 14, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- I just backed Composer's Corner writes "How To Appreciate Rap Music" Book on @Kickstarter http://t.co/X8yZXhPxgb
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Info
- Experience
- Feb 2013 - PresentQuality Lead / Voxpro
- Nov 2012 - Feb 2013Team Manager / Voxpro
- Actively managed, lead, motivated and developed a team of IT phone and email support specialists.
- Led, planned, coached, managed performance, allocated work and motivated the team to achieve SLA’s and KPI’s.
- Involved in developing systems, processes and team members to achieve superior levels of service enhancing the client relationship. - May 2012 - Oct 2012Quality Trainer / Voxpro
- Was responsible for new hire customer service training and quality assurance training.
- Delivered training via group sessions and daily one-to-one feedback sessions. - Oct 2011 - May 2012Quality Lead / Voxpro
- Investigated and reviewed customer service cases and drove customer satisfaction scores in line with company and client targets.
- Provided support, coaching, and feedback to agents via one-to one quality reviews and group sessions. - Jun 2011 - Oct 2011Specialist/Backup Trainer / Voxpro
- Advised agents in relation customer technical issues.
- Delivered product training to new starts and refresher training to tenured agents.
- Also built the department’s internal knowledge base and training website. - Oct 2010 - May 2011Technical Support Agent / Voxpro
- Provided technical support to SMEs and other organisations.
- Helped customers to troubleshoot complex technical issues via phone and email.
- Gained experience with Salesforce.com, trained to use WebEx remote administration software. - Apr 2007 - Jul 2007Temporary Graduate Intern / Public Appointments Service
- Provided key support to the Senior Management Recruitment team through the delivery of three projects.
- All projects met objectives and were delivered on time.
- Used initiative to carry out additional work that was of benefit to the organisation.
- Involved in a variety of other tasks that arose in the course of the team’s management of recruitment campaigns.
Education-
2009 - 2010University College CorkMBS in Electronic Business
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2004 - 2008University College CorkBSc in Government
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1998 - 2004St. Colman's CollegeLeaving Certificate
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Posts
- Jul 26, 11
This blog was maintained as part of my masters degree course, which is now completed. As such there won't be any new posts appearing here.
However the existing posts have links to some interesting content so I'm going to leave them up for posterity. :) - Mar 17, 10Apologies for the lack of content over the last month. I'm in the final month of lectures in college and I'm up the walls with assignments.This is a nice video from IBM talking about how data can be used to improve our daily lives by using the internet as a kind of central nervous system for the planet. It's worth a watch. If you want to see more stuff like this visit IBM's A Smarter Planet blog.
- Feb 21, 10Apologies for the lack of content recently. Since the start of the new college term I've been very busy with assignments, one of which is a mock-up of website I had to produce for one of my courses IS6116 Programming for Web Applications and Services.The mock-up can be viewed at this link. The site is little more than a facade at the moment, with limited functionality due to the fact that we were only allowed to use client-side scripting for this phase of the project. The javascript for the login and registration work but they're not linked to anything yet and won't store any information.The next phase of the project will involve using PHP to give the site more functionality with server-side scripting.
I'd welcome any feedback or comments. - Jul 26, 11I was looking over some material for an assignment for one of my masters modules, EE6162 Telecommunications Technologies and Applications, and I remembered a video I saw on Google's data centres. It's an interesting video featuring a tour of a one of these data centres and an explanation how some of the technology works.
- Dec 29, 09I came across an article through Digg claiming that e-books outsold hard copy books on Amazon on Christmas day.I bought a Sony Reader recently so I've been keeping an eye on developments with e-books. Also, as I mentioned in a previous post, I've been reading The Long Tail, and there's a lot of material in the book on the advantages of digital distribution for retailers. It'll be interesting to see whether this was just an anomaly or the beginning of a move towards consumers buying e-books more than hard copies.
- Dec 22, 09I've been doing some research for a report I have to do on the semantic web and I came across this ZDNet blog post on how Oracle will be offering support for Thomson Reuter's Calais service. Calais is a service that generates semantic metadata. It looks interesting and the site is worth a visit.
This video gives a brief overview of the service. - Dec 11, 09I posted earlier in the week on Amazon's plan to open bricks-and-mortar stores. Silicon Republic carried a story on Tuesday reporting that Amazon have made an offical denial in response to the Sunday Times article.
It's too bad that this doesn't seem to be going ahead - it would have been interesting to see how opening bricks-and-mortar stores would have impacted on their business model. - Dec 07, 09Today FM's Sunday Business Show had a short piece yesterday on Rupert Murdoch's conflict with Google.
The whole show is nearly an hour long so you may want to skip forward to the relevant bit at around 54 minutes in. (The first few minutes might be worth a listen too, because Amazon gets a mention in the show's investment advice section.)
They refer to a Wall Street Journal article that Google CEO Eric Schmidt wrote during the week outlining his take on the future of media (interestingly, the WSJ is owned by Murdoch). - Dec 06, 09The Sunday Times has an interesting article on Amazon's secret search for property. The article says that Amazon plan to begin opening bricks-and-mortar stores, operating these as collection points for customers who don't want their goods delivered to their homes. It will be interesting to see how they design and locate the physical stores. They could end up locating them in retail parks and maybe having a superficially similar layout to Argos stores.
I wonder if they'll open one in Cork at any stage (Mahon Point or Blackpool please!). - Dec 04, 09Silicon Republic has an interesting article about Plink, an Irish firm that just won a prize as part of the Google Android Developer Challenge.Their product, PlinkArt, is is a "visual search engine", a sort of a visual equivalent of Shazam or Midomi. It allows you to photograph a piece of art and get information on that piece returned to your smartphone.It looks pretty cool, and it's nice to hear of an Irish firm doing well.
- Nov 29, 09
Just a quick update. Things have been a bit chaotic with UCC going the way of Atlantis and I've got exams to study for, so I'm putting the posts on The Long Tail on hold for a while.
I'll still try to put up content over the next few weeks, but it's going to be pretty brief stuff.
Hopefully I'll be able to make regular posts again soon. - Nov 16, 09I got through chapter one of The Long Tail Last night and I must say I was pleasantly surprised. The book seems very readable and I'm looking forward to getting properly stuck into the rest of the chapters.
He discusses some really interesting ideas, like how "Many of our assumptions about popular taste are actually artifacts of poor supply and demand matching" (Anderson, 2006:16). He goes on to describe how the online retailers like Amazon and Rhapsody are making big money by selling to niche markets, and outlines the long tail concept itself.
It's thought-provoking stuff and really makes sense once you get into it. I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of direction he takes for the next few chapters. Sorry for the shortness of this one but I'm wrecked from being in late doing assignments. I'll try and be more elaborate and insightful with the next few posts!
Reference
Anderson, C. (2006) The Long Tail, London: Random House - Nov 15, 09I've been snowed under with assignments lately so I haven't gotten a chance to put up a new post in a few weeks.Now that I've got a bit of breathing room I thought I might take a look at some of the books that were mentioned in the lectures. I bought a copy of Wired editor Chris Anderson's book, The Long Tail at the weekend. I'll be reading it over the next few weeks and I'll try and put up a post on my thoughts about each chapter as I go along. If it all goes well I'll be doing the same for Don Tapscott's book on mass collaboration, Wikinomics.I came across some of Anderson's stuff while doing some research for an assignment. He's got some interesting thoughts on the new business models that are emerging on the web. Here's a good video featuring his take on "freemium", which he calls "the first business model of the 21st century":In the video Anderson references Alan Murray, executive editor of The Wall Street Journal Online. Here's a link to another interesting video where Murray gives his opinion on what content should be charged for, and what should be free.In his second book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, Anderson discusses his ideas on the future of free.That's it for now. I'll try and post again as soon as I've finished the first chapter of The Long Tail.
- Oct 23, 09
I just got my invitation to Google Wave tonight so I'll be trying it out over the next few days. I'll do a blog post about it once I familiarise myself with it.
Also, I'm allowed to send out a limited amount of invitations to people so leave a comment with your email address if you'd like an invite. - Oct 15, 09
- Oct 11, 09If you're anything like me then you probably felt a bit lost in the NetBeans tutorials during the week. My main problem was that I didn't understand the terminology or the grammar/vocab/syntax of Java. Also, the results of what we were doing weren't immediately apparent, unlike our HTML tutorials, so what we were doing felt out of context to me and I didn't know what it was leading to. I came across a few bits and pieces that might be helpful and I've listed them below.
Wikipedia has an article on the "Hello World" program. This explains what the program does and why it's used.
Sun Microsystems, the company behind Java, have their own set of tutorials, including a handy section that explains the basic concepts of object-oriented programming.
Here are a few introductory video tutorials on NetBeans.
This video shows how to download and set up NetBeans on your home computer or laptop. You don't really need to watch all of this one.
This second video is short and is similar to the material we covered in the IS6115 tutorials during the week and shows how to create the "Hello World" program.
In this third video, Tim Layton also demonstrates the "Hello World" program. It's worth watching the whole thing because he looks at some small applications that he made with NetBeans.
I hope all of this makes the whole thing seem a little less daunting. - Oct 08, 09Bill Emerson mentioned the SETI at home project in today's lecture. I participate in a similar project called World Community Grid. Both projects are a form of distributed computing. World Community Grid uses the world's largest computing grid to conduct scientific research projects for the benefit of humanity, such as fighting childhood cancer. It is funded and operated by IBM. I use it on my laptop at home and it runs whenever the laptop is idle. I recommend getting involved as it's an easy way to do some good without any financial or time commitment.
- Oct 11, 09This video features Larry Ellison, the co-founder and CEO of Oracle, giving his take on the cloud computing phenomenon. Ellison is of the opinion that cloud computing is merely a buzzword to re-brand existing technologies. While I can't say I agree with him fully, there might be a kernel of truth in what he's saying. So is cloud computing the future of e-business or just a buzzword? Have a look at the clip and decide.
- Oct 04, 09This is a blog I've set up as part of my masters, the MBS e-business in UCC. I'm not sure what direction it's going to go in terms of content but I'll try to stay focused on e-business topics and avoid going on tangents. Mainly, I'll be putting up links to interesting e-business-related articles or videos I come across on the web and also commenting on some of the readings for the various modules.
I think the blog will be useful to me during the year for keeping track of my own reading and I'd be very happy if it helps anyone else on the course during the year.
Enjoy!
