Tech Heroes: Conor O'Neill

I’ve been trying to get Conor O’Neill on the show for a while. He’s a great blogger and entrepreneur and a cheerleader for Irish Tech.

But what I really wanted to talk to him about was ‘home entertainment hacking’! Then Netflix launched in Ireland and I sent him a ping.

Luckily he was free to join us this week. Unfortunately, Michele was delayed doing media interviews about ICANN’s launch of the application process for new gTLDs, so it’s just Conn and Conor on this episode.

We started off talking about Netflix, but that was just the launch-point! Then we get down the the specifics of Conor’s home entertainment adventures, taking in Boxee, Roku, Saorview and the surprising delights of Windows Media Centre along the way.

Thanks for the chat Conor!

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About the Author: Conn Ó Muíneacháin

Conn Ó Muíneacháin works at Blacknight, Ireland's largest provider of domains and hosting. He's an award-winning radio producer, podcaster and blogger. He's an engineer as well (not the award-winning kind). Conn produces video for Blacknight and edits Technology.ie. Labhair Gaeilge leis!

9 Comments

Keith January 16, 2012 at 1:10 pm - Reply

Just on the topic of GeoCities, Jason Scott & Archive Team did a good job of backing up much of it before it was taken down, which they then released as a 640GB torrent !

http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=GeoCities

It’s up on The Pirate Bay if you are interested (and not on an Eircom customer)
- Conor O'Neill January 23, 2012 at 11:48 am - Reply
  
  I’d love to download that. I did extract all my own stuff before Geocities shut down (and ditto Jaiku last week). I wonder if 640GB goes over my Eircom Unlimited “Fair Use Cap”?
Donncha January 18, 2012 at 12:14 pm - Reply

I’m a new convert to Netflix (and hopefully a subscriber if I can convince my wife) but what bugs me is that there’s no playlist feature. It’d be super useful to have a “kids channel” showing one episode of each programme one after another like an ordinary channel.
- Michele January 18, 2012 at 12:54 pm - Reply
  
  Donncha
  
  There’s several features that I’d love to see, though I hadn’t thought of that one :)
  
  Michele
  - Conor O'Neill January 23, 2012 at 11:51 am - Reply
    
    I’ve been following some online threads around problems that developers of things like XBMC Flicks are having with Netflix UK/IRL. No-one has got it working properly on XBMC or PlayOn or Windows Media Center yet.
    
    One thing I learned is that there is a queue feature exactly as Donncha described built into the US Netflix but for some nutty reason it isn’t offered over here! I must see if it magically appears over VPN.
    - Michele January 23, 2012 at 11:55 am - Reply
      
      Conor
      It’s not an option in the Apple TV.
      I might play with my IP address settings etc., this evening as an experiment *cough*, but I’m happy with my rather convoluted setup :)
      
      Michele
      - Conor O'Neill January 23, 2012 at 11:58 am
        
        I was basing it on Simon Whelband on Twitter saying that when he was in the US (really in the US!) and he signed in with his Irish Netflix account, he got a US UI. I assume that’s in the browser and not via an app.
    - Donncha January 23, 2012 at 12:04 pm - Reply
      
      Out of curiosity I loaded Netflix through an ssh proxy to a US server and while the selection of content was the same I didn’t see a queue. :(
      
      Maybe it’s one of those Netflix apps that works on the US version but not the IRE/UK version?
      - Conor O'Neill January 23, 2012 at 12:05 pm
        
        Weird. I’ll try it later tonight on the various Apps that are broken when on Irish IP.