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The completed M9 motorway linking Danesfort Kilkenny to the Carlow section will officially open on September 9th at 11am. Speaking on KCLR Radio earlier today, Joe Gannon stated that the official opening ceremony of the new M9 motorway would take place at 11am on the 9th of September. (09/09 for the opening of the M9 … coincidence?)

The completed M9 motorway will link Waterford to Dublin with non stop motorway and the journey time should be approx 1h 30 mins between the two cities with the previous journey time usually 2 hours 35 minutes. Currently traffic has to exit at Danesfort, continue via Kilkenny (or via Knocktopher / Thomastown route) to the Carlow section and resuming on the M9 just outside Carlow. The announcement of the official M9 motorway comes as a welcome relief to travellers to Dublin from the South East as well as the people of Kilkenny (and Thomastown/Gowran) who have seen increased traffic as a result of the diversions.

Roll on the 9th September … the only thing not on the M9 through are servcie stations or Motorway services, I wonder when these will be added?

People are now twittering and tweeting everywhere from the office, train station to the restaurant and airport. The emergence of mobile technology allows people to tweet quickly and easily.

Below are listed some handy iPhone Apps for using Twitter all of which are freely available on the iTunes App Store.

Twitter

The official Twitter iPhone app has all the features you might expect, tweeting, latest posts, lists, access to your profile and favourites and some other extras. This is the twitter app I use most, mainly because it is the official app.
Latest Version is 3.0.3 – Size 3.9 MB

Price : Free

Tweetdeck

The Tweetdeck iPhone app allows you to have Facebook and Twitter on the same app, saves you having to access 2 different iPhone apps. Some nice features and if you want to have a fully integrated app this is the one for you, tweet and facebook on the one app. I still use this on occasion and it is a handy tool for Facebook and Twitter users.

Price : Free

Echophon

This is one I installed a while ago and was my original twitter app before moving to tweetdeck and moving then to Twitter App. It’s a bit clunky and I found it a bit slow to use but that was over 7 months ago … so if anyone has used Echophon add a comment below. However having reviewed the latest app on iTunes I think this has recently been updated.

Price : Free

Feel free to add your comments and review of these Twitter iPhone apps….

With over 1.8m new iPhones sold there is a flaw coming to light affecting the signal strength of the iPhone. Apple are to fix this within weeks.

Apple is set to release a new update to the latest iPhone within weeks of the release. The iPhone went on sale in five countries, including the US & UK, on June 24th but iPhone fans in Ireland are not happy as the iPhone 4 will not be available in Ireland until July 30th. The official release date for the iPhone release in Ireland and 16 other countries was announced and confirmed by Apple at a press conference on Friday 16th 2010.

Apple have admitted there is a problem with how the iPhone calculates its signal strength. Some iPhone users had complained that holding their iPhone near where the antenna is located caused a reduction in signal strength and sometimes dropped calls. Apple defended this saying “Gripping any mobile phone in certain ways will reduce its reception by one or more bars. This is true of iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, as well as many Droid and Nokia phones. …. Users observing a drop of several bars of signal when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erroneously displaying four or five bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place”

Apple have released a statement promising a software fix within weeks for the signal strength error. The iPhone seems to misrepresent signal strength and this is not just for the new iPhone 4G but apparently the signal strength error affects the previous iPhone 3GS and 3G models.

Apple said ,”…We were stunned to find that the formula we used to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays two more bars than it should for a given signal strength…”

The new iPhone software fix is promised within weeks and should make the signal strength calculation more accurate … watch this space!

iPhone OS4.0.1 is now available which fixes some of these issues so download now!

Today Apple will hold a press conference to discuss the iPhone 4.

The reason behind the Apple press conference is not yet known officially but rumours persist that Apple will discuss the antenna and signal problems which are affecting the iPhone 4G.

Other rumours also include that the iPhone 4 press conference will see a price drop for the iPhone 4G, or in a worse case scenario that Apple will recall the iPhone 4 an that the signal issues are hardware issues and not software issues.

Apple had said that a software update would be available soon to fix any signal related issues and it is quite possible that todays press conference will be 90% relating to the signal strength issues.

The Apple press conference is set to take place at 10AM PT (6pm GMT) Friday, July 16th.

With the recession it seems that certain businesses are reducing levels of service in order to save costs.

The boom is over and prices have fallen, but have levels of service also been reduced – getting poor service is something which is creeping in here in there.

From Restaurants and Bars to Travel Services and the general Service industry. I have seen many examples in the past year where I feel that service just was not up to scratch … not going to name any places (just yet) , but I’m just wondering if I’m alone. In one establishment, I held out my hand to get change and while looking me in the eye, the girl at the till plonked the coins onto the counter, another incident involved going to a till and the cashier just saying “20″ … not “Thats €20 please”, just “20″ – no please and when I was finished, no thank you.
Small things but I haven’t returned there!