Archive for November, 2005

Irish Slut – Number 1 on Google

Tuesday, November 15th, 2005

So it seems if you do a Google for Irish Slut this site appears first. Oh my. Oh my oh my.

There they are – Digital Rights Ireland steps into the light

Tuesday, November 15th, 2005

A while back I asked where was our EFF after once again listening to a biased, one-sided and truth bending interview with the folks from IRMA, who blamed all the woes of the record industry on piracy and those evil terrorist funding music downloaders. Today at 1715 on the Today FM’s Last Word a representative from Digital Rights Ireland is going to bring some balance to this argument. Tune in here.

This is no-doubt going to be the first of many times when balance is brought into media interviews about online civil rights.

Neil Gaiman signing in Dundalk tomorrow + Rattlebag details

Tuesday, November 15th, 2005

Straight from the blog of the Dream King.

At 1.00pm (16/Nov/05) I’m signing in Hughes and Hughes bookshop, Clanbrassil Street, Dundalk.

Also he is recording his interview for Rattlebag tonight. The show will be broadcast on Thursday 17th November at 2.45pm. (GMT) You should be able to access the RealAudio of the Neil Gaiman Rattlebag interview here after the show airs. The link will be dead until then.

This is customer care – Will they do it in Ireland?

Tuesday, November 15th, 2005

James points to the Typepad folks compensation for downtime when they moved/upgraded their servers. They allow you the customer to choose from a multiple-choice list of compensation types. That’s brilliantly done. It respects and trusts their customers. Oh oh and buzzword: empowers them.

Irish Times does a Forbes

Monday, November 14th, 2005

Via Gavin and Slugger is news that the Irish Times has another hostile piece on blogs. Doing a Forbes Irish style I guess we could call it. Slugger really decontructed the piece and showed what a badly researched and monstrously biased piece it was.

Just like Forbes we have the same emotive words to describe bloggers:

Anybody, anywhere with access to a computer can blog – you can use your blog for a personal attack, to preach racial hatred or merely to solve the world’s problems.

Well done the Irish Times. And I was considering giving yearly subscriptions to the Irish Times website to the Irish Blog Awards winners.

Google Analytics – Really fancy stats for your site

Monday, November 14th, 2005

Google Analytics released. You need an Adwords account. I don’t do ads on my site so not sure will I sign up. It’s very clever of Google, in a way – release really good stats packages that you can use and that they can use to monitor traffic and click-through rates. I’m sure it might actually encourage me too to put ads on my site if I think they could make me some money and Google of course would reap the rewards too.

What is quite interesting too is the use of additional colour (orange) on the Google Analytics webpage. To me this is a first, but maybe I never used AdWords before so I didn’t notice this.

Threadless T-Shirt Sale on Monday

Sunday, November 13th, 2005

T-Shirts reduced to $10.

Sunday the 13th links

Sunday, November 13th, 2005

Via the Irish Art Blog is news that Liverpool Registry office is removing heteronormative* art from their walls so as not to offend gays. Fucks sake. Bit overboard if you ask me.

The city, which has over recent years become one of the most gay friendly in Britain, is removing two paintings because they are too associated with straight marriage. One is of a young bride signing the register and the other is of Romeo and Juliet on a swing.

* always wanted to use that silly word.

Chile Presidential Candidates answer questions from blog readers. Another way of conversing with the public. Will we see the parties using blogs before the next election? and using them to actually converse with people and not talk at people without listening, as is the current case.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart). This makes me sad for a few reasons.

Torrent of Sigur Ros on Jools Holland playing hoppípolla and með blóðnasir. Saw them live in the Olympia on Friday night. Sinéad has a review here. Additionally read what memories are swirled up when she listens to them.

Store Pandora streams to your hd.

Girl from tomorrow type bracelet. ‘Embrace “interactive braceletâ€? concept includes LCD display, Bluetooth, camera.’

Ferrari Joyride around Paris.

Table with conveyor belt to get rid of the crap on it.

10 most powerful women in the blogosphere. We need more women in the Irish bloggersphere. We need more non techies too.

Adds to my Christmas wishlist.

Scoble does a Ballmer – Throws a chair at a blogger

Sunday, November 13th, 2005

Attacking a rival company is bad. Attacking the company by attacking an employees personal blog is really bad. Even if the information was right (which it wasn’t) it was still unprofessional and just plain petty.

Scoble made a post and quickly erased it from his own blog which personally attacked a blogger because of who he worked for. For a guy writing a book on Business Blogging it appears he still doesn’t get some of the lessons to be learned from the book. It reminded me of that Forbes Article. Prime example really. The post was entitled “Google employees push sites that only work with one browser” mirrors are here and here. Since so many of Scoble’s regular readers read him via RSS, they are still going to get a copy of this in their feed. D’oh. In fairness Scoble apologised and if there’s one thing about Scoble it’s that he’s genuine. A good lesson is that once the “Publish” is pressed you simply cannot erase what you said, even when you pull it off your site a few seconds later. There were links before going around about how not to write angry emails and angry forum posts. When I go into rant mode against some fuckwit I write a draft post and leave it for a few hours or even a day and then come back and see do I want to still want to publish it. Stick that in the book Rob.

But if you look at the Google employee’s blog entry he doesn’t condone blocking IE from sites. He stated:

Not to mention a bit violent sounding for people like me who just want to advocate a faster web experience.

and from that Scoble stated:

Google is pushing a single-browser solution. And their employees are advocating putting code on your site that’ll turn off Internet Explorer.

Eh no. He saw the code and reworked it so users could detect IE and then display the Google Firefox Ad. It makes you wonder though if Scoble just let the mask slip this time and these are the real feelings he has for Google. You know what though? Scoble is still a great blogger and a real person. He’s made us all like Microsoft a bit more. Maybe not right now but Google will need their own version of Scoble in a few years time.

I have a spare ticket to Sigur Ros for tonight

Friday, November 11th, 2005

Seems my 4th ticket just can’t keep on to an owner. Anyone in the Irish Blogs want a Sigur Ros ticket?