Damien Mulley

At the recent Wicklow CEB talk that I gave, I covered how it was very important to optimise websites for Google and as a result all search engines. I outlined that all the important steps for riding high on Google tie in neatly to blogging and so I advocated blogging as being crucial for a business to blog, if they have the time of course.

A cheat sheet was sent out to those that attended and here’s a bit of what was in it, which the SEO guys will no doubt nitpick 🙂

When optimising for Google:

Page titles mean a lot
Links mean a lot
Google likes new
Blogs fit well into this

Blogging tips:
Pick a niche, become the authority.
Network – IrishBlogs.ie, other bloggers in your niche.
Put your blog on your existing website.
Host the website in Ireland, if you want Irish traffic.
Regular posts – 1 per week for a year.

Additionally, writing a blog is not writing some kind of diary, it is a form of story telling, a way of you communicating with potential customers and explaining to them what your company or business philosophy is.

Piaras’s post where he thinks a little less privacy for better customer service is not so bad, reminded me of a piece I wrote for the Trib about all these new technologies which when combined could easily stalk us. Tim O’Reilly mentions the UK where policemen will be wearing head cams and the privacy implications.

For someone that doesn’t want to be online, they probably are already in their friend’s Bebo profiles with pictures and videos of a 21st, at concert pictures with them in the background standing at the bar, in videos of people cavorting in public parks etc. etc. Is it just “tough luck” if you are in a photo and want it removed from the web? Is it “if you don’t want to end up online, then don’t step outside your house?”. We wouldn’t be talking about images that would ruin your reputation or anything but just images of yourself you don’t want others to be able to access. Will you end up like Michael Jackson with dark glasses, surgical masks and blankets over you? Or if a law comes in which says you have to get permission from everyone in your video before you can stick it online, does that totally screw over these streaming services? There doesn’t seem to be anything in the new TV/Media directives from the EU either to cover this.

Lifestreaming, like the movie Being John Malkovich will allow you to climb inside the head of someone and experience their day via a digital smorgasboard of public text messages, blog posts, gps tagged photos and (thanks to mobile broadband and tiny videocameras) a live video stream of them as they move around their world. Every person can now be their own TV channel and everything they do will leave digital footprints across the web on multiple websites. Something like this a complete surrender of privacy but as all these services stress, everyone opts in to this. However many of these sites seem to be like the Hotel California that the Eagles sang about: lovely places but can your data ever leave and what if your images were uploaded without permission?

Some of us might like our privacy and may never use these super-fad social networks but we’ll still show up in the peripheries of videos and photos and mentions in blog posts and texts. There may already be multiple websites where our image is stored online and we don’t even know it. If we do become aware of such things, we might have to go to two or four or even 12 different websites to try and have our data removed. When Google recently released street-level photos of cities in America, lots of people did not want the world to see them and asked for their images to be removed but Google demanded a scan of your drivers licence and a letter from you before they’d even consider removing your picture. That’s just Google and there are possibly hundreds more websites also hosting images and videos and text snippets about you.

Do companies *have* to remove your image on request? Can you tell them not to put your image up in future or do you have to chase down every image and request a removal for each one?

Update: Eoin replies.

Una Rocks, no Una Jacks. It would be terribly awful if people starting calling her that. Just awful. Anyway, visit her jacks graffiti blog.

Like Una, Mark Webster has also started another blog.

Fantastic predictive piece on how the media and web will react to the BBC iPlayer.

I want this Doggy. Why doesn’t anyone buy my expensive pieces of modern art, eh?

Via Walter Zack Snyder talks Watchmen

Equire now launch a TV channel. Every newspaper and magazine should have one. Rumour has it that Blogorrah is actually going to be launching an online TV channel too.

Via metafilter – Zotero is a neat firefox plugin for scholars.

Via Mr. T: Skittles Touch:

A weird Intel music video about computer security, directed by Christopher Guest.

Javier Bardem looks like he has the best part in this. Based on the book by Cormac McCarthy.

Friend told me a story over IM yesterday evening. I asked could I blog it and he gave me permission. I never ever email friends things and ask them to email it on but if you could, maybe copy and paste this story and share it with your friends? This is how Ireland works right now. That child has no rights under the constitution but the mother does and despite an Oireachtas committee suggesting changes, it was shot down by Bertie. It is very very difficult for the State to take this poor child of his junkie mother because of the current way things stand. I’m sure there are dozens or hundreds more stories like this one too.

You can choose your friends

A woman got on Dart in Bray before I had time to properly go to sleep. Rather ok looking pram with child in it. On closer inspection, said child had Downs Syndrome. Downs Syndrome children are really affectionate, attentive and loving. The mother had pushed the pram half way up the carriage. Not ideal for ease of access or exit.

She proceeded to try to give the child its bottle of orange juice. On noticing that she had no bib, she asked two of our local Dart passengers, if they had some tissues. Kind passengers give woman tissues. It became obvious when the woman jumped up twice for the wrong stop, once at Glasthule and once at Dun Laoghaire that she was stoned.

I hadn’t judged her for her accent. I hadn’t judged her for looks. I hadn’t judged her for neglecting to carry a bib. I hadn’t judged her for rather roughly inserting the childs bottle. At the Dun Laoghaire effort to get off the train, she said ‘I ain’t really with it, Im gettin’ off at Tara’. My heart sank.

She then proceeded to meticulously arrange and fold two fifty Euro notes, that were in the end of her handbag. She wrapped the notes in an old train ticket. I could only think she was destined to ‘score a fix’. My heart sank more. Young Downs Baby, no more that one and a half, looks at me and waves. I felt SICK.

Congrats Senator Hannigan.

Nice coup. Podcamp have gotten Neville Hobson signed up.

Like Intel, Google is investing a lot in Indian startups.

Meanwhile here less and less want to be programmers.

Apple screws customers more, this time on power leads.

Modest Mouse – The Ocean Breathes Salty:

God’s Army has a show on technology. Yup a tech gadget show from the Jesuits talking about the Nabaztag:

Didn’t do it again so it was not won. It’s getting silly now so I’ll do it on Saturday. Move along now.

Great post from Niall Larkin on the arrogance of Google where they seem to think they have a right to scan and index anything digital or convert anything to digital, without permission. Google book search would be an example in my view.

Congrats to Kieran who will now be contributing to the Irish Times.

Is this *really* a Garda snorting coke? Or someone pretending to be a Garda snorting a line of baking powder. See, this is what Blogorrah should be looking into.

Back seat driving on a plane. Safe.

iPod tax for Canada? I’m sure IRMA might push that for here too.

Make yourself into a Simpsons character.

The 4am conspiracy.

I want water towers like these.

Paul Weller & Graham Coxon – This Old Town

Friday Night Lights, just started watching this and it seems promising, meant to be very good drama:

I need your help. We all know that Ireland is an expensive place to go on holidays but I am looking for examples of bad value and bad service for a series that we’re running in The Irish Times throughout August. Actually I am also looking for examples of good value and good service now that I think of it.

Leave a message on the Pricewatch blog.

So it appears that Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher are in town in Dublin for a while this week. Kara was nice enough to link to some IrishBlogs.ie posts on the iPhone too. I’ve been asking around on Twitter and via email about who they are here to see and so far no journalists I know were aware of the visit and no tech companies I know were aware either. Odd, no? Anyone know anything about this? They are here on business.

It would be nice if Walt and Kara met some of the new breed of tech startups.

Muchos muchos gracias to Mr. T for the image.