Archive for October, 2007

Sceptical: 22.5k Irish people join Facebook in the past week? 17.1% growth in a week? (Multiples of 20)

Sunday, October 28th, 2007

Just checked Facebook. It now says: You are targeting about 154,180 people in Ireland.

That’s an increase of 22520 in 7 days. 22520/131,600 * 100 = 17.1% growth

Every area has seen increased growth. The stats from last week are here. I’ll check the stats again this week but if true, these stats are just crazy. There is no way 40 Google Ireland employees joined or 40 existing employees decided to add their employers details and 280 Microsoft employees joined.

What’s with all these multiples of 40 and 20? Is there some odd maths going on here?

You are targeting about 43,600 men in Ireland.
You are targeting about 60,560 women in Ireland.

137,260 people between 18 and 35 years old in Ireland.
62,980 people between 18 and 25 years old in Ireland.
84,800 people between 25 and 35 years old in Ireland.
8,320 people between 18 and 19 years old in Ireland.

About 1,440 people in Ireland who work at Microsoft. +280
About 360 people in Ireland who work at Google. +40
About 160 people in Ireland who work at IBM. +40
About 180 people in Ireland who work at Accenture. +40
About 120 people in Ireland who work at eBay. +40

About 9,960 people in Ireland who are in college. +1620
About 480 people in Ireland who are at University College Cork +80
About 2,800 people in Ireland who are at Trinity College Dublin
About 1,520 people in Ireland who are at UCD Ireland
About 780 people in Ireland who are at NUI Galway
About 200 people in Ireland who are at DIT Ireland.

Some recent marketing bits that I liked

Saturday, October 27th, 2007

If you’re not familiar with the Hype Machine it’s this excellent site that searches all the mp3/music blogs out there and will create playlists for you on content you want, and using their player, you can play all these mp3s scattered across loads of websites. For their new design and functionality upgrade, they said they’d launch it to the public, only if there were 10,000 people logged on to this page at the same time. (Page now redirects to main page)The buzz was already building with many influential bloggers having private tested the new design and so 100s of bloggers started encouraging everyone to log on to that page, spreading the word far and wide about Hypemachine. Great idea. And cheap.

For those that don’t know Uncov, it’s this bitchy, nasty, fabulously catty website that takes shots at the Tech world. Think Techcrunch with more arrogance and a billion times more cynicism. Hard to get advertisers on a site that takes no bullshit from anyone right? Well Opera did a very clever thing with Uncov, they ran a competition on it which encouraged the readers of the supernitpicking site to find bugs in Opera, the winner getting access to the Opera launch party. It’s a nice way of leveraging your product with what others would consider a hostile market.

BT2 are doing some kind of dealy with Phantom and maybe other stations too. They’re hosting songs from new Irish bands, you submit your stuff to them and they’ll stick them up on their website. Shame their website is utterly unusable. Cute idea with jigsaws but it’s almost impossible to find the sections to the site without having to move your bloody mouse over the whole page in order to find the hidden links to the various parts of the site. But hey, designs that irritate are good, right? It’s nice to associate your hipster brand with some of the really good emerging music talent in Ireland. You get love from your existing clientele and some love from the bands and their devoted followers too. A good way of reaching the people you want to market to.

Any clever bits of marketing you saw recently? And Not the cadbury’s Gorilla.

Remember that wine thing from ages back? First reviews now in for the Alaia 2004

Saturday, October 27th, 2007

This was the offer. Well, both reviews for the first wine, the Spanish Alaia 2004 are now in. This is the one from Deborah on the Alaia and then there’s the Alaia review from Michele.

Alaia 2004

I’ll nudge Mark to start sending out more wines for review now.

Exclusive: Politics.ie now home to even more “young adult” whingebags

Friday, October 26th, 2007

Politics.ie, you know the site that makes The Phoenix magazine look like the Irish Times, has paused giving up on breaking false rumours and innuendo (never wrong for long you know!) and instead has gone gung-ho against the Government, Gay Byrne, the Road Safety authority and anyone that would in any way look sideways at people in their Honda Civics with L plates. Yup, if you’re one of those who will now rightfully be supervised until you get off your ass and do your driving test, then go to Politics.ie right now. Yes, it’s a lot like Bebo. LOLZ wtf lolocopterz. txt spk.

Has a learner driver anything to do with running this PramToyEjection campaign we wonder?

Anyway I could write more on the sheer stupidity and idiocy of the arguments from people obviously too lazy to learn to pass the driving test but Elly has summed it up succintly for me. Get off the fucking roads if you don’t like the rules, little ones. Less people will die as a result. While you might be happy ploughing your prams, sorry cars, into walls and trucks and other cars, please don’t do it while taking out innocent people on the roads and footpaths of this country. If it takes someone else in the car to tell you sensible things like “don’t overtake on this dangerous bend” then so be it. Sit the fucking test and less of the crap about waiting lists. It’s a fatarsed lie.

According to the Politics.ie press statement, 6,000 people have visted the site over this issue and one of the polls, not the one asking Gay Byrne to resign (9 votes!), not the should we burn down mosques one, probably this one: Should the Government give more time before putting 100,000 drivers off the road?, the press release said 72 percent voted against the implementation of the new RSA measures, I guess that would be this poll where a whopping 139 people visited. 68% is what it stands at now.

Want to join my Facebook Group? Dear L drivers, shut the fuck up and take the damned test

Oh looky, a sensationalist headline and post. I’m reminded of what exactly…

Update: Dear learners.

and more events – Wireless Conference November 13th

Friday, October 26th, 2007

Ireland’s third Wireless Conference – IMI Conference Centre, Dublin, 13th November 2007. www.iwc.ie

Conference Theme 2007:
‘Mobile Broadband, Mobile Content – The next wave’

Chairman:

Guy Johnston, CEO – European Telecommunications Management www.etm.ie

Speakers include:

John Strand, CEO, http://www.strandconsult.dk (Strand Consult)
Jan Hoffman, Mobile Manager, http://www.tv2.dk (TV2 Denmark)
Eamon Hession, CEO, http://www.puca.com (Puca)
Emer Conlon, IT Project Manager – http://www.rte.ie (RTE)
Fran Rooney, Chairman, http://www.icebroadband.ie (ICE Broadband)
Mark White, CEO, http://www.nowcasting.ie (Nowcasting)
Richard Rodger, CTO, http://www.feedhenry.com (FeedHenry)
Colm Piercy, CEO, http://www.Digiweb.ie (Digiweb)
Colm Healy, CEO, http://www.xiam.com (Xiam)

Conference programme available – http://www.iwc.ie/programme.htm

Registration: Contact Niamh Collins Niamh@investnet.ie or +353 (0)1 7008506

Date: Tuesday 13th November 2007
Venue: IMI Conference Centre, Clonard, Sandyford, Dublin 16.
Cost: 300euro pp

Fluffy Links – Friday October 27th 2007

Friday, October 26th, 2007

Donal now lives here.

You remember that short film from Ireland called “Underworld”? Download it now for free or watch it online for free.

Where do you hide yours?

Google block ads on websites that report on Google.

Oh no, oh my.

This is how you get all your data out of Facebook without being someone who plays with APIs. What you need now is something to extract all the data and then write over the old data and THEN delete your account. People give out Facebook but at least you can get data out, I still think it should be a section under the Data Protection laws for all providers to have to provide that.

Get a Dell laptop for 300 quid ex vat.

Ahh Uncov. Ahhh bitterness.

Labour Youth are having a conference this weekend. They’ll probably once again celebrate Che Guevara but ignore his murder campaigns, while taking swipes at Sinn Féin being terrorists and they’ll probably also wear their ban Coca Cola t-shirts as they are wearing here. Free Lenin caps or Lennon caps too (bless them, so many icons to crotchrub against) at the door and I hear there’ll be lots of special helpers on the day to train people on how to grow scruffy beards, how to give oneself a double-barreled name or use the Irish version of it. I’m not a member but I do enjoy the Che Guevara was a murderer and your t-shirt is not cool facebook group. 14k members so far.

Upcoming interesting tech/marketing events in Ireland

Thursday, October 25th, 2007
  • Mashup Camp Dublin. November 10th. Seriously, get to it. Also, if you have a blog and readers of the nerdy/tech variety can you let them know about it too? It’s not everyday we get people of this calibre mixing together and it would be great to see Mashup camp come back on a regular basis.
  • On November 1st Digiweb are holding a free seminar called ‘Making Websites Work’ which is part of their Online Edge Seminar Programme. At the Digital Hub, Dublin. All you have to do is go to www.digiweb.ie/onlineedge and register your attendance. Registration closes at 6PM Tuesday 30th October. Laurence Veale, Eoghan McCabe and Richard Hearne will be the speakers this time round. They’ve a lot to live up to since I was fantastic at the last talk. I’m sure they might get near that high bar. You can do it guys!
  • On Tuesday, October 30th 2007 The “possibilities for a post Web 2.0 world” will be explored iby Mike Culver, Web Services Evangelist with Amazon.

    The presentation will provide an overview of Amazon Web Services, the company’s distinct technology arm, which allows developers to build software applications leveraging the same robust, scalable, and reliable technology that supports Amazon’s retail business; there will also be a code demonstration showing how .NET developers can easily build managed clients for these services.

    This takes place in the swanky Westin Hotel, Westmoreland Street, Dublin 2 with registration from 7.00 pm. If you wish to book a place, please contact Cormac Moore, Verkom, on (01) 432 1501 or email cmoore [ at ] verkom.ie

  • IDMA’s Digital Marketing Seminar on 15th November – Raising the Bar in Digital Marketing
    8:30am – 12:00pm
    Thursday 15th November
    Mont Clare Hotel, Merrion Square

    Tom Bazeley (CEO, Lean Mean Fighting Machine)
    Jay Stevens (VP Operations, MySpace.com)
    Jonathan Forrest (Managing Director, Cybercom)
    Shenda Loghnane (Managing Director, ICAN)

    Tickets are only €75 for IDMA members / €100 for non-members – available from info [ at ] idma.ie

Doooblin

Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007

Around Dublin til Wedn evening. If you want to meetup, give me a call or text. Number is on my facebook.

Fluffy Links – Tuesday October 23rd 2007

Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007

As is the trend, another great blogger has left the O’Sphere. Slán Grandad. Enjoy the blog retirement.

And as one goes, another returns. Via Mick. Aine is back. Aine Chambers mofos. With her own Halloween themed new website and welcome video. The old site has a fun pic too.

And again, via Mick, fun graffiti.

Seán reaches 200.

Mashup Camp is in Dublin on November 10th now. Have a look at the impressive lineup. Get yourself to it.

Seedcamp tips.

New blogs on the block from yesterday.

Two sims, one phone. Handy.

Of course there were going to be t-shirts.

Renegade Master with Final Fantasy clips:

Renegade Master with Fast and Furious clips:

Microsoft Hyper V – So what is it?

Monday, October 22nd, 2007

Last week I had a Fluffy Link which talked about all the Microsoft Hyper/Microsoft Hyper V domains that Microsoft were buying up. Since then I’ve had, shall we say “interesting” IP addresses visit that post.

Lots of Microsoft Hyper V domains as well as vboxlab.com and vboxlab.net
Some folks in MS in the States seem coy about whatever this is.

However, a project called Viridian, also known as Hypervisor which had to do with Virtualisation might be something to do with it. Just seems to be part of Visrtual Server really. If it ever gets out the door. Seems there were a few delays. More here and here. Maybe that’s it? Shame really after buying all those domains.

I’d love to see MS do their own version of an NGage like platform that will work on all OSes and all platforms so people can interact with XBox Live from anywhere. Course I also think XBox live should be waaaaay more than just an online games platform. That’s their social network right there. Perhaps if Silverlight shows the way for “any OS and platform” they might do the same for other products too.

Update: More.