Archive for November, 2007

Disclosure: I’m a judge for the Choice Music Prize

Friday, November 30th, 2007

is what some people will probably be saying when Jimbo Carroll makes them feel special. And they should feel special. The Choice Music event is a great thing. Hat tip Sinéad. 🙂 Hope you didn’t fall off your seat when you saw the title.

A change is going to come, I can feel it – Irish Web Industry Association?

Friday, November 30th, 2007

Paul Walsh has made a call to get something started in Ireland:

I’ve previously grumbled about the lack of support in Ireland for Web based companies. Heck, Enterprise Ireland doesn’t even have the word ‘Internet’ in the ‘Industry sector’ section of their application forms for grants etc. What does that tell you?

If you’re interested in helping me improve the ecosystem, please join me for dinner in January

There are so many things I want to say on this but I just don’t have the time right now. There’s a dinner in January to talk about this and act on this. Watch the Segala blog and do come along.

I’ve had my run-ins with Walshy in the past and people ask me why I’m friendly with him after I exchanged such strong words with him before. The reason is that the more I see him work, the more he impresses me. He doesn’t suffer fools gladly (sounds familiar) and like Fergus Burns he’s a networking machine. And again like Fergus, it’s not the Irish definition of networking which is comprised of gathering and then selfishly hoarding contacts (another blog post on this will follow), it’s all about “This is so and so, you should talk, you work in the same space and exchanging information will help you both”. Paul has made a name and a rep for himself in London and further afield because of the events he organises and he’s done a great job with BIMA and all their events.

If Paul can do the same in Ireland as he’s done in the UK then that’s a very important thing for the Web industry here. In the meantime I’d strongly recommend that Irish companies that are serious about doing business in the real world outside of incubation centres should be getting cheap Ryanair flights to London every now and then to attend many of the networking events that are on, on a regular basis. The quality of the contacts is worth the travel costs and time used up. See you in January in Dublin!

Fluffy Links – Friday November 30th 2007

Friday, November 30th, 2007

Elly is working on a nice interactive map of Europe for tourism and such. Have a bash!

Maryam Scoble lists some good places to visit next week.

Well done Pat, another great deal inked.

Death by a thousand cuts. More contradictions to Bertie’s tales.

Lessons for educational publishers in a social media world.

Robin muses about Pixenate and what he’d do with it. He talks about offering a service for bloggers to edit pictures. I’d like to add that I’d take the Facebook widget that already exists and make it a blog widget so people can play with Pixenate on all their friends’ blogs too and mess around with their pictures with an export option to a new Pixenate account. BTW, Robin is on my “ones to watch” list for 2008. Get to know him before he becomes well famous and charges 25k to turn up to talk at a BarCamp.

Haha. The Pay Per Post folks are getting impatient with their dealer.

Brilliant video about proof reading.

The new Knight Rider car. That’s a macho machine. KITT in the 80s was uber-camp. But then so was the Hoff.

Wouldn’t it be great if Google Ireland would support an Open Mapping Initiative which would make their maps much much better? Not like the OSI will give away anything for free.

Sigur Ros – Hljomalind

Sigur Ros – Heima

A bit behind

Thursday, November 29th, 2007

I’m way behind on everything since last week. I’ve unanswered emails from last week, blog posts still in draft, an article to write for ENN, interviews to answer and more. Early last week I picked up some virus, or at least we think it’s a virus. It started with ringing ears on Wednesday and on Thursday I got pins and needles in my left hand and foot. This spread to my whole left side on Thursday and Friday and a nasty headache kicked in too. My concentration was wiped and I could barely answer a text message. By Sunday my whole left side was numb so I thought it time to see a doctor. Went to Southdoc and they told me not to worry, it wasn’t an aneurysm or anything so see my own GP come Monday. 60 quid for that. Cheers. Well it seems to have been a viral thing, which can’t be treated. As of today most of the numbness is gone and my concentration levels are going back up. Proper two-post-a-day blogging may resume shortly, once I sort out all the emails and other stuff.

Fluffy Links – Thursday November 29th 2007

Thursday, November 29th, 2007

Paddy’s Valley gets better, now confirmed to visit Meebo and to go drinking with the Scobles and Loic le Meur and anyone else that wants to come along.

Via the Limerick blog. Now that’s a nice linkup, the Limerick Leader is listing local Limerick blogs on their site. All newspaper sites should be doing this.

Both Donncha and AJ point out the latest ads for eircom broadband that try and embarass people into buying broadband. ICAN are the ad agency that have done them and the ads are the most absolutely fucking moronic thing I’ve seen in a while. ICAN said at a recent conference organised by the IDMA a few weeks back that these ads are to encourage people to get broadband at home and not surf in the office during the day. Yes, cos you go red from the ad and you think “eircom is right, I’ll buy their broadband now.” Eh no, I’d try and find the idiot that came up with this ad and introduce them to a lumphammer, though, that’s how they probably managed to concoct such a stupid idea on day one.

More proof that ComReg lie. They say we talk more than the rest of Europe. OH NO WE DOESN’T. The mobile phone bankrolled TIF then say we have higher bills because we text more. Oh please.

Shrooms (the filum) very very selectively quotes from the Irish Times review of the movie. I bet if the review said SHIT, the morketing droids would quote it as HIT.

Boards of Canada – Music Is Math

Fluffy Links – Wednesday November 29th 2007

Wednesday, November 28th, 2007

Mulley’s not so secret project No. 2 is live – Gastronom.ie – Irish Food and Drink aggregator. Kick the tyres but don’t twist off the aerial now!

There’s a blog for everything, like the Galway Public Libraries blog.

Burkie is also back.

Wii helps man find out his wife cheated on him. No, Mario did not say “She a cheating on you, witta me”.

Get a Bebo sim from o2. Basically it gives you a week’s free access to the mobile version of Bebo.

What the hell? Spud tourism? Don’t mention ze famine!

How to hack Facebook, kinda.

Nail and head. I Don’t Want To Consume Media That I Can’t Interact With.

The new Guinness domino ad, love it:

Which drug are you? Fianna Fáil’s Malcolm Byrne is Cocaine

Wednesday, November 28th, 2007

Gotta love this. So you’re a Fianna Fáil councillor. You’re on Facebook, like we all are.

Malcolm Byrne

You install a Facebook application your mates sent which asks you what drug are you and it says you’re cocaine. Jesus, imagine if anyone saw your public profile and you left that there, they’d blog it or something. Fucking bloggers. And now we throw in the default joke about Fianna Fáil always loving their Charlie. You know, this may not be best time to do that quiz.

Malcolm Byrne is not a narcotic

Above is what it looks like and below is the text.

I’m “Cocaine”!

You’re a smooth talker and a straight shooter and other cliches used by business men in the 1980s. You like the nightlife, and the morning life, and even the early afternoon life. You are upset your friends can’t party as long as you can. That’s okay – you can just buy new friends.

Saying that though, Malcolm’s mates say he is the most trustworthy of all of them. Oh and he drinks the most:

Malcolm Byrne can be trusted

Testing out the 3 SkypePhone

Tuesday, November 27th, 2007

I got one of the 3 mobile/Skypephones, the one that retail at €99 and allow you to call anyone who uses Skype and vice-versa. If you want to help me test it, add me to Skype, I’m damienmulleymobile and let’s see if this aul thing will work. Please don’t call til after 2 today though 🙂

Update: I just got two more of them in the post but these don’t come with sims so have to buy some.

Update2: Only in the past few minutes (It is now 1647) have your requests to add me to your contact details come through. 11 of you so far. 🙂 Bit of a bloody lag there. Rax, I think I accidently declined you!

Fluffy Links – Tuesday November 27th 2007

Tuesday, November 27th, 2007

The next Barcamp is in Kilkenny around Feb 2008.

The EduBlog Awards have been announced. Nice one Josie et al!

TiVo seeps into daily lives.

In the week where grown ups showed how scared they are that their kids are rejecting privacy, the UK Govt removed a hell of a lot of it for the kids. Some week. And so Ze Frank on Privacy.

Using the Wii to teach kids maths.

Seems being featured in an iPod ad is the new movie soundtack superstardom. They just need to start a record label now and win win.

Molecular Gastronomy – A video!

A few years ago we thought these pound shop watches were shite. Now they’re cool and retro.

Via Sinéad – Bill hicks on marketing

Boards of Canada – an eagle in your mind (fan vid)

Fluffy Links – Monday November 26th 2007

Monday, November 26th, 2007

BOLD FLUFFY LINKS!
This was meant to go out this morning after sneaking out last night for a few seconds and sneaking back into it’s box again. Tut tut. Here ya go.

Anyone else going to answer Sinéad’s question?

A two for one special from Dave. Dave points out that if your ad is sexist to women it will be banned but not the other way around. Not that the ad companies are obliged to listen. Dave also rants about the BT Complaints webpage and a wiley little thing that probably cuts down on submissions.

Michele points out that Camtasia or at least an older version is free. This is a great app for doing video screencasts/video tutorials.

Paul Browne has a fantastic post on why you should blog for business.

The other Paul has a good intro to Google’s Open Social. Open mehole.

Una’s Book nSupp has started. A book club done over food and booze.

If there’s one Facebook app you need to install it’s the Nothing application.

Erm, when you sang their national anthem you said they had big you know …

One laptop per child, one future.

iPhone sales in the UK are tanking?

Al Murray ripping into an American:

Ronnie Johns mocking Chopper: