Archive for December, 2007

Facebook Applications on … Bebo and others – Important for Irish businesses

Wednesday, December 12th, 2007

Via Techcrunch and Facebook Dev blog:

Google Open what?

CEO Michael Birch says that it has been developing these parallel languages for about five months and in communication with Facebook itself, which has been assisting Bebo in its efforts to essentially adopt its platform.

This is very very important for Ireland since Bebo is still the main social networking site here. I still believe Facebook is where it’s at in terms of social networks and current figures show that Facebook now stands at 190k+ users in Ireland but as of a few weeks time applications like Scrabulous can be installed on Bebo. Scrabulous has more mindshare than Facebook it seems and this comes from FB people! If you are an application developer it’s all good as Bebo is mirroring the application markup language that Facebook is using. What is probably most important is that this will allow cross-platform interaction. Play scrabulous via Facebook against your kid brother on Bebo. If you’re a business that wants to reach a large audience and saw Facebook as easier to build for, well now all that’s changed again. Now you don’t have to pay thousands to have your application approved by Bebo and accessed by their userbase. I wonder what those companies will say who paid a lot to load their applications onto Bebo?

One wonders will we see the same happen with other social networking sites? I think we will. Great move by Bebo but this is a coup for Facebook. They just open-socialed Open Social. Of course every other social network will want Facebook applications to be installed on their site and ways to interlink with Facebook’s 50Million users. Next year they’ll have 100Million on the site. I assume we’ll soon see cross-network IM, chat, gaming and VOIP and all done before Open Social.

I’m betting a tenner the werewolves and ninjas applications will be the most popular though.

I’m blogging about John blogging about me about me blogging about him

Wednesday, December 12th, 2007

It had to be done. Never mind the sandals, here’s John Gormley. Day Two in Bali and John pokes me about poking him about his sandals. We’re rooting for John in Bali though. We’re shit at soccer and rugby on the International stage, perhaps it’ll be “our John” who’ll beat the French, the English and the South Africans at this event. Oh, right, it’s not that kind of event? Still, c’mon Sandal John!

Sandal John Gormley and his environmentally friendly rothar

Fluffy Links – Wednesday December 12th 2007

Wednesday, December 12th, 2007

More data lost, this time in NI. This is only the stuff that’s disclosed.

Giz Conor a job. Please.

Tune into Le Web 3, live.

One of the first bloggers I interacted with outside of Ireland was Anita Rowland. RIP Anita.

Tado gear. Yum.

It seems we’ve been waiting years for the return.

For legal nerds, Daithi links to cases with odd and over-the-top judgements. The Times gives a good writeup on the cases.

Last week in Palo Alto it seemed the bus drivers relied heavily on GPS. It ain’t perfect though.

Those who attended Paddy’s Valley

Tuesday, December 11th, 2007

I’m not sure how to summarise Paddy’s Valley so I’ll write a few posts instead of one long one. This one being on those who went.

Paddy's Valley

What a bunch of … really fun, interesting and intelligent people. I can barely not kill my friends after a week’s holiday yet I’d happily spend two or three weeks with some of the crew that went over. There’s a lot of raw talent in the group and a seriously amount of talented people all round. It’s a pity that not everyone that did the pitch training got to pitch on the Tuesday night but hopefully the pitching at Yahoo! Brickhouse made up for it. I make a yearly (I only actually started this last year) “ones to watch” list and I’m thinking a lot who I met last week should go on it. It’s like this, were the crew stationed in Palo Alto and not Ireland, I have no doubt they’d be very successful so it will just take a little longer on this side of the world.

It was a pleasure to spend my week with them and I really hope that they make Paddy’s Valley redundant by doing their own versions and dragging people over. I hope they evangelise how people in the Valley operate and maybe inject their enthusiasm into Irish culture. Wouldn’t it be nice if the Paddy’s Valley idea wasn’t in anyway special and something that happens a lot?

In terms of brain power, I was chatting to some of the Irish CEOs that were attending the Leadership 4 Growth (their use of a number, not mine) in Stanford and I was saying that the PV group as a whole would make a great sounding board for any company.

There’s talk of a meetup in January where the PV crew will talk about their experiences. Anyone interested in coming along and picking the brains of everyone?

Thanks to everyone that came to Paddy’s Valley, we all rocked. 🙂

Photo sets: Marcus, Jess, Conor, others

Fluffy Links – Tuesday December 11th 2007

Tuesday, December 11th, 2007

Some pictures from the ground-breaking, historical, game-changing, buzztastic Paddy’s Valley.

John Gormley is blogging from Bali. Loving the sandals. He always wore them though, right?

Self Notes, a new sevice from Sxoop.

Well, you had the chance to win Wii’s now you have a chance to win three Skype Phones from Three via 3 Mobile Buzz. Just write a blog post or do a video or something creative as to why you should win them.

Get Tom Waits’ “Christmas Card from a Hooker … ” to number one for Christmas in Ireland.

The eircom innovation fund application form is now online. (Link to word doc.)

Oh god. Fine Gael kids want an Enda song to get into the charts.

Another one of those truth in advertising videos:

Enterprise Ireland and the Geneva Convention

Monday, December 10th, 2007

For all of those who still live in fear of Enterprise Ireland, you better stop associating with me now because in the near future I’ll become a lot more critical of this useless state body and if you think you’ll be tarred with the same brush, then stay away, starting now. What am I on about? It seems that article from the Tribune that quoted my thoughts on EI has gotten some attention that others surrounding the Paddy’s Valley tour wish to distance themselves from. Fair enough. No really. I don’t and will not take the EI soup so I can be brutally blunt about them while many can’t. This is the relationship many people have with Enterprise Ireland, one which I consider to be an abusive one where people alter their behaviour for fear of being punished. That’s how many voluntary orgs get controled by the Government when they give them funding and they rely on it.

Consider this my Geneva Convention style declaration though. Trouble is coming. Abandon all association with me from here onwards if you worry about grants and feasibility studies and them being affected somehow via me.

I won’t comment any more in public of my experience of EI during Paddy’s Valley (I will talk about it in private though) but in future I won’t be staying quiet for anyone else’s sake. So if any company interacts with me via the Blog Awards, Web Awards or other events I organise, accept any potential fallout or stay the fuck away.

I’m back but so is

Monday, December 10th, 2007

This. Left side all pins and needles and numbness. Hmm.

Paddy’s Valley and Jerry Yang, just hanging, as you do

Saturday, December 8th, 2007

Nothing will be bigger than the first trip. For years people will be talking about this. Full writeup on this trip when I get back but as well as the impressive Valley people, those that came from Ireland are bloody impressive too. Some very clever people who if given the right opportunities could make Ireland a better place by building great companies. Were I a businessperson I’d be watching all of them with interest.

Yahoo! meets Paddy's Valley

Spot the difference

Saturday, December 8th, 2007

Value Ireland points out some of their blog posts and some articles from the Indo. Interesting out.

Indo attack bloggers yet want them to work for them for free

Friday, December 7th, 2007

Fuck off. Seriously guys, go fuck yourselves.

As has been noted elsewhere, the Indo have had a nice aul go at bloggers for the past while, even making up stuff about Beaut.ie yet at the same time they’ve been approaching people to blog on their site. For free. First of all, for free? I’d blog for free for the Irish Times (only if they paid me to do something else for a lot) but not for anyone else and my god would you honestly associate yourself with that lot. I don’t want the readership of the Indo as my personal audience, I’m quite happy with the better though smaller crowd that hang around here.