Archive for June, 2008

Foodie Blogging: The Still Restaurant in the Dylan Hotel

Monday, June 30th, 2008

Had a lovely meal in the Dylan last night. We started with Gazpacho which was presented as a plate with the bread, a basil and cress thingy on the bread and tomato foam around it and then the waitress poured the gazpacho from a mini-jug around the bread:

Gazpacho

For the main meal was Sea Bream with borlotti bean purée & Spanish ham(yay Spain):
Sea Bream

Quenelle of Cheese Cake, with sablé crumble, raspberry coulis and filo crackers:

cheesecake

National Broadband Scheme – Strange Bedfellows

Monday, June 30th, 2008

While rumour on Boards.ie is that the National Broadband Scheme is canceled, despite providers being brought this far, heres some interesting (for me) data about it. Just looking at more FOI’d documents from the Department of Communications and the list of companies and consortiums who applied for the National Broadband Scheme tender:

Wirefree
Eircom
BroadNet (Motorola & Azotel Consortium)
3 Ireland
BT, Wirefree & Avanti Consortium
Avanti Broadband
Crimson Tide
Clearwire, Motorola Consortium
IFA, Motorola Consortium
UPC, Enet, BT Consortium
Smart, Enet, Last Mile, Permanet Consortium

Fluffy Links – Monday June 30th 2008

Monday, June 30th, 2008

I’m at the SaleForce.com Tour De Force event today so blogging is going to be light. I met some of the folks last night and they’re some of the friendliest bunch of tech people I’ve encountered. Here’s some stuff to keep you slightly entertained while blogging is light.

Beer and food competition from Bubble Brothers.

M83 are back again.

Via 12 Stories. Are you a visual thinker?

Solar powered plant pot. I like.

For the Philip Pullman fans.

New blog – The Connolly Column. From Cob H.

Marketing’s Wheel of Misfortune.

Passion Pit. Yay.

Nodal Points. William Gibsontastic.

IrishTimes.com is live – Shane’s blog not on new site

Sunday, June 29th, 2008

IrishTimes.com, the new site for the Irish Times and with another new design is now live. First reaction is I’m not too gone on it, too like the Guardian Berliner design. I liked the old white background. I don’t like the cream coloured background. It also looks like Shane’s fantastic blog, mothballed as it is, is not on the new site. Meaning that our cries and foot-stamping shouts of “You’ll be back, they always come back” were wrong. Jim’s is still there and Conor’s as is Mark Hennessy’s blog. No new blogs yet. Please please bring in new bloggers.

“Safe as Houses” – aKING

Sunday, June 29th, 2008

Via Fabulist:

“Safe as Houses” by aKING

Irish Times removes paywall from Monday

Saturday, June 28th, 2008

Paywall removed, moving to IrishTimes.com, Ireland.com to become a portal.

Via Eoin and a really shitty press release comes news that the Irish Times are going online and are moving domain for the freeness to IrishTimes.com and keeping Ireland.com for premium stuff. The last bit is a little stupid really. All those links with “Irish Times” are now going to Ireland.com which is going to become a “portal” on all things Ireland. Great…

The Irish Times will publish on the web under its own title online from Monday morning with the launch of a new site, www.irishtimes.com. The site will be free to access by readers.

The move to irishtimes.com is designed to make the newspaper the dominant media website in Ireland in the 21st century. The change from a subscription model to a free newspaper on irishtimes.com is a further instalment in the biggest editorial development programme in the history of the newspaper embarked upon last February with the redesign and modernisation of The Irish Times and the launch of new supplements.

The new ireland.com will combine relevant content across a range of channels, local services and search functionality in a manner that has not been seen in Ireland before. The new site is aimed at Irish internet users or people elsewhere with an interest in Ireland and all things Irish.

Here’s what I predicted at the start of the year, so more to do:

The Irish Times will open up
While some won’t want to see the paymodel go away after defending it for years, the paywalls at the Irish Times will fall away and traffic will go up and up, making this quality paper rightly go up in rankings for all things Ireland. The Irish Times will internally consider buying Beaut.ie or asking Kieran Murphy from IceCreamIreland to do a weekly piece for their food and lifestyle blog. Nothing might happen though.

I’m hearing I’m going to be wrong on the blogs. They’re still greatly disliked in there.

Anyway, overall fantastic news, lets see how these stats look in two months.

Hot Garda Cam Action

Friday, June 27th, 2008

No, not really. Found this on YouTube:

So you think you can write?

Friday, June 27th, 2008

A kind of followup to this post about what to write and this post about WordPress installs. Even with guides on what to write, some companies still don’t feel able to blog and I’m getting queries more and more from people asking me to supply names of people or companies that work in the copy writing/blog post writing business. However I smack their knuckles with a ruler if they suggest ghost writers. I won’t supply names to them for that. If I hear you ghost write for business blogs, I won’t recommend you either. Blogging is all about real people and real engagement, remember?

Multimedia message
Photo owned by janetmck (cc)

The same way I’m getting a public list of WordPress Installers together, I’d like to put a list of people together that are willing to write blog copy (and get attribution) for businesses. The idea would be too you’d work with the company to eventually bring some of their staff into the blogging lark on their blog. If you think you can write non-PR bullshit and engage the public on behalf of a business, stick your name down in the comments and maybe areas you are good at writing about already.

Fluffy Links – Friday June 27th 2008

Friday, June 27th, 2008

I love this post from Maryam. Amazing how people can change depending on who they interact with.

Nice blog, 12 stories in 12 months.

New blog: Double Negative.Yeah right.

Swasticow the full length movie. Gott Ja.

Cian Foley from Slang.ie has a new book out – For Focal Sake.

Via Roosta101 PhotoShop tips in 5 Minutes.

Dublin free WiFi is actually ripoff expensiveFi.

What do Creative Generalists do?


Ahhh 404 errors
, oldies but.

Check out Slow Club
This is a song called “Me and You” but their song “Dance til the morning light” really rocks.

Fun in the morning at Darklight

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

Please do come along to Darklight in the morning. I’m going and I’m going to get my book signed by the guy who wrote it. Niall of the Larkins will be on the panel (and he’s the one who gave me the book! .6 degrees of these days) and Legs-a-Jimbo from the Times. I promise I’ll make my contributions tense, edgy and darkly funny. Then y’all can also attend the Web 3.0 talk right after.

[Disclaimer: I received the platinum status appearance fee (€8,327.24) to be on this panel. This post is very much paid for]

Lines of Communication
Photo owned by Martin Kingsley (cc)

[or maybe not]