Archive for July, 2008

Perlico Advertising Complaints

Thursday, July 31st, 2008

The industry run Advertising Standards authority brought out their latest report two weeks ago. Perlico show up a good bit. Here, here, here and here. All complaints about them were upheld.

Most of the complaints were about pricing issues and dodgy terms and conditions as well as this famous deceptive flyer but one was about the fact that Perlico billed their 1Mb broadband package as “superfast”. They aren’t allowed to do that anymore.

Dept of Comms refuses to disclose their telco assets

Thursday, July 31st, 2008

Eames Solicitors sent in this Freedom of Information request:

Reports which relate to the telecommunications assets of the State or State owned bodies, one of which relates to Project Dingle.

The Department says yup, you probably mean this report: “Potential for Enhancing and Augmenting SemiState Telecommunicaton Assets”. Then tells them due to commercial sensitive information in the report and because of the deliberation process of Government decisions, they can’t provide it. Application refused. Eames appealed. Again refused.

All details here in this pdf and this one.

Uh, so why can’t the public find out what taxpayer paid for assets are and what the Government is doing with them?

Things you can say on a blog that you can’t to your “public”

Thursday, July 31st, 2008

Sometimes you can be more open and honest with strangers than with friends and family. What can be too much information for a friend isn’t for some strangers. I think many blogs are handy confessionals, like post secret.

Unfortunately my friends who don’t blog are now reading this blog and many who read this blog have become some of my best friends so I seem to be hamstrung just a little when it comes to making this a dear diary thing. But almost like the way people ask philosophical-like questions at 4am while being half-stoned, why not go and ask in public a question or thought you had but kept to yourself?

Here’s my contribution:

How come within minutes of eating asparagus, your wee smells of it? It’s the same for coffee.

grilled asparagus
Photo owned by woodleywonderworks (cc)

Oh what, you thought I was going to be high brow or intellectual? Pah.

RTE Auction for an OLPC

Thursday, July 31st, 2008

Auction here.

Money goes to charidee. Part of their Global Classroom week.

Winner gets an OLPC and the money goes to a third world charity. Current bid is around €60€150.

Surely a company will get into the bidding? G’wan.

OLPC

10 years of Irish conversations

Thursday, July 31st, 2008

Boards.ie are giving away all their collected data. That’s 10 years of posts and threads from massively massive discussion site Boards.ie and all now available for download. It’s a bold and open move. And very exciting.

And if that’s not enough, there’s a bloody big competition for people to do interesting things with the data. The most interesting apps or thingymabobs win prizes:
* The first prize is an Amazon voucher for $4000 (~€2500)
* The second prize is a voucher for $2000 (~€1250)
* The third prize is a voucher for $1000 (~€625)

See more here on John Breslin’s blog.

I’ve love a Google News/Boards.ie mashup and a timeline kind of thing. Pick a date from a timeline, see the main news from Google and then see how people on Boards.ie reacted.

Or pick a few brands that became over the past few years and plot the rise of them. Sociology and Anthropology researchers will have a field day with these things.

When was the first mention of x on boards.ie and the first use of “celtic tiger” etc. etc.

Screw Google’s zeitgeist, what was the most linked to site in 1998, 1999, 2003?

Well done the Boards.ie owners for doing such a thing.

Cuil.com search test second life
Photo owned by llawliet (cc)

Fluffy Links – Thursday July 31st 2008

Thursday, July 31st, 2008

New Blogs:
Trust Tommy.

Narocroc.

Ant Galvin’s blog.

Well finally, Sligo Today launched and they’re getting thousands of hits a day. Yeah, take that.

Heard Gerry O’Beirne on Pearl’s show on Phantom. No way will I pay $17.50 for a cd these days. or $15.50 for a digital download. Sorry.

Ben on his Mobile Me package.

Netroots Nation Keynote.

XP on the OLPC seems to be shit.

Meanwhile some people think Vista rocks when told it’s not Vista. Hmm.

I’m a cynic but Obama would have known this would happen.

Dexter season 3. Yawn.

Viz Sizemore

All Change – The great blog switcheroo

Wednesday, July 30th, 2008

English Mum was on to me about a nice idear she had with others. They all hijacked swapped their blogs about.

From here to here and to here.

No blogs were harmed. etc.

Musical Chairs
Photo owned by mysticchildz (cc)

Upcoming training bits and bobs

Wednesday, July 30th, 2008

The actual business blog for my new company will be set up in the next while on a different domain so these self-promotional things will go away then and it’s back to slagging politicians and the town of Muff. Promise.

Next week is the Media Training course in Dublin. August 6th in the afternoon. Takes place in the lovely Radisson Hotel. Also home of the Web Awards, dontchaknow.

The Cork Media Training event will happen mid-August. Dates will follow.

On Wednesday, 15th October, at the ICS Headquarters in Crescent Hall and in association with said Irish Computer Society I’ll be doing a day-long course on Business Blogging. Contact them if you want to sign up.

On Wednesday, 29th October, again with the ICS in Dublin I’ll be doing a day-long course on New Communications and Online Marketing.

There’s also versions of these (in assoc. with another org) going to happen in Cork. Possibly Limerick too.

I think I’m doing some free talk with it@cork in October as well. Stay tuned.

Clagett Farm CSA 2008 Week 5
Photo owned by thebittenword.com (cc)

Yeah I dunno why I have beans in the pic. Colour.

Fluffy Links – Wednesday July 30th 2008

Wednesday, July 30th, 2008

Last day to give feedback about IrishBlogs.ie

Swear I’m not Paul. Another music blog but pretty damned good all the same.

More Muff.

Joomla to wordpress importer from Cathal.

A Bebo page for Roches Stores. RIP.

I began Life as a simple furniture store and expanded to Cork’s largest dept. store hiring many a mouldy college student to stack shelves and hook up.

The Beeb have at Stephen Fry about Apple.

Steve Jobs, arrogant fuck. Love it.

Might as well face it.

Via Joel, it seems Second Life is fueled by the sale of women’s dresses in the virtual world. Just like we have a recession in Ireland due to the housing issues, will we see the same if the market is flooded with dresses and too many people overspend on them?

This was in April but is still good. How to prevent your daughter from becoming a vegetarian.

Helicopters going upside down, just rock:

Now that’s a gig

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

People should play gigs in houses more. Or backgardens.

Una covers it too.

Kind of goes back to the Stations blog post I write way back when.