Archive for July, 2008

My Top Ten Sites as per the Google Spy Machine

Saturday, July 5th, 2008

Despite disabling it years ago, Google Web History was kind enough to log all my searches since October 2005. I’d advise seeing what they opted you in to without permission or due to “bugs”.

Anyways, it seems these are the sites I use most after doing searches:
Top sites
1. en.wikipedia.org
2. www.youtube.com
3. www.answers.com
4. www.imdb.com
5. www.linkedin.com
6. www.techcrunch.com
7. www.bebo.com
8. www.engadget.com
9. www.amazon.com
10. www.boards.ie

I use Facebook 10 times more than I use Bebo so I dunno where that came from.

This site: http://www.irf.com/ is the one I apparently clicked 5th most in 2.5 years. Uhm, I’ve never been to this site until I saw it in my history.

Some end of day, end of week bits – (Not Fluffy)

Friday, July 4th, 2008

The Oireachtas web elves want your views on their websites. Fill out this survey. Maybe if more people said how god awful the Dáil Debate pages were, they might change them into something easier to deal with. It is 2008 afterall. A feed for what a TD and Senator says, please?

On the same tack. Look at what the UK Gov services you can access inc OSI data. Via.

Boards.ie continues to evolve. Some ancient members don’t want some of the new profile updates to be opt-in not opt-out. With recent upgrades you can see who’s been looking at your profile.

Justin points out numerous stories about Amazon’s EC2 servers being used for spam.

Fox News photoshopped photos of people they attacked to make them uglier without informing people the photos were doctored.

SligoToday.ie / The Day Today?

Friday, July 4th, 2008

Sligo Today with their website SligoToday.ie and video:

The Day Today with Alan Partridge:

I got to 30 seconds

Friday, July 4th, 2008

Via Alexia, can you watch the whole thing?

edit: Nope it ain’t.

Minister Eamon Ryan’s Broadband Promises

Thursday, July 3rd, 2008

In summary, the ten Government commitments are:

1. Government will target capital investment of €435m to address the digital divide
2. Universal broadband coverage in Ireland by late 2009 / early 2010
3. 100 Mbits per second broadband connectivity to be introduced to secondary schools on a phased basis
4. Future investment will be determined in accordance with value for money review of the Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs)
5. Ensure Ireland’s continued high level of international connectivity
6. Major public infrastructure projects will have to install ducting at the construction phase. Government will establish a one stop shop to provide service providers with flexible and open access to existing and future ducting infrastructure
7. New premises will be required to install open access fibre connections where practicable
8. Maintenance of the regulatory framework necessary for fair and transparent competition across a range of platforms. Allocation of spectrum to encourage trialling and development of flexible new mobile technologies
9. Use of Government purchasing power in order to stimulate demand, create economies of scale and better public services
10. Establishment of a specialised research programme to monitor developments

1. Let’s see how much is really spent, sounds to be like fantastic number playing going on here. Is this their annual telecoms spend being used?
2. Universal Satellite Coverage is what they mean. Half the schools in this country are on satellite. Proper wired or wireless broadband is not going to be ubiquitous in 5 years let alone this ambition. And even then it won’t be the broadband the rest of the OECD has. It’s mobile dialup people have these days and the Government call it mobile broadband.
3. A few schools are already connected to the Metropolitan Area Networks. Fantastic. BUT half the schools in the country are on satellite (as above), how are they going to even get close to a MAN to get those connections. D4 and private schools can rejoice. Rural schools… tough. Show me the plan on how this will be done.
4. A waste of time looking into this. The Govt are not going to slam their own investments.
5. That’s paying the fucking bills Minister That’s like saying we’ll continue to have the lights turned on because we put 50p in the meter.
6. Brilliant. Brilliant. Well done. When does this start?
7. Again brilliant.
8. The regulator is a mess, it needs to be replaced with a regime that gives a damn about consumers and business and not keeping the large telcos happy. Oh and not take every issue as being a personal attack. Bring in ofcom.
9. Brilliant. Well done. Go team Eamo.
10. You mean a PR FUD team? Have we not enough?

The Irish Web Awards – October 11th 2008, Dublin

Thursday, July 3rd, 2008

The Irish Web Awards are a go. Contract signed with the Radisson SAS in Dublin for October 11th. Rick O’Shea will be the MC. You may have heard of him. Same informalities as the Blog Awards: no bland meal, no tux requirements, no having to pay to nominate a website, no paying 200 quid to attend. Also judging criteria will be public. It will not be a popularity contest so the site or people with the most friends will not win for anything other than having the best site out there.

080516 trophies
Photo owned by Dan4th (cc)

There’s a pending announcement of the critera for the Web Awards (you can still contribute here) and the 20 or so categories for the Awards will be announced in two weeks.

I’ll be looking for sponsorship and require one headline sponsor and a sponsor for each category too. Like the Blog Awards, for category sponsorship I’d prefer to see smaller businesses with the intent that they will get as much from the Awards as those nominated. Now here’s a shocker. If you sponsor the overall event or any category then you CANNOT be nominated in any category.

If you’re interested in sponsorship (I don’t have prices worked out yet) then give me a bell on IrishAwards@gmail.com

Facebook Ad Competition – Best Irish Facebook Ad Campaign

Thursday, July 3rd, 2008

In brief: The Facebook Ad/Ad Campaign that gets the best stats (you have to share/export them for proof) wins 100 quid.

Terms are that at least 7 people have to enter this competition in order for the money to be given out. Winning because it’s a one horse race wastes my money! By stats I mean clicks, not views. It’s a campaign targeting Irish users of Facebook. You can’t be deceptive promising free stuff or begging for clicks.

And how will you pay for the ads you run? Alexia and Dave pointed out that Visa will give you a hundred dollars worth of free Facebook Ads if you add their application to your profile.

Here’s a guide I wrote to running a Facebook Ad Campaign. So you have no excuse.

You can run the campaign over a month. You can only spend 100 dollars. Are you mental spending any more than the free money?

Reason I’m doing this is I don’t think we have enough case studies yet to see what works and doesn’t work for Facebook Ads, especially from an Irish perspective so I think it’s worth the expenditure.

IXS_1792
Photo owned by acme (cc)

Millions (well over a Million) come to Mulley.net

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008

I started logging traffic using Statcounter on June 11th 2005. The number on the counter thingy hit a million a few hours ago. That’s a million unique visitors. Not hits. Not pageviews. I’m quite happy that on average I’m getting 330k unique visitors a year to this blog. I’m happy with that but happier with the repeat visitors. Those that stop by each morning or are subscribed and read the blog in a feed reader or by email. Thank you all for visiting and coming back. The majority of you have made me a better blogger. Some of you would really want to lighten up though! 🙂

Party on Garth! Reach for the lasers:
DISCO FEVER!
Photo owned by ir0cko (cc)

Interesting 2008 – Take Aways

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008

Late for the party? Totally. But at least I was there.

So Interesting 08 happened a few weeks ago (June 21st 2008) at Conway Hall in London and life has been so hectic that I’ve not had time to talk about it til now. Tom Hopkins blogged his thoughts on it as did Colm “Gold Medal Limbo Dancer” Brophy and Alexia.

The crowd: (Photo by Bowbrick)
Interesting 2008

So what is it? Well it’s a gathering of people that know Russell Davies and who go up on a stage and talk about something they think is interesting for about 3 minutes. Some got 6 mins though! Lots and lots of presentations based on the tastes of these random folks. And it really worked. The talks were all over the place and so brought in new areas for most people. The youngfella who designed the new UK coinage also gave a talk. And the chap that did that amazing Radiohead remix was there too. I went to enjoy myself and to also wonder could we have something like that here too. I think the rules stated no talking blogs, twitter or technology as such.

It was amazingly informal and as Tom above noted the crowd were patient and understanding and amazingly behaved. We gave everyone attention and appreciated their effort. No grub was provided, the attitude being you could find a local cafe at lunch. There was tea and coffee but again it was a help yourself attitude. The whole thing was very English. From the country hall feel to the building, to the bunting, to the singing (yes a sing song), to the tea and nice biscuits and the overall nice to be nice attitude. I loved it.

Roo Reynolds gave the first talk on Lego and also pointed out all the other talks in this post.

There’s also a Rememble Interesting 2008 media timeline.

In the pub after I got to talk to the amazing Dave Funkypancake. Who takes photos. A lot of photos.

Will McInnes. The Robin Hood of social media and analytics.

Also met the rockin Annie Mole who has a blog on the London Underground. Sorry to be all transport geeky but what a great idea for a blog and no wonder it’s hugely popular. Oh and I’m subbed and finding brilliant brilliant stuff on it.

Josie got herself a big chunky tattoo made with marker too. As one does.

So dya think we could have an Interesting for Ireland? What would you talk about?

New Irish Times blogger – Bryan Mukandi

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008

Hooray. Bryan will be writing the OutsideIn blog.