Archive for September, 2008

Fluffy Links – Saturday 27th September 2008

Saturday, September 27th, 2008

Since I missed them yesterday.

So are the Golden Spiders going through the short lists of the Irish Web Awards, pimping for business? If they are, great, because all those sites deserve the attention. Pity they’re being asked to cough up money and pay to play at the Spiders.

Free book!

The Websters’ Dictionary aims to educate on the web’s potential to motivate groups and enact change on broader issues, all while keeping in mind the complexities inherent in organizing movements online.

Well that demo about the Property Market did well. Tonnes of coverage including the Indo.

Amherst college.

Students in the class of 2012 who registered computers, IPhones, game consoles, etc. on the campus network by the end of the day on August 24th, the day they moved into their dorm rooms: 370 students registered 443 devices.

Fabulist has a great piece on George Formby and his wife.

They were not, they were told, to perform before black or mixed audiences. They were to perform to whites only. Beryl got on the phone – ‘Why don’t you piss off, you horrible little man?’, she declared, and hung up.

George and Beryl cancelled their planned tour. They performed instead a free 20-show circuit, to black shanty-towns and halls only.

The wine tasting at Bubble Brothers went well. Julian blogs it up.

So Google patented a phone that can easily and automatically switch carriers in an area depending on price. Yeah, all you need then is a set of mobile carriers that are cutthroat and are not in a comfortable monopoly/duopoly/rigged market. Not going to happen anytime soon is it?

The Earth Dies Screaming: Tom Waits music set to 28 Weeks Later:

Are you one of the 300 Web Awards Warriors?

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

Update: Forgot to thank The Ken for this. Yes, THE Ken, he’s so cool he has a The before his name.

Moviestar Irish Web Awards

Irish Comms Minister uses Boards.ie to get feedback.

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

I’m impressed. Post here. And it was him, not a handler or some joker.

The event the Minister is inviting people to is a roundtable discussion or rather 12 tables of people discussing the Broadband issues. Representatives from Govt, the telcos, consumers, the regulator and wider industry will be at each table, if I correctly recall what I was told.

Places are limited so if you want to have your voice heard you can join the NGB discussion forum on Spammado
and give your replies to questions there. It’s very odd though that the forum is marked as private and invite only. It should be made public for people to read the replies from people. It also has pathetic rules (stored in a powerpoint file)such as “We will delete any bad language!”.

How does one call bullshit in a succint way? When you do enter that forum (if given access), you’ll see it almost right away.

Despite all those issues, please do try and join and get your opinion viewed. If you have issues let me know, you can always post your comments here.

Ry Cooder – I knew these people

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

This is from the Paris, Texas soundtrack. The video is boring footage. Just listen to the audio if you have about 9 minutes to spare.

McCain suspends Letterman appearance, Letterman pays him back

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

Makes lots of sense too…

Fluffy Links – Thursday 25th September 2008

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

Richard is giving away two tickets to the Web Awards. Might be worth applying. Looks like we’re going to reach capacity within a week for the Awards.

Congrats to MAXroam going white label and allowing companies to become resellers.

Is Eoin O’Dell on performance enhancing chemicals from his Jamaican cousins? He’s on fire of late on his blog.

New blog: Whoopsadaisy

Thanks to Ian for the hat tip – Get chocolate business cards in Ireland with Print Delicious. No cards in your arse pocket from now on!

Website from a chap in Limerick – On The Map

Irish Tech Company? Get yourself listed on TechCrunch’s Crunchbcase.

Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference.

It ain’t just Irish newspapers that rip off bloggers. UK wholesale.

Using the Mechanical Turk for audio transcription.

National Day of Volunteering in Ireland is this Friday. Do.

Web 2.0 Expo NY: Gary Vaynerchuk (Wine Library), Building Personal Brand Within the Social Media Landscape

Fluffy Links – Wednesday September 24th 2008

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008

Don’t forget to register for the Web Awards if you want to come along.

Irish Web Awards? Nah, try the Irish Hair Awards.

I’m giving a talk at the Irish Computer Society today. Call in and say hello.

The Spanish wine tasting is 2:45 on Thursday now.

This is a beautiful blog post from Robert J. Hogan.

Nice tips on how to get media attention. Worth bookmarking.

We can now map the fuzz zones in Ireland or some of them anyway,

Dear RTE, please create this app for the iPhone. An iPhone app to citizen journalism. Clever. Well done CBS.

Chocolate and typography. Yes please!

Fun with writers for hire. The Best film ever made.

I commissioned an essay from a supplier of tailor-made academic essays. I requested a 1500 word essay that was to “prove that Junior… is the best film ever made.” This essay was to make reference to various writers including Freud, Barthes, Baudrillard and Jameson in proving it’s case.

Piracy:
Spore becomes the most pirated game ever, one reason probably being because they filled it with crappy anti-piracy protections.

The prophesy comes true.

Kottke also adds this take from Kevin Kelly:

Anything that made purchasing and starting to play difficult — like copy protection, DRM, two-step online purchasing routines — anything at all standing between the impulse to play and playing in the game itself was seen as a legitimate signal to take the free route.

First look at the Google phone.

Tuesday Push 23rd September 2008 – DownloadMusic.ie

Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008

Download Music

Probably an established brand in the Irish Web Scene these days, DownloadMusic.ie is a simple service with all the complex stuff hidden away. Buy music off the site or via their SMS shortcode. You get a copy sent to the phone and to an online download link so you can have a copy on your computer too. All for a euro.

I’ve already covered the album that they brought out. One of the guys behind the site is Johnny Beirne who has been a music fan forever and always has been involved with independent music in Ireland so this site sprung from his passion in this area. Some of the best businesses out there have been created by people that have been immersed in their market and want to improve it or see a painpoint that can be addressed.

If you’ve not seen DownloadMusic.ie before, go and have a look.

If you want your technology/product listed on the Tuesday Push, then fill in this form here. We’re not interested in some rebadged or reskinned piece of technology, you have to have added some kind of IP to your service. To see the benefits of the Tuesday Push, read Gordon’s blog post on it.

Conor is on the Late Late this Friday

Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008

This Conor. The last time I tuned into the Late Late and Pat the Plank was to watch another set of brothers – Patrick and John Collison. Monsieur Prendergrast will be on along with his brother Daragh to talk about Civil Partnership and how it affects his parents, Ann and Bernadette.

It’s great to see real stories from real people around this area and not people wanting to boost a political career or play political games. I couldn’t personally give a damn about marriage or marriage equality, I’d want equal tax rights and family rights if I was in a longterm relationship with someone of the same sex. It seems that most of the campaigns around the issue of gay rights forget about the kids and rights of and access to the kids. Without going too off the topic, the rights kids have now even if their parents are legally married are crap and the father and mother have different rights too.

Campaigning for gay couples to have a clone of marriage is backwards and it makes me think all these campaigns have never talked to the many people like Conor and his mums or real non-textbook heterosexual couples and their kids and the issues they face.

Disclosure: I’m one of those gays, apparently I’ve been too ambiguous about that. I’ll now go back to protecting the Kylie Wikipedia entry.

Fluffy Links – Tuesday September 23rd 2008

Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008

The Web Awards organising still roars on soaking up all my time. Oh yes, register if you want to attend. 100 people are coming so far. Luckily Mulley Communications Ltd is now my full time gig so I can dedicate some time to it.

Post the Roast for this week is up.

Eighty stories, twenty photos, one book, ready in time for Christmas, all proceeds to Focus Ireland. A bloggers’ book?

The slide cast of the pitch for Decisions for Heroes.

Julian points out another RTE cookery show looking for contestants.

Google’s own docs show that people can’t tell the difference between ads and search results on Google? They were selling this as a plus to potential advertisers. Youch. That’s not balanced or impartial.

How Social Media Can Help Your PR Efforts

RTE plagiarism? Once instance only?

50 amazing tour posters

History of NYC’s Internet community by Fred Wilson.

Cisco virtualizes the Data Centre.

Minimal Sites. Yum.

Via Colm Brophy: Fucked up kiddies slide. Is this real?