Archive for October, 2008

Fluffy Links – Tuesday October 14th 2008

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008

They’ve not gone away you know. The fluffy links that is.

Web Awards summary of summaries.

Post the Roast is up too.

Like David, this is my fav Web Awards picture.

David Behan has a good post about the Internet being good for recession times.

And it seems now *is* a good time to be building and working on the web.

So, what is effective blogging? If you’re a hired hand or blogging for business, can you have unrestrained passion which sets your blog apart?

Mick’s Garage have a blog, well done lads.

Alex also has a blog too!

Graphs lie.


Gary Vaynerchuk on ROI and online spend
and marketing in today’s world. Guy is a ledgebag.

Google give tips on how to generate more inbound links.

Via Enda: Antony and the Johnsons – Another World

Web Awards Intro:

lolcats at Web Awards

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008

Via Boards.ie

Locats at Web Awards

So I knocked the power out during the videos and

Monday, October 13th, 2008

people assumed it was a Windows error. I get the thing going again and this is what happens:

Again, without any advanced prep, Rick, Brian and the guys from Spunout adlib. Listen to the enthusiasm from the crowd. Best Web Awards ever! But then this was Year Zero.

Almost back to normal round these parts

Sunday, October 12th, 2008

Fall in love with the Web Again

I’m going to have a week of thank yous as a result of an amazing night at the Moviestar.ie Irish Web Awards. Right now though I’m kind of brainfried so have a look at Tommy C’s post on the night and videos, at Peter D’s post here AND another here. (Greedy ain’t he?) And Keith’s post here too. Anyone else done posts?

Update: State, Alexia, Richard, Ken and me. David D. John Williams. Jennifer (Get well!).

Irish Times print coverage.

Photo above is from Keith’s Irish Web Awards photoset.

Web Awards a few hours away

Saturday, October 11th, 2008

The Web Awards are a few hours away and things will go wrong, I know that for certain after three Blog Awards but it won’t change a great night and a great event. So much is going to be happening and can’t be stopped that it’s going to be framazing. (This word made sense when I wrote it) Thanks to so many people that have been helping out in the background too who I’ll thank on the evening.

Minister Eamon Ryan’s Next Gen Broadband Forum – Constructive, depressive and with the odd spacer

Wednesday, October 8th, 2008

To summarise the event in one sentence: We all want fibre-like broadband and we want it everywhere but we’re fucked infrastructure wise.

And now follows a longer summary:
I previously wrote about how Eamon Ryan put a half-day open forum together on Next Generation Broadband. He even went on Boards.ie to announce it. I got to go along, along with Damien Callan from Bleep.ie and a few other folks including general consumers and people from Boards.ie. The structure was a room with 14 tables and around each table were civil servants, telco people, people from the EU, consumers/campaigners and other interested parties. In other words, a very good mix, though it all depended on who was at your table. Some fantastic minds happened to be at mine.

Coober Pedy
Photo owned by jnpk1979 (cc)

It was almost table-quiz in structure as we were given table questions to consider and give answers to over a number of rounds. Each table had someone that would then communicate what the table had decided. Some were good and feedback from people after told me some had their agenda already set and gave that.

Mostly the topics dealt with state assets, future trends, the best way to get everyone broadband, the digital divide etc. Some of the questions were stupid though such as asking to decide on a max and minimum speed by 2010, 2015 and further. Really! Jesus. Targets once set have most energy around them dedicated to rigging them as I happily pointed out to the Dept of Comms rep at the table. (big fan of you by the way dude, love your memos that I got under FOI.) The rep’s Department have lied for years about broadband levels and every Minister with them. Whatever someone wants was my answer and our aim should not be a speed because every prediction has been beyong wrong, it should be whatever the person or business wants. 100Mb, no problem, a gig, no problem. I argued strongly for that.

Then came a typically backwards-thinking question and one that gets my brainblood boiling: What is the killer app for broadband? Dedicating time to figuring out a “killer app” for a medium is wasteful and isn’t addressing the issue. What’s the killer app for water? What’s the killer app for electricity? See, they’re utilities, they don’t need killer apps. (David Isenberg points to a Jupiter survey that shows people will stop going to the movies and paying for movie channels well before giving up their Net) “The killer app” for broadband (were it to exist) is broadband. A free and open pipe and have the world build things in, on and around it.

jenga
Photo owned by iwona_kellie (cc)

After the tablequizims, there were breakout sessions to discuss various things and then we all came back together to discuss the results of them. And then something odd happened, despite the whole general feeling of the day about needing of more speeds and better connections the Assistant Secretary General of the Department of Communications stood up and summarised the day and the state of Ireland and said that from the day we see people don’t need or use fast broadband connections and sure all they do is send emails anyway. Planet Nothere called and want their spacer back. Maybe he’s a nice guy, I hear he is but stating that nobody uses their 20mb connection for anything more than email is devoid of reality or just a plain fucking lie and it’s obvious that the Department can do that very well.

So was it just a talking shop? some of the Boards.ie people think so. I don’t. It made the Civil Service do something new: Meet reality and the people that exist there. Not the telco people either but real Joe and Joanna Soaps. Happily ignoring people from an Ivory Tower and only interacting via highly controlled paper consultations didn’t happen. Real people spoke and shared.

What needed to happen though was that everyone there agreed on a todo list for the Department and the Department had to go off and carry some of them out and report back in 3 months. Reality-based todos that can be done, so at least it’s better than nothing at all. Action points were needed. Let’s hope if there is a next time it will have them.

Fluffy Links – Wednesday October 8th 2008

Wednesday, October 8th, 2008

Now you can print off your own A3 Web Awards and 300 mashup poster.

Marc McCabe has a blog. Yeah, loads of quips can be made.

Check out Victoria’s site.

Via Mick Marriot Fail

Hollywood is coming after creches!

Another new blog, to me.

Jeff Jarvis says it right. It wasn’t Citizen Journalism that made Apple stocks tank.

This is one brave and strong Catholic priest. Well done dude.

Geode looks interesting. Maybe it will mean you plug your GPS coords into your browser and you get far more localised search results and ads because they know where you are? And all opt-in too.

So just being in Silicon Valley on a frequent basis might be enough, besides having a fulltime office there.

Rolling Stone mag takes McCain apart.

As seen on – Aha – Take on me (but where they sing what’s happening in the vid)

How many Dark Knight mashups have there been now? I like this one though:

Yiz are all

Wednesday, October 8th, 2008

Via Jonathan.

Oh fuck

Hello European Commission folks!

Tuesday, October 7th, 2008

Seems my mug and that of Cian and Damian (and my wonderful Macbook Air) are on the front of the European Commission website at the moment. (Massive screencap here)

There’s a news item about the conference on Saturday. EC seem happy with how it went. Small screencap:
European Commission Blogging

I can smell the whiff of crayons being taken out of boxes right now as letters of complaint get written. Perhaps.

Tuesday Push – Oct 7th 2008 – LouderVoice

Tuesday, October 7th, 2008

LouderVoice for Business

They finally allowed us to give them a push. LouderVoice has been about for a good bit now and for those unaware of it, it’s a service that allows people to review anything they want and have the review republished to their blog or elsewhere. There are loads of ways to send in reviews too from Twitter and Jaiku (sub-niche site, don’t worry about it) to SMS.

I’ve done many a review on the site and it’s simplicity personified. The latest addition is a white-label type service that allows a business to import in their own reviews system that’s actually powered by LouderVoice. It’s called LouderVoice for Business. Now *thats* a very good idea. Like the tagline of “Connecting Commerce and Customers” too.

Conor O’Neill is the posterboy too for LouderVoice and is one of the greatest promoters of Irish tech talent I’ve ever encountered and it’s about time we talked him and his offering up since the Irish tech community would not be what it is without him.

For me, being a stats junkie, I’d love to see some kind of sentiment measurement for the site. X% like Sony products this week, general mood has increased y% etc. etc. Good luck too to LouderVoice who are shortlisted for the Moviestar.ie Web Awards.

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.