Archive for December, 2009

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Thursday, December 31st, 2009

Chocolate.

Every now and then I decide to give something up to appreciate it more or to see can I do it. I gave up booze for a year before, it was easy enough, tried to give up meat and fish for a year and lasted 3 months and for 2009 I’ve been off chocolate.

I’ve loaded up on 7 selection boxes (two were presents), some O’Conaill’s chocolate, Lindt chocolate and I was given a present of Butlers chocolate too.

photo

So did I miss it? Absolutely. I’ve been a chocoholic all my life and chocolate has been a comfort, a treat and a mood enhancer for me. Bad mood? Chocolate helps. Want to relax? Chocolate helps. Good work done today? Have some chocolate.

Will I appreciate chocolate more now? Perhaps, I don’t know. I’ve seen how the French appreciate good food including chocolate by taking small bites and appreciating every chew. Perhaps I’ll do that after first biting the head off a chocolate bunny I’ve nicknamed slugtard and swallowing in one go. After that I’ll train myself to take small bites and to chew.

So what am I going to give up for 2010? Well it was suggested I give up bad language, when I told others of that suggestion a mini-protest started. Apparently people like my strategic use of colourful language in person and on Twitter and this blog. It’s much easier to give something up though than take something on, as an old classmate said about Lent before. So maybe I’ll give something up and take something on. I’ll let you know what in a year.

Everybody

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

Nice take on this song, the album by the band “Yesterday and Today” is pretty good

Fluffy Links – Tuesday December 29th 2009

Tuesday, December 29th, 2009

Via Kieran Murphy – Married an Irish Farmer. A blog.

Nice piece on what teens really do and give a shit about.

Some pretty interesting mind/body hacks.

Rickrolling someone by programming a phones system. Nerdy++

Good video. Don’t let your genius go unnoticed.

This is cool. So they make cheap computers for the third world but they’re not all standard as they buy in lots of cheap hardware. Amend and adapt.

Via Denis‘ Flickr is this neon books bookshelf.

Nine Inch Nails amazing fan film, better than the real thing.

Remaking Smack my Bitch Up

and 25 years later

Monday, December 28th, 2009

Excerpt from David Ogilvy’s book on advertising:

There have always been noisy lunatics on the fringes of the advertising business. Their stock-in-trade includes ethnic humor, eccentric art direction, contempt for research, and their self-proclaimed genius. They are seldom found out because they gravitate to the kind of clients who, bamboozled by their rhetoric, do not hold them responsible for sales results. Their campaigns find favor at cocktail parties in New York, San Francisco and London but are taken less seriously in Chicago. In the days when I specialized in posh campaigns for The New Yorker, I was the hero of this coterie, but when I graduated to advertising in mass media and wrote a book which extolled the value of research, I became its devil. I comfort myself with the reflection that I have sold more merchandise than all of them put together

I had this quote in draft before I read about the 15,000+ social media experts on Twitter. Last night at the mini-nerdfest in Cork we chatted about that and the number of people out there coaching, empowering and facilitating companies to get into the social media lark. Hell, Mulley Communications made most of their turnover in 2009 from training and mentoring in social media like blogging, Facebook and to a small degree, Twitter. Though I’ve mostly encouraged companies not to take Twitter seriously until they get their web basics right to start with.

For a company to spend resources on any of this, they have to have goals and objectives to measure too. So while some of the social media ninjas (seriously they call themselves that) will tell you that in social media you can’t measure objectives and to enjoy your new emperor-like clothes or others tell you that once you get a social media certificate you have free reign to be an idiot online as you have your badge, there are growing numbers of people who will tell you the reality.

Everything must go
Photo owned by janetmck (cc)

This is a whole new world to most business people so they’ll latch on to people who call themselves experts and gurus that give them a checklist on how to appear genuine online (one such millionaire social media guru has such a list). It’s lazy by the business people to do this but they’re used to buying in communication skills and shortcuts. They might get burned and they’ll react badly but as all of the hype normalises and social media is as background as email then many of these shysters will disappear or more likely will attach themselves to the next hype curve. WAP experts, Y2K consultants, SEO experts, Twitter coaches will always be around in some form and many of them will be quite rich.

Closed businesses always react badly to change, miss the boat and then pay handsomely to catch up while still being afraid of the future and of course there are groups always willing to prey on that. 25 years since the above quote and it’s cycle after cycle. So maybe we shouldn’t react to the social media gurus who will be social business gurus in two years but instead react to closed-minded businesses that fuel this?

Santa: Believe but don’t believe all

Friday, December 25th, 2009

Rejected by Alexia for her Selection Box series.

Proud drinking in public ticketholders
Photo owned by Tirch (cc)

Do you know that Apple and Steve Jobs have modeled themselves on Santa? Fact. Steve did in his eye go to India and come back enlightened, he was in the North Pole. It’s not Steve Jobs that’s the best CEO and marketer around. It’s King Fatty himself and his Santa Corp. Creaming billions every year while being outside of the law. Even NORAD clear the skies for him.

The greatest trick the devil played was convincing the world he didn’t exist. So said some shortarse famous actor in some awful film. Santa Corp exists, is pretty much as bad as the mafia yet nobody does anything about it. How’s that for owning the market?

Some facts:

  • Santa Corp controls their comms very very strongly. What’s the last negative thing you’ve heard about Santa apart from being fat? Steve Jobs’ secrecy and paranoia is merely a milquetoast version of this.
  • Santa gets the kids and the adults to market his product, building an air of mystery. Yeah forget the Apple Tablet and all that. Santa Corp is hype central, again, Apple making their customers do their marketing is not a new thing.
  • Elves are real. In a squint your eye kind of way. Pretty much starved and inbred natives of the arctic circle who have been working in icey sweatshops for decades. China and Apple ain’t got nothing on this guy. Outsourced assembly is Santa Corp mastery.
  • North Pole? Tax haven. Centuries ahead of Cayman Islands, Liechtenstein and even Ireland. Google might dump their profits in Ireland but there’s no tax at all up frosty way.
  • Tech support? Haha. No email, no phone number, no IEDR style fax. They only receive handwritten letters and only from kids sending requests. All other chimAir letters are shredded and used as bedding for the reindeers. While Apple got close with their brainwashing that everything is fine, even when the machine spits oil at you, people still get refunds and replacements from Apple. Money only goes into Santa Corp.
  • Santa is 157 years old. 5 livers, 12 kidneys, 23 facelifts and niptucks. 2 livers Steve? Catch fucking up you veggie freak and eat some reindeer and the odd elf.

Merry Christmas you …

* nods *

Thursday, December 24th, 2009

Why? on Google

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

The quare fella from Tipp suggested to try this and so I did.

Go to Google and type in Why and see the suggestions it gives as you type.

I got:
TypeWhyIntoGoogle

Fluffy Links – Wednesday December 23rd 2009

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

Merry Christmas from Mulleyland.

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So yes, Blog Awards 2010, aka Blog Awards the 5th part of the trilogy are on in March in Galway.

The Daft iPhone App is out and it’s pretty damned nifty.

Via Darragh. Twas the night before Christmas in Dubberlin.

Owen Rooney on The Myth of the Smart Economy.

Via MetaFilter download your video of a 7.5 hour train journey from Oslo to Bergen.

Loving this: Fyfe Dangerfield – When You Walk in the Room

The kids are alright? Irish Science Rap videos.

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

Blurby McBlurb:

Science Raps Challenge is a new competition aimed at encouraging young people to express their thoughts about science and technology through rap music. To enter the competition students were invited to compose and video a rap on this year’s Science Week theme: “Celebrating Creativity and Innovation”.

The winners:
David Genesis Jackson:

Spectrometry Rap:

Karimah Gambo:

Chloe Murphy:

Reminded of anything?

Social Media for NGOs/Charities – Followup

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

The Social Media for NGOs event earlier this month went down quite well. It was disappointing the number of people who pulled out at the last minute but as was pointed out, had there been a charge, this would not have happened. Big thanks to Nick McGivney, Darragh Doyle, Damian O’Broin, Susan Quirke from Spunout, Irene Lawlor from Barnardos and Red Mum for giving up their time to come to this and share their knowledge. Thanks too to Suzy for cracking the whip in the background.

Special thanks to Philippe and staff in the European Commission office who hosted the event and sponsored the teas, coffees and food and streamed the event on the EU Ireland website. Thanks to to Tom Duke in Digital Revolutionaries for the streaming video goodness on the day.

The video of the talks are available in two parts both here and here.

There will be a follow-up to the event early next year to act as a refresher and there is talk about a need for more in-depth workshops like how to set up a Facebook Page and Campaign, setting up a blog and figuring out engaging content etc. So stay tuned here or the Commission website. The NGO event was there to serve NGOs and to aid them in what they do and there will be more of these.