Author Archive

GREEN IT: Reduce CO2, Raise Profits Conference – Nov 26

Monday, October 20th, 2008

The 2008 it@cork conference has been announced and the title is: GREEN IT: Reduce CO2, Raise Profits Conference

Pretty obvious what it’ll be about from that! There are a whole load of really speakers lined up for this and the full schedule is here. George Lee is opening it. Last week I had great fun watching Catherine and Alison from it@cork getting their photos taken for the press for this. One giant postcard and a green postbox. I ended up being official handbag holder/guarder while they stood around the South Mall.

Have a look at the enviromentally friendly initiatives for the conference too. I’m on the organising committee for this conference and ont he steering committee for it@cork too.

Fluffy Links – Monday October 20th 2008

Monday, October 20th, 2008

I can blog it now. Congrats Sarah, she’s now writing for the Irish Times. Send Johnny Waters our love!

Nialler made IGIF. G’wan!

Check out the graph by Rob on o2 iPhone data costs.

Finetuna is getting some fine mentions these days. Well done Alan and crew.

No landing gear? Yes problem. Mattresses might not work well.

Horse feathers are playing this side of the Atlantic. Shame they’re not coming to Ireland. Well worth a listen to.

Congrats to Simon Collister on his new job.

Robert Francis Wine doing videos now. Yay.

Someone years back put Steve Jobs in his place.

The CAO is a private business? Is this not anti-competitive? Never seen a tender to run the CAO.

What a fab piece of art.

Sam Sethi has a blog type thingymajig going now. Eh oh Sam!

If you’ve read the Frank Miller Batman graphic novels you’ll appreciate it more. Text from Miller’s Batman put on to the camp 60s show screenshots.

How to fix the Firefox 2 second video issue. (It’s actually a flash issue) Doesn’t work for me.

Go NY Times. API to campaign finance data. I wish an Irish news org would do something like this.

Bjork – Human Behaviour (live)

Want to Beta Test a booking engine?

Sunday, October 19th, 2008

Got this in my mail a while back from Visrez but had no time to blog it.

Well it’s a standalone booking engine system that can be used to sell accommodation online. You can also use the same system to sell events as well but at the moment, we want to test the booking engine side of things. We’re just coming into the beta testing phase and we’re looking for people who are interested in being beta testers and submitting feedback about the usability of the system.

The 3 types of accommodation we’re hoping to test are B&Bs/Guesthouses, Apartments who sell short term accommodation (1 month or less) and hotels who can allocate 10 – 60 rooms to the beta system.

It’s commission-free, no set up costs and no long term contracts. The incentive for beta testers is that they can have the use of the booking engine on their website for 3 months for free once we launch the product.

DSC223865, Silver Legacy Casino Hotel, Reno, Nevada, USA
Photo owned by jimg944 (cc)

Anyone who’s interested can sign up here.

The only requirement is that they have to have a website already and they give Visrez feedback. If you need a booking engine urgently, this isn’t really for you as best testing might go on until 2009.

Neither Fine Gael nor Labour were willing to comment

Sunday, October 19th, 2008

on the case — due to the fact that many of their TDs and senators also employ family members in their offices.

John McGuinness’s son is on 43k per year after being appointed his personal secretary. He is also a councillor with Kilkenny Town Council so he gets a salary on top of the 43k too.

Also of note:

Earlier this year, it emerged that one in five TDs and senators is employing a relative at taxpayers’ expense. Some 31 TDs and 11 senators currently employ family relatives, including wives, husbands, sons and daughters, out of a total of 226 politicians in the Dail and Seanad.www

The posts are not publicly advertised and carry salaries of up to €45,000.

As I stated last week, they’re all the same when it comes to things like the above or when it comes to the yearly reporting of expenses they bled from taxpayers. None of the parties will complain or speak out.

Offline Wikipedia for your iPhone – Now official Appstore App

Sunday, October 19th, 2008

Ages ago I mentioned that Patrick created an app for the iPhone that allowed you to have an offline and searchable version of Wikipedia. Well, it’s now an official app on the Apple Appstore:

Wikipedia for the iPhone

Nice one Patrick. This is going to be of huge value to so many people. Get it here.

Innovation Vouchers: 802 issued, 110 redeemed so far

Sunday, October 19th, 2008

I did an FOI about Innovation Vouchers recently and Enterprise Ireland subsequently decided it would make sense to publish the stats on their website and so they have. You can now see the knowledge providers who have done projects for companies and the companies themselves.

For me this shows takeup is great but once companies have the vouchers the issue is either lack of vision or else inability to find a knowledge provider to do the work. Some companies I know definitely have no idea how to use them despite some orgs really wanting the custom and willing to suggest things to them but I know other orgs have laughed a company out of it for their “puny” 5k. The stats are interesting too as Carlow is out on top so far yet you’d think a Dublin institution would be getting most trade.

Maybe EI needs to actually give some case studies or the knowledge providers themselves? How many have open days like the NCI?

The Business Post has an article about the numbers here.

For those that are unaware, Innovation Vouchers give limited companies 5k in voucher format that can be redeemed at a College, IT or group for research or development of something that can be used by the company. They’re a great idea.

I trust more, I don’t trust as much

Saturday, October 18th, 2008
  • Companies that have personalities and a team that adds humanity to their business both online and offline.
  • Companies who care enough to monitor what blogs are saying and react, even when people have negative issues.
  • Companies who contribute to online discussions and mailing lists without pimping their solutions and help even when the topic matter isn’t in-synch with their business area.
  • Companies that ask for help, contributions, feedback.

And then

  • Businesses that use domain names to describe what they do instead of using a company name.
  • Business people that leave comments on blog posts with their keywordladen website name and not their name and surname.
  • Businesses that write blog posts and internally link to their services in every blog post, again laden with keywords.
  • Businesses that write blog posts that are neither interesting nor useful but instead are dressed up brochures.
  • Businesses that write blog posts that do nothing more than block quote someone else’s blog post and then add one line of commentary.
  • Businesses that use Adwords on their business blogs.
  • Businesses that don’t name who they are on their About page.

Fluffy Links – Thursday October 16th 2008

Thursday, October 16th, 2008

Have a look at Look Around Ireland, a website that has a hell of a lot of 260 degrees views of various places in Ireland. The Newgrange one is nice.

PollDaddy was sold to the makers of WordPress. Another win for Ireland. Why not big up the lads over on TechCrunch too?

Debz’s daughter got hold of her makeup. Why so serious?

Get the Lotto results on Twitter now.


The Nora Dunne Gallery
website is now up and running.

Have a gawk at Diddlyi.com, a social networking site for Irish dancing and music enthusiasts.

Obama campaigns inside XBox360 games.

Then 7-eleven has a clever campaign tie-in with cups. Choose your Obama or McCain cup.

A guide to Google Analytics from a Googler. Nice overview of what Google Analytics can do for you.

Details about the new ad system from mySpace. Google still controls contextual ads on the site but anyone can run ads that target people by their interests, age etc. A bit like Facebook’s older ad system.

Start embedded YouTube vids at any time.

Irish Web Awards intro thanks to John Williams:

Indiecater reissue old Irish albums

Wednesday, October 15th, 2008

Sun Bear Front Cover

Kevin mp3hugger sent out a mass email last evening about a project of theirs – Indiecater. Their latest release is a reissue by an Irish band called Sunbear

From the email:

Just getting in touch with all the movers and shakers in the Irish blogosphere to let you know that we’ve finished our second digital reissue and this time it is from an Irish band called Sunbear. Sunbear only released 1 LP (and a number of EP’s) but it was a classic. The thing was not many people got to hear it in 1994, when it was originally released, as there were only 1,000 copies ever made. This despite being stalwarts on the seminal ‘No Disco’ programme. Now as part of our ongoing mission to release long deleted classics indiecater has made Sunbear available for download for a recessionary-proof price of €3.50 (no 1% or 2% levies!!!).

I think this is such a great idea and a total work of passion. It reminds me in a way of those people that restore old films or work hard to make sure an unnoticed classic gets more attention. Reissuing deleted albums from bands that should have gotten more coverage – genius. And at €3.50 for the album it’s quite cheap and you can even stream it before you buy it. Well done

Made in Hollywood – Props for the Web Awards props!

Wednesday, October 15th, 2008

Fran Hollywood via David got in contact with me before the Web Awards, wondering could he help out in any way. Now Ireland is scattered with mini-Ws and a few large ones are about the place too for example:

Rick and the gang at the Web Awards

Muzu TV and Web Awards

Rick and Ws

Now that we’ve used these props this year, we’re going to have to outdo ourselves at both the Blog Awards and the Web Awards 09. Fran doesn’t make props as his main business, it’s a sideline to show what he can do with expanded polystyrene foam, a lot of what he does is for builders and architects that want to create various shapes which can’t be done with wood or might be too heavy for concrete.

I think we’ll have Fran blogging soon enough, right? Meanwhile check out Made in Hollywood and if you need things made in 3D, they might be the crowd for you.