The Datamining blog recently talked about the times when bloggers don’t blog or when experts in an area avoid talking on something they would normally talk about. This left me wondering what kind ot trend analyzer could be built into feeds and IM applications etc to let you know when people you read a lot have stopped blogging. A kind of last activity notice that you have on Bebo and other sites. For example Tom Raftery has been very quiet on his blog but his Twitter account has shown activity. With it we know he met with the IDA and impressed them with the datacentre build. Sometimes his Flickr feed shows what he is up to as well.
Wouldn’t it be nice as well as to receive notices when friends go online, to get them from your IM and your bloglines aggregator if there hasn’t been any activity in a while? Maybe it’s a bit too stalkery or needy for some people but it would probably be a nice plugin for some kind of contact manager. It might also be handy for watching the blogs of people making a product and if they go all silent then maybe a big launch is on the way or an acquisition? Handy to monitor the competition too.
Or Katleennnnnnn as we say in Cork and what everyone refers to the Labour TD from North Central. I like the fact that they used the word “Mam” and not Mum. Like the other Labour videos it is a to-the-point piece on living in a “modern” Ireland. With all the other videos out there on YouTube now, it seems far too tame.
Radio 1 was last night forced to withdraw a song some of its top DJs had been playing after it emerged the track appeared to be a thinly disguised advert for a brand of hair gel. Style, Attract Play is the slogan for the hair product range Shockwaves. Honeyshot (the band) was created by the advertising firm Saatchi & Saatchi as a pop group that can be bought “off the shelf” by companies to covertly promote their brands.
RTE is having a live webchat at 1400 today with Dempsey and the opposition party spokespeople on Comms. You can submit questions to the live webchat here. Four questions allowed max, unless you delete cookies 🙂 They also limit the amount of text per question but anyone who can hack javascript can circumvent that. I’d sent in some questions but I hope others can send in more too. Boards.ie thread on it.
Questions asked:
Minister, your Dept stopped new funding for the Group Broadband Scheme in April 05. From then on communities were strung along saying the next funding round was on the way. This happened up to the week when you announced the GBS was due to be scrapped. How can you say there was no takeup?
The new National Broadband Tender is using taxpayer money to subsidise the winner to go into areas where broadband is already available. Doesn’t this clash with competition rules?
The National Broadband Tender does not apply to anywhere in Wexford because your map says everyone in Wexford can get broadband, which is patently untrue. What do you have to say to the 1000s in Wexford who can not get broadband and cannot get it under this new scheme?
The broadband tender does not cover anywhere where exchanges are enabled. The failure rate in urban exchanges is 10% and 40% and higher in rural areas. The tender does not apply to them. Why?
ComReg even before their new powers had the power to fine a company, even if the amount was tiny. They never did. Why will they change their ways now?
Why did the Minister not carry out the recommendations of the Oireachtas committee on broadband but spend 100s of Millions on unconnected Fibre rings?
The new broadband tender fits amazingly well into the eircom broadband roll-out plans. Did the DCMNR plan the tender with the consent of eircom?
Posted in blogs, irishblogs | Comments Off on Webchat with Dempsey and others re: broadband at 1400
Got a press release about this today. Including a second email with another 3 JPGs totalling 6mb. Grr.
So what’s the Pleo? Well according to the blurb in the release it will be the hot new toy of Christmas 2007 and is already toy of the year for one of the toy lobby groups. That’s how they’ll build the hype anyway. From the Wiki page on Pleo:
Pleo is a robotic dinosaur, made for all ages, designed to emulate the appearance and behavior of a week-old baby Camarasaurus. It was designed by Caleb Chung, the co-creator of the Furby, and manufactured by Ugobe. Chung selected this species of dinosaur because its stocky head and realitively large cranium (as compared to other dinosaurs) made it ideal for concealing the dozens of sensors and motors used to create the illusion of life.
My fav bit is:
The robot will be software-upgradeable via SD cards or USB and cost around 350 USD. Ugobe will encourage user modifications of the robot’s firmware, providing a graphical interface for home users and an API for programmers.
This is how the robots rise up against us. Expect some clever fecker to create a Wiimote interface to it and you can take it for walks.
I think the thing needs more annoying fucking sounds. Like Elmo. If the retail price wasn’t more than an XboX360 I’d consider getting one. Afterall, I own one of those Elmos. Blog title thanks to Jimmy G.
Oh found one with him being noisy. The video is the most vomit inducing thing I’ve seen in a while. The fucking music and titles just make you want to set it on fire:
The really awful video of David Hasselhoff being drunk and filmed by his daughter has been viewed at least 1.7 Million times already. It’s been aired on many TV networks too. I really despair at American news when instead of serious news, all outlets including CNN devote more and more time to Anna-Nicole, Britney, Paris, Prince William and now the Hoff.
This is the video:
But the interesting thing for me are all the parodies that are on YouTube such as this one:
The dozens of Irish piss-take videos around during the election show too that parody is alive and well in Ireland. Parody and satire seem to be a handy way of forking out into deeper more original creativity. The whole “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” comes to mind. First comes the derivatives of other work and then comes totally original pieces. Hell, Billy Shakespeare’s work got a lot of inspiration from other older stories. PoliticalThicko is getting a lot of attention for his videos but he is far from alone on that front. Bertie Ahern on Dragon’s Den was superb too.
I wish Labour and the other parties would release the raw footage they use to make their videos. It’d be great too to see RTE also release a lot of their own content online for free and to be reused. Neil Grogan has written to RTE asking them to release the political debates (if they bloody happen).
I am writing this email to ask you follow America’s CNN in releasing Irish Election broadcasts under a permissive license, like Creative Commons. This would allow people to reproduce the content freely, and give RTE the credit it deserves. Like Democracy, Culture wants to be free and open to the people. This could serve as a trial to Creative Commons licensing other RTE produced programs.
A great idea. I support it and it’d be great for all other political websites and organisations to ask the same of RTE. As Neil said, they can class this as a trial and maybe consider moving more original content online after that. Not in the god awful realvideo format either. RTE, like the Beeb, should get themselves a YouTube channel as well as a raw footage archive. Fergus Cassidy has also highlighted the CNN endeavour.
Overhear.us review. A site that encourages anonymous comments about your company from your employees. Then charges you to address this bunch of anonymous people. They’re selling this as some kind of HR tool. Uhm, right. I don’t think this could survive more than a day in Ireland. RateMySolicitor anyone?
6 Drummers. First time seeing this but it has done the rounds. This is like Stomp but inside an apartment:
Via Metafilter, it seems authors are now making video ads for their new books.
I wonder will Twenty Major do one for his book? With millions looking at YouTube every day it makes great sense to do something like that. Course you still need to make it interesting enough for it to become viral and get you millions of views.
