Author Archive

National Development Scam

Friday, January 26th, 2007

Noel Dempsey has really pissed off a lot of rural communities after finally admitting that they won’t invest in the Group Broadband Scheme anymore. Despite telling people for all of 2005 and 2006 that all they had to do was apply for a GBS, the last round to apply was some time in 2005. Since then there has been nothing apart from lots and lots of “coming soon” talk from the DCMNR. Rural communities have been strung along since 2005 and were told round three would open in September 2005. Noel, you’ve deceived 1000s of people desperate to get broadband. I hope the voting public remembers that.

With some creative accounting and spin they have reannounced almost all of the same money for nearly all the same plans already announced. For example, the budget of €435m is over 7 years. That’s €62m a year. The DCMNR was already allocated €48m a year so that’s an additional €15m a year. Right… and with inflation probably going to go way up, that’ll make sfa of a difference.

Now, add to that funding of €170Million already announced for the current building of 27 MANs (the fibre rings around towns which don’t actually connect to homes) and future building of 120 MANs. However, now it seems 80 of these MANs are now part of the latest NDP. No new towns have been announced either for MANs yet some towns could do with fibre rings. I’m not a fan of MANs and they are only once piece of the puzzle to get broadband to the end-user yet the Goverment bills they as solving all issues.

James gets namechecked by Techcrunch

Thursday, January 25th, 2007

Nice one. I have no doubt Google people are researching games and virtuals worlds for advertising opportunities. Again as has been said before, Google is an advertising company with a search engine.

Fluffy links – January 25th 2007 – Don’t count your lions before they’ve hatched

Thursday, January 25th, 2007

Hi Maryam!

More pink than fluffy, top 5 nuttiest pink gadgets. A pink George Foreman grill!

Rent a protester for 100 quid an event. I always had this tinfoil hat belief that Greenpeace was a group for hire by the competitors of various groups they’ve protested against.

A lion in the hand is worth two in the bush.

A really cool learning management system.

What a great durex ad.

Ooops we did it again. (again) (again) Microsoft paying people to rewrite Wikipedia articles that make them look better.

Campaign for Nike to release the shoes/boots they had in Back to the Future II. Nike McFlys:

Fluffy links – January 24th 2007

Wednesday, January 24th, 2007

Blogorrah had a fantastic post title yesterday. Ginger, model, trevor white and bitch were not even mentioned!

Pat Phelan is looking for reviews for Roam4Free. Write a review, enter a prize draw. No purchase necessary. 🙂

Kathy is going to the history of Irish food night classes in UCC. Damn you! I have to suffer Irish Land Law on a Wednesday evening.

10 Google feeds worth subscribing to.

Best merchandising tie-in EVAR! Now, why doesn’t an Irish zip manufacturer hire a panto star?

That same character loved duct tape. Here’s how to use it for babysitting.

Richard Dawkins would love this.

Twitter goes corporate. I can just see a David Brent scenario where he Twitters his advice to his staff when he’s on the road and then accidently sends a personal text to it. Finally the thing sent me my password yesterday evening when I tried again. Site is still at a crawl. It is now updating via my mobile now too.

Found on IrishBlogs.ie tonight. The National Forum on Europe podcast. This is a sweet looking site.

A tactile interface to Second Life.

Download Jacob Borshard’s albums for free. His mySpace.

Mind-bending Blog Awards nomination idea

Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007

Over on Letter to America, a blog post asking for nominations for the Blog Awards starts an interesting discussion in the comments on whether it would be superfunironical that their Podcast at last year’s awards would win them this year’s Best Podcast award at the Awards. Now they also go on to talk about creating Barack Obama/Hilary Clinton style viral videos to ask the public to vote.

Nowwwwww wouldn’t it be fun if their viral video which asks for votes so their Blog Awards podcast ended winning Best Podcast, itself ended up winning the Best Vidcast award?

Fluffy Links – January 23rd 2007

Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007

There’s now a rejigged nomination form for the Irish Blog Awards. Remember that all you need is one nomination. No need to have 50 people nominate you for best blog post. 2200+ entries in the nomination database so far.

My name is Earl wins for most elaborate net nerd reference.

Give Away of the Day. Each day some shareware is given away which if not installed by the end of the day, expires and you have to pay for it.

Famous McDonald’s Manager Dave has a day off and things turn to shit.

The travel pussy. Vile.

Where’s Wally inserted into Apocalypto? Mad Mel Gibson.

Just two weeks and lots of SecondLife clients for loads of diff OSes

What women want:

This woman has better insurance premiums for a reason:

Another post BarCamp thing – The wine from BarCamp Cork

Monday, January 22nd, 2007

A few of the people on Saturday who were at the Cork BarCamp were asking what the wine we had was. It was called Culepo. Pic of it here. You can get the red (Syrah) here for €9.90 and the white (Sauvignon Blanc) here, also for €9.90.

Note to self. Remember to get some off Austin when next I call in.

Edit: Fixed wine type

These are not the fluffy links you are looking for … January 22nd 2007

Monday, January 22nd, 2007

I’ll let you in on a little secret. Generally these days the fluffy links are done a few days in advance and sometimes even a few weeks. With my weekend taken up with BarCamp and other activities I haven’t had time to collate lots of sources for the fluff and yes, as asked at BarCamp, Donagh Kiernan is the originator of the “fluffy” name. Anyway, some links for the day:

Everyone loves ferris wheels, even the Klan.

Making and marketing movies is easier than ever. Such is the case for animated movie “M dot Strange” and comedy A dog’s breakfast. All you need is YouTube?

Tom Murphy and BoingBoing report on the wonderful “Proceed and Permitted” letter Linden labs sent to a site that parodied their SecondLife product. A “Proceed and Permitted” is the opposite to a cease and desist letter.

Laura is organising an open source conference in Limerick on February 16th to 19th.

Ubuntu studio sounds pretty darned cool.

Netlabelism – A music blog just for CreativeCommons licenced music. Also you have generationWire which does something like this too.

BarCamp Deise was fantastic

Monday, January 22nd, 2007

At the first BarCamp in Cork I really didn’t get to see any talks as I was busy running around tending to things. It was nice to sit down and listen to people this time around. Well done Keith and Tom for a very well-organised event. Wasn’t the spread done really well too? The scenery around there was lovely. Must be nice to come to work and appreciate the calming vista.

I enjoyed a few talks but missed out on some because of timetable clashes but hell, it is great that there was variety. The panel discussions were worth the ticketprice alone. 🙂 Videotaping the talks too. Clever. Tom and Keith took the baton from the Cork boys and improved on what we did. Kudos to you both lads, I really emjoyed myself.

I took some notes but the slides will probably be available from the various talks in a few days. And the vids!

Adrian Smith has a nice writeup and a rather brilliant mindmap of the “Building a Web Services company� discussion. I really need to get into the mind mapping stuff. That diagram is a great refresher of that talk. Keith has a review of the day, as does Ken McGuire and James Cooley too.

Suggestions for the next BarCamp.
And just to be clear, I’m not knocking anything at BarCamp Waterford. 🙂
Have rooms that are totally quiet. The main room location in Cork wasn’t great as it was an open area and some people were completely ignorant and would rather have loud conversations around the corner. This was less of the case in Waterford but I found room 1.10 at times to be drowned out in noise and I was straining to hear the speakers. I would still also have a coffee/food area for networking etc.

I fear the event is becoming far too cliquey. Yes, I’m sick of all your fucking faces after only two. I would like to suggest that next time, if you have been to a barcamp before you *have* to bring someone that hasn’t been to one but who you’d think would find benefit from one. I also think that preference should be given to those who haven’t presented before.

I would like to see an actual unconference at the next one too. If necessary we should drag someone along that has done unconferences before.

Battlestar Galactica Admiral comments on Irish Peace Process

Sunday, January 21st, 2007

So says BreakingNews.ie anyway. Slow news day at Mulley.net, I know I know.

Click the image for a larger screenshot:

Adama