Damien Mulley

Got this in an email. It looked interesting enough until I checked out their ghastly website: http://www.people-before-profit.org/ The Indymedia to normals ratio will probably be quite high too. Maybe there’ll be classes on how to use a video camera for the Shell to Sea people? 🙂

Time for a real left alternative – Public Conference

Speakers Include:

Vincent McGrath (Shell to Sea/Rossport 5)
Catherine Connolly (Galway City Cllr),
Joan Collins (Indp. Cllr),
Eamonn McCann (Raytheon 9, Journalist)
Catherine Murphy (Indp. TD)
Richard Boyd Barrett (People Before Profit),
Prof Kathleen Lynch (UCD),
Carmel McKenna,
Dr. Abdullah Sayed,
Ailbhe Smyth,
Kieran Allen,
Rory Hearne

When: Fri 24th & Sat 25th Nov.
Where: Central Hotel, Exchequer St, Dublin 2

Conference Registration: Waged €5 Unwaged €2

This conference is bringing together individuals, groups, political organisations, campaigns, and unions who want to create an Ireland and a world based on what people need rather than the needs of corporations. Come along to discuss and listen to issues such as war, globalisation, privatisation of public services and the creation of alternatives. We believe a radical alternative to the establishment political parties is necessary; one that represents working people and all those currently alienated by the consensus politics that prioritises the needs of corporations, developers, and the wealthy elite over the needs of workers, local communities and ordinary people.

Timetable
Friday Nov. 24th:
6pm Education & Privatisation for Profit – the dangers for public education
Prof. Kathleen Lynch (UCD), Niall Smyth (Campaign for Commercial Free Education), Dr. David Carey, Froebel College, Blackrock, Coordinator of Special Education and Programme Development at the Froebel College of Education

7.30pm War, globalisation and Ireland
Dr Abdullah Sayed (Irish-Lebanese Community), Richard Boyd Barrett (Chair, Irish Anti War Movement & PBPA Candidate Dun Laoghaire), Ailbhe Smyth (UCD), Eamon McCann (Journalist & Raytheon 9)

Saturday November 25th:
10.30am Privatisation & neoliberalism: the future for our public services?
Catherine Murphy (Indp TD), Catherine Connolly (Cllr. Galway), Kieran Allen (UCD)

12pm People power and strategies of resistance
Vincent Mcgrath (Rossport 5), Frances Corr (Combined Residents Against Incineration), Rory Hearne (People Before Profit Alliance)

2.30pm People before profit: time for a new left alternative
Joan Collins (Indp Cllr), Carmel Mckenna (People Before Profit Alliance Candidate Wicklow), Richard Boyd Barrett, Catherine Connolly

Org. by People Before Profit Alliance/Davitt League Contact 086 1523542/086 0566290
www.people-before-profit.org

White Zombie was another favourite band of mine years back. In a search for their song “More Human than Human” I found countless fan videos, mostly using anime. Here are a few which YouTube still host:

Before Crisis:

Powerpuff Girls:

Vampire Hunter:

The Crow: City of Angels

And finally Evangelion:

You may spot a theme here.

HMV screws Irish customers over more than their UK ones.

CIE wants to screw us by increasing their fares again.

The ESB who are about to screw us all over with massive price hikes wants to buy an NI power company. Will it bring prices down? Not a chance. It means a bigger monopoly. Split them up like the consultants report said, Dempsey.

Oh look, now the English have seen they can screw us over.

And lastly, the Government have no balls and are only making a piecemeal effort to protect kids.

With all these accusations and counter-accusations, where are the vids on YouTube, where are the Flickr photos? This is 2006, right?

Sweet jesus. Are things that bad everywhere else too?

Eircom TSS, the sales contact centre operation of Eircom, has picked up an award for Best Contact Centre in the World, at the International Contact Centre World Awards held in Las Vegas last night.

The annual awards recognise the best contact centres and best contact centre people and strategies worldwide.
The Irish telecoms firm said that it had beaten competition from more than 250 entries from around the world as well as two rival finalists representing Asia (Apple Care) and North America (Sage).

Gerry Culligan, Director of Consumer Market, Eircom said, “It is fantastic to be recognised as the best of the best by our industry peers from around the world.”

Haha.

Colbert calls it quits. Fantastic rant.

How men (straight) choose their clothes when getting dressed. Gross generalisation!

Google talks about easy export of your stuff. Where’s the export option in their services again? Where’s the one for YouTube?

Information Politics. From the OfcomWatch folks.

Via Twenty:

Footage of Kevin Federline finding out via text that he’s being divorced. Bye bye millions.

Calm down James. Village Magazine now seems to own another url – Village.ie. I had thought the Village venue owned that. Apparently not. I’m not sure what will go up on it but they have RSS and feeds for various sections of the site as well as OPML. Their urls include “blogsection” but that could be to do with their content management system or might be a clue that they are going to start blogging. Time will tell.

While I was away details of the Digital Media Awards were announced. These are the yearly awards that Ashville Media run. I was asked to judge a new category for the 2007 awards which is for blogging. It was pointed out to me when I was asked to be a judge that unlike the Irish Blog Awards these awards are pay to play type awards. Now I’ve gone on record before and slammed the Golden Spiders for their awards and the curious way that a sponsor of one category ends up winning another category. I’ve also expressed my unhappiness with the Netvisonary awards where if you are shortlisted and want to attend the event, you have to pay.

So why would I be a judge at this awards show? Well first I think the organisers of the Digital Media Awards want to run a respected and professional awards show and that is why they asked a genuine blogger to be the judge of the blogging category and someone that knows their stuff about podcasts to be the judge of the podcasting award. I’m not au fait with the other judges but trust they are experts in their judging areas. I also think there is plenty of room for a full blown blog awards and blog award sections in other awards shows. Lastly, I think that getting podcasting and blogging added to well known award shows will benefit the blogging and podcasting communities which are still small. It is really nice to see blogging and podcasting to rub shoulders with other areas of digital media. Oh and so you know, I am not being paid to be a judge for this.

In regards to the Irish Blog Awards themselves, I will never charge people to nominate a blog. Bookmark this post and remind me if I ever try. 🙂

Now, can we start a fund to get Twenty nominated?

Disclaimer: I’m in no way an AdWords expert so this might be old hat to some people but I found it interesting and also a cheap way to advertise. I run Google Ads and have a few running for PoliticsInIreland. I have them running when a TD’s name is mentioned on a webpage. Google have demanded at least 45 cents per click and up to 8 euros for the likes of Bertie Ahern. I decided to bid 5 cents per click. You’d think then I’d get no ads shown or at least I did. Instead the ad that displays when Willie O’Dea is mentioned had 23,524 impressions in the past week. It tells me the average position for this ad was 5.0. For Tom Kitt the ad had 35,577 impressions in the past week. In total for 64,713 impressions, there were 33 clicks. A terribly low click-thru rate but with the name and the url displayed in the ad, maybe that’s all is needed when the ads are pretty much free.

Anyone got experiences of the same?