Author Archive

2 More Blog Awards things

Monday, January 30th, 2006

A Best Technology Blog/Blogger category has been added to the awards so I have opened nominations for a week for this. Then public votes start.

I was also thinking about the iPod prize. Would it be a good idea to put a collection of all the recent Irish podcasts on to the iPod for the winner to listen to?

Self Harm – John was in the Business Post today

Sunday, January 29th, 2006

Self harm is a blog by John which helps to explain what self-harm is and why people cut themselves and inflict other forms of harm on themselves. I’ve been reading the blog a while now and it’s educated me quite a lot about this issue. I didn’t nominate many blogs for the blogawards but I did nominate this blog in the Best Personal Blog category. This blog deserves a bigger audience in my opinion and it was great to see Markham write a piece in the Sunday Business Post about it and have John interviewed in it too. To quote a small piece from it:

John cuts himself. It feels like the sting of sunburn and a release of pressure. When his feelings get confused and his thoughts are clouded, he seeks solace in pain. The pain focuses him, it’s a pure sensation, a reminder that he can feel; that he has emotions and everything is alright again. It’s like hitting a reset button.

Refreshed, John patches the cut with a plaster, rolls down his sleeve and goes to sleep.

It is blogs like John’s that add quality to the blogosphere in my view. The tag line for the blog is “You are not alone” and thanks to John hopefully more people will indeed realise that there are others who they can talk to about this and there to help them remedy the situation. Well done John and well done Markham for writing such a piece and bringing it to wider attention.

Lots of talk about Venture Capitalists going around.

Sunday, January 29th, 2006

There’s a lot of talk about rebooting or changing the way venture capitalism works. I wonder is all this renewed talk down to this guy?

Scoble mentioned one thing which I suppose is true about software companies:

But today’s world isn’t money constrained. You don’t need much money to build software or services

So, I wonder, what is the biggest reason for companies to seek money? Wages for emlpoyees? Hardware costs? Are there many VC firms in Ireland that will invest in comparitively small amounts, say 100k or do they only want to talk to people who need a few tonnes of bank notes?

Giant PR firm lauds blogs, gets on cluetrain

Sunday, January 29th, 2006

Via Doc Searls is a link to a piece by Richard Edelman who is CEO of the world’s largest independent public relations firm with 1,800 employees in 40 offices worldwide. In the piece he says:

How can companies embrace this future of empowered stakeholders? Speak from the inside out, telling your employees and customers what is happening so they can spread the word for you. Be transparent, revealing what you know when you know it while committing to updating as you learn more. Be willing to yield control of the message in favor of a rich dialogue, in which you learn by listening.

Sage advice and probably something that a lot of us here in the blogosphere know already but this coming from Edelman is good news indeed. I just wonder how long before this trickles into the consciousness of all PR people in Ireland?

When I grow up I want to be Fiona De Londras

Sunday, January 29th, 2006

Fiona’s writings over the past few days have been nothing but exceptional.

Soundseeing tours of Dublin – Tourist Office podcasts

Sunday, January 29th, 2006

Via Smartmobs comes news that the Dublin Tourism site is offering podcasts of various tourist walks around Dublin. About time. I suggested Soundseeing tours of Cork a while back with the timings and maps of the tour being “open sourced” so people could mash-up the audio files. I still think something like that would have a lot of potential.

Google – where privacy is an evil lie

Saturday, January 28th, 2006

John Battelle asked Google what details they store and I think this has stark implications for Ireland with the new Data Retention Spy Law.

These “server logs” typically include your web request, Internet Protocol address, browser
type, browser language, the date and time of your request and one or more cookies that may uniquely identify your browser

In other words, yes, Google does record this data. But, does it KEEP that data, I asked? The answer:

Yes

Kind of on the same topic, via Google Blogoscoped is a mini video on why the L in Google is green.

Food Blogging – 420 gram T-Bone Steak

Friday, January 27th, 2006

We have a remarkable Chef at work. This is what I got the other day. I couldn’t finish my chips or salad. 420grams of VERY rare T-Bone steak, chunky chips and a salad. Cost me a tenner.

T-Bone Steak

And this is what I had in Aya last time I was in Dublin. Well it wasn’t the only thing, but who would have thought fish eggs were so colourful!

Fish Egg Sushi

Robots.txt is your friend

Friday, January 27th, 2006

Village Magazine distribution list. Oooops.

After finding 15 interesting people DLefties interview me

Thursday, January 26th, 2006

Interview with Damien Mulley.