Damien Mulley

Peter Jennings, Robin Cook and Ibrahim Ferrer have all passed on this weekend. 3 men who all made an impact on peoples lives.Via con dios.

Hugh Macleod (Hi Hugh) has been leveraging blogs and using the mantra of the Cluetrain Manifesto to start interesting conversations about various things including products he is helping to develop. One of Hugh’s latest iniatives is to give away bottles of wine to bloggers and have them review the wine on their blogs *if* they want to. The only obligation is that they let Hugh know if they have done a review. Positive or negative it doesn’t matter as Hugh and his clients stand over the quality of the product.

Can this be done in Ireland with the irishblogs? If I had a product and I wanted people talking about it, which bloggers in Ireland could I approach and say “hey, you want to try this? I welcome your opinion on it. Post a review, positive or negative or don’t comment if you don’t want to.”

Slugger is the most prolific and professional Blog in Ireland but they don’t do the “I was playing with my new SuperDooperDippyBox the other day that Damien asked me to check out and I got to say that…” Slugger is more fact only, no personal opinions, their subject matter is very specific.

Donncha’s blog is the most linked to Blog in Ireland due to his involvement with WordPress. His subject matter varies a bit, from personal stuff, to productivity, to tech to photography.

The Community At Large is just a site that rehashes BoingBoing, MetaFilter and Populicious links, no real opinions on subject matters, just a lot of fun links. No offense guys.

Other worthy mentions are Bernie, Dave, Backseat Drivers, Michele and Sigla Mag though I’m sure FMK is too cynical to pimp anyones products.

There are loads of Irish Bloggers who could be used to talk about your product and you can have them to do it in a very transparent manner. Tom I’d like to have your opinion on this since you are now doing consultancy work on business blogging. Would the IrishBloggers be annoyed/abhorred that someone is profiling them to see what products could be given them to try out so that they’d talk about them. Is there an ego boost to know that you are a maven?

As usual, my comments are fucked (sush Michele and Tom!) so if you do have a comment maybe talk about it on your own blog and just link to this.

Tags: irishblogs hughtrain cluetrain

God, this post title belongs in a newspaper column. I’m so witty and hip and with it at times. Second City Trilogy too is witty and on the pulse and garnished with wonderful imagery of Cork and its culture.

So, what is Second City Trilogy? 3 short(30mins or so) plays about Cork people and referencing Cork life. Superb acting, good writing, nice fusion of comedy and drama. Uses Cork as a background and includes all the usual slang and local history without doing a Gift Grub style stereotype of Cork life.

Only drawback was the seats in the half moon were crap and it was very warm in there. Still it was only a small hardship to see this trilogy.

There’s a review of it by the Examiner here. My review is less pretentious, not for want of trying. 🙂

The Columbia 3 – Sponsored by 3 Ireland. Makes sense, no? Wonder what additional extras will be on the Columbia 3G Phones. Bet you there’ll be more first person shooter games and a new digital version of hide and seek.

Freestater has done a quick summary of all the IrishBlogs on the EFI idea Antoin and myself have been commenting on the post too.

Antoin has posted his EFI views too on his site.

While there is talk of funding, if you look at the IrelandOffline model, we run on nothing pretty much. I’d be of the idea that save as much money and be as frugal as possible, not because money is precious but spending time looking after money and collecting money is a pain in the ass and uses up your time when it could be used to do much more important things.

The IrelandOffline Committee itself largely interacts via private mailing lists, online IRC meetings and phone conversations. We meet up in the physical world only now and then, generally when it’s to meet telcos or Govt bodies.

The initial EFF idea seems to be forking already, though in a good way possibly. There seems to be some people that are more interested in a Bloggers Representative Group to be a voice and adviser for the irishblogs and others interested in more of an EFF style group.

I like Antoin’s suggestion about working with other groups in this area and building on their strenghts instead of starting from scratch but I am slightly wary of the ICCL‘s ability after volunteering so many times and being pretty much ignored. They are still a must to talk to though, to see where they are now and what they have planned. To go slightly off on a tangent for a sec they need a mailing list that works, a proper website and online discussion forums.

If people are interested in the EFF idea I’d suggest them letting one of us know either on boards.ie or leaving comments on Freestater’s or Antoin’s site. Get people you know to look at what is being written online too. Post a link to the discussion on your blog and on discussion forums. Forward the link to mailing lists (without spamming).

If you go online in anyway or use any form of electronic communication then an EFF Style group is important, and while you may not want to get involved in setting one up and running it, you should support it by talking about it, linking to it and advertising it.

Update:
Contacted the ICCL to see what they cover. Seems they haven not looked into this area for ages and their E-Rights group has been disbanded. Waiting to hear back from the ICCL for clarification on what areas of the digital domain they are researching. They have some research on privacy they’ll be publishing.

On the way back from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory the other night (which is a fantastic movie BTW) I heard a band called The Engineers on Today FM. They were playing a song called “Home”. It’s a good song, though it reminds me of some other song that was out before. You can watch the video for home here. I’d recommend.

A few weeks back I talked about the idea of Googleshame – Googlebombing an entity into changing their service or highlighting to the public crap service/products. Tom Raftery gives a Googleshame example by highlighting his unhappiness with a meal in Casey’s Hotel Glengariff. Lets see how long before the great Google links to his review of Casey’s Hotel Glengariff.

Mick suggests an Irish Bloggers Union. I’m all for it. We might need it if Sir Tony wants to take on the bloggers.

Updated August 4th:

FMK pointed out the interview in the Sunday Times with Tony O’Reilly where he wanted to do to content thieves what the record labels did to Napster.

Feargal believes Dr. Sir Tony is aiming for bloggers and for once I agree with Feargal. Loads of “out of touch with reality” quotes from Tony.

“I can see the newspaper industry getting together the same way as the recording industry got together, except in a more effective way,” said O’Reilly. “A journalist’s work is valuable, it needs to be protected.”

Links are also valuable, the more inbound links pointing to your content the more strenght it will have, the more you can leverage it and monetize it, without screwing over people. It makes me think though does Sir Tony figure he can make money from micropayments and microcontent?

Saying that it was his son Gavin who took a swipe at another form of New Media – Participative Journalism.

“I think participative journalism is a dangerous precedent for our
industry. People forget that newspapers have always been an interactive
medium, people have always been able to interact with us through the
mailbag.

Like father like son?

But back to Sir Tony, he took a dig at bloggers too when denying Newspapers were on the decline, which would reinforce what Feargal said about him gunning for bloggers stealing his content:

“It is a sunrise industry,” said O’Reilly. “Newspapers are tactile, hugely cheap, reliable, go with a cup of coffee. You can trust newspaper writers. Can you trust a blogger?” O’Reilly said that the newspaper industry would also challenge the rise of the internet as an advertising medium. A whole range of goods would not be congenial to be advertised “on a PC”, he said.

Oh my. Compare him to Murdoch. Who’ll be around in ten years time? O’Reilly and Son or Murdoch and Family?

Other Blogs on this:
FeckOff.net – Hey Tony, lay off the crack pipe
Mark on Stuff – Damien Mulley picks two bad horses.
Dick O’Brien weighs in and expands on this with some very clever analysis. Hi Dick! He also gives his thoughts on setting up EFF Ireland

32* hits so far today from: BBC Magazine Review of Weblogs. My sarcastic comment about the IRA announcement is what got their attention. Trust my smart mouth to have the beeb take notice.

May I suggest you all visit and bookmark Slugger O’Toole as it is the best website on the politics of Northern Ireland.

Go look at IrelandOffline for something far less important than peace in our time.

* I just spotted the irony as I drafted this.