Damien Mulley

Tom Murphy(PR Tom) is talking about press releases and sending out releases via email. I’ve noticed with some newspapers that our (IrelandOffline) press releases get sent straight into the junkmail folder of their mailboxes. I was told this by a friend that happened to be doing some sysadmin work on their computers when he noticed our press release in the junk folder. Perhaps they’re sick of our releases about broadband and instead of asking to be removed from our mailings they just blocked us or perhaps their spam filters. Though it could also be badly configured spam filters who block anything that’s not got their email address in the “To:” field. Maybe we need to alter our mailing list management software to do this.

The main news sources always pick us up, which is comforting. It seems to be regional ones that might not get our mails. What I’ve found is that the likes of other journalists and radio stations will get on to us maybe 24 hours after our release after reading it in a paper or an online news source. For a voluntary group like IrelandOffline this allows us a bit if a breather.

What we’ve also been doing of late is adding on unique quotes for certain news orgs so they don’t just reprint the press release and are the same as everyone else. I think the journalists like this more, the ones who dislike copying and pasting that is.

Regarding subjectlines, all our press releases have the subject line begining with [Release] – Example: [Release] OECD Broadband Report – Ireland 27 Out of 30 for Value , generally something short and to the point.

Using RSS for news feeds is a good idea. I subscribe using BlogLines to a few newswires that have RSS feeds and they are very worthwhile. Perhaps we can get our overworked webmaster to look into it. The trouble with RSS is the News org needs to find you and add you to their subscription and not the other way round. Email was quite handy for allowing the person doing the release to take some of the journalists workload.

Link: The IrelandOffline Press Release Archive Online

Via Donncha via Eirepeneur

Two of the big blogging boys have picked up on my BoggerSphere neologism and Donncha has created a definition for it which I like: �Boggersphere – The totality of Oirish weblogs or Oirish blog-related webs.� Nice one Donncha and nice one to EirePreneur for picking it up. I’ll just wait for Dr. Cloud to create a button for “BoggerSphere” now I guess.

I don’t think this would have ever been picked up if it wasn’t for John Breslin’s Planet of the Blogs. I’ve noticed a change in the way I’m posting to my own blog too as a result. While I was already part of the great Internet Community, I’m now part of the Irish Blogging Community and thanks to PoTB we are getting a continuous feed of all our thoughts and ideas so I feel like I’m writing to the a real community now and not just a few friends that read the site now and then. Go community !

PoTB is already making more inroads than IrishBlogs because it is not exclusive but inclusive and John has the drive, energy and sense to solicit feedback and make changes as a result of comments from his audience. I think this is just the start of something bigger and this could be a really good way of Irish talent promoting and fostering additional Irish talent. Watch out for the next generation of journalists come into the spotlight on PoTB.

I haven’t joined the Irish Bloggers mailing list on Yahooo! but I may do soon enough.

Meanwhile I’ve created a new tagline for this blog – Tales from the BoggerSphere. I also think I’ll upgrade this site to WordPress or something like this and reopen comments and trackbacks. Right now I’m hammered hourly from trackback and comment spam and am not protected enough to open this blog up.

Donncha points to an article about How to Get More Done in Less Time. This is very like the idea behind 43 Folders who base their ideas on the Getting Things Done book by David Allen. Some of the 43 Folders tips and ideas might not be relevant as the very techy stuff is tuned to Mac users but overall it’s an excellent resource for those that want to manage their work and life a bit better.

I’ve ordered the book, as has Dave O’Neill, mine is sitting on my desk ready to be read. But then there are 30 other books also waiting for me to give them attention too.

EirePreneur brings up the idea of creating an open source GPS map of Ireland:

“Why don’t we create a similar ‘open source’ GPS map of Ireland? If OSI aren’t going to play ball with GPS mapping companies then maybe we can re-route around them (pun intended) with a smart mob of volunteer mappers.”

Great idea, I’d like to help. Someone else can organise it and I’ll attend and do the walking around with a GPS device.

Ciaran talks about his former employer here. It’d be nice if more of this kind of frank commentary was seen in the Irish Blogosphere. Pity one can only do it after you’ve left the company though.

By the way Ciaran, I’m not stalking you I swear. Blame Planet of the Blogs.

fredrik odman photography

Ciaran’s Blog post about Ireland’s drinking culture. I must say it is quite embarassing working in a company that hires many non-nationals and being stuck for an answer when they ask “Besides the pub, what’s there to do here ?”

Ciaran linked to “Mark who is giving up booze for a year. My site has a few posts about my own challenge where I stayed off alcohol for 12 months as well as other “narcotics” as well as doing my best to stay off caffeine. 12 months off alcohol is dead easy. My first week off I ended up going to the beer festival with lots of muppets insisting I drink alcohol.

Here’s a better challenge: stay off bread and all flour based foods for 12 months and not starve ! Staying off alcohol is easy as it it not the main way to stay hydrated but the main ways to get food into yourself in this country seems to be via two slices of bread.

For my next challenge I think I’ll do something like train to run a marathon.

Final scene of Seven reenacted using stuffed animals.

Yahoo! is going to start using content from Wikipedia and wiki articles are going to start showing up in Yahoo!. Wikipedia was already hitting the big time. This is hitting the “even bigger time”.

From the WikiMedia Foundation website: “The Wikimedia Foundation (http://wikimediafoundation.org/) and Yahoo! (http://yahoo.com) announced today that they have reached an agreement by which Yahoo will provide hosting capacity to Wikimedia. Yahoo will dedicate a significant number of servers in one of its Asian facilities for hosting Wikimedia’s free content websites. Jimmy Wales, CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, says that this generous donation will be of particular benefit to the vibrant and growing community of Wikipedia users in that part of the world.

Yahoo!’s donation is a gesture of support for the charitable goals of the Wikimedia Foundation, and does not imply any ownership of the content. Yahoo! does not expect Wikimedia to host advertisements in return for this support.”

Planet of the Blogs is kicking the ass now of IrishBlogs.ie. But I’m just being biased as I have yet to be listed on IrishBlogs. I mustn’t meet their secret criteria for being paddy or something.

Meanwhile I’m enjoying the personal views of many in the Irish bloggersphere. Should we start calling it the boggersphere or the eiresphere or some other nasty word ?

Lots of the blogs and journals are awash with comments from Gerry Adams yesterday and the upcoming general elections in the North and UK. This election will be enchanced by the Guardian site on the election and it’s aggregating of blogs that talk politics. The UK also has the excellent Channel 4 factchecker which could sorely be used here and there are also TheyWorkForYou and Public whip. We need something like that before Bertie and co go for re-election.