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Fluffy Links – Monday February 1st 2010

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Gathering of Twitter users to meet up with Shel Israel on Tuesday, February 23, 2010, 7:00pm Berkeley Court Hotel, Dublin.

Twebt (twitter event, blind tasting) is a wine tasting on twitter. Watched it happen on Twitter last night amongst the Irish winerati. Lovely idea. More details from Brian on it.

Already an iPad fund in the UK. Would love to see an Irish iPad app fund for educational apps.

An Irishman with an odd accent tells us how to live on no money at all.

Microsoft’s Azure pricing is off track for small-scale apps?

Good business opp. Rent your content on YouTube when there is demand and then switch to advertising model after a time.

Amazon versus the publishers. A very interesting take. Apple is more fair than Amazon? For now…

Very interesting take on domain names and jurisdictions. Kentucky trying to shut down a gambling website that hosts in the UK and registered the domain with a UK company.

Better user experience with story telling.

The Virtual Revolution, a four part series airing this week on BBC Two about how the web is changing the world.

Sabotage – longer version

Posted in Fluffy, irishblogs | 2 Comments »

Demon Coffee

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

A demon in my coffee, taken on Friday last:
Demon Coffee

Posted in food, irishblogs | 5 Comments »

Update on the Dublin Twitter Treasure Hunt tomorrow

Friday, January 29th, 2010

Have a look at the twitter account DublinTweasure.

It starts at 2pm in Dublin City Centre.
What you need is a phone with web access, a team and knowledge or access to knowledge.
Cash prize for the winners too. Full details of what will be asked of you will be on the Twitter account.

Update, these were the clues:

Where is Suzanne walking? Frankly I haven’t a rashers. She’s awfully
good looking though.

Near broken spears and swans in flight we saw a vision. We were tied
up all winter.

Where Moore met Parnell sounds like under a little sign you go
downstairs to have a bite with a Polski wuj.

Harry jigs on, mixed up. He brought water into town but died in bath.

Where saol’s for sale two dogs show the way.

What will Damien give me, what does he have in store?

It’s a stitch up! There’s a singer on top of my brother, on Charles
Chetwynd. I’m beside myself with worry.

Shake up a regal she moth then have a hot one, you’re nearly there.

This was written after I was shot, Nancy.

Posted in Events, Ireland, irishblogs | 2 Comments »

Our Mums are about to join the web

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

That new device from Apple (avoiding putting it in the blog post title or body to avoid Googler traffic during the hype cycle) is going to make using the web easy for people who up to know found using a mouse, keyboard and a browser a tad intimidating. Webstats show that iPod Touch traffic has been quite strong and growing and this larger version is going to bring a whole new demographic online who might never use such an onbnoxious pointing device. A device without a “real” OS so no need to install patches, no need to shut down properly, no need to figure out all the shite UI gotchas and so on. A thin piece of glass that we touch and the full blown web and all the data she carries.

I’m sure it’s killing those that want the web acessible only via oily machines and those that somehow “deserve” the web but tough. The majority of people don’t give a shit that you can’t modify the device or Jobs owns their functionality. The same way most people don’t add a big fuckoff exhaust and go faster stripes to their car. Apple’s obsessive paranoia about control gives us devices like the iPhone and the iPad and the proponents of openness give us … the Nexus Phone two years later and One Laptop Per Child. Out of the box, Apple devices work for the greatest number. That really must take the power away from those that are called upon by the family to sort a driver for some device.

A tweet that sums up the massive potential for the device is this:

I’ve been pretty vocal about my dislike towards the iPad but I still want one. Imagine – not having to carry anything to class but a slate!

iPhones and iPod Touches are already being bought en-masse by educational institutions. Bye bye school labs and awkward desk setups. Schoolbooks and courseware direct to the device. Art galleries use iPod Touches for multimedia tours. Tate Modern has a great one. Apple from feedback knew the screen on the touch was an issue for lots of further uses of the device so this new device will fill a gap. It will probably impact on the Touch. Apple has shifted 20 million iPod Touches so far.

So, democratisation of the web. Is it open platforms that need an engineer or is it easiest route to get to the web, even if in a “closed” device?

Oh yes and ChromeOS, I think you just got sunk.

Posted in business, irishblogs, technology | 13 Comments »

Fluffy Links – Thursday 28th January 2010

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

The treasure hunt using Twitter is on this Saturday in Dublin City Centre. Follow the DublinTweasure account for more details. There’ll be prizes. Teams are wanted to take part.

Via the #biztweet thingymajig, 119 companies pitched what they do via a Twitter message from all walks of life. Great to see those in the legal profession take the step in pitching for business too. Times are tough for us all. If you want to see who these companies are, here’s a list of some active Irish businesses on Twitter.

Like this post about being cynical online.

Smoking a wet cigar. I do actually mean a cigar here.

Oooh. Motorcheck uses Google Cache and sees Revenue changed the car scrappage rules.

Business Blogger in Ireland? IIA has a survey going if you want to add some thoughts.

This is what the web means. Block an app on the Appstore, the web routes around it. So why quack about closed devices?

Reqall. Nice iPhone App.

Virgin Trains welcome photographers. Yay.

Good spot. Google Reader now allows you to subscribe to a site even if it does not have RSS.

Tesco getting into film making isn’t that daft an idea.

Posted in Fluffy, irishblogs | 1 Comment »

#biztweet

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

I’ve been telling people that they should be able to pitch themselves/their business in a single Tweet. If you can’t explain what you or your business does in 140 characters then you need to work on your pitch. If you’re in a lift with Bill Gates and he asks you what you do, can you tell him before his bodyguards chuck you out on the 5th floor?

Huge amount of Irish businesses in the past few minutes are doing just that by tagging their twitter messages with #biztweet

Example:
Biz Tweet

Posted in business, irishblogs | 2 Comments »

Fluffy Links – Wednesday January 27th 2010

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Funconf. Genius idea. A tech conference, on a bus. It might have go-faster FLAMES. Twitter for the conf.

Sunlight. The Story has FOId monies given to companies by Enterprise Ireland. Way more via other grant mechanisms are given out too. Hope we see those too!

Good piece on social networks for business by Hopkins Comms.

New blog from Silverhill foods.

Edelman Trust Barometer for Ireland. (Link now fixed) Who do people trust, who do they trust less?

Neville Hobson is in Dublin this week and is running a meetup on Friday. Got time? go along.

Nice photo blog from James.

Great resource for hyperlocal websites.

Ah sure why not.

Remember these lads?
My Little Funhouse

Posted in Fluffy, irishblogs | 7 Comments »

Fluffy Links – Tuesday January 26th 2010

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Blog Awards date set in stone. Special room prices for the hotel at the moment.

Nice blog concept, blog on the Fanning Sessions through the years.

Chocolate making and tasting course. Nyom.

Serendipity and astronomy.

Via Goog: How to make a TV commercial in 5 easy steps.

So what happens when you disconnect from the Net?

The Rolling Stones – Wild Horses

Posted in Fluffy, irishblogs | Comments Off on Fluffy Links – Tuesday January 26th 2010

The blogger contact template

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Spoke about this at the Online PR course on Saturday on what doesn’t work. Heads up to the PR companies out there that are trying to engage with us but are wondering why it is not working. Here’s the template that yourself and your peers are using and it doesn’t work. The implied bits are in ( brackets )

Dear < insert blogger's name >,

Love your < insert blog name > and especially liked < insert recent blog post title >, it was certainly food for thought. I’m contacting you today to let you know about a new campaign we are doing for a client. (50 quid if you can actually spot a difference between this and the same campaign last year) The feedback so far (by the people afraid to be critical of the spend) has been great. I think the readers of your < insert type of blog > blog will get a great kick out of it ( or maybe the fact we have pics of a fat dude in a suit next to a woman dressed like a hooker.) Maybe you’d like to blog it? If you’d like to talk to Brendán who heads the marketing for the Company (you remember that souless corpspeak waffler who made it clear you gave him a rash from just being around?) let me know and I’ll arrange for you to do an interview for your blog. (I hope you’re getting the fact that I have a column to fucking fill in Excel and we got you pissed last year on petrol flavoured alcopops so you owe us)

Hope all is well and keep blogging about < insert that recent blog post title >!

(goodbye smelly blogger)
Cheers dudes,
Droid 1.c

Posted in business, irishblogs, online marketing | 2 Comments »

Fluffy Links – Monday January 25th 2010

Monday, January 25th, 2010

Brendan Hughes is moving into a new job in February. Congrats!

And on that, congrats to Gavin Sheridan for his move to the news startup that Mark Little is building.

The top apps in the iTunes store in Ireland are interesting.

Fantastic wine bottle design.

And staying with the Dieline blog, their new book Box Bottle Bag on packaging design is out soon.

A new logo for Firefox?

Detailed post on sorting out your Facebook privacy settings.

Slideshow on bringing a product to market.

Nice vid from Google on doing SEO.

Euan Semple video on innovation.

For the foodies. Book on some amazingly designed restaurants and their locations. Eat Out!

Via I Guess I’m Floating Owen Pallett (Who plays Whelan’s on March 18th)

Complete with a raging rainstorm that scares the tech crew to death but not before Owen screams “Let me finish this song!” whilst avoiding wind and lightning bolts to boot.

Posted in Fluffy, irishblogs | 4 Comments »

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