Archive for the ‘blogs’ Category

I am not the child from Oliver but I thank you

Tuesday, February 21st, 2006

So yes, I’m not that child who, as it happens, was also called Oliver. There have been a few posts, most recently Simon’s suggesting that there should be a whip-around of some sort for me. No need. My hotel stay is now being paid for by Microsoft Ireland and I am hugely grateful. A big thank you to Clare Dillon for making the no-strings attached offer. But have I told you how I’d prefer all my readers to use Internet Explorer to view my site and … 😉 Nope, Microsoft just like us bloggers so they have asked for nothing in return, like many other people who have kindly offered to paypal me money and so forth. Thank you everyone.

Just to be clear, my transparency post was not me with cap in hand, more me just being upfront with costs and what it takes to run an event like this. I have talked to other people who look like they are going to run some other interesting award events and hopefully my post helped them out.

Thanks for all the offers of financial assitance but I should be ok. However the best thing to do to help me is just tell as many friends of yours about the event and if you personally know people in the press, try and encourage them to do a story on blogging. You could also try and get more people to blog especially if you think their voice would bring something new and different to the community.

Speaking of sponsors, I’m toying with the idea that I’ll only accept sponsorship next year from companies that have a blog or employees that blog. That’ll make things interesting. 😉

Can’t blog me love – Via Steven – Excellent

Friday, February 17th, 2006

The Richard and Fiona show. A love song.

I knew I’d infect someone else with the blogging/song mashups.

Nice one Steven.

Boost a blogger

Friday, February 17th, 2006

TechCrunch talks about the new Rojo idea known as Feedshare. Basically you stick some code on your page and it advertises a blog and an ad. In turn your blog will be advertised on someoneelse’s blog. So for every block of ads you show (2 in a block) your ad will be displayed on another website. Rojo makes money from the second ad. I like the fact that the ad also has a direct link to your feed so you can subscribe to it.

It’s a good idea but I wonder will it get eclipsed by a service that just allows you to display one ad and you get an ad in return (we are back in the bubble with companies giving you something for free) or one ad and a share in the second ad?

This could be done for the Irish Bloggersphere. Simple javascript you stick on your sidebar that randomly chooses a blog from a list on IrishBlogs or Planet of the Blogs. If you wanted to be ultra-generous you could specify in the code to weight towards new blogs where new is defined as being less than 2 months old.

The person that builds this blog network would have access to a lot of Irish blogs then and would have the opportunity to then offer revenue share on ads in the future. So have the reciprocal ads to start with and then when people trust you enough you could give them the opportunity to display a second ad which they’d revenue share in.

Another lazyweb idea from Damien. Someone steal this idea.

An experiment in transparency

Thursday, February 16th, 2006

Sooo, the blog awards are almost here and voting ends in 24 hours time. I’ll lock the voting system then and sort out the shortlists. Some are going to be very very close. I’d like to go through the costs behind the event now and at the end of this post I’m asking for suggestions on some things.

  • The room is costing me €220 ex vat and I hope the fiver fee I’m charging as an entrance fee will cover that.
  • All prizes are sponsored and all sponsors are paying €50 per category except for Blacknight who are sponsoring a 2gb iPod Nano for the Best Blog prize. Blacknight are also hosting this site for free.
  • The Awards.ie domain cost €40 ex vat.
  • Spolitchild did the logo for free.
  • Rick O’Shea is doing the MC gig for free which is fantastic for someone of his calibre.
  • Bitbuzz as well as sponsoring a category are also sponsoring Internet Access.
  • o2 are sponsoring some i-mode phones as spotprizes and for a draw for voters.
  • Bifsniff are giving me a t-shirt with one of their surreal cartoons as a spotprize.
  • A cool guy named John Greene is donating two bottles of wine as spot prizes.

I am not getting anything extra from any of the sponsors. I will apparently have one PR company buy me lunch though. I’m a fan of the Mermaid Café by the way. 🙂 I’m paying for two nights in the Hotel myself and the train/plane. I must also get some trophies made this weekend, which for now will come out of my pocket. I have no issues paying these costs myself.

What I want to ask though is that I got a good few enquiries from companies and PR people wanting to sponsor the overall event this year. As in they wanted “Irish Blog Awards – Sponsored by Widget Limited” but I turned them down as I thought it unfair to the category sponsors and that they’d be overshadowed. Plus almost all costs were covered. So, next year do you think it would be ok to have an overall sponsor as well as category sponsors?

And now for the most important question: Should I personally profit from this next year? I’m sure I can ask much more for category sponsorship and overall sponsorship and with that comes a bigger venue, maybe better prizes and I want to pay the MC next year (and I’d hope it’d be Rick) but even then I’m thinking there would be money left over. Should I expense my hotel stay and trip and put any spare cash into my wallet? Or what should I do?

I am already profiting from it in a way as my traffic to my site has jumped and I seem to be getting to know PR people a bit more and may work with them on other blog related events. So I will be clear in that I am making something already from it. Anyway, I want the community to decide on this as this is your event and without you I wouldn’t be doing this and having so much fun. And to note, whatever you suggest I will honour it because I really don’t give that much of a damn about money. So, over to you…

Thursday Morning (Feb 16th 2006) Quick Links

Thursday, February 16th, 2006

20 Ideas for a Great Podcast. Some good suggestions there and some common sense ones that I would have overlooked.

Bohemian Rhapsody, Lost style. Weird Al doing his thin. Funny enough but not as fantastic as it could have been.

Cool performance Art pictures.

The movies of Mitchell Rose. Check out the ballet between a guy and a big digger. Quite a fun short film.

Via Michele is the Mike Davidson guide to getting an expired domain name. Very helpful. I’m still trying to get mulley.com and damien.com

Vote for a blog and maybe win an O2 i-mode phone

Wednesday, February 15th, 2006

Just announced on the Blog Awards site that o2 gave me some i-mode phones for the awards.

o2 i-mode phone o2 iMode

A few ways to be a winner:

You have a chance to win an i-mode phone if you have voted in the blog awards. This surely is an additional incentive for your readers to vote for you now. Stick the pic above on your blog and state “Vote for me and you might win this i-mode phone”. I want to see over 1000 people to have voted by Friday evening, we’re nearly at 900. Pimp yourself more 🙂

Additionally if you turn up on the night you also have the chance to win one of two i-mode phones as well as other spot prizes such as bottles of wine and hopefully other goodies including a Bifsniff T-Shirt.

Valentine’s Day 2006 links

Tuesday, February 14th, 2006

T-Mobile now has all-Ireland roaming rates. Are they cheaper than the providers here, doesn’t this mean we can just buy their service off them?

Virgin offers TV on your mobile (in the UK) but this surely means you now have to buy a TV license for the phone?

Irony alert. Jonathan doesn’t have comments so I can’t help him with hisBT issue.

Via Claire comes news that Tom Raftery is doing a whole lotta podleader interviews and Microsoft are sponsoring the first few of them. Go Tom!

John Handelaar is also kicking ass and developing his Fax Your TD project now called Vocalvoter. You rock dude!

800+ people have voted – Keep going

Tuesday, February 14th, 2006

800 people have voted in the Irish blog awards so far. Let’s try and get it to 1000 by Thursday and 1200 by Friday! I will be deeply disappointed to see the short lists come out because in all honesty there are way more than 5 fantastic blogs per category. As a community we should be really proud of these blogs because they kick the fucking ass of so much out there. For a country with a shitty Internet infrastructure and ripoff telecoms prices we’re doing pretty well online. Strange how we had one of the first websites ever yet haven’t progressed as fast as the rest of the world.

How long before they make Grand Theft Auto – Dáil Eireann Edition

Monday, February 13th, 2006

Driving down motorways the wrong way, drunk.
Knocking down pedestrians.
Breaking speed limits.
Then we have the big boss Gun Runner though we had a previous gun runner also run the country.

Oooh, and we can have a fascist Chief of Police.

*puts on his Judas Priest album and spins “Breaking the Law”*

Lazy investigative journalism

Sunday, February 12th, 2006

Update: She was acquitted.

Piaras Kelly mentioned the Naomi McElroy story that was in the Sunday Times. Basically she was done for writing fake prescriptions to aid in some story she was investigating. Piaras suggested her work was like those who tested the security of flights after the Sept 11th terrorist attacks:

Who can forget the number of weapons sneaked onto flights in the wake of 9/11 in a bid to highlight poor airport security

I replied in the comments but I think his commenting system dislikes me as only half my comments ever seem to get through. This is my view:

The weapons were fake, like her prescriptons but the big deal is she got drugs from these prescriptions. Would you rob a bank to prove their security was weak?

You can highlight weaknesses in most systems by adhering to the law, it just takes more work. If she wants to break the law to highlight something then she must pay the price and she knew the price before she did this. Her editor should also be found complicit. Journalists are not above the law just because they are trying to improve the system/get more readers.Is this lazy journalism?

Sarah mentioned on the Newstalk show today that blogs and bloggers don’t forgive lazy journalism. I guess this blogger doesn’t forgive Geraldo style lazy investigative journalism either.