Archive for the ‘blogs’ Category

Good presenting – Jobs and Lessig

Wednesday, January 11th, 2006

Guy Kawasaki laudes Steve Jobs’ presentation at Mac World and discusses how Jobs knows how to make a great presentation. Compare this to the crap that Bill Gates foists on people. Another proponent of lots of slides but using minimal text is Larry Lessig. His latest defense of Google Print is a great presentation though as in previous posts, I think he’s incorrect about fair use. Still, download his presentation via bitTorrent and see how a pro does it.

Fast 50 – Slow to blog

Wednesday, January 11th, 2006

In an earlier post I was asking about there being a Fortune 500 for Ireland and there appears to be but you have to buy the cd of it. The reason I was asking was to do the same as Chris Anderson’s Fortune 500 Business Blog Index. Instead I used the Deloitte Fast 50 list which I thought would have modern enough “cutting edge” companies who may know something about blogging. Well, I was mistaken.

At least they all had websites, but none had blogs. It makes you wonder how many in business that are not actually blogging, have heard of blogs? Of those that have business blogs, is it only IT companies? What also struck me about the list is how so very very bad and ugly some of the sites were. All was missing from some of the sites was the old Blink tag or “Best Viewed in Internet Explorer 4”.

Without further ado, here are the sites:

01 Data Electronics Services Ltd
02 Alltracel Pharmaceuticals plc
03 Digiweb Ltd
04 Meridio
05 Bard na nGleann
06 Directski.com
07 Sabeo Technologies Ltd
08 BookAssist
09 tns distribution
10 Lagan Technologies Ltd
11 Exoftware Agile Solutions Ltd
12 MediaOne Ltd
13 Puca Technologies
14 Crannog Software Ltd
15 PulseLearning Ltd
16 Level Seven Creative
17 Medicom Medical Computer Solutions Ltd
18 Terminal Four
19 Real Time Systems Ltd
20 Texthelp Systems Ltd
21 Mapflow
22 Singularity
23 Ash Technologies Ltd
24 Clearscape
25 Version 1 Software Ltd
26 Electric Paper
27 Compass Informatics Ltd
28 Performance Fluid Dynamics (PFD) Ltd
29 ITS New Media Ltd
30 Core Systems NI Ltd
31 Datacare Software Group Ltd
32 Quantum Healthcare Informatics
33 iQon Technologies Ltd
34 Strencom
35 QUMAS
36 Biznet Solutions
37 Webtrade Ltd
38 ANDOR Technology plc
39 System Solutions Ltd
40 Partners in Europe
41 Stockbyte
42 Consilium Technologies Ltd
43 Globoforce
44 InterFusion Networks
45 Williams Industrial Services Ltd
46 Prologic Data Management Ltd
47 First Derivative plc
48 VistaTEC Ltd
49 Nitec Solutions Ltd
50 Conduit plc

Ultimate Showdown

Tuesday, January 10th, 2006

Via MemePool is The Ultimate showdown a fantastic song with accompanying flash video of superheros and Chuck Norris beating the shit out of each other. JCB Song what? TCAL covered it too.

Mary Mary Mary – Mary O’Rourke comment

Monday, January 9th, 2006

Well for some reason I’m the first result in Google for “Mary O Rourke comment” so I better put something here for the two people that visited from Google.

Suzy has covered it here as has Fiona.

Update: Richard Develan gives good coverage and I actually thought it a non-issue until his coverage of the media handling of it by Fianna Fáil and the lack of backbone by the media to call her out on it:

Orla then reads out another text from a listener that makes comparisons to the way Paddies and Micks were treated in the UK and elsewhere. The listener says that she’s black and she’s offended by O’Rourke’s remarks.

Asked for her response, O’Rourke says: “Good for her. She’s got clearly her asylum…or her papers. I wish all asylum seekers could work here.”

Oh my god. In fact this needs more punctuation: Oh. My. God.

Best blog summary, comes as usual, from Twenty.

My neighbourhood getting all tarted up.

Thursday, January 5th, 2006

Found on boards.ie are these pics of a new development near Pairc Ui Caoimh. Very nice. The NMRC is moving near my place. Great idea.

Development near Pairc Ui Caoimh

Development near Pairc Ui Caoimh

Dublining

Thursday, January 5th, 2006

I’m off to Dublin and Maynooth in the morning. Am around Dublin on Fri, Sat and Sun. If anyone is around give me a shout if you want to go for a drink or two. I’m going to see Mogwai play on Saturday evening, anyone else going to them?

I won’t be checking mail til at least Fri evening, I should think, so if you need to contact me have your people talk to Sinéad’s people who will ask Sinéad to supply my number.

Anyone know of a place in Dublin that does cocktails after lunch? Yes, I’m starting early.

Irish Blog Awards – Nominate your fav blogs now

Wednesday, January 4th, 2006

I’ve opened the Irish Blog Awards Nomination Process.

The categories are:

  • Best Blogger
  • Best Blog Post
  • Most Humorous Post
  • Best Photo Blog
  • Best Fictional Piece in a Blog
  • Best Arts and Culture Blog
  • Best Political Blog
  • Best Group Blog
  • Best Comment/Commenter
  • Best Personal Blog
  • Best Use of the Irish Language in a Blog
  • Best Contribution to the Irish Bloggersphere (Tech wise)

Go to the post on the Awards site to get more details. Now that nominations are open I *have* to get everything else in place PDQ. Have fun!

Asked what my New Year’s Resolutions were

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2006

I said:

why would I need to make resolutions? That would mean I wasn’t doing things right in 2005. I did everything right. Wouldn’t change a thing in 2005.

Oh the arrogance/delusions…

Hidden Agendas or not…

Saturday, December 31st, 2005

From the Director and Producer of Homosexual Agenda comes a new bigger and more explosive sequel – Gay Agenda.

There are now 42 LGBT bloggers on Homosexual Agenda which caters for Irish people or those living in Ireland but for those non-irish or not resident here we have launched Gay Agenda. Unlike Queer Filter which is pretty massive, I think for GA we’ll have to keep the numbers down and choose blogs that are less personal diary and more cultural, political or somethingelse-ical natured. I was thinking that if we kept the number to something like 500 or so blogs and ran an automated script that when the technorati ranking of a blog reached a certain level then the blog would be removed from the aggregator.

The idea being that GA would help promote some of the good but lesser known blogs and try to help with making them more popular and as they reach a certain threshold they’d get kicked out of the nest to fend for themselves. There are another few ideas for GA using structured blogging and the like which I have to convince Rob to create when he has some free time. 🙂

Schools and blogging

Saturday, December 31st, 2005

At the recent IT@Cork Conference a school principal/teacher asked Robert Scoble about blogs and school kids blogging. I think the principal/teacher was worried about kids blogging and revealing too much information about themselves. I wonder how much the fear of predators contributes to schools and parents preventing kids from going online.

Trouble is, trying to discourage kids from blogging will be counter-productive. They’re curious, they’ll want to be independent, they have a lot to say. So perhaps kids should be taught how to blog when they are taught how to use computers. Blogging could be a serious tool for the likes of debating, english assignments and learning how to frame arguments. Seeing how your peers blog and how they think would be an excellent means of furthering ones education surely?

I think I mentioned this in another post, but I’ll say it again: Scoble made a great point that he wished that his son’s teachers blogged so he’d know what they were covering in school. I like this idea a lot. A single daily post from each teacher would be good. For primary schools anyway, doubt this would work with secondary schools though, so perhaps a weekly post from each subject teacher.

In an email chat with Ina O’Murchu she mentioned how DERI have given classes on the semantic web to refugees in the area and that Brendan Smith the DERI outreach officer is in the process of setting up blogs for 40 schools in Galway. Definitely something to watch and see how it goes.