Archive for the ‘blogs’ Category

Just Meebo, myself and I – Meebo wishlist

Saturday, December 24th, 2005

Bow down and worship Meebo. It’s a great AJAXian application. Nice secure access to your various Instant Messaging applications, all via a browser. Very very handy if you have firewalls in work or school or college. All your IM clients open in one browser window.

But I want more from Meebo now. It isn’t enough anymore. I’d like to see the ability to browse some sites inside Meebo. Like that mini-browser extension for firefox (I couldn’t find the link to it, can someone send it to me?) which allows you to have a mini-browser inside a webpage, I think it would be sweet to click a link in an IM window in Meebo and have the option for it to be loaded in another IM window. If I recall all communications between my browser and Meebo are encrypted? The idea is Meebo serves me the webpages that it downloads for me, so if I have a nannystate firewall I circumvent it with Meebo.

This however could mean that the nannywalls would then block the Meebo site but perhaps there might be ways to come to an agreement with some companies. If the content does not pass through the company servers unencrypted then they might be more relaxed.

Essentially I’d like for meebo to be a VPN via the browser, imagine as well as IM, meebo connected to my home pc and allowed me to access my harddrive. “Feck” says he “I left that word doc at home.” “Why not Meebo it” says his work colleague. “Ah yeah”.

If we can have Linux in a screensaver, why not have VNC and VPN using Meebo?

Tis the season for domain renewals – GoDaddy just made a packet from me

Saturday, December 24th, 2005

Just renewed a good few domains and realised I have some domains I should really use or just kill off.

buyanorgan.net – Evolved from an old college project where we had to build a jerk simple e-commerce site using javascript and other mundane web 0.9 technology. The lecturer seemed a right humourless git who I felt might take offense easily so I created an e-commerce site for selling human organs. It was witty enough. Later on I moved the content on to this domain. The site is dead now and will remain like that until I decide what to do with it.

civilpartnership.org – Registered around the time of David Norris brought out his failed Civil Partnership “Bill”. Perhaps with the latest McDowell belches about Civil Partnerships, a discussion forum could be put together to talk about this.

digihive.com – Registered when I believed the hype and thought I could make money fulltime from building websites. Mainly used now just to accept mail from domain registrars. Will probably kill it off soon.

incork.com – Registered for Fixer when he wanted to build a Cork listings style directory. Expires some time in 2006. Still a few possibilities for this domain.

nicecock.net – A piss-take domain again. After seeing the Nice-Tits.org site which was apparently owned by the Royal Tit-Watching (Ornithological) Society of Britain, I regged Nicecock.net and stuck a picture of a rooster on the front page. I guess if I had any design abilities I could have sold some t-shirts off it. Maybe the BitSniff people could help out and we can split profits? 🙂

peoplesrepublicofcock.com – More a dig at the PeoplesRepublicOfCork forum. Again I wanted T-Shirts that were to the casual observer the same as the PROC T-shirts, apart from one letter in one word. Dunno what to do with this.

homosexual-agenda.org – Well I finally did something with this.

smart-survey.com – As a result of working on surveys for IrelandOffline I thought there was a definite need for something out there targeted to the Irish market. Mainly there were tonnes of surveys I wanted to do without having to pay a fortune for them. Since I’m quite thick when it comes to the technology aspect of these things I’m just waiting on someone to come along and do this for me. I’ll happily share the revenue for anything made off this!

The Homosexual Agenda

Friday, December 23rd, 2005

Rob helped me get Homosexual Agenda up and running and doing something. I regged the domain ages ago as I loved the way the right wing Christian nuts, mostly in the States, were always on about the homosexual agenda or the gay agenda. So I thought I’d put up a piss-take website. Version 0.2 was a group blog. That didn’t last as we all had our own blogs anyway, so this is version 0.3 and is just a simple aggregator. It’s not about segregating the homosexualists from the straights in the bloggersphere, but merely a way to see what a subsection of the larger community are discussing.

My bloggers, my friends, thank you.

Friday, December 23rd, 2005

I have to say that 2005 was definitely the year of the blog in Ireland. A community quickly came together thanks in no small part to the IrishBlogs and the PlanetOfTheBlogs aggregators. I’ve made a good few friends and hardly any enemies from this blogging lark. I’ve also found a new play toy called United Irelander. But more of that in the new year 😉

The quality of content coming from the small but growing boggersphere community is fantastic and we need to encourage more people to join this community and be their guides and mentors. We have the like of the lefties interviewing us, so we can learn more about ourselves, even silly memes that fly around the boggersphere faster than UI gets taken to task by the feminazis are good things for becoming more comfortable with each other. We have reporters, academics, artists, politicians, business people and social satirists in the mix and it’s enriching our daily reading. This is such a good thing. We even have a lovely Russian lady giving her views on things. I’m still looking for the elusive Polish bloggers though.

We also seem to be reaching out further to cyberspace and making our presence felt. We had Robert Scoble over here to visit Cork and Dublin and he helped advertise other Irish bloggers. Sites like PodLeaders and Newsroom.ie are interviewing international tech leaders as well as local tech and business influencers. Us Irish bloggers are doing well!

We had a good few events like TechCamp and IT@Cork where the bloggers got together. Most recently being the Dublin blogger meetup where the real TwentyMajor may or may not have appeared.

It was through the Irish blogs community that the Digital Rights Ireland group formed and they’ve already shown their worth with massive media coverage. 2006 is looking like an amazing year for them, but I’m biased being a director. 🙂

Now that I don’t have work for a while, college is over til Jan 3rd and both the lobby groups I have fun with are slowing down for the holidays, I really really really guarantee I’ll do something about the Irish Blog Awards.

So, to get to my point at long last, I’d like to thank everyone who blogs because you contribute a great deal of knowledge to my daily life now and educate me non-stop. Keep blogging, keep your current high standards, keep encouraging your fellow bloggers and try and get more and more people to blog.

Linux as a Windows screensaver

Thursday, December 22nd, 2005

Found this via Slashdot. Having Linux run as a screensaver in Windows. Pretty nifty and other words of praise.

Will the real TwentyMajor please stand up

Wednesday, December 21st, 2005

… and say “cunt”. It appears there was a Twenty impostor at the blog drinkies last night. Plot getting thicker than the average comment poster on UI’s blog.

Especially for Dave Winer

Tuesday, December 20th, 2005

Good ole Penny Arcade. Thanks Brian.

Apple and notebooks for women -pah

Tuesday, December 20th, 2005

Apple to release light-weight notebooks for the ladies? says engadget. You’ve lifted a baby right? They’re frickin heavy. Women can lift notebooks without hassle for god’s sake. Making them more stylish though I can agree with. I wonder how many women buy IBMs compared to mac laptops?

Wyrd Systers and Brothers

Monday, December 19th, 2005

Winds tagged me for the weird blog meme. 5 weird things about me.

  1. I park on the same quay in Cork city when I’m there in the evenings, if not then I park in the White Street carpark (which is free after 4.30pm and all Sat and Sun btw) and if not there I park in the multi-story carpark next to the City Hall. Hail rain or shine I park there though there are lots of places nearer to the City centre.
  2. I don’t use the word hate in conversations to talk about things. As an example I would never say “I hate that bloody song” or “I hate the way she does that.” I normally use “I detest” or “I can’t stand”. I have hate reserved for special people and special occasions.
  3. I abhor and have a thing about putting used ware in the kitchen sink and on the draining board. Not because the ware is dirty but I have this thing about bacteria and sinks being breeding grounds. I positively freak when someone puts meat or bread on the draining board to defrost.
  4. If I see someone wearing the same shirt, t-shirt, top or sweatshirt as I have, then I won’t wear that item of clothing again.
  5. I scrape and punch my knuckles against walls and other dense objects when bored and as a way of toughening up my knuckles. I’d advise not getting punched by me. Apparently it hurts!

Paying it forward to: Conor, Suzy, Robin, Dave, Donal and Stephen.

(yes I know it’s 6 not 5, sue me.)

Rules of the game:

The first player of this game starts with the topic “five weird habits of yourself,� and people who get tagged need to write an entry about their five weird habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next five people to be tagged and link to their web journals. Don’t forget to leave a comment in their blog or journal that says “You are tagged� (assuming they take comments) and tell them to read yours.

In or around Dublin? Still can’t get broadband? Want to be on De Telly?

Monday, December 19th, 2005

RTE are looking for people that are based in and around Dublin that still cannot get broadband after trying for so long to get it. Are you willing to be interviewed this week? If so, email me at info AT irelandoffline.org

Details I need:
A brief summary of how you tried to get broadband and failed.
Where you live and where you work. (If you can get off work for a brief period to do this interview it would even be better.)
Contact details, both mobile and email.