Archive for the ‘irishblogs’ Category

IrishRail’s gaywatch – Confirm they are on lookout to stop gay couples

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

It seems that IrishRail is actively watching out for gay and lesbian couples who might be getting the train. Minister for Setting things back 30 years Mary Coughlan, when she was in charge of social welfare put a law in place that denied samesex couples the ability to travel on a companion travel pass and IrishRail started enforcing it this year. They now have public notices in train stations that state:

Only named persons that have signed the rear of the pass and that are of a different gender are entitled to use the pass.

Irish, blacks, no gays

The “rules” mean that you can claim a companion pass even if you are unmarried, once the person is of the opposite sex. You can blab on about the Constitution and the protection of marriage and such but if unmarried couples who are not gay or lesbian can get the pass then that’s some serious inequality there. Or an old person with a non-loving, non-sexual partner. Up to the rule change by Coughlan, samesex couples could claim the pass if they passed the same eligibility tests as heterosexual couples. Of course if an elderly gay couple(I hear there’s at least 4 in the country) and an elderly lesbian couple went training around the country they would be allowed if they put a person from the other couple on their pass and vice-versa.

IrishRail’s spokesperson confirmed in an email to Suzy Byrne that they have been stopping gay couples from availing of this.

Maybe they should those World War II propganda posters too?
PartyOnCommunists
Photo owned by Ligadier Truffaut (cc)

Do Follow – Should you change link policies on your blog?

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

Michele’s kicked off something interesting with his blog post about the IIA’s Blog putting in nofollow or rather using the wordpress default on their blogs for comments.

(For the non techies who are the majority on this blog: the nofollow attribute in links left in comments on a blog means Google and other search engines won’t give these links any weight because they came from your site. See some people/bots had been leaving 1000s of comments on blogs before which linked to certain sites and it resulted those sites getting artificial boosts in Google rankings)

The IIA have since changed that around. Michele himself talks about his moderation policy and how he nukes any soft sell comments. If you have a moderation policy of doing that then removing nofollow makes sense I would guess.

No, not that kinda Link:
Link
Photo owned by metaxin (cc)

However, the way I see it, links without nofollow should be ones that you endorse and they’re not links in comments. I leave plenty of comments through that I do not agree with. I’ll do the same for links but I don’t vote with my site for those links. My own moderation policy is I’ll allow most stuff through soft sell or not (though not all) with the idea being the stupid and bad linking of an individual just makes them look like tits.

When you have IIA in their training classes advocating leaving comments on blogs to boost your Google rankings, maybe nofollow is actually a good idea?

Also wouldn’t spam engines target your blog more if it removes nofollows?

It would be nice though for WordPresss to allow you to have that control. Maybe they’ll bring it out. Meanwhile there’s a Dofollow wordpress plugin for it.

Update: This is what happens when you allow dofollow. The spammers make lists.

Operation Free Flow – anti-M50 toll campaign website

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

Operation Free Flow

IMG_5529
Photo owned by poeloq (cc)

A new web campaign has started to fight the “toll free” toll on the M50.

Some of their suggested steps are here which should cause disruption but not on the M50:

3 Step Pay Guide
Support M50 eToll O.F.F. Campaign, by following 3 steps
Step 1: Do not purchase or use any prepay options.
Step 2: Use the M50 as normal.
Step 3: Pay via the telephone service by Dialing 1890 50 10 50 at exactly 7.45pm the following day.

Fluffy Links – Tuesday September 2nd 2008

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

Going to PodCamp? Do.

My own take on this new Google Chrome Browser. I think the browser wars won’t happen. This is all about building an OS for the Web.

The latest Post the Roast is out.

K8 the Gr8 won August’s Blog Post of the Month. O2 are sending her a phone too. Fair play to O2 too for keeping up with the sponsorship despite a load of us bloggers giving them crap for their iPhone issues. Not every company would do that.

Eamon climbed Mont Blanc. For the laugh like. Read all about it.

Ryanair is one of the best PR/Marketing agencies in the world. Another example. I do wonder is it Ryanair themselves leak these? People keep getting told how they will try every trick in the book to cut costs. We get a new one every so often. Remember the mobile phone charging ban? Do you honestly think it was real?

Fan in fanatic. Look at the massive energy and gravity around the Dr. Horrible universe. Whedon has whacky fans.

Playlist from William Gibson. iTunes buy!

Jeremiah on How to get noticed. Brand wise.

Remember that cool enough song that was made for 500 quid and had 250k views on Youtube? Know how many mp3s he sold as a result? 100 Here’s Rhodri Marsden’s take on how hard it is for bands/musicians these days.
Here’s the vid again:

Are there any Seanachai events in Ireland anymore? I’ve love to go to a few of them and see how they work. I’d love if Eddie Lenihan’s TV shows were put online by RTE or put on DVD. You can listen to a tale from Eddie here.

Meanwhile:

Darth vader being a smart arse:

Net screwed in Ireland past few days? You’re not alone

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

Update 4th September: BT Ireland officially stating they are unsure what the issue is and will revert when they do know. Been almost a week now. I’ve asked will they compensate us for the month of September for these continued outages. They’ll get back to us on that too.

BT are blaming eircom or some BT staff are. Also affecting Perlico and UTV. Seems to happen mostly in the evenings the past few days. Something is certainly screwy.

7 ways on how blogs in Ireland can make money

Monday, September 1st, 2008

There are hundreds if not thousands of stories about how blogs can make you thousands of dollars/euros/punts a month/year but there’s not so much out there on success stories from Ireland. I’m talking about honest ways of course. There’s always selling links and Pay Per Post if you want to go the online chugging route.

These are some direct and indirect ways to make money, please add more in the comments field.

Direct:

1.Ads and affiliations

Google Ads:
Many blogs in Ireland are using Google ads to sell ads. They’re probably the easiest to set up but depending on the content of your site, the return can be pretty shite. Saying that, the more niche the content and the bigger the International readership, the more return you can get from these ads. A blog like mine with such a massive mix of topics and fluffy links means that Google Ads would have an identity crisis.

Others:
There are thousands of other ad systems out there that you can use for your blog too. Don’t just stop at Google ads. Read Michele Neylon’s Monetise.it for more information and tips. There are loads!

GAP Simply Summer
Photo owned by Dominic’s pics (cc)

Sell em yourself:
In Ireland companies like Trade Doubler and SalesOnline.ie don’t seem to work with blogs at all. There’s a valid enough reason too: Most blogs don’t do enough traffic so it’s hard to manage 100s of small tiny sites that they can put ads on. Maybe over time we’ll see our own bloggers ad network. My own form for those Irish bloggers wanting to do ads is sparesly enough populated too.

Feed ads:
You can put ads on your RSS feed too with the likes of Google Adsense for feeds or you can use an Amazon feed option so that you can put affiliate links in your RSS feeds.

Affiliates:
You can become an Amazon, eMusic etc. affiliate so that every time you mention an album, book, movie etc. a link is created to a sales page on Amazon or others. If someone buys an item then you get a percentage.

There are lots and lots and lots of options there. Please leave some feedback in the comments below and I’ll add more of your suggestions.

2 Sponsorship

It doesn’t happen much with Irish blogs but it’s an option. I use this model for Gastronom.ie and Bleep.ie and it allows an advertiser/sponsor to create their own “sponsored” blog post. They contribute a blog post that has good content in exchange for a sum of money. The post itself is highlighted as a sponsored piece. The company can also sponsor certain categories of the blog too and their branding can appear in that section in the sidebars and header and footer. It’s something like TheRegister.co.uk does for the various sections of their site.

delicious happiness
Photo owned by myuibe (cc)

3. Tip Jar

Paypal, Amazon and other services allow you to create a tipjar style option for your blog. If you’re not into making a lot of money but just enough for hosting, this is an option.

05-17-08_1455
Photo owned by kingnixon (cc)

4. Content syndication

Why not make a note that your content can be distributed? I think a lot more blogs would find their content in newspapers and magazines (when not nicked) if they mentioned they had a syndication policy. A creative commons button means absolutely nothing to normal people. It’s not an organ donor card you know. There are plenty of bloggers out there that write great content that could well be syndicated if the person reading it realises this. Don’t be afraid to make this know. Have a Syndication Policy.

5. Events

Something that should be done but not done yet as far as I can see. Although the Blog Awards is probably one such event but the money there goes to charity and it’s run to break even. 400+ people attended the Blog Awards in 2008. If your blog has a big enough local following and has some theme, then why not organise an event on that theme. Or perhaps an event for the niche you are in along with other blogs in that area. *cough* food blogger eatathon *cough*

Podleaders All Around
Photo owned by topgold (cc)

6. Build up and sell on

If you build a niche or nichey(not a real word but then this is a blog!) website and work hard at it then there’s a possibility that you’ll be bought out by your rivals, a local publisher (I still think the Times or the Indo will start buying blogs) or a larger niche or not so niche content network. There are already some examples:

VIPGlamour.net was sold by John M. Ryan a few years back for an undisclosed sum. It had good traffic and was added to a stable of other sites. I guess the idea being that the more property you have, the better deal you can get from advertising networks or create your own ad network that sits on top of your various websites. See what I said above about ad buying/selling companies only wanting to deal in 10s or 100s of 1000s of pageviews per site.

ArseBlog is/was an Irish blog about Arsenal. It was sold to OleOle.com this year for an undisclosed sum and the Arseblogger still has full editorial control of the site and works fulltime for them now. Depending on your blog’s content, you might be able to do the same.

Of course if your blog is not on a domain you own, you’re going to run into a few issues with ownership.

Indirect

7. Using the blog to get other work

Book deals
Twenty Major, Grandad, Good Mood Food Blog, Kieran Murphy (one more link on this line and it’d be linkbait) and others have gotten book deals as a direct result of their blogs and the writing that they do. Publishers are always looking for new ideas and content for books and blogs are a nice way of seeing the ability of potential writers.

Consultancy
Rowan Manahan, Tom Raftery, myself and others have written about topics on their blogs which have resulted in approaches from people and companies asking us to do work for them or we have been referred on to companies by our regular readers. All depends on your niche again. Why not add a “Consultancy Services” page on your blog?

Fulltime jobs
It’s happened and it will happen again. Prospective employers can get a much better insight into who you are from your blog. If you’re blogging about a topic on your blog and are an expert at it, don’t be surprised if you get a call from a company for a chat. It might start off with some consulting work and might eventually turn into a fulltime job.

Stairway to Heaven
Photo owned by ╠╣ỴρΞЯ ΔC╬ịVΞ (cc)

Do you have any suggestions?

Mad Men comes to Ireland and will make you smoke

Monday, September 1st, 2008

Mad Men

Mad Men is finally coming to these shores. Currently on season 2 in the States, this is a must-see TV series from some of the Sopranos staffers. It is the most visually stunning TV series I’ve ever watched. There are some scenes in it that will make you go “oooh” if you enjoy luscious design, typography and cinematography.

It will also make you want to smoke. A lot. And drink a lot. The sets, the costumes and superb writing. It’s got it all.

RTÉ 2 tonight – 11:30pm

Fluffy Links – Monday September 1st 2008

Monday, September 1st, 2008

James has a laugh and has created the FluffyLinkulator. A rapid inclusion service for your website. It works too! Kinda honoured he used that name.

Una talks about a new Cork music docu.

Bad cops bad cops, whatya gonna do. Garda van in Oz.

My friend Terry and his missus are traveling the globe for the next few months. Follow their adventures here. Really gonna miss them but great to read about where Ter has puked already.

Rubber Ducky!

Cool Sites. Another web enterprise from Michele. Nice one.

David Armano points out there’s already fan fiction Mad Men sites and Twitter accounts out there and how this is a good thing and the show producers should back the fuck off, basically.

The Voice Stick. Nice idea even if it is a concept piece right now.

Via Jonathan Hopkins – Hedluv

Saul Bass. Best known for his collaborative work with Hitchcock, Preminger and Scorsese, Bass on Titles presents a comprehensive, well-rounded retrospective of his film title sequence design.

Art of Being Subtle Part II

Sunday, August 31st, 2008

Brendan has a great post about the way some people online treat newcomers to online communities:

Over the past while I have witnessed several individuals and companies being dressed down by leading members of Ireland’s online community. These are individuals and companies that have broken the rules of the community.

He goes on:

The misdemeanour could range from the way they set up their blog, taking advertising on their personal website, to sending unsolicited emails to large numbers of people. Individuals are named and shamed, and often rightly so.

He points out that businesses are probably afraid to come online and interact when they see that kind of aggression. Very wild west! Where are the Pinkertons? 🙂

I’ve given out when people set their blog up on blogspot, which I call catpissspot. I’ve given out when people dress lies up as advertising and I’m constantly giving out about businesses spamming people. It’s frequently pointed out to me that I’m very ratty on this blog. Certainly when it comes to spamming, I wouldn’t shed a single tear when a business infringes on my privacy and blames it on a simple mistake and then gets hammered. If we had a competent Data Privacy Commissioner I think this would happen less. It’s like the excuse those headcases give when they microwave their dogs. They didn’t know. They were never informed. That was never written down. No get out of jail card there from me. Anyway, back to the point.

How subtle!
Photo owned by faeryboots (cc)

I’ve previously mentioned the art of being subtle and of observing and I left a comment advocating the same on Brendan’s blog post. The trouble is that it seems companies now hire consultants to quickly tell them what the rules and nuances of this online game are and the companies jump straight in with their rulebook learned off by heart. They still need to observe. What’s with the rush?

What do you think? Should we attempt to turn the other cheek and not get so enraged? Leave a comment over there. Brendan is the chair of the IIA Social Media Working Group and I’m sure would enjoy as much constructive feedback and different viewpoints as possible.

Presentation Zen – Authors@Google: Garr Reynolds

Sunday, August 31st, 2008

A must watch for anyone that sucks at Powerpoint or Keynote but has to use it (probably everyone):