Archive for the ‘irishblogs’ Category

Fluffy Links – Wednesday August 13th 2008

Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

On Twitter? Why not do Laura’s Twitter survey?

Steve. You summed it up perfectly. Nice one.

List of bloggers who are happy to copywrite/edit business blogs. Want to be added?

Sick of Aer Lingus being late? Aer Lateness

DownloadMusic.ie has a nifty new player you can stick on your Facebook or iGoogle page.

A question of blog. George Hamilton is blogging.

I know how Shane feels. All this new music and most of it is pants.

Via McAWilliams: As if you can’t hate the iPhone owners enough, now you can install a free app to use your free web text from Meteor or O2.

Speaking all things iPhoneish. Some tips. More tips.

Blue Screen of Olympic Death

Some great Business Blogging tips.

Review iPhone apps while high. No, don’t. Bro.

Getting people to your site is one thing. Converting them into customers is another. 5 main reasons they don’t “convert”.

Via Alexia:

Another Irish SEO “Expert” endorses blog comments to rig Google rankings

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

From the Enterprise Ireland eBusiness Mailing list:

Blogging is a way of building the inbound links.

How?

You blog, about interesting topics (link bait). Then you put comments on
related and relevant blogs with a link to your blog / articles. You submit
your RSS feed to wherever you see fit, and you submit your blog to the blog
search engines.

Was any lesson learned from that Irish Greeting card blogger spamming incident?

poodle in bodacious blue
Photo owned by greg westfall (cc)

I already have one Irish SEO expert in my sights to get a severe fucking kicking for selling a list with my details on it and telling the moronic victim to send me an email to try and get links from me and leave non-relevant comments on other blogs to build inbound links. If I see more lists being sent around or more bullshit comments from cluetards thinking it’ll help their SEO then I’ll make sure to flip the nuclear switch.

Don’t make us think. Well, not all the time…

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

In a recent blog post, Paul Bradshaw pointed out how high profile bloggers became toned down and tamer in their opinions as more people started to read them more. I’m not sure myself I’ve become tamer but this blog has changed over the years as more people read it. While it’s still a space for me to extract thoughts from my head, I seem to use it less to figure things out as I type or even after I’ve published. i know I put up fewer very rough pieces that turn into something better in a later blog post.

Art show, amateur division
Photo owned by Benimoto (cc)

Ter recently chatted to me and expressed surprise that I wasn’t allowed to have a non-PC opinion about Spanish students, the noisy fuckheads, and I suppose a few years ago I could happily give out about them and anything else without people coming back to defend them or give out to me for generalising. That’s fair enough I suppose.

Now a lot more thought goes into the blog posts (no really), however personally I still need to share my amateurism with others and I do so over on Twitter these days. I think it’s important to have an outlet for being stupid, rough, rude and wrong but for me this here blog is no longer the place for all of that. Apart from when I talk about Chocolate and Crisps or Asparagus and wee. (Funnily enough I got the biggest reactions to those two silly and amateurish wonderings.)

We got talking about quality posts at the training event on Saturday and Sabrina talks more about it on her post here. It does seem that blog readers in fact can’t handle an over-abundance of “quality” and in-depth pieces.

This is what Sabrina has to say:

More importantly, however, people take in a massive amount of information from scores of blogs each day. I suspect your average reader can manage maybe one or two “heavy” posts from across all of their sources in a given day. If your blog is always the blog with the big ask for time and attention, you will actually lose rather than win readers with your dense but awesome content.

So if you do produce fantastic guides about various things, should you throttle back on them? Perhaps mix them up with fun and maybe “amateur” pieces? I feel this is right. I’m not saying dumb it down, rather don’t push the high-brow stuff too much. Make your readers think but perhaps don’t make your readers think TOO much? Like 3 times a day. 5 days a week too much. I think there are some out there who can belt out quality piece after quality piece and never dilute the value of the content but for anyone that reads them on a regular basis, these pieces actually will start to hurt.

At the same time it’s probably good for your creativity and brain power to screw around with things. To have uncoordinated, unplanned fun. Or stupidity.

Say something stupid today, your blog audience needs it.

"People is the plural form of stupid"
Photo owned by cote (cc)

Toddle – A great addition to your email marketing – Tuesday Push August 12th 2008

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

The Pushee for this Tuesday is Toddle, now with a brand spanking new domain and another great redesign.

Toddle Email Marketing

Toddle helps you build and send great looking email newsletters. Simple idea, amazingly simple way of designing them. They do have a design company as their daddy so that’s got to help. This week they’ve also signed up their 1000th user.

Despite all the hype about Facebook, social media and all the rest, there’s a magnitude more have email addresses than read blogs and have a social network profile, yet using the medium of email has been abused and badly done for years when the rate of return on a good newsletter or mailshot can be fantastic. So Toddle helps you out by giving you beautiful templates you can use to send good content to your customers.

Coming up in the next few weeks are: Crewger, eWrite, DownloadMusic.ie and more

If you want to have your service listed then fill in this form. Please note that online stores reselling goods will not be considered. Also if you want converage you have to also give coverage on a website or blog. Everyone gets out and pushes.

The Tuesday Push and everyone involved can only work if as many people talk up the companies that are highlighted. Please spread the word about these great Irish companies.

Fluffy Links – Tuesday August 12th 2008

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

Back Seat Drivers. Back? Maybe perhaps yes.

Congrats to Fústar on Blog Post of the Month.

Roger Overall’s Food Photography Blog. We likey.

Liz McGonigal is using Twitter to give out PR tips. Nice idea. (Disclaimer: she’s a client)

Rain rain go away. No. really. My god.

Pat has his 3G iPhone working on Vodafone.

Tom Murphy is on a very nice shortlist of PR pros. Nice one Tom.

Amazing photos from the Olympics Opening Ceremony.

Is this the new Bond poster?

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone do a soundtrack for a movie.

I love this song. REM – Drive

Via Josh Spear, Something bad is going to happen here:

380,000 pensioners’ details were on that missing laptop

Monday, August 11th, 2008

So RTE says that laptop which was actually nicked/lost last year had 380,000 social welfare records on it. Holy shit.

Adrian will no doubt say that the data will never be accessed so it’s nothing to worry about. A granny in Kerry probably has the data, right?

While a junkie indeed might see a laptop valued at 50 quid and sell it on, where it ends up is another thing. Criminals are getting far more sophisticated in these matters as can be seen by the daily phishing attacks on banks, paypal and eBay in Ireland. There are enough gangs of criminals in Ireland into credit card theft and cloning now. Look at the Irish retailer website that got done over. It transpires that the criminals who had the credit card details waited months before trying out siphoning money from the cards.

I think I’d be more concerned with the data on that laptop than the fact that there are eircom modems in use by businesses. Which if cracked into could lead clever criminals to crack other passwords that may eventually lead them into gaining access to point of sales systems. That’s if the POS systems are connected to the same network as wireless modems. And no encryption is used for transmitting credit card details to the verifying server.

I’d be wondering why it took 16 months for this monumental fuck-up to be disclosed. Why are people are only being informed now? Why are banks are only being involved now? Why so long? Why was it not deemed a priority and why is it now an issue if it wasn’t for 16 months?

I’d also wonder how long the Data Protection Commissioner knew of the extent of this information? A few days, weeks, months, a year?

Other views: Brian, Digital Rights Ireland.

Business Blogging – Trained the trainers

Monday, August 11th, 2008

This Saturday as promised I did a free training session for people who wanted (or were pushed into) to train people on Business Blogging. The training session was in the Cork Airport International Hotel. A very funky hotel. One I like a lot if you’ve read any of my previous posts. I think most people were impressed by it. Amazing decor. A big thank you too to the Mercer Group who gave me the room for free and layed on (that sounded dirty) provided scones and tea and coffee for us, again without charge.

Cork Airport Hotel
(Photo by Sabrina)

I’m actually going to use the hotel for future training events in Cork because the surroundings are so nice and there’s free wifi all over the hotel too for everyone, not just those giving the presentations or those staying there. Likewise I’ll use the Radisson SAS in Dublin again for training classes as the place is gorgeous and the service from the staff is exceptional.

So we now have 10 people who I hope to see in the next while also giving Business Blogging training and given the majority are bloggers themselves and know their stuff, this growing area will be high quality from the start. Nice way of smothering the cowboys.

DSCN4301
Photo owned by jotterblog (cc)

I also promised that I’d open source my training material and so I shall. I’ll be stick all of it on my business website in the next month or thereabouts.

Sabrina has blogged about it and a great conversation was had about what content is good for a blog, what people will allow and won’t allow as readers and what engages and what bores. I think for BarCamp Cork there should be a few quick unconference type talks where people contribute things like that. “Topics for good blog posts”, “Startup cheap tips” etc.

Fluffy Links – Monday August 11th 2008

Monday, August 11th, 2008

I think you should read this. The Secret Fire. Such a wonderful blog post. Maybe send it on to more friends too and link to it.

New Blog: Suedehead’s Emporium.

I never realised Brendan was blogging over here. I was subbed to his other blog.

Another new to me blog: And from these ashes

Via Stephen. This video demo of the dog-like robot freaked me out. It’s just so alive-like but headless. Mad.

A great example of how to get your company in the news with a simple survey.

I’m not so sure is this iPhone holder stylish or actually nerdish. Too pocket protector for me.

Jesus Christ. It’s an attachable snout for shaving.

Via Today’s Big Thing and everywhere else: Slow Mo Camera films lightning

Feck Apple, have a pear.

AT-AT and the Nazis.

Adam and PaulJoe do the new James Bond theme:
Adam’s go:

Joe’s go:

I want the 3G iPhone less now

Sunday, August 10th, 2008

Firstly, have you seen yet more bad treatment of potential customers by O2 experience stores? So a few more phones go on sale online early tomorrow and I was considering getting one but maybe not now.

Not now that I upgraded the iPhone I bought last December in Palo Alto and unlocked and got working in Ireland. I added a data package to my existing cheap phone package and was all happy with the phone until the 3G model came out. Today though as I said, I upgraded the firmware to 2.0 using the PWNage tool (btw the Windows version sucks and fails to work) and now I have many of the features that the 3G phone has and I have access to the Appstore on iTunes.

I use my phone mostly for (and in this order) Email, Twitter, texts, the Web and calls. Email hasn’t changed with the firmware but the new version of Twinkle, the Twitter app is free on the Appstore and is fantastic and you can see from this screenshot:

Twinkle on the iPhone

The Nearby feature is better in this version too so you can see those you’re not connected to but are near you and are using Twinkle/Twitter. Lots more people in Cork are now on iPhones and using Twitter.

The new Facebook app for the iPhone is great too. A great little app that makes it even easier to use Facebook than their pretty slick web interface. I also have the WordPress App for the iPhone so I can update loads of my blogs on the phone and even write blog posts offline if I wish.

I already paid for an app too, as recommended by Enda Crowley. It’s the Tuner app and allows you to listen to Internet radio on the iPhone. So finally I can listen to Phantom 105.2 anywhere in the country or the world (via wifi). There are thousands of apps you can download for free or pay for on the App store and all this via a firmware upgrade.

Can’t get a new iPhone? Try and get one of the older ones.

Media Training – Thanks John Collins!

Friday, August 8th, 2008

Feedback so far on the Media Training class on Wednesday has been quite positive and I hope that those on the course will start popping up in the media more and more. They certainly have the products and knowledge to get themselves into the press.

A huge thanks to a very nice and helpful John Collins from the Irish Times who’s even busier these days as he’s acting Assistant Business Editor. He spoke to us for 30 minutes on how to work with him and journalists in general and what works and doesn’t work. Again, thanks John.

John Collins and Damien Mulley
Colin sent the above pic on. He suggested I photoshop myself to look like I’m interested. Oddly, when I’m paying real attention to something, I look like I’m tuned out. More on that in a later post.

I’ve been asked about the Cork one. There’s a difference between those who are interested and those who will pay for the course. I won’t train less than 10 and more than 12 people in a class. 6 have said they’ll actually attend. So let me know.