Have a look here and here and here. If all evidence removed, you can still see how the blog part of the site was hacked by looking at the RSS feed here.
Archive for the ‘irishblogs’ Category
Lucinda Creighton’s Website got hacked
Friday, November 9th, 2007Fluffy links – Friday November 9th 2007
Friday, November 9th, 2007I’m not really here. I’m in Wicklow. This is a post written on Wednesday.
I’ll be at Mashup Camp in Dublin all weekend, will you? Here’s who’s going.
On Monday I’ll be taking my first trip to Phantom towers to talk about blogging on the radio. Sometime after 2. Do tune in.
Fluffy Links – Thursday November 8th 2007
Thursday, November 8th, 2007I’m off to Wicklow today as I’m up early on Friday morning giving this blog training course. Sign up if you want to learn how blogging is good for your business and what is involved in business blogging. I’m staying here tonight. Pricey but I hope worth it for the location. Can someone cold call them about their site and offer to fix it?
Check out this Irish Craft news blog.
Got an Education blog? Check out the Edublog awards. It’s been suggested I have an Educational category at IBA3. What do you think?
Twenty pitched this as his first book but was beaten to it: Cooking with Booze.
I’ll be at Mashup Camp in Dublin all weekend, will you? Here’s who’s going.
Evil Eamon Ryan is now leaving it up to Junior Ministers to announce the bad news about broadband rollout in the sticks. National Broadband tender winner not announced til mid-2008. I’m betting late 2008 meaning people won’t avail of this scheme for up to two or three years after.
Larry Lessig at TED. How creativity is being strangled by the law.
How do we get Girl Talk to play in Ireland? Speaking of gigs, anyone going to the Final Fantasy gig on Dec 11th? I’m going to Lapland the next day I think. (Not the club. Boo!) A Hawk and a Handsaw are on the same night as Final Fantasy. Gah.
Sick of all this Facebook talk. Hugh drew this.
The N95 has an accelerometer inside, apparently. Would have been nice to know.
Analysis: New Facebook Ad System – faux-permission marketing to your friends? (Twitter finds a revenue stream)
Wednesday, November 7th, 2007But before I give my opinion on this: Microsoft have no input into this at all. Holy Cow. This is a competing ad platform to the existing one running on Facebook that Microsoft manages. While the 240 Million dollars is small change for Microsoft, bloody hell, all they got was access to banner advertising while Facebook has control of a more highly targeted system?
Thanks to the analysis of Jeremiah Owyang on his blog I was able to make some kind of sense of what this ad system actually does.
Executive summary
To me this system appears to be the start of Vendor Relationship Marketing though in a kludgy manner. The new Facebook system allows a company or individual to basically create a profile or group for their brand or product. Instead of “friending” this brand, a person “Fans” this profile and it is listed under their friends listing. The profile owner though can serve ads on your profile. They can also show ads on your news feed when you interact with them on their profile. Also external sites can advertise in your feed when you interact with them e.g. Your feed will say you bought a book from Amazon and under it Amazon might offer you 5% off the same book OR a book that is more tailored to your preferences as with the ad system it caters to your profile. The last bit has the most potential.
The new Facebook Ad Platform is broken into four areas: Social Ads, Facebook Pages, Facebook Beacon and Facebook Insights
Facebook Social Ads:
Very much just an iteration on Facebook Flyers but they allow you to drill down and be even more specific who you can target, age, sex, workplace, college, likes and dislikes etc. Quite targeted but these via Facebook Pages and outside webpages allow you to place ads in the News Feeds of people. They do this by showing ads under the actions of what friends have done with facebook Pages or Facebook Partner websites.
This is pretty much your friend giving permission for you to put an ad on their friend’s News Feed. Not permission marketing as such is it? How many friends will you dump on Facebook when this kicks in wholesale?
Facebook pages:
These are profiles for companies or products. People “friend” or rather “fan” your Facebook Page. It works very much like a profile with a few exceptions. When you add a Facebook Page it goes into the Fan section on your own profile.
This is the screenshot of adding Jeremiah’s Facebook page:
And this is how it looks on my Facebook profile:
All your friends also see this add in their news feed. This is now called a “social story”. When you interact with the Facebook Page by leaving comments and uploading photos and all that, that too goes into your news feed. Just like interacting with a friend. Each of the “social stories” has a link back to the Facebook Page so it is a handy way of increasing traffic to a profile. Then the Social Ads kick in. So you see this on the News Feed and under it is an ad for whatever that brand is BUT it is also tailored, almost sniper-like to your Facebook profile. So people in Ireland might see a different ad to someone in the UK or men see different ones to women.
Facebook Beacon
This is clever. I like this. This is for external websites who want to get a foot in the door of Facebook. Like the example above. Buy a book from Amazon and it gets listed in the news feed of that Facebook member and you can attach an ad to it. Want 5% off the book John just bought? This is good in that to start with it won’t get astroturfed. It will allow us nosey human beings to see what people bought or what they did with external websites while that site can pique your interest with an offer. And that offer is tailored to your demographic.
Facebook Insights
This is just the stats part of the ad system. Seems basic enough for now but bound to change.
Things unanswered for now
Groups: Why isn’t this offered to existing groups? C’mon Facebook people, with millions in some groups you could actually make more cash by allowing those group owners to do the same. Switch it on for them. Allow group members to opt in.
An ad network inside an ad network
If you build up your brand (Hey, remember Ze Frank is a brand) on Facebook and put a lot of hard work building it up, why not be able to make money by selling ads for other people and do it in some kind of automated fashion. If I have 100k followers, it would make me and Facebook money if I can allow some other people to send targeted ads to my subscribers without this advertiser going off and creating their own page and build up a following. Right now it only seems that I can spend money on Social Ads, not make money. Facebook people, yu do remember something called AdSense, right? Allow people to make money from their Facebook pages. Go on!
Where’s my kickback?
If my friends are reading my lifestream and seeing ads built around what I’ve purchased and done. What do I get back? I want a kickback
Will others rip this idea off?
You friggin bet. Now I sound American! Tumblr just got their revenue stream if they hadn’t already thought of this. Twitter too. I think we’ll also see RSS feeds of purchases become standard on all websites and people encouraged to stick them in their lifestreams via some kind of points thing. Get 5 points every time someone clicks on an item you’ve purchased etc. etc.
The future
This will get people and advertisers next to the next step in advertising. Vendor Relationship Management. A post on that another time.
Fluffy Links – Wednesday November 7th 2007
Wednesday, November 7th, 2007Want to try out some ice cream recipes? Want to get credit in an ice cream book and get a copy of the book. Talk to Kieran Murphy now. Yes, another blogger with a book deal. There’s gold in them thar blogs.
Sinéad’s got a new series called Musical Rooms. Check it check it out.
If you want to thrash valid opinion use the word “fringes”.
Via the ladies from Beaut.ie, tis Roy the Taxi Driver. He’s looking for other Taxi Drivers and the stories they may have.
New blogs on the block for this week. Want to be listed? Go there and leave a comment.
Speaking of which. Another fine music blog is added to the mix. Damn but that’s one vibrant blog area. Between that and food bloggers. Great to see.
Harry has a nice video of the Govt Ministers talking about their pay.
Nokia does touchscreen haptic feedback. I like.
Rob is now doing, er, Robby Links.
No Youtube for you!
And the real deal. Skip the middle part.
Pay Per Post and fake reviews illegal in Ireland/EU?
Tuesday, November 6th, 2007Not only has Google punished all those people judasing their opinion on the web for some silver, but now the EU is saying that companies who pay people to write fake reviews of products will get fined and be liable for criminal prosecution. Well according to the Register anyway.
and the upshot is that companies (including sole traders) will no longer be able to pay individual bloggers or professional agencies to post false or misleading blogs or reviews online. Nor will they be able to do it themselves.
A little step in the right direction for the malevolent marketers and their deceptive disciples who would rather make a quick buck then have a moral backbone or an ounce of creativity. In actual fact this is law in many EU countries already, this is what the EU wants:
Certain commercial practices across Europe are banned outright under the Directive. To ensure that traders, marketing professionals and customers are clear about what is prohibited, a Black List of unfair practices has been drawn up. Which types of commercial practices does it cover? The commercial practices on the Black List are unfair in all circumstances and no case-by-case assessment against other provisions of the Directive is required. The list may only be modified at EU level, by revision of the Directive with the involvement of the European Parliament and the Council (representatives from Member States).
And the one for this blog article:
Professional trader disguised as consumer “Falsely claiming or creating the impression that the trader is not acting for purposes relating to his trade, business, craft or profession, or falsely representing oneself as a consumer.â€
Is paying someone to blog about your product covered under this?
Is it Law in Ireland? Under the Consumer Protection Act 2007, in section 55 it outright bans:
(x) making a representation or creating an impression that the trader—
(i) is not acting for purposes related to the trader’s trade, business or profession, when the trader is so acting,
or
(ii) is acting as a consumer, when the trader is not;
And the fines:
56.—A trader who contravenes section 55(1) or (3) commits an offence and is liable on conviction on indictment or on summary conviction, as the case may be, to the fines and penalties provided in Chapter 4 of Part 5.
But would the below section mean that once someone delcares Pay Per Post, they’re ok?
(q) using editorial content in the media to promote a product (if a trader has paid for that promotion) if it is not made clear that the promotion is a paid promotion, whether in the content itself or in any oral, written, visual or descriptive representation in the promotion;
I’m not sure myself but I’m not a legal scholar so I’ll leave it up to one to clarify it when they read this. However part x is quite clear and useful. You can now make a complaint to the national consumer agency if a marketing or PR company leaves fake comments as “consumers” and have them done for breaking the law. Not that the NCA will give a damn or make an effort to do anything about this. I should think Boards.ie can make massive use of this given how so many marketing companies and all sorts of companies come on to the site, register as new users and talk up new products pretending not to be linked to them. I remember a certain Satellite Internet company used to do that on the IrelandOffline forum on boards, come on talking up their product and denying they were from the company.
Update: Daithà was 9 months ahead of me!
Gadget Lust – ASUS Eee PC 701
Tuesday, November 6th, 2007
Ships in 6 days. I want. Once I get it running with a 3G USB modem that is.
Specs
• Display : 7″
• CPU & Chipset : Intel Mobile CPU & chipset
• Operating System : Linux System/ Hardware Compatible with Windows XP
• Communication : 10/100 Mbps Ethernet
• WLAN : WiFi 802.11b/g
• Memory : 512MB, DDR2
• Storage : 4GB S.S.D. (Solid-State Disk)
• Web-Cam : 0.3 Mega Pixel Video camera
• Audio : Hi-Definition audio CODEC, Built-in stereo speaker, Built-in microphone
• Keyboard : Qwerty UK keyboard
• Expansion: 3 x USB ports
• Battery Life : 3 hrs (4 cells)
• Dimension & Weight : 22.5 x 16.4 x 2.15~3.5 cm, less than 1kg
Congrats business journalists and mucho congrats Adrian Weckler – UCD Smurfit School Business Journalist Awards
Tuesday, November 6th, 2007Adrian won the Business Technology journalist award from the UCD Smurfit School, congrats man! Also, well done to John Kennedy from Silicon Republic for being shortlisted.
In the yoof grouping, Mark Paul from the Sunday Times won the Young Journalist of the Year with Ian Kehoe from the Business Post and Laura Noonan from the Indo getting shortlisted.
Also well done to Ally Donnelly from the Evening Echo for winning Regional Business Journalist.
Other winners:
Business News
Winner: Kathleen Barrington, Sunday Business Post
Shortlisted: Nick Webb, Sunday Independent and Aine Coffey, Sunday Times
Business Comment
Winner: Brian Carey, Sunday Times
Shortlisted: Ciaran Hancock, Irish Times and Arthur Beesley, Irish Times
Business Feature
Winner: Arthur Beesely, Irish Times
Shortlisted: Aine Coffey, Sunday Times and Mark Paul, Sunday Times
Business Broadcast
Winner: John Murray, RTE Radio One, The Business
Shortlisted: Emma Mc Namara, RTE and Diarmaid Fleming, BBC Dublin
Specialist Business Reporting (marketing, personal finance and recruitment)
Winner: Niall Brady, Sunday Times
Shortlisted: Bill Tyson, Sunday Tribune and Laura Slattery, Irish Times
Guest Post by John Reynolds from 4Basra
Tuesday, November 6th, 2007John Reynolds runs 4Basra which aims to get aid to a childrend Hospital in the bruised and bloody country that Iraq now is. This is his guest post:
“There are so many needy causes out there and I prefer to support the ones that do more than just ask for donations.â€
Ouch. That has been the only negative response I’ve had so far. Iraq has edged out of the media spotlight, as Brian Cathcart in the New Statesman pointed out last week, but thankfully there are people willing to support a cause there. Initially I’d hoped 4Basra would somehow find an idea for a social business – like Heart of Africa, for example – that meets the following aims:
- Provides a return to an investor or existing business (on which we might piggy-back to minimise start-up costs)
- While also generating a profit that can be used to help provide medicines and supplies for a children’s hospital
- Has some connection to one, some or all of the key themes of supporting a children’s hospital in Basra: children, medicine and Iraq
Many readers of this blog are good with ideas…do get in touch if you have any. In the meantime, I’ve been lucky enough to have some kind help from the following people:
- Two UK-based doctors; the founders of Media Lens, and a couple of their supporters
- John Pilger at the New Statesman, who will shortly be writing about the situation in Iraq.
- The Irish Medical News and the Irish Medical Times
- Dr John Teeling and Stephen Teeling, of Cooley Whiskey and David Horgan, of Petrel Resources, who have kindly donated a case of special edition rare Irish whiskey for us to raffle.
- Senator David Norris
- Piaras Kelly at Edelman PR
I’d love to be able to say that I’ve come up with a social business model that means I won’t have to ask people for any more donations or support. The reality is that I haven’t. The only way we can help at the moment is by fundraising, to help pay for vital medicines and supplies. So we’re also hoping to get enough doctors – here in Ireland, in Britain, and possibly in Switzerland and Austria – to sign an appeal. If we have enough support, we stand a chance of getting back in the media spotlight – if even only briefly – as the two doctors who are helping me did in the London Independent, on 19 January this year. If you’d like to support us, or make a donation, or have a chance of winning that case of whiskey, and a number of books I’m hoping will be donated shortly, please email me on john at 4basra.org
Pass the spin please – Another Green gets handed the baton-o-FUD
Tuesday, November 6th, 2007Neilformer – Commie in disguise (he of the Che loving, Coke hating Labour Kids) takes a few shots at Roderic O’Gorman and his nonsense post about the Green Party and their backturning on equality. Neil makes very salient points and also points to Ciarán Cuffe and another blog post on his view of the past week. I don’t for a second believe what he said last week in the press but once again a blog post from Ciarán gives me some hope that the Greens have some morals. What good are morals though if you never take a stand? Anyway, contrast Ciarán’s blog post with Roderic‘s. I know which one is more transparent. As Neil also points out, I think it very poor form to use the names of Katherine Zappone and Anne-Louise Gilligan to try and copperfasten what the Green Party did last week. It’s pretty low in my books.
Speaking of low, while cheap to laugh at a typo, I find it funny that Roderic talks about getting passed the spin, (I think he meant getting past the spin) as if he was the next baton holder in the Green Party FUDathon. It seems indeed that Roderic picked up the baton and performed well enough, if spin and buck passing is the game. Screencap of the blog post title before it is changed on Rodder’s blog.
I wonder will I get dressed down privately now because of what I said about the Greens? I hear that’s the new fashion these days.
Bonus link to Una’s piece last Sunday on Ciarán.