Archive for the ‘irishblogs’ Category

Fluffy Links – Sunday 25th November 2012

Sunday, November 25th, 2012

Ballymun Lullaby is on the RTÉ for another few days. Do check it out.

Want to research the food industry in Ireland? Fantastic resources from Bord Bia.

We’re unloading the beast of the Money Grabbing Machine that we used in the Web Awards over on DoneDeal.ie, these things retail for something like 5k. (Cost about 2k but we ain’t got the space for it)

Salt Hotel. Yeah, actually made out of salt. Would probably prefer the Ice Hotel though.

Top 50 Cork albums. 50 – 40.

Sinéad Gleeson on Illness and Art

TechTeams links SMEs who are looking for some dev work with Irish dev companies. (Yes, a second Fluffy link for Mr. Blanchfield, people will talk)

58 Christmas songs from Sufjan Stevens. Silver and Gold. Mega.

And a crazy ad (one of a set) for it:

Prep for the Unthanks in the Opera House:

Fluffy Links – Sunday November 18th 2012

Sunday, November 18th, 2012

Golden tickets to Young Chef of the Year.

Finally! The I Shot JR t-shirt from Father Ted is officially released.

I’ve heard there was a secret chord, that David played and it pleased the Lord, but you don’t really care for music, do you? Via Kottke. Birds teach their chicks a secret chord, in a way.

Funding drive for a web initiative called. The Wild Geese “a leading Internet gateway focused on furthering understanding of Irish history and heritage.”

How the money flows in tech companies.

Anglo the Musical in negative review equity. But those that got freebies to it loved it. What’s with that. Oh.

Another wakeup call for bands, this one about the likes of Spotify. Though I think this is well known.

Facebook’s take on their Presidential Election data crunching.

David Chang, the Mind of a Chef. Looks like a good show.

The Twinkie defense.

Hudson Mohawke

Fluffy Links – Monday November 12th 2012

Monday, November 12th, 2012

If you build it, they will come. If you don’t build it right or at all, the modern world will route aroun you and build if themselves. James Eggers’ BetterExaminations.ie is an example of that in my view.

Maybe you can start with using robots.txt on your website to block Google? It worked for the Times… right? Then maybe you can remove the Google (DoubleClick) ads on your site and the article itself. The Examiner and other Irish papers are getting shitty with Google showing their content in their index. You know, the search engine that brings about 80% of traffic to websites…

Lot of people (some with agendas) knocking The Gathering. However bringing a load of travel bloggers to Ireland is a great idea. Once they don’t do what they did with some recent food bloggers where they ended up showing them the tried and tested tourist traps. We are more than a building with pictures of stout.

Not exactly tweeting reactions while a movie is playing but at the Cork Film Festival you are encouraged to tweet your feedback after watching some shorts.

Temboo, handy list of APIs you can use for your web project and an interface to them.

Bjorktastic. Remember her at the Oscars? Love this top.

Photographing historic moments. And again. And again. Scout Tufankjian got some great ones of Obama.

How

Man love

Thursday, November 8th, 2012

Wrote this to my iPhone notes the other day:

Some of my older male friends are weird about doing more than briefly shaking hands when you meet. You will accept the MulleyHug, dislike it all you like mofo. The younger generations of men are fine with contact, comfortable with hugging each other, enjoying their closeness. Might be a softening due to liberal attitudes, more interactions with girls and gays perhaps. Who knows for sure but touchy feely is nice. The yearning to touch and be touched, physically and emotionally is surely a natural human condition. We’re not talking public face fucking, like.

Then this popped up via Kottke yesterday:

David Brooks argues that over time, people (especially men) have become more emotionally intelligent and that this shift might be responsible for a significant portion of our cultural progress.

and Brooks points out:

Body type was useless as a predictor of how the men would fare in life. So was birth order or political affiliation. Even social class had a limited effect. But having a warm childhood was powerful. As George Vaillant, the study director, sums it up in “Triumphs of Experience,” his most recent summary of the research, “It was the capacity for intimate relationships that predicted flourishing in all aspects of these men’s lives.”

Fluffy Links – Thursday November 8th 2012

Thursday, November 8th, 2012

Teenagers on Facebook and Mobiles. Some stats.

7.24% of teenagers on Facebook are accessing Facebook using an iPad

The Glucksman’s new exhibition on The Experience of Illness in Art looks to be fantastic and with that there’s a symposium on the same subject. People from science, the medical profession and the Arts are going to be at it. Mega lineup. Wish I was around for it but I’ll be in Cardigan learning about denim…

One person’s experience of running the Ireland account on Twitter. Not positive.

How to deal with insomnia. You can also get amber glasses to block blue light. Not sure how effective they are.

RedFly are now giving away their keyword tool away for free. (This is dead handy for anyone into SEO)

Facebook used by Obama to get out the vote.

The campaign found that roughly 1 in 5 people contacted by a Facebook pal acted on the request, in large part because the message came from someone they knew

And related: Liquid Democracy and the German Pirate Party.

Pantone prints, yes please.

Katharine Philippa – Whiter Than I

Fluffy Links – Tuesday November 6th 2012

Tuesday, November 6th, 2012

Seti The First play Triskel Christchurch on Thursday. Worth seeing in my view.

UXPA Ireland “The Place for UX, Usability & Accessibility Professionals in Ireland” official launch takes place on 8 November 2012 — World Usability Day — at the National College of Ireland (NCI), Dublin.

So the Web Awards seemed to go well. Thanks for all the help everyone.

That Night Follows Day is in the Everyman until Saturday. A play for adults by children. “catalogues the many ways children’s lives are determined by that of their carers.”

Regulating Cloud Computing: Clear Skies Ahead? UCC, Friday 16 November.

Mr. Blanchfield says Start a Startup. Can you say no to this man?

So bands make sfa from selling music, the impression was touring is where it’s at. Seems not there either

Killer Mike – Big Beast (Via Jim)

Dorval – Julia Kent

Monday, October 22nd, 2012

This was played on Liz Nolan’s show on Friday.

It felt quite familiar even when first hearing it. For me, like all good music, it creates it’s own world that makes you feel part of it or at least a witness from the peripheries. This track creates for me an evening out with those you love and as things wind down, as the intoxication of chemicals artificial or natural slow things down, the night dissolves around you until you just have each other.

Or something.

Fluffy links – Sunday October 21st 2012

Sunday, October 21st, 2012

It’s been an age since some updates.

Businesses, check out eircom’s Digital Boost initiative. Monthly chance of winning free resources from eircom.

I really like this alternative The Gathering posters.

iphone app. Spots – search a location for Instagram photos taken there.

This reads like someone trying to start a legal test case. Guy building a 3-D printer to make a gun.

The most expensive and fastest Michelin-starred sushi you’ll ever have. Worth it?

Got sent a Microsoft Project file the other day. Found this PDF site converted them into PDFs so easily readable in a few short steps. Not just for making PDFs from Word docs!

John Kelly played “Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet” the other week. Well an excerpt as it goes to 74 minutes. Bren has previously written about this piece.

Fluffy Links – Sunday October 7th 2012

Sunday, October 7th, 2012

Two good gigs coming up in the Triskel. Seti the First and The Gloaming.

For kids, boo, win a Lego bedroom.

Personaised wine labels. Of course! Ugly website though.

Stream the new Freelance Whales album from NPR.

Some thoughts from Online Marketing experts on what next for this area.

Can we get Mary Meeker to Ireland to give a talk/visit?

The National College of Ireland are offering two courses under a Government ICT initiative; a Higher Diploma in Computing in Software Development and a Higher Diploma in Web Technologies.

Social product design with Facebook. London. Scholarships being offered.

In case you never saw it before. You can search by image in Google Images.

Macklemore and Ryan Lewis

What future for news?

Tuesday, October 2nd, 2012

So I asked a few people that work in media for their take on the future of news, where is it going, what do they think is going to happen. A very loose question has received some very interesting and insightful answers. Many thanks to: Deirdre O’Shaughnessy, Gareth O’Connor, Laura Slattery, John Kennedy, Adrian Weckler.

Deirdre O’Shaughnessy – Cork Independent

Expensive print is continuing to suffer as online news makes further inroads into peoples’ daily routines. I believe there’s still a place for print; the issue for most outlets is that people are now out of the habit of paying for any content, and that is a major challenge that most news producers still need to get their heads around. As a free newspaper, we are lucky not to be based on a ‘consumer pays’ model, but we are finding that advertisers are still far more willing to pay for print advertising than online advertising. Funnily enough, one of the biggest helps in that regard is going to be Apple – Apple customers are forced pay for music, film, etc. Introducing paywalls to people who already use Apple products will be a lot easier than introducing them to people who use free downloads all the time.

Regarding sourcing of news, I think the realisation has hit most journalists that a person on social media is the new ‘bloke in the pub’. Verification processes should be as stringent when you are told something online by a stranger as if you were told the same thing in a pub by a stranger. Social news isn’t new – it’s only the medium that has changed.

Gareth O’Connor – Storyful

I’ve grown a little tired of the phrase “future of news”, as I like to think more about the present of news. The world of news and journalism is a very exciting place to be right now with a whole host of new tools and technologies which help journalists to do the job faster. In my job at Storyful I live very much in the moment, two to three screens open on my desk at all times. Twitter has become a key tool in my trade, the social platform is where many news stories emerge right now as journalists embrace new storytelling methods. My role at Storyful as Director of News-Gathering involves being the “radar” of our social newsroom, the air traffic control tower if you like. As a social media news agency we pride ourselves on spotting stories quickly and delving into a whole host of social sources to increase understanding and offer context. These methods of news gathering were unheard of ten years ago, before social technologies opened up the web. Often I will have over twenty ‘live’ Twitter lists open on my terminals as we monitor multiple news sources around the world. These methods enable Storyful to react to developing stories really quickly, alerting news clients and activiating our video search discovery team. In a world of real-time news and social streams, this ability to react quickly gives our news team a vital cutting edge.

The key to these new methods of harvesting news is the concept of curation. As the online universe becomes noisy, the role of providing signal in the noise becomes more vital. Trust is a valuable commodity in the world of the social web and increasingly people are looking to experienced journalists to point them towards useful and relevant content. Fine work is being done in this area by news people like Jim Roberts of the New York Times (@nytjim on Twitter) or Neal Mann at the Wall Street Journal (@fieldproducer on Twitter) and our own Editorial Director (@DavidClinchNews) Our entire business model at Storyful is also based on this concept of finding the news from the noise. Every day our team searches the web for the best news content to share with our media partners. Key to all of this is the concept of the open or social newsroom. A big development in the news industry in the coming years will be the notion of the collaborative newsroom where journalists engage with the community on stories of relevance. Some organisations like the Guardian in the UK have already done a lot of work in this area. Legacy media organisations are also starting to embrace the concept of breaking down newsroom walls. The present of news is also about data. A goldmine of data exists for journalists to explore and this will become a more important area in years to come. In some senses the future of news is already here. That’s why I’m so excited about the present.

Laura Slattery – Irish Times

The future of the news business looks a lot like its past: intense, adaptive and alarmingly dependent on the financial commitment of passing moguls. Newspaper groups currently in the game of delivering (or aiming for) hard-news scoops as well as providing colour, context and entertainment may be placed under pressure to pick a side. Even the most genuine scoops very swiftly disseminate into what’s dismissively known as “commodity news”, with every news outlet jumping on the story. Some outlets, therefore, may come under commercial pressure to operate more like premium current affairs magazines ? with much smaller workforces to boot. All in-depth content (not necessarily long-form) will eventually go behind a pay wall as a matter of course, with only entry-level synopses of the events of the day offered for free to news tourists.

News outlets must remember to encourage journalists to stray from the beaten path ? pursuing online traffic by racing to embrace the same stories everyone else is doing will only result in self-defeating feedback loops. The aim should be to deliver content that either ticks some carefully selected ?specialist? boxes, or elegantly communicates a grander story. It?s about having fun without being intellectually flabby, being serious without being dull, and always, always, having some element of novelty. Unfortunately, it is a general rule of thumb that ?better? journalism takes more labour hours to produce: Only news outlets that recognise this and don?t go down a content-farm route will thrive.

Although some of the terms we hear nowadays (curation, aggregation, data journalism) are simply new names for old tricks, this is nevertheless an exciting time to be a journalist. But there will be painful job losses at legacy news organisations and further casualisation in employment. Freelances are finding it harder and harder to make journalism pay – this is worrying if it means that only young people from wealthy backgrounds can ?afford? to pursue it as a career.

John Kennedy – Silicon Republic

(Excuse typos, writing this on my iPhone at 18,000 feet.)
The first thing to understand if you are media is that nothing will wind back the clocks, the ivory towers are collapsing, there are no ‘papers of record’ and the media is truly mass media in the sense that everyone now has a voice and can contribute.
This is something of a rude awakening for traditional media but it is something they need to understand – the audience will crave the raw perspective of a nurse or teacher on the frontline of cutbacks for example as much as they will relish the column and opinion of a distinguished political columnist with impeccable connections. People can tweet, comment, blog, podcast, shoot video and add new dimensions to a story. It is all content and there is no point shouting at the waves ‘go back’ in irritation at the arrival of these other voices and opinions, embrace it.

For news practitioners this is not the end but rather the start of a golden age, but its up to you. Delivering the facts accurately alongside other forms of media like video and audio as well as distributing it socially will mean journalist will have to work even harder and faster than before. Journalists will also need to develop social communities around their brand and approach stories as opportunities to facilitate debate and gather new information.
Traditional journalists will need to be open to new ways of working and collaborating with their colleagues and their audience using social media. This will require a lot more flexibility in terms of working arrangements and will be a challenge for management in newspapers and broadcast outlets to ingrain in their organisation.

News will be fluid and if journalists wish to survive and thrive in this era of change they need to seize and realise the opportunities and adapt. Never before has such a rich array of technology tools and capabilities been at the disposal of journalists – those who embrace them and adapt will survive and prosper.

Adrian Weckler- Sunday Business Post/BusinessPost.ie

News is its own master and will find its own outlet. That’s good news for anyone with a phone and a big challenge for those who have become comfortable with rigid, established routes to an audience (broadcasters, publishers).
According to the latest survey (Ipsos-MRBI), over half of Irish adults have a Facebook account. Half, again, of those adults visit their Facebook page everyday. That is substantially more people than buy a newspaper every day (even if the purpose for visiting can vary). The same survey shows that a fifth of Irish adults have a Twitter account. At the same time, the number of people buying newspapers here continues to fall, at a rate of between five and ten per cent each year.
But newspapers are slowly starting to adapt. It’s becoming rare to find a journalist who doesn’t have — and use — a Twitter account.

I believe that the profitable, commercially sustainable answer to 100,000% more information, stories and opinions floating around networks and platforms is not to water down journalism and research, but the opposite. If you put more research and skill into a story or a feature, it will stand out even brighter, even in an age of aggregation, sharing and retweets. True, you have to pay attention to a framework, business model and all the rest. But there are different models to let you do this, from paywalls to online ads.
The Sunday Business Post has chosen a blended approach (paywall for the Sunday product, free-to-access for The Daily Business Post). Our experience is that people are willing to pay for news they need when it’s packaged to their liking and delivered on the devices they use.

There are some bright, well-executed rivals that have recently come into the Irish market. The Journal and Broadsheet stand out. They are giving the news audience what it has been looking for and no amount of moaning by traditional publishers about the evils of aggregation is going to change this. What established publishers are now starting to do is to take a minute and re-assess their own mojo. When they think long enough about it, they’ll see that The Financial Times makes a lot more money than Gawker, even if it invests a lot more money, too. The barriers to entry for anyone who wants to cover what’s happening around us are now far lower than they were. That means that it’s not enough for a high-paying traditional publisher simply to type up something that occurred or an announcement from a press release: it doesn’t take a degree to do this. Instead, publishers need to do two things: (i) break news and provide superior analysis and (ii) have platforms in place to make sure that the potential reader doesn’t have to strain to get to that news or analysis.