Damien Mulley

(I’m not here. Ssssh.)

T-Shirt Beta. I want one! Pity my size is sold out.

Universal gets Firefly fans to create a big online buzz to market the Serenity movie. Then fucks them over. So they repay the favour.

WordPress plugin to allow posting to Vox as well. APIs are really needed for Vox though.

The Fermoy by-pass – a ghost highway? Not a sinner on it.

I need to get this handy doormat that reminds you to take your keys and wallet and phone.

Handy message in a bottle notice for USB memory sticks.

Don’t copy that floppy!

Left hand: Phantom FM, backed by Denis Desmond, have availed of paid banner advertising on boards.ie for the past week or so in preparation for their launch at 12 noon today. The Phantom FM forum has been hosted at boards.ie for a number of years.

Right hand: “MCD is taking legal action against the site boards.ie for allegedly hosting a defamatory statement about Oxegen. The discussion forum was targeted by the Denis Desmond-owned music promotions company, after festival goers used it to complain about tent-burning and fighting at the festival in Kildare last month.”

Autopilot should kick in on this site in a few hours. I’ve scheduled blog posts to publish for the rest of the week and on Monday of next week. Everyone will still get their dose of fluffy links and there are a few other posts which will publish most days. It seems I’ll be more productive on the blog while I’m away then when I’m here.

Currently waiting for the audiobook version of Barak Obama’s first book to download from iTunes. Have his next book ordered from Amazon too. Thanks to Richard Delevan for the suggestion and welcome back!

Right. See you on the other side.

The owner of Greek Blog aggregator BlogMe.gr was arrested. Why? Because his aggregator aggregated a blog story which mocked some public figure. Ouch. Greece is in the EU and not part of China, right?

The Indo finally picked up on the story about Leinster House banning blogging.

In the UK the Institute for Public Policy Research is calling for a “private right to copy”. DRI over here wants the same I believe. This comes as the head of EMI says the cd is dead.

Levy stated that 60% of consumers now rip CDs to their computers for transfer to portable devices.

It’d be nice to see a survey done here in Ireland to see how many people rip their music.

Unlike the Telecoms Poodle, the UK telecoms regulator has balls and is happy to tell the EU to back off. Ofcom doesn’t want the EU to regulate TV over Internet or other emerging technologies. This TV without Frontiers thing from the EU is just a continutation of jobs for regulators. A new land to regulate. Job security. I’m sorry but who the hell are you to tell me to put watershed limitations on the content of my website?

More new blogs on the block. 6 to be exact.

I’ll specifically talk about two more here. The first is Alan McKernan’s blog. Alan is a really good friend of mine who I know years and years and years. Alan is off in Whistler, Canada enjoying snow sports and just landed a sweet job. “Living the Dream” is his blog and it’s what he’s doing.

The other is A Random Walk down Grub Street. A foodie blog from a lovely woman in Cork. 😉 More food blogs please!

When so many people are departing from the blogging community, it is nice to see a few joining.

Telling the time by the stars. When you don’t have a watch, a computer or a mobile and don’t live in a city since the light pollution hides the stars. Practical. 🙂

Sneaking around RTE TV studios at night time.

Stupid deaths.

RetailMeNot.com – Site for sharing coupons for online sites. This is the new project from the BugMeNot.com people. Not enough coupons on it yet but I’m sure it’ll grow. Speaking of which Play.com has some cheap DVD deals at the moment.

Cute Panda t-shirt.

Via Brandish: Training video from Wendy’s. Hiphop stylee. Very 1980s. Horrible.

My favourite band of 2006 – Beirut are the support band for Calexico in the Olympia this Thursday. After spending almost half a day contemplating canceling my NY trip just to see them, I decided not to. If, however, some kind soul is going to this, I wonder could you pick me up a t-shirt (large) from the band and I will repay you once I get back to Ireland? It should be a really good gig. If there are tickets left I’d recommend going to this gig.

This is Beirut live in Moscow:

Currently I’m liking Cold War Kids, Sebastien Schulder, Hanne Hukkelberg, Girl Talk, Midlake and Cast King. Just got Tom Waits’ new triple album too. If anyone can recommend anything else then I might Google Checkout it on iTunes before I head to the states.

Via Fred who inspired Jason to blog his thoughts. Jason Calacanis sure stirred up a hornets nest there with that statement. Jason thinks Wikipedia could take in over a hundred million a year that could be used to fund charities or the like in return for some small ads. The overall tone of the piece was resoundly “Won’t someone think of the children?”. It seemed very much like children would starve because Wikipedia won’t go commercial. Would Jason like the library of congress to have each book aisle carry advertising billboards?

You can commercialise anything and everything really and one wonders why we don’t. Why do we draw a line? Isn’t the reason that Wikipedia doesn’t take ads the same way we don’t walk around in our daily lives looking like F1 drivers with sponsor names all over ourselves? Logos shaved into our scalps and brand names tattooed on our arms? We don’t need the extra cash. Nut why don’t we think of the children we could help if we did! We don’t need to distract users from their research or reading by telling them that they might like this or that product, even if it is relevant to what I’m reading. Would encyclopedia Brittanica have ads at the top of every page in their printed encyclopedias?

The backlash though is quite strong, even for people that dislike Calcanis. Next up monetizing the Book of Kells.