Author Archive

Cork Event: Staying Competitive in the International Arena – Ireland’s Wireless Sector

Tuesday, December 5th, 2006

I’m chairing a talk in the Rochestown Park Hotel on Wednesday called Staying Competitive in the International Arena which is part of the Wireless Wednesday

We’ve bitched and moaned that these wireless events are always in Dublin, well finally they’re coming to Cork. Hurrah.

Full details below, please do come along and don’t forget to register.

Date: Wednesday December 6th 6pm-8pm
Venue: The Maple Suite, Rochestown Park Hotel, Rochestown Road, Douglas, Cork.
Registration: 6pm – 6.30pm
Admission: Wireless Skillnet members are free
Non members Euro30

To register contact: admin [at] investnet.ie (David Neville)

6.00-6.30 – Registration
6.30-6.50 – Presentation
6.50-8.00 – Panel Discussion
8.00 Networking Reception sponsored by Selatra

Chair for evening: Damien Mulley

Speaker: John Dennehy, Director – Upstart Games Topic – Operating a Successful Mobile Games Company in Cork – Lessons Learned

Panellists:
Sean Cronin, CEO – Selatra
Ian Deakin, CEO – Pervenio
John Dennehy, Director – Upstart games
Chris Lynch, Co-founder – GMedia
Pat Phelan, Director – Roam4Free

Presentation will be followed by a Q&A session with the Speakers

Visionaries: The states has Vint Cerf, the UK Tim Berners-Lee and we have Gerry McGovern? WTF

Monday, December 4th, 2006

Karlin lines up a list of net visonaries and Gerry McGovern of “Nua fame” is put in the same mix as Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf, Tim O’Reilly and Nicholas Negroponte. One invented the web, another designed the protocols for connecting computers , one is running the One Laptop per child initiative and set up the MIT Media Lab and then we have Gerry, now modeling himself as a Jakob Nielsen-like character.

Ireland’s best known thinker on matters digital, Gerry McGovern, set up one of Ireland’s first web development companies, NUA, back in 1994

After that point, and with the setting up of his own consulting company, he has focused more on web content, in particular how organisations can best use the web. Though less of a presence in Ireland, his early writing and columns – before the Celtic Tiger took off – were some of the first to get people thinking here about the arrival of these new communications technologies and the role they might play.

Is Gerry McGovern the greatest in the history of the Irish Internet? If not, who is? Mary O’Rourke?

Meanwhile, look at the rest of the articles in that series on the Irish Times website. Lots of blogger have written pieces and lots more get mentioned. It is also in the Times as a supplement today.

odin’s raven magic – Sigur Ros et al

Monday, December 4th, 2006

I may have mentioned it before but the greatest concert I’ve experienced so far was the Odin’s Raven Magic concert that Sigur Ros, and a whole heap of other people performed on September 28th 2004 in Charlie Parker Hall in La Villette in Paris.

Pictures of the event are here. I particularly like this one.

It was an opera type male singer who performs the Icelandic 14th century poem “Odin’s Raven Magic” and accompanying him was a choir, an orchestra and Sigur Ros. They played some very traditional instruments including what looked like stones and made amazing sounds. There was a big screen behind them showing very arty visuals. Overall, everything on stage complimented everything else. It was absolutely amazing to experience and I’d travel the world to see this show again. The audience I think were blown away. People including me were almost emotional enough to shed a tear at the beauty of it all. Almost.

Here’s a clip from another performance of it in London:

Fluffy Links – December 4th 2006

Monday, December 4th, 2006

Ooops he did it again. The Late Late drunk invader ramraids RTE.

Alf Stuart’s mySpace profile.

Racist rant boosts Seinfeld DVD sales. Of course…

See-though fridge.

Via Piaras, is news that the EU Dublin office is podcasting.

Owwww. I mean, it is used for more than just sex.

Top 40 bands in America.

Gay man spends half a million to try and defeat a republican who voted to ban gay marriage. I don’t find this an uplifting story to be honest. Surely that money and energy could have been spent on making a better difference.

Booom. Fun with alkalis:

Dumbass:

PSNI have a MySpace profile

Monday, December 4th, 2006

PSNI on mySpace. Thanks to Phil for pointing it out.

It contains the tag line “Making Northern Ireland Safer For Everyone” and has this in-your-face drink driving ad:

Who’da thought it? I expect to see a Garda and Crimeline Bebo account by the end of the day, knowing how these things go. Veh-hick-kill.bebo.com is free still.

Meanwhile, new blogs on the block for this week are here.

Effective

Monday, December 4th, 2006

Tony Blair

Anti-ID Card Ad. Regulator rules it is not offensive.

Music Lists for 2006 – tis the season

Sunday, December 3rd, 2006

Nialler is looking for your top Irish albums of 2006. Yes, it *is* that time of year. I’m not sure have I actually listened to any Irish albums released in 2006. Certainly not that album from yer man Rice.

Overall my favourite albums or artists for 2006 have been Beirut – Gulag Orkestra, Regina Spektor – Soviet Kitch (yeah I know it isn’t her latest album), Girl Talk – Night Ripper and both Final Fantasy albums. I think I have a few Irish artists on my iPod but not many at all when compared to my overall music collection. Perhaps Nialler’s list will convince me to seek out local talent.

Moviestar.ie Tinfoil hattery: Google remove another blog post?

Sunday, December 3rd, 2006

It seems to be Richard’s turn this time. He has had just one single post removed from the Google index. He points out that it was his post on Moviestar.ie that was removed. A post which wasn’t that flattering of their “award winning” site. (Since changed and made much better but the award went to the old site) Guess who does their PR? I honestly think it is a coincidence. There’s no way a multi-billion dollar company could have such a weak system in place that would allow a human to interfere with their search godmachine. Afterall and by all accounts, Google really don’t have time for or trust these humans. Many know and have experienced the massive disregard Google has for anyone human that tries to connect with them. I doubt an actual answer to Richard will be forthcoming. When my post was removed the excuse/reason a Google employee gave wasn’t at all convincing.

When you do a search for Moviestar.ie, Richard’s homepage comes up alright but the actual post, the one saying something that isn’t positive, well that seems to be gone. So is Google manually removing some posts when requested by people/lawyers or is it that their service is just shit? Again, Richard’s post on them is no. 3 on MSN, yet it is not in the Google index. Curious, no?

touched for the very first time…

Saturday, December 2nd, 2006

Seem’s Steven‘s Virginity For Sale post is getting him a good deal of traffic. His post appears on the front page of Google for the search phrase: Virginity for sale. It makes me smile that Steven has learned to pimp virginity. 🙂

Free Amazon.co.uk postage – and a free present to pass off for Christmas

Friday, December 1st, 2006

Via boards.ie, It seems if you order a free book made by Hellmans, you can avail of free postage for anything else you add to your order.

Simply go here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/hellmanns, add the book to your cart, click on “Proceed to the checkout”, choose your postal address and on the payment page add the gift certificate code “HELLMANAMZN2” and click to continue. Choose a payment method for the rest of the order.

You should now notice that postage for the other items are free. Handy for Christmas shopping.