A few weeks back I blogged about the Irish Brain Trust idea. An advosry board for new Irish companies or existing ones who wanted some advice.
As a result of that John Timmons has set up BusinessAdvisory.ie and over the next few weeks/months we’ll start putting together a structure for this thing and see what we can do. Stay tuned.
A Dave McClure idea, halfbaked could easily be run as an event at BarCamp. Here are the guidelines from Dave:
- Act 1: start by having people yell out ~50 random words.
- Act 2: split into 5 teams, each chooses 2 words + “.com”
- Act 3: each team has ~10 min to prep their BlankBlank.com biz plan
(biz plan = product idea, revenue model, marketing plan, logo, tagline)
- Act 4: each team does a 5 minute pitch on their product to a VC
- Act 5: vote on who did the best job, then celebrate the insanity
Details of the latest Halfbaked.
This looks like a quite fun thing to do and along with Pecha Kucha would make the event a little more relaxed and interactive.
Around America in 80 days. In a mini, visiting each of the states that are joined to each other and visiting the smallest town in each one. Sounds fun.
Pets in costume. Freaks.
Want to buy some GMail email addresses? Check out EBay.ie. Because getting GMail invites is so bloody difficult.
You can now watch the whole of “The Power of Nightmares” online.
Microsoft Zune are sponsoring blogs to get the word out on their iPod competitor. Trouble is they demand you cannot say unkind things about Microsoft or Zune. Tut tut. Scoble has a nice soundbite on that: “You define yourself and your business by the customers you fire”
Carpark North – Human. I only have a few videos on my iPod. This is one.
Via Boards.ie
Dirk Benedict aka Starbuck from the original Battlestar in the series “Paine Management”:
Over on the blog awards website I mention that planning has started and I also go over the kind of sponsorship I need to make it better than last year. Also, 4 new categories are announced and 4 more surprise ones will be announced closer to the day. Suggestions for other categories are also welcomed over there.
(It’s a Simpsons quote.)
Another pay to play Web awards got coverage in the Examiner yesterday. The Webbys. Fee details. The Irish site is here. Take a deep breath before clicking. I love the bit at the bottom that is barely legible because of the colours on the page:
This website skillfully created by Brightspark and wonderfully hosted by Webhost.ie
Eoghan, Richard, Alan, thoughts?
Update: They’re delighted with their coverage. 🙂
Don’t forget the Politics in Ireland competition! (I’m saying this too much I guess.)
Education in Ireland. A view from the coalface/Western front. We need more teachers blogging and explaining what it is like from day to day.
How to tie a double windsor.
Irish energy regulator once again acts as Bord Gais apologist. Maybe now that the Consumers Assocation get less money from the Government, they might start making bigger noises. Though they’re still getting paid by numerous quangos to be on their “advisory” panels e.g. they are paid €1500 to attend consumer meetings with ComReg. In return at a meeting with the EU the Assocation sang the praises of ComReg and their consumer initiatives and rattling off false ComReg figures.
Who wouldn’t want a rampaging Willie t-shirt? No filthy, not that. Wash your mind out with soap!
Via Jeremy Zawodny’s blog: Jumbo landing on an airstrip that’s really really short and really really narrow. Final flight of this jumbo. Magnificient piloting of this sky giant:
Ist Bruno! He’s just a gay version of Borat. Baron-Cohen got 40m for a Bruno movie? I’m curious are they just making something like a Borat sequel with this character.
Via Neil Gaiman – This is absolutely brilliant. I really love this. Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen created a performance piece called “Complaint Choir” which gave Finnish people a chance to complain about anything and everything. Complaints were gathered and turned into a choral piece. The results are below:
Check out some of the lyrics:
You can’t get rich by working
And love doesn’t last forever
In the public sauna they never ask
If it’s ok to throw water on the stoveOld forests are cut down and turned into toilet paper
And still all the toilets are out of paperWe always lose to Sweden in hockey and Eurovision
Christmas season always starts earlier every year
Why do people never agree with me?
Anyone found the complete lyrics to the above piece?
There also seems to be a Birmingham Complaints Choir.
I wonder could there be one for Ireland? Lots and lots of people complaining here. A fringe festival might sponsor such a thing.
Anyone want to string together some lyrics?
I get emails or calls once or twice a week from journalists and researchers asking for comments or asking me do I know anyone who is willing to comment on x or y or do I know experts on w and q who could help with their article/radio slot. I do my best to help.
Dave Winer recently gave out that journalists are using the same old tried and tested people when doing stories on politics or tech. He considers it an incestuous relationship. One of his solutions is to document who quotes who how often:
a simple project would be to build a network model for who gets quoted by which reporters at which publications
I think that’s a fair point and we get the same here. Remember the days of the Late Late when the same wrinkled faces were on nonstop talking about whatever was topical at the time? In defense of journalists and researchers, most are commissioned to write about certain subjects that they don’t know much about and unless you’re a full-timer in a paper with a specialist area it is quite hard to cover certain subjects within a 6 hour deadline. I feel sorrier for radio researchers who have to go and find panelists on subjects that the current news cycles deems important and making sure that the person won’t freeze up on-air.
Would having a group made shared list of names/bloggers work for both bloggers and journalists? It decreases the same old faces in articles and voices on radio and pays more attention to genuine experts who were not getting coverage up to now due to time restraints of journalists. Is it win win? Or is it just encouraging lazy journalism?
The list would be on a webpage and contain categories of expertise and the names of bloggers and links to their blogs. Being able to read their blog archives would be a way for the researcher to see that the blogger is not a grade 16 cat lady. (Each grade = no. of cats you own.) The table/list would also contain a list of publications or radio shows that the blogger has been quoted in or participated in. Naturally such a list is opt-in and it would not be sending journalists to bloggers who do not want to be contacted.
What are your thoughts on this?
Lets hope their spot the scumbag section becomes a regular thing. Why wait for highly paid RTE presenters to ask you if you know those faces? Were I more inclined I’d used this Firefox extension to download all those videos before the uploader deletes them. The trouble with those downloads is that they are saved as FLV files and if you want to have them in your own YouTube account you have to reencode them to avi and then upload them once again to YouTube (which then encodes them to FLV).
EDIT: See comments. The file is on the LimerickBlogger account. Good good. And it seems you can upload FLVs. Better again.
While Cork may kick ass for tech events, Limerick is proving to be the place for the best regional blogs with the Limerick Blogger, Alive in Limerick and The Newswire all reporting on Limerick.
Bernie asks should the G.A.A. sue YouTube?
How to customize embedded Google Videos.
A Dr. Laura doll. Fucking scary. This is her bio.
Great pic of a wave breaking.
Earth from space, Winter 2004.
John releases an OPML list for planet.journals.ie and quickly enough Justin makes an application out of the data. I wonder will we see anymore apps created.
Ofcom has won back a huge amount of ground on the TV Without Frontiers directive. The only regulator in the EU to give a crap. Remember the telecoms poodle and others wanted to regulate YOUR blogs and websites if there was video on it.
Colbert Tribute to the outgoing Republicans:
Ben Folds sings “Such great heights” (live)
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