Archive for October, 2005

Raiméis is playing with Flock

Thursday, October 20th, 2005

Raiméis is having fun with Flock. I have yet to hear the word “ground-breaking” or him so excited that he is going to try and convert everyone he knows to it. Is it just like Firefox with some pretty neat plugins?

I signed up to the mailing list too. Got nothing back. Shame.

Jabber founder is blogging

Thursday, October 20th, 2005

Doc Searls lets us know that Jeremie Miller, papa of Jabber is blogging. He has some nice comments on this web 2.0 hype. He thinks we are only seeing web 0.5 now.

Wiki.ie

Thursday, October 20th, 2005

John Breslin announces Wiki.ie.

Wiki Ireland was set up as a non-profit project to create a valuable local knowledge store for Ireland’s culture and heritage.

Excellent news. Another fantastic project from the Cloudmeister.

Irish Blog Awards Website

Thursday, October 20th, 2005

Website for the Irish Blog Awards Nice and handy url (awards.ie) and a blog that allows comments!

Robert Fisk, Metropole Cork, 20th Oct – €45

Wednesday, October 19th, 2005

Tempted to go and see Robert Fisk. David McWilliams interviewed him at the Dublin gig tonight. Wonder who’ll be there tomorrow night?

Damn, Digital Rights Ireland made BoingBoing

Tuesday, October 18th, 2005

The ever gregarious Cory Doctorow gave a nod to Digital Rights Ireland on BoingBoing today. BoingBoing is so strong now it has its own mini-Slashdot effect. Hopefully we’ll get some Irish Tech and Activist people who wouldn’t have heard about DRI before now.

More on this Irish Community Supersite

Tuesday, October 18th, 2005

Irish Bloggers take note. This is an interesting idea. Go to John’s site and comment on this or blog about it. I think this is something as a collective that we can do.

Taking some of the points that John Timmons mentioned on his post about the Irish Community Super Portal and adding my thoughts on each of his bullet points:

A blogroll that contained every Irish blogger
This would need the input of the people of IrishBlogs and Planet of the Blogs

I’d also suggest having this broken into blog categories. Everything, Tech, Politics, Arts and Literature, Humour, Music, Odd

Updated new posts from every forum you are subscribed to.
This would mean the cooperation of the people behind P45.net, Boards.ie and other sites like Peoples Republic of Cork

I’d also add the ability to have a feed which you can create a super feed of perhaps the Humour Section of Boards.ie mixed with P45.net and PROC or someting like that. A PubSub type hack.

Latest news from Irish news sites
RSS feeds from the sites should sort this out. Perhaps the webmasters behind those without feeds could be persuaded to create them?

Search bar for Irish sites
JMCC should step up for that. A search engine for Irish sites / Irish Content that would display results of sites and blogs together, but would at the same time via a non-intrusive colour scheme highlight which was a site and which was a blog. Each result would also allow you to subscribe to the rss feed of the site and also allow you to have an RSS feed of the search results.

Customizable RSS feeds from Irish sites
Job sites could be included here and sites with specific content. A recommendations section for various channels or topics of Irish interest. Non-blog Feeds (blog feeds are above) such as:

Arts and Literature Feed
Photography Feed
Technology Feed
Tech Jobs Feed
Engineering Jobs Feed
Cork News Feed
Upcoming Cork events Feed

I’d add in a few more ideas to this:

Blog Statistics
Perhaps have Aodhan Cullen from Statcounter help work on a stats engine for the Irish Bloggersphere? Number of posts per day from the ‘sphere. Number of blogs, most prolific poster, number of page views per blog etc. An Irish Technorati

Ability to Group Tag Blogs and Posts
Possibly via a delicious interface, allow those to add tags to posts and to blogs, so that over time the people can vote for the category of the blog. It would be damned handy too if people could tag Irish forum posts.

Gaiman in Dublin Update – Number for tix is (01) 208 2822

Tuesday, October 18th, 2005

Neil Gaiman posted a new phone number for Rattlebag.

(01) 208 2822

Read the rest of his post where basically he tells someone it is ok to take out an mp3 cd of Anasi Boys from the Library and put it in your Nano. This is being enlightened. This is being cool. This is being someone that can still earn a crust without having to stomp all over a persons freedoms and put a knife to their throat and demand money, though if he did he could do it in such a stylish way.

If you’d checked out the MP3 CD from your library you’d be expected to put it onto your iPod, after all. There’s a weird sort of ethical fogginess, in that I suspect that part of the idea of libraries is that when you’re done with something you return it, and of course once you have your MP3 on your computer and iPod you can keep it forever. But I think this is just one of those places where changes in technology move faster than the rules.

If you’re listening to it, and you’ve got an iPod or suchlike MP3 player, you’re almost definitely going to listen to it on your iPod. That’s how things are, and it’s a good thing (it’s why I got Harper Collins to release American Gods and Anansi Boys on MP3 CD, after all).

Probably wisest not to pull it off your iPod and give it to other people, though. Let them at least take it out of the library themselves.

EDIT: Hello Boing Boing readers!

A Web2.0 portal for all things Irish – an Irish Netvibes

Monday, October 17th, 2005

JWT is thinking about an Irish Online Community Portal over on his new blog.

He suggests:

  • A blogroll that contained every Irish blogger
  • Updated new posts from every forum you are subscribed to
  • Latest news from Irish news sites
  • Search bar for Irish sites
  • Customizable RSS feeds from Irish sites

Could this be built at the next TechCamp gathering? Who’ll accept the challenge? Darren? John?

about this IIA Netvisionary thingy

Sunday, October 16th, 2005

Now that voting on nominees has closed I can say that I’ve been nominated for the IIA Netvisionary Award in the Social Contribution category. I decided not to comment on it or solicit for votes for my own weird reasons. There’s nothing wrong with nominees asking people to vote for them either, I’m sure in the distant future I’ll be massively pimping myself in order for people to vote for me but now I’d like to see how things go without me saying a thing.

I’d like to see John Breslin win this award but I’m not sure will he because his co-owner of Boards.ie won it last year. That award last year should at least have had John as the co-nominee in my opinion. John’s attitude to growing boards.ie has seen it evolve from a few forums for Quake fans to a 600 strong forum with 40,000 members, conversing in their 1000s every day and every hour. It has brought people together, it has spawned campaigns that forced eircom to introduce broadband, it has formed and sealed friendships and it has had people fall in love. And all from a bit of software and a cool attitude.

That’s a social contribution. I’m delighted to be classed as one of his peers.