John Handelaar has created the Fax Your TD project but needs more volunteers. He needs 5 more people to volunteer to work on the project to move it along further. Sign up this evening or the project will die! Dramatic eh? 🙂
Archive for January, 2006
Fax Your TD – Need your help now
Tuesday, January 31st, 2006Torturing your Digital Rights
Monday, January 30th, 2006Bernie comes up with the idea of Digital Rendition where our personal data is snatched by a third party, brought over to a detention centre in another country, is examined and “tortured” before the information is extracted and sent back to the authorities in Ireland. In a way, this is what IRMA does when they hire MediaSentry to spy on Irish people. I can’t seem to find the mp3 download link for this though.
Extraordinary name for torture flights
Monday, January 30th, 2006Bernie talks about this experience with US flights and the difficulties trying to prove that those Shannon planes are torture flight planes. I wonder what the budget on PR and Spin is for the US Govt. because they have the sweetest sounding names for the most horrible of things.
Fiona pointed out this Irish Blog on Torture flights the other day. Worth a look.
Moral Test – Ireland’s Elderly and Ireland’s Children
Monday, January 30th, 2006“The moral test of a government is how it treats those who are at the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those who are in the shadow of life, the sick and the needy, and the handicapped.” – Hubert H. Humphrey
The National Economic and Social Forum (NESF) said Irish spending on the elderly is the lowest in Europe, at almost €6,500 per person compared to €19,500 in Denmark. Course we’re the same country that was illegally taking money off the elderly, and when caught changed the law and tried to find a different method to judtify their robbery of money. Luckily our President got the Supreme Court to examine it and it was ruled unconstitutional.
The NESF would want to update their website though. Nothing on it about this press release which is printed in the Examiner. Also in the same paper is concerns from the Ombudsman for Children that not enough care/attention is being given to child abuse complaints and investigations.
The Ombudsman for Children has reportedly expressed concern that the health authorities may not be responding adequately to reports of child abuse.
2 More Blog Awards things
Monday, January 30th, 2006A Best Technology Blog/Blogger category has been added to the awards so I have opened nominations for a week for this. Then public votes start.
I was also thinking about the iPod prize. Would it be a good idea to put a collection of all the recent Irish podcasts on to the iPod for the winner to listen to?
Self Harm – John was in the Business Post today
Sunday, January 29th, 2006Self harm is a blog by John which helps to explain what self-harm is and why people cut themselves and inflict other forms of harm on themselves. I’ve been reading the blog a while now and it’s educated me quite a lot about this issue. I didn’t nominate many blogs for the blogawards but I did nominate this blog in the Best Personal Blog category. This blog deserves a bigger audience in my opinion and it was great to see Markham write a piece in the Sunday Business Post about it and have John interviewed in it too. To quote a small piece from it:
John cuts himself. It feels like the sting of sunburn and a release of pressure. When his feelings get confused and his thoughts are clouded, he seeks solace in pain. The pain focuses him, it’s a pure sensation, a reminder that he can feel; that he has emotions and everything is alright again. It’s like hitting a reset button.
Refreshed, John patches the cut with a plaster, rolls down his sleeve and goes to sleep.
It is blogs like John’s that add quality to the blogosphere in my view. The tag line for the blog is “You are not alone” and thanks to John hopefully more people will indeed realise that there are others who they can talk to about this and there to help them remedy the situation. Well done John and well done Markham for writing such a piece and bringing it to wider attention.
Lots of talk about Venture Capitalists going around.
Sunday, January 29th, 2006There’s a lot of talk about rebooting or changing the way venture capitalism works. I wonder is all this renewed talk down to this guy?
Scoble mentioned one thing which I suppose is true about software companies:
But today’s world isn’t money constrained. You don’t need much money to build software or services
So, I wonder, what is the biggest reason for companies to seek money? Wages for emlpoyees? Hardware costs? Are there many VC firms in Ireland that will invest in comparitively small amounts, say 100k or do they only want to talk to people who need a few tonnes of bank notes?
Giant PR firm lauds blogs, gets on cluetrain
Sunday, January 29th, 2006Via Doc Searls is a link to a piece by Richard Edelman who is CEO of the world’s largest independent public relations firm with 1,800 employees in 40 offices worldwide. In the piece he says:
How can companies embrace this future of empowered stakeholders? Speak from the inside out, telling your employees and customers what is happening so they can spread the word for you. Be transparent, revealing what you know when you know it while committing to updating as you learn more. Be willing to yield control of the message in favor of a rich dialogue, in which you learn by listening.
Sage advice and probably something that a lot of us here in the blogosphere know already but this coming from Edelman is good news indeed. I just wonder how long before this trickles into the consciousness of all PR people in Ireland?
When I grow up I want to be Fiona De Londras
Sunday, January 29th, 2006Fiona’s writings over the past few days have been nothing but exceptional.
Soundseeing tours of Dublin – Tourist Office podcasts
Sunday, January 29th, 2006Via Smartmobs comes news that the Dublin Tourism site is offering podcasts of various tourist walks around Dublin. About time. I suggested Soundseeing tours of Cork a while back with the timings and maps of the tour being “open sourced” so people could mash-up the audio files. I still think something like that would have a lot of potential.