an tImeall celebrates their 100th podcast. Very impressive I have to say. Conn’s speech at the blog awards was great too. I’m a day late for birthday greetings though. Ooops.
Archive for March, 2006
Happy 100th to an tImeall
Friday, March 17th, 2006Patrick’s Day Pieces
Friday, March 17th, 2006A very clever way of getting that domain that a domain reseller currently owns.
Speaking of which, have a look at the Big.com search engine. With a site like this I don’t have to wear glasses on my work computer. Simple idea but I think the search engine that’s uses is shite. I was not number one on google for god’s sake! 🙂
The World’s Bravest Man. No, it isn’t Piaras Kelly but maybe they’re related? 16th cousins or something.
This guy is looking for a billion page views. Another MillionDollarHomepage type idea. Best of luck to him. He needs to post pics of naked chicks or something I’d say.
In the same vein. Unusual business ideas that work. All it is really is knowing how people think and working your ass off. I wonder how much of all of this is having the personality to make people notice you in the crowd without looking like a nutjob?
Triple Award winner Twenty is live blogging from Ron Blacks. Go read.
Holks Alternative Irish Blog Awards. Loving this.
Bringing new people into the Blog O’Sphere
Friday, March 17th, 2006Myself and James are having an interesting debate over on Eirepreneur about OPML and feeds. It starts an interesting debate on how to introduce new people to blogs and feeds. I like the idea of the open Irish directory but don’t like the fact that it is so cold and isolationist. I’d like to see each node in the directory having a quick content preview besides having to go off and click some more to then read and site and find you don’t like it.
I started off reading sites like BoingBoing and Slashdot which linked to other sites that supplied them with info and I followed those links, quickly becoming a fan of Metafilter and Memepool and so on. As my daily sites to read went up I found that an aggregator was called for. I started off with about 15 sites and as I found more interesting sites I added them and removed sites I fell out of love with.
If I was to try and get Irish people using an aggregator now I’d prepopulate it. Something like the IrishBlogs aggregator but more based on everything that is in the blogroll of every IrishBlogger(like an Irish Tailrank) and a small best of list created as a result of this.
The idea would be that when someone signs up they are asked for their favourite websites. These would then automatically be put into their aggregator. Then they’d be asked what areas interest them the most and from this some backend wizardry technology would go through everything in the Irish Blog rolls and make recommendations. The initial blogroll should be no more than 15 sites in total (plus the users favs) and the user then should be allowed to add more or remove some as they go along. I would have one feed displaying at most 10 feeds from the IrishBlogs aggregator as this could intrduce the user to something they would not normally look at. Call it the “wildcard” feed. Or maybe have this “wildcard” feed comprised of the most bumped posts from the day before.
The Google generation wants simple and they want results given right here, right now. Clicking these days seems too time consuming.
Saints, scholars and messy drunks
Thursday, March 16th, 2006I’ve tuned into Markham’s blog now and then during his year of the big drought and today is his last dry day. Well done Markham. As he starts on the drink again it seems that it is rememberance day tomorrow. The Irish are Drunks Rememberance day to be exact. Kind of apt that Tiernan posted this link about an automated bar. Dick O’Brien who is much younger than I imagined he was 😉 also brings up the subject of alcohol and the Irish. If you look at the blog posts about the aftermath of the Irish Blog Awards it seemed every second post had someone hungover but at least we didn’t fight or smash a glass in the face of another fellow blogger. Even the feminazis as UI calls em didn’t glass Piaras on the night. We don’t need riots tomorrow for there to be blood on the streets, all we need is the general population getting pissed.
In the comments double award winner 😉 that girl suggests:
After all the hassle last year and the riots a couple of weeks ago I wonder will we need bloggers and cams on the streets of Dublin this weekend?
I used to work in an Accident and Emergency Department when I was in college first time round. There should be a photoblogger there to witness the violence, the stupidity and the difficulty of those that drink. Car crashes, family disputes, para-suicides and alcoholic comas and all down to alcohol. Shouting and singing is the background music with blood and vomit being the carpet of choice.
Markham has a great summary of Irish society and alcohol:
Irish people rely on drink so heavily that it’s pretty difficult to break out of the cycle of getting hammered. Drinking=social life seems to be the assumption. Bucking that trend puts you out of sync with a lot of people; you start having a routine that isn’t defined by closing times or hangovers, but by when you get tired and when the sun comes up, which sounds medieval if you’re not used to it. But it’s a better way to live, I reckon.
Markham will now operate from his new blog called Metropolis Blue. Happy Patrick’s day everyone! Also check out a blog about drink called the Pour.
Thursdayness – Some quick links
Thursday, March 16th, 2006The Podfather points to a survey showing radio is losing to podcasts and mp3s. I’m sure mp3s and the availability of millions of songs via an Internet connection have made most of the impact and that podcasting has made a smaller impact. It must still be a challenge though for traditional radio and for those that adopt to podcasting they could get a whole new audience. I can’t listen to Pet Sounds on TodayFM most nights due to college but I’d listen to the podcasts on the weekend and being a podcast I don’t need to hang around a radio for it. For shitty daytime shows I would think podcasting them is a waste but for something like niche shows like Pet Sounds and discussion shows like the Last Word then they’d increase their audience.
More Blog Awards prizes were given away today.
Last night I finally listened to interview with Sligo Tourism Gal Aine Chambers on the Monday Dave Fanning show. I was shocked and impressed that at the very end of the piece she thanked myself and Letter to America host Jett Loe. Aine is a natural for the airwaves. She controled the interview well and that’s something else when being interviewed by livewire Dave Fanning who is very hard to keep up with.
Update: Aine is now also in the Sligo Champion. Bump Aine on Digg.com
Dave Fanning has a blog
Wednesday, March 15th, 2006The Dave Fanning blog. We’ll need an aggregator soon enough just for Irish DJs. Welcome to the Blog O’Sphere Dave and hope to see you have fun here. Dave has got to have the perfect personality for blogging. We all know how much information he knows and the medium of radio with the time limits of ads and songs means Dave always appears not to be able to tell you everything he wants to. Blog it Dave!
Hotmail 30 day termination trigger almost makes Top Tech Tom say “Duck”
Wednesday, March 15th, 2006Says Tom while in between shining his award and hanging up on journalists and groupies:
I wanted to use another term rather than suck (one which rhymes with suck) but I realise some people can be offended by profanity so I rowed back on the language.
Why am I annoyed? – Microsoft’s insistence that you have to log into Hotmail every 30 days or they delete all your info.
You go Tiger Tom!
🙂
Dave Winer to leave blogging world – qui custodiet?
Wednesday, March 15th, 2006MJ mentions that Dave Winer is going to blogRetire. Dave Winer can be childish, petulant, mean, brash and loud. By god do we need more people like Dave but do we have them? Not only has Dave created blogging but he has also created Podcasting. The current new shift in trends is all thanks to him. He’s the guy who has also on numerous occassions said “Dude, that emperor is naked. ”
Dave’s not Gandhi but he was and is of the same attitude to get things done for the greater good. The right things. Dave knows when he’s right and will kick and scream and prod and push to bring everyone on side. Gandhi was blessed in that he had everyone onside when he did his work. Dave doesn’t because the opressors are not as obvious as they once were. They creep nicely in and we think they’re great and then bam, you’ve been fucked over. Evil is no longer zero sum.
How can you have the people behind you when the people don’t know what the hell is about to happen? Dave’s not been disheartened about this and in the past has thrown himself on many a grenade and decided to not give a fuck about popular opinion in order to stop the madness.
So Dave is going to retire and I hope he enjoys his retirement. He’s got plenty of battle scars and he deserves to take a break. Hope you have fun with your spare time fella. But who’ll replace him? A replacement is needed or more than one. Scoble, Searls, Weinberger are far too polite and we don’t need more polite people. We need people who are as tough as nails and will dive into a fight besides sitting around and discussing it. Who’s got the brains and the balls to get really angry about things and to not take the bullshit fed to and believed by others. Dave won’t take crap from Google, Apple, MS to name but a few. He’ll call out the new companies too who seem to ge so much love by the “A listers” who schmooze with them so much and are kept under the thumb via nominations to advisory boards.
Can the recruitment process for the next Dave start asap? We really need someone to fill the void.
The hunter becomes the hunted – Interview with a blogger
Wednesday, March 15th, 2006The BBC had a radio show called Chain Reaction. The idea was that someone from the entertainment world begins the series interviewing a person of their choice. The following week the interviewee becomes interviewer and choses their own person to interview. And so it goes on. The series wrapped up with Alan Moore interviewing Brian Eno. Would anyone like to do the same here for Irish bloggers? Since we all got on so well at the Blog Awards and chatted with people we previously only engaged with online and from meeting them in personlearned a good deal more, I’m sure now there are a load of new people we’d like to talk to and find out more about. To me it’d be a nice way of humanising this Blog O’Sphere too. I’d like to kick it off by nominating two people who would then go off and ask people to be interviewed. That way we should see about two new interviews every week or so. Are people interested in taking part in this?
Few rules:
Interview someone that you don’t know really well already otherwise it’s a bunch of mates telling each other how great they are.
Try and mix it up too by interviewing someone outside the sphere you normally blog in. Techs interviewing techs is going to be boring as are Republicans interviewing Republicans.
If you interview someone so they can just talk up their business then you will ruin the spirit of this and I’ll call you names on this blog. Maybe even rude names.
Be civil to the person you interview. Don’t interview someone just so you can get a load of digs in because you have totally different political views. I think Tom Cosgrave’s open letter to Richard is probing enough without being antagonistic.
Email the person first if you want to interview them besides saying on your blog that you want to because they should be under no pressure to accept.
Not a rule as such but a suggestion – Don’t lay out a set of questions and let it at that. Send a few follow-up emails to clarify some points or dig deeper into certain areas.
Oh, just seen UI’s piece on Damien Blake. Nicely done.
Update: 16 March 06
Greetings MSNBC Clicked readers. Thank you for stopping by. If you want to read more about Irish Blogs then try IrishBlogs.ie and PlanetOftheBlogs. We’ve got a great community going here and we appreciate your patronage. 🙂
The past 7 days
Wednesday, March 15th, 2006Tues 7th. My birthday. Woke at 0530 to travel to Dublin for the launch of an Oireachtas report on broadband. Think I was featured in SiliconRepublic talking about broadband.
Wedn 8th.Talking in ENN about broadband and teleworking.
Thu 9th. On Dave Fanning to talk about Blog Awards.
Fri 10th. Flew to Dublin. Was in Irish Times talking Blogs. Was in SiliconRepublic talking about Govt Man project.
Sat 11th. On Newstalk talking about Govt report on broadband.
Sun 12th. In Sunday Times talking broadand.
Mon 13th. Talking broadband in Metro paper. Talking blogs in Irish Times. Talking Blogs in Electric News. Talking Blogs in Siliconrepublic.
Tues 14th. Fighting with eircom director on Newstalk about broadband at 8am. Was mentioned in Electric News again.
In that time I also helped contribute to a few other news stories that I was not credited with but that’s the nature of the game. Am I a media whore now then? 🙂