Seriously now. You’re Microsoft. You want to get a blogger to check out Vista. If you are going to send it to a blogger, don’t send it to the guy who accused you of destroying Christmas. But if you do, make sure it works. Then make sure it works again, then once more and only then send it to him.
The Flattening of Politics conference – May 18th, stateside. I want to go but I do have exams and there’s meant to be an election around then too. Damnit.
Nothing to do with Queen Elizabeth and her obsession for wardrobe accessories. Take flying your own plane. Take transgender and you get Hangar Queen. Yeah yeah, mile high jokes.
Staying with the flying theme. Nick Whittome flys naked. That’s what security has come to in this day and age. That’s been the plan from day one. Ok, I’m picturing what kind of searches will be returned for Nick’s name now. Oh dear. Anyways Nick is a Microsoft Small Business Server and Flight Simulator MVP.
Jochen Lillich is a lumberjack. He’s a lumberjack and he’s ok. He’s a lumberjack and he’s ok and he sleeps all night. This is his Twitter. This is his feedburner feed. He cuts down trees, skips and jumps, likes to press wild flowers.
Flirty something‘s blog. Men adore her. Women wish they had hair like that and in 1976 a crack commando unit escaped from a top security military prison to get her attention. Instead they got a TV deal.
And I can tell you you I rarely see a man drinking on their own in a hotel bar. I only used do it in the days before high speed internet access in hotel rooms
How modern business people are changing.
Via Ter– Superyacht Chef Niall Harbison was asked to do a video demo of one of his specialist dishes for some video production companies who are interested in possibly doing a show with him. Here’s the results. I think this is the one that tips me over the edge and gets me into the kitchen to try it myself. Now I’m hungry.
Simon McGarr has honoured me by asking me to check into VoteTube.org now and then while he tends to one of the future leaders of our country. Hopefully I’ll start posting stuff over there soon. I think it odd that this election might miss out on using video and web tech in general to execute an election campaign while the next election in 4 or 5 years time might actually have people going “Duh, of course we are using the web. Everything we are doing is tied in to the web.” Next election we are not going to be seeing newspaper articles about “blogs” and the shiny new fad of “web videos” and candidates in Mayo uploading videos with the Saw Doctors singing in the background. Blogs and videos will be tools just like leaflets are tools now for campaigns. Seen a newspaper article about pamphlets lately? (Some guy is going to link to one now I bet and prove me wrong!).
There’s been meagre efforts from most of the parties at this stage but nothing spectacular. Labour’s “But, Are You Happy Video?” and the website tie-in was a bit of fresh thinking but that’s surely just a start? The PDs have started doing some videos too and I note Dan is pissy because the Sunday Times didn’t mention him in an article on them. Dan, who cares? The Sunday Times don’t seem to have an Irish website anymore for their articles. The ones who’ll find the YouTube probably won’t be the ones reading a print version of the paper. A political consultant recently told me the average time for reading the Sunday Times is now 14 minutes. If they’re not uploading all that content so it can be found by the great Google then they’re fucked really. What’s the average time spent watching YouTube in an Irish office these days?
As Dan notes, his video has been watched way more than the PDs one. But Dan, your video is still clobbered by another politician. Guess who’s been the most viewed politician though? Trevor Sargent. And where? A YouTube clip of him on Podge and Rodge. 8175 times. 7-8 times more than the next best video. (Roughly) He still comes across as a boring shite though. (Staying with the Podge and Rodge mentality.)
But Video and blogs are just two bits of technology that can be used and exploited and really are not. This election I think there’ll be some advantage for the party that starts using more web technologies where next-time there’ll be no advantage. They’ll be used by all. So, my glorious and intelligent readers, what off-the-shelf tech do you think politicians should be using to interact with the voters and to run their campaigns? No vapourware shite now please.
Bonus Video. Apple fan? Remember their amazing 1984 video? Now it’s been remixed again for Obama and takes shots at Hilary Clinton:
Morning Edit: Votetube and Simon were name-dropped on Morning Ireland this morning but an interview with Simon was unfortunately bumped. He’ll have his day again though!
A short while ago I asked who wanted to be added to my blogroll as I was definitely lacking some essential Irish blogs and I said I might do short summaries of your blogs too. I didn’t mention whether they’d make sense, if you recall.
“I’m not really The Man, but I do have his e-mail address”
Well what can you say after that apart from Life Without Toast is a reference to what happens to the Rocky Horror Show if someone thinks about the starving kids in Africa. Feedburner feed. Twitter profile.Delicious profile.
Now over to sligo for Strandhill Online. Being really shit with geography, I never knew that Strandhill was in Sligo, home of the lovely Aine Chambers. Nice to see more regional blogs starting up.
Now over Waterford way for Jonathan Brazil‘s Weblog. This ex-formula one racing star is now laying low in Waterford and working in technology research where he is working on a prototype to make a digital version of the tick you hear from analog Swiss watches. This ground-breaking work could one day win a Noble prize. Feedburner feed. Twitter profile. Flickr profile. Delicious profile.
Former cocker spaniel gymnastics trainer Elana Kehoe walked away from the soon-to-be Olympic sport after a plane crash in the Andes left herself and her team stranded and she had to turn her doggies into a nice fur coat to keep her warm while she awaited rescue. Elana is now a very famous mommy blogger though can still skin anything in less than 3 minutes. Be warned and be aware. Flickr profile. Twitter profile.
It’d be great if the TinyUrl and URL.ie urls got turned into the final urls so we can see what the sites are. Also, seems to me a Digg like service via Twitter could be made from this too.
Apart from GMail, Meebo and Bloglines, the one site I visit the most daily is IrishBlogs.ie and now with it down all weekend there’s a gap in my web life. I guess I should log off and go out and try and catch pneumonia or something… Hey Roger. you should set up a tipjar so we can contribute to what is now an essential web service for some.
Ireland is a micro-state that steals other countries tax revenues. It is not capable of being compared to the UK. It can only survive under the shadow of the UK (and I say this as an Irish citizen).
So a few days after the blog awards it was my 30th birthday and I really was too tired to go out for it but got dragged out the following night by my friends. Even though I didn’t want to.
Then they gave me my present. Which was a red jumper. You can tell my gratitude with that overjoyed expression on my face.
I was then made wear this jumper without any sleeves. Still not knowing what was up. Thought I was going to get slippers and a pipe next or something. So I start opening the next present.
And then it clicks with me when I see the cutout of a TV:
A line from Father Ted where Jack is giving out about Dougal being on the telly: “What’s that gobshite doing on the television? ” which is what one of them said when I was on the news talking about blogs.
So then with my red jumper on and the cut-out of a telly, they made me re-renact the scene from Fr. Ted. Which was helpfully printed out in neat type on the back of the telly. Not that I could read it without my glasses.
After that they gave me a cake and had me cut slices from it. It was then I discovered that…
They had baked me a cake jumper. A Father Ted reference that I actually failed to get.
Oh yeah, here’s the cringeworthy YouTube of it. Warning, excessive Cork accents:
