Damien Mulley

The three new blogs from the Irish Times – On the Record by Jim Carroll, Pricewatch by Conor Pope and Present Tense by Shane Hegarty are all quite excellent and all meet the criteria of blogs with comments and proper feeds. (I encourage you to subscribe.)

Not to be outdone the Irish Independent are almost almost there in putting blogs and podcasts on their website too and I even hear videos will be put up. Hooray for content. A few Sunday papers are also messing around with the idea of blogs.

Some people at the Blog Awards this year complained that the “professional” writers were at some kind of advantage because of who they write for. I don’t believe they are and that was reflected in who won. I’m against the idea but do people think people who write for papers or the blogs on the likes of Ireland.com should have their own category?

Inside Google asks whether Google should allow media companies and others to buy Google Ads for searches relating to the Mass Murder in Virginia. Are the news orgs that desperate for the eyeballs of onliners?

Dave Winer has two posts on the mass murder (One titled Vlogging Comes to Mass Murder” and the other entitled “ChoTV Day2”) and thinks that the videos sent to NBC should be uploaded and left for everyone to see and do with them what they will. Some have argued about copycats but I’d more worry that this is just another form of trolling. The guy wanted attention and spreading the videos will do that for him. Attention whore has already got enough publicity. Doc Searls also says release the videos. Would he link to blog posts that had mockup pics of Kathy Sierra being murdered? Would he tell Kathy to upload the abusive pics and messages if they were posted to her?

Jeff Jarvis also supports their release and has some very good reasoning but I don’t think releasing the videos will encourage people to report potential rampage murderers, I think that lesson will be learned without them. We’ve seen the degrees of stupidity and insanity some people go to for attention, will this not just reinforce that fact that trolls with guns will be rewarded with the attention they want?

Meanwhile, isn’t someone in RTE being awfully clever with their “Sororicide jury breaks for weekend“. I’m not sure are murder cases the best place to show off your word of the day skills, though they seem to be fantastic sources for pullitzers and for best-selling non-fiction books.

Following on from my post about looking for mobile phones, I was asked to mention a few charities in the almost daily fluffy links. If you want more mentioned, add them to the comments.

Markham (you have a blog anymore?) recommends Camara.
Blurb:

Camara has three main activities:
1. We take in second-hand computers that have been discarded by Irish organizations, refurbish them and send them to schools and colleges in Africa.
2. We send out groups of volunteers to train African teachers in basic computer literacy and more specialised technology areas.
3. We produce computer training materials, and educational multimedia content in areas such as HIV/AIDS.

Primal Sneeze points to the Jack and Jill foundation who help sick children and collect mobile phones and ship them to Africa.

Support the Irish at the NextWeb Awards. Vote for LouderVoice and for Pixenate. (They’re in different categories so you can vote for both.)

BarCamp Dublin is on this Saturday, you going?

Speaking of which, don’t forget to register for ShareIT Dublin which is on Saturday April 28th. Free business training for startups!

Via Niall: An entire wedding party does the Thriller dance at their reception:

Nooo, they want to destroy Bloggorah by getting rid of lovely girls. Best Blogorrah headline in a while, cos there’s been some great ones: Lovely Girls Lubricate Dick. Why on earth are the PR company defending themselves, why are people not questioning the expense wasted on this?

Mobile phones wanted. Apply within.

Rufus Wainwright – Going To A Town

Why the shootings mean you must support my politics. a new version of the “Why the Bombings Mean That We Must Support My Politics“. Totally interchangeable with “Why the Kathy Sierra threats mean that you must support my code of conduct.”

Neil Gaiman – How to talk to girls at parties.

Primal Sneeze is looking for some feedback on Web 2.0 Usability.

I’ve been lumped with doing a paper on the usability of Web 2.0 applications. In this context, Web 2.0 means Blogger, WordPress, Flikr, Feedburner etc.

Send your feedback!

Go sign up for BarCamp Dublin. I won’t be attending but were I going I’d be taking a seat at the following talks, which are but a few of many on offer on Saturday and all free and all set at the Digital Hub in Dublin:

• Tom Raftery. CIX – Setting up an energy efficient/carbon neutral Data Centre.
• Eoin O’Dell. Law of Blogs; Blogs of Law
• Darren Barefoot, Social media marketing, or how I learned to love the mob.
• Colin Whittaker, The realities of building an LLU network in Ireland.
• Keith Bohanna & Tom Corcoran, Keith; GTD – my implementation of Getting Things Done – I’ve Practiced, now I’ll Preach, Tom; Spreading the Word – his experience of getting a team up to GTD speed
• John Ward. Cengal – Selling Web 2.0 to Irish Financial Institutions.

Well done to the organisers of this event.

Lots of ads on Boards.ie offering a free domain and web hosting for a year to college students and others. Sign up here. (I changed the referer to Mulley.net from Boards.ie 🙂 )

Offer applies to 3rd level students, postgrads, teaching or research staff, and lecturers only.

The terms and conditions don’t mention whether you own the domain name or not. What’s the story with that Dan?

Via Tom Coates is news that Yahoo! and the BBC are having a hack day on June 16th and 17th! Yes, hackday is over two days. It’s free and you can register here. The HackDay site is haxorifically cute with all the oldstyle terminal green and text changing as you mouse over it.

More of the blurb:

We’ll have a whole bunch of speakers from Flickr, Yahoo! and the BBC to start us off. We’ll have food—mostly flat—to meet the specialised needs of our guests. There may be booze. I’m not telling. If you want, you can stay awake all night or crash out in a corner in a sleeping bag. The only requirement or restriction (except for the legal ones, which you should probably read) is that you come to the event and try and build something, ideally using some of the stuff that the organisations hosting the event have to offer.

Don’t forget to register for ShareIT Dublin which is on Saturday April 28th. Free business training for startups!

BarCamp Dublin is on this Saturday, you going? (I can’t go unfortunately.)

Come back Julianstown Blog, all is forgiven.

Via Metafilter – Listening to words allows you to find, listen to and discuss free lectures from around the web.

Here’s a nice new ranty Irish blog. Blog the Bog. Liking it.

Responses from candidates for the upcoming General Election 2007 in Ireland on gay marriage.

iQ Content did a nice piece on Political Party websites. Not much regard for any of them at all.

Spam scammers now using the Haughey dynasty name. 🙂 Greeting gentle brave sir kind, I am Abwallah Maureen Inshoota Haughey…

This here is the blog of Denise Heffernan, it isn’t my blog.

Will it blend is old school. How about Will it freeze?

ElectSusie.com – Using your kid to make a point. Is it exploitation in itself to use a kid to campaign for child health care?

My name is Susie Flynn. I am running for President of the United States of America to help the nine million children who have no health insurance. This is a crisis. These children have been let down, yet the people accountable are doing too little to solve it.

Her announcement to run (Very slick production) – Viewed 2,606 times:

Her message to Congress: