Damien Mulley

Fianna Fail are putting DVDs instead of leaflets in our doors? Snazzy.

Walter gives a Cliff notes version of the “Microsoft is dead” essay. Please buy Snipshot – it’s going for a song.

The Union of Students in Ireland cut their links with SIPTU and instead align themselves with drink industry astroturf group MEAS and also with IBEC. Jesus. I can’t stand IBEC for their eircom sponsored crap through the years like: 2″we are the cheapest in Europe for telecoms prices and that those official EU reports are wrong” or “we’re not second last for broadband” or the real doozy: “we are poor for broadband because nobody wants broadband”. This excuse was flipped when the new eircom said it was availablity not demand which was the problem. USI and IBEC. These kids are the future of our country? I’d hate to be poor when they take over.

Farmers Market supplier in the UK found to be ripoff merchants. Hope the came is not the case in Ireland, though I notice some organic veg sellers seem to add a 100% hippy tax on to their good. Organic foods should not be luxury items, right?

So, The Economist will give me a discount and I can get a yearly subscription for just €92 a year. Saving 63% on the cover price. Or, thanks to this UK crowd, I can get the magazine for €72 a year. Quite a saving. Now, do I have time to read The Economist?

Here comes more monetization in Second Life. You can now pay for your real name to be shown in Second Life. I quite like being Casio Tone in Second Life. I can see some issues though for those with the same names as famous people. God love David Hasselhoff of Leap, Co. Cork if he tries to use that name. (Person may not actually exist. Just like KITT.)

Nice timeline of Twitter and Jaiku.

Now begins the usual back-tracking. “What I actually meant was…” “I think you got me wrong there, I wasn’t saying” “No, what I was saying is different.” Abort, Retry, Fail.

So who doesn’t like the code of conduct idea? Here are just a few from my own feed reader:

Pat Phelan:

I can personally promise that I will never subscribe to a site or will unsubscribe to one that has this crap displayed.
Whatever happened to freedom of speech. If I don’t like you I will let you know and I totally subscribe to Shel Israel’s living room policy rather than this police state bull.

Paul Watson:

I am on the side of anarchy in this. It comes down to the individual how they run their domain. So long as it is legal I don’t want interference from any party. It is the readership that decides what they read.

Valleywag

While we’re at it, how about an ombudsman, required ethics courses at J-school, and regulation by the FCC? Because that’s worked so well for America’s breathtakingly turgid daily newspapers, and bland network news

Hugh Macleod:

I suppose if it makes some people feel better about their lives, then that’s a good thing. Whatever.

Michael Arrington:

And whenever someone, no matter how much I respect them, tries to tell me what I can and cannot do by defining “civility� around their own ideals, I tense up. It feels like a big angry mob is arming itself to the teeth and looking for targets, and I need to choose whether I’m with them or against them.

Jeff Jarvis:

This effort misses the point of the internet, blogs, and even of civilized behavior. They treat the blogosphere as if it were a school library where someone — they’ll do us the favor — can maintain order and control.

Dave Winer:

If you want to reform the blogosphere, here’s where to start. Have a brigade of people whose job it is to put out fires when they start. To defend the people who no one wants to defend. That, imho, would be a very positive first step.

JP Rangaswami.:

When you take the lyrics of John Lennon, or for that matter even some of the early Bob Dylan, civility is not the word that comes to mind. They’re passionate to the point of being irascible.

Fred Wilson:

Blogs are the epitome of free speech. Let’s not take an iota of freedom away from them.

Jason Kottke:

There has to be a mechanism for anonymous comments, even if they need to be approved before being posted. As the EFF says, “anonymous communications have an important place in our political and social discourse”.

Twenty Major (In the comments on O’Reilly’s blog post):

A blogger’s code of conduct is the biggest load of simpering bollocks I’ve ever heard in my life.

Nobody is clear to the exact words from Ben Franklin but this is close enough to what he said:

Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

I like this variation: Those who would sacrifice Internet freedoms for some pieces of silver deserve to be called money grabbing cunts.

I’m not a fan of the term “blawg” which is used to refer to Law Blogs but still, I thought I’d make a list of ambulance chasers legal folk who blog in Ireland.

Well, the first crowd I noticed way back when were Fergal and Simon over on the Tuppenceworth Blog. Not soley a law blog as it has a great mix of other things too, but a great stop on your law blog travels and I think it was the first one I encountered when I first started looking at blogs.

Then there’s also the mostly dead blog of Fiona de Londras though she reappeared in a guest starring role over here recently. Come back Fiona!

Karole Cuddihy‘s blog is also near-dead as well, which is another great shame. Some great essays on that blog and maybe we’ll see a few more.

The blog for McGarr Solicitors is great and they’re involved in some very interesting cases. When I grow up I want to fight their good fights.

Irish Law Updates. Managed by Darius Whelan. Nice resource, as are many other online projects from Darius and UCC.

TJ McIntyre‘s IT Law in Ireland blog. A fantastic resource for anyone working in tech. Well worth subscribing to. TJ is also the chair of Digital Rights Ireland who are currently suing the Government for being too like Big Brother..

Two very good blogs that have been posting quality stuff quite a lot in recent times are the relatively new blog from Dr. Eoin O’Dell called Cearta.ie. Well worth checking out and adding to your Google Reader or Bloglines. The coverage of the Trocaire debacle was fantastic. I just realised I don’t have Eoin in my links. Apologies, Eoin. Might actually add an Irish Law Blogs section altogether. And by the power of Greyskull, I have.

The other blog I’m reading on a daily basis is from Daithí Mac Síthigh. Daithí is writing a PhD on the regulation of ‘Web media’. Quite a fan of Daithí’s writing and he gives great insights into media, tech and the web.

I’m in no doubt that I’m missing some very good blogs, so let me know which ones in the comments.

Lastly, I’d hate to have an argument with any of the above, they’d kick my ass. Not physically though, I could take them all, apart from O’Dell, we know about your ninja past Eoin. 🙂

Via Tara Hunt, take the Coworking survey. (If you are interested in coworking that is.) Bonus link: Irish Coworking website.

Wobbery! FatMammyCat is latest to get ripped off.

Phoar, for the mapping lovers out there. This is a map of what locations on maps are referenced the most. A thing of beauty to be honest.

Staying on the mapping theme is OpenBible.info. All locations from the Bible put on Google Earth. Raw data files exported too.

David Weinberger’s new book is out on May 1st. Prebook now.

This is very very odd. Is the song satire? Free speech or a legal case in the making?

Some really good podcasts (with notes) from the Times.

The Times and Times Online bring you the Best of the MBA. Ten of the world’s leading business thinkers provide the latest thinking in economics, management, finance, strategy and marketing. The weekly series of lectures will be available as a 30-minute podcast, in text online and in an abridged version in the newspaper

Via Antoin is the first of four parts of the documentary Century of the Self:Niall Larkin reimagines Gordon Gecko talking about Google, instead of greed. I love the Gordon Gecko greed speech, which is here:

Talk about not being a regular thing. These irregular posts are when I make suggestions for business ideas without being asked. Backseat driving in a way. This post actually been in draft for about 2 months or maybe more as today I’m cleaning out and deleting about 40 posts I have in draft. On to the idea…

A total clone of the first IDAFYfA, this would be the same idea as the Sixty Second Interview except it would be a longer interview. 365 seconds, naturally. 🙂

The suggestion though is that Hosting 365 would video interview their own clients and put them online at 365Interviews.com or something like that. A nice marketing/attention grabbing thing for Hosting365 as they have some clients that others would certainly sit down and watch being interviewed and it would then be a free bonus for their clients for getting their name onto the net and onto YouTube. Another free way of getting the Hosting365 name bandied about.

To hell he is going. Blasphemer! Obviously looking for a book deal…

Happy Easter. Now to eat my Moro Easter egg.

This was going to go out tomorrow but Conor is saying the blog O’Sphere is dead today, so here ya go:

I see from Conor’s twitter that again on his latest trip to Rosslare he spotted one Garda on the road. One more than a previous trip of his. Back then I did a lazyweb request for a “Spot the Cop” service. There’s still a need for it. Maybe with more people using Twitter and with the addition of a special text number, this service could actually work? I must say myself, on trips around Cork and the suburbs I encounter cops every week or two weeks who stop me. Random breath tested just the once though.

First YouTube, then PornTube and now GodTube.

Via Coolhunting, comes the band “The Bird and Bee“. Some nice pop songs on their mySpace profile.

Vertikal Vodka. V interesting bottle design.

Seems in Japan, GMail Paper is kind of real, in that you get free photocopying but the photocopying contains ads. Actually in my sicknote from my doctor for work, the sicknote now has bloody ads on it. I’m sure Google will be buying the person who came up with this idea, I mean, buying the company.

Sign up to go on the Paddy Tech Tour of Silicon Valley. Being Irish is not necessary. Wiki. (If one knows how to use a Wiki)