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Fluffy Links – Thursday 11th September 2008

Thursday, September 11th, 2008

Congrats to Fiona and her new On the Fringe blog on the Irish Times website.

So I watched the US election convention speeches and the best one was from Hillary, followed by Obama’s. McCain’s own one seems to have bombed. Garr Reynolds takes it to pieces here.

Twitter goes even more mainstream with a CNN show using the power of it.

Via Brian, Kim Jong…

This is marketing!

Google invests in a satellite “broadband” company.

Via Kerry (again) Ranking in Google’s top ten might not be enough these days. People expect just the top few results to give them what they want.

Nice idea from the Wikipedia founder. Use the Wikipedia ideals for information on green issues.

Every photographer needs a cup like this.

Steven Berlin Johnson is working on a new book.

In a real sense, Priestley was a kind of lost Founding Father: a hugely important figure to Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson who is barely mentioned today in most accounts of the revolutionary generation. To give you some sense of his role: in the final correspondence between Adams and Jefferson, starting in 1813, Priestley is mentioned 52 times, while Franklin is mentioned five times, and Washington only three. And when you see the Founders through the lens of Priestley’s life, it changes the way we think about the values of the revolutionary generation. (For one, it makes it clear how thoroughly integrated science was with their political worldviews.)

Via Analogue Mag:
cLOUDDEAD ‘Dead Dogs Two’ (BOC mix) Music Video (Unofficial)

You mean mobile dialup, right?

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

Just because you scored a girl once, doesn’t make you’re a stud, just because it’s theoretically possible to get broadband speeds on a modem from 3, O2 or Vodafone doesn’t mean you have a broadband connection. But why let the truth get in the way of a report from the telecoms poodle, right?

ComReg today said there are 222,330 mobile broadband connections in Ireland as of last quarter. Here’s something to try: Publish monthly results of speeds tests on their networks from various locations. See what happens.

Minister Eamon Ryan congratulates ComReg on a telecoms market in Ireland which collectively lies about what a broadband connection is. Heckuva job there Comregy. The Dept of Comms, ComReg and the telcos are never going to question each other when they’re all benefiting from not opening their books to see the real speeds of their services. I chatted to Minister Ryan before the Summer and put this to him and suggested he instruct ComReg to run monthly speeds tests on all the networks and publish the results. Until this happens I’m certainly not going to have any respect for these figures and the offices that tout them.

Dave sent this on and is just doing a Pavlov’s Dog test on me I think. 🙂

This isn’t Pavlov’s dog. It’s ComReg:
Apricot Miniature Poodle
Photo owned by charkesw (cc)

LinkedIn DirectAds launches – USA Only, some figures

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

Edit: Well that’s a screw up! This was launched in July! Slow news Summer for Mulley.net!

LinkedIn DirectAds

Chris alerted us all on Twitter than the new LinkedIn DirectAds have launched.

Some thoughts and figures from playing around with LinkedIn DirectAds:

You can go er direct to the Directads creation page to run your own ads. It runs a bit like the Facebook SocialAds idea. Target ads to people. You can target them based on: Company Size, Job Function, Industry, Seniority, Gender, Age, Geography

LinkedIn DirectAds

Targeting

There are 12,449,658 members in the United States who you can now target a LinkedIn DirectAd to. United States only right now, hopefully the rest of the world to follow. Also LinkedIn charge per impression, not click. The basic charge is $10.00 per 1,000 impressions. As you make your ad more targeted, they charge more. For example to target women or men only it’s $13.00 per 1,000 impressions. To target women aged 25-34 it’s $16.00 per 1,000 impressions.

I actually like that idea of charging more for targeting. Facebook doesn’t mind how targeted you get but there is more value in targeted ads really.Trouble is that LinkedIn will only allow you target based on two or less of the seven target types. This is odd.

LinkedIn DirectAds

Some additional figures :

Company profiles:

211,137 are self employed
513,697 in a company with 1-10 employees
640,016 in a company with 11 to 50 employees
802,168 in a company with 51-200 employees
562,431 in a company with201-500
479,299 in a company with501-1000
1,129,009 in a company with1001-5000
560,801 in a company with 5001-10,000
2,404,600 in a company with 10000+

Added up you get 7,303,158 who have filled this in.

Oddly, when you check the Seniority box you are told 1,296,023 are the owners of their business, yet 211,137 are self employed. Hmmmz.

Age Profiles

18,841 are aged 18-24
623,310 are aged 25-34
1,428,227 are aged 35-54
102,392 are aged 55+
When you tick all the boxes you get 2,172,770

So that means you are missing 10 Million people if you send an ad based on age

Misc:

On gender there are 4,752,304 women from the U.S. on LinkedIn and 5,625,916 men. Which gives 10,378,220 that have filled in their gender. So 2 Million in the U.S. have not.

There are 1,423,490 people on LinkedIn who say they’re from New York

Thoughts

All in all, this is good. I’m sure mySpace and maybe even Bebo will come along now too and offer something like this. I hear it’ll be 2009 before mySpace can offer these type of targeted ads.

IIA Blogger Survey

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

I’m suffering from blogger survey fatigue here so maybe other bloggers can answer these questions for the IIA’s Social Media Working Group that Joy from the group sent on:

Why do people engage with it? (Both readers and bloggers)
What motivates them? (Both readers and bloggers)
Why do you think it is a success?

D stands for Doodle
Photo owned by KaiChanVong (cc)

Last call for Web Awards judges

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

Irish Web Awards

We still need a few more judges for the Web Awards. Why not sign up? Email contact awards.ie, if your site/work has been nominated then you can’t judge any category at all. Sorry!

Fluffy Links – Wednesday September 10th 2008

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

Mulley.net has a new Favicon thingymajig (the lil image that shows up in the tab). Thanks to Paul for that.

Phil has a nice summary of Creative Camp Belfast.

Want to talk to the Cadbury’s Gorilla? Ask it about Mrs Gorilla or something.

Ok, while I gave out earlier this week about the Kraftwerk gig being moved, this pic shows maybe it was the best idea.

Bertie now works for a property developer. No! Officially.

The job losses have started, blame it on a recession or employers using the recession excuse. Rowan has a guide on how to job hunt when the going is getting tough.

Luke is not at all into his trains.

Enda Madden thinks OpenTrace is the killer app at TechCrunch50 so far.

Google will now anonymize IP data after 9 months. Cos they love us. Or because their tech has advanced a good bit so they only need 9 months now to know everything about you compared to 18 months a while back.

Life can survive in space. Makes you think where life in the Universe started?

Does LeoCinda realise this video, where they nicked their material from, was a joke?

Luxury

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008

Doesn’t it get boring after a while?

Time to start a business/time to upskill

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008

Start your own business with Hothouse

If you’re thinking of starting your own business then Hothouse.ie might be for you:

We are currently taking applications for the DIT Hothouse www.hothouse.ie program starting on September 19th.

The Hothouse is a one year training and mentoring programme for knowledge based start up businesses. The main points of note are:

* Free incubation space for 1 year

* Ten sessions with a business mentor

* Workshops on key business topics

* Access to funding


You can apply by emailing Brendan.ring@pdc.ie or Bernadette.oreilly@pdc.ie

Subsidised Six Sigma Training

Meanwhile, if you want to upskill your company than SQT in Limerick are doing Six Sigma training in Dublin and Limerick which has been massively subsidised by FAS and Chambers Business School. Six Sigma training, normally around the 13k mark is on offer for 3k.

(Disclaimer: I’ve done some consultancy work with SQT)

Digital/Online Bootcamp for PR/Marketing companies

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008

TechCrunch broke the news last week about certain members on DIGG.com charging to get your website/blog post to the front page of the website. I see nothing wrong with hiring a copywriter wise to the tricks of DIGG to get your website to the front page but not this way.

I seem to be talking to PR companies and PR people a lot and many of them are subscribed to the blog. Hi folks! I think most that sub to this blog realise that PR is changing and there’s going to be an online element to their work and they want to learn that that is.

I was thinking of putting together a free bootcamp for PR and Marketing companies that would cover the basic elements that companies should be aware of in 2008. Spend half a day at it. The companies that would go along would also be encouraged to share their thoughts and their own experiences. It needs to be interactive. I asked a few PR people for some areas and this is the list so far.

Some topics which might get covered are:

  • Current state of the web today
  • Web 2.0 and social media
  • SEO
  • Blogs, writing blogs, engaging with bloggers
  • Feed readers
  • Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon
  • Social networks
  • Web/blog/social network monitoring
  • Wikipedia/Wikis
  • Podcasting

Any others? Any interest?

weight loss spa beach boot camp
Photo owned by ninahale (cc)

Tuesday Push – 9th September 2008 – eWrite Lite

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008

This week’s Tuesday Push: eWrite Lite.

eWrite Lite

eWrite Lite is a tool for editing and publishing a website. It can be used to create a whole new website or log into your existing website and make changes, all via a web browser. There’s no need to install anything. They even have a demo that you can use to log into your own site. It’s also very affordable and ideally suits their target market of SMEs.

I’ve actually reviewed eWrite Lite previously so read that. Ideally for such a low charge, eWrite Lite would best be licensed by hosting providers or ISPs as selling to individuals at that price could take a lot of footwork.

Check out eWrite Lite and their other products. If you want your product on the Tuesday Push, fill out this form. Please remember we’re looking for something that was created by an Irish company, not just some technology that was reskinned.

On a side note, someone asked me recently about whether you could give constructive criticism for the Tuesday Push or were you required only to say positive things and talk something up. The idea is to talk the company/person’s effort up and give honest feedback too. I would think the pushees would prefer someone kicking the tyres and looking for leaking oil than saying everything is super.

DownloadMusic is up in two weeks and BookAMeetingRoom