Author Archive

Fluffy Links – Wednesday July 30th 2008

Wednesday, July 30th, 2008

Last day to give feedback about IrishBlogs.ie

Swear I’m not Paul. Another music blog but pretty damned good all the same.

More Muff.

Joomla to wordpress importer from Cathal.

A Bebo page for Roches Stores. RIP.

I began Life as a simple furniture store and expanded to Cork’s largest dept. store hiring many a mouldy college student to stack shelves and hook up.

The Beeb have at Stephen Fry about Apple.

Steve Jobs, arrogant fuck. Love it.

Might as well face it.

Via Joel, it seems Second Life is fueled by the sale of women’s dresses in the virtual world. Just like we have a recession in Ireland due to the housing issues, will we see the same if the market is flooded with dresses and too many people overspend on them?

This was in April but is still good. How to prevent your daughter from becoming a vegetarian.

Helicopters going upside down, just rock:

Now that’s a gig

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

People should play gigs in houses more. Or backgardens.

Una covers it too.

Kind of goes back to the Stations blog post I write way back when.

Using Blogs and Twitter to give blood?

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

Via Kerry is a story how via Twitter, a blood drive was organised in Austin, Texas. At the same time Will McInnes has a great blog post on how we the diggerati split our time between talking, thinking and doing and maybe we should do more of the doing.

As well as generating a huge amount of buzz on Twitter and the blogosphere far more importantly it led to 100 donations that day, may from first time donors.

A great idea. The Irish Blood Transfusion Service are always looking for people to donate blood and there are loads that probably would donate if their peers around them are also doing so. Shouldn’t social media (still dislike the term) also be about empowering people and getting them to be social and helping society?

I don’t like many charities. I have a particular dislike for African charities and those gimps on the street that harass you on their behalf. I don’t think giving money to an org is the best thing to do most of the time so actually giving blood without harassment, that’s good.

FUTAB
Photo owned by basykes (cc)

So what’s a geeky way of organising a blood drive and who’ll help organise it? Online sign-up form? Limited number? The Austin drive billed it as “exclusive” as only 100 people could sign up. The buzz generated on Twitter and Facebook got the momentum going and people turned up in droves. It seems afte ryou give blood the IBTS do clever things like text updates etc. to let you know when they’re next about or phone you up when they’re at crunch time so that bit is sorted. Should there be an aim to get 40 new people to donate blood and be brought there by experienced people?

Should local businesses sponsor the refreshments afterwards? Pillows to faint on have been sponsored by Swan beds? Booze by diageo.

Oh and who’ll organise such a thing? Not gonna be me. Your turn.

Tuesday Push 30th July 2008 – Pix.ie

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

Pronounce it Pixie. Yeah? Good.

Pix.ie

The blurb:

Pixie is a popular photo sharing site based in Ireland. Launched in August 2007, Pixie has registered users from over 120 countries and is currently storing millions of images on their behalf. Pixie’s free service which includes an upload quota of 500MB/month, is used by both professional and amateur photographers, families, friends, students, charities and photo bloggers, i.e. everyone!

So yes, an Irish Flickr some will say but it’s a tad easier to get your stuff out of Pix.ie. Tried that with Flickr recently? It also looks prettier.

But what I personally like more (Jesus when did I become a capitalist?) is the fact that they allow co-branding and commercial profiles. Promoters also get access to the Pix.ie commercial API which can feed live photo streams of their event or competition back to their official site. Throw in blogs and discussion forums too and you have a really nice hosted social platform for events and promotions. Why build something and self-host for a limited-time event? Makes sense. I also hear that groups are on the way.

Also, the way the images are displayed are much nicer than Flickr too and as has been spotted by those rascally Irish bloggers, they’ve got a nice deal going with Guinness Storehouse where people upload the photos they took at the Guiness Storehouse to Pix.ie.

That 3D gallery looks great, so spread the word about Pix.ie

Pixie and Guinness

Want to be part of the Tuesday Push, find out how.

Coming up in the next few weeks are Toddle, Crewger, eWrite and more!

Fluffy Links – Tuesday July 29th 2008

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

One more day to give feedback about IrishBlogs.ie

Julian wants to get Gary Vaynerchukto come to Ireland. How do we do that?

Rapture Ponies talks Max Streicher. Nice clouds!

This is a great idea. Caffe Noto in Dublin have their own social network, thanks to Simon.

Justin points out yet another security hole on the O2 website.

Josie has a list of open source social software. Nice one.

New blog Resident Vagabond.

FriendFeed is a monster. Look how many times is smashes at the Flickr servers.

Check our Conn Corrigan’s website.

Lenovo is the tech partner for the Olympics. They have athletes blogging on their site about the Olympics.

For companies, they’ll start needing community managers to look after their blogs and social interactions online. Here’s a list of essential skills to be one.

Via Helge Tennø23 Rules for brands wishing to attract the youth. I like no. 20:

If you don’t know by now, I shall tell you now. Intentional virals that are made to be sent around DO NOT WORK! So please, stop trying.

Via Connán – Stop

Quick: Irish Blog Awards 2009 special rate

Monday, July 28th, 2008

So the 2009 Blog Awards are now booked for February 21st 2009 in the Cork Airport International Hotel. There’s a special room rate of €100 per room or €55 per person sharing if you mention the Blog Awards. Just so you know.

IMG_0304

Simple Pleasures: Toasted banana sandwich

Monday, July 28th, 2008

That’s my simple pleasure. Despite being a total food snob and liking all sorts of “foreign” cuisine there are times when I just want something simple. Really simple. Normal bread (as in Pat the Baker), a banana, butter and that’s it. Of course I ate the bloody thing before I took a photo so here’s a stock photo:

French Toast
Photo owned by bcmom (cc)

What food is your simple pleasure?

Oh and by the way, Irish Food Blog Aggregator Gastronom.ie has been updated and now aggregates about 40 Irish Food Blogs.

New Website: mybeautifulboutique.com

Monday, July 28th, 2008

mybeautifulboutique

Got an email ages back now about mybeautifulboutique.com, an Irish site dedicated to listings and promotions of Boutiques. It’s a boutique directory which gives users an online boutique emporium to browse through. so boutiques get an online presence and listing. Not bad for what can be very traditional businesses.

And how do they make their money?

They give all boutiques a basic listing for free, and then the option to upgrade to a premium listing €330 per year which provides them with /theirname on the site, stats on visits, they are highlighted in searches on their site and an easy content management system about other things.

They’ll also have a newsletter going out where advertising will be taken. This will probably be where most of their revenue will come from in my view. There’s millions left in email marketing in Ireland if only it were done well. Oh that’s right it is. Use Toddle folks!

I wonder is there a guy in Ireland called Paul that has a boutique?

Gav’s Guide to installing WordPress

Monday, July 28th, 2008

Deserves a post all by itself. Nice guide from Gavan on installing WordPress on your own site. Only slightly technical abilities are needed.

Fluffy Links – Monday July 28th 2008

Monday, July 28th, 2008

Peter goes green and fluffy.

Want to go to a Food Styling demonstration?

There’s an Irish Webmaster meetup on August 9th in Dublin.

TJ finds the best named legal firm in Ireland.

Chris has very good reasons to unsub from BoingBoing.

So if you do set up a Twitter account for your business, maybe don’t use your mobile as the mobile arm of it.

So what did that Joss Wheedon “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” project make, numbers wise? Wheedon nodded in the comments that they were about right. Love this idea though:

For example, musical theater aficionados will note that a few of the Dr. Horrible numbers feature two distinct countermelodies. It’s difficult to parse a melody and a countermelody lyric in real time, much less two distinct countermelodies being sung along with a melody part. To get it all (and rabid Whedon fans will want to), you’d have to listen to it at least three times. So Dr. Horrible seems specifically engineered to be watched again and again

Maybe that’s the future of movies? Design movie so it can be watched a few times and deliver new content each time.

These are the Facebook applications that Facebook think are the future? Interesting that some are productivity tools on a site that many businesses think waste time.

What a great idea. A place to highlight PR fuckups. You can send on your own via Twitter.

iDesign 08.

Spammy titles in newspapers?

Olympics 2008 Monkey Movie – BBC Sport