Damien Mulley

Want to do Google Ad campaigns and the like? Take this advice from RedFly.

Mmmm, I like this geeky pet rock.

Well they did it. Via a Bebo group, they brought back Wispa. but compare this to the guy who set up a Facebook group that said if he got a 100,000 people, his wife would allow him to name their second child “Spiderpig”. The second was a hoax but surely people can see the marketing potential for stunts like this.

Via Conor “Romance is not dead” O’Neill. Facebook profile for the Sex Pistols.

We need more parking signs like this.

I love that the Daily Show, a fake news programme is the one actually reporting from Iraq now. Reminds me of Jon Stewart ripping into CNN:

Suggesting that a “fake news” comedy program should not be held to the same standards as real journalists, Stewart said, “You’re on CNN! The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls! What is wrong with you?”

Looking good for FaceBook. We can airbrush it for you wholesale.

Nice idea. Search the net to see what the first pic is that someone takes with their camera. Tried to do this via Google.ie but the results very shabby.

Karl Rove’s father was not only gay but apparently someone big into piercing his genitalia back when it wasn’t a normal thing to do…

Shiny Toy Guns – Le Disko

Was just chatting to a journalist who is doing an article on using Facebook/LinkedIn et all to get headhunted/promotions/work. Anyone know of Irish people who have been headhunted using these services or had recruiters contact them with job offers? I’ve gotten a few via LinkedIn alright offering me jobs in the States.

Anyway, if you know of someone are you ARE that someone then fire off an email to Colm Heatley on colmheat { at } hotmail.com

Of just leave a comment on this blog post.

Well, not everyone uses Facebook so I’ve started linking up to people from my address book who are on LinkedIn. I neglected this site for a while but more and more I am finding old college and school associates that have not yet found the way of the Facebook. It’s nice to reconnect. If you were one of the people that added me to LinkedIn in the past few days, thank you. Go here if you want to add me to LinkedIn and go here if you want to add me to Facebook.

I volunteered (without being asked) to do the PR for Twenty’s Book Launch. Being all urban, and hip (Twenty, not me), we needed to also reflect that in the campaign. Now, I hear you say we should do viral and Gorilla but Twenty is far more than that and deserves the edgiest form of marketing and that’s Red Ass Monkey marketing.

1. Hire 400 people to go to the Phoenix Park and spell out the words CUNT as a plane flys overhead.
2. Dress up 100 kids as mini-Twentys and have them try and get served in all the Dublin pubs. Screaming obscenities and starting fights. Like the kids from this but with Twenty Masks.
3. “Leak” Voicemails celebrities have left Twenty. Think Twink but not as scary or shrill.
4. Hire a guy to walk on to the set of the Late Late and oh hang on, been done.
5. Stalk Charlie Bird, nothing like free coverage on every news bulletin.

Anyone else got suggestions?

Want to write about Rugby during the World Cup? Talk to Gerry.

Shite Drivers is now up and running. Visit and contribute. Niall, I am willing to do PR for the site for free. Just so I can see the word “shite” in print.

iQ Content are looking for a projector manager.

I’m still looking for a sponsor for “Best Blog Post of the Week”

David LaChapelle takes great photos.

Blogging not dead. Just smells that way.

BBC gets social bookmarking. Nice. Expect rise in Beeb stories on various sites. RTE, listening?

How did Skype go down and slowly and sluggishly recover? Lot to do with it being a parasitic network. A few DDOSs and you could wipe out this billion dollar subsidiary of eBay.

WTF. More on the gay “lifestyle choice”.

I want to see this on a bigger screen. Helvetica the film.

Via MeFi – This isn’t easy:

and THIS is just insane.

M.I.A – Bird Flu (she’ll be at Elec Pic)

I was interviewed this week about Facebook and LinkedIn and all the various social networking sites and whether they are a good way of business networking and ways of getting jobs. I answered in the positive and gave my reasoning and advice. Anyways, I should have reference how NOT to get yourself noticed with social media.

From the wiki entry of Aleksey Vayner:

In October 2006, Yale University student Aleksey Vayner applied for a job with UBS AG, the world’s largest wealth management company. Amused by Vayner’s apparent puffery, an unknown member of UBS staff emailed his application materials to other investment banks. They were soon posted on various blogs, then YouTube, from where they became an immense viral Internet phenomenon

Read the whole Wiki entry, the guy really was caught out a beaut and then his “charity” and “investment bank” and “book” were caught out too. Here’s a video, car crash TV –

Impossible is Nothing:

And a great spoof by Michael Cera – Impossible is the opposite to possible:

Posted this on the Awards website. Looking for a company to sign up to sponsor the “Blog Post of the Week” section on the Blog Awards site. Each week people can nominate the best blog post and the winner will get a voucher for Amazon or something like that. If anyone is interested in sponsorship, drop me a line.

Update: Just to clarify a few things. Sponsorship for this would start in September and would end just after the Blog Awards 2008. This is a long-term sponsorship commitment.

More details on how it can benefit the sponsor and why it benefits blogging:
There are now well over 2000 Irish blogs, with the number possibly over 3000 blogs. The Best Blog Post will feed into the Irish Blog Awards 2008. It is designed to keep people thinking about the Blog Awards but also as a way of promoting quality blogging.

There will be a nomination form on the Awards website which will allow anyone to nominate a blog post. The winner will be announced on the Blog Awards site each week and the winner is encouraged to display the Blog Post Winner badge link back to the blog post.

Currently the Blog Awards website gets about 2000 unique visitors a month but closer to the Blog Awards event, it gets a lot more visits. In February this year it had 13,575 unique visitors for the month.

The Beeb is picketed over the DRM in their video player. Do those picketing realise that they were mandated to restrict the content after commercial companies said it was unfair to have a taxpayer backed entity competing with them?

Jump up and down MORE.

Join the Irish Business Network on Facebook.

Meanwhile, Tripadvisor pay 3Million for a Facebook application. Easy money?

Over-capacity, y’think?

Force websites without feeds, to have them.

Múm – They Made Frogs Smoke ‘Til They Exploded

Walk Hard:

Myself and my work colleagues have been avid supporters of the Farmers’ Market in Mahon Point which is on every thursday. However of late we are getting more and more jaded at the almost weekly price increases by the providers there. It’s a shame that some people seem to see they are doing well and so will exploit consumers who are giving them business. Most of the stalls we visit (apart from O’Conaill’s) seem to have jacked up their prices a LOT over the rainy summer.

For example, the curry stand now charges €7.50 for a bowl of curry or €8 if you want a curry with meat in it. Now, I don’t have receipts from a few weeks back but I could have sworn I didn’t pay more than a fiver for a bowl of curry then and the veggie and non-veggie curries were the same price. 8 quid for a small bowl of curry? Sorry, no. UPDATE: See comments below, it seems this is for a different tub and not the one they server for consumption at the Market.

One of the most popular stands does nice steak sandwiches and Chorizo sandwiches. It is now €6.50 for a steak sandwich, they too were under a fiver at some point in the past few months. Even their pricing lists can’t keep up or their staff who sometimes forget the new prices. Same goes for the Sushi place. A small kebab cost €6.50 yesterday. Yes it was lovely but it was worth €4.50 at most.

I don’t think the Market has hit a tipping point just yet, but they will and people will stop paying through the nose for “organic” food. I thinkI saw some woman pay 4 quid for a few lettuce leaves the other day. Good christ is the country that rich and lazy?

Red Wine Gums blogger is the guest blogger today. Check out his blog at Random Reflective Rantings. This blog post is going out (now) in the morning. Fluffy links will be the afternoon treat instead.

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“Don’t ever put any facts into a speech.” “Even if you have three separate sources for it?” “No, they only cause trouble.” As a then political science student I would have thought the basic scientific triangulation principle would have counted for something. “I wrote speeches for the President a few years back. Put in all the flowery bullshit and they loved it.” He paused to take a bite of his mini spring roll. “All the papers were going on saying how great it was. Not one fact. People aren’t interested in facts. You save yourself trouble if you don’t mention facts.” The other piece of advice to a work placement student from a public servant with over 30 years experience was to always make sure you were near the door at a State function. You get fed quicker.

I hope to be able put the latter piece of advice in practice again some day but the former has stuck with me. The more I think about it, the more I realise that the facts matter very little in current discourse. The reality is no-one gives a toss. The oft cited “My mind is made up. Don’t confuse me with the facts” resonates among those who have seen decisions taken that fly in the face of all the available evidence. It doesn’t matter who said it first. All that matters is that it was said. The passive voice pervades life, even for those of us not overly au fait with matters grammatical. It comes back to what everyone expects the Government to do when a crisis presents itself – Something! How many times have you heard on the radio or television the phrase: “The Government must do something to fix this situation as it’s very serious and the people down here…”?

Not that it’s important that something is actually done. Merely that something is seen to be done. Preferably as a closure on the news story with a nice photo call of Bertie/Bush/Brown bringing beautiful, bountiful, billions to said local area in an iconic image that will have the Sunday papers debating the politics of spin rather than the substance of the issue. All alliteration attempts are average and abject of course compared to those tremendously tearful tabloids. The voices of the nation, they be. Those of us in the Irish blogging community may remember some of the more amusing glimpses of nose hair from those so much better than us.

My blog gets into the low double figures on a good day. Does that make me insignificant? I could become one of those forgotten greats who will only be acknowledged after my passing, or I could be delusional. It’s not that I don’t care about readers, hits or unique visitors. It’s that I primarily blog for myself. If I wanted a load of hits I could do what some newspapers do and start putting a whole load of naked women on the blog as well as pandering to racial stereotypes in some of my posting. If I genuinely wanted more hits, I could mention some of the places I’ve worked and I can guarantee that would make me the bubble gum flavour of the week. But people don’t really want to know about my life. I’m OK with that and don’t really want it to change either. Like Sweary mentioned on this blog, I probably could have picked a better name but what matters is that my real name is somewhat hidden although I’m sure a determined person could find it.

This is not a cynical poke at politics and the media… well not entirely. The public relations mantra that perception is reality carries weight in an era when the soundbite matters more than the speech. Where the idea matters more than the evidence to back it up. When Paris Hilton takes precedence over Iraq in the news. When the media sets up the parents of a missing white 4 year old girl for a fall and forgets to reminds us of the thousands of black 4 year olds dying because they don’t have enough food.

It doesn’t matter what the truth is or what the facts are. What matters is how what you write makes people feel . Whether I pander to my readers’ prejudices is irrelevant. Whether you read my blog after this is irrelevant. If I’ve made your day that little bit brighter I’m content.

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Thanks to Red Wine Gums, who as mentioned blogs at Random Reflective Rantings. Read his blog and subscribe if you want.