Damien Mulley

According to my stats, I have over 500 people subscribed to this blog. I greatly appreciate that. If I am not already linking to your blog then please let me know and I’ll link to you. Naturally I wouldn’t mind a link back but no hassle if you don’t want to.

Instead of just adding a link, I’ll also do a 2 sentence review of your blog too. (I know I know, you must feel so loved) Kind of like the New Blogs on the Blog bits I do over on the Awards website. If you’re already on my link list, awww, you miss out. For now. 🙂

Got this into one of my mail accounts:

The ICT Excellence Awards sponsored by Lenovo is now a firmly established landmark in our industry’s calendar – but are you involved?

Currently in its sixth year, it is Ireland’s most prestigious and respected awards competition in the sector with over 600 attending last year’s event.

Winning an award provides a sales edge and a real competitive advantage, gives your team a boost, generates some great PR and adds weight to your sales and marketing collateral.

Sponsorship of some awards is still available which includes:
Titled award sponsorship
Branded table of ten at the Gala Dinner
Branding onscreen during the award presentation.
Branding on the framed award certificate
Branding on the table menus
Branding on the show website www.ictexcellenceawards.ie
Presentation of the award to the winner on stage
Photo opportunity with the award winner
Promotion in ComputerScope, Irish Computer & Smart Company pre and post-show.
Fee: €4,800

Tickets @200 + VAT. Seems you can book tables of 10 with the application form.

So, a cat sponsorship is €2800 since you get a table which would normally cost €2000.

The best bit:

We hope you can join us and our MC Marty Whelan

In fairness, sponsors get a lot more from the above awards than the Blog Awards but I’m proud that there is no overall sponsor, that the name is clean in all promotional material and that sponsors do not present winners with the prizes on the stage itself. I’d hope the blog awards as much as possible will stay less commercial than other awards show. People keep suggesting making it a blacktie event next year too but I’d prefer to make the dress code as liberal as possible so nobody is put under pressure to wear a monkey suit. I do hope we have more people like the three mafia lads representing Bock the Robber,

And unlike other awards, it does seem like you can nominate anyone to enter this. With Twenty winning blog awards and Netvisonaries, I think we should nominate him for this too. His IT is indeed excellent.

More here: www.ictexcellenceawards.ie

Since I started writing for the Sunday Tribune a few weeks ago I’ve been getting almost daily solicitations from PR and Marketing companies wanting me to try out their client’s new doodahs or inviting me along to the AGMs of chemical companies and stuff totally not related to what I write about. One crowd even decided without permission to pencil me in for a conference call to chat about their product.

So, just a few things to consider before contacting me to let me know of your product/client and hey I appreciate you contacting me at the address supplied on the Tribune articles, if they don’t interest me, I can delete them, so this isn’t me saying get lost:

• 1) If I do write about PinkWidgets one week, emailing me and telling me I never wrote about your PinkWidgets is fair enough. Expecting me to then write about them the next week won’t happen. Pitch me something new.
• 2) My name is spelled DamiEn not DamiAn. I don’t mind people getting it wrong, happens all the time but writing insincere best buddy friendly emails trying to pimp your client and calling me DamiAn when the top of my column has DamiEn will make me think a little less of your ability to research your market. I never said I wasn’t precious.
• 3) I am very easily influenced. I will write about stuff if you bring it to my attention. That’s why I wrote about BarCamp, SEO Marketing, Pat Phelan’s AllFreeCalls, Twitter and that’s why I have quoted Eoin O’Dell, TJ McIntyre, Richard Hearne, Ed Byrne, Joe Drumgoole and lots more. But are you seeing a pattern? I’m influenced by them because I subscribe to them or I subscribe to people who mention them. They are not an inner-circle but they are some kind of circle and some kind of community I am involved in. Familiar strangers is a term I use a lot and that’s what they are.

  I’m lucky with the brief I have and can write about stuff I want to write about and that interests me and I find I write more naturally (not necessarily better) when I write about familiar things and familiar people. So yeah, make it on to my bloglines, or get picked up on IrishBlogs.ie and you’ll have a greater chance of getting my attention.

• 4) I’m based in Cork. I work by day as a technical writer. Yes, let’s get a coffee, what time does your train arrive at?
• 5) I write my articles for my mum. She’s being all proud and mother-like by saving everything I write. She’ll tell me if she can understand what I was writing or not. If she can’t, I try and make it simpler and make her go “Ahh yeah”. The one on crowd-sourcing is her favourite so far. Please understand this fact if you want to give out that I didn’t go in depth about the technology. I welcome your criticism but now you can see where I am coming from.
• 6) Press releases don’t work on me. Send me a link to a YouTube video of what you do.
• 7) I have to end lists with odd numbers. They just look better to me. You don’t have to do the same.

These are my Twitter feeds via Google Reader. Just imported James’ Twitter OPML file and added some new Twitter links of other Irish people I know. Viewing them via that Grazr Widget is painful. I prefer this method, til I come up with something a little better.

I expected Google Reader to be better with all the hype. The scroll, refresh, scroll, refresh, scroll refresh is beyond annoying. It’s nasty UI design. Is there a way of fixing it? The tagging/labeling is also still shit. Really surpised people like this over bloglines.

Holy crapola but the number of Irish folks joining Twitter is really taking off. I have a piece in the Tribune this weekend talking about it too. Anyways, hello to some of the New Twits on the block:

Award winning Gavin Mullan
Mr. Dogg.ie – Brian White
Paul M. Watson

and more:
Joseph Johnson
Justin Mason

EDIT, and more again:
David Cochrane
Stephen Spillane

eircom are launching their next generation network. Fibre to the estate is what it really entails. They are probably looking at how KPN in the Netherlands did theirs.

With NGN you don’t need exchanges. If eircom sold all their exchanges they’d make billions. With exchanges gone, LLU players would be quite screwed unless they have a large presence in every exchange. They don’t in Ireland. If they did, what could happen is what happened in Holland where the telco was not allowed to sell off the exchanges because of the high level of LLU. If a tiny percentage are on LLU though, well then the regulator and the EU might allow a telco to go right ahead and sell off the exchanges.

In the past three months Noel Dempsey has done nothing but talk about looking to the future and about NGN. NGN NGN NGN. LLU has not worked and may not work. Noel wants it brushed under the carpet as soon as possible. Now ComReg is starting with the NGN twaddle when they haven’t even fixed LLU.

Expect Noel and ComReg to let eircom do their NGNs on their own terms and expect exchanges to be sold off and LLU to have it’s throat slit to put it out of its misery. You can thank eircom, Dempsey, ComReg, ALTO and BT for this. At last ALTO has started to speak up but I think they left it too late and the same with BT. The future will see broadband via ducting controled by eircom with the only true competition being wireless services. This sunshine moment was brought to you by…

ComReg did have a Broadband Strategy Manager job advertised on their site here. While today is the last day of applications, the job is no longer on their site. Hope it had nothing to do with me talking about it on Newstalk on Saturday afternoon. You can still find a cached version of it on Google though.

Good Afternoon,
I wish to apply for the position of Manager Broadband Strategy (Ref:
W2/07) in ComReg. Attached is my CV. I am currently Chairman of
Consumer Lobby Group, IrelandOffline.

In the past three years IrelandOffline have been the main driver of
broadband awareness in Ireland and have successfully lobbied to
increase broadband availability. Through my work as Chairman I have an
in-depth knowledge of all aspects of broadband in Ireland, have
working relationships with ComReg, DCMNR, eircom, ALTO, BT Ireland and
every other ISP.

Through my meetings and regular communications with ComReg I feel I
have an understanding on the operations of the Communications
Regulator. I would therefore like to be considered for this job.

Damien.

Please? It isn’t that difficult these days is it?

Edit: Thanks Squid!

More of this.

Ahhh hah, Frank has a tash. His beard for the other play was better. Ticket to the tash are still on sale.

I’m noticing a lot of ads in my various Gmail accounts for the LinkedIn profile of Facebook VP Matt Cohler. He used to work in LinkedIn too. I wonder what that costs on a daily basis.

I see Bebo staff are using Google Apps for their mail now.

Tom Murphy makes mention of the “Technology Journalists’ Association of Ireland”. A Google brings back nothing for them but I have heard some chatter about a Tech Journo Association being formed/reborn. I have found references to the “Irish Science & Technology Journalists Association” but their webpage on IOL is dead.

Jason Kottke points out what a farce the Red campaign was.

Also Via Kottke The David Fincher 6-6-6 Tribute. His 6 Best Music Videos, 6 Best Commericals, and 6 Best Movies.

This has been doing the rounds the past few days: Help the Police by Adam Buxton. A cleaned up version of “Fuck the Police”. Classic.

Up to now if you were with UTV or BT or Digiweb broadband and wanted to move to Smart or Magnet, you first had to cancel your service, move back to eircom and only then could Smart or Magnet place an order for LLU on your line. Well in a few minutes eircom will announce they have enabled a “seamless” transition process so people no longer need to do this.

We should have had this years ago and it is a statement that the new eircom are playing ball more than ComReg having any ability to force eircom to do this. This should have been around in 2001 and now we’re here six years later and it is only starting. Expect Smart and Magnet to start upping their game and trying to grab eircom, BT and UTV customers.

Still, there is a massive gap in LLU and that is mass-migration. This is why LLU works so well in the UK and this is why Carphone warehouse tore up the market last year. BT Ireland expecially are waiting on mass-migration so they can move all their customers who use the resold eircom product over to an LLU product. This process is not seamless and takes a bit of time still. eircom will probably never allow this to happen unless they get some kind of leaving tax from BT for every customer moved.

eircom’s point is that they enable an exchange, take the monetary risk in putting all the equipment in while BT and UTV just come along and resell without any risk, then if BT builds up say 400 customers in an exchange, they can put their equipment in and move their customers over, again with less risk. eircom are hardly going to make this easy for them and I very much doubt ComReg will. I’m sure today’s news will piss off BT as well since they’ll probably lose customers to Smart and Magnet.