Damien Mulley

Meebo has released a widget for your website. It allows website visitors to message you via the Meebo system. Meebo in case you don’t know it is a website that allows you to sign into most IM clients and use them all on just one webpage. It’s very handy when traveling or when behind corporate firewalls. 3 simple steps can you can have the widget on your site. There’s tonnes of these apps around but Meebo has a very large userbase already which is a definite selling point and it also as I stated allows you to sign into all your other IM clients. This chat window is now on the right-hand side of the blog. Not sure will I leave it there forever.

Edit: Here is an old Meebo wishlist of mine.

Edit 2: I’m now on JWT’s site messaging him via the Meebo widget and I’m in Meebo messaging him on MSN. Is there an option for Meebo account holders to be able to message each other too since we both have accounts anyway?

Edit 3: Oooh. It remembers your screen name as you move from site to site. This is interesting.

Edit 4: Signing in from home means I have to now sign in to my account which auto signs me into all IMs, then I have to sign back out of each one individually so that I can get Meebo messages from my site while using my home IM clients. Maybe add a “Just sign into my Meebo (non-IM accounts)” or something like that.

Crooked Timber mentions the Irish Times coverage of Declan Costello. Not being big into politics since the current generation are uninspiring and having not done Irish history in school, I never read about this very interesting man. It seems he was a great inspiration and who actually managed to change society and engage with the younger generations. Some contract to the lot we have today. It must have been great to live in those times when politics was exciting. When was the last time politics was actually exciting, the birth of the PDs? Mark Waters also points to the CT piece.

There’s been a huge amount of new blogs in the Blog O’Sphere the past while and I would like to use the dusty Blog Awards website to do some profiles on them and maybe ask them a few questions and get them noticed by the wider community. I think the same goes for existing blogs who have bloggers with small voices but fantastic opinions which you think deserve to be heard a bit more.

If you know of any blogs that fit these criteria then leave links to them in the comments.

Via the Conservative pro-Republican Independent Gay Forum

Update: Suzy has it up a while. D’OH. Still worth sharing.

With DRI suing the state I presume there’ll be some kind of legal fund where the public can put money into? Bernard has suggested we all tell 5 people and spread it that way but I’m sure we would also like to contribute financially as well.

I’d also suggest they make it more viral than “tell 5 people.” How about a form on the DRI site allowing people to email a note to 5 people they know explaining what DRI are doing? Or even if they’re worried about spam, create a simple non-jargony paragraph or two about what they are doing so that people can copy and paste it into an email. People are lazy and might not want to summarise the far too long post on the DRI site.

Maybe I’m late on this but Loic Le Meur points to a Business 2.0 article on Web2.0 European startups and Nooked is profiled along with other European companies. Well done everyone in Nooked.

I’m looking to get a script made that’ll scan for certain words in a document pasted into a form on a webpage. There’ll be a few dictionaries to choose from that’ll be used to scan for certain words and if found they’ll be logged and then passed through another script which I’ll discuss in private with you.

The results of this second script will then be outputed to another webpage for the submitter to see. I’d also like to have an option of emailing the results to whoever submitted the information.

I don’t care what it’s written in but it must be fast and able to handle largish texts. Eventually I’d like the option of including URLs to scan as well and possibly even document uploads. They can be in future versions.

Your name and website url will be displayed on the bottom of the results page so you’ll get credit. The understanding though is that you will not replicate the same idea or create the same script for someone else to replicate the website idea. Give me an email if interested.

Examiner Front Page: Digital Rights Ireland to sue over Data Retention Laws. EDIT: Digital Rights Ireland on front page of Irish Times too and DRI also in the Irish Indpendent.

In a landmark case, lobby group Digital Rights Ireland (DRI) says it is preparing to challenge the constitutionality of a law that obliges telecommunication companies to retain the details of all electronic traffic.

Well done guys.

Full DRI press release:

DIGITAL RIGHTS IRELAND CHALLENGES MASS SURVEILLANCE

For Immediate Release.

Digital Rights Ireland ltd (DRI) has written to the Minister for
Justice, the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources
and to the Garda Commissioner calling on them to cease the collection,
storing and accessing of personal private data on every citizen using
a mobile or fixed line phone.

Such data collection is a breach of the Irish citizens’ statutory,
constitutional and human rights to privacy, as set out in the European
Convention on Human Rights and endorsed in Irish courts, in the
European Court of Justice and in the European Court of Human Rights.

This data includes a record of the physical location of everyone with
a mobile phone in Ireland, as well as every number called, the time of
the call and its duration.
Undertakings Sought

An undertaking has been sought from the Minister for Communications,
Marine and Natural Resources to withdraw a direction to
telecommunications providers to store this data. An undertaking has
been sought from the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform
that he will not, and he will ensure that Ireland will not, withdraw
or otherwise not prosecute the challenge under Article 230 to EU
directive 2006/24/EC, which purports to mandate such interference with
citizens’ privacy on a Europe-wide basis.

The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform is also called upon
to give an undertaking that Ireland will not in any circumstances
transpose or commence the process of transposition of Directive
2006/24/EC into national law.

The Garda Commissioner is called upon for an undertaking to withdraw
any and all requests made to telecommunications providers to store
this data, whether made under the Criminal Justice (Terrorist
Offences) Act 2005 or the Ministerial Direction of 25th April 2002.
Legal Proceedings Authorised

TJ McIntyre, DRI chairman and lecturer in law in University College
Dublin says “This mass surveillance by the state is a breach of our
right to privacy, as set out in our constitution and in the European
Convention on Human Rights which has been incorporated into Irish law.

The undertakings we have sought from the Ministers for Justice and
Communications and the Garda Commissioner are urgently required if the
ongoing breach of citizens’ rights is to stop. If they are not
forthcoming we have informed all the parties that our legal team have
instructions to commence legal proceedings.”

Paintballing a block of flats?