Damien Mulley

In the his latest interview Tom Raftery grills Bradley Horowitz of Yahoo. Of particular interest is when Tom puts Yahoo on the spot for sponsoring spyware and fucking over that journalist in China:

Yahoo! was at the receiving end of some negative publicity last year – In August, Ben Edelman outed Yahoo for funding Spyware developers, and in Sept, Yahoo! was accused by News.com of employing spyware tactics in its new version of its Instant Messenger app, does Yahoo! have a corporate Ethics Officer or a corporate Ethics statement that you follow? – 25:35

More bad PR in Sept when Chinese journalist Shi Tao was jailed for 10 years for posting “sensitive informationâ€? after Yahoo! turned over his Yahoo! hosted email account to the Chinese government – is this a case of Yahoo! putting profit before human rights? – 27:44

If this had happened in the US would Yahoo! have fought the government request in the courts? 30:37

Bradley mentions they comply with the Law of the land and the last question and corresponding answer seems very relevant now with news that Yahoo and other engines handed over search data to the US DOJ. Google refused and are going to Court. As John Battelle notes, they say there was nothing in the request for personal data but a Patriot Act request could look after that.

Via Monochrom: The Graham Chapman Eulogy. Funny, sweet and sad.

No, not that agenda or that one either. As some cynics have pointed out I have an ulterior motive to the Blog Awards and running them. I want to be more popular and get to be the new “It” guy of the Irish blogging community. I’ll be like Cheers, where everyone knows my name except I’ll only midly smell of beer and peanuts. And the reason for all this? Free homecooked meals. There said it. Take your jaw off the floor. I know, shocker isn’t it?

Have you seen the blog posts on food around these parts lately? Winds has a whole shagging section on cookery as does Morgan. Suzy tempts my tummy now and then too. Bernard too has recipes.

And then of course there’s Cheesecake boy. 🙂

We should have a big cook-out. We’ve done drinks, we’ve done conferences, we’ve done dinners in a restaurant. Now the bloggers should get together and cook. I shall eat their meals as I am a nice guy.

Are there others out there? I know I forgot a few. I must be their new friend and be popular with them!

No doubt James will make an OPML node for these foody blogs 🙂

Rightso,
I’m not doing all of this on my own, the blogging community can now help me out with the Blog Awards. I’m looking for category sponsors as well as spotprizes for the night. Maybe you or your company can spare a few quid or maybe you know someone that works in a cash rich company that would love to sponsor a category, if so then talk up blogging and the Blog Awards and have them contact me.

Also, really important, can people let me know if they are going to come along. Right now I only know of four people who have said they’d go. Register your interest in going to the Blog Awards here.

Mmmm cheesecake. I must add cheesecake to the list of things required for the night. There. Done.

Marie Mulholland has joined the blogosphere. Welcome Marie.

Dear Sir/Madam/Computer Accessory,

You visited my site after searching for “How to fuck a mac”. I’m just wondering what type you mean?

A computer?
A raincoat?
A BigMac?

Thank you for any help you can provide to me so I can make your searching experience more valuable.

Google buys leading radio advertising company.

Google is an ad company first and foremost these days.

There’s been about 100 nominations so far and the nominations are slowing down to a trickle now so I think I’ll let them run until next Monday morning and then shut nominations and then start creating the nominations list for each category. When that’s done we can go to the next phase which is a public vote to eliminate blogs from certain categories so a short list is created which can then be passed on to the judges.

On the subject of judges, it is becoming quite apparent that 3-4 judges who would judge all categories is not going to work out as the judges are themselves nominated in many categories. To remedy this I’m going to create a pool of judges and once nominations close for the awards, which I think will be next week, I’ll be able to assign judges to various categories. So now I must fire off a few emails asking people would they like to be judges. Quick, check your email! I’ll list who will the judges are once the short lists are nailed down.

Still no news on a date or venue.

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