I seem to be telling people more and more to subscribe to Irish bloggers who talk tech and business to see what new things they’re playing with. There’s a small core of people in this country who always do the donkey work of looking at new technologies or products and testing them til they break or annoy or are realised to be a load of dross. It’s good to have these people.
Of late we’ve seen people using Twitter and Jaiku, but before that it was Podcasting and Blogging. They’re the people who install Linux operating systems, beta versions of Microsoft Service Packs, try out video blogging services like Seesmic or download very alpha software like Prism from Mozilla. Something new and shiny comes out and these folks are trying it out. I’m not one of these people really. I’m a little more conservative and I use people like Tom Raftery, James Corbett, Bernie Goldbach, Alexia Golez, Pat Phelan, Elly Parker, Conor O’Neill and so many others to try things out first and then I’ll wade in.
Via Jeremiah comes a definition from Ross Mayfield – Blogalyst:
What’s a Blogalyst? Part blogger, part analyst and part catalyst.
Maybe that’s what these folks are, it’s a nicer explanation then what I think: They wade through all the shite so we don’t have to.
So if you want to get the Zeitgeist of tech in Ireland from a consumer perspective, people like the above are good people to subscribe to or even contact and ask for opinion. This doesn’t mean spamming, mind. And they’re all way ahead of the trends too as they know how to use predictive text too.
