Damien Mulley

Club Penguin got purchased by Disney for $350 Million with an additional $350 Million performance bonus if they keep growing well til 2009. Coverage by the NY Times and Techcrunch.

Techcrunch points out that Sony previously wanted to buy the online social networking website for kids but the deal faltered for a few reasons, one being that Club Penguin donates sunstantial portions of their profits to charities and Sony wasn’t easger to continue this after a sale. I guess Disney is happy or else the three fathers who created the site have worked out some other deal.

Club Penguin’s growth has been fantastic and they seem to have decided on a site philosophy early on that they’ve stuck with. They’re not overly commercial looking and tone down rather that harass people with ads. It looks like they got the balance right when so many other websites have failed so badly. They also CHARGE customers which seems to be some kind of vulgar no no for other websites. 700k customers pay $5.95 a month to customize the penguins.

Lots of lessons to be learned from this website and their business plan.

Fun and cute candles.

Free webcast: Managing SEO for Big Sites, Big Brands.

Of course:

Anyone going to the Future of Mobile conference?

Another foody blog.

Totally nicked from Una

Blur – Song 2 (Acapella)

Worthy of New blogs on block but thought I’d give it a fluffy link too. The Mood Food Blog is a damned fine food blog.

Never thought cooked veg would make me hungry and want to try them. I hope the owner (Donal) sticks to the blogging. I’ve seen his other past blogs.

Staying with food. Milk is better than sports drinks post-game or post-workout. Who sponsored this?

Almost moving away from food … they’re breeding schizophrenic mice now.

Register for the FireFox 3 talk in Cork.

I love it. A multi-purpose tool that fits in to your wallet. 11 tools in the space of a credit card. All for a fiver. Now now, I know I won’t mention the big end of year event that starts with C but that would make a great stocking filler. Sold out on both sites that are linked to on the Cool Tools blog.

Microsoft gives away Microsoft Works for free as adware. Stupid stupid stupid. Stop trying to copy Google and make a mess while you do it. Put it online, not on the operating system and NOT with ads.

Nice observation by Rob on Twitter, Second Life and Greenpeace.

If they were to stick to their principles fully, of course, Greenpeace would probably have to address the Internet through machines powered by hippies (vegan ones, naturally) on treadmills.

And for the geeks, Rob rants about WordPress and all the calls it makes. In a convo with Rob once I think he talked about writing a WordPress like clone using some other language which was 1700% faster or something? What was it again Rob?

Treasa got me thinking about the Princess Bride. One of my favourite movies ever. One of those movies to test out the other person in your life. If they like that, then that’s another box checked. Well, for me anyway.

Via Writing it down:

“Antony and the Johnsons – You Are My Sister”
:

IT@Cork are now hosting the Marcio Galli talk I previously mentioned. It takes place at 6pm on August 8th in the National Software Centre, in Cork. Please let others know about this and encourage them to register if they are going to attend.

Read, Write, and Recycle the Web with FireFox 3

Blurb:

A talk on Web development and advanced applications with upcoming Mozilla Firefox 3. The presentation focuses on demonstrations of new features of the Firefox “platform” built on open standards with the focus on technology cases and development opportunities.

Target audiences: Computer science students, web developers, software engineers, entrepreneurial individuals, and more.

FireFox – A Web-browser, a Platform, a Framework.

Bio of Marcio Galli:

Marcio Galli currently works as a consultant for the Mozilla project, with specific contribution to mobile projects such as the Mozilla Joey, Mozilla Minimo, and Mozilla development efforts in Brazil. Prior to that he worked as an web interface engineer for the Yahoo! Messenger team, and served as Technology Evangelist for the Netscape Gecko and Open Standards at Netscape Communications. Marcio now lives in Sao Carlos Brazil. Marcio presented in conferences like OSCON (portland ), Nasa and Warner Bros while at Netscape, and other open source events in Brazil such as FISL and ESLAM.

Update: A few hours later, Blacknight stepped in and sponsored the event. Nice one.

From the people that gave us Bertie on Dragon’s Den

Via Pat. Send texts from as little as 1 cent.

This week’s new blogs on the block.

Last chance for Paddy’s Valley this week. Spaces still available. Details here.

Tech company profiles, why not have your own company profiled? So far I’ve gotten 14 profiles sent in. We surely have more tech companies in Ireland than that?

I really thought online group buying died a death?

Richard Hawley – Tonight The Streets Are Ours

Albert Hammond Jr. – In Transit:

I feel ill. The chef here had me try out a chocolate sweet made from durian. The smelliest, most horrid fruit ever. This is actually how he billed it before I tried it. The sweet is now repeating on me and sends waves of the most noctious, sickening gas up my throat and out my nose and nostrils. It is the type of thing that fits so comfortably in the “delicacy” comparment that fools us all into paying a fortune for food nobody else would bother trying since their life doesn’t depend on it.

Here’s a video of someone trying it:

Math Rock. Yeah apparently this genre exists. I’ve heard of Battles for a while but was really wondering were they a band that sang songs like “1 and one is two. Two and two is four. Break it down.” or “I don’t want to be your square root, I want to be your multiplier” but they seem more about doing rhythms in certain ways. They have a Primus or Zappa feel to them. Then the chipmunks have an LSD party with the Smurfs. It also reminded me of something else.*

Anyway, Phantom played this tune tonight:

Of which a longer, live version is here:

Really good. Must get the album now.

* Was also reminded of this Trigger Happy TV moment:

Irish Times, FinFacts and others cover the Paddy’s Valley trip. Maybe now the local papers will cover the companies, now that the Times gave them a seal of approval.

Most expensive petrol in Ireland?

Words. The most offensive.

A mobile client for bit torrent. If the operators in Ireland don’t block it and give proper caps, it could be useful. It should have a bluetooth or wifi option.

I seem to be on a Ben Hammersley linkathon of late. Ben mentions that this is the golden age of good TV and I think I’m going to agree. But it is only a golden page because of the net and Bittorrent. Deadwood, Battlestar, Dexter. Friday Night Lights, Heroes, The Wire to Rome.

I’m beginning to think that all the fuss over the internet is entirely misplaced: the artform that is truly coming into its creative and cultural maturity is television, and specifically long-form American produced drama. It’s not a new point, but from the Sopranos through to BSG, Dexter to The Wire, there’s some truly inspired writing and photography happening coming together.

African journos use mobiles to take vids and upload them using GPRS.

Via Metafilter: Dentist puts boar teeth into patient’s mouth. She sues, he coughs up 250k. He sues insurance company and they cough up a million. America.

This is an ex-Internet:Teaser trailer for Beowulf: