Damien Mulley

Further Edit 10-10-05: Add Podcasts to these awards too? Some people say yes.
(another edit: New boards.ie thread on it.

The Irish Bloggersphere in my opinion is now maturing a bit and becoming a real community. Certainly the addition of IrishBlogs.ie and Planet of The Blogs to the web has made an immense difference to the Irishbloggersphere. Hell even my boggerspere neoligism made it into the Tribune. Maybe it’s time for the Irish Blog Awards?

But this idea isn’t unique. Seems that bastion of balance – the Freedom Institute came up with their very own Irish Blogs Award 2005, way back in urm February. Not sure how the voting system worked. They officially called it the “Liberty Blog Awards for 2005” though, so maybe if another Irish Blogs Awards happened they wouldn’t mind too much? And if they did it would only generate more attention for these awards. Even better.

So, to me it’s obvious that Slugger O’Toole will wipe the boards when it comes to any awards involving Ireland and blogging. When it comes to humour, well then Twenty Major will kick ass. (BTW he comes in the top 10 in Google for just the word “twemty”.) He doesn’t even need a special “Best use of ‘Cunt’ ” in a post. Though (NSFW Link) Mr Bing’s Blog entry tonight might.

But even if Slugger and Twenty clean up, it would be good for the citizens of the blogger/boggersphere to nominate bloggerss and posts and have them line up shoulder to shoulder and be recognized as the cream of the crop. Not entirely sure what the categories should be though. How about?

• Best Blogger
• Best Blog Post
• Best New Blogger
• Best Contribution to the Boggersphere (Tech wise)
• Best Potential Blogger i.e. Someone we’d like to see blogging

Now since comments are fucked on this blog, if you want to comment you’re going to have to post about it on your own blog. Oh and if you do that it means more people will read about the idea. That can only be a good thing.

UPDATE 09 Oct 2005:

Richard from FI emailed me to let me know that there wouldn’t be an issue with using the name Irish Blogs Awards. So there we have it. And now he’s blogged about it too!

Kevin over on Disillusioned Lefty liked the idea and Mr. Free Stater likes it too. Progressive Ireland also endorses this.

Further Update: Should we also include Podcasts?

One has to wonder with some of the greatest minds in the world working in Google, whether they really are going to be working on secret applications for the US Govt or Military. Sure, they can still do no evil, “do not be evil” is just a philosophical viewpoint.

In John Battelle’s post about Google Reader he states that Google is looking into facial recogition. Man. That’s quite interesting. Wonder how long before you have “Search Google personals for guys that look like Matt Damon. ” That’s just one selfish application. Ssssh, I’m allowed to indulge! Here again is the quote:

Google also announced its work on determining sex of a person using pattern recognition in photos. This is a first step toward ID’ing faces, then searching by face

Tags: googlereader facialrecogniton irishblogs

Google Reader – simple bloody name. Not a bad interface. The best thing is you can import and export OPML files. Going to import my bloglines OPML now.

What else? TAGS! Well, labels, as per GMail. Handy handy!

More on John Battelle’s site AND a very very interesting snippet which I will post in another post, just to get more Google juice. Google also announced its work on determining sex of a person using pattern recognition in photos. This is a first step toward ID’ing faces, then searching by face.

Hmm. Anyone else think the Google site is very slowass? Slower than Technorati at the moment!

EDIT: 15 minutes later and it is still importing my 120 feeds. Jesus this is painful!

EDIT 2: What horseshit. Beta it may be, but Google are the ones that made Beta something so professional that it outclassed release candidate material. Not this time.

Tags: googlereader bloglines

Paging Dr. Scoble,Paging Dr. Scoble, can you bring your Slingbox to the IT @ Cork event? Go raibh maith agat.

Via Google Blogoscoped. This brings me back to 1st year college running crackerjack against a shadowed linux password file and using a massive list of dictionary words to check passwords. Full txt list of resolving Google Subdomains. Tony Ruscoe found some interesting unpublished Google subdomains by using a bruteforce check on Google subdomains.

Via InsideGoogle: GreaseMap “Greasemap uses Greasemonkey to add a small layer to Firefox webpages. When you visit a geotagged page, it allows you to view an overlay map (powered by Google Maps) showing the coordinates of the geotag.”

Via BoingBoing: Bedroom slippers with LEDs in the toes.

Are EU ready? .EU domains are almost good to go.

Me in need of a haircut. Nice colour to my eyes, if I do say so myself.

More on Larry Lessig’s Powerpoint presentation style. Where can I get a PPT copy of his presentation? Larry’s presentations were the inspiration for the best powerpoint presentation I ever saw.

Sesame street lyrics in Klingon. Sing along! ” Describe to me immediately how to go to Sesame Street.”

Digg Spy. Automatically refreshing flash interface. Quick AJAX/Web2.0 fanboys. Love it! Love it now!

Handy Getting Things Done Email hack from Ross. It’s a tick box you can add to your sig stating you don’t want the email conversation blogged or quoted or that you permit it.

EU Information Society open Consultations. Handy bookmark.

Handy VoIP Flashdrive phone. Plug it into the USB, launch the software on the drive and you’re away. Now that’s mobile!

Rick is sick of this Web 2.0 bollox:

Having said that, enough already with this Web 2.0 nonsense. We are doing the same thing we always do when “new” has “newer” come along. We hype the snot out of it and crap all over the ‘old stuff’.

Blogs are the new new which is the new brown which is the new black. I remember the good ole days of WAP and how that would set the world on fire. I wish someone would have set a WAP PR bunny on fire. WiMax, there’s another sinner. Petrol, sugar, frozen orangejuice – Napalm some marketer scum and his dumbass client. How to succeed in this new age: Just build apps with the tech you have and stop being a marketing whore. The best way to pimp your product is to turn it from vapourware into ShitThat’sImpressiveWare.

Do you really need some dumbfuck marketing guru who only has the ability to “buzzerize” your product? Did FireFox need someone to give them a sexy name? If it changed its name in the morning most people wouldn’t give a damn.

Meanwhile look at Ning.

Sun and Google to announce Google Office?

Google already own Joerg Heilig who was a Project Manager for StarOffice. Will this be an online version of Star Office integrated into GMail or something like this? It could hardly just be a calendar app. Not when you have both Sun CEO Scott McNealyand Google CEO Eric Schmidt announcing this at the Computer History Museum.

The biggest thing about this to me is where the application resides. Will it be Desktop based or server based? If server based it will freak out Microsoft quite a bit. I think a table and a chair might fly over this.

EDIT: Previous speculation about AJAX Office.

Nokia 888 Concept Phone video.

From Textually.org:

The phone gives information on what’s happening – such as an incoming call – by changing shape… The user interface is entirely without keyboard…

You dont have to carry it in your pocket or on your wrist. You can carry it anywhere, in anyform. You can roll it, bend it, put on your clothes like a clip. It also makes some form changes that makes it more ergonomical: i.e. when you want to talk on the phone, the body form turns into the form of the good old telephone. You can personalize these forms and record them. So it fits you the best in the way that you have chosen.