Futures of news

July 26th, 2012

Some interesting things around news and websites in the past few days have popped up:

A memo or philosophical note from Buzzfeed on how they are all about built for purpose.

Some tips from Mashable on how journalists/media can use Facebook in a more productive way.

Why Gawker is moving beyond the blog.

Locally, I think Broadsheet is/are? something worth watching. A news site that has a tonne of fun and then can stop everyone in their tracks with a concise and sharp analysis piece. It evolved from funny things we’re watching on the web to a place where Irish people are sending their content and ensuring things are highlighted that other media miss or willfully ignore.

Fluffy Links – Monday July 23rd 2012

July 23rd, 2012

Experimental film festival in the Triskel. Black Sun Cinema: A Day of Experimental Film at Triskel Christchurch – Sun August 12th.

Hilary Hahn and Hauschka have an album.

Like trains? Got a fortune to blow? Orient Express is here for your money.

Only available for American politicians. A search engine to find deleted tweets from politicians.

Cork solicitors offer free services to Glanmire flooding victims. They’d be my solicitors too.

Ah, so this is where the Irish tobacco lobby is hanging out online.

Stewart Brand is some man for one man.

Seems like a smaller iPad is on the way from the data this post is showing. Also renaming the iPad 3 to just IPad suggests that there will be an iPad “something” out in the next while.

Distant Green Valley – Silk Road Journeys

Fluffy Links – Friday July 20th 2012

July 20th, 2012

Greenshoots are looking for entrepreneurs in the Lee Valley area to join their incubation programme.

Reminder: Doing a Digital Marketing course (the price is subsidised) with Cork Chamber in August.

Wifi blocking wallpaper. I really do think in time there will be a niche for holiday getaways that have no mobile signal, no broadband and no telephone lines. Some parts of West Cork offer this without realising it.

Nice piece from Henry Miller on the slog that is writing. Many writers seem to suggest the idea of writing and writing and writing to a set agenda.

One way of getting kids to clean up their Facebook Profile is to tell them your roommates in college (and thus their parents) wil be shown your profile when you are booking rooms.

Thank goodness. Proper content is better than someone taking content and rewriting it to add jazzhands. Maybe less “news aggregators” will get Google love so.

Interesting concept. No need to use logins as we’re all on mobiles and logins are a pain.

Abdullah Ibrahim – Cape Town Flower

How Buildings Learn – Complete series online

July 15th, 2012

Stewart Brand put his whole series online, for free and encourages people to remix it. Wiki page about it. Amazon book link.

Music by Brian Eno.

The series was based on my 1994 book, HOW BUILDINGS LEARN: What Happens After They’re Built. The book is still selling well and is used as a text in some college courses. Most of the 27 reviews on Amazon treat it as a book about system and software design, which tells me that architects are not as alert as computer people. But I knew that; that’s part of why I wrote the book.

Anybody is welcome to use anything from this series in any way they like. Please don’t bug me with requests for permission. Hack away. Do credit the BBC, who put considerable time and talent into the project.

Fluffy Links – Saturday July 14th 2012

July 14th, 2012

Darina Allen has a blog. And she has a lovely post of how only recently did she learn to type and got herself an iPad.

Piece I wrote on TV for RTÉ Digital.

Showrooming: Retailers now corrupting barcodes so they can’t be read by scanners (phones) and compared online.

Doctor Who best of: List of some of the classic Doctor Who episodes to watch.

Mozilla kills off Thunderbird but full steam ahead for a mobile operating system.

Highly interesting. Red is the first colour to be distinguished when language gets around to colours.

And also via Kottke: Def Leppard re-recording their old songs to screw their record label which won’t negotiate about digital downloads. Some weird contract they had with them.

BBC – How art made the world Part 1, full 60 mins.

Data Journalism. Love this idea of using technology to start writing stories that would have been impossible a few years ago.

Fluffy Links – Friday July 6th 2012

July 6th, 2012

Cork Pub Summit is on the 11th in Electric.

Mobile Monday Cork is on in City Hall this Monday. Starts at Midday.

Doing an 8-part Digital Marketing course in August in Cork with the Chamber. If you want to partake.

Documentary about Alternative Miss Ireland on Radio 1.

CruiseNet. Networking while cruising on the River Shannon. August 2nd.

Irish Nostalgia blog.

Like this interview of Alec Baldwin interviewing the media shy David Letterman.

Kronos Quartet – Requiem for a dream music

John’s Book of Alleged Dances

July 5th, 2012

via Liz Nolan in Lyric FM

Fluffy Links – Monday July 3rd 2012

July 3rd, 2012

Imogen Bertin talks Uncollege and the changing ways of education.

It’s mobile mobile mobile web. And that means massive opportunity.

Using a remote controlled helicopter (stop calling it a drone) to spy on Facebook and Google offices. Oh yeah, take that giant corporations.

Work in tech? RoleConnect would like you to do a quick survey on the way and method that recruiters contact you.

Meaning Conference. Brighton, October 1st. A conference that helps people to make their business more social and other new-thinking ideas.

Google Now. Gives you answers to questions you haven’t asked yet… Really.

From Ron:

but the nefarious thing about Twitter and other social media is that it starts to fill all the gaps in your day

Blur:

Epiphany – Trailblaze at Cork Midsummer

July 1st, 2012

Trailblaze came to Cork for the Cork Midsummer Festival and it took place in the Triskel. A great line-up of speakers in a beautiful location.

Everyday Epiphanies and Altered States was the theme for their first time in Cork.
Speakers were Steve Collins, Dylan Tighe, Carmel Winters, Niamh Gunn, Sheena Matheiken, Brother Richard, Robbie Hamilton, Stevie G

Trailblaze Cork

I liked a good few talks and ones that shone through was one from Brother Richard for the UCC Chaplaincy and a talk from Carmel Winters really resonated. It was a story about her Aunt Eily who was in a convent til her 70s. A great short talk about seeking truth and truths and the idea two different ideas can be right and wrong at the same time. I would listen to her all day, great intellect and language skills.

There’s one more post about a Midsummer event and then I’m done about it for a while I’m sure. Overall I really liked the eclectic mix of events I got to see. A lot of imagination, youth and energy was experienced by me. I hope that the energy, I sucked in like a vampire will help me with things I do for work and pleasure in the next few months. Batteries certainly were recharged in the past 10 days because of these events. It’d be great to see more people at the events of course. Maybe there should be a big brother, big sister type programme to bring people that have never been before.

Court: In the Name of the People #corkmidsummer

June 30th, 2012

Court. Running for a few days in the Cork Midsummer festival was Court. The setting was the Court House in Cork City. A beautiful building I was never in before. A choir used the space, which being a place of large rooms and pillars can be interesting. The pitch for the event is thus:

For In The Name Of The People, we encounter the Cork Chamber Choir in the imposing entrance hall of the court house, who move through the space and sing an a capella rendition of a Renaissance liturgy as well as texts from judgements laid down in this building.

Cork Court House

The choir first sang down to us in the foyer area and then walked down.

Cork Court House Balcony

Part of their work was name-checking Irish cases and reading from judgments that occurred within the walls of this Court. The choir also walked around, in and around the crowd themselves. The sound was fantastic and I loved the concept. In a way it takes the energy from the ghost from lives that have been changed in this building and brought them out through accessible singing.

Nice to see the Court opened up too. All in all, I liked it. Might have been a tad too “comedic” at the start but the visceral Court experiences later on made it a strong enough piece. Delighted I legged it from Dublin and got to see it.

Poor iPhone sound:

Cork Chamber Choir in Cork Courthouse