Fluffy Links – Monday October 3rd 2011

October 3rd, 2011

Tweekaboo gets nice coverage in the Business Post. (Disclosure: they’re a client)

Simon Geraghty is blogging about starting his own business and pine martins. Looking forward to more posts.

And on that. Giant giant list of apps/tools/resources for startups.

Netflix got into trouble from a lot of people for pretty much getting rid of renting physical DVDs but still paying the same for the service and then bringing it back as a sister business. One of the founders, now no longer there gives his take. He supports the idea and gives great insight into the history of the company. 95% of revenue was from selling DVDs not renting in year one and then they killed it off. Ballsy.

Nice post about the resurrection and plummet of Nixon both done via TV. Never heard of the Checkers speech before.

Nice post by Ian Power on how Play.com converts Facebook fans into paying fans.

Facebook and photos. Holy crap, every photo online appears to reside there now.

Cork Opera House, Corcadorca present The Winter’s Tale:

No more Guinness Jazz Festival or Absolut Fringe after sponsor ban?

October 2nd, 2011

The Business Post reports that a Government sponsored group, the National Substance Misuse Strategy Steering Group is looking at suggesting the banning of drink sponsorship of Arts and Culture events. There’s been talk for a long while too about banning drinks brands sponsoring sports events. So no more Jameson Film Festival, Absolut Fringe, Corona Cork Film Festival and the Guinness Jazz Festival?

Arts and Culture organisations will be even more moany if another source of funding is shut down. Government grants aren’t what they used to be. We’re in a recession so it’s harder, for some at least, to get corporate sponsors. Of course one can donate to an arts project without having to publicly be listed as a headline sponsor/sponsor. I’m sure many drinks companies will instead do this, given how they care so deeply about Irish culture. So says the press releases. Bit of Dáil discussion on it too.

You have to wonder about Arthur’s day too then. Will this artificially created calendar event get killed off too? It’s not “Guinness day” but is associated with it. No coincidence it was created just as worldwide drinks companies started seeing traditional marketing routes denied to them. Funds for social entrepreneurship, like sponsoring arts and culture events are another route to keep your name around if you’re a drinks company. I wonder will these be classed as sponsorship too. It’s nice that a fraction of revenue from a single day out of a year is spent to keep these projects sustained for a while.

There’s some great lessons to be learned from the arms race between the tobacco industry and various Governments over the decades. Now it’s happening with alcohol. I’m sure fatty foods will be next. For those that haven’t issues working for tobacco companies or drinks companies then there is serious money in change and disruption. Think of the euro changeover or the Y2K bug. Fortunes were made from it. Helping these companies find newer routes to market their products will get you that mansion sooner.

And of course with tobacco TV ads banned we get this instead, now if they ban drink and fatty food ads…

Fluffy Links – Tuesday September 20th 2011

September 20th, 2011

Mulley Comms wants someone to write about Hard Working Class Heroes for them. Expenses and ticket costs covered.

The Business Post covered the Mulley Comms Teen Smoking Survey recently. Some of the data was unexpected and eye-opening. Reasons for giving up saw cost and health equally matched and what many already know: the anti-smoking ads don’t work.

I’m going way up North in a few weeks to talk Online PR/Crisis Comms.

Cork based FundIt Project – Partly Cloudy are looking for support.

Culture Night in Cork is this Friday. I’m away, of course. Nice lineup of things to do. The Cork Printmakers one looks good.

Still reading the book – Nudge. Interesting bit in it that people will spend sometimes up to twice as much on desirable items because the option to pay with credit card is there.

Concern Worldwide will host the 10th annual NetHope Global Member Summit at Intel’s Innovation Centre in Leixlip from 7-11 November

Been doing the rounds in mainstream news now. Lovely way of lighting up homes in developing countries, for almost nothing using Coke bottles.

via Ebby Giant cows made from recycled car parts.

Midnight City by M83 from their new album

Follow

September 7th, 2011

Follow. At the Fringe this year, be great to get them down to Cork.

Shane’s parents are deaf. He grew up in a house with doorbell lights and subtitles on the TV. A house where to be heard, you had to be seen. Follow him to a place where languages collide. Where the lights are so bright you can’t see to speak. Where sound is just a feeling and signs are all around. Close your ears, cover your eyes. Come to the Deaf Disco. We’ll see you there

Follow Trailer from José Miguel Jiménez on Vimeo.

Fluffy Links – Thursday September 1st 2011

September 1st, 2011

The 2011 Realex Payments Web Awards category list is out. Woo.

New Irish blog on marketing and advertising: Brant.ie

Meanwhile Eoin Kennedy is Going Out West.

Love research and data around cities. The first bunch of paragraphs talk about a London with deadly fires, the Plague, Cholera and more and yet it survived and grew even bigger. I

I like the idea. Sculpture classes as a team-building, fun event. Nice results.

Found via Twitter User story does online usability testing and website reviews.

Actual causes of death. Smoking and bad diets eh?

Lana Del Rey – Video Games (Via Jim)

Black sun

August 28th, 2011

via BBC’s The Code

Starlings create these amazing patterns when flying together. It seems they follow three simple rules and if you recreate them as a software model, you can get the same patterns. Fly at the same speed, always stay the same distance between you and your neighbours and if you see a predator, leg it.

Meanwhile a 13 year old uses the Fibonacci sequence to redesign solar panels to be more like trees and so more efficient.

A year in an hour and a bit

August 22nd, 2011

If you were to bump into this witty and cultured guy at a friend’s party and think he’s a good laugh and he invites some friends and you to another party, you take his car and on the way to this other gaff you realise it’s not his car, he just lifted keys from the original party and he’s actually on second thoughts a bit mental and with a scary dark side and you have no idea where the fuck you’ll end up or if you’ll escape, then you’re slightly experiencing the genius that is Neil Watkins and his play The Year of Magical Wanking. And if you only breathe out after that last full stop, this is what the play will do to you. You can’t be prepared, so go with it. Funny, scary, intelligent and with spit in your face honesty. It could just be a little bit liberating.

Runs 9-17 September 2011 in Project Arts Centre. Tickets on sale from Absolut Fringe Dublin 2011.

This is the new trailer.

And this is just five minutes of what you’ll be experiencing:

Fluffy Links – Sunday August 21st 2011

August 21st, 2011

Coffee product placement by TV3, sure haven’t they been doing product placement in comics for ages?

Ah there’s another ex-Demonware founder let loose on the bloggersphere. Sean Blanchfield, hello.

Nice idea from Paul. SEO in a box, type service. 747 SEO.

Tickles, another deal site, this time for us down South are hiring. Part of the TCH Group.

Woah. From a McDonald’s (why did he not cover his tracks properly?) a disgruntled employee almost totally wiped out the tech infrastructure of his ex-Pharma bosses. Virtual servers eh?

Seen all those cool levitating type pics from Asia? Here’s how they do it. Yer man has the same accent as Paul Whitehouse. Via Hyperallergic.

Active Child – Hanging On

Opportunities

August 18th, 2011

Jim Carroll’s post on Quality v Quantity in the music business where you now have only a few months to break on through (it seems) due to easy findability of every band on the planet, kind of links into this piece quoting Ian Rogers on how it’s easy to create and distribute music nowadays but again because of easy discoverability, you have to market harder/smarter to get yourself noticed, so more resources are going in to marketing/pr/promotion.

That to me says there are opportunities as well as suggesting maybe with all this connectedness it could bring the quality way up for bands but they still need that 10k hours idea Gladwell came up with. Wait til they get the tech right for people to jam with each other properly around the world in real time. No more ‘bassist wanted’ flyers in guitar shops. It worked with Internet dating!

This of course ties into everything else not just music. When the web first came about, search engines allowed us to find/discover textual information and it worked well. The amount of information then for the basic web was tiny compared to now. With these more complicated media, more tech and more opportunities to sort out information were born. Now with the web we have services like Last.fm (liked this song, others who did liked this one), Netflix for movies, Amazon recommendation services (bit rough) and sites using your social media footprints are now aiding us into finding new things we might like. Counter to that though is the idea we are having too much hidden from us due to what we soley like. Serendipity gets stomped on. There’s a whole TED video on filters and this:

Anyway, Dylan Collins did a blog post on what people (I was included too) thought were opportunities for startups. A good range of people and a load of good ideas are over there. Importantly for me and maybe you is that these quick bursts of ideas get you to think and come up with other ideas and opportunities based on them. Even reading them and saying “this is bullshit because…” gets you to be creative and analytical and maybe share ideas and potential opportunities.

So loads of new ideas for everyone around the world that can be inspired by blog posts and what not. More ways to be inspired, cheaper tech and infrastructure to build your ideas and faster turnaround for the ideas. Increase in quantity, increase in quality too but also a lot of noise. Geography won’t matter as much (we’ll have no Valley is better than Roundabout stuff in the comments please) so an Irish startup could compete with a German one for example. Creativity and skill not previous history of the area become stronger factors for startups.

Is the startup world following what is happening in music? If yes, will the issues with the music industry become a lesson to be learned by startups too? So a bit like Inception, there seem to be opportunities inside opportunities as the opportunity to have an opportunity becomes easier.

Inspiration is just a matter of slowing things down and observing:

Fuckoffier – #mulleycomic 2

August 16th, 2011

The next version of the Mulley Comic is plonking down on doorsteps about now. First one is here.

Thanks to Nick and Dena who didn’t know how they’d be presented.

Also thanks to the companies in the comic for investing in good old product placement. Voice-over Bloke. Curious Cupcakes. MadeInHollyWood. John Blackbourn. Blacknight. IsMulleyOnATrain.com made by Keith and Anthony also features. And of course we all <3 IrishStu.com

A bit of end of business year fun.

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Ink/Drawing by the legendary Tommie “jetpack” Kelly