Damien Mulley

Beaut.ie is celebrating their first birthday and have released a few stats:

Beaut.ie is read by up to 6,000 people a day (unique visitors to the site per day) and boasts over 150k hits on an average day. The sisters have clocked up almost 2000 posts (articles) on topics covering every aspect of the beauty industry – from facials to lipgloss, waxing, and latest beauty trends

The blog has received well over 50,000 comments so far from site visitors.

1 year and 50,000 comments. Holy fucking crapola! So will it be the Irish Times or the Indo or someone else?

Congrats Aisling and Kirstie, you both rock!

Still day 3 and since Karlin Lillington continues to selectively quote me on her blog but refuses to let my comments through, I’d like to point out that she cannot even recall what she said on her Newstalk slot the other day. Now she is backing away from the 90% broadband coverage statement on her blog saying she never said that:

In addition, let me make this very clear: I did NOT state the there was 90% coverage in Ireland, and I did NOT accept this statement either. However I was NOT the interviewer for the piece, and I do not ever control the direction of interviews or shows

If you listen to the mp3 of the tech slot, she says the following around 4 minutes 15 seconds.

A question that goes a long way with this whole issue of coverage and the takeup and our low takeup is whether there isn’t a larger question of why we don’t have the penetration despite a 90% coverage

It’s that quarter of the year again where I will be updating the blogroll/links on the right of this blog. If you are not on the list and want to be included, please let me know in the comments. Then when I will forget about a few of you (oh trust me, my mind blanks at times) do remind me via email or via another comment. 🙂

For those that subscribe to this site it seems you are only getting summaries of the posts not the full posts. I’ve only been told this this morning and I’m trying to fix it but for some reason WordPress is saying the feed is a full feed. I’ve also the number of subscribers Feedburner reports has halved so something is deffo up. I’m looking into it now and hope to remedy all of this asap. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Matt of Life Without Toast F A M E is auctioning off his guitar for charity, have a look and have a look that it is listed on eBay with a video.

This is the video and it’s fucking great. El kabong! My god, that unearthed great memories:

What a really creative way to auction something off. I’m very impressed and with more and more people auctioning stuff, this is deffo a way of getting more attention to your auction. Nice too that others can embed it. Still, it seemed I had to go to the listing on the VZaar site before I could get the embed code. Maybe this could be changed?

This is a London? based company, be nice if crowds like Intruders TV and Blognation covered this. *cough* *nudge*

Free ticket to Techcrunch 20. Apply to Pat now.

Win tickets to see Feist, courtesy of Nialler.

The new iPods are great and all (apart from the fugly iPod Nano) but Michele points out the serious price differential between here and the states now.

As Ken notes, I joined Jaiku yesterday after Twitter was down once again. It’s a fantastic microblogging/presence system, the only downside being it’s pretty empty when it comes to Irish users. I might stick around on it now actually as many of those I interacted with on a daily basis are on it now.

Want to review some wine?

Day 3 of the Karlin Challenge, where she blocks comments from me on her blog but happily slags me off without still taking up my challenge.

Kottke is a massive fan of the TV series “The Wire” and points to this marvellous quote about the creators attitude to the average viewer:

I was always told to write for the average reader in my newspaper life. The average reader, as they meant it, was some suburban white subscriber with two-point-whatever kids and three-point-whatever cars and a dog and a cat and lawn furniture. He knows nothing and he needs everything explained to him right away, so that exposition becomes this incredible, story-killing burden. Fuck him. Fuck him to hell.

It is not as such the erosion of privacy but the erosion of obscurity that is the issue these days. Search engines et al are now tieing all those small pieces loosely joined toogether and displaying them all in one go.

And more cleverness: Doc Searls points out the idiot girl from South Carolina has been viewed more than 13 Million times on youTube now. A few million more views that the number who viewed the actual pagent.

Via Una, the visuals at the Chemical Brothers gig at Electric Picnic. That screen is the size of the main stage. It blew me away. Absolutely fantastic.

This is Amy Winehouse at the Mercury Music Prize the other night. (Una also linked this but I swear I had an original thought of doing the same before reading Una) It’s a shame the Beeb seemed to be so obsessed about panning up and down her body, like they were looking for evidence of her recent battles with self-mutiliation. Her voice and this song shows what an amazing and quite beautiful girl she is. Shame the tabloids are helping her to be more fucked up. A rumour went around Electric Picnic that she had thrown herself off a building and I felt genuinely sad about that, even though I don’t follow her exploits and have yet to play her album but her voice seems to suggest to me she’s a lovely person. Could be way off of course!

Donncha has a photo on display at a Photography Exhibit in Mallow today that goes on for the next few weeks. If you around Cork, why not head along. It’s for a worthy cause.

I’m pleased to announce that Sublime Wines would like to offer readers of this blog the opportunity to review the wines from their collection. The idea is that they’ll send out bottles to people every two weeks and in return those people will write a review of the wine. Now, this is not like those sinister pay per post blog things where people are paid to write positive reviews. Mark and the others in Sublime Wine want your genuine opinions of their product. Naturally there are terms and conditions, the most important one being you have to be over 18 to take part in this. You must do a review and allow the review to be displayed on this blog and also have it on your own blog. (More conditions at end of post) In fact, I’d suggest using LouderVoice.com to do your review, which will also post it on your blog. For now, bloggers will take precedent but over time we’ll be asking non-bloggers too and they can definitely use LouderVoice to publish their review.

Here’s the intro from Mark:
Sublime Wines is the online equivalent of the best wine shop you know. We have a selection of wines from all over the world – hand picked by Mary Gaynor, one of Irelands’ foremost wine experts – and a woman who knows that wine is meant to be simple and fun. There are great value wines available – and the delight of exciting discoveries from small, specialist artisan winemakers.

As Ireland’s premier online wine site Sublime Wines are delighted to sponsor this new wine tasting section on Damien’s excellent blog. We are looking for wine lovers to review our wines – and will be needing two new volunteers per fortnight – no experience necessary – in fact we would prefer that you didn’t have any!

In return we would like you to write a review within 10 days that is honest but also entertaining – where would you drink it? with who? what might that lead to?? Be imaginative but not too filthy!! We will be offering wines for review from 8.50 to 50 euro so you will have to bear cost in mind too.

And finally please visit the site, have a tour around and buy if you like what you see – our wines are genuinely great value. And please, please also tell your friends about us – we need the word to spread!!

The first wine Sublime Wines would like you to review is:

Dehesa de Rubiales – Alaia 2004

Many wine experts see Spain as the ‘next big thing’. This gem, made from the classic Tempranillo grape along with the little known Spanish varietal Prieto Picudo punches way above it’s price.

Terms of this Review Offer:
You must be over 18 as already stressed.
Email damien < at > mulley.net with the subject “Wine Review” if you want to take part and include your blog address.
When you do the review, please link to the wine on the Sublime Wine website.
Please be honest in your review and have fun doing the review.
Send the review to me and I’ll post it here along with the other review, then post it on your blog too, once published here.
If you are not picked initially, your name will still be on the list and we’ll hopefully get around to you and everyone else, this is a long-term project so be patient.
*Update* Just to clarify, this is not saying everyone who applies will get a bottle, but Sublime Wines will try their best to give wine to as many people as they can but two people will get a bottle of the same wine, meaning at some stage all their catalog will have been sent out.

The Gleesonator. She is back.

Bernie and Ruth got married yesterday. Congrats to both! Very happy for them.

This almost matches my Blogorrah needs. One for the Road deconstructs Brian McFadden.

RTE makes Wikipedia changes to articles about their competitors. Nicely spotted Darran.

Today is day 2 of the Karlin Challenge.

Auction your daughter off to the highest bidder.

Nicely said Mary.

So you build this really nice and stylish eco car. Why the feck would you call it the “Fetish”?

A bill of rights for social media. Nice idealistic wants. But how can it be enforced?

A ceiling fan made of Batman type wings. Of course I want one.

Via Daithi is the infamous Brit Awards KLF performance where they basically just made a lot of noise instead of doing their song:Via Twenty is this not safe for work video, brilliant:

Karlin, without naming me, it is obvious that I am the clueless whinger you are talking about in your latest blog post. You seem upset that I called you an apologist recently on this blog:

Fortunately there are people who have a far more nuanced understanding of the problems and continue to work, as many have for decade, to make things change. The funny thing is how some of the projects and behind the scenes work that here and there were the previous targets of the whingers are actually those that have most contributed to bettering the situation here. This is recognised on an international level, and by analysts, and by businesses, but not often at home, by the whingers

Karlin, can you confirm on this blog or on your own that I am one of these whingers?

Karlin you seem to think it is hypocrtical to praise you when you manage to get something right and be brutally frank when you suck up to Eamon Ryan, yet I think doing the opposite is the hypocrisy:

However, one thing you learn very quickly as a journalist is that some folks love you when you exactly confirm what they want to hear — a type of ‘praise’ that is pretty transparent at the time because it is too enthusiastic. Take any view other than that, and you, personally, get attacked. Not just your ideas. Not the issues themselves. It’s that old, sad strategy of the ad hominem attack.

Karlin, the consensus from even the most objective people of your performance on Monday on the Right Hook was that you were far from being a journalist. It was in fact embarassing for everyone that listened in.

You seem to think because I am outside the tent pissing in, that I have a skewed view but you and those on the inside know better. You say the majority of people don’t want broadband, yet the vast majority of those using the net in Ireland want broadband. We’re talking broadband demand, not Internet demand. That’s a different issue. Just because in your estate people don’t want broadband or the Net, does not mean that the rest of the country do not. This whole “majority” crapola isn’t helpful. Using that you could say most Americans do not want broadband or most of the UK, Spain, Italy, Greece, the Czech republic and so forth. There are 100s of 1000s of people who do want broadband in this country and telling them the issue is demand is bollox, even eircom are saying the issue is a supply issue not demand. Are they too whingers like me?

You seem to think what I did was not productive yet in some frank and off-record conversations with people in Government and industry, we were told without all the whinging we would be much further behind. I don’t give a damn if it was childish, it worked and all the crawling in the world wouldn’t have made the same impact.

In my blog post I pointed out that this 90% coverage stat is a lie. Please show how I am wrong. Point out exactly how there is actually 90% broadband coverage in Ireland.

But on to the main bit, I’m challenging you on your next Right Hook slot to ask people in Dublin to text or email in where they are and ask them for their problems with getting broadband. You get George to remind people of your request each day for the rest of the week. Then collate them and see how many in the Capital City of the Celtic Tiger cannot get broadband. Just Dublin. Surely if the issue is demand, you will get a tiny amount of people because of the vast amount of choices in Dublin when it comes to broadband. The issue IS demand for those that want to use broadband to surf the net and yeah, they are in the minority if you add in those already on broadband to those who do not want broadband but that actually does not mean the issue is a demand issue.

Also, can you please reference these surveys that show all these businesses who do not want broadband and all the people as you mentioned here:

They simply DON’T see any advantage to having broadband at home, and neither do many Irish businesses; this comes up on survey after survey.

EDIT: Oddly enough other comments on Karlin’s blog post are being left through but the one I left is not showing up, though it is showing up in my cached view. I hope this is fixed.

Further update: Karlin suggests comments that are personal attacks are not left through. This was my comment, which was not left through. Is this a personal attack?