If you’ve not booked your ticket to the Digital Festival that’s on in Dublin on February 24th then perhaps this discount that they sent on might entice you.
The discount code is BFSDMULL which brings the ticket price down to €275+VAT @ 21%. So that’s 100 euros off. I’ll be availing of that myself. Some people I greatly respect and admire will be speaking.
Test your risk intelligence.
Got this via a press release:
As the current financial crisis demonstrates, many people are bad at thinking about risk. Expert gamblers, however, seem to be an exception. They are less prone to the cognitive biases that affect most of us and as a result, they can think about risk more clearly.
In the next lecture of the 2010 College of Science, Engineering and Food Science (SEFS) Public Lecture Series at UCC, Dr Dylan Evans will present his initial findings from recent interviews conducted with expert gamblers and outline some ways for thinking more wisely about risky choices.
The lecture titled: “Risk Intelligence” – How expert gamblers can teach us all to make better decisions” will be delivered on Wednesday, February 10th at 8pm in Boole IV Lecture Theatre.
Dr Dylan Evans is Lecturer in Behavioural Science in the School of Medicine at UCC. He is the author of several popular science books, including Emotion: The Science of Sentiment (Oxford University Press, 2001) and Placebo: The Belief Effect (Harper Collins, 2003) and writes regularly for The Guardian. He is a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association, and a Member of the British Fulbright Scholars Association.
FuelTweet is Twitter app that allows people to get petrol and diesel prices in their area and send in prices too via Twitter.
Blog Awards. Nominations closing very soon. Some stats: 825 separate sites by 1070 people got nominated so far.
Kids are knocking back even more media into their brains.
Kaiser Family Foundation Study which found that on average America’s 8-18 year olds devote 7hr 38mins a day to media use, up 20% over five years.
This American Life comes to the iPhone. And iPad too of course. Yes please.
Dublin Tweasure Hunt from Jentertainment on Vimeo.
Haiti fundraising in Limerick via Bock. Huge effort has gone into this so far. Well done all.
Michael O’Leary is a genuinely charitable fellow. At times. Running marathons for autism.
Piaras Kelly on the Edelman Trust Barometer:
Slide twenty five caught my attention. Online search engines such as Google and free content sources such as Wikipedia are now as trusted as TV news coverage and articles in national newspapers in Ireland.
When spending on yachts is good for your company.
6 months free membership of Irish Computer Society.
Subscriptions are the future of making money online, not advertising? Lovely takedown on the mess than is pageviews = revenue.
How to record phone conversations on your iPhone. Does it work in Ireland?
A Twitter dress. All for Grammy attention.
God Hates smartarsed hipsters who mess up your hateful protests.
Another take on that infamous VHI ad:
[youtube 9atUuf5ItYQ]
Gathering of Twitter users to meet up with Shel Israel on Tuesday, February 23, 2010, 7:00pm Berkeley Court Hotel, Dublin.
Twebt (twitter event, blind tasting) is a wine tasting on twitter. Watched it happen on Twitter last night amongst the Irish winerati. Lovely idea. More details from Brian on it.
Already an iPad fund in the UK. Would love to see an Irish iPad app fund for educational apps.
An Irishman with an odd accent tells us how to live on no money at all.
Microsoft’s Azure pricing is off track for small-scale apps?
Good business opp. Rent your content on YouTube when there is demand and then switch to advertising model after a time.
Amazon versus the publishers. A very interesting take. Apple is more fair than Amazon? For now…
Very interesting take on domain names and jurisdictions. Kentucky trying to shut down a gambling website that hosts in the UK and registered the domain with a UK company.
Better user experience with story telling.
The Virtual Revolution, a four part series airing this week on BBC Two about how the web is changing the world.
[youtube 0cKc_pvpuqg]
Sabotage – longer version
[youtube H4PN7Xbexq4]
A demon in my coffee, taken on Friday last:
Have a look at the twitter account DublinTweasure.
It starts at 2pm in Dublin City Centre.
What you need is a phone with web access, a team and knowledge or access to knowledge.
Cash prize for the winners too. Full details of what will be asked of you will be on the Twitter account.
Update, these were the clues:
Where is Suzanne walking? Frankly I haven’t a rashers. She’s awfully
good looking though.
Near broken spears and swans in flight we saw a vision. We were tied
up all winter.
Where Moore met Parnell sounds like under a little sign you go
downstairs to have a bite with a Polski wuj.
Harry jigs on, mixed up. He brought water into town but died in bath.
Where saol’s for sale two dogs show the way.
What will Damien give me, what does he have in store?
It’s a stitch up! There’s a singer on top of my brother, on Charles
Chetwynd. I’m beside myself with worry.
Shake up a regal she moth then have a hot one, you’re nearly there.
This was written after I was shot, Nancy.
That new device from Apple (avoiding putting it in the blog post title or body to avoid Googler traffic during the hype cycle) is going to make using the web easy for people who up to know found using a mouse, keyboard and a browser a tad intimidating. Webstats show that iPod Touch traffic has been quite strong and growing and this larger version is going to bring a whole new demographic online who might never use such an onbnoxious pointing device. A device without a “real” OS so no need to install patches, no need to shut down properly, no need to figure out all the shite UI gotchas and so on. A thin piece of glass that we touch and the full blown web and all the data she carries.
I’m sure it’s killing those that want the web acessible only via oily machines and those that somehow “deserve” the web but tough. The majority of people don’t give a shit that you can’t modify the device or Jobs owns their functionality. The same way most people don’t add a big fuckoff exhaust and go faster stripes to their car. Apple’s obsessive paranoia about control gives us devices like the iPhone and the iPad and the proponents of openness give us … the Nexus Phone two years later and One Laptop Per Child. Out of the box, Apple devices work for the greatest number. That really must take the power away from those that are called upon by the family to sort a driver for some device.
A tweet that sums up the massive potential for the device is this:
I’ve been pretty vocal about my dislike towards the iPad but I still want one. Imagine – not having to carry anything to class but a slate!
iPhones and iPod Touches are already being bought en-masse by educational institutions. Bye bye school labs and awkward desk setups. Schoolbooks and courseware direct to the device. Art galleries use iPod Touches for multimedia tours. Tate Modern has a great one. Apple from feedback knew the screen on the touch was an issue for lots of further uses of the device so this new device will fill a gap. It will probably impact on the Touch. Apple has shifted 20 million iPod Touches so far.
So, democratisation of the web. Is it open platforms that need an engineer or is it easiest route to get to the web, even if in a “closed” device?
Oh yes and ChromeOS, I think you just got sunk.
The treasure hunt using Twitter is on this Saturday in Dublin City Centre. Follow the DublinTweasure account for more details. There’ll be prizes. Teams are wanted to take part.
Via the #biztweet thingymajig, 119 companies pitched what they do via a Twitter message from all walks of life. Great to see those in the legal profession take the step in pitching for business too. Times are tough for us all. If you want to see who these companies are, here’s a list of some active Irish businesses on Twitter.
Like this post about being cynical online.
Smoking a wet cigar. I do actually mean a cigar here.
Oooh. Motorcheck uses Google Cache and sees Revenue changed the car scrappage rules.
Business Blogger in Ireland? IIA has a survey going if you want to add some thoughts.
This is what the web means. Block an app on the Appstore, the web routes around it. So why quack about closed devices?
Reqall. Nice iPhone App.
Virgin Trains welcome photographers. Yay.
Good spot. Google Reader now allows you to subscribe to a site even if it does not have RSS.
Tesco getting into film making isn’t that daft an idea.
[youtube UVtpXvzzXiA]
I’ve been telling people that they should be able to pitch themselves/their business in a single Tweet. If you can’t explain what you or your business does in 140 characters then you need to work on your pitch. If you’re in a lift with Bill Gates and he asks you what you do, can you tell him before his bodyguards chuck you out on the 5th floor?
Huge amount of Irish businesses in the past few minutes are doing just that by tagging their twitter messages with #biztweet
Example:
