Via Alexia, can you watch the whole thing?
edit: Nope it ain’t.
[youtube UpPymk3vZoU]
I got to 30 seconds
July 4th, 2008Minister Eamon Ryan’s Broadband Promises
July 3rd, 2008In summary, the ten Government commitments are:
1. Government will target capital investment of €435m to address the digital divide
2. Universal broadband coverage in Ireland by late 2009 / early 2010
3. 100 Mbits per second broadband connectivity to be introduced to secondary schools on a phased basis
4. Future investment will be determined in accordance with value for money review of the Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs)
5. Ensure Ireland’s continued high level of international connectivity
6. Major public infrastructure projects will have to install ducting at the construction phase. Government will establish a one stop shop to provide service providers with flexible and open access to existing and future ducting infrastructure
7. New premises will be required to install open access fibre connections where practicable
8. Maintenance of the regulatory framework necessary for fair and transparent competition across a range of platforms. Allocation of spectrum to encourage trialling and development of flexible new mobile technologies
9. Use of Government purchasing power in order to stimulate demand, create economies of scale and better public services
10. Establishment of a specialised research programme to monitor developments
1. Let’s see how much is really spent, sounds to be like fantastic number playing going on here. Is this their annual telecoms spend being used?
2. Universal Satellite Coverage is what they mean. Half the schools in this country are on satellite. Proper wired or wireless broadband is not going to be ubiquitous in 5 years let alone this ambition. And even then it won’t be the broadband the rest of the OECD has. It’s mobile dialup people have these days and the Government call it mobile broadband.
3. A few schools are already connected to the Metropolitan Area Networks. Fantastic. BUT half the schools in the country are on satellite (as above), how are they going to even get close to a MAN to get those connections. D4 and private schools can rejoice. Rural schools… tough. Show me the plan on how this will be done.
4. A waste of time looking into this. The Govt are not going to slam their own investments.
5. That’s paying the fucking bills Minister That’s like saying we’ll continue to have the lights turned on because we put 50p in the meter.
6. Brilliant. Brilliant. Well done. When does this start?
7. Again brilliant.
8. The regulator is a mess, it needs to be replaced with a regime that gives a damn about consumers and business and not keeping the large telcos happy. Oh and not take every issue as being a personal attack. Bring in ofcom.
9. Brilliant. Well done. Go team Eamo.
10. You mean a PR FUD team? Have we not enough?
The Irish Web Awards – October 11th 2008, Dublin
July 3rd, 2008The Irish Web Awards are a go. Contract signed with the Radisson SAS in Dublin for October 11th. Rick O’Shea will be the MC. You may have heard of him. Same informalities as the Blog Awards: no bland meal, no tux requirements, no having to pay to nominate a website, no paying 200 quid to attend. Also judging criteria will be public. It will not be a popularity contest so the site or people with the most friends will not win for anything other than having the best site out there.
There’s a pending announcement of the critera for the Web Awards (you can still contribute here) and the 20 or so categories for the Awards will be announced in two weeks.
I’ll be looking for sponsorship and require one headline sponsor and a sponsor for each category too. Like the Blog Awards, for category sponsorship I’d prefer to see smaller businesses with the intent that they will get as much from the Awards as those nominated. Now here’s a shocker. If you sponsor the overall event or any category then you CANNOT be nominated in any category.
If you’re interested in sponsorship (I don’t have prices worked out yet) then give me a bell on IrishAwards@gmail.com
Facebook Ad Competition – Best Irish Facebook Ad Campaign
July 3rd, 2008In brief: The Facebook Ad/Ad Campaign that gets the best stats (you have to share/export them for proof) wins 100 quid.
Terms are that at least 7 people have to enter this competition in order for the money to be given out. Winning because it’s a one horse race wastes my money! By stats I mean clicks, not views. It’s a campaign targeting Irish users of Facebook. You can’t be deceptive promising free stuff or begging for clicks.
And how will you pay for the ads you run? Alexia and Dave pointed out that Visa will give you a hundred dollars worth of free Facebook Ads if you add their application to your profile.
Here’s a guide I wrote to running a Facebook Ad Campaign. So you have no excuse.
You can run the campaign over a month. You can only spend 100 dollars. Are you mental spending any more than the free money?
Reason I’m doing this is I don’t think we have enough case studies yet to see what works and doesn’t work for Facebook Ads, especially from an Irish perspective so I think it’s worth the expenditure.
Millions (well over a Million) come to Mulley.net
July 2nd, 2008I started logging traffic using Statcounter on June 11th 2005. The number on the counter thingy hit a million a few hours ago. That’s a million unique visitors. Not hits. Not pageviews. I’m quite happy that on average I’m getting 330k unique visitors a year to this blog. I’m happy with that but happier with the repeat visitors. Those that stop by each morning or are subscribed and read the blog in a feed reader or by email. Thank you all for visiting and coming back. The majority of you have made me a better blogger. Some of you would really want to lighten up though! 🙂
Party on Garth! Reach for the lasers:
Photo owned by ir0cko (cc)
Interesting 2008 – Take Aways
July 2nd, 2008Late for the party? Totally. But at least I was there.
So Interesting 08 happened a few weeks ago (June 21st 2008) at Conway Hall in London and life has been so hectic that I’ve not had time to talk about it til now. Tom Hopkins blogged his thoughts on it as did Colm “Gold Medal Limbo Dancer” Brophy and Alexia.
The crowd: (Photo by Bowbrick)
So what is it? Well it’s a gathering of people that know Russell Davies and who go up on a stage and talk about something they think is interesting for about 3 minutes. Some got 6 mins though! Lots and lots of presentations based on the tastes of these random folks. And it really worked. The talks were all over the place and so brought in new areas for most people. The youngfella who designed the new UK coinage also gave a talk. And the chap that did that amazing Radiohead remix was there too. I went to enjoy myself and to also wonder could we have something like that here too. I think the rules stated no talking blogs, twitter or technology as such.
It was amazingly informal and as Tom above noted the crowd were patient and understanding and amazingly behaved. We gave everyone attention and appreciated their effort. No grub was provided, the attitude being you could find a local cafe at lunch. There was tea and coffee but again it was a help yourself attitude. The whole thing was very English. From the country hall feel to the building, to the bunting, to the singing (yes a sing song), to the tea and nice biscuits and the overall nice to be nice attitude. I loved it.
Roo Reynolds gave the first talk on Lego and also pointed out all the other talks in this post.
There’s also a Rememble Interesting 2008 media timeline.
In the pub after I got to talk to the amazing Dave Funkypancake. Who takes photos. A lot of photos.
Will McInnes. The Robin Hood of social media and analytics.
Also met the rockin Annie Mole who has a blog on the London Underground. Sorry to be all transport geeky but what a great idea for a blog and no wonder it’s hugely popular. Oh and I’m subbed and finding brilliant brilliant stuff on it.
Josie got herself a big chunky tattoo made with marker too. As one does.
So dya think we could have an Interesting for Ireland? What would you talk about?
New Irish Times blogger – Bryan Mukandi
July 2nd, 2008Fluffy Links – Wednesday July 2nd 2008
July 2nd, 2008Blog Post of the Month should be announced over there later today.
SoundCheck is back and is weekly. Thursdays in Spy. Free in. Cheap booze too.
Charity Poker tournament in Cork on July 5th.
Via Maria – A photography exhibition from Boards.ie users.
Zinadoo now allows you to upload video to your mobile site.
Nialler has a nice assortment of music on this post. Check out the bands Heathers and Fleet Foxes.
Zoomii – Check out a very visual way of going through Amazon.
Google’s advice on spotting SEO cowboys.
Inside CRM has some great stories on SEO cowboys too.
Via I guess I’m Floating, a quick preview of the new album from Cold War Kids. Great to see YouTube to promote albums:
[youtube wpED4LqKiCQ]
That PutPlace feeling
July 1st, 2008
This is the first of the companies to be covered on The Tuesday Push. PutPlace, as their blurb states does this: “secure, organize and share your digital life”. Think about all the media that you have all over the place: On cameras, iPods, memory cards, portable drives, that old battered laptop you’ve kept as there are some docs on it that you might use someday…
So imagine all of that data was nuked/wiped/drowned. Well PutPlace allows you firstly to see what you have, then sort it, then back it up. Then if you want to push that stuff to another place, you can do that.
That PutPlace feeling is knowing all those digital bits and bobs are sorted. I do like the case studies part of the site. PutPlace is currently in Beta so it’s free to use. They recently opened up to public beta so are looking for testers. So you’ll get 2 gigs of unlimited space (during beta) to back up all your digital pieces and they’ll be backed up in a sensible way, not you just mass uploading stuff from folders.
Please consider trying out and reviewing PutPlace or talk it up on your blog.
The Tuesday Push – Getting word out in a co-ordinated way
July 1st, 2008
Photo owned by Micah Sittig (cc)
Shopped this around to a few folks in the Web/Tech scene in Ireland and they liked the idea, so we’re going ahead with it. The Tuesday Push is a way for the small but growing tech community in Ireland to make some noise about ourselves by picking a good example of an Irish Tech Company and highlighting their product(s) every second Tuesday. This co-ordinated way of highlighting our abilities will hopefully get tech companies heard a bit more and also foster more community spirit as we help each other out by getting everyone greater attention. We’ll need as much help from those in the tech scene in Ireland to work with us on this so please tune into participating blogs. Hopefully there’ll be a dedicated space for this project soon as well as a Twitter alert.
The premise is that everyone talks up a company (if they think it deserves to be) on a particular date. Every second Tuesday at it happens. Everyone tech and non tech alike are encouraged to talk about the company so that hopefully a tipping point is reached and a potential investor or journalist or partner hears/reads about the company.
If you want your company/product mentioned, please fill in this linked form. If you have a product announcement too, better again. You might consider timing it for a Tuesday Push. If you do partake please realise that you are encouraged to highlight the company of the week too, not just yourself. The more talking each other up, the better.
Today’s company is PutPlace. A blog post on them shall follow.