Damien Mulley

Woah, just 3 sponsorship slots left for the 2007 blog awards. That was fast!

USB heated slippers. Seriously like, why? The market for stupidity ins infinite.

A good idea is heat senstive spoons. That makes much more sense. Have they these on baby bottles yet?

Bono wants to squeeze more out of his back catalog. 50 years is enough surely. Surprised PJ Harvey is also wanting to have copyright extended.

Guy sues GF over her blogging about their sex life. Was only a matter of time for this to happen.

Geek out. Comparison of spaceship sizes from popular sci-fi franchises.

A frank note to one of those people with ultra-senstive car alarms. I must print out some red cards or notices for asshole Mahon point drivers who block multiple lanes so they can get shitty bargains.

Bo Selecta interviews Meatloaf. This is brilliant. Pity I couldn’t find it without commentary:

Bill Bailey on Argos:

Bill Bailey – Kraftwerk Tribute( as already seen on Blogorrah):

Matches in a Microwave:

I’ve signed up to attend BarCamp South East on January 20th and I’ve put myself down to give a talk too. The talk will be my experiences of working in IrelandOffline and my views on how to effectively lobby the Government and big business with a budget of zero and no fulltime staff. It will not be a talk about telecoms/broadband in Ireland.

Off the top of my head it will cover:

• Setting up a lobby group structure
• How to engage the public/get supporters
• How to engage the press
• How to engage industry and the Government
• How to research and fact-check

January 28th is Data Protection Day in the EU. How will Ireland celebrate?

Via Twenty Major. Read the reviews for this album.

Wired Magazine’s 2006 Vapourware list. Always a fun read.

JT covers the fact that Angel investors in France are going to get tax breaks. Good way of fostering investment.

Prince Harry is going to Iraq. Bring more bodyguards mate.

How to leak stuff to a reporter. Would Irish journalists agree?

Dana Carvey as Tom Brokaw covering how Gerald Ford could die:I’m from Barcelona – We’re From Barcelona:

I’m from Barcelona live:

Seems the In Fact, Ah mob will be on Newstalk tomorrow. Best of luck El Commandant P, if that really is your pseudonym.

In 2006 I made a list of the recent Deloitte Fast 50 winners and checked to see had they blogs. None had. The list of the Deloitte Fast 50 from late 2006 has now been examined by me and once again is disappointing to say the least. While there were a few with what they called “blogs”, some did not have RSS feeds and also didn’t allow comments. Others had staff members blogging but it did not seem to be directly about what the company does, so I classed them as personal blogs. When those were taken out a grand total of two companies in the top 50 had blogs. Qumas and Globoforce.

Krishna De had a little to say on the subject of the Top 50 blogging. She offered free consulting to whichever exec from an Irish Top 50 company approached her. I wonder have any of them?

I’m not hugely concerned about the lack of blogs, that’s a choice for the business but it is a damned shame about the lack of RSS especially when most of these companies have press and news sections. Deloitte should encourage RSS and run an aggregator for the entrants.

1. Xsil
2. Digiweb (Some staff blog)
3. Espion
4. Pulselearning Ltd (They do have Skype us button)
5. Zamano
6. Exoftware Agile Solutions Ltd No blog but a news feed.
7. Newsweaver – Denise Cox has a blog on their site. Success!
8. Puca Technologies
9. TNS Distribution
10. Bookassist – RSS feed for their searches.
11. Globoforce – Woo, Globoforce have a blog.
12. Gem
13. Crannog Software
14. Prologic Data Management Ltd
15. Systems Solutions
16. Propylon Ltd – Blog of Seán McGrath, CTO
17. Directski.com
18. InterFusion Networks
19. Lagan Technologies Ltd
20. iQon Technologies Ltd
21. Strencom
22. Meridio
23. Empathy
24. Core Systems (NI) Ltd
25. ITS New Media Ltd
26. Texthelp Systems Ltd
27. Datacare Software Group Ltd
28. Medicom
29. Mapflow
30. Ash Technologies
31. Singularity
32. MediaOne Ltd
33. Andor Technologies plc
34=. eTel Group Ltd
34=. Williams Industrial Services Ltd
36. Ocuco
37. Consilium Technologies Ltd
38. Partners in Europe
39. TERMINAL FOUR
40. Level Seven Creative Ltd – They have a blog but it does not allow comments or subscribing. So maybe not a blog.
41. SWS Business Process Outsourcing Ltd
42. Version1 Software
43=. Nitec Solutions
43=. Qumas – Hooray they have a blog and you can sub to it! They have podcasts too.
45. Alchemy
46. First Derivatives plc
47. Ergo
48. Real Time Systems Ltd
49. Webtrade Ltd
50. MobileAware

Irish Rail loves their customers, right? Getting there might mean dealing with this kind of behaviour.

Irish Blog Awards 2007 – March 3rd in Dublin. You going to go? Please let me know if you are.

A Not Safe For Work HTML tag? Not sure of that.

Child born on train gets free travel for life from rail company. Awww or something. Great marketing too. Even gets reported on in Ireland. In Ireland the mother would have had to buy the newborn a ticket.

Divorce is as easy as saying a word three times in some Islamic countries. This guy gets drunk, shouts the words, she accepts, they are divorced. If this happened in Ireland half the country would be divorced.

Okay so Kathy made a Scoble doll but it’s a cute idea for a homemade present. Take a Ken doll and make it into someone you know.

The fact that there are medical warnings about the Wii and medical associations giving warm-up tips shows how unfit we really are.

Mario Brothers on the One Laptop per Child Laptop

Via We make Money not Art, club goers with RFID implants:

Via Slashdot.

Oxfam launched a video about fairtrade coffee and how Starbucks weren’t good to Ethiopian farmers. They stuck it on YouTube:

They said Starbucks weren’t listening. They were and they used the same new medium to respond:

Fantastic. As it should be. Still, saying they spent 2.4M on projects in Ethiopia isn’t really convincing since they probably make that every few hours but generally the reply is good. Imagine seeing companies respond to criticism this way! And all it cost was the use of a cheap camcorder and video software. Quick and almost cost-free replies.

Here are the questions that you sent to me via email or left in comments when I asked for questions for an Irish blogger survey. I threw all the questions together, removed duplicates and bunched them into groups that cover the same area. Feedback again is appreciated on these. I was aiming for 30-40 questions and these seem around the right number though to be honest I think we could lose a few of the questions.

Blog Reading

1. Use an aggregator yes | no | aggregators | other | more than one
2. How many blogs subscribed to
3. How often do you read blogs
4. How much time
5. What type of blogs do you read
6. Breakdown: Irish| Other , Male|Female

Blogging

7. How many blogs do you have?
8. Do you use dial-up or broadband.
9. How long have you been blogging?
10. Do you use your own domain or blogspot, blogger etc?
11. How often do you blog?
12. Do you class your blog as a personal blog or as a business blog?
13. Would you have a political affiliation. What would it be?
14. How many subscribers do you have, if you know?
15. How many visits do you get per day?
16. Have you considered stopping blogging or taking a break?
17. Have you modified your standard template and added features?
18. What do you use your blog for?
19. Why did you start blogging?
20. Have your reasons changed?
21. Do you have comments and are they pre-moderated i.e. you approve all comments before they are live?
22. Do you get a lot of comment spam?

Act of Blogging

23. What is your inspiration for a blog post?
24. Preparation time: How long does it take to prepare/write your post?
25. Do you check and verify sources?
26. Do you link to other blogs and newssources? In every post, sometimes, not really.
27. Do you use other media like audio and video in your posts?
28. How have you improved your blogging? How? Listen to feedback, watched other bloggers, asked for help
29. Do you think there is a need for training classes in blogging?

Threats and legal issues

30. Have you received a legal letter/threat or a threat of another kind?
31. Do you know how to respond to legal threats?
32. Do you know the law about blogs and defamation?

Blogs and the blogging community

33. Gone to blogger meetups/conferences?
34. Friendships through blogging?

Blogs to non-bloggers

35. Do friends know you blog?
36. Read your blog?

Blog promotion

37. How do you promote your blog ? Email signature | Link Swapping | Advertising