Owen Pallett of Final Fantasy interviewed by the Torture Garden

April 19th, 2006

Toture Garden interviews Owen Pallett.

Hugh says give Tom a job, Shel does too. I just want to hurt a puppy

April 19th, 2006

Ok, I thought Tom’s post was tongue-in-cheek but I guess it isn’t. Hugh says hire Tom. Shel says hire Tom. I say Hire Tom or the puppy gets it. If the ISPCA had a blog I bet they’d link here right now pouring scorn on me. Not tested on animals type scorn obviously.

Technorati: A survey company only?

April 19th, 2006

Another state of the blogosphere and more fantastic stats but that’s even more fascinating is that Technorati still exists. What does it do apart from stats and surveys? Technorati is just a blog stats company in my view. How many years has it been running? I’m still quite curious as to what the business model for this is? How are they making money again?

I’m with Marc Canter on this one, show us the money!

I listened to Tom Raftery’s Podcast with David Sifry and I wasn’t impressed at all. He seemed quite evasive on many technorati related questions like funding and making money. The site is slow, the way it seems to rank things is a bit like playing black magic and I’ve rarely seen stuff come my way from it. Compare that to daily traffic from Tailrank. Technorati has been at it for a good bit now, shouldn’t they start making a profit soon or selling themselves to someone? Though all it needs is a little time and a Google algorithm tweak and they could be quite screwed. Maybe I’m blind but what value does it bring to net users? Do they secretly sell their surveys to the NSA and FBI? If they make themselves a blog version of Nielsen then yeah, they might be on to some gold.

Aine finally gets TV time – Podge and Rodge And Aine

April 18th, 2006

Aine should be a regular on the show. She was a natural and Tony Fenton on the show as the voice for Blind Date was a nice added bonus. I’m waiting to see what the hits from Google will be now.

EDIT: 30 visits already this evening.

EDIT No. 2: The 2nd half of the show – The Blind date

Got new glasses today

April 18th, 2006

Two new pairs.

Damien Mulley glasses

Damien Mulley glasses 2

Ahhh vanity

Is this classed as food blogging?

April 18th, 2006

This is the 1.2kg rib-eye steak a co-worker had the other day. Notice his phone next to the plate. Yes, big plate, bigger steak.

big bloody steak

This is the small 850gram rib-eye steak I had. Yeah it was a bit fatty.

big bloody steak 2

And this is the trout I had a few weeks ago. Yes of course I ate it all, including the eyes. Mmmm, jelly.

Mmmm trout eyes

EDIT: Forgot to add that I had a sing-a-long with the fish and had it opening and closing its’ mouth as it sang with me.

Hype machine – Give the bloggers the free passes

April 18th, 2006

The loud-mouthed, write about everything and anything, highly opinionated bloggers should be the ones promoters look after.

I just got another one of those Hotpress free passes for a movie emails today. Because I’m not in Dublin I never get to see the movies. I’m not up on this whole deal but I guess Hotpress gets money for promoting these movies and additionally they get goodwill from their readers for giving them free passes. The payoff for the movie promoters is to create buzz about the movie and get people talking about it as well as having an advertisment for it in Hot Press. Could they get a bigger bang for their buck with bloggers?

Why not allocate a percentage of these tickets to bloggers? People who by their nature talk and share their thoughts with others. People who are opinionated, people who might just write really good reviews if they see a movie. Reviews that will quickly be indexed by Google. The same goes for new up and coming bands who tour the world. All these early tours are there to generate hype, to create interested, to grow fanbases and to get the word out. Shouldn’t bloggers who are into music be given free tickets to gigs, bloggers such as the In Fact, Ah massif? I’d welcome opinions on music, drama and movies from a lot of the bloggers out there who I’d give more trust to than some of the folks that write “fantastic” reviews of the latest disney shite that gets released.

But what happens if someone says the movie is shit? Well that’s quality control in a manner of speaking isn’t it? Doesn’t it encourage the movie studios to make better movies? If people are genuinely into making great movies then they should be genuinely soliciting unbiased feedback. Let the bloggers be part of the Quality Assurance programme. Not that you have a choice as they’ll still give their opinions whether you bring them to a movie or a film or not. The first entity to spot this market and link up bloggers to promoters could make a nice living out of it. The big issue too should be that there is a no obligation agreement. Nobody should have to blog a review, it is up to them if they want to write one.

Attention lowly bloggers: Sip from the cup of Canter wisdom

April 18th, 2006

Fixer asked me to let you all know that one of the doyens of social software and open standards – Marc Canter is coming to Dublin and if you can make it you should dine with the guy on April 26th in the Market Bar. Marc is over for the Web 2.0 conference in Dublin and you should go to that too. Marc’s enthusiasm for everything is infectious and is well worth hanging around the guy and talking about everything and anything. More details from Conor O’Neill. I wish I could go but I have college exams a few days later. Oh yes, and I’ll give good odds to anyone that can party harder than Marc. Check out this podcast of Marc Canter with Tom Raftery.

And don’t worry precious, the lowly bloggers thing was just to annoy you enough to read this. 🙂 You’re not lowly you’re remarkably fantastic. Mind your ego fits through your door now.

Twenty is on fire today, no, not literally

April 17th, 2006

Post Secret, Twenty style.

Twenty Major

Slugger should republish that. Hey UI!

the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor

April 17th, 2006

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor.

Quote from the Sandman by Neil Gaiman.