Damien Mulley

There have been dozens or at least two requests for contact info for me after people read this site. On the left are some contact details for me now. Soon comments will be enabled.

Bookslut sums it up so well.

Today seems to be a Hugh Macleod love-in on this blog, as for the second post in a row I link to him.

Today Hugh suggests Find the coolest blog in the industry you’re in, and see if you can’t make a deal with the owner.

In the comments I remix what he says and suggest that those who are heavyweight bloggers pick some small unknown blogger and advertise them. Better still the big bloggers should let their readers suggest the blogger to advertise.

Same goes for other “A-Listers”, if they all picked someone small and had a free ad for them in a prominent location for two months it would grow the other site and grow the overall community. We all want more quality in this place.

Now, I do realise that a blogroll is doing the same thing to a degree but if you are an avid blog reader like me a link in the middle of 110 others is not going to do much. I think the ad should be more prominent than that.

Peter Jennings, Robin Cook and Ibrahim Ferrer have all passed on this weekend. 3 men who all made an impact on peoples lives.Via con dios.

Hugh Macleod (Hi Hugh) has been leveraging blogs and using the mantra of the Cluetrain Manifesto to start interesting conversations about various things including products he is helping to develop. One of Hugh’s latest iniatives is to give away bottles of wine to bloggers and have them review the wine on their blogs *if* they want to. The only obligation is that they let Hugh know if they have done a review. Positive or negative it doesn’t matter as Hugh and his clients stand over the quality of the product.

Can this be done in Ireland with the irishblogs? If I had a product and I wanted people talking about it, which bloggers in Ireland could I approach and say “hey, you want to try this? I welcome your opinion on it. Post a review, positive or negative or don’t comment if you don’t want to.”

Slugger is the most prolific and professional Blog in Ireland but they don’t do the “I was playing with my new SuperDooperDippyBox the other day that Damien asked me to check out and I got to say that…” Slugger is more fact only, no personal opinions, their subject matter is very specific.

Donncha’s blog is the most linked to Blog in Ireland due to his involvement with WordPress. His subject matter varies a bit, from personal stuff, to productivity, to tech to photography.

The Community At Large is just a site that rehashes BoingBoing, MetaFilter and Populicious links, no real opinions on subject matters, just a lot of fun links. No offense guys.

Other worthy mentions are Bernie, Dave, Backseat Drivers, Michele and Sigla Mag though I’m sure FMK is too cynical to pimp anyones products.

There are loads of Irish Bloggers who could be used to talk about your product and you can have them to do it in a very transparent manner. Tom I’d like to have your opinion on this since you are now doing consultancy work on business blogging. Would the IrishBloggers be annoyed/abhorred that someone is profiling them to see what products could be given them to try out so that they’d talk about them. Is there an ego boost to know that you are a maven?

As usual, my comments are fucked (sush Michele and Tom!) so if you do have a comment maybe talk about it on your own blog and just link to this.

Tags: irishblogs hughtrain cluetrain

God, this post title belongs in a newspaper column. I’m so witty and hip and with it at times. Second City Trilogy too is witty and on the pulse and garnished with wonderful imagery of Cork and its culture.

So, what is Second City Trilogy? 3 short(30mins or so) plays about Cork people and referencing Cork life. Superb acting, good writing, nice fusion of comedy and drama. Uses Cork as a background and includes all the usual slang and local history without doing a Gift Grub style stereotype of Cork life.

Only drawback was the seats in the half moon were crap and it was very warm in there. Still it was only a small hardship to see this trilogy.

There’s a review of it by the Examiner here. My review is less pretentious, not for want of trying. 🙂

The Columbia 3 – Sponsored by 3 Ireland. Makes sense, no? Wonder what additional extras will be on the Columbia 3G Phones. Bet you there’ll be more first person shooter games and a new digital version of hide and seek.

Freestater has done a quick summary of all the IrishBlogs on the EFI idea Antoin and myself have been commenting on the post too.

Antoin has posted his EFI views too on his site.

While there is talk of funding, if you look at the IrelandOffline model, we run on nothing pretty much. I’d be of the idea that save as much money and be as frugal as possible, not because money is precious but spending time looking after money and collecting money is a pain in the ass and uses up your time when it could be used to do much more important things.

The IrelandOffline Committee itself largely interacts via private mailing lists, online IRC meetings and phone conversations. We meet up in the physical world only now and then, generally when it’s to meet telcos or Govt bodies.

The initial EFF idea seems to be forking already, though in a good way possibly. There seems to be some people that are more interested in a Bloggers Representative Group to be a voice and adviser for the irishblogs and others interested in more of an EFF style group.

I like Antoin’s suggestion about working with other groups in this area and building on their strenghts instead of starting from scratch but I am slightly wary of the ICCL‘s ability after volunteering so many times and being pretty much ignored. They are still a must to talk to though, to see where they are now and what they have planned. To go slightly off on a tangent for a sec they need a mailing list that works, a proper website and online discussion forums.

If people are interested in the EFF idea I’d suggest them letting one of us know either on boards.ie or leaving comments on Freestater’s or Antoin’s site. Get people you know to look at what is being written online too. Post a link to the discussion on your blog and on discussion forums. Forward the link to mailing lists (without spamming).

If you go online in anyway or use any form of electronic communication then an EFF Style group is important, and while you may not want to get involved in setting one up and running it, you should support it by talking about it, linking to it and advertising it.

Update:
Contacted the ICCL to see what they cover. Seems they haven not looked into this area for ages and their E-Rights group has been disbanded. Waiting to hear back from the ICCL for clarification on what areas of the digital domain they are researching. They have some research on privacy they’ll be publishing.

On the way back from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory the other night (which is a fantastic movie BTW) I heard a band called The Engineers on Today FM. They were playing a song called “Home”. It’s a good song, though it reminds me of some other song that was out before. You can watch the video for home here. I’d recommend.

A few weeks back I talked about the idea of Googleshame – Googlebombing an entity into changing their service or highlighting to the public crap service/products. Tom Raftery gives a Googleshame example by highlighting his unhappiness with a meal in Casey’s Hotel Glengariff. Lets see how long before the great Google links to his review of Casey’s Hotel Glengariff.