Culch.ie can feck off

This?



Never going to happen. Despite what he says. Or she does.

Get back up

Meet Nick Vujicic. he's 25 and he wants you to get back up.



Honestly had a video that made me think like this in quite a while. He's some guy. Inspiring doesn't seem like it's a strong enough word.

I spotted this over on Sean's blog.

Enterprise Ireland Masterclass: Enabling eBusiness: Best Practice and Future Trends

I've been invited to speak at a Masterclass this morning at Enterprise Ireland. Though not something I've done much of, the opportunity has come at a great time, as I'm mid way through a couple of big projects with Boards.ie

The Enterprise Ireland eBusiness and High Potential Start Up Units are organising an advanced eBusiness Masterclass for clients who operate in the online space. The Masterclass, entitled "Enabling eBusiness: Best Practice and Future Trends", will feature presentations on international best practice from leading industry figures on the following topics: blogging and the law; online advertising; virtualisation; and online payments. The presentations will feature indepth analysis of the current best practice in the topic areas, as well as outlining future trends and developments.

Rather than waffle on alone for 40 minutes, I've invited a panel of expert speakers to contribute to the conversation. My intention was to give a broad mix of experiences, backgrounds and skillsets while still maintaining a connection with the audience, all of whom already occupy the online space.

On the panel will be:

• Eamonn Fallon, CEO of Daft.ie - http://www.daft.ie
• Brendan Hughes, ecommerce manager of FBD Insurance - http://www.fbd.ie, http://www.nononsense.ie
• Carolyn Fisher, Senior Press Officer, RTÉ News and Current Affairs - http://www.rte.ie
• Jason Roe, lunatic blogger, http://www.jason-roe.com/
• Thomas Brunkard, Bvisible Communications - http://www.bvisible.ie
• Eoin Kennedy - Slattery Communications - http://www.scomms.ie
• Stewart Curry, Design Director with XCommunications - http://www.xcommunications.ie
• Stiofain MacDhaibhead and/or Eoin ó Suilleabhaín - Bórd Gáis - responsible for the Big Switch Campaign - http://www.thebigswitch.ie

In my own presentation will be some statistics about Boards.ie, including that in March 2009 we had over 1.49 million individuals visiting Boards.ie with over 22 million pages served and the average time on site was just under 9 minutes. We are working on facilitating conversations between companies and Boards.ie members, so the opportunity to present this morning comes at an interesting point in the project.

Other speakers today include Roger Galligan, CEO of Cognotent who runs irishblogs.ie on Website promotion and Social Media, Simon McGarr of McGarr Solicitors on Legal Questions arising from Cloud Computing and Keith McCabe from Realex Payments on How to do business online securely.

Am I nervous? Hell yes. Will I enjoy it? Time will tell but sure I'll give it a go. A huge thanks in advance to all the speakers and to David Scanlon for arranging.

500 people queue for Londis jobs in Dublin yesterday

EDIT: It was for numerous stores, not just that one. Ahh, that makes sense.

500 people queueing in front of Londis, St Stephen's Green to apply for sales assistant positions.

Is this genuine? Is this Ireland now?

I don't know how they did it but I want that phone!

Yep, another commercial post!

So Vincenzo from the Viral Factory was in touch again with the new Samsung viral. I've had a look and while the video looks interesting, my goodness the phone looks great. The quality of that camera looks amazing!



You have to guess how it's done - they did it all in one take, no special effects etc - the comments say twins, a different room and so on. Watching in HD seems to be an advantage.

I am in the market for a HD camera that will help me with interviews, filming and the like. Hermione's recent experiment with the Flip Mino HD had me really interested though Niamh is suggesting the Kodak Zi6 based on this review.

All I know is I want a camera that can take in great quality, with good sound and range and allow me to edit in a simple way and upload directly. Still haven't found it... But that phone looks good.

Anyone got recommendations for a camera?

The twitter truth about Alan's hair. #alanshair

It's very much an in-joke on twitter and perhaps a little bit evilly over on Culch.ie but Alan Costello's new hairstyle became a topic of debate when he announced on Twitter that the locks were going...

Speculation was rife but Alan remained steadfast not releasing the new hairstyle to his adoring fans until today.

Alan's hair before:


Photo by John Williams, taken from Pix.ie

And Alan's hair as featured exclusively by meself:





Reaction on Twitter has been quick - from the complimentary:



to the surprised



to the speechless



to the questioning:



and, before you all chastise the poor guy even further, thanks to the lovely ladies in RTÉ make-up... during:













He's a legend. And his new hair is grand. Honestly.

Why she does what she does

"I believe I achieve an existential pleasure, a reward and validation if my effort for other people helps further their own happiness, and I feel more realised, if my work results in an improvement, achievement or advance... then I am real."

From a Gmail conversation I'm having at the moment. She continually impresses and surprises me in the best possible ways.

Irish women work six weeks for free: video interview about women and politics

More from the Labour Party Conference, my interview with Sinéad Ní Chúlachain, Chair of Labour Women about pay differences, Irish women, Labour women and why we should care about politics.

The day was windy so the sound in all parts isn't ideal but it was definitely one of the most interesting talks I had all day.

Comment spam happening at the moment...

Just like poor Manuel recently, I've spent today chasing a comment spammer from post to post. So I turned on moderation, put comments in a pop-up and implemented a captcha for the moment until they get the point and go away.

Sorry for any inconvenience!

Domestic abuse - isn't it time someone called cut?

Keira Knightley stars in the new UK campaign for Women's Aid against domestic abuse. The video is pretty shocking. Full of foreboding and really gets the message across.



Women's Aid Ireland can be found online here.

Why should I care about politics? Video interviews from the Labour Party Conference

I was at the 2009 Labour Party Conference held last Saturday.

It was my first political party Conference/Ard Fheis/Meeting. I'd never have considered myself interested in politics but something Suzy said - along the lines of "if you're interested in things changing or improving, you're interested in politics" - struck a chord and so I took the Labour Press Office invitation to attend the event as a blogger and went along for a look, not knowing what, if anything, I could contribute.

I'll do a longer post on this soon - Simon McGarr's is well worth a read - but I wanted to upload the videos I have ready to show of interviews I was lucky enough to get.

How? I asked for them.
Why? Well, I just wanted to know two things - why I should be interested in politics and why should I be interested in the Labour Party.

I knew of course that they were simple leading questions, designed to help party members talk with passion about the Labour Party, but passion is important too.

Here's some of what people told me:

Eamon Gilmore, Labour Party leader



Pat Rabitte TD, Spokesperson for Justice (be warned, we were in a very noisy place)



Emmet Stagg TD tells me about his political career and why I should care about politics. He was a gentleman, we had a great chat.



Senator Ivana Bacik:



I'll be blogging more about this - I have more interviews to come - but I sit here now, looking at them again, impressed by the passion and the hunger for change with not just those I interviewed, but practically everyone I spoke to.

Huge thanks and props to Stephanie who was a brilliant camera person and partner in crime.

Obviously it's something I said...

I was wondering when this would happen...



There's almost 60 Qwitter emails all in one go.

I recently went through all the people I follow on Twitter and wondered - who are they? Do I speak with them regularly? Do I engage with them or they with me?

I was up over 950 people and not really properly engaging with anyone. So I decided to just unfollow everyone. Every single person.

Then I went through my followers list to see who I recognised, who I spoke with, who made me laugh, who had interesting links and who I knew in real life and followed all of them back, seeing as they're the people I wanted to talk to.

All 350 odd of them. :-/

Then I added all the gurus, the moguls, the idea merchants, the event twitters and those services I liked.

I expected mass unfollows. I never mind someone who unfollows - God knows I don't tweet much of use anyways - I use it more to stay in touch with people than as a "promotion" service. I thought if twitter really works on conversation, on connection and on following, I should have dropped down to below the number I follow.

Strangely I didn't. There are therefore people whose twitterstream features my inane ramblings who I never interact with or never interact with me, yet they keep me there. Is it because they don't know how to delete? Are they just shy? I'm fascinated.

This fits in though with Sinéád's recent research on Irish bloggers. Part of her thesis which I'm particularly interested in was her finding that

" ...some blogs are more connected to a blogosphere than others, with some bloggers not being connected to any blogosphere at all. Over 65% of bloggers indicated that they were listed on an Irish planet aggregator, and almost 64% consider themselves a member of the Irish blogosphere. The remaining bloggers indicated that they were not listed and did not consider themselves part of the Irish blogosphere.

This highlights the 35% of bloggers unconnected from the Irish blogosphere, and this could suggest that there are far more Irish people blogging than is known.

It sparks off a lot of questions in my mind about the use of the word "community" in an online sense. Boards.ie for example isn't really one community, it's very very many in the over 700 forums we have. Equally just because one is a "blogger", one isn't expected to engage with other blogs or bloggers - though Sinéad's research shows that those who do benefit from the Social Capital:

"35.5% of bloggers believed blogging had a positive effect on their social lives, with 19.9% saying it had a “very positive” effect... Additional questions revealed that blogging has had an especially positive effect on the development of weak tie relationships with 81.3% of bloggers indicating that they have made friends that they communicate with online because of blogging.

Conclusions then? I don't know. The medium has me as interested and as passionate as it ever has. The opportunity to talk to people you wouldn't meet ordinarily - possibly you wouldn't have access to - is the biggest advantage, the one that keeps me going back for more...

For Twitter, I just repeatedly quote Ivor Tossel from his Twitter article on Globe and Mail:

Brian Cowen nude - the video

Gotta love the stuff coming from Doris/Magee these days - here they tackle Picturegate (or Cowengate if that be your preference!)