Keith and Aidan are back with the next series of Help Yourself talks in the Newpark Hotel in Kilkenny today. There’s finger food and a chance for some light networking at 12:30pm with the talks on from 1pm – 2pm.
Today is looking at showing you how to
- Focus your search to get results more relevant to your requirements
- Keeping track of competitors/sectoral news easily
- Use alternatives to Google for certain searches
See HelpYourself.ie for details as usual.
I blogged on KilkennyMusic.com a while ago about the saving of internet radio, mentioning Pandora in particular as a site that I love to have open in the office. The selection of music is incredible and I’ve been introduced to so many great artists over the last year or so. Alas, in reading Techcrunch before I’ve checked my emails it looks like the curtain is falling on Pandora for users outside the US.
With DMCA laws in place, Pandora are fine to continue in the US due to the rights deals agreed to date but as the DMCA doesn’t extend past the US, Pandora need to negotiate direct deals with the labels, publishers and acts to continue using the music – something they’ve been working on for over two years and hope in the hope of being able to resume service in the UK and Canada while gradually restoring transmission through Europe.
Reading the comments as well, the news has hit Pandora pretty hard, this comment coming from Tom Conrad (CTO)
I can’t even begin to say what a disappointing outcome this is for us. We’ll continue to work with music rights holders with the goal of making Pandora a truly global service.
To those that have listened from outside the US, we thank you for your support and we’ll look forward to the day when we can restore access — we’ll take good care of your stations in the meantime.
Going to miss my Incubus Station, Zero 7 station, Alanis Morissette, Cary Brothers station and all the other stations I’ve built up of late.
Looks like the work has paid off for Conor O’Neill and co., LouderVoice has moved out of the private beta stage and been opened up to the world for scrutiny (and use). I’ve got two reviews (here and here) at my LouderVoice review blog which were posted during the beta phase.
Have to say, much rather the final homepage design as opposed to the pre-launch stage. Quite warm and inviting indeed as Paul Watson puts it. The site has plenty of details on what exactly LouderVoice is, so now that its open, why not pop along and register? Posting your review is a breeze, you can also publish to your own blog, grab a Firefox plugin, WordPress plugin… endless possibilities thought out.
No doubt there’ll be a plethora of blogging coverage to come from interested parties, thought I’d fire in my two cent…
A few tweaks to come but I’m impressed anyway and thats all that matters? Right? Make up your own mind…
Been a while since I changed the theme on the blog and having effectively broken my last one (as well as IE throwing a small fit), I’ve gone and given kenmc.com a change of clothes for the summer. Slimmed out, added some stripes to the header, brought in a few images from flickr, tidied up some of the load, deriving the theme from Non Zero.
Header background generated online by the Web 2.0 Stripe Generator, fun to play around with for background images. (result here).
Ok, now I’ve got to get in and check out Joost – anyone have a spare invitation? Reason for this now piquing my interest (taking ‘pique’ courtesy of Conor O’Neill), is that the NHL have announced a partnership with Joost for coverage of the Stanley Cup Final, with the season now currently in the playoff stages.
I did have a look at some of what Joost had to offer a few months ago but if one can get free hockey, without having to fork out a monthly sub to the North American Sports Network or get a Chorus or Sky connection into the house then I’ve gotta see it.
So I ask, anyone have a spare Joost invite for a blogger with a love for ice hockey? If you do and would like to leave a comment, that would be mighty fine 🙂
…Yahoo can at least try and match.
Since Google paid an extortionate amount of money for the DoubleClick ad network in recent weeks, Yahoo has seen fit to acquire Right Media for the princely sum of US$680m. Yahoo had previously invested $45m in Right Media last year.
Keeping up with the Jones’ eh? Bless these “search engine” wars…
Checked the software update for the MacBook Pro this morning and there’s a new battery update – something I wasn’t aware of is an outstanding issue with batteries in MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops which may result in the warping of said batteries.
Something I’ve advocated since my first laptop died a painful death is battery care. I know more people with dodgy batteries because they charge them for ten minutes, use them for five, constantly plug it in and out, never fully discharge a battery – you know the way. So, I was surprised to see a few photos and word knocking around the web of swolen MacBook Pro batteries, battery case warping, and general diminished performance in batteries issued since February 2006 to present date.
That being the case, Apple have issued a firmware update (download runs at around 700kb) which aims to improve battery performance, and if you’ve noticed poor battery performance of late then this update should solve your problem (presuming your problem is strictly battery related). Failing that, Apple will gladly issue you a battery replacement.
How do you spot a dodgy battery?
Affected batteries will have one or more of the following symptoms:
I try to keep the cycle count low enough on my own one, currently on its 27th cycle in almost five months so I’m a few off 300 yet. Grab the update if you can, save yourself some hassle in the long run and a few pennies in the process.
I’ve been used Google Apps (for your domain) on two blogs now and it is a bit of a pain having to go in and check the mail through the web interface during the day, or to organise forwards (which to me defeats the purpose of the domain). So, found this little gem this morning, called g4me – presumably more along the lines of ‘Google For Me’ as opposed to ‘Game’.
Sits nice on the dashboard, flip the widget to put in your email address and password, time interval to check mail and away you go.
Starting to look his age but this is possibly one of the best ads I’ve seen in a while.
I think I’ve really seen it all now (bar seeing a man eat his own head, of course) but the LG National Texting Championships have been and gone, and wouldn’t you know the winner was a 13-year-old girl (Morgan Pozgar). She even picks up $25,000 and her opponent in the final, almost ten years her senior even had a personal trainer!
With a few hours time on my hands at the weekend, I’ve finally splashed for the Flickr Pro account. At US$24.95 it seems like a fine price but why, Flickr, why don’t you print photos for Ireland eh? Mind you, I did make use of that Photobox offer this week and bagged myself 58 prints that should be due today or Monday (I’m guessing).
In fairness though it’s bloody high time I organised my photos, or at least have them online (those that do and don’t make the photoblog) to have them shared with the family and friends. I’ve had the Flickr account since college but it has only been the last six months or so that I started to make use of it (somewhere in advance of Barcamp Waterford) but combining that and the Flickr uploader I’ve got on the Mac, I’ve been delighted with the service to date.
All I need do now is sift through the 30,000 odd photos sitting across two machines and see what I can get online….
The following are a list of resources for Photoshop for students or anyone looking to get into Adobe Photoshop. Blog post stemmed from conversation with Tanya, a first year multimedia student in Tipperary Institute (part of Bernie Goldbach‘s group, a lot of whom I met in Kilkenny earlier this week). These resources would have been fantastic when we were coming through college back with Photoshop 5/6/7.
Additions:
Talking to Bernie in Kilkenny earlier today mentioned the FON routers in conversations, something I’ve looked at before – primarily as a cheap means to getting a wireless router into the house so I don’t have to worry about drilling through walls and doing a bit of wiring…
So at the price they are – €39 odd plus shipping, are they worth it? I’ve read all about the service behind it, sharing your wifi connection, picking up free wifi in places in return, but has anyone had any problems quality-wise? Signal drops? Routers just going on the fritz, exploding, dying for no apparent reason, replacing them a few times?
Any bad points on them before I click purchase?
Daw mentioned it yesterday in a blog post and I hadn’t heard anything else online until digging about this morning. Disappointingly, Leopard (Mac OS 10.5) has been postponed until October, to coincide with the release of the iPhone.
According to Cellphones etc.
The main reason for the delay is that Apple had to reassign key software personnel from the Leopard to work on the iPhone, an even much-more anticipated product from Apple.
.
Both myself and John have been looking forward to Leopard’s release which I had thought would be fairly soon, or should have been at least, and it will likely be Christmas at this stage before I make the upgrade on the Macbook Pro. At least it isn’t at Microsoft level with the ever increasing delays in OS releases. Should the iPhone and Leopard hit the market on the same day it’ll be a good coup for Apple. Looking forward to the new desktops and upgrades to mail.app.
And so we play the waiting game….
Interesting use of Twitter this – Fox are promoting the season premiere of new TV series ‘Drive’ (now that Prison Break season 2 has finished) by having a twitter party, director and executive producer Greg Yaitanes providing a running tweet-commentary on the 2-hour premiere while tweeting away from the aftershow party as well.
As for the show itself…
DRIVE is an action-fueled drama following a diverse group of Americans competing for their lives (or the lives of their loved ones) in an illegal, underground cross-country road race. Some of them have been coerced into joining “The Raceâ€; others have sought out The Race themselves, hearing rumors of the $32-million prize. Each has a reason to compete. And each must win.
Hopefully it will live up to Prison Break, hard to replace something that good in a TV season, especially coming in to the summer. Nice way to catch the online fans don’t you think?
I’ve recently (as in Thursday / Friday) added staff blogs for KilkennyMusic.com (Mine, Alan Dawson, Ross Costigan, Michael Keogh) driven by WordPress MU and needed a quick and easy way to combine RSS feeds from all blogs (all using FeedBurner) and port them to the homepage and each of the individual pages on KilkennyMusic.com.
If you’re looking for a quick way to combine a load of RSS feeds into one single publicly accessible RSS feed (whether RSS / Atom / RDF) you could do worse than try FeedBlender.
FeedBlendr will grab all the feeds you enter and blend them up into a nice, thick, ‘river of news’ smoothie. You’ll get a URL where you can subscribe to everything all at once.
All you’ve to do is enter the feeds on the homepage, add as many as you need, give it a title and presto – all your feeds rolled into one to do with whatever you want. Certainly gets my thumbs up anyway.
Came across a handy resource for WordPress themers. If you’re like me and usually end up throwing countless additional time into the day by pouring through WordPress, hacking up themes for one reason or another, you should find the WordPress Hooks guide really useful.
It has a huge selection of hooks documented and explained in good detail, and can be broken down to specific versions of WP as well. Worth a glance or a bookmark.
The old mobile blog is back up and running under the new owner of the domain, Michele Neylon, who acquired the domain from myself last month. After a short while pointing to a search page, the blog is now up and running with Michele looking to use it to “talk about matters related to mobile technology ie. mobile devices. .mobi and mobile phones”.
Interestingly, only 136 .mobi names have been registered in Ireland. Anyone surprised by that figure at all?
Update: I didn’t acquire the domain from myself… cheers John
Got a few text messages this morning, from my Grannie no less (spell it with an ‘ie’ to keep that hip factor) who found a Ken McGuire quoted in the Irish Times yesterday in Conor Pope’s column which looked at the new seat charges being implemented by Aer Lingus.
My comment in full, which was on the original blog post here, was
Thats a bit of a pain. They’re standing there in the airport (were Saturday in Dublin and today in Amsterdam) actively encouraging you to change seats. As it was, the seats I had booked for the flight home didn’t seem to be available and we were seated towards the rear of the plane.
The baggage charge is a joke. It won’t be long before you’re able to buy clothes in your destination city and post them home when you’re leaving for less than the charge on the bags…
But charging for a window seat? Gimme a break…
The comment itself was posted a few hours after I landed back from Amsterdam last Tuesday night. Its been a while since I flew out of Dublin, or flew in general – my trip to Toronto being my first flight in around a decade – had always done the ferry / camper / ferry / car thing. There are the airport are these most handy self check-in kiosks, a quick scan of your passport and your flight number is called up along with all your details, seating, baggage etc.
On the way out it was a breeze, the seats we reserved online were there, seated exactly where they should be (two aisle seats, two center seats), but on the way home when we checked in at the KLM desk, this wasn’t the case. We had intentionally reserved the seats to the front of the plane (preference of the more regular fliers in the group) but yet going to check in we were seated a further 20 rows back with one person split from the group – nothing at all what we had booked and confirmed online (with a seating confirmation email which followed).
Whats the point in booking your seats on a plane if you can’t get the seats you booked in the first place, and now, if you want to change your seat you’re going to have to pay for it? After losing the seat you booked and confirmed in the first place?
Pah.