Got my copy of Smart Company in the post this morning… nice article by Tom Raftery across pages 26-27 arguing “that a blog can be used as a powerful commercial tool”. Reads well and should be a good source for companies who still rely on industry mail publications to find out whats going on in the world instead of reading blogs! Certainly worth the read if you’re in a company position where you either don’t know how a blog can be to your advantage, or if you need that little kick to send you in a blogging direction.
Main points…
Case in point… more companies need blogs and bloggers!
An Irish website RateYourSolicitor.com, which aims to let clients find and rate solicitors has received an Irish High Court injunction to remove defamatory material about one such rated solicitor. The site is hosted by a US provider, gmax.net, which has reportedly been served notice by lawyers acting for the defamed solicitor.
Has / had anyone actually seen or used this website before its closure? Turns out that GoDaddy, as the domain registrar were challenged from Ireland to get the domain locked for access. Interesting…
Google’s search listing…
RateYourSolicitor.com enables people in Ireland to find quality legal representation by showing the best and worst solicitors in each county.
With the site now removed (or at least you couldn’t access it this morning anyway), here’s a link to Google’s cache of RateYourSolicitor.com.
For anyone who is interested, the site is a sister site of ‘Victims Of The Legal Profession Society’… also known as CrookedLawyers.com.
Niche men’s channel FX plans to show what it calls the first UK advert specially designed to combat viewers using digital recorders to avoid commercials.
The advert for its new drama “Brotherhood” will show a single image on the screen for the entire 30-second slot, and therefore retain its “sales message” when viewed even at the 12-times speeds enabled by Sky+ and other digital recorders, also known as personal video recorders, or PVRs.
Interesting to see if the approach works (via Reuters)
I like this one…. A lot of the videos already come iPod friendly (MP4 format), managed to pick up a copy of Night Of The Living Dead 🙂
Well, I’m not, in fairness. I’ve only recently splashed out over 400 euro for a 60GB iPod video and then Stevie (Jobs) Wonder goes and announces a massive price cut, when initial price cuts still haven’t hit European shores.
Anyway, gripe with Apple’s pricing policy aside, there’s going to be massive coverage on the web tonight and tomorrow about Zune as it goes to launch, with initial details now available in the Zune Virtual Pressroom.
Marking the next big milestone for its Connected Entertainment vision, Microsoft Corp. today unveiled details of the first products to be released under its Zune™ brand. Designed around the principles of sharing, discovery and community, Zune will create new ways for consumers to connect and share entertainment experiences. The Zune experience centers around connection — connection to your library, connection to friends, connection to community and connection to other devices.
“The digital music entertainment revolution is just beginning,†said J Allard, vice president, design and development, at Microsoft, who is leading the charge for building the family of Zune products. “With Zune, we are not simply delivering a portable device, we are introducing a new platform that helps bring artists closer to their audiences and helps people find new music and develop new social connections.â€
Go knock yourself out with all the details on Microsoft’s Zune here.
Update….
Don’t count your chickens and suggest a link before reading the magazine! (That tip is for me!) What appears nice and crunchy on the outside may be a bit stale on the inside…. 🙂 That, or when you buy the magazine it might have about 75% of content not related to entrepreneurs directly…. (link)
Busy day today, or maybe I’m in a good blogging mood.
Thinking back to last year or maybe a bit earlier, when I got a letter in the mail telling me there was a chance that my personal information had possibly fallen into someone elses hands. This letter of course had arrived from Time Warner (AOL being my former employer at the time, having spent some of my college life working for them in Waterford), informing myself and over a half million other current and former employees of what we could do if our data was stolen – at least informing us that it might have been stolen, never mind the additional protection.
In working for the company, whose main global operation lies in the US, you have to sign a few papers allowing your data to travel outside of the EU, in order to have your employee records processed, passwords and security IDs issued and all that.
So when the news breaks in the US that the data storage company accidentally misplaces 40 backup tapes with records of 600,000 employees you think… ah sure that’ll have nothing to do with me – until the letter arrives that is. So we were offered protection and ways to monitor credit reports and accounts. But the fact is, we were kindly told about it, even though it wasn’t then judged to be a major risk, and were offered ways to work around it.
Which brings up this afternoon’s post on the DRI blog entitled “Support a right to be warned if your personal information is exposed“.
The EU Commission is now proposing something similar to the Californian law, though more limited. The proposal applies to “electronic communications services†(such as telephone or internet services) and would require providers to “notify their customers of any breach of security leading to the loss, modification or destruction of, or unauthorised access to, personal customer data.â€
While the initial process sounds limited in its capacity, I for one would bloody well want to know if someone got a hold of any personal data on record and have sent my email to the EU Commission and the Department of Communications.
Interesting chart is this, Forbes.com’s Dollar Density, mapping out where all the billionaires in the world are hiding out. Seemingly, most of them are in the US.
Surprise, surprise.
Pat Phelan mentions this morning that Rick Segal and Shel Israel are hitting Cork on the 17th of next month and there is a bloggers dinner being organised if you can make it down.
Dinner is in Taste of Thailand Bridge St Cork (they also do Western dishes if you don’t like Thai food)
17th October @ 8pm
I won’t be there but its good to pass the word…. as we were so kindly asked…. 🙂
To Suzanne, Tom, Danny, all the mini Dreamstuffites, Sean (reader and blogger) and anyone else who picks up their Junior Cert results this morning, the very best of luck to you.
Of course, you’ve still got the Leaving Cert to come and then you’ll realise that the Junior Cert “isn’t worth the paper its printed on” as our JC maths teacher said the first day of Transition Year. She was the one piling on the most pressure too!
Almost 58,000 students, including Junior Cert students and adults returning to sit state exams will pick up their results this morning from 9am if not before. Of course, the government are delighted, Mary Hanafin is delighted and no doubt there’ll be a few parents and students delighted as well.
Speaking to my cousin about her impending results on Monday afternoon she didn’t seem too bothered.
Sure, like, there’s nothing I can do now, no point in bloody worrying about it. Anyway, its only the Junior Cert. Did I tell you that we’re doing horse riding in Transition Year now? I get to go to the gym as well!
Too interested in the social aspects to worry about her results. She’s right too. The Junior Cert is only the first hurdle if you’re planning on staying in education, sitting your Leaving Cert, sitting college exams – don’t start worrying about the small stuff now because if you thought you were under pressure or your exams were tough – wait another 2-3 years 😉
Again though, my congratulations 🙂
We just confirmed the venue for the Irish Blogger Conference: Blogging The Election. The venue is the Digital Hub on Dublin’s Crane Street. And the date is Saturday October 7th.
The date has been set, guests will be announced shortly and they’re looking for some sponsorship (my guess to pay for the caterers if they come “with the right cost”.
Keep an eye on IrishElection.com or check the post here.
Someone might have your credit card details… amongst other things.
BBC are reporting that Second Life has been hacked over the past week in a “security breach in which a malicious hacker broke into a database holding information about Second Life’s 650,000 users”.
An ongoing investigation by Linden Lab into the security breach found that it involved an attack on the software used on its membership database.
It took the serious step of asking people to renew their password because the nature of the attack meant it could not find out which personal records had been looked at by the attacker.
This Wednesday sees the Kilkenny County Enterprise Board present “Head Right For Success”, South East Women in Business conference 2006. The conference will be held in Lyrath House, on the main Kilkenny to Dublin road (handy if you’re travelling from Dublin or Carlow).
While setup and registration will take a while, the conference gets underway at 11am. Speakers on the day include Fiona Brown Johnson (Brook Cottage), Catherine McGeachy (Vision Consultants) and Kilkenny’s own blogger/consultant/entrepreneur Keith Bohanna who will be “talking about dbTwang and in particular looking at some of the great free and very cheap online and offline software and services that are available for internet start-ups today”. For those of you not in the know, dbTwang is a very interesting startup and online service for guitar collectors, which I have had the pleasure of working on myself.
In the afternoon there will be a 90 minute networking session followed by Terry Harmer and Nicole Buckler of the Women Mean Business magazine.
Full details are available here, tickets are €25 with limited exhibition space also available.
Here’s a question for you this morning….
You’re quoted in an article in a newspaper about your take on certain events and you give permission to the article’s author to make reference to your website after speaking with him in depth about the article in question.
The following morning you pick up another newspaper and see that an entire blog post has been lifted without prior contact or permission and reprinted word for word. Also lifted are quotes that you made on a private forum (free forum, but you have to register to be able to read it) which another journalist registered for, published in full in said newspaper attributed to “one contributer said…” or “one contributer replied…”.
Now, in fairness, I would have certainly expected more from this newspaper, one I’ve had a decent relationship with over the last year. The article didn’t have an author’s name to it (how can you author something that is someone’s entire blog post and numerous subsequent quotes and comments) but I know who you are and neither myself or the others involved are too happy!
So whats your take? Would you be pleased to find your work appearing in the media without a sniff of a mention, courtesy phone call or email?
At least they didn’t reprint the photographs! There’s only so far across the line you THINK you can walk.
So, reading the Kilkenny People yesterday (page 7, section 1), seemingly the local press are the next thing banned out of China – at least on the web anyway.
Now, before the Kilkenny People were taken over by the Johnston Press, you could forgive them for having a half decent website but I’ve certainly no regard for their current rendition.
Either way… they’ve been banned…
The Kilkenny People website is banned in China, people trying to read the website have told…
The newspaper was banned after and article noted Chinese human rights abuses. The abuses were mentioned in a report on the twinning of Kilkenny with a Chinese city by Mayor Martin Brett [also current Mayor) two years ago.
Can anyone in China verify this? 😉
Update –
Nice email from Beijing within an hour of the blog post…
Despite rumours the Kilkenny People is alive and kicking on the web here. Actually I could of sworn I saw President Hu Jin Tao headin of for a smoke with a copy of it under his arm.
Cheers Karl!
So its not Mike Arrington doing the reporting, but TechCrunch UK (Sam Sethi) has run a piece on Blacknight’s Ruby On Rails solutions.
Ruby on Rails developers wanting to try out the new technology can get up and running in a couple of minutes. The latest versions of both Ruby on Rails and Ruby gems are available to allow web developers produce content rich applications for their clients quickly and easily.
Any new signons following the post? 🙂
Another quality web service to enjoy….
iQ Content bring their iQ Bootcamp to Morrisson’s Hotel in Dublin from October 17th to 19th with 3 days of intensive workshops. Its seems a bit pricey (would cost nearly 4 grand to send three of us there for the three days) but the topics covered are interesting…
What more could you ask for in a “hip venue” with “networking and cocktails” as the flyer puts it….
Has anyone signed up for / going to sign up for this?