The 2006 FIFA World Cup kicks off in just over an hours time, and while I won’t be breaking my blogging habits for kenmc.com, you can follow all the action and my own thoughts at World Cup Access, running to the end of the World Cup in Germany.
Author: Ken McGuire
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The Blogger’s Glossary
Ever wonder what people are babbling on about? Permalinks, trackbacks, pings, autocasting, vlogging, xml, opml, rss… endless phrases, acronyms, and words that we’ve become so used to on a daily basis.
Well, if you do wonder about them, wonder no more thanks to Quick Online Tips’ Giant Blog Glossary. Useful resource if you’re teaching someone about blogging!
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Where Have All The Emails Gone?
Say, you accidentally delete a folder from inside Outlook that contains several hundred emails. Just say…! Is there any way to get them back or any application available that can restore them?
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National Blogging Day
I’ve been blogging a while now (did a year’s worth of it in college before launching this iteration of kenmc.com back in October of last year) and I love it. Pure and simple.
I don’t claim to be any good at it, but I love it all the same, and that passion has spawned several other blogs since.
What I’m thinking, seen as Ireland has developed quite a nice blogging drive, quite evident since I’ve taken it up, and moreso through some of the ‘leaders’ for want of a better word, those blog evangelists if you will, is that we have a National Blogging Day. August 1st, just to throw it out there.
And on this day, everyone – everyone – writes a piece reflecting on their previous year’s blogging – how they’ve developed themselves, made articles, favourite snippets from the year, what they enjoy about blogging etc.
Nice way to chronicle the changing face of the Irish blogging community, would you think? -
AllOfMP3.com Breaking The Law
It was rumoured around the colleges… rumoured around the offices…. and now it seems official – AllOfMP3.com are breaking the law – hiding behind Russian copyright laws just doesn’t seem to do it any more.
The breakdown? Well, it seems that whatever about the kind of music they sell, they just don’t have a license to sell it, full stop! The British industry’s (music) trade association, BPI, is planning to attack the site through the UK courst, while leaving members and online customers out of the equation.
The site has been through a rough patch of late, experiencing some major down time leaving users wondering where their online credit had disappeared to. Now, I haven’t had the chance to use it myself but have been known to use another Russian website on the odd time over the last few years and can’t fault their service. At some stage you start believing that its a legitimate distribution channel, with the low prices in keeping with its host nation, but with legal proceedings already underway in Russia against AllOfMP3.com, it might not be long before its days are well and truely up.
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Spreading The Sheets With Google
They’ve already taken on board Writely as an online word processor and now Google are launching Google Spreadsheets right out of Google Labs – with support for both XLS and CSV files, and again, its another free service. Had been talking in the office last week about how it would be a great way to save on licensing or massive license fees – just do the whole lot online. If they keep going at this rate I wouldn’t be surprised by it either!
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Eh… Adobe? Where’s My PDF?
Why, oh why, would you take away the ability to support PDFs across Microsoft applications? Its just become to much to bear… seemingly….
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A Little Facelift
Update – 00:33 4/6, Blogroll population is kicking in. I’ve added direct links to people’s RSS feeds from their blog. If you’re on the blog roll and want to use a different link for your feed, be sure and let me know.
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Summer is in and I just splashed out on a lovely set of 2 LG Flatron L1917S 19″ Flatpanel monitors, nothing like it to get the design juices going. So much screen space I tell ya. With that in mind, I’ve been working on a mild facelift to the blog, tidy up certain elements and structure things a little neater.
My main idea was to remove the clutter from the sidebar (posts, comments, ever-extending blogroll, numerous links) and improve the navigation (new nav bar on the top) and search (now located bang in the header itself), so, I introduce KENMC6 Beta for WordPress 2.x.
Of course, if you’ve got any feedback, or notice any little kinks that might need ironing out then just shout. Network / Resources / Blogroll should be active by this evening at some stage. -
Creative Commons Music
Came across this one for the Friday evening, good going if you fancy keeping track of the latest Creative Commons-released music?
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My Documents Held To Ransom
Not exactly my own person documents, but this woman had her ‘My Documents’ folder held to ransom in an attack quickly becoming known as ‘Ransomware’. Hackers raided her computer in the UK and encrypted her My Documents folder in Windows containing coursework, photographs, personal letters and more.
From the BBC…
A message had appeared on her computer screen telling her she had contracted an unnamed virus.
It is thought the message was part of the scam and she inadvertently downloaded it.
The virus is known as Archiveus and victims are told to buy pharmaceutical drugs from an internet chemist thought to be based in Russia.
Buying drugs from an online pharmacy was going to give her access to the 30 character password she needed to decrypt her files.
You have been warned! Read on at the beeb…
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Nikon Climb Aboard The Flickr Train
Via Steve Rubel’s blog it seems that Nikon have struck up a partnership with Flickr which will see the introduction (for the first time ever) of graphical contextual ads on Flickr by a third party company in relation to their photographs. What it means for users is that they’re going to wind up with a small Nikon logo beside photos they’ve snapped using Nikon gear.
As a Nikon photographer (I’ve been shooting Nikon for years both film and digital) I can’t say that I would mind at all to have a Nikon logo appear along side my photos, or have my work appear in a planned Nikon-only gallery on Flickr. Its something about photographers, liking to show off the gear they shoot with. Mainstream you’re either a Nikon user or a Canon user (out of the main players), so it will be interesting to see if Canon decide to make any similar moves. Think Google would buy Canon and co-brand Google Images?
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Music For A Podsafe Generation
Back on my podcasting buzz for the day, Bernie Goldbach has posted an excellent list of podsafe music resources featuring a great list of Creative Commons-licensed works for inclusion in your podcasting developments.
The more and more I look into all the resources that are available, the more excited I get about the planned KKM series kicking off (hopefully) over the summer.
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IIA – Congress Podcast Released
From people I’ve been talking to, the IIA’s Annual Congress was fantastic, and the IIA with Doop Design have released a podcast of the entire congress with mp3 links listed below. You can catch further details on the podcast release here.
- Colm Lyon, IIA Chairman.s Introduction
- David Jesse eBay Using eBay to sell online
- Peter Cobley, Yahoo! Search Marketing
- John Herlihy, Google, A New Marketing Paradigm
- Mark Charkin, MSN, The Changing Consumer and Microsoft – what this means to you
- Colm Lyon, Realex Payments – An Opportunity to Thank You
- Extensive Q&A with full panel
- Interview with Sean Foley microsoft & vox pop
- Des Kenny, Kennys, Moving an entire business online
- Jim Scheinmann, Bebo, Engagement Marketing on Bebo.com
Been looking forward to this….
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305 And Counting….
Keith’s domain auction has hit €305 and there’s still a good 5 days left on the auction. Think that should pay for his dinner when attending the IT@Cork Web 2.0 (ooooooh did I say that?) conference…. 🙂
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2.0 Sides To Every Story
Google News picked it up straight out of Ireland’s Silicon Republic as John Kennedy writes how there’s 2.0 sides to every story, following on from the IT@Cork vs O’Reilly debate starting breaking last week….
Genius title!
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Gotta Love O2
Update: Managed to get my phone book back at 23:16. I think I should have sent messages to those people just to say I. In particular, the number that was entered simply as “myself”. Now, wouldn’t that person get a shock!
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I’ve got no idea who Sharon, Cowhey, Tomas Z and M. Sexton are but they’re a few of the entries in the O2 phonebook seemingly tied into my account.
Mistaken identity? Have I logged in to someone elses account? It has my name, has the right balance for my phone, but everything else has disappeared and I’ve got loads of new people in my phone book – and none of my original entries.
For the love of God O2….. sort it out! How long should it take an organisation that big, with vasts amounts of daily traffic, subscriber numbers in the millions, to sort out their website? I’ve no patience this weekend….
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Blogging The World Cup
//Off-topic
While the tech world gets around the idea of Yahoo jumping into bed with eBay and Google getting all close with Dell, I’ll be adding to the blog collection for the next couple of weeks, keeping track of the world cup.
With the NFL in its off season since February and the draft come and gone I’ve a need to keep going with sport and have just launched World Cup Access, tracking the latest news and events in the run up to and throughout the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany.
It’s WordPress with my own conventional twist and theme, which I may release once the 9th of July closes… or at least port it to another of my blogs 😉 Anyway, if you’re interested, don’t be afraid to check it out. Maybe its just that 24, Prison Break, Scrubs, The Sopranos (this weekend), Lost and Desperate Housewives have all finished…. or maybe its just for the love of the game.
//End Off-topic
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Data Retention Abuse? Phone Records Leaked?
Digital Rights Ireland has an interesting article on the Gardai leaking confidential mobile phone records to the press following on from the recent hunger strike in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin…
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Yahoo, eBay stop just short of merger
Huge news out of Silicon Valley, with rumblings during the week of a massive move between some of the major players, its out in the open that Yahoo and eBay have formed a “far-reaching alliance” in a move designed to boost their stance amid competition from Google and Microsoft.
Yahoo will be the exclusive provider of graphical, branded advertising throughout eBay’s auction site while Paypal will be integrated to all of Yahoo’s premium and financial services. Bad news for Microsoft who had been looking to pull either Yahoo or eBay on board to rival Google.
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EI Web 2.0 Presentations Available
Joe Drumgoole has kindly made available on his blog the presentation material from the recent Web 2.0 meet in DCU including presentations by Tablane, Nooked, Sxoop and speakers Jeff Clavier, Marc Canter and all others involved.