Ken McGuire

Author: Ken McGuire

  • Last chance for history

    Fair enough… I was waffling on about eBay last night but this is an auction that should yield some interest. For those of you who are familiar with the Million Dollar Homepage you’ll find this the last piece of the puzzle, for those of you not, you might want to read up a little bit.

    In brief, the Million Dollar Homepage is owned and operated by UK student Alex Tew, a 21-year-old entrepreneur, who hopes to pay his way through university by selling 1 million pixels of internet ad space for $1 a pixel. Well, he’s sold 990,000 of them and he’s put the final 1,000 up on eBay. At time of writing he was up to around €38,000, a far cry from the 1,000 he would have raised – and there’s still six days left on the auction!

    If you’re up for it, and you’ve got a spare fifty grand then head on over to his auction to check it out….

  • Become a Web 2.0 success

    This is gas… by that I mean pretty funny, though looking at it on the outside, it does hold some valid points. Want to become a Web 2.0 success? Or at least get that Web 2.0 ball rolling?

    Here’s a good one that I had to reproduce… all credit goes to Suhail over at Imaginathon. The article and comments in full can be found here.

    The standard template of a Basically Blah 2.0 web-startup is to first select a name totally devoid of any meaning in the context of the service the application provides. If it starts with digits, all the more better. To convert this name into a hotshot thingie, all you have to do is register a URL and make a big-buttoned-app-name-in-text as the logo.

    Add another small icon like a leaf, or a fruit or something “herbal/organic” which looks appealing enough that you might want to eat. Throw some RSS feed icons everywhere across the page. Keep a big text box wherein you beg for visitor’s emailID and promise them that exciting ideas are being thrashed out. In your “About” page spout some of the words from the above list. Ajax is mandatory. Wait till you make half a million accounts.

    Screw up with the browser’s back button. Sell out to Yahoo for a few million. Profit. Throw parties, attend conferences, generally move around like a hotshot. Start a blog on how to save 30 seconds while blowing your nose. Give it an equally stupid name, like ummm…30seconds? Move to the Silicon Valley.

    Add that “a Yahoo company” superscript to the logo. Introduce planned downtime and say that you are moving servers to Yahoo. And ofcourse your App remains in a perpetual Beta state for continuous customer satisfaction. Thusly, nirvanification shall be attained.

    Once again, the original web 2.0 article can be found here….

  • Microsoft and the Treo 700

    You might remember posts coming up to the end of 2005 which looked at my debate over a new mobile, the Hewlett Packard HW6515…. well, it got into a fight with the Treo 650. I’m still letting the 6515 win out, but the phone has changed places on my list of priorities for 2006.

    Irregardless of that fact, we’ve been talking around the office about the new Treo 700. Palm recently established a Dublin base to concentrate of the development of the Palm OS and new applications for it – now, along comes the brand-spanking-new 700 and its running Windows, the first Palm mobile to do so.

    They say that they’re going to continue to release new mobiles with new Palm OSs – so why the change? Are they giving into demand and forsaking what they’ve developed and stood for todate? It’s their phone, their hardware, their technology, their OS – so why now?

    It’s on sale from this morning on by the way…. 😉

  • KENMC.COM : The painters are in

    I’m looking for colour opinions here. Also… according to my feedburner chicklet down the right of the page (which I’ve just added), I’ve got 14 people keeping tabs on my blog. Thanks for tuning in over the past while, and lets hope the blogging continues right through 2006.

    Any of you 14 people fancy a suggestion or comment at the new colour scheme? Anyone remember the old one?

  • Oooooh – advertising

    And so I venture into the world of finally advertising on my blog. Part of the test, if you will. Over at NFLView.com I’m currently running Google AdSense and adverts from CJ.com targetted specifically at the American market, so we’ve got the likes of eBay , Google, Sports Fanfare and a few others on board. One pay-per-click system, one more like a pay-per-lead system.

    I’m not running Google AdSense on my own blog and most likely won’t, I’m not out to make money from my own blog, just testing the waters. Plus, its nice to break up the new theme with the odd splash of white, or yellow, or something that stands out.

    Been hitting eBay loads recently, picked myself up some football gear over the weekend and a nice new leather wallet this evening to replace the one that got nicked on my before Christmas (though this one won’t bring back my pass cards, credit cards, ID, cash….). Gotta love that eBay!

  • Back to Business

    January 4th… been back at work since yesterday in a flurry of activity around the office, time to get the blog back in shape. I’ve been losing out to one of my other blogs which I might reveal over here and here.

    Most people who know me know that I’m a huge fan of the NFL (American Football, not Gaelic) and I started blogging the NFL over Christmas including the running of a fantasy football league (I had developed an ASP-based online fantasy football application about 2 years ago through the college so this might be the start of it’s revival…). So I present to you, to those who are interested, NFLView.com and it’s Fantasy Football wing.

    Christmas was great – such a perfect time to relax and do nothing. I finally caught up on about a year’s worth of rest, a lifetime supply of books, more cups of tea than you can shake a stick at, a few walks up the mountains.

    Most likely going to change up the dress code around here now that I’ve launched the other two blogs. They serve as representing an interest of mine but also a test in themselves in a little more targetting blogging as there genuinely isn’t a massive Irish interest, at least in comparison to the US… so that’s what I’m at!

  • The Magic Of Google

    Just take a moment to look at what makes the great Google tick!

    • More thanfour billion Web pages, each an average of 10KB, all indexed and cached (copied).
    • Up to 2,000 computers in a cluster. With over 30 clusters
    • Over 60,000 computers! Yes 60,000 pc’s.
    • 104 interface languages (how many can you name!).
    • One petabyte of data in a cluster — so much that hard disk error rates of 10 to the power 15 begin to be a real problem if not planned for.
    • Constant transfer rates of 60Gbps. (Gigabites per second)
    • An expectation that sixty machines will fail every day.
    • No complete system failure since February 2000.

    Want to know what makes Google tick? Some pretty interesting stuff, a good read too! Check out the full article I found here tonight….

  • Keyboard of the Future!

    An interesting discussion was had in work on Friday morning about the developments and customisation of keyboards for computer application, gaming, general PC usage…

    On a trawl of the web, this little beauty was turned up. Should be released some time in 2006…..

    The keyboard of the future?

  • Mona Lisa Smile

    The DaVinci code movie is just around the corner and the analysts are popping out again, this time focussing on the Mona Lisa itself – only now they’re not looking for cryptic clues. Taken from BBC news….

    A computer has been used to decipher the enigmatic smile of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, concluding that she was mainly happy.

    The painting was analysed by a University of Amsterdam computer using “emotion recognition” software. It concluded that the subject was 83% happy, 9% disgusted, 6% fearful and 2% angry, journal New Scientist was told. The computer rated features such as the curvature of the lips and crinkles around the eyes.

    Interesting stuff? You decide…. here’s the full article.

  • See me, see me live…

    If you’re free this Friday then you should find your way to Cleere’s Theatre, Parliament Street, Kilkenny where there’s a tribute night for The Frames kicking off around 9pm before the big gig in Carlow this weekend. If you’ve not got tickets for Carlow and want to catch some of The Frames music live, then Friday is your best chance!

    Local Kilkenny band Silvertape are providing a tribute to the Frames, preceeded on the bill by the Happy Medium, featuring yours truely.

    Music kicks off around 9pm as I’ve said with local singer/songwriter Ken O’Dwyer, followed by the Happy Medium before Silvertape lead a tribute to The Frames. Friday also marks KilkennyMusic.com’s Christmas party, so why not get into the spirit of things and come along to start off your festive music season!

  • Yahoo On The Move Again

    Over the weekend I mentioned that Yahoo picked up del.icio.us.

    Now it seems that they’ve partnered with Six Apart, the creators of Moveable Type / Typepad and are now going to offer users the ability to create blogs with MT for hosting on the Yahoo Small Business hosting service. Not a bad move for Six Apart seen as they’ve just announced their own partnership with VideoEgg (see my earlier post).

    Full story….

  • Death of a Comedian

    Anyone who has ever seen Eddie Murphy raw will know of his Richard Pryor impressions. The man that most black comedians aspire to, the man who racial satire often went pure off the charts when it came to his standup routines.

    Pryor won Grammy Awards for his comedy albums and starred in such films as ‘Hear No Evil See No Evil’, ‘Stir Crazy’ and ‘Superman III’. He had been in declining health for years after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1986 but died this weekend of a heart attack.

    Check IMDB for Richard Pryor information

  • Time For Me

    During the week, I’m in the office 8:30am, normally until 5, 6, 7, 8pm at night or beyond.

    Afterhours, I get home and spend another hour or two going through KilkennyMusic.com and making sure everything is ok there.

    Get to bed around 11/12 and the cycle continues.

    So what a pleasure it was to find myself yesterday at a gig locally, getting in the door at 2:30pm, armed to the teeth with camera gear, finally getting to take some photographs! Anyone who watches my photography account on DeviantART will know its been since October 31st that I last uploaded some class of a deviation but no more!

    While I adore my work and my weekly routine, it’s so good to get out of the house, out of the office, enjoy your hobby and take some photographs!

    Of course it means more work now that I’ve 300+ highres images to sort through at some stage but at least I went and got them! And it felt good!

  • Yahoo nabs Del.Icio.Us?!

    Reading this article on TechCrunch yesterday, it was revealed that del.icio.us (such a handy tool I might add!) is being bought out by Yahoo. Have they beaten Google to the punch or are they simply trying to follow in Google’s footsteps and buy up whatever is good on the internet?

    Is there any need for Yahoo to acquire something like del.icio.us? Could this be the key to serious success for Flickr, since Google were tapping up Riya to be bought? (A previous post of mine).

    From the del.icio.us blog...

    We’re proud to announce that del.icio.us has joined the Yahoo! family. Together we’ll continue to improve how people discover, remember and share on the Internet, with a big emphasis on the power of community. We’re excited to be working with the Yahoo! Search team – they definitely get social systems and their potential to change the web. (We’re also excited to be joining our fraternal twin Flickr!)

  • Multimedia Merger Completed

    So the big merger is finally complete. Only dawned on me today (happened at the weekend)!Adobe has officially eaten up Microsoft…. err… Macromedia. Yes… thats it.

    There’s the simplest of lessons in there – if you can’t beat the opposition, make sure and bloody well buy them out! At least they’re keeping Dreamweaver and Flash alive! Through WIT I had the chance to work on a daily basis (and nightly basis) for over 4 years solid on the whole family of Adobe and Macromedia products… but you always had your favourites. You could always say that one was better than the other at something… but now there’s no competition! If Adobe screw something up, who’s gonna argue, or try beat their product off the shelf?

    A little hint of Microsoft off this one? I think so…

    Anyone interested can read a full PDF of details on the acquisition here.

  • TypePad users to get video

    Video blogging, vlogging, v-logs… whatever you want to call them – just got a step closer for some users as SixApart have announced a partnership with VideoEgg & Serious Magic

    VideoEgg has been kind enough to make a preview version of VideoEgg Publisher available to TypePad users free of charge, at typepad.videoegg.com. From their site you can log in to your TypePad account and use VideoEgg to post a short video to your blog.

    Doesn’t leave anything for us WordPress users… but nice to see VideoEgg raising its head again

    Read the full story

  • Spreading My Wings

    Booked myself on a flight for an hour or so over Kilkenny City & County yesterday. Should provide an amazing photo opportunity. Haven’t flown anywhere in almost ten years, and at that I was among hundreds of other people on a very comfortable Boeing.

    This time around its gonna be me up in a small plane taking photos. Reckon we’ll be waiting for a picture-perfect day, most likely very early in the new year but no going back now!

  • What blogs can buy

    After years of battling against online adverts, popup windows and the likes, we now litter our blogs with adverts stemming from the likes of Google AdSense, Commission Junction, TradeDoubler etc. – but it is accepted. We now, more than ever, realise that we can make money off our blogs – a few clicks here, a few clicks there and next thing you know you’re getting a little cheque for $25 in the post, or whatever your preferred currency is.

    So for those of you aiming big… I direct you to Rick over at FeedBuzzard.com with his recent entry “The Car That Blogging Bought“.

    After reading his post, I realised I missed one of the old ProBlogger posts from back in March…. “The House That Blogging Bought”

    So is this what everyone is aiming for? Or are you just blogging for pleasure?

  • 12 Reasons To Use RSS For Marketing

    Picked this up over at DevShed (good resource for us developers…. sure was the last few years anyway!). This is a summary based on the full article which can be found here but it provides twelve solid reasons to use RSS marketing, showing how it increases your boundaries – or removes them completely.

    I’m not one for passing out marketing advice, would normally leave that up to Aidan, or through the Event Blog, but with particular interest to me, it should be to you as well!

    1. Get your content delivered without fail to all of your subscribers
    2. Increase your web traffic and your online visibility.
    3. RSS enables you to easily get your content published on dozens and dozens of other sites.
    4. It will serve as a platform for ad sales
    5. It will provide advertising opportunities to promote your own business
    6. It will help you get more content for your site without you having to write a single word
    7. People want to receive content in a controlled environment where they are in-charge, not the publisher
    8. Delivering content using e-mail is becoming increasingly difficult, due to blacklists, spam filters and over excessive amounts of e-mail in your recipients’ mailboxes
    9. RSS allows you to deliver content beyond your e-zine, giving you more content delivery opportunities
    10. RSS is a natural tool for content syndication, which means easily and instantly delivering your content to hundreds of other content sources, thus creating additional exposure.
    11. When using RSS to deliver all of your web site content updates, RSS will actually increase your web site traffic, thus giving your promotional messages more exposure.
    12. People are afraid of subscribing to e-mail lists, which makes getting new subscribers difficult; RSS is a whole different story.

    Again, check the full article over at DevShed.

    Like a puppy is not just for Christmas, RSS isn’t just for your blog folks…

  • Are Eu Ready?

    Come on… you read it like “are you ready”…..

    Registration for “.eu” names begins on Dec. 7 at 10 a.m. GMT.

    For the first two months, only certain rights holders such as registered trademark owners, public bodies and companies can register. On Feb. 2, “.eu” opens up to family names. General registration begins April 7 on a first-come, first-served basis.

    Just a few interesting little bits. I’ve applied for two .eu domains already and should find out the success of the matter next week. Hopefully anyway.

    Prices are a little expensive to start with, as with any new TLD, but should calm down to the €15-€20 mark for general registration. Event Ireland will also be offering .EU domain registration through the Event Ireland storefront when the domains go live.