Category: Internet

Might not make everyone sick but dear God in heaven – why did you remove the old website and replace it with THAT?

I’ve seen bad websites in my time but this is really taking the piss! What was so wrong with the old website, that was actually usable and in keeping with the likes of IrishRail.ie and DublinBus.ie (which uses the same model-ish that the old Bus Éireann site used to use).

And why change just the homepage to a ridiculous layout and keep all the older existing menus and pages the same? Surely you want to attract people to use the site and surely there’s a nicer way to organise things? Hell, we had a great girl in here on work experience for a week who lashed together a nice website for herself in two days…

Would you consider changing it back?

Cheers Michele.

Looks like Google have been at the PR updates again…

• kenmc.com – PR 4 to PR5
• kilkennymusic.com – PR2 to PR4
• liverpoolaccess.com – PR0 to PR5

Pretty pleased with the increase in LiverpoolAccess.com given its only been knocking around since the end of the summer, coupled with the rise in kilkennymusic.com’s PR, which I hadn’t been able to shift from 2 while using PHPNuke at the backend, no matter who was linking into it or what amount of content I published.

Just after I had asked was Pagerank really important and all…. 😉

Earlier in the year Dell announced a partnership with Google for all new machines shipping out of Dell – a machine’s browser homepage would default to a special Google landing page offering Dell and Google products and news.

Now, according to the Taipei Times, Yahoo have snapped up HP (having already snapped up ACER to the same deal) to have browsers on new HP desktop and laptop models in Europe default to the Yahoo homepage. Users in the US will have a cobranded HP Yahoo toolbar preinstalled on their machine.

I’m not at all fond of the Yahoo toolbar or any other toolbar for that matter (if I can’t get it in my Firefox bookmarks bar or search for it in the top left on one of the FF searches then I’m not too bothered). All the same, its a good deal for Yahoo as continue to battle it out with Google for search engine domination, HP being the second largest global PC manufacturer behind Dell.

Kilkenny (St. Lukes) averages out about 62%…. Ardkeen (Waterford Regional) averages out at 58%… considering that hospitals should be aiming for 85% + to be in the good books on the site, what can you find out about your hospital.

Check RateMyHospital.ie (yet another rating website)

If you’re in Kilkenny today at 6pm and fancy dropping into Langton’s on John Street, you might just be able to Help Yourself as Aidan (Event Ireland) and Keith (Bohanna Consulting) kick off a new series of monthly talks (presumably in Harry’s Bar inside Langtons) aimed at local businesses.

Help Yourself is a way for businesses in Kilkenny to get a gentle introduction to various bits of the internet without techie speak and in the company of like minded people. It is a network with a monthly talk/seminar and an online resource with additional backup for the talks.

The talks are being supported by the Kilkenny County Enterprise Board and each talk will feature a rotation between Aidan and Keith for the main topic of discussion, as well as a guest speaker for 20 minutes discussing their own personal internet-related experiences. Guest speaker for tonight is local businessman John Ellis of E-Insurance Ireland. John will be speaking on the success of his own website and lessons he has learned from it.

Tonight’s main topic for discussion will be domain names and email associated with those domains. (e.g. having your own .com or .ie but using an eircom.net address or other free provider).

You can find out more at HelpYourself.ie

Looks like RTE have joined the internet exchange, INEX, and are looking to “deliver quality broadcast material over the internet in a more efficient manner”.

You think that they’ll be charging the average internet user for accessing this “quality broadcast material”. It’d sure beat the hell out of paying a TV license fee, and at this stage of proceeds I get enough enjoyment out of watching material online than paying attention to whatever is on the telly.

No mention of what this quality broadcast material is exactly, though I wouldn’t mind seeing someone develop new program material for RTE to be distributed strictly on an online basis.

For those of you who don’t know who INEX are, they’re the Internet Neutral Exchance Association, based out of Dublin.

Our objective is to provide high-speed, reliable and resilient IP traffic exchange facilities for both Irish and International organisations, allowing them to route IP traffic efficiently thereby providing faster, more reliable and lower-latency internet access for their customers.

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!

Exactly a year to the day since he started his adventure to trade one red paperclip for a house, it looks like Kyle MacDonald has finally accomplished his goal and looks set to pick up his house tomorrow.

Kinda takes the power of the internet and media to new levels…. Think you could walk into your local Sherry Fitz and start that conversation…

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance….”

As if the website isn’t bad enough at the moment since the upgrade… they’re doing it again….

From Saturday 24th of June at 17:30, to Monday 26th of June, o2.ie will be unavailable. You will be unable to access any part of the site during this time as we are upgrading our billing system. Please note as this is an upgrade to our billing system, Customer Care will also be unable to assist with any queries during this time. We apologise for the inconvenience caused.

(Via) In another marketing stroke sure to add a few more 000’s to the MySpace millions, the search engine behind the site is about to be auctioned off to the highest bidder – likely Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft. But if you’ve got enough cash – and a search engine – sure there’s no harm in asking.
Anyone care to lay a wager as to who is going to get it? Since MSN already have MSN Spaces in action, will we see Google extend their search empire into MySpace (as if they’re not doing enough already), or maybe see Yahoo creep in, then slowly witness a Flickr integration into the site too?

Either way, they’re about to make another packet…

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….

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.

Full story in all its detail from Reuters.

Surprised that it has an ‘er’ at the end and not just an ‘r’?

Textorizer takes a raster image in a format such as png, jpeg or gif, detects edges using a Sobel convolution filter and replaces them with supplied lines of text. The output from textorizer is in SVG, which can be viewed directly in the Firefox 1.5 browser or using the Adobe SVG Plugin.

Had a play around with it earlier on and took a look at some of John’s images all textorized and its pretty damn impressive with what it can do! Give it a lash yourself.

Reading a post from Piaras Kelly this morning on twelve observations on Irish society, it was point number 9 that clicked big with me…

9. Bebo is the most popular website in Ireland – The most important thing about Bebo is that it will ultimately drive a higher adoption of broadband in Ireland.

He’s absolutely right.

There’s a cousin of mine (one of a few) who regularly drops in during the week after school instead of going home to her own house. Straight up the stairs she goes to the study, unhooks my computer from the network in the other room, and parks herself in front of Bebo for an hour or two.

“Ugh…. you can’t Bebo on dialup”

“We’ll have to get broadband…. I can talk to people all night”

And so the story continues. Fair play, I also make use of Bebo, strictly with people I know of course, majority of people I’m in contact with I’ve actually had or currently have some social involvement with. I received a few messages via their service from people on my “Friends List” telling me that they in need of help setting up broadband, so they can spend even more time on Bebo.

Parents will give in. Save a few pennies, keep the kids occupied for the night talking with all their school friends they’ve only seen a few hours ago, drawing crazy pictures on the ‘whiteboard’ and more.

The government and Eircom/Digiweb/Smart/Metro/Chorus/etc. must be looking at Bebo as a blessing in disguise. Teenagers whining for broadband to get their Bebo fix will get this country up that European Broadband League….

The BBC have launched a new API aptly dubbed ‘BBC Web API (beta)‘ and have created a series of widgets drawing on their TV-Anytime database for Yahoo and Google services.

“The purpose of this API is to allow people greater access to our content and information about our content. Two words sum up what this API is about: simple and TV-Anytime. The API is built on a TV-Anytime database and you can use it to extract information in TV-Anytime format. We have also provided a simple response format, giving quick and easy access to information.”

Interesting in their first step of adopting an entire Web 2.0 approach to running the Beebs online runnings….

Via the FON blog….

“FON is giving away free routers in the European Union! If you live on a busy street and would like to become a Fonero send FON an e-mail with the view from your front window before May 12th. The offer is valid for up to 100 winners.”

How very handy indeed… Busy location, free router, spread the love if you’ve got it!
See also my previous post on FON explaining a little more about the setup.

One of the most interesting uses of Google Maps to date comes out of the New York Times who have secured the records for every murder in the city – and plotted them on Google Maps.

It covers a period of 2003-2005 which includes over 1600 murders in the US.

John’s suggestion – Google Maps for traffic deaths in Ireland ©. That’ll show people….

Different jobs call for different rules…. If you’ve never come across the W3C Accessibility Guidelines I would suggest a read… Time for an educational lesson today!
In brief…

1. Provide equivalent alternatives to auditory and visual content
2. Don’t rely on color alone
3. Use markup and style sheets and do so properly
4. Clarify the usage of natural language
5. Create tables that transform gracefully
6. Ensure that pages featuring new technologies transform gracefully
7. Ensure user control of time-sensitive content changes
8. Ensure direct accessibility of embedded user interfaces
9. Design for device-independence
10. Use interim solutions
11. Use W3C technologies and guidelines
12. Provide context and orientation information
13. Provide clear navigation mechanisms
14. Ensure that documents are clear and simple

The above points, explained in detail are available here from Sitepoint. You might also want to take a look at the W3C’s own site, or even Microsoft’s Accessibility Website