I’m Not Sure How I Feel About This
November 25, 2008 at 10:58 am
Damien Mulley’s blog won best blog at the Golden Spider awards last week. I think he deserves it, it’s a great blog, consistent, well written, newsy and he’s not afraid to tell it like it is.
But I’m not sure I support his decision to attend the very awards he has slagged off so much. Not only that, but he got taken as a guest of eircom’s. His commentary on the night is nauseating:
I’m very very grateful for the Award and for how I was looked after at the event. They covered the ticket too, not like I’d pay for one! The Golden Spiders staff were awesome and made sure everyone had a good time.
Slurpy mc slurp. I don’t like it.
If you have principles which I believe Mr Mulley does, then stick to them and don’t roll over to get your tummy scratched when “Big Telco” offers you a ticket for a black tie event. He talks about the web being open and that’s why he set up the Irish Web Awards, and how exclusive awards ceremonies are rather like holding the Olympics but only for rich white men.
Well in my opinion, Mulley attending the Golden Spider Awards (email law breakers that they are) is like Mandela attending a KKK Rally! How the mighty have fallen.
Blog Action Day
October 15, 2008 at 12:45 am
My dad died when I was 11 years old. I was devastated. It took years for me to get over it, and today I’m not sure I even have. Ask anyone who’s been through the pain of losing a parent – it’s life shaping. It’s really tough.
Imagine how you’d feel if you lost your mother not 12 months after your dad died?
I don’t want to.
But I imagine my heart would be so heavy and there would be so many memories in daily life that would be constant reminders of what I’d lost and how life will never be the same again. My young shoulders would be weighted down with responsibility having to care for a little brother.
Imagine if you lost your Dad and Mum and your little brother?
Would you be put into care? Maybe a loving foster family would look after you? Your teachers at school would be warned to treat you in a special way. After all, you’ve endured. Your poor heart must be breaking.
Imagine if you lost your Dad, your Mum and your brother and there was no care? No social welfare. No special needs teachers. Nothing to fall back on. What then?
You’d have to worry about where to find food. How to live from day to day. Would you even be able to continue with school? You’d be so tired at the end of a day. You’d be vulnerable. And your heart? How would be? Heavy and trembling with fear in case you don’t survive.
That’s how I imagine I’d be if I was in Gantz’s situation.
This is Gantz. He’s from a small village outside Cape McClear in Malawi. He’s such a gentle lovely guy and also a bit of a geek! He loves science and wanted to be a biologist when he got older. He lost both his parents and his brother to AIDS. His grandmother was doing what she could to support him. Without her, I imagine he would have bad to give up school. When I met him, continued attendance at school pursuing his dreams was a bit precarious. What would happen to Gantz once the old woman was gone?
But Gantz is not all morose and feeling sorry for himself. He’s warm and smiling and gentle. He still has ambition. In fact, he considers himself lucky to be alive.
Many people of our age like Gantz in Malawi have not been so lucky. An entire generation has been wiped out. Since AIDS came to Africa twenty years ago, most of the women and men of sexually active age have died.
Can you imagine what that would be like?
To lose most of your friends and all of your family to a pandemic that is rife. Its not anybody’s fault. AIDS is sweeping through the continent of Africa. Why Africa and not Europe?
Because AIDS and poverty go hand in hand. If you’re already weakened by poverty, then you haven’t much hope when HIV and AIDS comes your way. HIV attacks the immune system. If your body is weakened through lack of food, it makes it much easier for HIV to take hold.
Today is BLOG ACTION DAY.
People around the world are blogging about poverty. I chose to blog about my friend Gantz. I don’t know if he’s still alive, or if he ever managed to make it through school. But I do know that he has more richness of spirit and inner strength than I have.
Gantz is just one story - one young man in a small village near Cape McClear. I hope he has survived. The odds aren’t stacked in his favour though - 1 African person dies of AIDS every 17 seconds.
Blog Action Day 2008
September 29, 2008 at 8:32 am
Last year 20,000 bloggers took part in the first Blog Action Day. It was about the environment and the idea was to have everyone blog about the environment on Blog Action Day in a bid to put that very important topic into people’s minds - out there on the agenda.
I didn’t take part. But this year I most certainly am. This year’s Blog Action Day is about Poverty. You can expect a post from me on 15 October reflecting on poverty. If you have a blog, you should take part too. Write a post on 15 October about poverty too. And if you’re a commenter, then get on to your favourite blogs on 15 October and ask them why they’re not blogging about poverty too!
Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.
All Girl Team Makes Rugby Magic
September 26, 2008 at 11:36 am
Our new site for Old Belvedere Rugby Club has just gone live. Not only is the established and venerated club updating its site, but they are taking to blogging in a big way.
The site is constructed using Wordpress which enables easy content management, it incorporates a Flickr feed where they’ve already got hundreds of pics up, and the blood red design will certainly speak to rugby players. But it is the blog that is really going to improve the way they communicate.
Last night I delivered training in how to blog to Committee members and team captains. I feel sure that they’re going to take to it in a big way; there are a lot of people in there who are passionate and have a sense of humour - two essential ingredients for blogging success.
On my own part, I’m pretty pleased that the all-female team at Brightspark has successfully delivered on the project objectives for this bastion of male-ness in Dublin 4!
Visit the rugby club site.
More Spam from the Irish?
August 12, 2008 at 2:12 pm
A previous post about the Golden Spiders being fined for spamming me generated a comment from John O’Neill, the owner of Backupanytime. Today he received an email from the owner of a new site, Mytown.ie, which he deems to be spam. He contacted the sender of the email and asked how he got his email address. The Mytown.ie guy had harvested the email off browseireland.com.
What Mytown.ie did is not illegal. They would only be in breach of the law if they ignored John’s request to remove his contact details from his database. Like what the mouldy spiders did to me. That shower kept emailing and telephoning even after I had asked to be removed from their lists. That is the real reason why they were fined for spamming.
I kind of feel sorry for Mytown.ie. It obviously took a lot of time and effort to do what they did, not to mention the monotony of harvesting all those email addresses. And I don’t think they’ll get that many responses. The email that I received was an elaborately written, too long, piece of marketing speak that went straight to the trash. They obviously just don’t know how to communicate online.
Here’s a link to a good post by Richard Hearne in which he meticulously breaks down what someone has done right in attracting his attention. Read the comments too for more info.
If you’re reading this Mr Mytown.ie - you can make a mistake once, just don’t do it twice. Oh, and good luck with your business.
Firefox 3 Launch Party
June 20, 2008 at 10:10 am
Was great craic. Lots of people there - new faces and old hacks alike! Novelty of the night was Quest.ie who were taking pictures against a greenscreen. Some interesting poses involving power drills. But here’s one for family consumption - all the bloggers who were in attendance on the night. I think the smiles on the faces sums up the general camaraderie and niceness amongst the blog community here. In my opinion that’s a good thing.
Bohoe’s pics of the night really capture it. Well the pre-Lillie’s bit…
Have a great weekend.
Need To Get Out More
May 27, 2008 at 3:46 pm
There’s a lot of talk going on right now about Ammado and their recent spamming of a number of top bloggers. It seems that they harvested a whole bunch of names and emails and then sent them a mass email asking them to blog about something they’re running relating to UNHCR.
There are a couple of accounts of it here:
Damien’s [parental guidance!! Warning this blog carries strong language]
It looks like there’s one person called Natalia who’s carrying the Ammado torch on Alexia’s blog. Her attitude is ALL WRONG. When the blogosphere turns on you because you have BROKEN THE LAW, this tone of voice just doesn’t cut it:
Oh come on people….Did Ammado hurt you when they sent those e-mails or what????
They made a huge mistake - they sent those e-mails to you as they thought you would be interested in their appeal….. but it seems you only want to make Ammado’s work harder….
Meanwhile, over on Mulley.net, in response to another Ammado person, Anna Kupka, who claimed that they didn’t expect their appeal to be regarded as spam:
What a load of bollox. If you talk yourself up at the IIA Congress and all over the press over the past few months as having a clue about people and the web you have no excuse whatsoever for spamming and for your lack of understanding of one of the most basic tenets of the Internet.
I agree.
I think it’s a case of the Marketing Department being allowed to run wild! Is Ammado full of developers and finance people, with only a tiny team of marketing graduates who don’t have the foggiest about the internet? I’ve never ever met a single Ammado person out and about, which in my opinion shows how cut off they are from the world. Like-minded people (or in this case people who are passionate about the net) tend to bump into each other again and again. The Anna’s and Natalia’s of this world ought to get out more!
New Blog Features
May 26, 2008 at 11:14 am
In the continuing quest to enhance your blog experience, here are a few plugins recently added to the Brightspark blog:
- Subscribe to Comments - if you leave a comment on a post and want to know what subsequent commentators have to say, then click this box. A great way of ensuring the conversation goes on and that commentators can retort if they want to! In the notification email you can unsubscribe whenever you like.
- Recent Visitors - this is a little box that shows who’s recently been having a look round. More to satisfy my own nosiness.
- What Would Seth Do? This little widgit has been on for quite some time now. It invites new visitors to add the blog to their RSS the first 3 times they visit. I like it that it gives up after 3 go’s so isn’t annoying.
Thanks to Gordon in Cork who efficiently translates all of my whims into reality!
If you know of some other plugins that would enhance the experience, I’d love to hear from you. Please share your knowledge in the box below.
Warm & Fuzzy Feeling
March 2, 2008 at 6:15 pm
The 2008 Irish Blog Awards took place last night at the Alexander Hotel and what a great night it was too! Thanks must go out to all the organisers who put so much thought and hard work into making it an amazing event. And as for Mr Mulley, the man should be sainted for his contribution to blogging in Ireland.
Congratulations to all the winners, particularly Kieran Murphy of Ice Cream Ireland who won the Best Business Blog against *stiff competition* for a second year running. He wore the full ice cream man get-up, with white wellies and all. I was also thrilled to see Best Designed Blog go to Sabrina Dent. And the Best Technology Blog go to Robin Blandford. I do love Lexia’s blog also. A hat trick was scored by Twenty Major, 3rd year running that he won Best Blog. Now that he’s got a book out and is in publicity overdrive mode, he revealed himself at the awards. Well, not in the way that some smutty minds might imagine, because that would be quite scandalous, but he was present as himself and was even autographing his book! View Twenty Major here on the left beside Joe Drum-Google!
Before the event took place, 37 women bloggers all met in the Market Bar for the Ladies Tea Party. I didn’t see a whole lot of tea being drunk, but there was plenty of chat, openness and sharing of stories and ideas. It was quite fabulous actually. I reckon I knew 5 women who were there from previous meets. I ‘knew’ about 5 or 10 more from their blogs. But by the end of it though, I felt like I knew everybody and we were all set to whoop each other on at the awards themselves. Special mention of my favourite gimick of the night was Julie-Anne Graham of Curious Tales.com who handed out fake mustaches to everybody to promote her new blog. The blog sounds really interesting; she takes old clothing and re-engineers it with a contemporary look and blogs about the story of the clothes. She also designs a rather fine range of eco T-shirts too. If anyone has any pics of me in the ‘tache, please pass them on!
For me, the Blog Awards confirmed how lucky I am to work in such a open, friendly, supportive, and highly creative, talented, and humourous industry. Everyone was buzzing to be meeting people they chat to daily in the flesh. There was much smiling and congratulating, and of course much flashing of flashes! I was getting a buzz off the fact that my favourite 5 web designers in the whole country were there within 10 metres of each other (in various states of inebriation!). At least 5 of the serious entrepreneurs who I most respect were knocking shoulders too. And it was all good.
I reckon it’s quite unique to work in such a non-hostile, supportive and open industry. Do groups of bankers and doctors all share the same warmth and camaderie at their get-togethers? I wouldn’t think so. Is there such genuine delight in the meet-ups at the Property Awards? I wouldn’t bet on it. Yes. Apart from being able to make my living doing what I love, I am also blessed that I get to it with such great people.
So that marks the end of the warm and fuzzy piece. Normal ranting and giving out service will resume tomorrow.
Smart Marketing by Glengarriff Lodge
February 18, 2008 at 3:38 pm
It seems some parts of the blogging community are up in arms about this. You can read the comments over on Mulley’s blog. I fall in with those who disagree with Mulley’s view. As far as I’m concerned, I was presented with the opportunity to enter a competition for a prize that I personally would value. The competition rules stated that I must link to their site using certain keywords. I’m happy to do that. I’m don’t understand those who are getting up in arms about it. It’s not going to damage the lodge’s search engine ranking because the links are naturally occurring and I seriously doubt they are going to happen in sufficient numbers to alert Google. I do agree with Sabrina Dent’s comments on Twitter however, that the tags on the site are rank. If they are running the competition to improve their search engine ranking, they should start with the basics first and get their tags working for them.
It’s great to see intelligent marketing by businesses who don’t necessarily have a massive budget! Glengarriff Lodge is a luxury self catering villa nestled in the ancient oak woods of Glengarriff, Co Cork. It looks amazing, and hopefully this post will earn me a nice little weekend break there.
You see, Glengarriff Lodge is looking to increase its search engine ranking and knows the importance of links. So it is running a competition to encourage bloggers to link to their site using a given keyword string - luxury self catering villa - and if there are 25 entries, on March 11th 2008 they will announce a winner! In addition, they are looking to spread the idea virally, so I’m supposed to link to a friend who might be interested. So I chose someone who is not only a real foodie, and has a blog, but is also an incredibe networker who will surely spread the word!
Fair play to whoever came up with this idea! Thanks also to Tom Raftery on whose blog this came to my attention. And good luck to Glengarriff Lodge who deserve to power on up the rankings now and enjoy the fruits of being on top for luxury self catering!
