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Archive for February, 2007

And the winners of the Feedburner T-Shirts are..

Wednesday, February 28th, 2007

And the winners of the Feedburner T-Shirts (as chosen by our completely automated selection process) are …. at the bottom of this post.

In another shock scandal, Bernie Goldbach got disqualified by following a link from his own blog. He did send the most (25) commenters our way, and since we’re making this up as we go along, if anybody doesn’t take up their prize , I’ll pass one onto him.

Thanks to everybody who took part , and to everybody who posted the message on their blogs! (Bernie , Damian, Phil, Billy Leo and Podcasting Ireland.

Drum Roll please …. The winners are ….

Feedburner logo

What happens next? I have the winners emails , so I will contact them directly to arrange posting the stuff out.

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Free FeedBurner Gear to give away on YOUR blog

Wednesday, February 21st, 2007

You may remember our ‘Free beer at the Irish Blog Awards competition‘. Well FeedBurner have smiled from on high at our efforts, and decided to donate some goodies to the cause.

So, in the spirit of increasing everybody’s subscriber numbers I’m going to give YOU the gear to give away on YOUR blog. Here’s how it works:

1) Leave me a comment on this blog. Wordpress will ask for your email when you leave a comment, but it won’t be publicly displayed.

2) Sometime next week, I’ll ask you (by email) to post on your blog. I’ll even give you a bit of advance notice . Most blogs allow you to publish at a given time in the future , so you don’t even have to be there to push the button.

3) I’ll be asking your readers to leave a comment on this post. We’ll leave the lines open for a couple of hours, then pick 3 comments at random to win the stuff.

To keep it clean , you can’t giveaway the stuff on your blog and win at the same time. I’ll reserve the right to change the rules if somebody blatently tries to cheat (not that it would be hard!).

Feedburner T-Shirt

Unfortunately , because I’m not a photo blogger , I couldn’t get a clear shot of what the goodies look like. Trust me that they’re pretty cool.

  • 1st Prize : A long sleeved FeedBurner Jersey, and assorted stickers and badges.
  • 2nd Prize : A T-Shirt with the FeedBurner logo, and assorted stickers and badges.
  • 3rd Prize : Just the T-Shirt with the FeedBurner Logo.

I’ll post the stuff direct to whichever reader of yours wins - so it doesn’t matter what sort of blog you have, where you’re located , or where your readers come from.

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Leave your name here to win Feedburner Gear …

Wednesday, February 21st, 2007

Read this first to understand what is going on.

Leave a Comment with (1) your name , (2) email (will be hidden) and (3) the blog that sent you here.

Only comments that include all three items are in with a chance of winning. Winner will be drawn from the people who leave comments on Tuesday 27th Feb.

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I’ve just been propositioned by Granny Mar …

Wednesday, February 14th, 2007

I was on the train home this evening. Sitting opposite me was an elderly lady. I saw her give me funny looks as I worked away on the Laptop. Just before I got off the train at Drogheda, she turned and asked me (in the sort of low voice normally used when trying to purchase  hard drugs):

Tell me. Do ye skype?

That’s it. Voip is definately mainstream. And Grandad’s wife is probably on the lose.

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500 Irish Bloggers - Will the Irish Blogosphere be banned by Technorati?

Wednesday, February 14th, 2007

You may have heard about the 2000 Bloggers project hosted by Tino Buntic. You may have even got your photo included among the 2000. And you may have pulled the links when Technorati complained about what was going on.

What Technorati (and to some extent Google) didn’t like was this as an attempt to game the system - loads of blogs , with little or nothing in common, all linking to each other and in process seeing a massive increase in their Technorati and Google rankings. Given that 2000 bloggers included photos and nothing else, what’s the difference between this and a sophisticated link farm? Better said on ‘I don’t deserve this Technorati rank and you don’t either‘.

If you’re one of the people nominated for the Irish Blog Awards You’ve probably seen a lot of incoming links from people who have taken the original IBA Nominee List (by Jason Roe) and posted it on their blogs. Over the past couple of days, I’ve seen about 20 links come my way via this method. Out of curiosity, I’d tend to visit people linking to me in this way.

Is this the same idea as 2000 bloggers, an attempt to game the Google / Technorati pagerank system? Will all 500 of us be blacklisted by Google? I don’t think so.

The difference between this and the 2000 Bloggers is:

  • All the links have a connection (they’re Irish Bloggers, or bloggers with some connection to Ireland).
  • More information is provided on the links - not just a photo , but what they blog about.
  • There is a quality screening going on (i.e. you have to be nominated) not just first come first served.

Just to prove the point, the list of nominees is below. And if you haven’t voted already, drop over and vote for us (FirstPartners.net / Technology in Plain English).

Best Designed Blog

Best Blog

Best Use of the Irish Language in a Blog

Best Political Blog

Best Group Blog

Best Contribution to the Irish Bloggersphere

Best News/Current Affairs Blog

Most Humorous Post

Best Newcomer

Best Blog Post

Best Arts and Culture Blog

Best Personal Blog

Best Sport & Recreation Blog

Best Photo Blog

Best Specialist Blog

Best Music Blog

Best Podcaster

Best Podcast

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Irish Blog Award Bribery Shocker

Tuesday, February 13th, 2007

In a shock turn to the Irish Blog awards, Damien Mulley has been revealed (allegedly) to be in receipt of a pint for his efforts in the ‘increase your subscribers on feedburner‘ award. Anonymous sources detailled his use of the Irish Blog Award feed (which increased it’s readers 32 times) to win this prestigious award, which is the premier alcohol based award in the Irish Blogosphere.

We didn’t bother asking Damien for a quote about these allegations, prefering instead just to make it all up buy him the pint. In the interests of fairness, Runners up Richard Hearne (offering free Search Engine Optimisation) and Eoghan McCabe (offering 2000 Euro worth of his time) were also not asked to comment.

Organiser of the competition , Paul Browne, is understood to be lining up a round 3 to give away goodies donated by Feedburner themselves, once the libel action with Damien is settled.

Final results for round 2 are below, and also many thanks to Ken, Conor, Aidan, James, Robin, Tom, Thomas and Damian for taking part. If you put your name down for round 3, I’ll be touch once I figured out the best way to give away the Feedburner stuff, and more importantly, how to do it to help your figures :-)

free-pint-winners.PNG

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Free Search Engine Optimisation

Tuesday, February 13th, 2007

To take up on Richard’s Kind Offer to all Irish Blog Award nominees.

  1. Just a little background on your website.
    • category you are nominated;
      Best Business / Best Technology Blogger
    • your blog’s topic or niche;
      Enterprise Development and Technology used by Business      .
    • your target audience;
      Decision Makers within the Top 500 Irish Companies.
    • how long you’ve been blogging; 2 yrs +
    • how old is your domain; 7 Years
    • the names/URLs of a few other sites, competitors or friends, in your niche ;
      Similar Audience to Silicon Republic , Zdnet , Irish Times Business Section.
  2. Trackback Done
  3. Tell me what you want to achieve SEO wise;
    Have the Technology audience (fairly) well covered, want to improve my exposure to Business people with a technical interest.

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Vote for us at the Irish Blog Awards and get loads of money

Monday, February 12th, 2007

Only one bit of that headline is true. And it’s not the loads of money bit. There is a good reason why we do business technology and not politics. However , if you’ve enjoyed this blog we would appreciate your vote.

We’re up for 2 Irish Blog Awards - Best Business Blogger and Best Technology Blogger. I could say something about the competition (below) being very very good (true) , but we’d also like your vote. We’re on the ballot as FirstPartners / Technology in Plain English.

Irish Blog Awards

Best Business Blog - Sponsored by logic+intuition

Best Technology Blog/Blogger - Sponsored by Bitbuzz

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Finally, a Tag Cloud that works for Wordpress

Sunday, February 11th, 2007

I’ve been trying to get this working for a while. If you’re reading the blog (rather than following via RSS) you’ll see the following changes:

  • MyBlogLog Readers (your photo) is now on the top left.
  • Tag Cloud is now working , thanks to the Category Tagging Plugin for Wordpress.
  • Monthly Archives are now at the bottom left, with number of posts per month.

Let me know what you think.

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Many Eyes - A Web 2 Service from IBM - Graph Pretty Picture from Excel

Friday, February 9th, 2007

It’s been a while since we posted a pretty picture on the blog. Not an Andrea Corr or Paris Hilton kind of pretty picture, but one to liven up the general flow of text on this site.

Just as well then that IBM has announced ManyEyes , an online Service to take boring old numbers and turn them into the kind of graphics that you see below. It’s pretty simple to use : upload your data in a table (Excel like) format, then select how you want to view it. They even provided a wizard to allow you to link the results on your own site.

For example: This is the Value of 1 US Dollar against the Other Major Currencies (Euro , Yen, Sterling , Yuan).

Interesting, in this Ajax-y world, that it’s implemented as a Java Applet. Maybe Bruce was right?

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Barcamp Dublin is Go on the 21st April

Thursday, February 8th, 2007

The announcement on the official BarCamp Dublin Blog is here.

Barcamp Dublin Logo

To quote what is barcamp?

[Barcamp] is an informal gathering of people from technical and business backgrounds, where information and experiences are exchanged. The event is geared towards sharing knowledge and learning from others and there is a policy of encouraging active participation in all discussions.

So if you’ve never been to one before, and not sure about attending. Just Go. You’ll be glad that you did.

Update: Paul asked me to change the order of links so that the ‘official’ site came first (previously I had his blog listed top). The original links are below.

Paul Walsh has announced the date of Barcamp Dublin on his Blog. It’s Saturday 21st April in the Digital Hub Dublin. Paul is organising the Event , along with EllyBabes and Joe Drumgoole.

Update 2: I’d forgotten to mention Keith Bohanna’s post about the upcoming Barcamps. Anybody else up for organising a Barcamp north of Dublin (in Drogheda, Dundalk or Newry)?

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2000 Euro worth of Design work , just to get Free Beer at the Irish Blog Awards.

Thursday, February 8th, 2007

I think he’s mad. But mad in a genius, Picasso, come and design my website for me kind of way. Which is exacty what Eoghan McCabe is offering to do to win a Free Beer at the Irish Blog Awards.

Feedburner logo

Now , he may be a competitor in our ‘who can get the most readers on Feedburner‘ competition, but even if I have to respect the sheer audacity of the move.

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And they’re off …

Tuesday, February 6th, 2007

Free Drinks at the Irish Blog Awards

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Enterprise Java Developer Wanted

Monday, February 5th, 2007

A good friend of mine needs an Enterprise Java Developer, to be based in Dublin Ireland (sorry , no Teleworking). It’s a contract position and the project is high profile and sounds quite interesting. The main reason I’m passing on it as the exact location is the only place where I cannot get to easily from Drogheda! One man’s poison is another man’s meat (or something like that).

With that information (i.e. next to none at all) I’m going to ask you if you’re interested. Yes , I could put all the buzzwords (the usual Spring , Ajax, JSF, EJB , Hibernate), but to be honest I don’t know where the technology road will take this project.

One small catch. We need to weed out all the muppets that are out there. So, you need to have been blogging about Java for the last couple of months. If you’re interested , leave a comment and I’ll pass on your details.

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