IIA Blogging Seminar

March 8th (2-5pm):One of Ireland’s most respected and active bloggers, Michele Neylon will present a ½ day seminar, at the Hilton Hotel Charlemont Place, on everything you need to know about blogging. If you are a novice, a regular blogger wanting to improve what you do or interested in adding blogs to your company’s marketing mix then this is for you. Places are strictly limited to the first 30 people who book. The cost is €95 for non members and only €55 for IIA members. This event is expected to book our fast.

This seminar will cover the following areas:

· Wonderful World of Blogs (some introductory examples)

· What is a Blog?

· What are its uses?

· Technical Overview of what makes blogs work RSS feeds and all that stuff

· How to set up your own blog

· Blogging Pitfalls

· Commercial applications of blogging

· Can blogging win you business

· Search engines and blogs – will your content be found

· Monetizing your blog

· How to promote your blog

· Examples of how blogs can be done badly

· Excellent examples of blogs – globally and in Ireland

· Can blogging win you business

· Question and Answer session

Pity its limited to 30 seats… could be an extremely interesting day!

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DeviantART Kicking Out U18s

Interesting points are being raised in relation to DeviantART’s recently published “Terms of Service”. I know that myself, John, Rob, and other ‘Deviants’ will recall the uproar over their last range of legal documents published. But now, they’re kicking out the under 18’s which I think makes up the mainstay of DA’s userbase….

“To register as a member of the Service or purchase products, you must be 18 years or lawfully permitted to enter into and form contracts under applicable law. In no event may minors submit Content to the Service. You agree that the information that you provide to us upon registration, at the time of purchase, and at all other times will be true, accurate, current and complete. You also agree that you will ensure that this information is kept accurate and up to date at all times. This is especially important with respect to your email address, since that is the primary way in which we will communicate with you about your account and your orders.”

From Jark’s blog…

Minors, which make up the vast majority of the userbase of deviantART, are now no longer allowed to submit content to deviantART. Not only are those under 18 not allowed to register for an account but they can no longer submit their art to the site or interact in areas where they will ultimately be submitting information to deviantART for all to view.

My thoughts…. ridiculous. I really, honestly don’t know what they’re trying to achieve with this. Don’t they know that kids are the future of today, tomorrow…. No bloody wonder everyone is flocking to MySpace!

Bring back Jark!

MySpace, MySpace, My Space!

MySpace! Its the word on everyone’s lips at the moment. What’s so bloody great about MySpace? I’ve taken a gander at it a few times and most recently last week found more of my friends on it than I cared to find. Is there some secret about MySpace that has everyone crawling there or is it just “the” place to be at the moment?

Running a gig (I run gigs under another one of my ventures… KilkennyMusic.com) recently I was speaking with a member of one of the bands who was constantly taking the piss out of one of his own band members for all the profiles he has on MySpace. Another one was greeted by “Jesus…. you’re not another bloody MySpace band are ya?” (in reference to a band that wasn’t appearing on the night).

Sure enough, the more bands I get through Kilkenny Music, the more they’re sending me to their ‘MySpace’ page. Seems to be nothing more than a glorified blog of sorts except you get ‘friends’, similar to the way you get ‘watchers’ on DeviantART. Now it seems that if the US wasn’t enough, they’re going to hammer the UK market as well.

They’ve got over 50 million users, 32 million of which are reportedly active and driving the site. I wasn’t exactly blown away by it myself but I’m guessing that the advertisers are well impressed!

Yahoo’s Fighting Words

In a follow up to yesterday’s post about Yahoo giving up the race against Google, they’ve come along and issued this response to address the issue and the blogstorm that rained down yesterday….

Camera Phone Crazy

Samsung’s latest offering in the cameraphone market is more of a camera with a phone stuck on the tail end as opposed to what we’re used to seeing in the shops. And guess what…. they’ve only gone and upped the resolution on the camera to 7.7 megapixel!

It’s supposed to be a phone for god’s sake! Its got a flash, and a TV-out function!

This is getting silly…

IE7 - Leaked and Loaded

Although Internet Explorer was only due to be unveiled during the first quarter of 2006, a build of the new browser and several screenshots has leaked online.

The link to the code of the IE7 build (version 5299) was posted on the Windows tech forum JCXP.net on Friday. I managed to get myself a copy of it before it was removed and was sorely tempted to give it a test. Although Microsoft took down the link, techies around the world managed to get their hands on the build, which can be downloaded as an 11MB file in .rar format.

Furthermore the patch which allows the IE7 build to run with cracked copies of Windows had been downloaded over 12 000 times by yesterday morning. So there’s either only 12,000 cracked copies of Windows in the world, or 12,000 people that are interested in running a copy of Internet Explorer 7.

Has anybody else landed a copy of IE7… or is anyone even interested at this point? Given that it doesn’t have the open source backing of the Firefox community, and is likely to consume your CPU usage with 18 dozen instances of IEXPLORE running for every new tab you open up, will IE7 geniuinely be worth the wait? If I was taking an eye to this whole “leak”, which I am, I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft leaked the build themselves to see how many people would take it up and talk it up. Makes perfect sense seen as there was the whole “leaked documents” story late last year.

Yahoo hold their hands up

Yahoo are holding their hands up and finally conceding the search engine race to Google

“We don’t think it’s reasonable to assume we’re going to gain a lot of share from Google,” [Yahoo] Chief Financial Officer Susan Decker said in an interview. “It’s not our goal to be No. 1 in Internet search. We would be very happy to maintain our market share.”

Funny how things develop. I remember getting online for the first time back in 1995 with Yahoo just starting out and it was the best thing going to find anything you want. Over the years through Yahoo tried to nail you with the kitchen sink while Google presented a simple search box. Yahoo! handled 19 percent of global Internet searches in November, a drop from 27 percent a year earlier, while Google’s share rose to 60%.

Where to next for Yahoo?

Google Most Popular Brand

While Apple have become the number one brand in the US and Canada, Google are now the top brand in the world (most influential) according to BrandChannel.com’s annual popularity poll which surveyed 2500 people across 99 countries. After a fairly good year, Skype is up there at number three in the world rankings with parent company and one of my favourite haunts, eBay, coming in ninth.

Read all about it at MacWorld

RFID Logins

I wrote a paper last year on the uses of RFID in a natural environment with a focus on personal privacy protection. Bit of a mouthful, but I find the topic compelling to be honest. Browsing CNN.com I came across this recent story on RFID implants (no, not the Page 3 kind).

The article is based on a 29-year-old entrepreneur out of Vancouver (Canada) who along with 20 of his tech-friends have gotten RFID implants under the skin in their fingers, allowing them to interact with various RFID readers, part of which allows him to access his computer with a wave of his hand. This type of technology really knows no bounds. Can you imagine no passwords for your computer? No code for the house alarm, no keys for your car?

Makes a very interesting read.

Setting the tone

Given the lovely weekend I had doing pretty much nothing except for Sunday night, I decided to discontinue any personal musings on Creative Imagination and ship them over to my.kenmc. From the outset, Creative Imagination intends to be intenet and technology focussed and has been moreso of late. If anyone is interested in some more personal ramblings in general you’re most welcome to pop along to my.kenmc.

Rock on for technology…

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