Quality Broadcast Material Online From RTÉ

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.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed to keep up to date with kenmc.com. Maybe some of my earlier posts will interest you too! Thanks for visiting kenmc.com!

KilkennyMusic.com Relaunches

Been a quiet week in the blogging sense as literally all my spare time during the week has gone into relaunching KilkennyMusic.com. The site had previously been working on a PHPNuke 7.8 install with phpBB integrated for the forums…. no more!

After pulling the site down last Tuesday in the very wee hours of the morning, it has relaunched this morning on a Joomla install. Most of the work involved was in getting all the users and forum posts migrated to the new setup, then spending a good bit of time templating up the site (and the forums to match) before getting all the components installed.

For anyone who is interested, the site is running the latest version of Joomla with the latest version of phpBB backing the forums. Community Builder looks after the members and integrates well with the forums. That too has had a bit of work done to it to cater for pulling in users posts from the forums, linking their avatars, providing each member with their own homepage and guestbook setup (MySpace comments style). There’s a new free classifieds area, post up some photos, sell your bits and pieces. The photo galleries and Artists Area of the site have been revamped thanks to some new components (thought slightly lacking in content as I’ve to load the backups in today). There’s new live chat features, blogs, podcasts going in this week, free mp3 downloads, KKM radio… and more besides!

The site now also boasts our new online magazine, ‘Sound System’ which has been made free to non-members as well, we’ve got interviews from some nice bands on the horizon (Laminate, Republic Of Loose, Fugazi, Yo La Tengo and more), a few new writers on board (or just people who were on board before but are now adopting a writers position as well) and overall the site - performance-wise and user-wise has improved a hell of a lot from its PHPNuke incarnation last week.

If you’re interested in the music, or you’re based in Kilkenny, do drop in and register - its free!

My thanks to everyone involved in KKM with me behind the scenes, to all the bands that have joined us for live sets during the past 12 months, to the Kilkenny Arts Office and the Arts Council for approving KKM for the Arts Acts Grant for 2006 and to everyone else that we’ve met along the way.

Why the relaunch?

We turned 1 year old on September 19th… gotta put something nice on for your birthday! Maybe now I can actually get to bed at a decent hour!

Yahoo Hackday Next Weekend

Visit the Yahoo Hack Day website and you’ll be a little thrown by the following message….

Sbe gur yngrfg arjf nobhg Lnubb! Bcra Unpx Qnl, ernq gur Unpx Qnl oybt! Yvaxf: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 N O P Q R S Jr’ir bcrarq hc Lnubb! sebz gur vafvqr bhg jvgu bhe jbeyq-erabjarq Unpx Qnl, naq sebz gur bhgfvqr va guebhtu gur Lnubb! Qrirybcre Argjbex. Abj jr’er bcravat hc Lnubb! vgfrys gb n fryrpg tebhc bs unpxref naq fcrpvny thrfgf sbe n jrrxraq srfgviny bs unpxvat, pnzcvat (lrf, gur gragf-va-gur-bhgqbbef xvaq–jr unir ernyyl, ernyyl avpr tenff!), zhfvp, naq tbbq gvzrf.Jr’yy xvpx guvatf bss ba Sevqnl, Frcgrzore 29gu jvgu n serr nyy-qnl qrirybcre jbexfubc (qrgnvyf).

Mouse over it though and everything is ok… Clever touch.

The weekend comprises of a series of workshops and speeches, while the night time is given over to “hacking” teams, developers coming together to work out on the lawn at Yahoo or huddled inside the main building. Coders and developers will have their chance to demo their projects on Saturday evening.

Among those giving talks and/or workshops:

• Rasmus Lerdorf, creator of PHP;
• Douglas Crockford, inventor of JSON;
• Andy Baio and Gordon Luk, co-founders of Upcoming.org;
• Cal Henderson, Engineering manager for Flickr;
• Matt Sweeney, author of the YUI Library’s Animation Utility and Dom Collection;
• Keynote by Bradley Horowitz, head of product strategy for Yahoo!;

Sounds very interesting indeed….

Google Video Ads - I’m Impressed

Just a quick note on Google’s video ads through AdSense - I’m impressed.

After posting this morning (Probability = 0.0000001%), the blog refreshed, and low-and-behold the AdSense block to the right of the top post (top of column two) was now playing a video. Short and snappy, a self-promotion video for Google on some of the benefits of AdSense, but the first time that I’d seen a video served through AdSense since they launched the more interactive ads.

Probability = 0.0000001%

Just a little something for the office on a Friday….

Facebook Up For $1bn?

There is always word flying around about some social network or another up for sale….. now its Facebook’s turn. After recently signing a hefty advertising deal with Microsoft, it seems that Yahoo are in line to take over Facebook.

Anyone know whats THAT good about it, physicially (not in the financial importance sense). Any Irish users been able to access it at all?

Smart Company - Blogging’s The Business

Got my copy of Smart Company in the post this morning… nice article by Tom Raftery across pages 26-27 arguing “that a blog can be used as a powerful commercial tool”. Reads well and should be a good source for companies who still rely on industry mail publications to find out whats going on in the world instead of reading blogs! Certainly worth the read if you’re in a company position where you either don’t know how a blog can be to your advantage, or if you need that little kick to send you in a blogging direction.

Main points…

• Blogs are extremely cheap to setup and run
• Search engines love blogs
• Blogs convey authority
• Its good for knowledge management
• A company can get feedback - good and bad!
• A blog breeds openness
• A blog can put a human face on a company

Case in point… more companies need blogs and bloggers!

Creative Links for 2006-09-19

• Interesting High-speed Video Clips
  The video clips below were filmed with a special high-speed camera. The super slow-motion playback lets you visualize effects that cannot be seen with the naked eye or with a standard video camera.
  (tags: video)

Rate Your Solicitor No More

An Irish website RateYourSolicitor.com, which aims to let clients find and rate solicitors has received an Irish High Court injunction to remove defamatory material about one such rated solicitor. The site is hosted by a US provider, gmax.net, which has reportedly been served notice by lawyers acting for the defamed solicitor.

Has / had anyone actually seen or used this website before its closure? Turns out that GoDaddy, as the domain registrar were challenged from Ireland to get the domain locked for access. Interesting…

Google’s search listing…

RateYourSolicitor.com enables people in Ireland to find quality legal representation by showing the best and worst solicitors in each county.

With the site now removed (or at least you couldn’t access it this morning anyway), here’s a link to Google’s cache of RateYourSolicitor.com.

For anyone who is interested, the site is a sister site of ‘Victims Of The Legal Profession Society’… also known as CrookedLawyers.com.

Making Sure Your TV Ad Is Seen (On Digital)

Niche men’s channel FX plans to show what it calls the first UK advert specially designed to combat viewers using digital recorders to avoid commercials.

The advert for its new drama “Brotherhood” will show a single image on the screen for the entire 30-second slot, and therefore retain its “sales message” when viewed even at the 12-times speeds enabled by Sky+ and other digital recorders, also known as personal video recorders, or PVRs.

Interesting to see if the approach works (via Reuters)

« Previous Page — Next Page »