RoadDeaths.ie Looking For New Owner

John is closing the door on RoadDeaths.ie, a great mapping project which ran between 2006 and 2007 but hasn’t seen updates in the last nine months or so.

I had offered in the past to carry the ball but my time constraints are just as bad.

The site detailed fatal traffic collision reports for 2006 and into 2007, plotting each accident on a map of the country.

This would be a great project for someone interesting in road deaths in Ireland, mapping, or someone with a desire to improve the facilities already in place. If you’re interested in the project, see the Jaiku note here or visit John’s blog to contact him.

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Those Irish Blog Awards Winners

Partly for my own reference for later on, and to give some link love to the winners, here’s the list of those who walked away with the trophies last night.

• Best Pop Culture Blog: Rick O’Shea
• Best Blog from a Journalist: Present Tense
• Best Food/Drink Blog: Italian Foodies
• Best Crafts Blog: A Simple Yarn
• Best Arts and Culture Blog: Sinead Gleeson: The Sigla Blog
• Best Political Blog: Irish Election
• Best Group Blog: Beaut.ie
• Best Use Of Irish Language In A Blog: Blag Ghael gan Náire
• Best Technology Blog: Bytesurgery
• Best Designed Blog: Sabrina Dent
• Best Sports and Recreation Blog: ArseBlog
• Best News/Current Affairs Blog: The Limerick Blog and Maman Poulet
• Best Specialist Blog: The Voyage
• Best Newcomer: John Braine
• Best Business Blog: Ice Cream Ireland
• Best Music Blog: Nialler9
• Best Personal Blog: Head Rambles, Grannymar
• Most Humorous Post: Twenty Major
• Best Photo Blog: GingerPixel
• Best Blog Post: Fat Mammy Cat
• Best Blog: Twenty Major
• Special Recognition: Simon McGarr, Rymus, Rick O’Shea

I had been featured under Best Technology Blog for kenmc.com while KilkennyMusic.com was included in the Best Music Blog, those categories going to Robin and Nialler9 respectively. Couldn’t go to two nicer lads! Fair play!

I’m currently shaking off a hangover, getting sorted with some photos from last night as well as the list of names of people I spoke to - yes, I saved them to my phone “just in case” the pints kept flowing. The pints, and shots, flowed until we were pretty much the last ones out the door so I’m glad I kept that list!

Full flashback / summary later this evening…

There Was Blogging, There Was Drinking, There Were Cheers…

That’s how I imagine tonight will run, but not exactly in that order.

The 2008 Irish Blog Awards are taking place tonight in the Alexander Hotel, Dublin with kick off scheduled for 7:30pm. Having been to the Awards last year I can say that the Alexander is a great venue and anyone going is bound to run into some fantastic people.

The blog finds itself nominated for in the Best Technology Blog category amongst the likes of Tom Raftery’s Social Media, Donncha O’Caoimh, Alexia Golez, Michele Neylon’s Pensieri, Michelle Gallen, Dave Northey, Inside View from Ireland, Robin Blandford’s ByteSurgery, James Corbett and Chris Horn.

Word has that list gets shorter again tonight before the awards are announced but it’s been a pleasure to have kenmc.com nominated for the very first time. I’ll also be there with Ross as KilkennyMusic.com found it’s way on the music shortlist though a betting man would put money on Nialler9 doing the double. Not a bad way to round out a week with Super Extra Bonus Party bagging the Choice Music Prize too.

According to Ross…

Ken will be the guy to talk to if you basically want to talk about anything from music to technology, sport, you name it. I’ll be standing beside him, the guy with the mohawk, consuming copious amounts of free alcohol and saying things like “what the hell is a blog anyway!?”

Says he leading the way for staff bloggers at KKM. Either way, we’re going to go and have a bit of craic, wind down after a few hectic weeks on all fronts and mingle with the very best the Irish blogosphere has to offer.

While having two phones might make me a terrorist, I’ll also be concealing my new Nikon Coolpix S200 so if you’re talking to me, jump in for a picture, sure why not!

See all y’all tonight.

Gone Pink For October

I might be a few days late with this one but with a few hours down time I’ve thrown together a pink stylesheet for the blog in support of breast cancer awareness for the month of October. More details can be found on PinkForOctober.org.

Jennifer Farley made reference to some pink designs during the week, while Eoghan McCabe has also “gone pink” for the month of October.

I’ve no problems at all in sporting a pink design and I’m happy to do it in raising awareness of breast cancer, knowing as well that it can develop in men as well as women.

Update: Also spotted the iQ Content blog is sporting a pink theme, while Will is going to be posting pink-coloured photos for the remainder of October.

Net Visionary Awards Voting Open

The Net Visionary Awards voting is up and running from this morning, a few names in there I’ll recognise, a lot of names in there I won’t recognise.

Congratulations to everyone nominated, you can vote until October 19th.

Me, I’m looking forward to the Blog Awards - if anything it’s cheaper to attend

Going through the feeds this morning, Michele raises an interesting point or two

Aggregating Politics, Getting Political

A review of Statcounter over the weekend showed some activity on the blog here, coming through Politics in Ireland in search of the discussion over Keola Donaghy on KCLR on Friday afternoon. Likely, this is due to the mention of a particular Labour Party TD who featured in the radio interview.

Politics In Ireland, run by Damien Mulley, is now it it’s second iteration with a much improved facelift. Aggregating feeds from blogs political and non, Politics In Ireland allows you track news developments and issues raised online featured the country’s political parties and politicians, the content of which can be broken down by party, constituency and TDs past and present.

A quick dip into my own constituency (Carlow/Kilkenny) brings up recent mentions by Bernie Goldbach of local Minister For Trade & Enterprise at the launch of Sprit of Enterprise in Tipperary recently.

Further to tracking the site via RSS feeds for all elements (overall, parties, politicians) you can also grab a javascript widget for your blog or even a Wordpress plugin to boot.

Drop by and see what your local politicians have been up to in the online world.

Keith Bohanna And The IIA

Quick word of congratulations to fellow Kilkenny resident Keith Bohanna who returns to the IIA board following the recent elections.

It is an honour to have been elected… Nice to be back here after a break - a different and more realistic environment for the board of the IIA to be operating in and I am looking forward to it.

Fair play good sir.

Tipping The Hat To Blognation

Delighted to see that Conor O’Neill is behind the launch of the Irish arm of Blognation, which kicked off today. As they say in Ireland, “there’s no better buachaill”. The addition of an Irish element to Blognation means that we’ll be more seeing the latest Web 2.0 developments / tech developments from all around the country.

The opening post on the blog covers an introduction to the web/tech scene in Ireland at present and lists some of the great web services on offer at the moment. You’ll get the latest tech events in the calendar (though *ahem* PodCamp Ireland isn’t among them yet - September 29th for FREE in Kilkennny) and a lot more besides.

One thing that jumped out at me from the post is Conor’s mention of the VC scene at present and what some options are.

The single biggest blocking factor for web startups here continues to be access to capital

Reason being in that I had a chat (and a sneak preview at the beta service) in Kilkenny today with a Beverly Hills startup (Kilkenny native) who politely offered his thoughts on the VC scene at present and the reason he’s now set up - with funding - in the US. Having watched in on the Auctomatic boys last week and the upcoming Paddys Valley tour in December I can see some of his points!

The first article though is a great one, well worth the read if you can. Would be a nice place to get some tech company profiling going on if the opportunity presented itself (with Damien currently compiling companies in Ireland) but thats for the editors to decide!

Anyway, tip of the hat to Conor O’Neill and fair play to Sam Sethi and Blognation for opening a door into the Irish market.

Revenge Through Spamming

I can see a head rolling for this one but by the looks of things, someone at CityJet (possibly but not 100% confirmed) is up shit’s creek with their IP logged as registering Damien Mulley for several dating sites, writing up untrue and possible libellous profiles. Bad form on their part in a big way, all likely stemming from a recent post on IWillNotHold.com about Sky Handling Partners, set up to provide a space to rant on customer service in our fair country.

No so fair by the looks of this wouldn’t you think?

If I was one of their web folk lurking around registering someone who has a bone to pick with your company for a very valid reason I’d be cowering about now….. Bloody childish carry on if you ask me.

Blog Awards Inspiring New Bloggers

If the Irish Blog Awards achieved one thing at the weekend it was in inspiring new bloggers to emerge and contribute to the social web. While I’m currently leading the blog count in the KKM team (some of which I think I’m going to trim unfortunately), the other three (pictured amongst the latest flickr upload) have become inspired to blog their own developments and interests.

Looking forward to Daw’s upcoming blog on sound production techniques and tips (certainly more niche), Mickey’s not ONE but TWO proposed sports blogs and hopefully Ross’s further development of Rants By Ross.

Amazing what an awards show can bring out in people once you spend a few hours immersed in the company of other drinkers bloggers at a pissup blog awards ceremony.

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