brionglóidí

Soma FM - maintaining my workday sanity since 2003

noreply@blogger.com (Brionglóid Media) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:37:00 +0000

One of my favourite websites has to be, without a doubt, Soma FM. It's a San Francisco-based website with various different themed radio stations playing different types of music, mainly electronic.

A long-running mainstay has to be Groove Salad with a playlist that runs from funky ambient, jazzy electronica to lounge and Cafe Del Mar-style chill.

However of late I've found myself listening more and more to Sonic Universe, which has some pretty out-there electronic jazz experiments with a lot of names I had hitherto never encountered before but will certainly be investigating. Some of it's pretty funky, some of it's pretty scary, some of it's very psychedelic, most of it is all three at the same time.

Well I finally got my Google Wave account...

noreply@blogger.com (Brionglóid Media) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:29:00 +0000

...but nobody to play with.

Still waiting for invites of my own. When I get them I'll announce it here. Have a few promised already but there'll still be a few up for grabs. More details later.

Google is all about children's shows this week.

noreply@blogger.com (Brionglóid Media) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:42:00 +0000

Well, I say kids shows, because I can't think of a better term right now. I wouldn't really say Wallace and Gromit are strictly for children, because of their huge popularity with adults, myself included.

At any rate, two children's favourites had their anniversaries celebrated by Google this week. The first being the 20th Anniversary of Wallace & Gromit followed later by Sesame Street, which has been on the air now for 40 years now, making it as old as the moon landing and, indeed, the network that would eventually become the Internet.

One suggestion, in case anyone from Google Ireland are reading and looking for image ideas for the google.ie front page, would be to also celebrate another children's (and adult) favourite, Dustin the Turkey who will be 20 this Christmas and would have won last years Eurovision were it not for the intervention of Vladimir Putin.

Anyways, thank you Google for rekindling fond childhood memories but also for souring them with the realisation that said memories were a considerable time ago.

For anyone else who reads this and feels the same spare a thought for Oscar the Grouch, 40 years living in a dustbin, or worse, poor Bert, 40 years old and still sharing a bedroom with his rubber-duck loving brother.

Googlewaveinvites.com is toast

noreply@blogger.com (Brionglóid Media) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 08:18:00 +0000

http://twitter.com/googwaveinvite/status/4778886944

Google told them to stop. My theory on all of this is that Google's servers aren't up to the task. Hence the reasons invites can take up to a week to send.

And I was only 54,956 on the list to receive one - oh well!

Cool Twitter & Social Network Marketing Pack

noreply@blogger.com (Brionglóid Media) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:31:00 +0000

Got this in my email this morning from Hubspot. The guys who run the well handy Website Grader site.

It's a full set of videos & PDFs on how to market yourself using social networks and on Twitter. Pretty handy.

Right - I'm going to stop begging for Wave Invites now...

noreply@blogger.com (Brionglóid Media) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:49:00 +0000

Because I couldn't keep my big mouth shut I'm now starting to get Wave spam from scammers. You click through and site says: "Oh I'm sorry the invites are gone - but while you're here..."
Yeah, yeah, I get it, fuck off.

It was stupid of me to follow the link in the first place. Thankfully it was only a site trying to scam me. Others are far more malicious though.

So if you're in the same boat as me beware of emails trying to redirect you to sites offering invites.

Couple of articles I found on "Google Wave Scams":

One

Two

Waaa!!! I want Google Wave NOWWWW!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Brionglóid Media) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:45:00 +0000

Cast your mind back to when you were a child and how you looked forward to opening your presents Christmas morning. Imagine yourself jumping out of bed, sprinting down the stairs and diving beneath tree, tiny clawed fingers at the ready to cut wrapping paper to ribbons and feast your eyes upon all those marvelous presents.

Now imagine there's nothing there.

That's sort of how I feel today, having looked forward for months to the debut of Google's new Wave service only to find no invite in my stocking. I guess all I can do is just sit tight, obsessively refreshing my Gmail and performing sleazy solicitations for invites on forums and blogs.

...Refresh again...no, nothing, ok, Publish Post....

New Webste - Sean Conlon Artist

noreply@blogger.com (Brionglóid Media) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 09:47:00 +0000

Seán Conlon is a self taught artist. A native of County Kildare, Seán was educated and grew up in Newbridge. Although a talented artist from a very young age, it wasn't until 1983 that he took his painting more seriously and began to exhibit regularly in group and solo exhibitions. Selling most of his paintings and being commissioned to paint various local scenes, many of which were sent to relatives in the USA and the UK.

Seán travelled to France in 1985 and 1986 where he painted in Collioure, a famous artists colony in the south of France, There he worked with many different artists from all over Europe and America. Although only 23 years old he received much praise and admiration for the quality and detail of his work from the public and many of his peers.

Our New Website - Great New Services & Amazing Web Design Special Offers

noreply@blogger.com (Brionglóid Media) — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 17:42:00 +0000

As some of you may have no doubt noticed the Brionglóid Media website was offline for a while pending a major overhaul. To be quite honest the original site was a few years old by this stage and looked it. But the much-needed redesign kept getting pushed back by both a number of new projects plus a huge increase in regular website maintenance work. Which is a good complaint to have, of course.

The new site is now 100% up and running and it isn't just the look of the site that's changed but the content too. The most notable difference between the old site and the new, other than the look of it, is the new format with a whole new links section, a completely redesigned portfolio section a section for articles plus a new customer testimonials section. New services have also been added including a copywriting service and, perhaps most significantly, we've added a whole new section devoted to web and graphic design special offers.

Our new special offers, and indeed the entire new site content, was specifically devised to reflect the current - argh! I nearly said "the current economic climate" didn't I? I hate that phrase, it's the phrase awful people use to justify price hikes and job cuts - so let's just blurt it straight out and say it. The Recession. Yes, we're in a recession.

In a recession, if you want to stay in business it's vital that you sell, sell, sell! And in this day and age, if you want to sell, your company has to have a well designed website - simple as that. Hence the genesis of my new Recession Buster website package; a complete website for just €250. Or for those who just wish to have a one-page website, there's also the Business Card website - which is not only the cheapest but also, for your money, the most effective way to gain a substantial web presence.

Our other packages include our Web Starter web design package, which is designed specifically for those who are looking to take their first small steps on the worldwide web and one giant leap for their business. Similarly our Business Builder and Business Builder PLUS packages allow companies to avail of the full spectrum of web 2.0 technologies including blogging, social networking, live RSS feeds, podcasts and Twitter, as well as traditional Search Engine Optimisation, for less than the cost of an ad in the local newspaper.

Finally our Online Superstar package has been developed specifically for the arts and entertainment world such as musicans, artists, bands or events management and promotions companies or indeed anyone who wishes to leverage the full potential of Internet marketing techniques, social networking, blogging and multimedia services to maximise their exposure.

In addition to our new special offers, new services and existing web services and IT consultancy services, we will also continue to offer graphic design services such as poster/flyer design, corporate literature and brochure design, logo design and graphic design for websites

If you're interested in these services, or want to learn about our other additional services and special offers, visit our new website at www.briongloid.net or contact us today.

Back in the Saddle

noreply@blogger.com (Brionglóid Media) — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 21:06:00 +0000

I haven't had much time for this blog lately and a lots happened since I was last active here; professionally, personally in the IT world and in the world in general. Regarding the professional, I'll be dealing with that in my next post and as for the personal, well, that's personal - suffice to say I'm no longer based in the Republic of Ireland - yes I've gone international!

But first I thought it might be a good opportunity to look back on the last few months and the happenings in the world of IT and the world in general, so here goes....

The shambolic global economy pretty much dominated the news from the beginning of 2009 overshadowing Obama's supposedly-triumphant and historical inauguration. All those months and months slogging away on the campaign trail only to end up with the most unenviable job on the planet.

But then Springtime came and a breath of fresh air! We forgot all about the ailing economy and instead found a whole new thing to worry obsessively about - swine flu! Though swine flu did claim fatalities, it has not yet become the apocalyptic 1918-type pandemic the press predicted it would be. For those involved in tourism, however, it might has well have done.

The tourism sector took an almighty hammering this year. More people trying to save their money meant less people going on holidays and of those people that did, the majority tended to opt for all-inclusive resorts, budgeting carefully, with little if any of their money venturing outside the resort. Swine flu paranoia did not help matters.

Spain has a particularly bad time of it lately. With its construction industry in freefall and a severe drop in tourism unemployment continued to rise. The final nail in the coffin being delivered last month with the bomb attacks in Mallorca, one of Spain's most popular holiday destinations, right at the very height of the tourist season.

The worst hit countries in Europe are all those whose economies were over-exposed to the property market, including Spain, Greece and Ireland. Ireland, whilst it may not exactly be a hot sun destination, suffered from a dramatically diminished construction sector and saw its economy buckle badly. Tourism was one of the worst hit areas, in particular the hospitality sector with many companies closing down and many more doing all they can to battle through the bad times. (The Irish government, however, has clearly far more important matters to worry about.)

When the media wasn't driving us all into depression talking about terror attacks, swineflu, toxic assets, GM bailouts and Bernie Madoff it was prattling on about Twitter. 2009 was the year when the mainstream media turned on to Twittermania. Previously Twittermania had been confined to specific websites and publications such as IT or business journals but as more and more celebrities started to tweet the press, especially the tabloid press, pounced upon it ravenously. After all 140 characters per tweet may not seem like much to you or me, but, with the right accompanying photo, is way more than enough for a tabloid newspaper to fill two entire pages of speculations and/or complete fabrications on celebrity love affairs.

Twitter was a word that seemed to crop up pretty much everywhere this year. When Sacha Baron Cohen's new movie Bruno failed to do as well as expected Time magazine blamed Twitter, and when Iran found itself on the brink of civil war a few months back, once again Time magazine cited Twitter, claiming it was the only way for not just the American press - but also the American government - to get a legitimate, on-the-ground picture of what was really going on there. And yet, whilst Time and sibling company CNN argued that Twitter may be the ideal way for the Obama Administration to gain real-world intelligence on Iran, it was not, they insisted, the place to get information about swine flu.

And that's where all this Twittermania has gotten us - to the point where what was once a website for freaks and shut-ins to deliver up-to-the-minute broadcasts about their cats has become so hyped by the major media companies that they now have to issue globally-telivised statements to the public that Twitter should not be considered an authority on health and medical matters. But then by that stage we'd forgotten all about Iran and swineflu anyway and the economy, too, was but a distant hazy memory because now it was all about Michael Jackson.

Jackson, who was planning his huge comeback gig apparently - though how huge it would have actually been we can only speculate - was found dead at some point in time. When, exactly, I really can't remember. In fact I can scarcely remember a time when we didn't have Michael Jackson headlines on every newspaper every single morning.

But anyways, yes the King of Pop popped his clogs and the net result was, seconds after the news broke, the Internet swarmed with Michael Jackson related spam emails and "click here to see pictures" viruses. Millions, perhaps even billions, of people woke up that morning (depending on their timezone) and, though they couldn't have given too hoots the day before, suddenly felt an overpowering urge to jump on the bandwagon and pronounce their undying love for Jacko. Amidst this Diana-esque blubfest there were, undoubtably, many who felt quite legitimatly choked up about it, but not nearly as chocked up as the actual Internet was.

This afforded journalists the sublime opportunity to combine their two favourite topics of the year - Michael Jackson and Twitter. Twitter was clearly not up to the task of serving all those zillions of Jackson-related tweets and has been suffering sporadic outages ever since with the famous Twitter "fail whale" becoming an increasingly familiar and frequent sight.

Another website that managed to create a stir this year was Hunch.
The new website uses a very clever system to answer questions like what book should I read or what album should I listen to. The concept is far from new, I've been using Gnod for this sort of thing for years, but the major difference is that Gnoosic, for example, will ask you for favourite bands and make suggestions on them based on other people's suggestions. So if I say I like Massive Attack I'm going to be asked whether I like Portishead and other suggestions will then be made based on my reply. Whereas Hunch asks you less direct questions and seems to be more deductive in nature, it asks you what sort of album would you like to hear, what styles of music do you like, whether or not you care what decade the album was recorded, etc, etc.

I put it through its paces and I have to say, it performed quite well, it recommended books, albums and movies to me that I either already liked or were very close to what I invariably would like - without actually asking me what bands/books/authors/movies/directors I actually do like. It also told me, based on a few simple questions, that I probably would not enjoy the new Star Trek movie all that much and it turned out to be correct, I was quite disappointed by it. Plus it managed to pick my favourite types of beer right on the nose.

In order to to get the full value of Hunch, the site says, you need to fill out what amounts to a very extensive questionnaire. Many of the questions I simply skipped on the basis that they were more geared towards a North American audience and therefore didn't really apply to me. Although a lot of the questions are pretty predictable personality test questions with others you do get the feeling you have somehow become the unwitting participant in some massive global focus group and the more questions you answer the more you start to feel as though you're being deliberatly profiled and separated into specific demographics.

My suspicions were first aroused on the very first question when it presented me with four pictures of different types of fries; 2 were generic, one was clearly from McDonalds and the other from Burger King. If someone at Hunch could explain the scientific theory behind that one I'd be delighted to hear from it. In fact, with Hunch, the hunch that I got - and it's probably because I'm a paranoid Internet conspiracy nut and all - was that a lot of the questions were put in at the behest of special interests, like, for example RIAA (the amount of questions I was asked about the morality of internet downloads was what really put me into tinfoil hat mode) or some political party or polling organisation (lots of questions about immigration also - the hell do I care if Mexicans take their jobs?) and in the end I started to feel like I was a character in a Neal Stephenson novel

And that's the thing about Hunch, you see, it's not just very clever piece of programming it's a marketing/public company's wet dream. Still I've no doubt in my mind that Hunch, or its successors, represent the future of search; a search engine that knows you as well as it knows the Internet and can sort through thousands of search results to provide you with exactly the type of website or information you are looking for. And by the time this techology truly comes into its own I'll probably just be some old fart tellin' the kids "in my day we had this thing called privacy!"

True, Hunch and Twitter made plenty headlines, they could never really hope to steal the spotlight from the Big Three, especially Google. Twitter in particular made big splash in 2009 but Google was to become a tidal force onto itself starting with the announcement of their new Google Wave system.

I strongly believe this is a killer app in the making - it's going to be absolutely huge - in fact I predict it's going to spawn a thousand copycats and create a movement which will change how people communicate in business, maybe not everyone's, but certainly my own. No more emails back and forth, no more attachments, just drag and drop files, images - everything basically!

I'm really sick of email, really sick of it. Sending text and attachments to someone@someplace.somewhere has been with us for decades now. Flared trousers and gold zodiac medallions are no longer hip, disco is dead and the Shah of Iran too, and yet here we are in the 21st century stuck with horrible emails - sending them, writing them, repying to them, waiting for replies to them...
When you think about it the process takes up so much time and we've only got so much patience and I haven't even mentioned all the spam yet!

Wave is going to change all that. It's going to make email obsolete, instant messanging obsolete and with integrated Google Talk and their new Google Voice it looks like they're going to blow my beloved Skype out of the water too. But the very best thing about Google Wave, I think, it is that right now legions of developer geeks are already beta-testing and tweaking it and developing little widgets for it it and so however excited I might be about Google Wave itself I'm even more excited about the inevitable mashups which are going to result from it. How many mashups have we seen with Google Maps? Yeah, you know the guys who made Google Maps? The same guys created Wave.

At Microsoft HQ, meanwhile, a plot was being hatched to steal Google's thunder. Firstly with the launch of their new Bing search engine, and secondly by taking on Google Docs by announcing that their new Microsoft Office 2010 would include free online versions of their popular Office applications - namely Word, Excel and Powerpoint. (Which, in industry terms, is sort of like witnessing the fall of the Berlin Wall)

Google responded by really upping the ante announcing that they would be entering the operating system game themselves and why not, they've challenged Microsoft on pretty much everything else and I think all of us geeks, whilst surprised by the sudden announcement, weren't quite so surprised by the notion itself. Nor, for that matter, that it would neatly coincide with the release of Windows 7

Google Chrome OS is based upon the Cloud concept with everything happening inside the actual browser. Considering how much I love the browser I can't wait to see the OS! Don't expect it on your PC just yet, though, just on netbooks. So, for the foreseeable future at least, it looks like Microsoft will still be top dog of the operating system pack with the added advantage of being able to watch its closest competitors loose more of their market share. The move will give Google not one but two flagship operating systems - both based on Linux - Android it's phone OS and the new Chrome OS. Obviously this has created a little tension between the companies, particularly for one Eric Schmidt who, before recently resigning from Apple, was on the board of both companies. Many believe this split will become an all-out war. Fake Steve Jobs doesn't seem that worried about it though, but I somehow imagine the real Steve Jobs is.

Whenever I mention the Big Three, I refer, of course, to Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, rather than Apple. However I may well have to change that because another major landmark in the IT world has been the announcement that Yahoo are getting out of the search business and from here on in anyone searching on Yahoo will actually just be searching a Yahoo branded version of Bing. How this is going to ultimately play out for webmasters like Yours Truly remains to be seen but somehow I still don't see Microsoft dominating the search market any time soon any more than I see Google dominating the operating system market. But still there seems to be a lot of changes in direction recently within the major companies. Old alliances are breaking down and new ones are being forged with some companies jostling for more room at the trough by entering new markets whilst others step aside and make way for them.

Interesting times indeed. And now that I've played catch-up with all the major external happenings let's now move on and allow me to tell you what we've been up to...

New Website: Virtual Assistant At Work

noreply@blogger.com (Brionglóid Media) — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 15:31:00 +0000

International Virtual Assistant Service

The foundation of any successful enterprise is a strong, reliable and organized administration. And behind every great executive is a trustworthy and reliable personal assistant. By outsourcing administrative tasks you not only save on utilities, materials and labor costs, but also gain a valuable employee with years of experience in international business administration, public relations and marketing.

Production 63 Promotions and Events - Ennis, Co. Clare

noreply@blogger.com (Brionglóid Media) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 08:18:00 +0000

Production 63 Promotions and Entertainment in Clare

Production 63 was established in March 2007 by Gerard Sweeney and Jacqueline Walshe. Based in Ennis, Co. Clare our objective was to facilitate live music and events Clare by conceiving ideas, creating opportunities and using our many contacts in the entertainment, corporate, media and other sectors. The provision of quality live events is the main driving force of Production 63 Event Management and in a short time we have earned a reputation for doing just that with past Production 63 Shows and Concerts.

Variety Concerts, presentation of single act performances, independent programmes, corporate workshops and conferences, are among the events undertaken to date and in the planning process at present.

Wilkinson Accountancy Services

noreply@blogger.com (Brionglóid Media) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 08:09:00 +0000

Wilkinson Accountancy Services located in Woodford, Co. Galway, is more than just an accountancy firm. Wilkinson Accountancy Services provide a range of other services including financial and business consultancy services. In an age of economic uncertainty, Wilkinson Accountancy Services continues to provide sound business advice for all Irish enterprises, with over 25 years experience of working in small, medium and blue-chip companies improving financial and management reporting, accounting procedures and processes, implementing internal controls, ensuring good corporate governance and raising finance.

Services include:

Financial and Management Reporting

Bookkeeping and Accountancy

Electronic systems

Business planning and strategic development

Internal controls and corporate governance

Do you remember the good ole days before the Ghostblog?

noreply@blogger.com (Brionglóid Media) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 07:38:00 +0000

Yeah, I know, I know. Haven't been anywhere near this blog in aeons.
Whole lotta stuff been goin' on lately which I'm not going to go into right now and also a few new websites and projects which I'll be announcing shortly. Most notably, perhaps, is that Briongloid.net is currently undergoing a refit, with a whole new look and new content. I'm also using Joomla this time, to make adding content faster and easier - but more on that later.

Anyways, to commemorate my negligence....

New Website for Irish Tea and Coffee Sales

noreply@blogger.com (Brionglóid Media) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:13:00 +0000

We are proud to announce the launch of Irish Tea and Coffee Supplies [Classic Tea and Coffee Company / Italian Coffee Company]

They are the approved agents for Lavazza coffee in Munster and supply coffee, tea and related products to bars, cafes, restaurants and bistros throughout the Midwest region.

They also sell a range of quality coffee machines from small office machines to larger cafe and catering models and also offer a coffee machine repair and maintenance service.

How to Get Rich Quick - This One Really Works!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Brionglóid Media) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 19:49:00 +0000

1. Buy lots of domains really cheap.

2. Set them all up as online banks.

3. Get billions from Brian Cowen!

Ireland is officially in recession.

noreply@blogger.com (Brionglóid Media) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:11:00 +0000

In other news, Ireland is officially an island and the world is officially not flat.

ffs like!

I'm a Chrome Dome.

noreply@blogger.com (Brionglóid Media) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 19:25:00 +0000

I'm writing this with a brand new browser, you've probably all heard about it, it's Google's new Chrome. Sure the logo looks eerily reminiscent of Simon and yes there are security issues but then let's remember that it is a beta. And let's also remember that it's greatest competitor is also a beta, and no I don't mean IE8 (and you all know what I think about IE8) I mean IE7, or any other version of IE, or anything else by Microsoft which are all beta products anyway. So I'll forgive that.

First impressions of Chrome are, that I find it fairly nippy and lighter. Firefox, my default browser, I find pretty heavy. It's like changing from a heavy saloon to a speedy sporty hatchback but I'll stop those analogies now before I start coming on all Jeremey Clarksonish. Also, the words "Jeremey Clarksonish" have been underlined (oddly enough it also seems to underline "Google" as a potential spelling error) but colour has not, because I've set this to UK English, and it's stayed that way, not like a certain company I could mention who seems bent on promoting American "English" as the de facto language of this planet.

Hopefully, in the full version, Google will satisfy my jingoism by also including Irish English and Gaelic, but then Google being Google I'm sure with the full release I'll be able to browse in Klingon if I were so inclined.

It's taking me time to get used to the layout. Especially if I right click, because I'm used to "open in new tab" being second from the top of the right click menu. The lack of buttonage at the top I also find really strange. I'm used to my dozens of buttons, plugins and toolbars. That, added to the security concerns, is the main reason why I won't be migrating from Firefox any time soon. And whilst I don't think it's going to take Google too long to arrange some great toolbars for Chrome, for the time being, at least, I'm just going to be messing around with it, rather than using it for serious browsing.

That said, whilst I don't see it replacing my default browser I could certainly see it bumping off my number two - Opera. At present I use Opera mainly because I find it faster and lighter. It's my "first thing in the morning" browser, where it's wonderful speed dial function means I can have my top five sites open in seperate tabs by the time Firefox 3 has loaded. Of course Chrome has something very similar.

On the whole, I have to say, that Chrome has got me more excited than IE8, and, I have to say, even more excited than Firefox 3. I like what I've seen so far, both in the options (though tbh it could do with a lot more of them) as well as how it renders websites.

The other big point for me was how rapidly I could install it and work away on it, no lengthy interrogation, no need to reboot, just a quick clickedy-click and away I go. The newer incarnations of IE, on the other hand, take bloat to whole new levels. And then there's the famous runonce page (run once - hah!) where you are prompted over and over to "tour" Internet Explorer and take the time (AAARRRGHHHHH!) to set up and tweak all the utterly innane and pointless features like its ridiculous phishing filter. Chrome also has an anti-phishing filter, but unlike IE's, which scores high on the Norton scale (when a useless piece of software or feature therein is a pain in the ass to disable/remove/uninstall I measure it in "Nortons") and is a pain to disable, Chrome's can be disabled with a simple click of a tickbox easily located in the "under the hood" tab.

So, the verdict. Chrome's not there yet, obviously, and has a fair way to go, but it certainly shows promise. I know a lot of people are also complaining about privacy and so forth, but hey, Google already read your email, they already know everyone's dirty little secrets, seriously, the browser won't make much of a difference at this stage. Where it might make a difference, however, is in the browser wars. Although, from what I've read about Chrome, this is just step one of Google's new plan (and no I don't mean Google's plan for a new Europe) I mean their plan to wean people away, not just from Internet Explorer, but also from Office, Windows and Microsoft in general.

And you know what, two years ago I'd have shuddered at the thought of a Google OS, but Windows Vista changed all that. For us geeks Vista was our 9/11. The world will never be the same after it. And I, for one, welcome our new Chrome-domed overlords and their new European World Order.

A Dirty Rotten Shame - Ronnie Drew RIP.

noreply@blogger.com (Brionglóid Media) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:09:00 +0000

I know I'm a bit late on this one but I just wanted to pay my respects to the late, great Ronnie Drew; a musical legend, a cultural icon, and an all-round true Irishman.

I was introduced to Ronnie and the Dubliners through my father, who's an enormous Ronnie fan, and who was also "raised up on Odlums and Brian Boru". So whilst I may not be of that generation myself, Ronnie was every bit as much a part of the musical landscape of my own childhood, as it was my dad's formative years.

As a child Ronnie was a fun character, he had that croaky, gravelly voice and he looked like Santa Claus. As I grew older, I began to appreciate his music on numerous different levels, the jolly singalong songs, or course, and the great ballads and folk songs, moments of Irish history and Irish lives, people and places and times which, like Ronnie himself, have since passed but shall forever be immortal.

Alongside Ronnie's music, there's the larger-than-life persona of Ronnie himself. That deep, raspy baritone, rare aul Dublin voice, the trademark Castro-esque beard, and a strong sense of social justice, both in Ireland and elsewhere, which permeated his music. No wonder, then, that he had become quite vocal about the new Ireland which he saw as far more materially orientated, and a sprawling anonymous Dublin which, he said, had lost its character and sense of humour.

Such a statement from any other Irish celebrity would have immediately spawned controversy, but then Ronnie was the voice of Dublin, and more so, the voice of generations of Irish men and women, a voice which shall echo through the ages.

So good man yerself Ronnie, hope you're doing well.
Rest assured I shall be mixing the barley and the grape in your honour.

Viva La Quinte Brigada - Performed by Ronnie Drew, written by Christy Moore.

Woah that's a lotta spam! - CNN fake news alert virus bombarding inboxes worldwide.

noreply@blogger.com (Brionglóid Media) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 11:20:00 +0000

Yes the Spamolympics officially have begun!

Seems all I'm doing these days is reporting on spam.
This latest one is masquerading as "CNN Alerts" and is hitting my Gmail spam folders at an alarming rate. It appears to be the same sort of video link spam-baiting that I mentioned earlier, this time focusing on the Olympics with lines such as "Beijing Olympics postponed indefinitely". (Oh if only it were true, it bores me to tears)

At any rate, here's some info on the CNN virus and more here from /.

Woah! Just got another one! Here's a pic:

Battle of the Browsers - Firefox 3 Vs Internet Explorer 8

noreply@blogger.com (Brionglóid Media) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:03:00 +0000

Right, I know there's probably a zillion blogs with posts like this by now but I thought I might as well make it a zillion and one and chime in with my own opinions on this.

Starting first with Firefox 3, well, let's be honest I'm not bothered with all those intensive acid tests and all that, I just want to know which is better and more enjoyable to use and those of you in the know already know which one that is but anyway...

First impression of Firefox 3? Wow that back button is ugly!
Seriously, I'm not a fan of the big fugly back button at all, but tbh, that's about the only thing I've got a problem with. Firefox 3 is just great. I love it, basically, because it's, well, it's Firefox. I got all my toolbars and stuff right back up and running during installation, and, with no muckin' about, went ahead and browsed in delight. Checked a number of pages, including a few of my own, and they all looked wonderful. Another thing I like about it is the new-look FTP browsing. So Firefox 3- very happy.

And so now we come from the swift and wily fox to the fat dumb Big Mac-eating lummox from Seattle. What you thought I was going to leave my prejudices aside for this? Not a bit of it! I'd been hearing for months about how IE8 was going to be standards compliant and a whole new direction for Microsoft and blah blah blah. And now, as I suspected it would be, that whole spiel is bollocks, and IE8, too, is absolute and utter bollocks.

First off, when I launched the thing, I had to go through the same 20 questions you have to go through with Internet Explorer 7. No I don't want to enable Windows Live whatever it says, no I don't want to enable your enhanced security claptrap, no I don't want to set my search to your lame-duck search engine or my default anything to any of your never-ending multitude of pointless services and I sure as hell don't want to make this overbloated, RAM-guzzling jalopy my default browser.

When I finally got going I decided, ok, lets just get a few sites up, so I started opening tabs. Unlike Firefox or Opera, though, when I opened the tabs I was given the now-standard "OMFG YOU'VE OPENED A TAB!" message. I'm used to just going Ctrl & T and then typing/pasting in URLs. But with IE I've to delete "About:tabs" from the address bar first, which is really annoying slows the whole thing up. Anyway, I soldiered on and opened up a few sites and I have to say it didn't look very standards compliant to me and still borked pages to beat the band. The way it rendered the fonts, I found, was very Safari-ish, very heavy, and, I found, hard on the eyes. It still had issues with spacing, breaks, headers, etc. and seemed to have serious issues with Javascript. When I went to view a page with an embedded Google Map, it rendered the map and then the map began to extend outward over the entire page. It was as though the browser was possessed. I decided to open another tab and search Google to see what the problem was and then, just before the results popped up, the entire thing collapsed in on itself. Send Error Report? No, I don't think so. I can't tell you how glad I am I used a guinea pig PC and not my main workstation.

Yeah, I know, IE8's a beta, but from what I've seen I'm far from impressed and, let's be honest, everything M$ release is a beta anyway. Hence the reason I'm still using Windows XP. And hence the reason I won't be touching IE8 with 10em bargepole.

No if you want to browse the web there's really one one undisputed King of Browsers and that's still Firefox by a long, LONG way.

VIAGRARMAMAGEDDON!!! - VIRUSES, SPAM, RUSSIAN M@FIA, IRANI@N MISSLES & CI@LIS

noreply@blogger.com (Brionglóid Media) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 10:49:00 +0000

In the latest bid to sell us crap, our hacker buddies in the Russian Mafia have come up with a new virus which is currently out-storming the storm worm

For those who don't remember, the Storm worm first came to prominence in January last year, in a variety of different guises. The original first began talking about an actual storm but then the headlines changed, some relating to things such as Iraq and others, and these were the ones I saw the most of, actually, were the "A friend/family member/admirer has sent you a postcard/greeting card/video/etc" variety. I remember, around springtime last year my Gmail account was getting dozens upon dozens of those a day, but, kudos to Gmail, every single one of them were sent to spam, do not pass go. Obviously, though, some other webmail clients weren't so lucky.

The mission of one of these emails is, to firstly propagate itself by infecting a machine and then making that machine send out more emails like itself, before moving onto phase two, which involves creating a botnet which, for all intents and purposes is a black marketplace for sending out the spam we all know and hate, generally relating to things like fake watches and pills of a penile nature.

There have been plenty of variants of storm and copycat viruses since then. And the latest salvo is a virus that propagates by using headline news, usually of a sensational manner. I mentioned, last week or so, the presidential porn spam I received, and indeed the presidential race is proving a lucrative source of headlines for the spammers, but even more outlandish are those which, among other things, are predicting a nuclear holocaust.

This new worm plays on fears of a second war in the Middle East with headlines such as US Army Invades Iran or Iran fires Missile at Israel. It reminds me of an old April Fools trick.

The bottom line of this is, if you get spam in your email and it has a sensationalist headline, whether it's about atomic Armageddon or Amy Winehouse (and tbh it's hard to know which is worse) or whatever it might be, whatever you do DON'T CLICK ON THE LINK!

Page Rank Junkies

noreply@blogger.com (Brionglóid Media) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:34:00 +0000

The other day I realised something - I'm nuts.

But I'm hardly the only one. To me, from my own vantage point from inside this home office that I seem to be leaving less and less this days, I can see that there are, in fact, two different types of people. The first are the ones who live in ignorant bliss and haven't the faintest idea what page rank is and the rest of us, with whom it has become an all-consuming obsession.

Why, for example, did I feel the need to run out and tell my girlfriend about the PR changes my sites have had, as though we should perhaps mark the occasion, maybe go out to a fine restaurant and propose a toast "to pagerank!"

What the hell is wrong with me? When did I start caring about page rank?
It used to be I'd stay out clubbing until 4am on a Saturday night, instead
of mindlessly pasting in URLs and squinting in despair at illegible spider-scrawl captchas.

Of course I'd probably be bragging if my sites had had any huge leap in PR since the last time, though they haven't, they've pretty much stayed pat, with newer ones picking up at around one or two. Not a great result, far less than what I was anticipating, though at least I haven't lost any.

If you log onto any web design or seo forum, though, you're bound to come across the hordes of angry, bitter people delivering fiery tirades at Google because the "high PR directory" they've been pushing has suddenly been reduced to zero. Not to mention all those who have spent way too much time, and possibly a fair bit of cash, submitting to bogus "high PR directories" then lost it all with the latest update.

Things like this will continue to happen so long as we all keep following the PR Rainbow. Google have the game rigged, lads. Otherwise we wouldn't need them.
It keeps us in the game, it keeps them in the game and it keeps this whole mess ticking over. In this ocean of information, mostly useless, which we call the internet, page rank is just a tidal force. It goes up, it goes down - c'est la vie - better to focus on long-term link strategies.

Not that I'm saying that PR does not have its uses, it does, but I think at times we forget that it's really a means of measurement. It's like obsessing over the pint glass, rather than the actual pint. Focus on the ends, not the means.

As I said in my last post I'd rather have no PR and lots of traffic than lots of PR and nobody reading, which is why I decided to change my blog to a Do Follow blog

When it comes to building links, slow and steady wins the race. Google are the first to tell you that and they're deliberately penalizing sites that use artificial means to build backlinks, what we call Blackhat SEO techniques and I would be very, very skeptical of people who say they can build lots of backlinks or boost your page rank fast. Maybe they can, indeed, do so, but at best your PR will plummet with the next update or, at the very worst, your site could even be penalized by Google.

As for me, myself, I'm slowly coming off the green bar. I no longer look to see if there's been an update every morning and I don't spend so much time checking and rechecking the iweb PR tool either.

It's a slow and very painful process, and I'm not entirely clean yet. I've been doing a lot of Yahoo lately, it's not as potent but the come-down isn't so harsh either, and on a bad day, if I feel I really badly need a fix, I get a hit from website grader, a very different feeling to PR, but it helps make the pain go away. I feel I should also admit that, in my weaker moments, I went on a brief alexa binge. I'm not proud of it but in my defence it was an isolated incident. On the whole I am getting better, I can feel it, some days are better than others obviously, but hopefully, with your support, dear readers, I'll get through this, one day at a time, until the day where I can say, without hesitation, that I am finally free of that Old Green Bar.

I Will Follow

noreply@blogger.com (Brionglóid Media) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 20:21:00 +0000

I've decided to remove "rel = "nofollow" tag to entice more people into making comments on here and to get more activity overall.

By default most blog services have the rel = nofollow tag on comments built in which tells search engines not to follow links there. So even when you type in your web address when posting and then your name shows up as a hyperlink to your site, it doesn't actually count for anything and you don't get any page rank.

In most cases, having this setup is desirable because otherwise all your hard-earned page rank would then be bled away by people making comments. Obviously this is something of an ideal situation for spammers, who not only get their filthy links but they also steal your page rank. Thankfully these can easily be filtered out with anti-spam plugins like Wordpress' Askimet.

A dofollow blog is also going to attract a second type of commenter like moths to a lightbulb, page rank junkies who go from one dofollow blog to another posting comments. I know this because I've done this myself, and will continue to do so, and advise any people who are interested in increasing their own page rank to do so. It's still a great SEO technique, which is not frowned upon, and is also a great way to network with other like-minded bloggers.

If you are looking for such blogs one thing you can do is look for dofollow blogs directories and also have a gander at Bumpzee's NoNoFollow community which has links to more directories.

Another great little trick I picked up, not so much blackhat, more like charcoal (sorry that's an obscure reference to a really old crap washing powder ad) hat is to do a google image search for "ifollow.gif" variants. Have a look at my own one, just above my about me section, he's "ifollowblue.gif", there's also a green, orange, pink, purple and ltgreen.

So, if having a dofollow blog sacrifices your page rank and leaves you moderating more and more posts and deleting more and more spam why would you ever want to do this? The answer is simple, I'd rather have traffic than page rank.

If you have a blog then, naturally, you are going to want as many people as you can to visit and read it. Odds are you've also got adsense and/or other affiliate advertising on it which you want to make money from. Or maybe you just feel like you have something to say but nobody even knows that you exist. SEO and linkbuilding is one thing, but it can consume a lot of time, submitting here, clicking there, typing in squiggly illegible captchas, hitting refresh, waiting, reading, writing articles, writing comments, looking at your Google Analytics for the fifth time that week and watching as, at last, people start to come in drips and drabs. What you need, therefore, is a fast way to get people to come to your site, you need a hook and that's where getting recognised as an Ifollow blogger comes in handy. It's like the flower and the bee, the flower needs to spread its pollen, so it offers nectar to the bees.

For Blogger blogs like mine, you can use this method. For Wordpress it's even more straightforward, you can use a dofollow plugin. If you'd prefer not to use a plugin (for whatever reason) then you can also do it manually.

I primarily use Blogger and Wordpress, so I'm not really familiar with other platforms (I'm currently rectifying this) but a quick Google will find the method for your own blogging platform.

Amyways, I'm going to leave you, for no real reason, with, the video to U2s "I Will Follow."

He Ain’t Heavy – He’s My Brother MFC-8440.

noreply@blogger.com (Brionglóid Media) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:16:00 +0000

Now I’m going to do something I’ve not done before on this blog, write a review. Actually, review isn’t quite the right word, because a review can sometimes be negative as well as positive, and there’s just no way I can say anything negative about my Brother.

I bought my Brother because I had worked in a computer shop for years with a friend and we both loved our Brother. It was a previous model to the 8440, I can’t remember which, and the only thing I can say bad about the 8440 is that the scanning quality wasn’t as good as that older model, which, unlike the 8440, scanned very high quality indeed. (That’s about the only bad thing I can say about the 8440, actually, the scan quality isn’t the best, but considering what it was designed for it doesn’t really need to be so I guess it's not such an issue)

I bought my 8440, when I set up my own shop, to be the workhorse, and after years of pumping out prints and photocopies, of scanning and faxing for myself and for the thousands of customers who had come through the place, day-in, day-out, non-stop, and it’s still going strong. Even with all the use I got a huge amount of printing out of just one toner cartridge, which is more than I can say about that piece of shit Konica Minolta which has become the bane of my existence. (Seriously, the only reason I don't throw my konica out the window is because I'd put my back out doing it)

The Brother's high capacity toner cartridge lasts me over a year, and even when it says you’re low, if you use toner save mode, you’ll get a good few months before you have to change it. I don’t have the ratings off the top of my head but you can look them up on Google, they’re good, really good.

For people running a SOHO operation, as I do now, a Brother MFC is the ideal machine. First of all it’s way cheaper than an inkjet and secondly its far more versatile. I see a lot of businesses using Dells or Lexmarks, seriously, instead of getting more toner or ink for them, chuck them in the bin where they belong and get one of these, you can thank me for it later.

As a photocopier it’s ideal, especially for offices who have a lot of copying to do but have neither the budget or the space for a large copier, unless you’re printing hundreds and hundreds of documents a day, this will do the job nicely. It’s also a great fax machine, pretty speedy too. Nothing worse than sending out faxes on an old, busted fax machine and waiting hours for them to come in. With the Brother you can either scan them on the flat bed or feed in as many pages as you like, it whips them through, no worries at all, and fires them off straight away, no waiting for hours like you do with some lower baud faxes.

Paper jams are relatively infrequent in comparison with other machines and tend to only happen with poor quality paper. Page curl is not a significant problem either. This is the sort of machine you can use as an office printer, shared off one machine, and still use to send faxes and photocopy at the same time.

It’s also light, very light in fact, and relatively small too. It really is a great little machine. And I honestly couldn't function without Brother multifunction.