JOHN RYAN

Ryanair: How to get the media’s attention

John — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 08:38:02 +0000

No sitting down please

Ryanair’s marketing people are to be commended, this obviously hasn’t a leg to stand on (ahhhh a pun)

Ryanair Holdings may offer free flights to passengers willing to stand up during flights of less than 90 minutes, Sky News reported, citing chief executive Michael O’Leary.

Ryanair is asking Boeing about converting planes or delivering a new fleet with a section of “vertical seating”’ that would allow passengers to stand or to sit on bar stools similar to those in trains’ dining cars, Sky reported Mr O’Leary as saying in an interview.

Mr O’Leary said he got the idea from a similar concept that China’s Spring Airlines is reportedly looking at, Sky News said, adding that the airline said any move would have to be approved by the Irish Aviation Authority.

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Twitter: Do you tweet celebrities?

John — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 11:29:31 +0000

I expanded the list of people I follow on twitter lately, not being as strict about who I followed as before. I mean twitter can help you expand your social networking from the usual blogger types and tech nerds of the internet. But there is another – well established class of people using twitter, they hail from a land ‘Far Far Away’, aka the land of celebrities, who have invaded twitter in the past year or so. And where there are celebrities there will be hangers on!

What I have noticed is there is a large about of people sending tweets to celebrities, fruitless tweets that are never answered or acknowledged. In the celebrities defence they often have thousands of followers so how could they answers every one.

Even worse I noticed people having one ended conversations with celebrities. Twitter is all about joining in the conversation, but is there a point of constantly tweeting celebrities when they never answer?

Without debating the reasoning behind this utter madness, I give you today’s poll.

Do you Tweet Celebrities?

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Remembering: Are You Being Served?

John — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:17:11 +0000

Mollie Sugden & Wendy Richard

Source

Remembering

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Wordpress advertising plugin – OIO Publisher

John — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:44:58 +0000

Money off voucher for OIO Published

If anyone is interested in a really great advertising system which can be fully integrated with wordpress, or used on its own, will handle payments and would like it for a discounted price. Read on…

I have been offered 8 USD off the retail price for OIO Publisher for anyone who wishes to use it.I have used OIO Publisher before on my Mobile Phone blog, with success, and I got a good few advertisers using it, it has a paypal module so it can also manage payments.

I wrote some info on this product below:

OIP Publisher allows you to organise and manage all your advertising requirements from one central location. If you use wordpress, great, you can manage OIO Publisher from the admin panel. If you do not use wordpress, it also works as a stand alone product!

Why use it?

You can sell ad space on your blog or website using OIO Publisher or even use it to manage digital sales. The process of selling ad space, inserting the adverts, and processing the payments is all managed by OIO Publisher.

Visitors to your website can place adverts directly on your website or blog using OIO Publisher, make a payment and their advert can go live instantly, or if you prefer you can approve them first!

You can use as many ad sizes as you wish, and it even works with google AdSense! Got more than one website? No problem, you can use this across all your websites.

If you have not sold any ad space, you can configure OIO Publisher to instead show a banner until the space is ready to be sold.

The most recent edition of OIO Publisher also has a built in theme system. This means your customers get a nice designed system in which to purchase adverts and make payments on the OIO system.

Sorry, I have been unable to find a down side to OIO Publisher, managing your own ad system gets rid of the middle man, meaning the profits are all yours. The price is not bad at all at 47 USD, I can also offer a 8 USD discount to johnmryan.com readers for the month of July 2009.

If you are interested in OIO Publisher click here, and if it is still July 2009, please use the following discount code! Quote “RAINMAN-JOHNRYAN” for your discount.

OIO PUBLISHER

install OIOpublisher as a Wordpress plugin or a standalone platform

sell all forms of text ads, banner ads, and paid reviews

custom purchases also allow you to sell digital products

display ads on any website you like using php or javascript

installation is simple using the web installer, no more manual file uploading

entirely automated, all ad purchases and expiration’s handled automatically

click and impression tracking, plus weekly ad reports emailed to advertisers

If you want to use this offer click here

Please note the discount is only valid for the month of July 2009

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iPhone 3Gs review

John — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:00:06 +0000

iPhone 3Gs

O2 Ireland recently launched the new iPhone 3Gs (and no… I did not get one), I have to say some of the changes to the hardware and software – version 3.0 – are an exciting step forward for the device.

However I really was expecting something special this year in terms of device design. But Apple like to take it slow.

It is no secret that the success of the iPhone is down to excellent touch screen which is unique to the iPhone. However, features which have been on mobile devices for years now are only now happening on the iPhone, and yet it is selling very well indeed. There have been many missing features users expect from their mobile device. Take for example MMS which is has only recently been officially supported on the iPhone.

Recent updates has meant the iPhone is getting closer to having a backpack full of features to keep every geek and business person connected to their virtual lives.

What is new, under the hood? There is of course the much needed better ram , graphics and more, let us boil all that hu-ha down and say the ’s’ in iPhone3Gs means SPEED, the iPhone 3Gs is a much faster creature. In terms of extra features, below is what has peaked my interest, if I miss anything that has you excited please add your comment, and I will try and keep the list of features updated.

Push Notifications

Push Notifications

Push notifications are used by applications to alert you of new information, even when the application isn’t running.

What was requested for a long time on the iPhone was the ability to run applications in the background on the iPhone. For those of us with no idea what this means, allow me to explain, when you close a 3rd party application on the iPhone, it is closed completely, so say for example some sends you an IM message, you will not know about it until you reopen the application again.And while you still cannot run background applications because it would slow down the device (apparently). Apple have invented push notifications for the iPhone which is the next best thing (again apparently).

What this really means is that, for example even if you exit an application you can still receive notifications when you get an update or a message for that application. You can then relaunch that application and view the message. As per the image, the notification can be a small message or a number badge showing the number of updates for the application; it may also be an alert sound to draw you attention to an update.

Camera

iPhone 3Gs Camera

The new 3-megapixel camera takes great still photos, too, thanks to built-in autofocus and a handy new feature that lets you tap the display to focus on anything (or anyone) you want.

Everyone is excited about this 3-mega-pixel…

If you want to take a great photo then use a camera, but you won’t always have your camera with you when a great shot comes your way, and chances are you will have your iPhone 3Gs clutched in your right hand.

Until now using the iPhone to capture any moment was pretty pointless due to the awful picture it would take. So Apple in there infinite wisdom have tweaked the iPhone to make it an almost useful camera substitute.

Basically the camera on the 3Gs is a 3-mega pixel auto-focus camera. Meaning you can now focus on subjects simply by tapping them on the screen. More interesting than all this is you can now use the camera to take and edit video footage. You can then forward this directly to youtube… not bad really! This will do doubt increase the popularity of this device no end!

Copy & erm.. Paste?

Cut, copy, and paste words and photos, even between applications. Copy and paste images and content from the web, too.

It is interesting that it has taken this long for a simple function like copy and paste to make it to the iPhone, but apparently it required allot of time…
For me that is the most interesting elements that comes with the new iPhone 3Gs device, but if you would like to discuss the iPhone 3Gs head to this website for a discussion.

For accuracy purposes here are the specs of the device.
iphone 3Gs Specs

Improved performance

3-megapixel autofocus camera

Video recording

Voice Control

Digital compass

Cut, Copy & Paste

MMS

Spotlight Search

Landscape keyboard

Voice Memos

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John’s Tweets on 2009-06-28

John — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 23:00:00 +0000

too much wordpress gives me a headache #
@Juliet17101 in bed right now knackered ! ur up late in reply to Juliet17101 #
@Juliet17101 lol i'd say he still has them somehow LOL in reply to Juliet17101 #
@barryryan sorry missed ur tweet i installed the OS in the end, but having trouble with some connections in reply to barryryan #
http://squurl.com/661ca/ hummm #
@barryryan yea it feels like ur wasting money, but it does go down after a while… thats why God invented Credit Unions… in reply to barryryan #
@PixieVonDust so you need to deauthorise one before you can authorise another, I think, iTunes now sells DRM free musicto avoid this I think in reply to PixieVonDust #
@problogger erm.. no… in reply to problogger #
@PixieVonDust http://squurl.com/c4883/ This should help #
@PixieVonDust you mean you have authorised your music for that PC?I think you can authorise your music for a certain amount of pc's 5 is it? in reply to PixieVonDust #
@barryryan – yea car insurace starts out like that when ur starting to drive, shop around, try Quinn Direct in reply to barryryan #
@barryryan yea I miss scheduled it oops! in reply to barryryan #
http://squurl.com/97b2f/ bye bye Setanta #

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What happened when Hitler got 3 Mobile broadband!

John — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:39:35 +0000

This had me in stitches, he has a point thought – Broadband my arse!

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Dear Wordpress – Thank you!

John — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:00:53 +0000

I remember a good few months back an Irish blogger wrote about an Irish airline and a glitch he found on their website, some of the comments in relation to this particular post on his website were discovered to be from the Irish airline staff themselves and they had – shall we say some negative comments to make.

What shocked me most about this incident was one of these comments criticised the blogger for using the wordpress blogging platform which was running his website, using some phrasing along the lines that it was amateurish.

Perhaps it is an irrelevant comment by a person who was making the comment out of anger and ignorance, but I thought to myself, name something better? Seriously! Describe to me blog management software that is flexible, adoptable, user friendly – used by millions from the likes of myself to British billionaires and Prime Ministers, and did I mention that all this is FREE!

Thank you – wordpress people, for bringing information to millions of people and providing the authors of this information with a wonderful platform for doing this!

Despite my wonderful words of gratitude in the above statement, I decided to shoot myself in the foot and try another platform. Mostly so I had a relevant basis of comparison for this post, and because I am geeky like that, ok the geeky thing was the main reason…

Having installed Movable Type blogging platform last week on my server, which I did also use 5-6 years ago and had terrible problems with rebuilding posts and such, I found myself lost – back to wordpress it was. I came at it with an open mind, but could not find any reason to switch platforms, for me it offered no wow factor which would make me interested in using it.

I am not going to make this a post about which platform is better – of course this is a huge can of worms and a preference for the individual, but rather I am going to briefly outline why wordpress is the blogging platform of choice for so many people!

From the one click install technique, (and yes I know you need to set up the SQL database and config file first, but after you ace that – you’re well on the way), to easy to install plugins and themes, your blog is ready for its content. So perfect for any beginner who wants a self hosted solution.

To boil all the features down into one short paragraph, you can make wordpress into your own baby.

The design and features you can use are endless, and the amount of people on hand that offer their services when you can’t figure it out is endless* (* sometimes at a price – like anything else), the amount of free designs and plugins to extend functionality that is on offer is so great you really don’t have to splash out on often expensive designs if you don’t want to or cant afford it. I wrote a post outlining some great plugins which compliment your installation greatly, you can find it here. Having mentioned support I being to think of a somewhat negative point, there has to be one, right?

Support! Wordpress should offer a support package, which would undoubtedly be in great demand. I understand wordpress does offer premium services on there hosted wordpress.com site, but for self hosted blogs paid support would be great.

To have someone on hand when something goes wrong, or when you have been trying to get something right for hours and it is just not working. Wordpress does offer support forums, which are of course not the same as dedicated support, don’t get me wrong there are some great people on wordpress willing to help, but a paid support service, would mean dedicated and fast responses where required.

Wordpress is easy to use, and it continues to evolve with the internet into a simple but extendable blogging platform. Dear Wordpress – Thank you!

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‘Need a Laugh Monday!’

John — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 11:51:24 +0000

We all need a good laugh of a Monday! Jokes Supplied by my other website Funn.ie

hee! hee!

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How to send emails securely on gmail

John — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 23:22:43 +0000

Did you know by default Gmail does not send e-mails over https , although, it does of course use it to log you on to the system.

But you can turn this on, here’s how you do it.

1. Click on settings at the top of your Gmail inbox.

2. Under the general tab scroll to the bottom of the screen to browser connection options.

3. Select https, and click on save.

4. Did it work? You should now always see https in your URL bar!

I know this is simple but you can now securely send emails!

Wordpress 2.7 – Whats to come?

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Broadband in Ireland – UPC need a kick up the arse!

John — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:56:24 +0000

Expensive broadband in Ireland

UPC Broadband was great, but for the last 2-3 months it has been on and off for me, so after 4 engineers and 10+ calls, I cancelled it in a a fit of despair today.

I was paying them for 20MB at 48 euro, and getting 2-3 MB when it worked over the past 2 months before that I was getting great speeds in fairness to the company, and as I had friends using it also, it was a good deal!

It seemed like UPC could just not give me an answer as to why it was no longer working. I did however get a ‘pick and mix’ of ‘answers’ such as: the modem not working (it was), congestion on the line, the line is being repaired today, there are too many users in your block of flats, one engineer told me they were waiting on planning permission to repair a line, one told me they were replacing those lines – the day after it was working again, the day after that it went down again. Two promised to call me back ,and never did, although one guy did when I asked for his name when logging the call. The automated callback guy called me (as they normally do to confirm an appointment, a great service really – if used correctly) and said, “I understand your issue has been resolved, is this correct”…??? NO!

Little did I realise, when I cancelled UPC how expensive broadband DSL still is today. All the adverts made me believe that it was now inexpensive. But when you remove all the addons (or bundles), add the VAT, and throw on the line rental you are left with the real prices.

I am willing to spend 40-45 max on DSL broadband (I don’t have cable TV anymore -so I need a good connection for on demand and youtube). And I am not interested in land-line calls, a mobile phone is more than enough for me there.

After calling eircom to connect the line (25 a month – unless you select a package, and until you move to your broadband provider). I am left with these options, when I stay in the 40 euro area and remove anything to do with making a landline phone call.

Smart Telecom – 5 MB for 41 euro
Eircom – 1MB for 45 euro
Digiweb: 7MB for 40 euro. (Activation Fee€49.95)

* All prices include line rental i’m told.

Digiweb a possible winner?

Ideas & suggestions welcome, as it will take Eircom until July 3rd to turn on the line!

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Puppy survives being trapped in waste pipe after flushed down loo – video

John — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 10:15:16 +0000

Love this

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The New iPhone is called

John — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:56:13 +0000

3Gs….

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Dolly – Words Of Wisdom

John — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 23:34:25 +0000

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Funny Friday with Funn.ie

John — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:01:43 +0000

hee! hee!

Here you all are – something to laugh at, it’s Friday and here is some good jokes/pictures – supplied by http://funn.ie

Funny Friday is powered by Funn.ie - Irish jokes website, submit yours today!

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Bing – Microsoft Search goes live!

John — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:23:55 +0000

We have Bing Off…

We all know Microsoft wants to be Google, it wants to be Google really bad!. Bing.com is a real effort by Microsoft’s search engine people – an effort to be seen as an reliable alternative (wannabe replacement) to Google’s search engine.

Will people be saying “Bing it” instead of “Google it” unlikely, but it is nice to think that someone is trying to give Google a run for their money.

It still needs some work, and is by no means a finished product. I do find it funny that when you search for bing on bing.com the results do not include Bing.com website! But when you search for google on google.com – you know where I am going with this…. right?

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Catholic Church in Ireland

John — Wed, 27 May 2009 20:15:45 +0000

It is my belief that every time someone does a google search for Catholic Church in Ireland, the abuse report should be front and centre. The Church itself has worked long and hard to bury the atrocities they committed. (From Damien)

This kind of activity does lead to misinformation. Anyway u’d have to be hiding under a rock not to know whats been going on, which makes the whole idea kinda redundant, if not well indented, however it can’t do any damage I suppose! (My comment)

I thought this was a bad idea, but I guess I got it wrong. I have just watched this video and thought to myself – How I can I give a shit about google searches.

Catholic Church in Ireland - I am linking with this phrasing to keep this report high up on Google.

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Grats to Big Bren

John — Thu, 21 May 2009 12:01:13 +0000

Manchester Great Run 2009

My brother took part (again) in the Manchester Great Run, he ran once again for a charity and raised a nice bit of dosh for them. Grats! And I promise to take part some time in the near future. Pics are here (You need to be logged into Flickr and one of my flickr friends to view some of the pictures).

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Watch This: The Dancing Parrot!

John — Thu, 07 May 2009 13:33:24 +0000

Not so sure about his taste in music, put this little guy can dance!

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Today on John’s Twitter (2009-05-05)

John — Wed, 06 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Chinese stir fry night 18:24:00
RT @lexia: naps are God’s way of hugging you 20:46:42
just watching the Meaning of Life on RTE Player – check it out 23:29:03

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