Sunday Tribune on Irish Blogs
IN THE SUNDAY TRIBUNE, JOE BLOGGS covers items raised by Tom Raftery, Damien Mulley, Alan Connor, Twenty Major, and United Irelander. Excerpts follow.
Been Googleshamed Lately? Cork-based IT consultant Tom Raftery knows that revenge is a dish best served online after falling victim to a bad meal in Glengarriff, West Cork.
"I ordered fish and chips--not too much wrong you can do with that, I thought--wrong! The fish was completely tastleless and the chips were so greasy that even the ketchup I tried to put on the chips to disguise their greasy taste couldn't stick to the chips and kept sliding back off they were so greasy!"
Adding insult prior to injury, Raftery adds: "We were asked to pay for our meal after ordering it--i.e. before it was delivered to the table, we had to pay for it! They are obviously used to people refusing to pay because of the poor quality of the food.
A simple review, even in a national newspaper, could only do so much to make his point. So Raftery--whose IT consultancy helps companies get better Google rankings--is going one further. He's Google-shaming his tormentors.
What is Googleshaming? Damen Mulley explains: "The use of Google tricks like Googlebombing to associate embarrassing phrases with your Mark which result in the website appearing first in Google or using link phrases to mke your protest site appear in search results for your mark's site. An example would be the "more evil than Satan" Googlebomb of a few years ago which brought you to the Microsoft website".
Bottom line: do not mess with bloggers.
Give Peace A Hat-Tip. Irish blogs continue to serve as a much-needed home for scepticism after the IRA announcement last month.
On the BBC's webmagazine, Alan Connor offered a roundup of what Irish bloggers were writing in the wake of the IRA announcement.
Twenty Major, in his parody version of the IRA statement, got a mention: "We realise that the international support we've received, especially from America, is going to be hard to maintain when the world and his mother are affected and appalled by the terrorism being perpetrated by those Muslim lads."
Peace, Shmeese. Finally, if you're bored with all this peace talk you can count on bloggers to find new targets for their venom. Like You're a Star. United Irelander saves some bile for RTE (or as he calls it, Really Terrible Entertainment): "Much to my horror, I happened to catch a glimpse of the "You're a Star Charity Special" on RTE1. Call me cynical, but it seems to me this is just a clever ploy by RTE to use the high ratings this charity special will no doubt receive to argue that the show should be kept on for next year."
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