Inside View from Ireland

Stealing baby ideas

TEMPLE BAR -- Based on the amount of press coverage surrounding the concept of "derivative works," Irish gallery visitors will see fewer piss-takes on original work. Xeni Jardin described how a "reality-TV human baby giveaway pissed-off Uri Geller." Geller alleges breach of trademark. Irish viewers won't see the ABC-TV program 20/20 when it airs "Be My Baby", a contest between five couples on the show, because that TV feed isn't part of any broadcast package in the Republic. As Jardin prepares her viewing schedule, she note, "the winners of the show get to adopt a real-live, pooping, crying baby." And the viewers get "a reality show with a human life on the line--all disguised as news programming."

Why not blog Mobhaile

CLONMEL -- An awareness of how to cultivate technology appears absent from the political platforms of candidates for European Parliament as well as from the dossiers of some Irish ministers. This troubling problem threatens the integrity of Information Society initiatives.

Note to Rosita Boland

IRISH TIMES -- In "Clothes Maketh the Profession," Rosita Boland resorts to a stereotype of "creative types -- artists, writers." She needs to visit the current members of the MA in Visual Arts Practices who meet several times each week in Temple Bar Gallery and Studios and to note how they personify 21st century fashion. She would quickly discard this so-wrong description:

Both sexes tend to favour long hair. Dreadlocks are out, but pony-tails enduringly popular. For women, skirts either flow to the ankles or stop not far below their navel--you will never find a woman arty type in a knee-length skirt. Men love weird T-shirts, with strang and pointless words on them, such as "Deep-frozen love," "Meat," and "Air Rocks."

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Rosita Boland -- "Cracking the work dress code" in The Irish Times Life Features, April 30, 2004.

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google.com/blog

GOOGLE -- "Test" is the single word that appears at Google.com/blog. This teaser appears on common derivatives of Google, such as www.googlr.com and www.466453.com (URLs we use to circumvent border management). But it does not appear in the SEC filing by Google.

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Fintan Friel -- "I have a test blog and now Google has one too. Plus they have my mail."
John Battelle -- "Now that the other shoe has dropped"
Chris Gulker -- "Search Google for the world's leading web search engine"
Amy Harmon -- "Is a do-gooder company a good thing?"
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Monetary contributions of Arts Groups

TEMPLE BAR -- We discuss the contribution of the arts to society every Friday in Studio 6 of Temple Bar Gallery and Studios. Part of the coffee chat today dealt with an econometric impact study released by the California Arts Council this week. The report looked at non-profit arts groups in Santa Clara County annually and documented that they generate $229.1 million in revenue, "through everything from ticket sales to money spent by employees on rent and groceries."

Irish Commission Red Cards E-voting

TECHNOCULTURE -- Karlin Lillington says, "the government's voting commission has ruled against using electronic voting machines at this time in Ireland. A surprise -- and a decision to be welcomed -- but certainly not what I was expecting. The reasoning is that while the machines seem to work fine, it has not been demonstrated definitely enough that they are secure and safe and reliable." I hope the government respects the judgment of the expert commission.

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Karlin Lillington -- "government voting commission"
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Blogging work activities

MOODLE -- One of the strongest acclamations that blogging can play a valuable role on the job comes through the use of a group blog in the work placement module for multimedia degree students in Tipperary Institute. All students, whether on industrial placement or those doing projects, fill out weekly logs and complete all monthly reports. These reports are first-hand evidence of learning on the job. We need to generate RSS feeds on them too.

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Tipperary Institute -- "Weekly Work Journals"
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eBay Wedding Dress

EBAY -- One of the coolest things about Wi-Fi in the Dublin airport is you can check your eBay items as you wait for your flights. We did this when traveling to Berlin. Bidding ended for SIZE 12 WEDDING DRESS/GOWN NO RESERVE, with absolutsth paying $3850 for the dress, worn "once for the wedding and once for these pictures." You have to see the pictures on the site. This wedding dress recorded more than 12.1m views en route to 113 bids.

The seller "found my ex-wife's wedding dress in the attic when I moved. She took the $4000 engagement ring but left the dress. I was actually going to have a dress burning party when the divorce became final, but my sister talked me out of it."

Shirtsleeve Mornings

KILKENNY -- The real part of summer has to be coming this weekend. I have bright yellow in two places in the back garden, a day-long backyard engineering project scheduled, and our afternoon high temperature (53F) is the same as my hometown's (Lancaster, Pennsylvania) low temperature. My Yahoo tells me these things so I know I can walk out without a jacket to greet the Irish morning.

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Biggest mistake

KILKENNY -- The biggest mistake I have made this month is failing to pull together a major meeting of Irish bloggers' meeting while Doc Searls was in Dublin. We've attracted 20 people on the hop before--but we worked the sessions on Saturdays when transport links did not have to be critically timed. Plus, I don't teach on Saturdays--students in Tipp resent their lecturers being sighted on blogs when they expect them to be in the classroom. So, as I start counting down the days until Doc's return to Ireland, I'm also looking at ways of ensuring his travels keep him in Ireland for an entire Saturday. We want to get a table that includes Cory Doctorow, Larry Lessig and Doc Searls for a Saturday afternoon in September 2004 during the Darklight Film Festival in Temple Bar.

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Doc Searls -- "Public Life"
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