Sunday snippets

KILKENNY -- It's a sunny Easter Sunday the morning after the Irish soccer team threw away easy points in Israel and many of the Irishblogs have taken a weekend away to enjoy a four-day short break. Some interesting stories are making their rounds today as I continue cleaning up my 4BR Kilkenny house for sale.

Legality of Iraq War. Tony Blair, the English Prime Minister, faces renewed pressure to justify the legality of going to war in Iraq. You just can't smack down a regime because you think there's something in their closets.

Weckler on broadband.  "Broadband will never be as cheap in Ireland as it is in other countries. Blame it on overstaffing in Eircom. Blame legacy networkds. Blame the capitalist shareholders-first system in which the largest telco operates."

Oh, Wolfie! Invade me like you did Iraq!" Reports in some British papers claim that Downing Street is furious about the nomination of Paul Wolfowitz to the World Bank, fearing his hardline attitude could alienate large sections of the international community.

Best text of the day. The impressionist's take on the folksonomy discussion between Clay Shirky, Stewart Butterfield, Joshua Schachter, and Jimmy Wales is the best text for time-pressured people to read today. Doctorow wrote it after his etech 2005 session.

Week's best Irish blog post. "Fear and loating in cyberspace" by Feargal McKay. Although Joe Bloggs in the Sunday Tribune gives the most inches to Jon Ihle and Backseat Drivers for his retort to Conor O'Clery's "lazy coverage of the Minnesota school shooting." Other media whores cited in the "Blogsphere" column include Slugger O'Toole (pick one of the postings with the maximum number of comments for the greatest entertainment value), "the outrageously acerbic Twenty Major, Marking Time, and Gerry O'Sullivan.

Blogs too wild for ad campaigns. In a page out of Sheila Averbuch's book, block buyers have told some group blogs that their content is too naughty for sponsors. Averbuch (nee McDonald) copped this years ago when setting up ElectricNews.net and that explains the house style that has sustained that online tech news channel for years--and resulted in it feeding both Yahoo and Google News.

Trusting Flickr. I have too many loose photos sitting around and have started scanning them at high resolution for storage on Flickr. While that probably decreases the value of my Flickr images, I've discovered I can reclaim the images onto Compact Flash card and print them at a local shop where they return to their original glory. I'm going to buy a magnifying glass and make a side-by-side comparison of the images because at arm's length, the resolution and sharpness looks the same. I'm using a mid-range HP ScanJet 3400C for the imaging. If I had a better flatbed, I wouldn't even try to make an analogue somparison.

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Ed Johnson -- "Blair faces renewed pressure over legality of the Iraq war"
Sharon Churcher -- "Will a British divorcee cost Wolfie his job?"
Adrian Weckler --"The great broadband rip-off" in the Sunday Business Post.
Jessica Mintz -- "Many advertisers find blogging frontier is still too wild"
Cory Doctorow -- "Folksonomy, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Mess"
Topgold is another of my Flickr identities.
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