Inside View from Ireland

How Irish Times Could Improve Online Revenue

IF THE IRISH TIMES wanted to increase revenues through online advertising, it would open its archives to all comers. Keeping them hidden behind a paid registration system denies the newspaper known revenues, according to pundits Doc Searls and Amy Gahran. Their analysis follows the podcast show Future Tense episode in which E-Media Tidbits editor Steve Outing offered his ideas on voluntary registration for news sites -- in the form of registration requests (not demands) placed at the top of every article.

Get the special look

GET A SPECIAL look from people on the street because of what you wear. Here are some clothing items and venue suggestions that have delivered special looks I've seen while out and about:

The Lillington Extensions

KARLIN LILLINGTON takes a step back from hands-on blogging to explain succinctly how blogs are communication tools. Implement a blogging element on your website and you have a better site. Here are some things that arise from the suggestions made by Karlin Lillington in her Net Results column. I call them the "Lillington Extensions" and I believe they are exceptionally relevant for those in the process of upgrading their website:

Ryanairsucks could become illegal

A TROUBLING amendment has latched onto a trademark bill currently meandering through the US Congress, according to Paul Levy. Its authors claim the technical amendment protects branding but the end result amounts to "an insidious attack on free speech" according to readers of Politechbot.

One version of the new trademark dilution revision act (HR 683) has already passed the House, and a related version is under very active consideration in the Senate.

I bought a vibrator

I BOUGHT MY first mobile phone since 1999 and it's a SonyEricsson P910i. This is a rugged phone. I got it through below-wholesale haggling. It has returned the joy of gentle vibration to my shirt pocket. I didn't know I missed the sensation. With the Nokia 9500 now relegated to my camera bag for occasional free WiFi hotspot use, I have a pocket-sized smartphone good enough to create podcasts and vlogs for a new media project beckoning next month. The P910i is a dependable digital dictaphone and its scrolling thumbwheel make reading blog summaries a real joy.

Hillary Clinton Blogging Cancer

HILLARY CLINTON IS (guest) BLOGGING about cancer on Yahoo's health blogs. Her first post is attracting hundreds of comments (441 comments were up when I looked but I noted several flamebaits that were deleted from last weekend) and most comments are forthright. Hillary blogging is tantamount to Irish Minister for Health Mary Harney addressing a Labour Convention. It's remarkable that she's using this channel of communication and more remarkable that the maggot comments can be pruned before they distort the flow of cross-talk (which, unsurprisingly, careens down the path of politics more frequently than the discussion of health).

Pocket Movies Competition

WITH NOKIA sponsoring the 2005 Darklight Film Festival comes the Darklight Pocket Movies Challenge. It's open to all genres--including animation, documentary, drama, and comedy. Films must be under five minutes long and suitable for wireless delivery to the small screens of mobile phones. Think small screen, slim frame rate, and punchy delivery.

Community Video Current TV

CURRENT.TV demands watching. Its content shows how camcorders and cameraphones will result in unique stories. Robin Sloan, part of the Poynter group blog is working with some cool things at Current TV. In The New York Times, Alessandra Stanley favourably reviews the cable network.

Current ... lives up to its billing as a slick, commercial cable network that gives its audience a voice in the programming.... Outsiders' films are labeled VC2 (as in viewer contributed content squared) and are selected by viewers who looked at them on Current's web site and voted online for their favourites. Only a few of these so-called podcasts are truly distinguished, but they all have one thing going for them: they look nothing like the glossy, overpackaged and bottom-feeding fare found on MTV or VH1.

Battlefield glow

THE GLOW on a 21st-century battlefield is more likely to come from a laptop than a campfire. And some of those laptops have produced "the blogs of war" that John Hockenberry has profiled in the August 2005 Wired magazine. They deserve bookmarking because some of them are books in their own right. I'm trawling around them at the moment to see how the story of Cindy Sheehan is resonating among active duty bloggers of the US military. Here are my regular milblog reads that will inform my judgment:

When the water is too clean

"WHEN THE WATER is too clean, there is no fish", says the proverb. It may be a thought unheeded by Chinese internet censors--the ones who blocked all Typepad sites from view last summer. A reporter from the Nanfang Weekend invited Chinese internet censors to talk about their philosophy and the interview sneaks a peek inside the mind of the Chinese internet nanny.

Some interesting details: