Inside View

Stupid Driving in Ireland 05C24384

VISITORS TO IRELAND should read about stupid driving in Ireland, such as that demonstrated by the white van registered as 05C24384 around 2200 on 6 May 2006. My Nokia N70--used by a passenger--caught its profile but did not register the overtaking event that merits this vehicle's inclusion in the "Stupid Photostream" of my Flickr account. Once there, the car often earns a permanent place in Google, such as the stupid Micra that hit my car while pulling into a parking spot. (For details, Google for 01TS1876 and read the rest of the story. Remember, it's the car doing the stupid driving.)  I am telling my American friends about stupid drivers and daft froggers on Irish roads before they encouter unexpected road hazards during their summer visits.

Suw Charman Wins Award for Best Conference Report

THREE GOLD STARS to Suw Charman for her double-barrelled constructive critique of WeMedia held recently in London. She says, "For a conference about the media and how it relates to the public, WeMedia missed tricks left, right and centre." Some snippets tell it all:

Web 2.0 Mashup List

I LIKE LISTS, especially ones like ProgrammableWeb which is the ultimate list of mashups, complete with graphs and stats analysis. It's like a Web 2.0 listing for Web 2.0 resources.

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via Richard McManus

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Forum for Kodak Tasers

Image via Wikipedia

THE LONG TAIL of this weblog amazes me because it seems to grow every month. Hundreds of concerned citizens interested in "the responsibility of protecting yourself, loved ones, and property" visit here to learn how to tinker with disposable cameras and converting disposable cameras into stun guns, stun gloves and stun vests. Although I don't offer stun gun schematics, my referrer logs suggest that I do. They also suggest that if I wanted to develop a loyal podcasting listenership, I'd include a "Stun Gun Moment" in every episode. As it is, several people every evening arrive, wade into the fray to "whine, bitch and complain about what freedoms they want and don't want" before leaving with ideas on where to buy the protection they think marks them as defenders of liberty and freedom. In Ireland, individual citizens can be excused for failing to engage with the call to protect personal property as passionately as Americans. In fact, I've received no request for stun gun schematics from anyone in Ireland and I have received only passing info about tasers on eBay. That may change the minute an Irish blogger is kicked to the ground in a street brawl outside a late-opening premises. Bloggers tend to be proactive about asserting their rights. I don't know if that translates into building a stun gun, however.

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Previously on IrishEyes -- "Build your own stun gun"

taser

Related articles

• Top 5 Coolest Tasers and Stun Guns (techeblog.com)
• McButt-in tasered at drive-thru (cnews.canoe.ca)

Web 2.0 in 1000 words

JOHN COLLINS provides a clear description of Web 2.0 to readers of The Irish times today. His smooth coverage of the topic should be essential reading for all thse involved with innovative Irish software companies.

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John Collins -- "Doing business in the Web 2.0 community" in the business section of The Irish Times, May 5, 2006.

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Speak Irish, Apply Online

THE EU NEEDS 30 Irish language translators to work at EU institutions next year. The translators earn €4000 monthly plus expenses plus pension plus expenses plus sick leave plus expenses. EU staffers who I know earn more in expenses than salary income during many months of the year. The closing date for applications is 8 June 2006 and applications must be made online at europa.eu.int/epso. When called for interview, applicants can claim expenses from the EU.

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via Jamie smyth.

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Facts about net censorship

REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS MARKED World Press Freedom Day with a 153-page report that cites several examples of how countries repress citizens online. The report also criticises Western firms for selling technology to repressive regimes to help them monitor what people do online. Governments have discovered it is relatively easy to monitor dissident thought online. Many censor blogs and jail commentators.

More Pull Than NYT

THE MOST-VIEWED obituary on IrishEyes is the one for Dennis Duggan, long-time NYC correspondent on Sam Smyth's Sunday Supplement. Today I discovered that one reason my comments about Dennis have such a global reach is because they are the top-ranked obit for Duggan on Google--at least from the perspective of the New York Times.

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Find "Dennis Duggan" using the New York Times search facility.

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Sell Your Place in Line

ONE OF THE measures of strength in the Irish economy is the length required to sell out of concert tickets. The healthier the economy, the faster the ticket sales. That bothers me a little because I know some people are heading to concerts and they have no interest in the artists on stage. They are going for the occasion alongside friends. Fair enough--but what if I had wanted to vote with my presence in the sales queue and assert my consumer rights as a ticket purchaser? Help is at hand with Seattle-based SuperOyster.com. They have a merchant service that allows people to sell their spot in the sales queue. Imagine how much more money a concert promoter could make by announcing the opening of the sales queue online, first come, first served. You could buy your way into the queue and sell along your place in the queue. This could work for World Cup tickets, All-Ireland sales, car dealerships taking limited bookings for new models, travel promotions and memberships to exclusive clubs. Having this system in place would greatly reduce the number of people sleeping outside travel shops and department stores that sell consumer items like the Play Station.

DOS Typepad

AROUND MIDNIGHT, Typepad access was down which affected top-of-the-morning service in Ireland. The problem occurred because Six Apart was the receiving end of a sophisticated distributed denial of service attack. This affected all of Six Apart's sites, causing intermittent and limited availability for TypePad, LiveJournal, TypeKey, sixapart.com, movabletype.org and movabletype.com. Although it was cleared up by mid-morning on 3 May 2006, Statcounter tells me that around 30 regular visitors didn't see IrishEyes. They would have been viewers from the west coast of the USA, Australia, Japan and China as well as some in Ireland who visit by clicking out of Irish Blogs.ie or Planet.Journals.ie. I appreciate the work Six Apart does to keep this site running, especially the anti-spam controls on the back end that ensure I never have more than a few spammers to vanquish for every 2000 visitors who stop by and read.