Inside View

Search With Kevin. Win Valuable Prizes.

"EVERY TIME you search the web, you could win a valuable prize from Kevin Federline." Don't delay! Go to SearchWithKevin.com and you could win an 8x10 hand-signed glossy photo of Kevin just like I did. Then I can sell the valuable photo on eBay! It’s that simple. So it is.

The Yahoo-powered site features a photograph of Britney Spears’s estranged husband playing poker, smoking a cigarette and apparently enjoying some kind of brown liquor over ice. The company behind the site, Prodege, offers other prize such as Kevin's latest CD and a T-shirt with his bad-boy face.

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Dan Mitchell says Google isn't worried.

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Designer Working at Home

ROBYN OFFERS a takeaway pack that showcases her design work and it's a superb example of how a creative can make money while working at home. Attagirl, Robyn! I discovered Robin before No Doubt was opening for U2 in stadium gigs. Gwen Stefani was an over-sized background on one of Robyn's Movable Type templates. The entire package--Gwen, edgy blogging, photographs and template aesthetics--drew dozens of my multimedia students to the blog and started several students learning to appreciate the aesthetics of template design. The college students enjoyed thinking that Robyn was an illegal Irish woman hiding in Oklahoma. I told them there are no trees in Oklahoma because the wind blows all the time there and they understood. You can check out Robyn's shots with her Nikon D200 Digital SLR on Flickr, mixed among others taken with her D70 backup.

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Robyn O'Rourke Pollman's things tagged BB. The shutterblogger formerly known as Tampatantrum.

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Prestigio Net Drive Problem

WHILE I LIKE the look and build of the 250 GB Prestigio Net Drive, I don't like being unable to hook it up as a Net Drive right out of the box. Part of the problem is I have a ropey SOHO network, strung together to tweak a wireless signal to the neighbours. I was hoping that I would not have to put a proper router into the mix but it looks like if I expect the Net Drive to perform as a shared network asset with FTP capability, I will have to wire it to a separate piece of silicon. As it sits, it is not recognised as a network device so I'm forced to share it as a USB folder from the back of my laptop. That's not what I intended when I bought it for EUR 190 in a local shop. More below. Suggestions welcomed.

Bum Rush the Charts

SOMETHING WORTHWHILE: Bum Rush The Charts. If you buy Black Lab's "Mine Again" from the iTunes shop TODAY, a portion of the revenue goes into a college scholarship fund. Plus, you get a really good track. And there's a chance that the man will notice the citizen effort and respond with another record deal for the group. I've liked Black Lab's sound since hearing it in a Spiderman movie. Another track from Black Lab features in the sixth season of The Shield.

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Now, go to BlackLabWorld.com. Or contribute your voice and start at the Financial Aid Podcast. Then check out Black Lab on the Podsafe Music Network.
 

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No Pee Please

IF I COULD have just one sign for common areas in Ireland, it would be a "no pee pls" sign in city centres. You can find more signs telling dogs not to shit than signs that ask people to stay zipped. Not that either kind of target would read the signs.

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Network from Home

PENELOPE TRUNK offers another solid reason for working at home. You can effectively maintain a professional network from your sofa. In her financial news column, she describes "serious bloggers" as "professionals ... investing four hours a day on their blog because it's an incredibly effective and efficient networking tool."

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Penelope Trunk -- "Networking for people who hate networking" with more than 100 comments.

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Rock the Vote in Ireland

I LISTENED TO a pitch about Rock the Vote on Irish drivetime radio last night. The piece rang hollow for me right around the time the presenter dangled the connection between Rock the Vote and Cillian Murphy. It caused Suzie Byrne to dig around a little and she believes "that Rock the Vote have a few organisational problems--well more than a few." Some questions arising:

Is Cillian Murphy, resident in London, registered to vote in Ireland?

Is And Dara O’Briain, the other name dropped during The Last Word, working in Ireland during the run-up to the Irish election? As documented by Maman Poulet, Dara is working in England. That might mean he votes there too.

Mermaid Break to Copenhagen

LIKE SEVERAL OTHER Irish bloggers, I'm heading to Copenhagen for Reboot 9. This time, my stay in Denmark will include touching a mermaid and bag modding. I will have plenty of time for bag modding and bike riding because we don't care if the WiFi is weak at Reboot. I promise to return with Reboot photos and audio stories about mermaid sightings that regular readers have come to expect from this high-tech weblog. Tune back in at the end of May for more mermaid sightings. Better yet, subscribe to M. Alberich Mathews' photostream and enjoy real creativity in your browser.

Pay Per Action

NEW FOR ULTIMATE web interaction--a way to pay Google for actions visitors perform. Google's beta launch of its Pay-Per-Action (PPA) product rolls into AdWords.  You can pay Google more for AdWords that bring customers closer to transactions you designate. This remarkable leverage could skewer low-hanging affiliate networks. When Google does something with click-tracking, they do it well. For those true information architects using AdWords, this new Google programme could pay off handsomely. You need to use well-formed persuasion architecture and deliver a clickstream of readers who trust your information. For me to capitalise on this blog, I will need to rejig some categories. There's a semester-long training course in how to do this correctly currently under review by the Irish Higher Education Training and Awards Council. We expect to start running it at Tipperary Instititue during evenings from September 2007. The lecturers will be those who earn more than EUR 300 monthly from Google advertising campaigns alone.

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Google -- "Pay Google Only For Actions That You Define"
Andy Beal -- "Google AdWords Pay Per Action Launches"
Pat McCarthy -- "Jumping to Conclusions on Google's Pay Per Action"
Michele Neylon -- "Adsense to Offer CPA"

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MySpace Loses Some Coolness

YOU NEED WIDGETS to express yourself but MySpace (a place for friends, not for widgets) has taken away some of that personal expression. MySpace is not your space. New restrictions by the web's largest social network now mean you cannot use non-approved embedded widgets to display music, video, advertising or transactions. The News Corporation may be setting these restrictions to "ensure that it alone can commercially capitalize on its 90m visitors each month", according to Lisa Story in the New York Times. But no matter how you analyse these new restrictions, someone on MySpace now cannot design and promote as they wish. This has not gone down well with several high visibility MySpace pages. Blocking widgets dampens the social experience of MySpace. Many high visibility MySpace sites I visit are maintained by unabashedly independent personalities who would not like to camp out in a silo.