Alexia Blogs

Sick of Toejam photos? Good, because here’s one I took after the Toejam meet, running into Busy Feet and Coco for a hot chocolate before rushing home. The tend was happy to pose, after gentle prodding.

I just came back from Cork yesterday and even after that short trip, I’m convinced that it’s the perfect place to hold next year’s Irish Blog Awards. The city achieves the Bohemian charm of Galway without making you feel old as you’re not a student anymore. It has more soul than Dublin, the people walk like they talk, with a small lilt. Wry humour is an added bonus. I’ve always given Cork a bit of a hard time, but that’s only because I like it so much.

Cork really is the spiritual home of the Blog Awards. In some ways, its the Blogging Capital of Ireland. Even a quick look at the pantheon of technology bloggers showcases some of the best blogging talent at work today - Conor O’Neill, Pat Phelan, Damien Mulley, Sabrina Dent, Tom Raftery and Donncha O’Caoimh.

So, while the decision still has to be made, I think Cork is the perfect spot for the 2009 awards. It’s a great spot, but what does it have to offer the bloggers?

The Photobloggers

There are so many interesting nooks and crannies for Photowalkers to get lost in. I like street photography, so walking the quays would be nice. However, the city is just a short jump away from Cobh, Kinsale or even Ballycotton.

The Foodie Bloggers

Cork is bursting with some many nice eateries and places to buy quality produce that you’d weep for. Perhaps like the Photobloggers, the Foodie Bloggers would go on a Foodwalk. Break into a small groups, have lunch in different restaurants and write reviews on them. It would be nice to read different takes on the same restaurant. And a walk through the English market to end the day is a must. I won’t even mention O’Conaill’s tingly hot chocolate. No, I won’t.

The Rest of Us

There are so many hip bars, cafes and places to slum that it’s dizzying. For those out-of-towners, the city is small enough to walk comfortably. I also love the fact that there are tiny boutiques and objects d’arse stores alcoved off in the side streets. Places to get lost, only to discover funky jewelery and clothes.

I can’t wait. What do you think? And Corkonians, are there any cool, hidden gems for us to visit?

Photo owned by inyucho (cc)

And McCreevy’s at it again! The Irish Times this morning is reporting (paywall link) that the EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy said yesterday at a meeting hosted by the European Commission that “no sane, sensible person” would read the Lisbon Treaty and that he hadn’t either. The Referendum Commission’s consolidated information is apparently fine for people to read who value their sanity.

It’s extraordinary to note that while McCreevy describes people who read the Treaty from start to finish as insane, he still has the gall to go out canvassing in Kildare with the Taoiseach. Right, so you are convincing us to vote yes but you are publicly saying that you don’t know what you are voting for? Sane people apparently vote for things they don’t understand, the rest of the electorate are probably reading legislation in padded rooms.

Oh, and apparently a vote resulting in a Yes is just a formality. More From IT piece:

He [McCreevy] described the treaty as a “tidying up exercise” which might make it a harder sell for the Yes side. “There is not a big point that one can build a campaign around.”

How the hell can he say that the treaty is a formality, mere EU housekeeping when he has said he hasn’t read the text? Those pesky Terms and Conditions. I wonder does he get screwed when he signs agreements too, as it seems he doesn’t care for fine print.

Is there anything more powderkeg than a prominent voice of the European project patronising the electorate that hold the final yea or nay on the bill? Gaff McCreevy really has a deft touch. It’s something I miss about his isolated secondment out to Europe. More like the naughty boys corner. Maybe he’d do best to stay in the corner and count bricks.

I haven’t decided which way to vote yet, but I know I’m off this weekend to solidify my reputation as insane by reading the whole document and making up my own mind. Are you?

Photo owned by benleto (cc)

IO9 has a very interesting post describing the results of a survey it carried out on the occupations and aspirations of Doctor Who and Star Trek fans. It’s a brainstrobing read that compares and contrasts the paths the fans took in their lives. Doctor Who fans are unapologetic science nerds. Not a shocker, but it’s nice to see evidence, even in a small sample.

Accepting the computing/mathematics bias in the survey, it’s also nice to see that that a significant proportion of respondents aspire to work and do work in Visual & Performing Arts. Less than 10%, granted, but it’s still a healthy figure and something I didn’t expect to read. Nerds are born under the same sun and fantasy entertainment is a great leveler.

Photo owned by axel kramer (cc)
So, Youtube has just set up a new channel called ‘citizennews‘ dedicated to ‘highlighting some of the best news content on YouTube’. At first blush, I love the idea. Imagine standing in the rice riots of Vietnam, bearing witness to happenings world within hours. Isn’t that the what democratising the web is about? People-powered media.

Here’s the ‘citizennews’ editor, Olivia, introducing the service:

Viewers are encouraged to contact the ‘citizennews’ editor, highlighting videos they believe newsworthy, and the editorial process will sift out the videos of the moment. User-generated content and crowdsourcing for popularity, very Web 2.0. Editorial yea and nay, a bit old news don’t you think?

Perhaps ‘citizennews’ is a little like Frankenstein’s monster? Count the number of times ‘citizen journalism’ is inserted in the video. It’s nice, cheap way for Youtube and Google to source on the ground video from people in the thick of breaking news, circumventing the large news conglomerates. Cutting out the middle-man so to speak.

So Paper Nerds Inherit the Earth?

Youtubers aren’t interested in what the school paper nerds deem interesting, they like same kind of content that their friends are into. Let’s face it, slap any cool, ‘awesome’ intro you like onto a crowdsourced channel, the editorial voice is still that paper nerd for the average Youtuber. Going down this route would lead to a disconnect with the yoof viewership. They are the lifeblood of Youtube, the real viewers that Google/Youtube would love to serve ads to.

So, instead of adding editorial layers on videos, wouldn’t it be nice to think of video news laterally? It’s pretty obvious that Youtube’s citizen journalist experiment is going this way, anyway.

Meshing Your Video

Imagine this, I’m out and about town. By chance, I spy someone stencil spray-painting on the side of a building. I’m a big Banksy fan, this looks like something he’d do. I pull out my mobile phone and start videoing the event. I want my friends to see this video, because they’d get a kick out off seeing it live. I could be using an application like Qik (or maybe Android will have something similar) to stream video from my phone up to the Internet. Just to make sure that know what the clip is about, I add a description to my video “Looks like a Banksy”.

As my video is streaming on the web, a message is sent to my friends on different social networks telling them that I’m streaming live, giving them a link to view the video stream and my Banksy description. My video is tagged with the description and keywords I gave it. If they are offline when I stream, the link will redirect to my saved video.

Wouldn’t it also be nice if the video were peer-ranked too. My friends could rate the video and this number combined with the number of independent views outside my circle of friends would yield a popularity ranking. Perhaps they could swap, share and embed my video on their blogs. The more times it’s posted or shared, the more votes it gets.

Geotag the video with exact earth coordinates where it was taken and you have a distributed network of crowdsourced videos that editorialised by the public. A mesh of people-powered video. Make the most popular/recent/hot videos just icons on a map like Google Maps or Local Live and you have a simple, intuitive way to browse through those videos.

Agendas, Agendas

Agenda is, and always will be lock, stock and barrel of the news business be it sitting in the noisy presses or in binary. Youtube’s ‘citizennews’ or any other media outlet does this. Soliciting votes in a news channel may not uncover those hidden gem stories, but the most fitting way to sift through crowdsourced videos appears to be crowdsourcing thumbs ups too.

Some people will queue for anything, even the smell of a Gen2 iPhone another 2 weeks away.

Great piece on the Lisbon Treaty over at the Cedar Lounge.

I want this on a tshirt.

Helicopter firms weep salty tears over this.

What we already know… Data-mining siloed information is the future.

Reasons to attend conferences outside your sphere of knowledge. Self-explanatory, really, but useful nonetheless.

If this be the trend, why hasn’t Europe a lot more mules. Our petrol prices are * double * that of the average US price! Double! Average US gas price today is $3.88/gallon, in Ireland we average about $8/gallon. Bloody hell!

Liking the NY Times’ TimesMachine.

Grr..forgot to sneak in the unlabeled NSFW link for Sinéad. * writes on hand *

Who knew that dropping “fuckers” in the Dáil could be one the smartest yoof moves that Cowen could have done, a few wet weeks into his tenure as Taoiseach? “He’s not such a dryballs after all”.

Hmm. Deliberate? I don’t think so. Connecting with more young people than Ógra Fianna Fáil? Quite possibly. Now, what could Enda do to top this?