Colin Cooney's Meanderings

Nokia's New Teaser Campaign - jadesphone.com

2008-10-12T12:33:00.007+01:00

I was watching the tv earlier and although I try to never watch the ads, I ended up catching a well-worked teaser ad from Nokia. At the end, it directs you to Jadesphone.com to see more. The whole premise of the ad is that if you found someone else's phone, would you look through it, knowing that it may contain texts, pictures, audio or videos that are personal to the owner?

The question certainly peaked my interest, so much so that I visited the site straight after. The tagline that "my phone knows everything about me" has some truth in it, as the mobile phone is now something we carry with us 24 hours a day and is never turned off. Obviously, it will hold information that is highly personalised to us and as the functionality and storage increases, the more of this information there will be.

The site promises to unveil something on October 13, at 5pm, so I'll just have to tune back in then to see what it is. As the phone just looks like the Nokia 7610, it must be an additional feature, like better gaming, additional security or another new service. Why would an existing phone need to be "unlocked" anyway?

Little Boots - Wearing My Rolex

2008-08-18T14:33:00.005+01:00

Found this version of Wiley's - Wearing My Rolex and thought it was great. I had already downloaded the original so it was interesting to see this version. When I logged onto the Little Boots website, there's a splash page and then it prompts you to enter your email address. This is so she can send you a free mp3 download of her latest track. No other info is available on the site. Great idea.

The Road to Triathlon - July's Sport Totals

2008-08-13T13:00:00.004+01:00

June was a write-off with my shoulder injury and being away in China and France. I did do some stair running (tough going!) in China in the 34 story building I was staying in, but that just about kept the food off. Only properly started back the second week in July, so the totals aren't too bad, all things considered.

The totals for the month of July were:

* Bike: 300 KM (up 61km on May)
* Run: 55 KM (down 4km)
* Swim: 2300 Metres (down 11400m)
* Soccer: 3hrs (up 2hrs)
* Golf: 9hrs (up 5hrs)
* Mountaineering: 6hrs

August has already started better and looking forward to the Carlingford Olympic Triathlon on August 30th, 2008.

Realistic iPhone3 3G Commercial

2008-07-31T10:36:00.002+01:00

This guy called Enda Crowley giving his take on the new iPhone 3G ad. Probably a little more realistic.

Banksy - Graffiti Artist

2008-07-16T16:19:00.011+01:00

Found this guy's site when I was reading another blog this morning and was really impressed. It showcases an english graffiti artist's work around his local Bristol and beyond. It is very clever and creative stuff. Here's a few pics to give you a taste of the work the guy does but you can see it all at Banksy.co.uk.

I found this quote by him and thought it was insightful in terms of graduates today.

"The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little". — Banksy

This one to the right was painted on the wall of an STD clinic in Bristol. Through popular demand, the City Council have left it there. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an RSS feed on his site so I will have to keep checking back for more updates.

Download Firefox on June 17th to break Guinness World Record

2008-06-17T11:20:00.003+01:00

Version 3 of the Mozilla Firefox web browser will be released here on June 17th, 2008. The company are trying to break the Guinness world record for the amount of software downloaded in one day. One of the new features is automatic warnings when you arrive at a webpage page which has malicious code. So as well as being even more secure, it will be interesting to see which sites are actually giving you all that junk spyware. It's also meant to be faster, more customisable and have a better bookmarking / toolbar system.

As I'm over in China at the moment, I have to wait till June 18th before I can start my download.

The Road to Triathlon - May's Sport Totals

2008-06-16T09:25:00.002+01:00

The totals for the month of May were:

* Bike: 239KM (up 150km)
* Run: 59 KM (up 29km)
* Swim: 13700 Metres (up 10500m)
* Soccer: 1h (down 1hr 45mins)
* Gaelic Football: 10h 10mins (up 35mins)
* Golf: 4hrs (down 4hrs)

Great month's training including a Bobby Behan weekend, Final Sprint Triathlon and TriAthy. Since then, I dislocated my shoulder playing gaelic football so I've been out of action since June 5th.

The Road to Triathlon - April's Sport Totals

2008-05-08T11:31:00.003+01:00

The totals for the month of April were:

Bike: 89 KM
Run: 30 KM
Swim: 3200 Metres
Soccer: 2h 45mins
Gaelic Football: 9h 35mins
Golf: 8hrs
Surfing: 1h 30mins

Another bad month...enough said. I've started May much better, so hopefully I can crank up the volume in time for TriAthy.

The Road to Triathlon - March's Sport Totals

2008-04-07T18:53:00.006+01:00

The totals for the month of March were:

Bike: 111 KM (Down 16km on February)
Run: 50 KM (Down 16km)
Swim: 6743 Metres (Up 1193km)
Mountaineering: 3hrs (Down 1 hour)
Soccer: 2hrs (Down 45mins)
Gaelic Football: 11h 35mins (Up 9h 20mins)
Golf: 7h 15mins

I was meant to be increasing the training this month but it all went a bit wrong. Most totals were down on February's and so far April is not looking much better. Getting worried as I have to swim one mile in a river in about 6 weeks time in TriAthy.

Securing a Belkin Wireless Network (belkin54g)

2008-04-02T15:15:00.009+01:00

After preaching about security recently to a group of students, they pointed out that I still haven't secured the wireless network in my house. The irony of it all eh. I decided to see how many of my neighbours could connect to my network. Off I went out the front door with the laptop on a field trip. Turns out that only about five or six houses could sniff out the network...as well as passing traffic. Is that bad???

Anyway, in case anybody else is wondering how to secure a Belkin Wireless G Plus Router. You type in the URL http://192.168.2.1 into your web browser. On the Wireless section on the left hand side, click on the Security button. There are a few security options here but the simplest is to select WPA and type in a password of your choice. After that, the router will reboot and from then on if any new user wishes to use your network, they will be prompted to enter the password.

The Road to Triathlon - February's Sport Totals

2008-03-15T00:46:00.010Z

The totals for the month of February were:
      Bike: 127 KM
      Run: 75 KM
      Swim: 4750 Metres
      Strength: 4h 35mins
      Gaelic Football: 2h 15mins
      Mountaineering: 4hrs
      Rowing: 1mins
      Soccer: 2h 45mins

Need to do more but don't have a whole lot of motivation for long lonely runs and solitary cycles. Must get myself a training partner.

MacBook Air - Slam Dunk or Air Ball?

2008-03-14T12:37:00.018Z

I have in my possession the new Apple MacBook Air, "the world's thinnest notebook". Now I don't own it, I am merely sending it back to the manufacturers to be repaired as my cousin, the owner, is out of the country. He bought it in LA this week and when he was registering in the airport it stopped working...not a great start.

So a quick non-techie opinion on the pro's and con's of this much-vaunted MacBook Air are:

Pro's

It's super thin - really this machine is as thin as you could ever imagine a laptop being. Although I'm sure it won't be long before it is surpassed, probably by another Apple.
Looks very cool - which make you look cool by default
Powerful machine -2GB DDR SDRAM, 1.6GHz or 1.8GHz processor
Adequate screen size - 13.3inch is plenty big for the average mobile user
Keyboard lights up when its dark
Extremely portable - the thing almost fits in an A4 envelope

Cons

80 Gig hard drive - not that big these days so it wouldn't be long before you'd need an external drive or desktop to store your music, video and other multimedia.
Limited connectivity - no ethernet connection to connect to LAN, with a wire. Have to get an adapter if you want to connect to one.
No optical drive - i.e. no CD or DVD drive. If you want one you can pay extra and get an external drive, but this is Apple specific so it won't work with any other brand of PC or laptop.
Only 1 USB port - could be messy if you wanted to use a memory stick and a mouse and maybe connect to a printer etc etc. You could always carry around a usb hub, but then you're starting to look like a pack horse and ultimately reducing its portability.
Can't customise it while purchasing to add or remove capability, the way you could with say a Dell laptop.
No connection for a projector - you'd have to pay extra for another adapter. See above!
Relatively expensive - pound for pound or euro for euro it works out more expensive than others in the same range. Then again Macs usually are. You can get your hands on one for about £1150 or my cousin got his for about $1800...better value especially with the weak dollar.

Will any of these cons turn off an Apple user from going out and buying one...absolutely not. They're in the Apple cult and in fairness if I had a few quid to spare I'd probably get one too. It was great showing it off in college over the last few days.

North / South Conference in DkIT

2008-02-11T18:23:00.000Z

Dundalk Institute of Technology (DkIT) hosted a major North/South Conference last week, where members of the Irish Government and the Northern Ireland Executive held talks on a wide range of issues, from the future of the peace process to commercial relations between the two states. It was significant for the town of Dundalk and especially the college as it is the first such gathering to be held in the Republic outside of Dublin.

The front of the college was closed off to college staff and students unless you got your hands on one of the exclusive security badges. It was a great opportunity to showcase the college, and in particular for the Event Management, Hospitality and Professional Cookery students who prepared, organised and cooked at the event. Apparently, it was a great success.

Have a look at the clip on RTÉ at http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0207/northpolitics.html. Click on the little icon of the camera beside the word 'Thursday' under the main heading to see the video. You also need to have Real Player installed, which really annoys me. Why don't RTÉ just embed their videos on the relevant page?

The Road to Triathlon - January's Sport Totals

2008-02-09T00:48:00.001Z

Aiming to complete an Olympic Triathlon in Athy (TriAthy) on May 31st so I have to start proper training this month. Last month's totals will be a good benchmark on what to beat by the end of February.
      Bike: 17.7 KM
      Run: 44.5 KM
      Swim: 5125 Metres
      Strength: 4h 35mins
      Gaelic Football: 1hour
      Golf: 3h 30mins
      Rowing: 10mins
      Soccer: 2h 00mins

Hospitality Student Blogs

2008-02-08T23:32:00.000Z

Here are the blogs that the students have set up for one of my courses, E-Tourism. Let's see what the next twelve weeks brings.

1800-MUMDAD

2007-11-25T21:17:00.000Z

There's a new service in Australia called 1800MUMDAD. What happens is, when a son or daughter run out of credit on their mobile phone, and are in a 'time of need', they can ring this free phone number and reverse the charges to their parents. The rates the parents are charged are apparently 50% cheaper than the standard reverse charge rates. However, this is still about $5 Australian Dollars for the first 60 seconds, which is charged to the parents phone bill.

Would it work in Ireland? Who knows? What I do know, is that the company are doing very well in Australia and it looks to me like a franchise you could roll out worldwide. Check out the site below.
http://www.1800mumdad.com.au

Public Relations Student Blogs

2007-10-26T12:38:00.001+01:00

All those in the Online PR module should leave your blog address here as a comment. I will then link to the RSS Feed of your blog with my RSS Reader. Instead of me checking your blog every day to see if you have posted a new entry, my reader will let me know when a new post has been written. There is a good video explanation of this is my earlier post, 'Explanation of RSS Feeds & RSS Readers'.

A Clamp Too Far - DkIT ???

2007-10-23T18:34:00.000+01:00

Well I suppose the 'clamp too far' happened last week when seven co-workers' cars were clamped in the staff car park...but that's a whole other story. Was just leaving work today when I spotted the scene below in the carpark of DkIT. I'll leave others to discuss the pros and cons of clamping, but suffice to say I was baffled by the explanation I received from the clamper as to what 'law' the poor student had broken. "Have you got a licence?" he barked at me with a strong Northern accent. "Certainly do", says I. "Well then you'd know that its breaking the law cross a white line", he blasted. "Thanks for that golden nugget" says I. Oh he also muttered something about the dreaded 'health & safety'.

€65 and three hours after the girl first noticed the clamp, the ordeal was all over.

Explanation of RSS Feeds & RSS Readers

2007-09-19T14:19:00.000+01:00

Great video of a guy from Commoncraft explaining what an RSS is and how to set up your RSS reader to view RSS feeds of your favourite news and blogs on the net.

Kayaking Vs Drugs (Virtual Communities at work)

2007-07-30T18:32:00.000+01:00

I was trying to find my mate's email address today by searching the web, and ended up stumbling across an engaging discussion he was involved in a while back. It is an interesting case of how passionate people can get about different topics and how discussions, forums and communities bring people back to a website again and again....like nectar to the bee.

You have to read down a little bit before it gets good but essentially, the discussion centres around the sponsoring of a 'Kayak Drop off O'Connell Street Bridge' in Dublin, being sponsored by a pharmaceutical company called Novartis. It seems like some of the kayakers had a problem with the "big bad drugs company" sponsoring the event and the discussion went from there. Looks like its one of the most popular threads ever and its nothing to do with kayaking!!
The link to the discussion is http://www.irishfreestyle.com/node/957

I'll have to ask him what the end of the story was and post again.

Ten two letter words of confidence

2007-07-23T14:23:00.000+01:00

I was watching The Open Golf Championship yesterday and the commentator alluded to a piece of advice which Butch Harmon recently gave to a golfer. The advice was "If it is to be, it is up to me". I checked around the web this morning and it seems to have been said originally by a guy called William Johnson, of whom there are about 20 famous enough to be on Wikipedia so who knows. Great quote though.

News travels fast...be it true, false or somewhere in between

2007-07-20T21:45:00.000+01:00

Back in the 19th Century, Mark Twain said "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes". This quote is remarkably appropriate in this age of the Internet where, as something happens it can be on someone's computer halfway around the world in minutes or even seconds.

The problem arises not necessarily when an action is broadcast or reported on, but when it is broadcast or reported on with bias, prejudice or just out of context. Ironically, Twain also said ">Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please”, which sometime seems to be the way certain news organisations report certain issues.

Must add a few examples of this.

China - The Experience So Far

2007-06-11T11:14:00.000+01:00

I am out in Hangzhou, China lecturing for a few weeks. Then off exploring a few more cities before I return home. All is great here so far. The School of Informatics in the Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics have put me up in the modern Xiasha Campus accomodation and have given me a nice suite with a kitchen, washing machine, fridge, living room, leather sofa, computer with speakers etc. Then the bedroom and bathroom are next door in another adjoining room. Happy days.

Most of the cultural difference so far revolve around the food. For starters, nobody warned me that nobody seems to have any English in this region, and that a knife and fork were seemingly never invented here. This can prove difficult when deciphering what is on the menu and then of course, trying to eat it. For example, yesterday's option in the accomodation restaurant was chicken claws in barbeque sauce or fish heads. I went for the vegetarian option. Today I ended up having eel, but didn't realise until I'd eaten it and the chef told me. Well he didn't so much tell me as dragged me over to the fish tanks and pointed to the bucket on the ground where about 50 eels were swimming around. Ended up having pigeon, duck's bill, frog, turtle and a few other delicacies along the way.

There are three Dundalk IT students studying out here for the year and I have met them a few times. They are all getting on really well. Two of them are staying in the apartment lived in by DkIT students from last year. The other guy is across the way in the same apartment block. They seem to be nicely set up with jobs, friends, extra curricular activities etc. Not easy coming out here for a year. Quite daunting actually.

As I head up to Beijing and back down to Shanghai next week I'm sure there'll be more to tell.

Funny Scare

2007-05-20T02:32:00.001+01:00

There's a whole load of ones like this on YouTube. Search for 'Scare Tactics', its an American tv programme. Some very funny clips.

Bug found in blog post

2007-04-04T11:24:00.000+01:00

Saw this today and thought it was good. Looks good when sent in an email on a white background. Just right-click on the image, save the picture to your computer and attach it in a mail.

New EBay shop in Drogheda

2007-04-04T00:54:00.000+01:00

Passed by this shop the other day in Drogheda and had to look twice. I had heard of these before but had never seen one in Ireland or anywhere else on my travels. It will be interesting to see how well it does. I will be calling in to have a chat with the owner when it opens for business next week.

6 year old solves a rubik's cube in 38 seconds!

2007-03-30T00:50:00.000+01:00

Iraqi Dinar...the web's worst, best kept secret

2007-03-26T09:46:00.000+01:00

So there I was in the pub the other night when talk turned to the Iraqi Dinar. It seems investors are speculating that once the Dinar hits the open market, the value will increase to that of the US Dollar, and they will be millionaires. Buying this currency seems to be the worst, best kept secret on the web at the moment. So off I headed to eBay and got myself a few.
Next thing I hear is all the negative publicity, bad value for money prophecies and counterfeits stories. I'll post again when I get my hands on my purchase.

Web addiction...my typical day

2007-03-09T22:02:00.000Z

My first hit of the day comes about 8.30am when, using FireFox, I check my GMail, Hotmail, SquirrelMail and Google Calender to see what's new and in store for me for the day. Lamentably, this process is repeated several times an hour for the duration of the day.
Next to be updated is my page on BeginnerTriathlete.com. Depending on what training I did the day before, this task could be skipped or else savoured as I input a run, jog or cycle and proceed to compare how Dok and the rest of the lads performed in the past few days.
This blog has been neglected but gets the odd update and i will always have a quick look at the page analysis.
Next stop, generally to while away a lunchtime, is wikipedia.org, o2.ie, youtube.com and maybe check my balance or make a transaction on AIB Internet Banking.
At some stage during the day I will log into Google Reader, which uses web feeds to constantly check, retrieve and aggregate my favorite news sites and blogs for new content. To check for new podcasts I will log into iTunes.
Finally, on a Friday afternoon without fail, I give in to one of my strongest web addictions, the time-sapping Fantasy Premier League. This site will tide me over for most of the weekend as the results start coming in and league positions are fanatically monitored.

Countries I've Visited

2007-02-19T11:10:00.000Z

Looks like its 21 countries. Thought it would cover way more of the world map.

Create your own visited country map

WebSite Analysis

2007-02-14T12:30:00.000Z

(SiteMeter, StatCounter, Google Analytics)
Once you have created a space for people to visit you online, you should be looking to embed a good stat counter so you can see, at the very least, how many people have been there. I use a few on this site. One that is very easy to use is Site Meter. It offers basic and some in-depth analysis including, average per day, average visit length, visits today & this week as well as analysis of visitors by referral, by location, by entry pages and a few more.
A similar site to this is StatCounter where you can also download a free and invisible stat counter which embeds into your webspace and provides you with detailed information about how people are using your site.
The one that has impressed me most is Google Analytics, which is very easy to setup, especially if you already have a google account. Everything from user interface to site analsyis is far more superior and sophisticated to both of the others. Whichever one you choose, after the initial setup, will be collecting data about your traffic, and displaying the results on their website.

EBusiness Module

2007-02-05T10:29:00.000Z

At this stage everybody in the 4th year EBusiness Module, Dundalk IT, should have created a blog here on Blogger.com. You should know your Username and Password and the full address of your blog. Reply to this post, letting me know your address.

Witness the Fitness

2007-02-04T01:36:00.000Z

Chatting recently and were trying to remember this video. Here it is - Roots Manuva, Witness.

Roots Manuva - Witness The Fitness
Uploaded by Colin Cooney

Classic news story from 1993 about the Internet

2007-01-31T21:37:00.000Z

Found this clip on The Break the other day. 1993 seems a long time ago now. Its funny to see the older computers and hearing the screeching when one guy is connecting to the Internet. The clip ends with a short cartoon arguing that the Internet is really only used for one thing...

Porn Percentages

2007-01-29T14:55:00.000Z

It turns out there ISN’T as much sex out on the internet as some had thought. Only about 1 per cent of the web has sexually explicit material according to a recent study. The study by a University College Berkeley professor estimated the number of pornographic websites based on a random sample of sites catalogued by Google and Microsoft’s MSN.

The study found that about 1.1 percent of the sites in the search engines’ indexes contained sexually explicit material.
Also, filters blocked from 8.8% to 60.2% of sexually explicit material. However they often also block a lot of clean content — 0.4% to 23.6% sites blocked didn’t have any explicit material.

This does not mean that the Porn industry isn't doing well. AVN estimates US adult products market to generate $12.922 bln in 2006. Adult movies remain the largest sector at more than $3.6 bln or 28% of the adult entertainment market. Falling prices for adult DVDs caused a drop of 15% in revenue in that segment, but unit sales were up, indicating a continuing market for adult films. Distribution over cable channels showed strong growth in 2006 at 34%. AVN estimates the Adult Cable/PayPerView segment (home and hotel TV movies) now represents $1.75 bln in revenue, annually.

What is most notable is that Internet sales of adult content, which includes images, live-chat and live-streaming video, is the main growth area. In fact, AVN reports that in 2006, Internet Sales became the second largest adult entertainment segment, with 22% of the market or $2.8 bln in sales.

Dell Wifi Hotspot Finder

2007-01-26T15:24:00.000Z

Last Feb I bought the Dell Latitude 610. Turns out the new model has included a unique feature called "Wi-Fi Catcher" located on the left side of the notebook. You can use this switch to turn off all wireless radios by putting it in the 'Off'position, but far cooler than that, push it all the way forward and it will blink green as it searches for a Wi-Fi network and if one is present it glows solid green, if none is found it shows orange. This Wi-Fi Catcher works whether the notebook is on, off or in standby mode. So there's no need to boot up and search for wireless networks, just push this button to find out.

More on this at... http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2846&laptop=Dell+Latitude+D620+Review

Securing your wireless network...alternatively

2007-01-17T11:07:00.000Z

Just got Broadband in the house and have a wireless router broadcasting the signal around the house. I haven't bothered putting a password on it, so I suppose my neighbours could be having free access. I was thinking about this and came across a story of a guy who is securing his wireless network in an alternative fashion. Essentially, he is messing with the layout of the pages that his neighbours are browsing...their fault for piggybacking!!

New Year's Resolution(s)

2007-01-17T11:01:00.000Z

The only one worth writing about is 'to complete at least one triathlon'. Booked myself in for one in Carrick-on-Shannon on April 22nd. Consists of 24 lengths of the pool(600m), 18km cycle and 5km run. Should be easy enough in theory, only I still can only swim two lengths and I've no bike.

Bupa Ireland Run 2007

2006-12-19T13:23:00.000Z

Just registered on for the Bupa Great Ireland Run 2007 at http://www.greatrun.org/events/registration.asp?id=6

Plan is to beat last year's time of 44mins for the 10km. This could be difficult as I struggled to a time of 48mins in the Port Tunnel 10km last week. Although in 2003, I completed an Irish Runner Five Miles in 34mins 52sec, with Tom Olden in 33mins 51secs. Was sniffing around and came across an article in the Meath Chronicle that shows all runners who competed from Meath in last year's event. Looks like you have to register on the Unison site to enter but the results were as follows:-

The full list of finishers from Meath with their finishing time was:

1, Robbie Matthews, Crossakiel 35:00; 2, Declan Fahey, Enfield, 35:58; 3, Sean Carpenter, Collon, 36:16; 4, James Gibbons, Navan, 39:29; 5, Bjorn Ludick, Dunshaughlin, 39:30; 6, Ronan Carey, Mornington, 40:42; 7, Tony Finegan, Wilkinstown, 42:04; 8, Raymond Gunning, Enfield, 43:11; 9, Robert Wogan, Wilkinstown, 43:20; 10, Joe McGuinness, Duleek, 43:27; 11, Anthony McGarry, Duleek, 43:47; 12, Colin Cooney, Drogheda, 44:00; 13, Mary Watters, Navan, 44:19; 14, Patrick O’Meara, Ratoath, 44:20; 15, Vincent Meade, Wilkinstown, 44:24; 16, Noel Mulhern, Trim, 44:44; 17, Declan McGuinness, Duleek, 44:51; 18, Shane Kelly, Drumree, 44:53; 19, Peter O’Brien, Slane, 45:11; 20, Desmond Savage, Navan, 45:16.

Search Engine Optimisation

2006-12-15T09:59:00.000Z

It is interesting to plot how certain key words appear higher up the Google results. Using some tracking software and some old-fashioned screenshots, I will plot how my name, Colin Cooney, becomes more visible in terms of appearances on Google's organic results. What I will be aiming to do, without any underhand methods, is get the the top few places when someone searches for my name. At the minute I am way down on the second page.

Websites are doing this all the time using a method called Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). According to the definition on Wikipedia, "Search engine optimization (SEO) is a subset of search engine marketing, and deals with improving the number and/or quality of visitors to a web site from "natural" (also known as "organic" or "algorithmic") search engine listings. In effect, SEO is marketing by appealing to machine algorithms to increase search engine relevance and ultimately web traffic. This is analogous to foot traffic in retail advertising."

Blogs et al.

2006-12-15T09:36:00.000Z

One of the great features of weblogs is that they are interactive — not only can you read them, follow the links you like, listen to files uploaded...but you can also leave your comments on any post. All you need to do is register — which helps us keep the spam and wasters. Below are a sample of Irish blogs which may be worth a look.

www.irishblogs.ie (all the Irish blogs, aggregated in one place: a good place to check out what is happening on the irish blog front)
www.sluggerotoole.com/ - Note on Northern Ireland Politics & Culture
twentymajor.blogspot.com
www.tomrafteryit.net
awards.ie/blogawards - Details about the upcoming Irish Blog Awards