Road Deaths Top 200

RoadDeaths.ie (yes, now at a .ie domain, as well as its previous incarnation at RoadDeaths.net) has had its death toll figures reach the 200 mark. If you’re still unaware of the site, it is being run by friend and colleague John Butler and provides a great Google Maps mashup crash locations as the accidents happen. While work continues on publishing details from the beginning of this year, one quick glance and the map will tell you that its not going to be a pretty picture by the time we hit December 31st.

One Irish blog is certain to cause a wake up call to the Irish government and driving public this year.

Forget Pirating Music – Pirate Websites

A few years back (talking 1998/99) I was running a movie website (no longer hosted) which had managed to get itself mentioned in a few national papers and US magazines, got a nice bit of sponsorship (and several free DVDs a month) and attention, then one day I get an email from a guy in Australia asking could he have a link on my site, to his new site that focused around the same topic.

“Sure”, I said, I’ll just go have a look at the site.

Low and behold I was looking at my own website. The styles, the structure, the links and sections, logos I’d created, all with his name tagged under the end of them. Needless to say I flipped. Forget flattery. My first case of a pirated website.

Then I come across this resource this morning, Pirated-Sites.com.

I’ve been publishing some of my photographic work to deviantART in bits and pieces over the last two years and the forum system there has a nice area set aside for reporting ripped artwork (where I’ve also had one of my photo pieces ripped and published without permission). Pirated-Sites takes that to the next level, providing an archive and forum resource of sites that have been ripped from a design point of view.

If its your thing, or you’ve ever been involved in a case of having your site completely ripped off, then check it out. Funny what people come up with…

The CIA Are Watching Your Bank!

Have you transferred money to the US in the last 5 years?

Does your bank use the Swift system for financial transactions and money transfers?

Does your government know EVERYTHING they’re supposed to know?

I think that if you find you answered yes to the first two questions, with a no for the third, that its quite possible your bank account has been screened by the CIA. There’s one for you! (Via DRI)

Kilkenny Music Going 2.0

Bit of a mad past two days workwise but its time to get back to brass tacks on the blog. Kilkenny Music going 2.0? Not another Web 2.0 novelty…. Its just time to launch the second iteration of KKM, which I’ve begun to implement following a few weeks of hard planning. Those podcasts are finally closer as well

What started out as a one man project rather quickly grew to a two man project and is currently running with three people now involved. Not bad turn around for kicking off last October. It is planned, at least, to have KKM2.0 live and online in time for, if not before our one-year anniversary, the site having launched private on September 18th, with a public launch on October 8th last.

The interface as a whole is getting a major face lift, out with the greys that currently grace the screen and in with some more powerful, vibrant colours; there’s a more indepth service for artists; full syndication of all gigs and events, straight to your inbox; wiki resource for those interested in music technology, covering techniques, tips etc; full podcast access and streaming audio from all the bands involved. For something thats working extremely well at local level, its time to start looking at bringing it a little further afield.

The podcast plans are finally nailed down as well, again, three of us going to be involved in an initial monthly distro. I’ve already entered into talks with getting them carried on local radio.

Speaking of local radio, we’ll be taking over the airwaves this coming Tuesday night, going out on air for the hour between 8pm and 9pm discussing a lot about KKM, what goes on behind the scenes, before delving into resources for bands, a look at online resources and technologies, the local music scene and more.

Busy few days gone and a serious amount of them ahead!

Creative Links for 2006-06-28

• JenSense
  Making Sense of Contextual Advertising, published by Jennifer Slegg
  (tags: advertising)
• Table cellspacing CSS
  Good CSS tip for designers, if you’ve ever had issued controlling borders of tables via CSS, its worth making a little note of this….
  (tags: css)

Apple iTalk Video

Oh what a video….

Now if only it was real….. (via)

Creative Links for 2006-06-27

• ecto for Windows 2.1 beta
  ecto is a feature-rich desktop blogging client for MacOSX and Windows, supporting a wide range of weblog systems, such as Blogger, Blojsom, Drupal, MovableType, Nucleus, TypePad, WordPress…
  (tags: blogging)
• Streamripper
  An Open Source (GPL) application that lets you record streaming mp3 to your hard drive
  (tags: audio opensource mp3)
• A – Z of Professional Blogging
  A to Z of Professional blogging including blogging tools, platforms, services and ways of making money from blogging – via ProBlogger.net
  (tags: blogging)

Codeplex To Launch This Week

Interesting one for developers this…

The CodePlex site will be a venue for Microsoft to provide programmers with tools available under its Shared Source licenses. These licenses allow people to view the source code of products, the software giant said.

The site, which had been in beta testing, is meant to foster more interaction between Microsoft and programmers with technical information and software, it added.

Should be another good step in Microsoft embracing open source software and development styles. As soon as they release Microsoft Office as an open source application, I’m sold.

Read the full story…

Sky By Mobile

Sky By Mobile is almost here and looks like a right good service. You’re out and about on the town, caught on the train on the way home, stuck in traffic, sick in the hospital – whatever. Just hop on the mobile (3G service) or use the proposed text-message alternative to remote schedule a recording. Available in Ireland? Remains to be seen, with no absolute launch date but if you’ve already got Sky+ then you’ll be looking at a good free service from Sky.

Once you get around your 3G mobile charges that is

When Beta Becomes Gamma

I hit Flickr this afternoon as part of another job and noticed that their logo (pictured right) has gone from Flickr Beta to Flickr Gamma… Are we now moving out of the stage of beta web 2.0 services? Can we expect to see gMail Gamma? Or Gamma Mail as it might become known? Anyone aware of the recent change….?

Update / Answer : “Ages ago”. Cheers Robin

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