Might not make everyone sick but dear God in heaven – why did you remove the old website and replace it with THAT?

I’ve seen bad websites in my time but this is really taking the piss! What was so wrong with the old website, that was actually usable and in keeping with the likes of IrishRail.ie and DublinBus.ie (which uses the same model-ish that the old Bus Éireann site used to use).

And why change just the homepage to a ridiculous layout and keep all the older existing menus and pages the same? Surely you want to attract people to use the site and surely there’s a nicer way to organise things? Hell, we had a great girl in here on work experience for a week who lashed together a nice website for herself in two days…

Would you consider changing it back?

Cheers Michele.

Looks like Google have been at the PR updates again…

• kenmc.com – PR 4 to PR5
• kilkennymusic.com – PR2 to PR4
• liverpoolaccess.com – PR0 to PR5

Pretty pleased with the increase in LiverpoolAccess.com given its only been knocking around since the end of the summer, coupled with the rise in kilkennymusic.com’s PR, which I hadn’t been able to shift from 2 while using PHPNuke at the backend, no matter who was linking into it or what amount of content I published.

Just after I had asked was Pagerank really important and all….

Earlier in the year Dell announced a partnership with Google for all new machines shipping out of Dell – a machine’s browser homepage would default to a special Google landing page offering Dell and Google products and news.

Now, according to the Taipei Times, Yahoo have snapped up HP (having already snapped up ACER to the same deal) to have browsers on new HP desktop and laptop models in Europe default to the Yahoo homepage. Users in the US will have a cobranded HP Yahoo toolbar preinstalled on their machine.

I’m not at all fond of the Yahoo toolbar or any other toolbar for that matter (if I can’t get it in my Firefox bookmarks bar or search for it in the top left on one of the FF searches then I’m not too bothered). All the same, its a good deal for Yahoo as continue to battle it out with Google for search engine domination, HP being the second largest global PC manufacturer behind Dell.

Kilkenny (St. Lukes) averages out about 62%…. Ardkeen (Waterford Regional) averages out at 58%… considering that hospitals should be aiming for 85% + to be in the good books on the site, what can you find out about your hospital.

Check RateMyHospital.ie (yet another rating website)

If you’re in Kilkenny today at 6pm and fancy dropping into Langton’s on John Street, you might just be able to Help Yourself as Aidan (Event Ireland) and Keith (Bohanna Consulting) kick off a new series of monthly talks (presumably in Harry’s Bar inside Langtons) aimed at local businesses.

Help Yourself is a way for businesses in Kilkenny to get a gentle introduction to various bits of the internet without techie speak and in the company of like minded people. It is a network with a monthly talk/seminar and an online resource with additional backup for the talks.

The talks are being supported by the Kilkenny County Enterprise Board and each talk will feature a rotation between Aidan and Keith for the main topic of discussion, as well as a guest speaker for 20 minutes discussing their own personal internet-related experiences. Guest speaker for tonight is local businessman John Ellis of E-Insurance Ireland. John will be speaking on the success of his own website and lessons he has learned from it.

Tonight’s main topic for discussion will be domain names and email associated with those domains. (e.g. having your own .com or .ie but using an eircom.net address or other free provider).

You can find out more at HelpYourself.ie

Looks like RTE have joined the internet exchange, INEX, and are looking to “deliver quality broadcast material over the internet in a more efficient manner”.

You think that they’ll be charging the average internet user for accessing this “quality broadcast material”. It’d sure beat the hell out of paying a TV license fee, and at this stage of proceeds I get enough enjoyment out of watching material online than paying attention to whatever is on the telly.

No mention of what this quality broadcast material is exactly, though I wouldn’t mind seeing someone develop new program material for RTE to be distributed strictly on an online basis.

For those of you who don’t know who INEX are, they’re the Internet Neutral Exchance Association, based out of Dublin.

Our objective is to provide high-speed, reliable and resilient IP traffic exchange facilities for both Irish and International organisations, allowing them to route IP traffic efficiently thereby providing faster, more reliable and lower-latency internet access for their customers.

So, reading the Kilkenny People yesterday (page 7, section 1), seemingly the local press are the next thing banned out of China – at least on the web anyway.

Now, before the Kilkenny People were taken over by the Johnston Press, you could forgive them for having a half decent website but I’ve certainly no regard for their current rendition.

Either way… they’ve been banned…

The Kilkenny People website is banned in China, people trying to read the website have told…

The newspaper was banned after and article noted Chinese human rights abuses. The abuses were mentioned in a report on the twinning of Kilkenny with a Chinese city by Mayor Martin Brett [also current Mayor) two years ago.

Can anyone in China verify this?

Update –

Nice email from Beijing within an hour of the blog post…

Despite rumours the Kilkenny People is alive and kicking on the web here. Actually I could of sworn I saw President Hu Jin Tao headin of for a smoke with a copy of it under his arm.

Cheers Karl!

Exactly a year to the day since he started his adventure to trade one red paperclip for a house, it looks like Kyle MacDonald has finally accomplished his goal and looks set to pick up his house tomorrow.

Kinda takes the power of the internet and media to new levels…. Think you could walk into your local Sherry Fitz and start that conversation…

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance….”

As if the website isn’t bad enough at the moment since the upgrade… they’re doing it again….

From Saturday 24th of June at 17:30, to Monday 26th of June, o2.ie will be unavailable. You will be unable to access any part of the site during this time as we are upgrading our billing system. Please note as this is an upgrade to our billing system, Customer Care will also be unable to assist with any queries during this time. We apologise for the inconvenience caused.