With the announcement of the upcoming general election on March 11th I decided to Google my constituency in the hope of getting a list of likely candidates in the area. I was skeptical I’d find anything useful other than possibly a Wikipedia entry. Here’s what I found ranked #5:

labour.ie - Dublin South East constituency details

Well done, Labour. I couldn’t have asked for more, could I? Not only have they listed all sitting TDs from all parties but also a list of all their people related to the constituency alongside a Google map of the area.

Nice work, keep it up.

The branding – the name, colours and typography – keeps reminding me of the competitiors, Three mobile. If I was entering such a competitive market I’d be trying to set myself apart.

Here’s the list in case you’re on the hunt:

• Radio Webmaster @ RTE – http://www.rte.ie/about/jobs/listing.html
• Developer @ Webfactory – http://www.webfactory.ie/
• AS 3 and LAMP developers @ The Creative District – http://www.thecreativedistrict.ie/careers/
• Senior User Experience Designer @ Clearleft – http://clearleft.com/is/hiring/
• Web Developers @ Betapond - http://www.betapond.com/careers/Betapond_Web_Developers_Required.pdf
• Communications Executive and Online Community Manager @ Temple Bar Cultural Trust – http://blog.templebar.ie/?p=1165

FOWD London launched a (beautiful) new website yesterday with details of the conference and workshops coming up at the event in May and tickets are on sale right now.

“Super-duper early bird” tickets were fantastic value starting at £235 but have been snapped up faster than you can say “jQuery”.

There’s still some “early bird” offers available starting at £470 (saving you about £200) so if you’re into it, get booking.

There’s a really great line-up across two different “tracks” including presentations and workshops from Dan Cederholm (Simple Bits),  Brendan Dawes (Magnetic North), Web Standardistas and Molly Holzschlag (Molly.com).

Topics to be covered include HTML5, CSS3 (implementation, graceful degradation, design), jQuery (essentials and advanced), Google Analytics, UX and usability, how to run a successful web design business and lots more in between.

Check the full details here, fingers crossed I might see you there in May.

Sorry about the image quality, not sure what WordPress is doing to my images #

1. Set up your Google Alert and be sure to select Feed from the Deliver to: dropdown list

2. Get your feed URL

3. Create a new Google Spreadsheet in Google Docs, select a cell and select the Forumlas button. Choose Google from the category listing presented and then double-click on ImportFeed.

4. When you get the space to pop your info into, blank out what’s in between the brackets and add in your feed URL. Make sure it’s wrapped in double quotes or else it won’t work. Hit enter and away you go.

FOWD Tour 09

Carsonified’s FOWD Tour 2009 is taking in Belfast this September the 2nd. I just grabbed one of the last remaining early bird tickets for £45 so if you want similar I suggest you hot foot it to the booking page pronto.

The day is split in two – a morning of tutorials and an afternoon of presentations & speed networking. Topics to be covered over the day:

• The Importance of Beauty in Absolutely Everything
• The Future of HTML5
• Top 50 Rookie Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
• Bauhaus Ideology and the Future of Web Design
• The Battlefield of Design – Designers vs Clients

Speakers and teachers on the day will include Andy Clarke, Brendan Dawes, Drew McLellan, Elliot Jay Stocks, Paul Boag, Simon Collison and more. Further info is on the FOWD Tour website.

See you there!

Twitter fail

It’s caught me out on more than one occasion and to this day I still haven’t figured out how to ‘unblock’ a user. 

Dear Twitter, please fix! In fact, I’ll do the work & give it to you for free, just stick this line into your CSS, you don’t even have to touch your HTML as it’s already being referenced!!!

The update:

#follow-requests .follow-request .right-box .block-link { padding:12px;}
#follow-requests .follow-request .right-box .block-link:link, #follow-requests .follow-request .right-box .block-link:active, #follow-requests .follow-request .right-box .block-link:visited { color:red; text-decoration:none;}
#follow-requests .follow-request .right-box .block-link:hover { color:red; text-decoration:underline;}

*zen*

BTW

Jason is taking the BTW event to Cork today at the Boardwalk Bar & Grill at 6pm. I was at the last one in Dublin and it was a fantastic informal meetup of a great mix of people from various walks of the online world most of whom I probably wouldn’t have met ‘offline’ otherwise.

There’s some tasty badges on offer too if you need further reason to attend Would love to have been there but Cork will have its’ claim over me next weekend instead for the International Choral Festival which I will be posting about later on. Directions for how to get there. Have a great evening all!

Never Gonna Give You Up, Rick Astley

Stu’s virus is getting contagious. Ridiculously so. I can’t help but think of songs as bloody alert boxes now. Some really awesome ones over on the Buzzfeed page, expect more later.

And about 15 mins later I had another one, good God help me.

London Calling, The Clash

Story in Sunday Tribune

Fine Gael are still sticking to their guns and now claiming that all sorts of research was done into finding inspiration for their new online face. My favourite quote from the unnamed FG spokesperson:

“What has been asserted is not correct; there are grains of truth in this thing but they would get a life of their own on the internet,” a party spokesman said.”

Their lack of understanding of the issues surrounding the website now outweighs the seriousness of their actions. Their lack of engagement with the online community on top of the poorest of efforts in delivering a suitable, usable and useful website is the basis for a total failure in the management of their identity and image online. As Suzy said earlier: 

“Above all this incident is about the second biggest party in the state and another example of it’s lack of serious commitment to on-line engagement with voters in the country,  a lack of faith in Irish based web developers, and no imagination in the excuse making department either!”

I’m still disappointed and quite annoyed with how the party have handled the incident. FG don’t realise that they’ve missed the boat completely in terms of communication with voters & getting their message out there ahead of the local elections and in time, maybe even a general election before long. Their attitude towards the Internet and the online community (from bloggers to developers) is archaic and worryingly ignorant. I’d normally wish someone luck at this juncture (considering the mountain that they have to climb) but the feeling of disrespect is now a mutual one so they won’t be getting any best wishes (or votes) from this citizen.