Will Knott

Saturday July 18 is World Wide Photowalk day. Thousands of images will be taken on the day and uploaded to Flickr with an overall winner chosen by photographer Scott Kelby.

Now I’m uploading to Pix.ie, so I won’t be in the contest part, but I will be wandering the streets of Cork wielding a camera. Its not just Cork, there are photowalks taking place in Cashel, Tipperary, Dublin, Galway, Limerick City and Adare in County Limerick,

Some of these are booked up (the maximum on a photowalk is being limited to 50. (Try herding a group of ADD afflicted photographers dawdling with a camera in one hand and traffic rushing towards them. The 50 limit is probably a touch much). But if your nearest one is full, you can set up your own (New York has at least five at the moment.)

Then again, meeting a bunch of fellow photographers (or messers with cameras) and wandering around with them is a lot of fun. You’ll pick up things. You’ll also discover views of your city or town that you haven’t considered before.

To be seen by the organisers upload your photos and tag them with “skpwalkcork” (or skpwalkdublin or what ever is listed in the instructions for your intended photowalk. The SK stands for Scott Kelby.

Because you never know what you might see on the streets.

Will Knott

“So what position did you play?” asked the good doctor.

“I’ve never played” I replied, and I could see a twinge of pity in his face.

I never went to a rugby school. I didn’t pay attention to the sport during college. The funny thing is that I only really got to appreciate rugby when I moved to Cork. When I moved to Munster.

On the Wikipedia entry for Munster Rugby says “Munster is known for its fan support and game day atmosphere”.

And while there I got to see just how loved the team are. The streets filled with red rugby shirts on a match day (and yes I have one). The roar of the crowd. I’ve seen the furious passion of the fans when in a Limerick hotel, and the bride delays her reception so she and her family can watch the match in the hotel bar’s big screen. And due to the coincidence of sharing the same gym as the Cork Constitution team, I’ve even met chunk of the team (best described as loud).

I mention this because the Tuesday Push this time around is for MyMunster a social network for Munster Rugby supporters. There you to chat and share views with other Munster rugby supporters, view club photos and videos, get the latest news.  Fans can buy credits to enter competitions for Munster goodies and match tickets – they also say that buying credits helps support rugby development in the province.

Not only be part of that army of fans, but support the team at the grass roots too.

You can also follow MyMunster on Twitter too.

The questions that crop up are, why have a niche social network like this when the all encompassing FaceBook could do something similar? Well, I think some things can start on facebook, but if you have a vary large following, it will support itself with the mass of the interest generated. Sign up and its only Munster without any vampires or sheep (but maybe a few trolls).

And Munster has an army of fans to raise it higher.

Enter lift off?
Will Knott

p.s. Puddleducks has embedded the video of the Haka performed by the New Zealand members of the Munster team during the Munster vs. All Blacks match in Thomond Park last November. Its worth watching (just remember Mowvember was still in play, it explains the moustaches)

As this pops up, I’ll probably be on my way back from 3D Camp, or encamped in a crowd of rugby supporters (how bad) watching Munster do its thing.

This is another ToeJam shot (oddly I’m still sieving through the shots from the walk part of the photowalk), and I just liked the combination…

If you look behind these two gentlemen (responsible for the hat sale) you’ll see a gap in the wall. I went back there to discover a wonderland of discarded items. And the remains of a small fire, possibly to make more room in the wonderland (well hinterland actually).

And in the remains of the fore, were the cards and the king crisps packet. Almost a pity they weren’t the came suit. Still, a pair of kings isn’t that bad a hand.

take care,
Will Knott

The video conference between the three Open Coffee sessions went sort of well. There were a lot of sound problems. Which makes sense. If you have a crowd, you have speakers. To talk, you need microphones. However a microphone picking up the output of a speaker causes a problem. At best, echoes. At worst feedback. And the session was dogged with echoes. After the main session, those of us that remained in the session had a nice discussion about the ASUS EeePc and installing a touch screen on it. John assured that he would blog every step, I’ll link to it when I get the details.

Image by geognerd via Flickr

Still getting the video to work was something of a surprise for me. You see I upgraded to Adobe Flash 9 (latest version). I’m on Firefox 2 (latest version) for Windows XP. And they don’t like each other. Things work well for a while, but fairly quickly flash video just stops working. I suspect that one is tearing a memory leak out of the other, but I can’t tell which. I do know that I’m not the only one seeing this problem. This might explain why it’s being opened up.

All I know is that it takes a reboot (and an upgrade of Real Player for some reason) to get videos on YouTube, reviews by Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw and (flash) embedded audio files to play. So I’m throwing in the music videos I’ve come across (I miss the days when I could say stumbled upon and not have people assume I’m talking about a certain site).

First up is the slightly surreal (in a Coca-Cola advert sense) music video (which has embedding disabled) for “Love Song” by Sara Bareilles.

And the completely loopy (in an old folks community visit to Silent Hill way) video for “I’m Good, I’m Gone” by Lykke Li.

take care,
Will Knott

At 11am on May 1st three cities are going to be linked in Open Coffee and inspiration.

OpenCoffee Club was started in London to encourage entrepreneurs, developers and investors to organise real-world informal meet-ups to chat, network and grow. The Cork Open Coffee meetings tend to take place every second Friday, in Dublin, Limerick and Waterford, their meetings tend towards a Thursday. And not only are their three sessions taking place at the same time tomorrow, but they are going to be linked. And New York is joining in too.

And you can join in too.

The three OpenCoffee sessions are going to be broadcast online thanks to Joe Garde of OnlineMeetingRooms and Bernie Goldbach of Tipperary Institute (Update : And Mary Rose Lyons who is looking after the broadcast from the Dublin end). Also thanks to Chuck Boyce of ChuckTV on Blip.tv finding out about the meet on Twitter (thus proving a business use if ever one was needed) means that the Irish OpenCoffee sessions are going to be part of the wider technology community.

Attendees should have a “Twitter style introduction prepared” (or a killer 90 second pitch ready) and join in. The details for joining the online sessions are on Mary Rose Lyons of Brightspark Consulting’s site. But if you are able to attend the sessions in person, it will probably be worth it.

And be prepared for a little Twitterstorm (and probably a Jaikugale) tomorrow morning.

take care,
Will

Most of you know by now that the Limerick Open Coffee meeting had an interesting pair of visitors, namely Patrick Collison and John Collison of Auctomatic.

The talk was Livestreamed on Ustream.tv by Conn Ó Muíneacháin and Bernie Goldbach has a podcast available.

I would comment about it, but I’m late to the party so I’ll let Aidanf Conor O’Neill and James Corbett do a much better job. Besides I’m mostly be repeating their comments), but right now you can see the potential value of the Paddy’s Valley tour. Remember that the pair left Limerick to go to the Valley in order to get things started.

On the other hand… there is Walter of Pixenate (who suspiciously suffered from a DOS attack after these comments, no connection I’m sure) commented on Twitter about the really weird offer being made by the Irish Venture Capital Association. On Thursday 27th September 2007 the IVCA training programme is ‘How to Raise Venture Capital’ developed in conjunction with the Ryan Academy for Entrepreneurship. In otherwords, the IVCA is telling bright and talented Irish Startups how to get money off the IVCA. And is charging the people they might give money to… is that circular logic or recursion?

I’m sure someone would be willing to comment and explain this to me?

take care,
Will Knott

tags : Open Coffee, Limerick Open Coffee, Patrick Collison, John Collison, Auctomatic, Ustream.tv, Conn Ó Muíneacháin, Bernie Goldbach, podcast, Paddys Valley tour 2007, Pixenate, Irish Venture Capital Association