One of the funniest ads!

This is one of the funniest ads on Irish TV at the moment : http://www.headgearanimation.com/work/recruit_ireland
or if you prefer youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uv4RMtwwN3o

Just thought I’d share it with you because Irish ads (well all ads everywhere) are usually boring and dull, but everyone seems to be talking about this ad the past few days. Take a look, it’s hilarious!

Lunar Eclipse

There is going to be a lunar eclipse beginning at 20:18GMT. So look up in the sky in about half an hour! The image to the left is how good you will be able to see the eclipse, depending on where you are (credit: BBC).

Apparently this is going to be the best eclipse in a while and the next one will be in the middle of the night on the 21st February 2008, so make sure you catch this one.

Hope it’s not too cloudy!

¦¦¦ update: The eclipse was great! It was slow but fantastic to look at and I’m glad I didn’t miss it.

Rig-digg-ulous. A very simple solution!

Since yesterday or the day before, there has been a lot of fuss about people getting paid to digg stories up and down on Digg.com. Examples: Digg probe hits a nerve, Digg can still be rigged, Wired buys votes on Digg, and of course the article that started it all: I bought votes on Digg.

I can see the problem with this; Fair and honest promotion of stories gets left behind and only those who are willing to pay, can get their stories to the front page of Digg.

Ok I got that but it also has the easiest solution! http://www.usersubmitter.com/users/feed/0beae52d0258935b19543e37b0d681eb = RSS feed with latest Paid to Digg Stories. Simple, all Digg has to do is sign up to the site, usersubmitter.com, and once you join you get all the paid-to-digg stories in a RSS feed (individual to each person). That way Digg will know which stories are being paid for without all the algorithms, checking which members actually follow the link to the site and the same members digg the same stories.

It’s that simple! The whole problem is sorted this way. Quick and easy, oh and should work for any other paid-to-digg sites that crop up.

By the way, occasionally when there are no stories, the feed says “At this time, there are no stories to Digg. Please check back later.” There is not a problem with the feed, it’s just the service has no stories for people to digg.

Enjoy,
Alan.

Joost about to get better.

I recently blogged about Joost, the free TV on-demand service created by the same people that created Skype and Kazaa. One of my points in that post was that if Joost was to make it big and become mainstream when it came out of beta, it would have to have lots and lots of content that could interest everyone. Well, today Joost has made a deal with JumpTV, a massive TV company that owns over 250 stations in over 70 countries. The details have not been announced yet but it means that a lot of new quality content will make its way on to Joost in the near future. This is great as it shows how committed the creators by continuing to make this service bigger and better.

Changing the Present. For the better.

Sorry for the delay in posting I have been a bit busy.
After appealing for a few comments the other day about my blogging so far, I logged back on to find well… none. :tear rolls from eye: However I checked my email and good news! I got a email about my blog! When I seen it there, I hoped it wasn’t going to be too negative and clicked on it apprehensively, preparing myself for the worst. I had nothing to fear though as it was a suggestion for a #6 for the post 5 ways to make a difference for free. Phew! 🙂

I read through the suggestion and I’d like to thank the sender, Robert, for it very much. However, it doesn’t fall under ‘to make a difference for free’. I included change.org for the simple reason that it had a good social network basis that enabled anyone to discuss issues without having to donate. So I’m sorry but I can’t include ChangingThePresent.org in the post. However the site looks really good and I want to include it in some way, so I’m giving it it’s own post!

ChangingThePresent.org is a website where you can make a donation to a charity in the name of another person. There are 33 different causes e.g. Disaster Relief, Blindness & Vision, HIV/AIDS, Cancer, Peace and Human Rights. In each of these there are different donations you can make e.g. in Global Warming, you can make a donation and adopt a penguin for $50, if you would like to donate $1500, you would give a cash-strapped community an intern to help them, create or update a community’s greenhouse gas inventory; create a local Climate Action Plan; develop pilot projects to reduce community global warming pollution, and reach out to local organizations. If your budget doesn’t stretch that far then you always adopt a sea turtle for $25 or offset 2000 pounds of carbon dioxide with a $5 donation. Really the choice is endless on the site and the perfect donation for that person you know is on there somewhere.

The site is well designed and laid out and I think that the amount of choice available should accommodate everyone. Each gift has a through description when clicked on and describes both the problem and what your gift will do. I think that this website may not be the next big thing (prove me wrong) but I do believe it is a great step forward in donations to charities and will definitely contribute to “Changing the World”, “One Gift at a Time”.

Click here to check it out.