Recently in General Category

I just visited the Carlow website. It's horrific. It's embarassingly bad.

Why can't they do something like Clare or Donegal?

Does a county have to rely heavily on tourism to have a decent looking website?

I'd have thought not.

Earlier this week Carlow decided to have a carfree day before the rest of Europe.

Whether this was a good idea or not isn't important, but if you were a resident it would have been nice to actually have access to some information on it.
I'd have thought the local authority site would have been the place to find the information. Of course there was absolutely no mention of it at all!

Anyone who tells me that egovernment is improving obviously hasn't tried to actually use the local authority sites for Carlow!

The drive from Carlow to Cork should be a lot more pleasant as of tomorrow when the new M8 Rathcormac-Fermoy Bypass is opened to the public. Last night when I was driving back from Cork I got held up for a good forty minutes at Fermoy, so being able to avoid the town completely is going to be worth the cost involved (€1.60). EDIT: Woops! It actually opened before I even posted this! See The Examiner's story

The 2006 IIA Net Visionary awards nominations are now open. You may nominate anyone you wish and you do not have to be a member of the IIA to nominate someone. There are a wide range of award categories that include blogging and podcasting for the first time this year. The nomination form is here

While browsing this evening I stumbled upon a couple of rather unique posters from LA Pop Art. I arrived on their site after looking for more information on their Scarface and Reservoir Dogs posters, as they contain the full script. The poster that caught my eye, however, is the Marijuana leaf which was created using the official list of 647 slang names for Marijuana Can you imagine that on a tshirt? :)

Hugh, or at least his company, may have been subject to libel by a publication this weekend. If you are unsure about what libel, slander or defamation are exactly then the short guide from Digital Rights Ireland may be helpful.

Why is it that anytime there is a bank holiday the shops go crazy? I can understand that people need to buy their "last minute" Christmas presents etc., but do they really need to buy that much food??? You'd think the shops were closing for a week or two. On my way out of Carlow the other afternoon we tried to get into the local Tesco, but there was a tailback. Today I ventured over to the new shopping complex in Midleton... Not the best idea I've had this week, admittedly, but unfortunately it was necessary. The place was packed with people hording for the "break"... Considering that most shops will actually be reopening on the 26th or 27th....

The debacle surrounding data retention in Europe (and Ireland) has been dragging on for the last couple of years.

It's nice to see local government making practical use of technology. Cllr Damien Blake is recommending that people check the Donegal electoral register directly online. Are they the only local authority to have put the register online? Seemingly not, but it's not the sort of thing that seems to be publicised.. I usually get these really annoying letters through my letterbox expecting me to jump through hoops instead of offering me a simple solution .. EDIT: Just checked the entry for me and submitted an update request as they had spelt my first name incorrectly. Only question now is - will I ever get an acknowledgement of the update ?....

I just got a nice envelope in the post from the IIA

According to an article on RTE.ie the EU member states are in hot water again.