Evolution of the Digital Native

So - there I was sitting in a really dull Microsoft presentation about …well about stuff and things (I was bored beyond belief, don’t ask me to remember the topics please!), when suddenly the presenter throws up a slide with crazy statistics and starts talking about the “Digital Native” and how Microsoft (and everyone else for that matter) should be adjusting their strategies and plans to accommodate this new entity for future reference. It wasn’t the title that woke me up, it was the statistics that were on the page and what they suggested as a trend going forward. Beware the Digital Natives, they are coming…

Read more

The OSSCAs

In addition to being included in the aforementioned thesis, I’ve also entered “Howl @ The Moon” into the OSSCAs (Organic Shadows Site Content Awards). This is a wonderful idea for a competition started by Shadow over at Organic Shadows. There is another WordPress 1.5 Theme competition running over at alexking.org at the mo getting a lot of attention, but the lads at Organic Shadows decided some attention was required on content rather than design, so they came up a seperate competition (OSSCAs) designed to address this. “Howl @ The Moon” has been entered into two categories so keep your fingers crossed

Read more

More Site Updates

Two specific changes have been made to the site this evening. You will note that Google ads are now visible in the sidebar. I decided to include these ads to see what the impact would be, and to hopefully help out a charity. I’ve no illusions of becoming rich from advertising, and I certainly don’t think this site will grow to such a dedicated readership which would make this a reality, but I am interested in doing what I can to help a specific animal welfare charity organisation here in Ireland. So I’m going to try this advertising lark and see how it works.

Read more

Bright Future Perhaps?

I’ve been blogging now for approximately one month, and I’m loving it. As previously posted, the desire to write has resurfaced and I’m hoping to increase the content categories as things progress. I may even invite others to join in, however a nice thing happened recently which made me smile. I was contacted by a Graduate Student/Research Assistant in the USA who is doing a thesis on blogging and being asked to take part in an online survey about the nature of blogging and what is behind “Howl @ The Moon”.

Read more

Brothers In Arms - Seven Deadly Sins

I’ve tried to like this game, I really have. I have played it on several occasions, allowing time in between for such laudable attributes like objectivity, distance and balance. The truth is - it makes no difference. This game just is not worth the money, and in my mind (having played it for a while now) it has committed seven deadly sins, which are unforgivable when taken collectively. Some items I could live with in a new game, but all at the same time? Nope, absolutely not.
The game smells of another console conversion, a dumbed down transfer from XBOX and PS2 land to the PC arena without the kind of functionality and intelligence which PC gamers expect. In my humble opinion this game has committed the following sins which will forever place it into the category of ‘missed opportunity’ for me.

Read more

Taking Revenge On The Spammers

IBM unveiled a service last week (March 24th) that sends unwanted e-mails back to the spammers who sent them. The new IBM (Research) service, known as FairUCE (Fair use of Unsolicited Commercial Email), essentially uses a giant database to identify computers that are sending spam. E-mails coming from a computer on the spam database are sent directly back to the computer, not just the e-mail account, that sent them. It’s about bloody time as far as I’m concerned. Spammers are the lowest form of lice (hmm - should that be life?) on the Internet as far as I’m concerned. So - how does the technology work then?

Read more

One Month Anniversary!

It’s almost one month now since I started blogging online, and I’m happy to say it’s been quite a positive experience thus far. In that month I’ve achieved quite a lot in respect of the various projects and tasks I’d set out as objectives, but more importantly i’ve become hooked on this medium. I am regularly impressed with the online response and feedback of the WordPress community and pleasantly surprised at my own interest in blogging as a result. The blogging experience has been so easy to integrate that I’ve actually (only recently) replaced the main avalon5.com site with the blog site.
Read more