Michael Jackson is Dead

Michael Jackson has died from a heart attack. That's actually sad. The poor man might have been very weird and a little crazy but he didn't deserve to die at 50. I'm sure his death will be the subject of conspiracy theories in years to come, somewhere Elvis and Jackson will be comparing record sales.

Another set on flickr, this time it's the Street Performance World Championships which returned to Merrion Square for another summer weekend. As is traditional now the weather was a little overcast and damp at times but that didn't stop people from having a good time. Unfortunately I missed seeing the winners and even the second place, but I did see Bendy Em who came third and lets just say, she had at least third place wrapped up and in the box if not in the bag.

(Also posted to the Dublin Community Blog)

Taste Of Dublin

Another set of photos on flickr, this time from the Taste Of Dublin Festival. This was my first time attending the festival and I have to admit that while the food was very nice I did think there was very little value for money. The celebrity chefs attracted crowds and the food stands did a great trade but I have to wonder if next year prices will drop and how many of those restaurants will still be around. Was this the last day out for the Celtic Tiger?

(Also posted to the Dublin Community Blog)

Docklands Festival

It's been a busy June in Dublin, I've decided to catch up on some photos on flickr that I've taken and intended to post to the Dublin Community Blog.

First we had the Dublin Docklands Festival. A great sunny weekend packed with food, music and tall ships. Click on the image to see more photos from Flickr.

(Also posted to the Dublin Community Blog)

Ronaldo Leaves ManU

The BBC is reporting that Manchester United have accepted an £80 million bid from Real Madrid for Christiano Ronaldo. Crazy money for one player. No matter how good a player is they are only one crunching tackle away from a ruptured knee ligament that puts them out for a season. I wonder how many replica shirts Real will have to sell to make their money back?

Apple Store in Dublin?

Just spotted a piece on ENN from the Sunday Tribune, Apple are looking into opening a store in Dublin. As a recent Mac convert I think that would be great, the MacBook Pro is a wonderful laptop and I'd like to have a proper Apple Store to browse and a Genius Bar to bring any problems to. The resellers in Ireland get screwed by Apple when it comes to stock of new tech. The 17" unibody MacBook Pro was a prime example. I didn't want to buy one without seeing it in the flesh, so to speak, but it was months before any were available in stores in Dublin.

The former Habitat Store and the Dunnes store on Grafton St are both mentioned as possible locations. I think Grafton St is more likely since it would have more footfall and the Habitat Store would probably be too large for the Irish market, unless Apple can get the store lease cheap and don't care about filling all the space. It would be the nicer profile building and Apple like their fancy store frontage.

Now of course all that should be taken with a grain of salt. The Irish market small enough to start with is now in recession/depression so Apple could still decide there is no long term future here. Interestingly the Sunday Tribune article also mentions Abercrombie & Fitch who were looking into setting up an Irish store but decided against it because Grafton St is "run-down". They might have a point, the gloss is leaving Grafton St, too many phone shops, burger joints and closed stores.

Setanta Sports in trouble?

It sounds like Setanta Sports is in trouble having apparently missed a payment of £3 million to the SPL for match rights. They are in talks with "a range of sporting bodies in an effort to change their payments following a strategic review".

Crap! I hope we dont return to a situation where Sky Sports hold the rights to every sporting event on TV, I like having the option to watch some Saturday soccer or late night American sports as part of my cable package.

2009 Flora Womens Mini Marathon

Congratulations to Rosemary Ryan winner of the 27th Flora Women's Mini Marathon. Congratulations also to the over 40,000 entrants who took part on a blisteringly hot Dublin bank holiday weekend. I was glad I got to stand and sit in the shade in St Stephens Green instead of going running around the city.

Some more photos can be found in my flickr stream,

Bank Nationalisation Sucks

The Irish government has announced that is will need to put €4 Billion into Anglo Irish Banks to recapitalise the bank. The bank has lost €4.1Bn for the six months to the end of March and total losses are likely to reach €7.5 bn. The government says it cannot allow the nations third largest bank to fail so they will need to invest the €4Bn to recapitalise. If the government would stop throwing money onto the bonfire of the vanities that is Anglo Irish Bank perhaps it wouldn't be the third biggest bank in Ireland and we could cut loose this dead weight.

Interestingly at the bottom of the story on RTE they say

The results show deposits from businesses in Anglo dropped by almost €9bn after nationalisation.

Now I don't know anything more about banking than the average Irish tax payer but if the bank has lost €9Bn in deposits after we nationalised it and now the Irish tax payer needs to give them €4Bn isn't that proof that if we hadn't nationalised the bank and had found a better way to reassure depositors the bank would have €5Bn more money on its books than it does now?

On a side note the government will be sinking €4 Billion into Anglo while on the other side of the same street as the Anglo HQ they are planning on building a €4 Billion metro tunnel. How often has a government thrown €8 Billion into two bottomless pits within 50 meters of each other?

PlayNow Arena Movies: None for you Ireland!

Another update following on from the Sony Ericsson event on Tuesday. Sony have announced the details of PlayNow Arena Movies. Big, big FAILURE! After all the talk and praise for a cool sounding service it appears Sony have ignored the Irish market, same as in iTunes. The service will launch in June in Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the UK but no mention of Ireland. Please Sony tell me this is wrong!

Simply put my opinion now is, their phones are cool, their ideas are great but since media and the downloadable content of Play Now is such a fundamental marketing point of their new phones do not buy the new phones when they go on sale in Ireland if Sony have not made the services available here. The same applies for other countries where the phones are available but the service is not. Wait until the complete service already available in other countries is launched in your country then buy the phone, it'll probably be cheaper by then anyway.

Sony own the phones, own the service and own the movies so the rights issues that have plagued Apple and iTunes in Ireland should be easy to sort out for Sony. Instead they are forcing Irish customers to find other ways of obtain digital content for their portable devices. If they see sales of their new phones markedly down in countries without the full PlayNow service they might give in and allow customers to legally download their content.

Sorry Sony Ericsson but no movies, no money.