Disqus - Latest Comments for Gerard_McGarry

Re: TweetLess

Gerard_McGarry — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 07:36:42 -0000

Is that a sign that you're starting to go cold on Twitter? I ran one of those unfollow apps this morning to get rid of stale accounts I was following, and was surprised at the number of media/TV accounts that are being discontinued.

I wonder if they're finding that Twitter isn't actually the next wave of social media marketing?

Re: What I did when I ran out of blog ideas

Gerard_McGarry — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 15:49:13 -0000

Play web sudoku. Or Mahjongg.

Re: belfast flickr meetup november

Gerard_McGarry — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 05:29:37 -0000

I saw your picture of the fork on Flickr, Phil - that thing's been sitting there for ages, because it was there when I visited the Pump House as well about a month ago!

I've got a couple of shots of the pump house on my website if you want to take a look - I've run them through Photoshop for added fun.

Re: belfast rebranded

Gerard_McGarry — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 09:06:36 -0000

But hasn't Belfast got a long tradition of having shit logos? Remember the Belfast's Got The Buzz one - utter rubbish.

What amuses me greatly is the smug dignataries standing around pontificating about how brilliant the logo is. They can't bring themselves to admit that they've yet again missed a crucial opportunity to rebrand the city. Instead we get a copy of someone else's logo.

Re: belfast floods

Gerard_McGarry — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 13:06:15 -0000

We had a hard time getting back to Crumlin on Saturday, think I might have banjaxed Lisa's car...ooops.

Re: yes we know gmail was down

Gerard_McGarry — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:45:40 -0000

Fortunately I was on a course and didn't even notice. Like I need a reason to be unproductive :)

Re: i need some sleep

Gerard_McGarry — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 05:09:52 -0000

None whatsoever! I stayed up to 1:30 this morning working on a website, and went to bed with a head full of code and ideas, so I couldn't sleep earlier.

Try to detatch from anything that involves concentration about an hour before bedtime - I read a book or watch mindless TV, that helps me unwind before I go to bed.

And they say you shouldn't 'live' in your bedroom - just use it for sleeping or it'll lose that association with sleep.

Re: (bank) holiday in the sun

Gerard_McGarry — Wed, 07 May 2008 03:42:36 -0000

Love the new design Phil. Funnily enough, I launched a new design on my site a few weeks ago - drop be and tell me what you think!

Re: saving my face

Gerard_McGarry — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 09:56:29 -0000

Good to see you getting out from behind the camera, and I think it's a great idea for people to see the person behind the pictures. It may not be natural, but I understand why you're doing it, and hopefully it's good for business as a photographer!

Re: fate awards after-party

Gerard_McGarry — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 03:14:58 -0000

You lucky git! I'm surprised you didn't lamp him for grabbing your camera though - we all know how possessive you photographers get over your equipment...

Re: a bread roll with that funny, please

Gerard_McGarry — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 08:00:53 -0000

Man, your 2008 is off to a flying start. I really must get down and check out your exhibition at some point - dying to see some of your snaps away from the computer screen.

By the way, did those photos of Lisa ever get published? If you know the URL, drop me an email!

Re: usa 2007 part 2 – nyc

Gerard_McGarry — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 16:49:30 -0000

Phil, good to see you posting again. I love the NYC photos, you've inspired me to take a trip over there someday (funds permitting)!

Re: the world is mine

Gerard_McGarry — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 05:33:33 -0000

Nice work Phil! I love looking at your photos and trying to work out where they are! Mostly around QUB by the looks of things?

Re: the world is mine

Gerard_McGarry — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 15:20:15 -0000

Phil, you've got to tell us how much the camera set you back - I've been barging the wife for an SLR for a while now. My Camedia doesn't carry much clout!

And to echo Kav, how do you manage to take a shot like that without getting dirty looks/GBH from the 'subject'?

Re: Do Interfering Parents Raise Successful Children?

Gerard_McGarry — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 16:55:40 -0000

I prefer to guide them gently in whatever direction they feel like going. I've always maintained that as long as my kids grow up happy and balanced, then I'll be happy with that.

We encourage them to go into things like swimming classes and dance as much to socialize with other children. Perhaps more than excelling at those activities. I would hate to think that I was nudging my kids into anything they didn't like.

Re: Plurk Karma

Gerard_McGarry — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:49:57 -0000

I like the fact that you've got to participate, but the fact that your karma drops off if you've been absent for a day or so is a bugbear. Besides, there doesn't seem to be much advantage to having higher karma - like better exposure on the site or whatever.

Still, I love Plurk so much better than Twitter, it's got so much more character!

Gerards last blog post..Seth Godin on Marketing Shortcuts

Re: Head-to-Head: TweetDeck vs Seesmic Desktop

Gerard_McGarry — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:07:20 -0000

I think the key feature both need is Twhirl's use of the ping.fm API to cross-post to other services. That'll be the feature that keeps me using Twhirl.

Re: I Smell Another Rant 4 - Childhood Pregnancy and Underage Sex | Just Kickin' It

Gerard_McGarry — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:42:56 -0000

If the boy didn't look about the size of an 8 year old...no, it would still be a complete travesty. Of course, the irony here is that The Sun is pointing to this as another example of why Britain is broken. Yet this young 'couple' are their key demographic: working class and dumb.

Is a paper that thrives on Page 3 girls and celebrity titilation in any position to point the finger?

Re: The sweet smell of ma.gnolia

Gerard_McGarry — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 08:07:47 -0000

Amen, Colin! I've been using ma.gnolia increasingly over the past few weeks and have started to use it to post interesting links directly to my blog with the postalicious plugin.

I think what Alex said above is true - ma.gnolia manages to raise the bar on social web apps, primarily because of its prettiness, but also because it has some great social networking and community features.

Re: Microsoft ships beta of latest Web site builder (Expression)

Gerard_McGarry — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 02:41:45 -0000

Robert, I completely hated FrontPage with a passion. It just seemed completely non-intuitive to me compared with Dreamweaver.

Having said that, I've been playing with the Visual Web Developer software recently, and if that's anything to go by Microsoft's finally got its act together on web development packages.

Re: Dreamhost getting sucky PR out on blogs

Gerard_McGarry — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 16:45:03 -0000

Looks like I'm a bit late to the party, but I have to side with Jeremiah on this - Dreamhost let me down in a big way and did to me everything they did to Andy.

Their customer support was abysmal, with vague and frustrating responses that told me nothing about what was wrong and why they'd taken down my site.

Now, this was my business website we're talking about here and it dropped off the Internet for roughly a week (email and all) because Dreamhost claimed my WordPress install was sending out viruses.

Each time I sent an email to them, it would take to the very limit of the response period before they'd get back to me, but with some confusing, non-committal response that DID NOT help to resolve my problem.

I resent the implication that by posting about negative experiences we're seen to be whining - I consider it fair warning to other potential customers!

Anyway, more fool me for sticking with them until this latest batch of problems which has seen more embarrassing downtime....

Re: Microsoft about to enter into patent war?

Gerard_McGarry — Mon, 14 May 2007 09:22:08 -0000

Hmmm. I read every comment on this thread so far, and there seems to be a hell of a lot of gun jumping going on.

In every argument about Microsoft and Open Source Software you get these massive extremes of opinion. OSS will kill Microsoft stone dead. Microsoft wants to shaft OSS and stifle innovation.

Instead of sitting at your computer with your knees jerking, why not get out and prove (to real people, not us geeks) how useful FOSS can be. Convince your pal with a small business to switch to Linux and OpenOffice. Or something like that. Start advocating OSS and people will use it.

My wife now refuses to use Windows, she's using Kubuntu with network storage on an MS Server. The more people who use Open Source, the less will fear it and it'll gain the traction it needs.

And Microsoft won't die overnight, if it dies at all. There are plenty of suits and resellers who seek the reassurance of that little multi-coloured flag that says Windows. Plenty of engineers who crave that MCSE for their CV.

Please get some perspective. And if you love Open Source, go out and help promote it, help establish it as a viable alternative.

Re: Why Mahalo, TechMeme, and Facebook are going to kick Google’s butt in four years

Gerard_McGarry — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 10:44:39 -0000

Why oh why do I get the impression that you're simply trolling with this hypothesis Robert? Could it be because SEOs will collectively knee-jerk at this? Could it be because Jason did a highly-successful bit of anti-SEO trolling within the last 6 months with this?

It's an interesting concept, and I'd love to see Google's dominance reduced somewhat. But those results link to mostly mainstream outlets - how are less established websites to get attention?

Plus, a number of the searches I did (on Mahalo) rely on results from Google News and Images for supplementary information. I don't think they're going to kill Google when they're legitimising them as a source of information.

Re: The Blue Monster CES express

Gerard_McGarry — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 17:53:34 -0000

In light of your recent post about copyright, I wonder how Hugh feels about not being given attribution for his monster on the side of the bus. An URL would have been nice!

Re: Six digital music pioneers

Gerard_McGarry — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 15:59:46 -0000

Kylie Konnect? Are you serious? Dated naming conventions aside, I signed up for that service and it's nothing like a social networking site. All the standard features you'd expect to find are missing. The design is actually worse than MySpace and it's completely unintuitive.

I could launch a better social networking service with my eyes closed!

Re: DIY - Dirty Tricks to Double your Traffic and talk trash all day long

Gerard_McGarry — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 15:11:24 -0000

I've often thought about having a blog war with someone. Possibly it's a matter of finding someone who's high profile enough and volatile enough to rise to the flame bait!

Ah, probably wouldn't anyway. I'm a lover, not a fighter...

Re: 5 Reasons Why a ‘Thundercats’ Movie is a Must

Gerard_McGarry — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 19:11:30 -0000

I bought the DVD box set of the first series at the weekend and have been busily brainwashing the kids into watching it. It isn't proving difficult, they're lapping it up.

We'll be heading along to the cinema in 2010 then!

Re: I Think You're Faking It

Gerard_McGarry — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:37:10 -0000

I think essentially everyone thinks that there's a low barrier of entry - no cost to join and no experience required. Unfortunately, all the SMM invasion is doing is devaluing the Social Media platform. People are already tired of being friended by idiots looking to create a legion of followers.

Re: BlogRush, You’re Kidding Me

Gerard_McGarry — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 05:38:38 -0000

Tamar - I didn't even bother signing up with it in the first place. It sounded way to good to be true at the time, and I haven't heard many positive reports about BlogRush generating oodles of traffic either. Not even from the so-called top teir bloggers who were supposed to benefit most.

Did they really think people were going to place their widget prominently instead of their AdSense blocks?

Re: The new spam

Gerard_McGarry — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 07:43:00 -0000

I'd noticed Zoran-related spam for a while now, glad someone else has identified it too. The thing it, it's such a flattering, seemingly sincere comment that you're tempted to believe all the nice things and not look under the surface!

Re: The new spam

Gerard_McGarry — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:05:12 -0000

Re: The new spam

Gerard_McGarry — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 07:43:00 -0000

Re: How to Tell When You are Simply a Pair of Hands on a Project

Gerard_McGarry — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 05:36:05 -0000

Congratulations on taking a positive spin on a frustrating subject Danielle! As I get more comfortable doing freelance web design, I'm learning to spot problem clients.

My preference is to walk away. Especially where a client thinks they could do a better job if they had the time to learn. Or they start tinkering with things that affect my work.

What I am trying to establish more and more is that the success of a client's site matters as much to me as it does to them. We need to work to our strengths and build the best site possible. That means the client provides the knowledge of the industry and I use my skills to build them a site that will attract visitors and generate business.

Having said that, there's nothing wrong with having your decisions challenged from time to time either. It just depends on how the client chooses to do it!

Re: The hypocrisy of digg and spam

Gerard_McGarry — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 03:34:00 -0000

Here's a radical idea - stop promoting Digg!

I've read enough posts by now suggesting that Diggs policies are tough on SEOs (in particular) and other sites deemed unworthy by the Digg audience.

Can I suggest that all the SEOs talking about marketing on Digg should switch to talking about Reddit or Stumbleupon and create a bit of buzz for those communities? Sure, Digg may create a tsunami of traffic initially, but I'd sacrifice the Digg pack for a more mature audience any day.

That's nothing against Kevin Rose and Digg - I think he's achieved a phenomenal thing with Digg. But the Digg audience are sending out a clear message and maybe SEOs and pro-bloggers should take the hint.

Re: Multi Blog Ad Campaign

Gerard_McGarry — Thu, 10 May 2007 07:16:53 -0000

I'm intrigued! And I like the idea of a guerilla advertising network that's independent. Count me in. How can I help?

Re: Multi Blog Ad Campaign

Gerard_McGarry — Thu, 10 May 2007 07:16:53 -0000

I'm intrigued! And I like the idea of a guerilla advertising network that's independent. Count me in. How can I help?