The BBC has plans to create social networking sites from its most popular brands.
Shows such as Top Gear, will have their own social networking website that will allow visitors to interact with each other and the show itself.
A new survey has revealed that just over half of US teenagers have used social networking sites such as MySpace or FaceBook. Those who do have an account with such sites hardly ever uses them!
The research was conducted by Pew Internet and puts a major question on the value of such sites. Recently MySpace was valued at between €15 to €25 billion and FaceBook is valued at over €1 billion.
I run a few small web sites that use the Amazon API (www.soccerminutes.com & www.shanganagh.com). The code I use is an off-the-shelf product called Associate-O-Matic. This code allows me to easily hook up with the Amazon API without having to touch a single line of code. It allows you to create an eCommerce website based on a particular topic such as soccer, star wars or even iPods, whatever you like really! With your Amazon associates ID you earn a referral fee for anything that is sold through the website you have created.
Recently Amazon have created their own tool that allows you to create miniature sites through their associates members area.
After logging in, you can easily create mini sites on any topic through a simple, easy to use control panel. Here are some examples of sites I’ve played with.
http://astore.amazon.co.uk/man-united-21/
http://astore.amazon.co.uk/nintendo-wii2006-21/
http://astore.amazon.co.uk/james-bond06-21/
These sites were created in minutes. My main concern so far about these sites is the search engines. A search on google shows 384,000 of these sites listed from the astore.amazon.co.uk domain name and 502,000 from the astore.amazon.com domain
However, inner pages of these domains do not seem to be indexed at all. It remains to be seen if anyone can make a success out of these stores, if they do, I would imagine it’s not from search engine traffic.
Well there’s been a lot of talk over the last few days about Mourinho’s future. It seems there are problems in the dressing room. What they are have yet come to light.
I have to admit, I felt from the start of the season that Mourinho looked unhappy this season. He just didn;t seem to be himself at all. Even in interviews he conducted, he was no longer the sarcastic man that some of came to love. Some of us that is, because a lot of people thought it was arrogance and others knew he was just having a laugh.
However, this season his comments on games he lost made him look like a sore loser and his arrogant sense of humour had all but disappeared.
It will be huge loss for the Premiership if he leaves. His skills as a manager and his skills at media management have been second to none for the last couple of seasons. I hope he can sort it out and give us some more for many seasons to come.
I went to the cinema last night to see the new, much hailed Mel Gibson movie “Apocalypto”. I didn’t read any reviews or information about the film before I went so I could make my own judgement on the film.
I should have known before I went to see this film that Mel Gibson would be trying to make a statement of some sort. In his record busting movie “The Passion of The Christ” (which I have yet to watch, it’s sitting in my DVD collection) he felt it would be a great idea to have it in latin and yet again he felt that his new movie should be similar, except this time in native Mayan. What he gets out of this I don’t know.
In Apocalypto, it was probably the fact that they hadn’t actually got a decent script to work with and for that reason, it was easier to make it more interesting with short lines of subtitles that everyone could read, leaving the images do the talking.
I don’t mind gore and this movie certainly had plenty. In fairness to Mel, he knows exactly what to do to make people go on an emotional rollercoaster. There were some horrifying scenes that really created a shocking atmosphere.
All in all, I was disappointed with the movie. It was hoping that he would be bold and make more of a statement than just using a different language. It ended up being a typical happy ending, Hollywood movie.
I don’t want to take too much away from the film, it’s really well done and it is a good Hollywood movie. But the whole language thing just annoyed me to tears.
Would I recommend going to see it? Yeah in the cinema…… the subtitles are easier to read on the large screen 
Well hot on the heels of the story yesterday about 99.9% UK banknotes containing traces of cocaine, us Irish did our own little survey.
Not as comphrehensive as the UK test, we Irish tested 45 banknotes and found that a staggering 100% of these notes contained traces of cocaine!
Compare that to the US where only 65% is contaminated.
My brother got a call from these guys today http://www.gaelictelecom.ie/
The offer they have is just something that can’t be ignored. They offer FREE broadband, unlimited Local & National Calls for just €11.99 per month.
The free broadband has an allowance of 20 hours, 48:1 contention ratio, downloads of 1MB and 128b uploads.
Apparently all profits go to your loca GAA club, which sounds nice! 
I’d be interested to hear of other people’s experiences with these guys.
The Sunday Telegraph reported that 99.9% of UK banknotes - YES 99.9% - have traces of cocaine.
Mass Spec Analytical tested over “1,500 £10 and £20 notes withdrawn from banks in nine separate rural and urban locations”. The company also found traces of ecstasy, heroin and cannabis, but “at far lower levels because the substances break down more quickly”.
Shocking to think that so many people are using cocaine!
Yep, it’s true. The swedes have created a fireproof goat after they impregranted a herd of Gavle Goats with flame-resistant chemicals.
Arsonists targetted these goats on a fairly regular basis, but this year they failed to ignite
