Cormac Moylan

The stage times for Oxygen were announced a few days ago. It’s unfortunate that a lot of the bands I would want to see are clashing but that was always going to be the case. It looks like I won’t be seeing anything of Black Kids, Friendly Fires, Interpol or Tricky. Shame.

Friday Night is probably the best night for Rock with Editors, Interpol and Kings of Leon all playing on the Main Stage. I’ll be taking a slight detour to the Dance Stage to take a look at UNKLE doing his thing live (hopefully live). Can’t wait for that performance.

Saturday is the ‘avoid the main stage at all costs’ night. REM, Stereophonics, The Verve, Amy Winehouse, Counting Crows, Bowling for Soup and Scouting for Girls will all be strutting their stuff on centre court! Eh, no thanks.

Saturday is the Techno night for me with The Japanese Popstars, Michael Mayer, Slam, Boyz Noise and Justice on show. Saturday also has the best alternative indie lineup with Hot Chip, Echo & The Bunnymen, My Morning Jacket, The Enemy, Vampire Weekend, British Sea Power, Ting Tings, Black Kids and Alphabeat all performing.

Sunday is a tough one for me. I need to choose between Rosin Murphy (who I love) and The Racounteurs (who are supposedly unreal live). A decision also needs to be made between Rage Against The Machine (YES!) and The Chemical Brothers (I am yet to see them live!).

The Dance Stage on Sunday night is very poor in my eyes. Cheesy euro dance DJ David Guetta is headlining. Boo!

There are some great acts on show throughout the entire weekend, however I have one complaint, not a single Hip-Hop act! Where are Common, De La Soul, Jurassic 5?

Below is a rough time line thingy of the acts I am hoping to catch.

Friday Night
19.30 - Deus - The O2 Stage
20.25 - Editors - Main Stage
22.00 - UNKLE - Dance Stage
23.30 - Kings of Leon - Main Stage

Saturday
14.30 - Japanese Popstars - Dance Stage
16.10 - My Morning Jacket - Pet Sounds
17.45 - Michael Mayer - Dance Stage
18.35 - Vampire Weekend - Green Room
19.45 - Echo & The Bunnymen - Green Room
19.45 - Slam - Dance Stage
20.15 - Alphabeat - 2FM New Band Stage
21.45 - Boyz Noise - Dance Tent
22.15 - Hot Chip - Pet Sounds
23.45 - Justice - Dance Tent

Sunday
13.30 - Subways - The O2 Stage
15.30 - Radio Slave - Dance Stage
17.30 - Carl Craig - Dance Stage
21.00 - Racounteurs - The O2 Stage
21.15 - Roisin Murphy - Pet Sounds
22.30 - Chemical Brothers - The O2 Stage
22.35 - Rage Against The Machine - Main Stage

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There have been a rake of bugs, performance issues and down time for Netvibes ever since the launch of their Ginger release. I’m no longer happy with Netvibes as my feed reader.

They even added a Google search bar to their header last week. What’s that about? I know what Google is. I know how to get to Google.com. I know how to search. I don’t need a Google search within my feed reader. Netvibes claimed it was a feature longed for by its users but the comments on their blog post about it are very negative. Where are Netvibes pulling these ridiculous features from? Obviously they’re trying to get paid but it’s at the expense of users. Users like me who are now looking for an alternative.

Anyway. I’m looking for a new feed reader. I quite like Google Reader’s news ticker feature but I can’t stand looking at their UI. Bloglines? PageFlakes?

What do you use and do you recommend it and why?

I often enter my email when asked if I want an invite to a beta release of social networks, music sites, etc… A few weeks ago I applied for the Strands.com beta. This evening I received my email invite (first two people to leave a comment each get invites).

In the time that has passed between applying for and receiving my invite I have completely forgotten what Strands is all about.  

Their homepage is a giant empty space of information too. I have being on Strands now for about a hour and I haven’t received any overview information to my personal email or to my Strands inbox. When I logged in for the first time I didn’t receive any introductory piece about what the site was about or how to use it. The below screenshot is the landing page you are redirected to after successfully logging in for the first time. Not too informative either.

I was in a bit of a panic at this stage to figure out what strands was about. It looks visually very nice. It asked me to add my RSS feeds / Twitter / Jaiku / Flickr / Digg / enter / more / 2.0 / apps / here / in order to syndicate my content. I began to assume Strands is similar to popular socialite app FriendFeed. It also provided me with a download which tracks the music I play in iTunes. I then thought that maybe Strands was taking a run at Last.fm by mining my listening habits in order to provide me with music recommendations.

The plot was begining to thicken but I still wasn’t satisfied. I checked out their footer expecting to find some links to explain what his company was about. I clicked on a link for OpenStrands to be greeted by this explanatory text: 

OpenStrands services allow you to programmatically perform many of the same functions available to you through the MyStrands website using a browser. The platform currently includes account, catalog, recommendation, playlist, tagging, and community services. Use of OpenStrands is free to registered MyStrands users.

Oh right. API is it?

In my quest for legible information I re-read the invite email which stated that “Strands lets you centralize your online activity in one place and provides tools that help you easily find the content that’s most interesting to you.” Ah, so it’s like a cross between FriendFeed and Last.fm then? Sounds interesting but the quoted text about doesn’t tell me too much about the product.

In the end the saving grace was a FAQ entry.

Strands helps people discover new things from people they care about. Strands gives users the ability to record their activities and keep track of their friends across multiple social networks and services. Based on your aggregated activities, Strands enables discovery of new things based on your own behaviors as well as those of your friends and influencers. 

With Strands, you just tell us all of the services and networks you use, and we do the rest. We create a single aggregated “activity stream” that others can track… your favorite videos on YouTube?, your recently played songs from Last.fm, your latest bookmarks from Delicious, stories and articles you have “dugg”, your photos from Flickr, your status updates from Facebook and Twitter. We pull it all together so others can have a single view into what you are into, up to and down with. And vice versa. 

Then comes the magic… we take all this information – from both you and your friends – and we pluck out the pearls that we think you’ll really be interested in discovering. What’s hot across the communities of people you care about – regardless of what services they use. And what you think your friends and followers should check out – regardless of where it came from. 

Stop searching. Start discovering. 

That bit in bold there in the end is kind of ironic

Strands, if you’re going to go to the bother of running a beta invite program then please make sure that your potential users know at the earliest stage possible what your website is about. I didn’t want to go on a magical mystery tour trying to figure out the ins-and-outs of your site myself but you didn’t provide me with any upfront and easily accessible information about how to use the site and what the site is about. You could have at least provided me with a default ‘Tom’ who’s profile I could take a look at! 

Anyway. Anyone for an invite? (I only have two).

Check out ScrnShots. Chris linked me to this design-centric website this afternoon. The site explains that ScrnShots…

…. is the best way to take and share screenshots of web and screen based design. Upload as many screenshots as you want, embed them in your blog, discuss them with your contacts and become a better designer!

The site enables designers to share their creations and receive feedback and/or criticism about their work. Some of the work which has been uploaded so far is quite impressive. Such as..

Quite a good resource if you are looking for some design inspiration.

I’ll be cheering on Russia propping up against the bar on Thursday night while I attend CrunchLudd. CrunchLudd is the one night only union of TechLudd and TechCrunch UK. The event is a get together of Irish software startups and is being held at 4 Dame Lane in Dublin. Proceedings kick of at 7PM.

Cad é TechLudd?

TechLudd is a free monthly social networking event for Irish start-ups and those interested in them, from founders to funders to fans.

TechLudd was founded on the idea of nurturing a network around start-ups, building the same kind of ecosystem that the Paddy’s Valley crew discovered helped nurture entrepreneurs with access, funding, contacts and communication on their trip to Silicon Valley in December 07.

If you’re interested in attending, you need to register at amiando (strange name!) so that the guys can figure out the numbers in advance. There will be one of two of use from work, ammado (nice name!), in attendance. Only problem is that Spain and Russia are kicking off at 7.45 in the Euro Semi Finals. Hope they have TVs at the venue!

What happens when you mix bits of Pearl Jam with elements of Foo Fighters and garnished with some Queens of the Stone Age?

Constantines - Hard Feelings