The Dublin Community Blog

Being snowed in can have it’s advantages. After doing the laundry and cleaning the living room, I will no try to summarise the year 2009 on the Dublin Community Blog.

Gloomy January showed us that the recession is in full swing, as Dublin indie institution Road Records was forced to close its doors (which thankfully re-opened later due to massive support from many a successfull Irish musician) and Dublin Bus announced massive cutbacks, laying off 200 staff. Add some snow causing massive disruptions to traffic and you had a very bleak start into the new year.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re reading this blog, no doubt you are familiar with RSS feeds. But, perhaps you are not. RSS feeds allow you to use a RSS reader to subscribe to your favourite blogs, and have any new articles that are created on your blogroll automatically placed into your reader. One such reader that is exceptionally easy to use, is web based allowing you to read from anywhere, and has a raft of filtering tools is Google Reader. If you already have a Gmail account setup, you can just use these details to log into Google Reader. When you’re there, you can then add a feed as you desire. In order to subscribe to this blog, you can add our feed which is at http://www.dublinblog.ie/feed

Ok, so, seeing as most of the Irish Blogging Community is no doubt drunk or sleeping at this stage, and I’m sitting on my balcony in Oz sunning myself, I thought I ought to post the winners from the Irish Blog Awards which took place a few hours ago. Unfortunately, we here at The Dublin Community Blog didn’t win the Best Group Blog award, but at least our own Rick won an award!!

So, without further delay, here’s the winners:

* Best Popculture blog
DZ-015 by Rick O’Shea

* Best Blog from a Journalist
Present Tense – Shane Hegarty

* Best Food/Drink Blog
Italian Foodies

* Best Crafts Blog
A Simple Yarn

* Best Arts and Culture Blog
The Sigla Blog

* Best Political Blog
Irish Election

* Best Group Blog
Beaut.ie

* Best Use of the Irish Language in a Blog
Blag Ghael gan Náire

* Best Technology Blog/Blogger
Robin Blandford’s ByteSurgery

* Best Designed Blog
Sabrina Dent

* Best Sport & Recreation Blog
Arseblog

* Best News/Current Affairs Blog
Joint winners: The Limerick Blogger & Maman Poulet

* Best Specialist Blog
The Voyage

* Best Newcomer
John Braine

* Best Business Blog
Ice Cream Ireland

* Best Music Blog
nialler9

* Special Recognition Award
Simon McGarr from Tuppenceworth.ie & Ryan from Rymus.net

* Best Personal Blog
Joint Winners: Grannymar & Head Rambles

* Most Humorous Post
Twenty Major – Tonight’s Debate

* Best Photo Blog
Gingerpixel

* Best Blog Post
Fatmammycat.com – Fox hunting, horses and a girl’s awakening

* Best Blog
Twenty Major

Happy New Year to all our readers out there. We’ve never really spoken about our readership on the blog, but, there are a couple of thousand of you a week, both regular and occasional visitors, who log on to check out what we have to say about life in and around Dublin.

Unfortunately, what we’ve had to say of late is, quite frankly, not a lot! Many of the original team have moved onto bigger and better things, and no longer live in Dublin, or are far too busy living the high life to have time to tell us about it!

So, this is a call to arms as such, to anyone out there who feels that they have a thing or two to say about Dublin. Good, or bad, it should be heard, this isn’t the Dublin Tourist Office, this is a blog all about living in and around Dublin. So, if you are interested in writing, or indeed getting involved in any aspect of the site, such as providing photographs, feature requests, or maybe even a re-design, please get in touch. You can mail me on write4us@dublinblog.ie

From September (possibly 2008) people in Ballyfermot and Ballymum will be able to access the internet for free under a new Dublin City Council WiFi scheme. The scheme will also cover a section of the city stretching from the Digital Hub to Trinity. (There are conflicting reports this will happen this September and also September 2008 – I imagine it is the latter.)

There had been talk of creating a city-wide WiFi service but so far only Ballyer, Ballymun and the Liberties will benefit.

You can read more here at the Irish Times (subs required).

Soon to be blogging on the bus in Ballyer 

BEFORE I start, I know it’s been an absolute age since I posted here (work literally crazy) but I haven’t forgotten about the writers or readers here and check in regularly.

When the nominations for the Irish Blog Awards began I nominated this blog as Best Group Blog because of all the hard work and dedication that has gone in to keeping it up and running from Daragh and everyone else. (Perhaps others nominated too, hopefully, as it’s a great blog)

So while I personally have fallen by the wayside, I still thought this blog deserved a mention so I’m delighted to report that we’ve made the long list for Best Group Blog and now all we need is for our readers to vote for us, to ensure we make it to the short list and be in with a chance to go before the judging panel.

We need your help. Please visit http://www.awards.ie/vote/ and vote for us in the Best Group Blog category. Whatever you do, don’t spam as that will result in your votes being discounted and us getting into trouble with Mr Mulley. Keep it to one vote each and everyone will be happy. The writers here all have ‘day jobs’ and so fit this blog into their spare time so I think they deserve some acknowledgement and I hope you’ll agree with me. If you’ve found this blog helpful, amusing, interesting or even just plain good then get your clicking finger out and vote for us.

While you’re there check out the other categories such as Best Personal Blog, Best Photo Blog and Most Humourous Post where some contributors here such as Red Mum, Rick O’Shea and myself (links in the sidebar) have also been nominated. If you could see your way to voting for us as well as this blog, that would be great.

As always, everyone is welcome to attend the Irish Blog Awards which will take place on March 3 in the Alexander Hotel. More details from www.awards.ie and www.mulley.net

Many thanks for your support and help over the past year and hope to see you at the Blog Awards. For now though, get a-voting – or I’ll send Twenty Major around!

EDIT: Also, could you maybe drop us a comment here when you’ve voted, so we’ll have an idea how well we’re doing? Cheers!

(Note to other contributors: The techies among you might be able to stick up an oul Blog Awards button or something? It’s beyond me but it might help to have it up in the corner there where the polls usually are. Cheers!)

In case you haven’t come across it already, there is a Blogging the Election conference taking place this Saturday in the Digital Hub in Dublin. I just noticed a breaking news item on it.
Organised by Damien, Cian, Suzy and Mick, the day will comprise of various sessions including the art of blogging by politicians and a talk given by Guido Hawkes.
The organisers are still looking for sponsorship so if you can help go to Irish Election and sign up as well as register for the event.

All those who register are being offered free blog hosting by Digiweb. More information on Irish Election.

Remember me? I used to blog here… I have been thinking about an ongoing post for here but so far have not been able to do it. Hopefully I will rectify that over the next couple of days. So until I do I thought that I should do something to check in so I looked up my most interesting Dublin photographs on Flickr and came up with these.

It is also worth checking out others Dublin pics, some are amazing and of course don’t forget the Dublin Blog Flickr pool of pix either.

Has the Dublin Community Blog become part of your daily read?! Do you like what we do? Do you dislike what we do and want to help change it? Do you live in Dublin? Do you work in Dublin? Do you write? Do you blog? Do you have something to say?!!?

If so, we’re looking for some writers to join up the team. The idea is that you follow the trends that have already been set here, as well as bring some new ideas to the party. Comments and suggestions for the blog, where it should be going and what we should be doing are always taken aboard and usually actioned too!

We’re also big into photo’s too, so, if you have photo’s of Dublin you’d like to share with the rest of the world, you can either join up and become a blogger, or, join our flickr group.

So, if you wanna join, know people who’d like to join, or have some suggestions for things you’d like to see or be done to the blog, drop a note to write4us@dublinblog.ie

Irish people, especially people living in and around Dublin spend quite a lot of their time talking about traffic, the length of their commute, and how poor public transport can be (when they’re not talking about the weather that is!). Damien Mulley has been writing about a Cisco employee in the US who commutes for an average of 7 hours every day to and from work, and is interested to find out about Ireland’s longest average commute, which I’m sure is going to come from someone living down the country and working in Dublin every day. I know I personally spend just under three hours commuting every day to and from Temple Bar, let us know what your commute is either here or on Damien’s site.