DjMagra’s stuff ‘n’ stuff

I recently wrote about stories being lifted from blogs by journalists, and either copied verbatim, or slightly re-hashed before appearing in ‘mainstream’ media. This is something that annoys me greatly, and has just happened to me again.

I wrote this piece over on The Dublin Community Blog on Tuesday evening, about the 150,000 rubber ducks that were recently released into the River Liffey as part of a charity fundraiser for Crumlin Childrens Hospital (more details here). So, imagine my suprise when I was standing on the DART today, and saw a nearby passenger reading this:

Needless to say, I picked up the Metro on my way out of Tara Street to see what they had to say, and looking forward to seeing some reference toward The Dublin Community Blog and the users comments that have been appearing there, showing where in the world these ducks have been turning up. Of course…there was nothing! Granted, there were mentions of another website that is tracking the ducks travels around the world.

Now, I could be way off the mark here, the Metro Ireland Editors could well have commissioned this article a while ago before my post, and it’s just pure coincidence that it appears in their paper two days later, given the time it takes for journalists to research stories and get their facts together. Then again, that wasn’t the case in this story.

I also know that there is a separate issue over Metro’s use of pictures related to that story, but given they’re not my pictures concerned, I’ll refrain from further comment on that one.

And, yes, I know the argument can be put forward that bloggers re-hash professional media stories all the time, but, this is usually with a hat-tip in their direction. Bloggers also aren’t paid (for the most part) for the writings that they generate!

/ Rant over…until the next time!

As a quick read through this blog will tell you, I’m a massive Google fan, and normally have very little bad to say about them, but, whilst this isn’t something bad about them, it’s an absolute classic!

A day after one of the Google Security Team posts an entry to the Official Google Blog, some clever blogger managed to exploit a bug in Google’s own Blogger Blog Service code, and post an entry to the Official Google Blog claiming that Google had discontinued their AdWords click-to-call trial.

No doubt, it is with more than a little egg on their faces that Google had to explain what happened today.

A reminder to everyone however, about just how IT security is…..

I know I have been quiet here, I know The Dublin Community Blog has been too quiet for my liking too, and those who write for the blog have been going quiet on their personal blogs as well…but, in an effort to recruit some new writers, I took a tour of some old favourites, as well as irishblogs.ie, and I’m kinda getting the impression that after the great hype that surrounded Irish Blogging leading up to and immediately following the Irish Blog Awards, that things have now tailed off, and that there are fewer and fewer people blogging and more and more with less to say out there? Am I right? Have others noticed this? Have people moved onto something new other than blogging?

It will be intersting to see what the impression of this is, both here and at the Irish Bloggers Conference on Saturday.