Behold Bertie Ahern watching his beloved Man U trashing the Gooners in glorious 3D yesterday, courtesy of those astute marketing people at Sky, who pitched up in Fagan’s with their fancy new gear and two sackfuls of cheap plastic specs. (more…)
I know it’s not always fair to make comparisons between RTE and the BBC - different scale, etc, etc - but the reaction on Twitter last night to those two public service broadcasters reflected my own feelings. Raspberries were generally blown in the direction of the Irish channel’s rehashed Tubridy Tonight, with a strangely muted Brendan O’Connor (how I longed for some of the sage analysis for which he is famed). The Twitterati are hard to please - who could reasonably argue with a bill of fare including both Twink AND Linda Martin?
Meanwhile, The Virtual Revolution on BBC2 had interviews with most of the people responsible for inventing the universe which you and I inhabit. OK, this history of the World Wide Web was a little gushy at times, and one might have wished for a bit more breadth and depth to the interviews, but the Beeb has made all the rough footage available online for people to do with as they please. Like this:
Increasingly, public service broadcasting on the other side of the Irish Sea means making all the data available online to the public who pay for it. What are the chances of that ever happening at RTE? If it does, I’ll pass on the Twink outtakes, though.
Just back from f-f-freezing Copenhagen, where I had a very interesting few hours in the offices of Politiken, Denmark’s Guardian-ish left of centre daily. (more…)
Good piece today by Sarah Carey (again) about Colm Toibin’s comments on the Iris Robinson case during the Marian Finucane programme last weekend. Strikes me that the whole story offers a fascinating insight into the mixed-up state of public discourse on gender and sexuality. (more…)
There are some great tributes on Donald’s blog to the memory of our friend Michael. They give some indication of the affection in which he was held, both by people who knew him personally and by his readers.
Some readers have taken umbrage today at the description of Rage Against The Machine as a ‘little-known’ band in our report on the Great Christmas No 1 Battle. (more…)
The Irish Times publishes its comprehensive Budget 2010 supplement on December 10th, with details, reaction and in-depth analysis from our best writers, including Stephen Collins, Pat McArdle and Kathy Sheridan. This content is only available in the newspaper, and will not be published online until later.
irishtimes.com continues to carry detailed news and analysis of the budget, with a calculator to help you measure the personal impact of any changes. Online users can see what experts from The Irish Times and from PriceWaterhouseCooper say about what the budget really means for them in our Q&A.
You can now access our new mobile site at m.irishtimes.com. Please check it out and tell us what you think.
We’ve decided to launch a device-neutral site which will render well on iPhones, BlackBerries, Nokias and everything else. It has breaking news, business and sport stories, and selected content from the newspaper. Some other popular functions, such as Most Read stories and Weather, are also included.
If you don’t know how to get to your phone’s browser, or you’re having trouble, you can text and you’ll receive a reply with a link. Send a text containing the word NEWS to 51500. Then click on the link in the reply
If your mobile phone has a web browser built in, and you know how to access it, then you can enter our mobile address, m.irishtimes.com.
(BTW: m.irishtimes.com is optimised for viewing on mobile phones and may not render well or at all on standard PC browsers)
We’re coming towards the end of celebrating our 150th birthday, and for the second time this year we’ve freed up our archive. If you haven’t had a chance to check it out before, please do. It’s an amazing resource where you can find out all sorts of arcane stuff about your local history, the social history of the country, or indeed (my favourite) dark family secrets.
The archive is free to all here until the end of December 13th.
…asks Michael Egan, rather peevishly. Well, as you’ve probably noticed, we haven’t shut down the Saturday magazine/moved to a tabloid format/given up writing about religion, all of which were suggested. (more…)
