Should you really be promoting HackWatch news?

bettyboo

Hackwatch News may be 'independent' but its also outdated and therefore hardly the most reliable site to visit for up-to-date information. Surely there are other more relevant sites that you could suggest.

yellum

What other Irish sites would you recommend ? The Irish Times tech site ? Enn ?

bettyboo

ENN, Techcentral.ie, Irish Times, even The Register.co.uk, which may be UK based, but often carries a lot of stories that are relevant to us - these sites may not be perfect, but at least they're updated on a regular basis

beaver

In terms of Irish news, I don't think it's that out-dated...

-Ross

gandalf

Originally posted by bettyboo
ENN, Techcentral.ie, Irish Times, even The Register.co.uk, which may be UK based, but often carries a lot of stories that are relevant to us - these sites may not be perfect, but at least they're updated on a regular basis

Right most of those sites apart from the register normally have news which is really spinned PR from the companies they are suppost to be reporting about. As for IT or Technology articles, if you actually know whats going on then reading the Technology section in lets say the Irish Times is quite amusing but normally not very informative and sometimes inaccurate.

At least John on Hackwatch does try to do some analyse which is not biased towards the companies the articles are based on, not quite perfect but at least its better than been fed corporate PR.

Gandalf.

Bard

This is something I've thought about on occasion. How can you call a site Ireland's best source for Tech news when it's horribly out of date and lacks a lot of relevant news that can be found elsewhere. (i.e.: I know I'm biased, but I've seen little or no mention of IrelandOffline on there).

Originally posted by beaver:

In terms of Irish news, I don't think it's that out-dated...

It's been 18 days at the time of writing since Hackwatch was last updated and I've seen it go for periods of a number of months (2 or 3 - don't remember exactly) without an update. That is VERY much out of date in my opinion.

I'm not totally enamoured by the writing style either. Gandalf - you say "At least John on Hackwatch does try to do some [analysis] which is not biased towards the companies the articles are based on" - er... correct- he more often writes in a way which is utterly biased AGAINST the companies the articles are writing on, getting over-opinionated and downright nasty at times. Sorry to throw stones at this "icon of modern Irish tech news reporting", - but that's simply bad journalism.

The Irish Times, The Register and (hate to say it... but...) ENN are much more reliable and up to date.

JustHalf

A group of mine is doing something to combat the nonsense. Keep your eyes open around the end of October.

beaver

I guess it's a side-effect of huge news sites that people think that all news sites have to be updated every day

I still find it interesting...

-Ross

ObeyGiant

Originally posted by beaver
I guess it's a side-effect of huge news sites that people think that all news sites have to be updated every day

Uh...
That's why they're called "news" sites.
When something is more than a day old, it's no longer "news", it's "history".

Bard

Originally posted by JustHalf
A group of mine is doing something to combat the nonsense. Keep your eyes open around the end of October.

Good idea... might fall over, otherwise :rolleyes:

... any clues?... name, etc...

JustHalf

Er, no...

I'm not saying anything further for now, until everything is finalised. I'm just here to generate morsels of pre-launch hysteria.

What do you mean by "might fall over"? I don't get you.

Hairy Homer

Originally posted by JustHalf
A group of mine is doing something to combat the nonsense. Keep your eyes open around the end of October.

Will do. But if you're thinking of launching an Irish-focussed technology title in this market, you're MAAADD!!!!!

Did you see the Sunday Business Post yesterday (Sep23rd)? An article on how dire the market is at the moment with the publishers of the two longest established print titles bleating about the 'bloodbath' conditions in which they are operating. Look at what happened to the Industry Standard!! Not to mention several smaller PC-oriented mags in UK.

And in Ireland:

Web Ireland - gone

.IE - flimsy

Irish Computer - about as chunky as Gandhi's legs (according to the SBP)

Communications Today - gone

ComputerScope - staff pay cuts (according to the Irish Times and SBP)

PC Live! - ditto (ComputerScope sister title)

Get Connected - also cutting back according to SBP

Business Solutions - Business who?

So if you're launching into that market, either in print or online, you've more balls than a vet's dustbin.

Still.

Vapourware don't bleed, do it? :-)

beaver

Originally posted by ObeyGiant


Uh...
That's why they're called "news" sites.
When something is more than a day old, it's no longer "news", it's "history".

No.

Something is history right after the event. One doesn't have to wait a day.

Many print publications are released on a monthly or even bi-monthly basis. These publications are still valid news sources.

-Ross

ObeyGiant

Originally posted by beaver

Something is history right after the event. One doesn't have to wait a day.

Didn't know quite how far to go down. The point is still the same - news is no longer "news" when it's "history"

Many print publications are released on a monthly or even bi-monthly basis. These publications are still valid news sources.

Not quite... I would not classify these publications as news sources, but opinion sources. Take Time Magazine for example - Noone reads Time Magazine to find out the latest news, instead they read it to read other people's opinions of past events.
But even still, this is not print. This is the ultra-fast, up-to-the-minute internet. Now at 21 days since hackwatch was last updated, and othing has happened in the Irish tech sector since then?

This is the same as a five-week-old newspaper.

Or a copy of Time Magazine.

Hairy Homer

Originally posted by JustHalf
A group of mine is doing something to combat the nonsense. Keep your eyes open around the end of October.

OK. It's now October 30th. Where are you? What are you? Who are you?


By the way, I see there's hot breaking news on Hackwatch.com today. 'Irieland.com are going to charge for e-mail' Hold the front page!!!


Actually it has been held. Since, er, September 3rd to be exact. That's how long it's been there.

Jafas!!!

The Corinthian

At the time of posting this, the article on the home page is almost two months old and many of the most recent articles in the various sectiond date back to 1999 or the sections themselves appear to even be under construction.

As for unbiased, well... it's not the usual press release journalism that one finds around, but unbiased is definately not a word I'd use for it.

Unbiased and jmcc? LOL

In fairness, if one views Hackwatch as a one-man-hobbyhorse, with defacto it is, it's not too bad. Having, a hobby-site myself, that requires fairly frequent updating, I can understand jmcc's position. It's very difficult to spend all that much time on a labour of love when you have to turn a living - and I've the advantage that mine's DB backed with a basic content manager, his appears static, so he'd have to update it by hand every time.

As for wheither boards.ie should promote it, we'll ultimately that's up to the admins. If one or more of them are either mates or have a deal with jmcc, or even just like the site, then it's their right to execute it.

On that point, shouldn't this thread be better suited to the Admin board?

JustHalf

Originally posted by Hairy Homer
OK. It's now October 30th. Where are you? What are you? Who are you?

Our team is spending a lot of time trying to resurrect a Sun E450. I'll give more information soon.

Sorry about that; it's an unfortunate delay, but we've been busy with other things lately for the IT Society in Maynooth. A lot. Now the hassle has died down, work will continue.

Hairy Homer

Originally posted by The Corinthian


In fairness, if one views Hackwatch as a one-man-hobbyhorse, with defacto it is, it's not too bad.

Now you're talking sense.

But if one views Hackwatch as a one-man hobby horse, then calling it 'Ireland's Leading Technology News Site' as it does, is an example of hyperbole or hubris in the extreme.

It's also, by definition, amateur.

And as JMCC is fond of using the acronym JAFA (just another f***ing amateur) to belittle the work of others, the words 'hoist' and 'petard' come to mind.

Gerry

Personally, I don't promote this site. Neither does kali or koopa. Presumably cloud posts announcements about it, since it seems to be the only independant IRISH technology site out there. I am currently working with justhalf on developing a technology site, as he says we are now getting back to work on it. I agree 100% with jmcc on his opinion of other irish "technology" sites. So unless someone has a better alternative site, I don't see the problem with promoting hackwatch. Would you rather the Irish Times or the Sunday Business Post promoted here?

The Corinthian

Originally posted by Hairy Homer
But if one views Hackwatch as a one-man hobby horse, then calling it 'Ireland's Leading Technology News Site' as it does, is an example of hyperbole or hubris in the extreme.

You don't actually think I take that claim seriously

And as JMCC is fond of using the acronym JAFA (just another f***ing amateur) to belittle the work of others, the words 'hoist' and 'petard' come to mind.

Hmmm... you've been around the block, once or twice, it appears. You have me at a disadvantage... PM/email me.

Originally posted by Gerry
Would you rather the Irish Times or the Sunday Business Post promoted here?
In fairness, I don't think anyone has suggested that, only questioned reccomending this site on boards in an apparent official capacity.

Personally, I've liked many of the articles on it, but its infrequent updating makes it too out of touch for me to visit on a regular basis or reccomend for anything other than an archive of the Irish Internet past. I would reccomend a site such as ENN before it (I'm not saying that ENN is 'Ireland's Leading Technology News Site' - just a more professional and useful site than Hackwatch, imho).

jmcc

Originally posted by bettyboo
ENN, Techcentral.ie, Irish Times, even The Register.co.uk, which may be UK based, but often carries a lot of stories that are relevant to us - these sites may not be perfect, but at least they're updated on a regular basis

ENN is primarily just a PR recycling operation. It may get the odd good news story but it is that - very odd. The Irish Times has some good news stories by Jamie Smyth and Daev.

ENN and Techcentral are completely dependent on press releases for the bulk of their content. On HackWatch, I don't particularly like to run press releases. If I had, it would have been trivial to set up a script to post these as a section of HW.

Most of my time for the last few months has been taken up with the WhoisIreland.com project. Perhaps if I posted the daily updates for the .ie tld daily - would that be news in your terms? :-)

Regards...jmcc

jmcc

Originally posted by Bard

I'm not totally enamoured by the writing style either. Gandalf - you say "At least John on Hackwatch does try to do some [analysis] which is not biased towards the companies the articles are based on" - er... correct- he more often writes in a way which is utterly biased AGAINST the companies the articles are writing on, getting over-opinionated and downright nasty at times. Sorry to throw stones at this "icon of modern Irish tech news reporting", - but that's simply bad journalism.

One thing about HW, Bard, is that I have never pulled punches though I think I treated some security issues with a lot more diplomacy than they deserved.

You don't like my style - fine. It is a news style. You don't like how I hit Nua when all the other tech journos were bowing down before them waiting on their every word - fine. Just look at how screwed up the Nua decisions really were and how wrong your favourite clueless technology journalists were. So I criticised Rondomondo/Eircom for being run by idiots. Guess what - they *were* idiots and that is why Rondomondo no longer exists.

Now perhaps you want to dance around smelling the buttercups thinking everything is alright in the world but that is not the way real journalism works. The moron technology journalists were a by-product of the dotcom era. Most of these people do not have a technology background and are not capable of dealing with technology stories properly. They cannot tell the difference between press release rubbish and a good story.

Real journalism expands the reader's understanding of a subject. You are not going to get any increased understanding from the sycophantic PR drivel that technology journalists shovel out. Sometimes things have to be described in brutally harsh terms because the truth in these cases, is often so.

Regards...jmcc

JustHalf

Originally posted by jmcc
Now perhaps you want to dance around smelling the buttercups thinking everything is alright in the world but that is not the way real journalism works. The moron technology journalists were a by-product of the dotcom era. Most of these people do not have a technology background and are not capable of dealing with technology stories properly. They cannot tell the difference between press release rubbish and a good story.

Indeed. There seems to be quite a lot of trash IT articles in the Irish media... just press releases rehashed for the most part, with no great thought going into the pieces. The problem is that most people think this is how tech journalism should be. Another company starting up? Let's have an "interview" with them. Guess if they'll sink or swim? Of course they'll swim! They're an IT company, aren't they?

Most people expect this. They are not accustomed to well thought out discussions about the likelihood of a companies survival. They also take the word of so-called "experts" as gospel. Myself and Gerry have a good laugh at some of the Sunday Business Post IT articles, particularly when they claim things like 64-bit processors run twice as fast as 32-bit processors.

Originally posted by jmcc
Real journalism expands the reader's understanding of a subject. You are not going to get any increased understanding from the sycophantic PR drivel that technology journalists shovel out. Sometimes things have to be described in brutally harsh terms because the truth in these cases, is often so.

Unfortunately, being condescending to people won't help you here. Calling people JAFA's, for example, is not going to win you any friends, and people take offense.

If you truly want to impart information, don't give people crap for not understanding things.

jmcc

Originally posted by Hairy Homer


Will do. But if you're thinking of launching an Irish-focussed technology title in this market, you're MAAADD!!!!!

I'd have to agree with this to some extent. The market for Irish technology news publications has traditionally been very small. I have never contentrated on Ireland alone for publishing ventures and indeed Ireland was a miniscule market for the technology publications I have worked on.

operating. Look at what happened to the Industry Standard!! Not to mention several smaller PC-oriented mags in UK.

Most of the magazines that crashed were higly optimistic in their business plans. They seem to be built on the idea of an ever expanding market. It is a mistake that newbies tend to make frequently in the publishing business. During a boomtime, the market gets flooded with poorly written and poorly edited magazines, all out to grab a section of the market. Most of these will fail. The market will then settle down to a more solid base of a small number of magazines. I think that e-company or something took over Business 2.0 and reverted to monthly publication. It generally takes about 18 months for a magazine to get established in the market.

And in Ireland:
Web Ireland - gone

This probably could have survived if it had been properly run and properly edited. When John O'Sullivan was replaced by Andrew McLindon as editor, the magazine was on a downhill slide to oblivion. McLindon was never good enough to edit a technology orientated publication in my opinion. This character is now working for ENN and I even caught him plagiarising my work though he apologised when I brought the matter to his attention.

.IE - flimsy

The dotIE magazine has traditionally been poorly edited and underfunded. It started out as the IOL house magazine - an idea that was based on the Compuserve subscriber magazine. However IOL/the initial publisher banjaxed the implementation by having an editorially weak setup. Hoson bought the magazine and basically it did not really bring in enough income compared with the dodgy adverts in the In Dublin magazine. It could have been a serious player if it had been handled properly.

Irish Computer - about as chunky as Gandhi's legs (according to the SBP)
Communications Today - gone

I think Irish Computer and Communications Today merged. Again CommsToday was poorly edited and Irish Computer was the flagship publication. CommsToday never had more than about a 7K circulation and there was an increasing overlap between the two magazines.

ComputerScope - staff pay cuts (according to the Irish Times and SBP)
PC Live! - ditto (ComputerScope sister title)

Computerscope is a trade only magazine. PCLive! is the retail mag. PCLive however is still the biggest Irish retail magazine. Both these magazines are heavily dependent on advertising which has taken a very nasty hit. A magazine's income is subs, sales and adverts. The main problem for magazines like PCLive is that there are so many competing magazines that it makes it difficult to get people to subscribe.

Get Connected - also cutting back according to SBP
Business Solutions - Business who?

I've seen a few magazines of that type - one by Business And Finance and another by some Dublin mob that I cannot be bothered trying to remember. Both magazines had what is known in publishing as "rivers of white". Basically they had less content than pages. Interestingly Business And Finance and BizPlus.ie moved into the area of internet business coverage and did it a lot better than those tossers in WebIreland.

The big problem with covering technology news, apart from getting the story is actually getting paid for the publication.

Regards...jmcc

JustHalf

Jmcc...

The argument that those magazines would have been better if ran properly is a rather obvious one. What's your point?

jmcc

Originally posted by JustHalf
Unfortunately, being condescending to people won't help you here. Calling people JAFA's, for example, is not going to win you any friends, and people take offense.

If you truly want to impart information, don't give people crap for not understanding things.

Yep it does upset some people. However I have not called anyone a JAFA yet. :-) Most of the companies that went to the wall in the last few months could have been saved if the people in charge there had not believed the rubbish put out by the technology journalists. McGovern was saying recently that Nua's big mistake was in switching from consultancy to software when they did not understand the software market. The same thing was on HW a few years ago.

Regards...jmcc

jmcc

Originally posted by JustHalf
Jmcc...

The argument that those magazines would have been better if ran properly is a rather obvious one. What's your point?

The market for Irish based/Irish targeted technology magazines is small. In a boom time, that is not a major problem as there is more advertising revenue than there is advertising space. With a downturn, there is more advertising space than advertising revenue. A properly edited magazine can cope to some extent by providing more content. Most magazines have a 50:50 advertising to content ratio. WebIreland had about 70:30 at stages and was only publishing when it got sufficient advertising. The content was sacrificed for advertising. When the advertising dried up, there was no overwhelmingly useful content in the magazine that made it a "must-buy" each month.

There were too many magazines fighting it out and some of them were going to fail. The interesting thing is that some of those that failed did not do so from a purely business point of view. They failed because they were very badly edited and or overlapped existing content in other magazines from the same publishers.

Regards...jmcc

Hairy Homer

Originally posted by The Corinthian


And as JMCC is fond of using the acronym JAFA (just another f***ing amateur) to belittle the work of others, the words 'hoist' and 'petard' come to mind.

Hmmm... you've been around the block, once or twice, it appears. You have me at a disadvantage... PM/email me.

Having problems with my metaphors? I infer from this that you either

a) haven't read enough history books

or

b) are about 16 :-)


A petard was a pot full of gunpowder that was used in the early days of firearms to bring sieges to a speedy conclusion. You snuck up under the wall where the baddies were entrenched, shoved the petard into a crack, lit the fuse and ran like hell. If you were too slow you were 'hoist with your own petard'. ie blown up.

Perhaps a more modern metaphor would be 'those who live by the sword, die by the sword' Er. Maybe that's not very modern at all really, but I hope you know what I mean.

The Corinthian

Originally posted by Hairy Homer
Having problems with my metaphors?

I know what a petard is. I was simply commenting that your viewpoints (regardless of whether I’d concur or not) were obliviously based upon someone who has been observing or even actively involved with the industry for a while. I was just curious as to who you really are, nicks and virtual masks aside.

b) are about 16 :-)

I do feel like a 16 year old every now and then, now that you mention it :rolleyes:

regi

Hmm I could say something nasty here...

Hairy Homer

Originally posted by The Corinthian


I know what a petard is.

Apologies for my patronising leap to conclusions about the breadth of your knowledge.

I was just curious as to who you really are,

Now that's none of your beeswax. You don't have to trawl through too many Irish bulletin boards/discussion sites before you come across McCormac and his nose-thumbing lunacy. That's if he really exists. I've never met him. Nor have I ever met anyone who has. Perhaps it's just a nom de plume. (or is that nom d'ordinateur in the 21st century?)