sinéad's lifestream

I was quite literally speechless on Saturday night when I heard I was a joint winner for Best Technology Blog at the Irish Blog Awards. I grabbed the fantastic Made In Hollywood “winner” tombstone (celebrating the death of blogging of course) as I was happier to prance away with that and let 3 time nominee, first time winner, Pat Phelan take the trophy home – a really well deserved winner. Though admittedly I’m looking forward to my own trophy making its way home.

In the past year my blog has transitioned from being considered a personal blog to a technology blog, but honestly I don’t think I could ever really separate the two. Since a really young age technology has been an integral part of my daily life and this blog has been my outlet for my passion for all things technology related, especially in the last year what with the publication of my blogging research,  subsequent end of my college course on Cyberpsychology and search for related employment.

I’m completely unable to express my passion for technology during my current full time job and if it wasn’t for blogging I imagine that passion might have wavered. I’m extremely thankful for blogging because of this and also because it has brought me to incredible events like the Irish Blog Awards and allowed me meet so many wonderful people, like the gorgeous ladies in the photo below.

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The Irish Blog Awards finalists list was published last night and I’m delighted to see so many familiar and deserving blogs and bloggers having made it to the final judging round. Next weekend in Galway is going to a lot of fun. I’m pleased to report that my own blog made it to the finals, in the “Best Technology Blog/Blogger” category. The full list of finalists in this category are below, as you’ll see the competition is incredibly tough and I’m proud to be put along side these amazing blogs/bloggers. Thanks to Bitbuzz who are sponsoring the category and thanks to Damien Mulley for organising another piss up awards.

Best Technology Blog/Blogger

– Sponsored by Bitbuzz

• The Gaming Liberty
• Pat Phelan
• Matt Johnston
• Sinead Cochrane
• Web2Ireland

Thanks to Steph for the graphic/badge.

Pat Phelan has been giving away some amazing prizes this week, has raised €1222.00 for the Cancer ward at Crumlins Childrens Hospital and has been busy encouraging the donation of old mobile phones to the Jack & Jill Foundation.

He also made Christmas come early for me yesterday with the delivery of the mystery “nice prize” I won. I had joked on his blog that “This could make the FIRST interesting unboxing video” but I was far too excited to do so. Considering that the mystery turned out to be a lovely little Flip video camera I decided I’d film a quick little video to say thank you. It really *IS* an easy little thing to use, and within 5 minutes of opening it I had the 1 minute .avi file on my computer and ready to upload to youtube (that was the part that took the longest!). You can find my cringe worthy video here (as always with youtube, best viewed in high quality mode).

Following on from Pat’s give-away, Damien Mulley has another competition, in association with a supporter of the foundation. Anyone that donates one or more phones will be entered into a draw to win some more gadgey goodness. Everyone has old mobile phones, so why not put them to some real use? There is even a freepost address you can send them to:

The Jack and Jill Mobile Appeal, Freepost, Ratoath Road, Finglas, Dublin 11.

Just put the phone and charger (if you have it) into a jiffy bag and pop in the post. It couldn’t be simplier. I asked everyone in the house to fish out their old phones (pictured above, along side the Flip camera on it’s tripod) and I’ll be posting them after Christmas.

The Irish Blog Awards are on tonight, good luck to everyone nominated. If you can’t make the physical event in the Alexander Hotel there is a Second Life party (formal attire please!) in the Dublin sim, in St. Stephen’s Green. This is tonight at 7.30pm. A big part of me (the shy part!) wishes I could go to the virtual party instead!

Kudos and thanks to Damien Mulley for applying his many skills to this.

My Fluffy Badge (thank you Damien) finally has a home – on my bookshelf. It’s a bit of a nerd alert though, so shield your eyes!

As inspired by the Science Week posts over on Mulley.net

What changes would you make to an existing piece of technology?

I’d love it my Sony Ericsson w850i had a QWERTY keyboard and a slightly larger screen, so I could write longer e-mails and not get frustrated with text message input limitations. Besides, most of the smart phones out there at the moment that have QWERTY keyboards are the size of bloody toasters. (No thank you!)

So… what changes would you make to an existing piece of technology?