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.

This award is going to provide a massive amount of motivation for me to continue writing well researched content and expressing my thoughts and experiences of technology. It’s been a real priority of mine this last year or so to produce all my own content and turn away from lazy blogging, and it looks like it’s paid off.

Winning wasn’t the only thing to make my weekend especially perfect though. I was really proud to see the Blog Awards videos received really well by the crowd, especially “The Death of Irish Blogging” and “The Blogger’s Apprentice” which were shot/edited by my girlfriend Jen. I was also over the moon to see Culch.ie, Sabrina Dent, Eolai and Tommy win in their categories. A big thank you to Damien for organising the event, all the brilliant unpaid volunteers and of course to the sponsors, especially Bitbuzz the Best Technology sponsors and providers of much needed WiFi on the night.

Best Technology Blog/Blogger

– Sponsored by Bitbuzz

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

Thanks to Steph for the graphic/badge.

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.

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

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?