Great night, great crowd, A whole hearted success and our congratulations go out Damien for another cracking night. Maman Poulet has produced a beautiful page of the winners that far exceeds my humble HTML skills so swing over there for the authoritative list.

This was the year when the real world took over from the geeks with people like GrannyMar and HeadRambles sweeping all before them. In fact the only techno geek to feature was Robin Blandford under the best technology blog moniker for his ByteSurgery blog.

Myself and Pat Phelan raced each other to get the results out on twitter and live blogged them (feeling a little quaint all the while!). I think the organisers might do this themselves in the future with prepared post that reveals itself as the annoucements are made. I was trying to type and chase links while the same time failing horribly to work out the name of the best irish blog.

There is a tagged record of the night in pictures on pix.ie.

A top night, my congratulations to all the winners!

Well here we are again, three years in a row. This could become an institution. Big Crowd and lots of movers and shakers, next year black tie and a meal? Who knows.

The man behind the Curtain Damien Mulley seems calm and that’s a pretty good sign. Conn Ó Muíneacháin is live streaming the awards at http://edgecast.ie, sound is rocking and the big screens are clear and close.

• Best Pop Culture Blog : Rick O’Shea, the Half Arsed Blog
• Best Blog from a Journalist : Shane Hegarty, Present Tense
• Best Food/Drink Blog: Italian Foodies
• Best Crafts Blog : A Simple Yarn
• Arts an Culture Blog: Sinead Gleeson: The Sigla Blog
• Best Political Blog : Irish Election
• Best Group Blog: Beaut.ie
• Best use of Irish Language in a blog : TDB
• Best Technology Blog: Robin Blandford, Bytesurgery
• Best Designed Blog : Sabrina Dent
• Best Sports and Recreation Blog: ArseBlog
• Best News/Current Affairs Blog: The Limerick Blog and Maman Poulet (tied)
• Best Specialist Blog: The Voyage
• Best Newcomer: John Bray
• Best Business Blog: Ciaran Murphy, Ice Cream Ireland
• Best Music Blog : Nialler9
• Special Award : Simon McGarr
• Another Special Recognition Award: Ryan (for photographs)
• Final special Award : Rick O’Shea
• Best Personal Blog: HeadRambles, Grannymar (a tie)
• Most Humorous Post: Twenty Major
• Best Photo Blog: GingerPixel
• Best Blog Post: Fat Mammy Cat
• Best Blog : Twenty Major

Thats all folks. Its party time.

Fergus has posted his keynote slides from the IWTC Conference on slideshare.

Barry here from IrishDev.com. We are releasing 50euro day passes for the final day of the Irish Web Technology Conference.

Pay on the day, the schedule commences at 9.15am so aim to arrive at 8:30 – 8:45am.

Schedule includes online Brand Engagement, business blogging, data protection, open source licencing (by the daddy himself, Russ Nelson form New York) IPR fro online activities, MS Volta, agile web development (Exoftware), mobile web (Roccoco) Developing secure web apps, enabling trust on the internet (Paul Walsh – Segala) Semantic Web (John Breslin) SEO (hobo), Google Analytics (IQ Content) – see http://iwtc.firstport.ie

Price includes lunch, brochure, and special laptop bag.

Send an email to patricia@irishdev.com or call her after hours on 087 924 3392 to confirm you place.

Lastly, remember tonight is Irelands first technology pub quiz – we have companies, user groups and even friends who have formed teams of four – if you want to enter simply turn up to the CineWorlds tonight.

Its all happening this week on the conference front in Dublin.

From Tuesday through Friday we have the Irish Web Technology Conference hosted at the Cineworld Complex on Parnell Street. Fergus Burns and Conor O’Neill will be presenting and I would suggest you also try and catch Paddy Holohan of Newbay. Paddy has made more money from software in the last twenty years than is probably legal :-). If you are really stuck, you could kill and hour with this guy.

The IWTC unfortunately clashes with two other great events I want to attend this week as well. XCellerate 2008 is a tabled as “Bringing Silicon Valley to Ireland” but seems to heavily focussed on an (impressive) lineup of irish presenters including Brian Caulfield, Chris Horn, Bernie Cullinane and Shay Garvey.

Its only a half day affair so in theory you could nip across to The Ballsbridge Court (aka the Berkeley Court) for the morning if you wanted to catch up on what appears to be a ISA conference from 5 years ago, dug up and dusted off.

The real clash comes with the ISA Conference next day which has some great speakers but the worst website I have ever seen (did I say website, web page! more like). Guy Kawasaki, the ex Apple Evangelist, A-list blogger and sometimes VC at Garage Ventures is paired with Anthony Williams the co-author of Wikinomics. These are world class speakers and its a real coup for the ISA to get them to come to Ireland. The ISA Conference is hosted at the O’Reilly Institute, UCD in Belfield.

Then to cap it all off on Saturday we have the Irish Blog Awards, organised by Irelands most prolific blogger, Damien Mulley for the third year in a row. This will held at the Alexander Hotel in Dublin (just behind Trinity). Entrance fee is €10 and a good night is guranteed for all.

Don’t even get me started on BlogTalk 2008 which kicks off on Sunday in Cork.

Prices are as follows:

• IWTC : Four Days, 41 speakers : €245 but €189 if you pre-register online
• XCellerate 2008 : Half Day, €100 or 450 bundle which gives you access to the ISA Conference
• ISA Conference : Members €250, Non members €300, Incubation Centre Member €200
• BlogAwards : €10 on the door

I think the keepers are the IWTC for the scope of its presenters, the ISA conference for Guy and Anthony and the BlogAwards because Damien sensibly organised it not to clash with anyone else.

I shot this picture in my local Tesco’s supermarket recently. This is the printer cartridge aisle. I know printer ink is more expensive than vintage champagne (or human blood for that matter). But this enormous mountain of ink is only a tiny representative sample of the totality of form factors for ink delivery out there.

Each time Dell or IBM or HP produce a new printer they seem bound by some crazed anti-reuse cancer to produce a completely brand new delivery system.

The obsession with eluding the cartridge refillers (who are doing the planet and our pockets a great service) must stop and some kind of move to a standardised delivery system has to be the future for this industry.

Can you say carbon footprint?

TechLudd Limerick kicks off in the George Hotel next Thursday the 21st at 7.00pm. Make sure to register so you can be sure of a seat 🙂

See y’all there on the night.

Originally uploaded by Joe Drumgoole
This is a serious horn for cyclists. I came across it outside the Stephens Green centre and couldn’t resist trying it out. You grab the handle in front on the forks and lift and press. It is car horn loud!

Great for drivers in the cycle lane.

Digital Tagging is for pussies.

Niall Larkin at the Digital Hub

Originally uploaded by Joe Drumgoole
Digital Tagging is for Pussies.

The little dot above is meant to be a whole image, but the shit, shit, shit (did I say it was shit) wordpress editor while displaying it correctly in edit mode, obliterates it to a pixel when viewed via the main blog page. To reproduce, post a photo from flickr and edit the title. See the next post for a correct view.