The deadline for X-tech is today  January the 25th.

Proposals for presentations and tutorials are invited for XTech 2008, Europe’s premier web technologies conference. The deadline for submitting proposals is January 25th, 2008.

XTech 2008 will be held from May 6-9th 2008, in Dublin, Ireland.

XTech’s theme this year is “The Web on the Move”, focusing on the emerging portability of data, applications and identity on the internet. We will explore the benefits, issues, practicalities and fun of a web built on open standards, open source and commodity technology.

"Companies are made up of people, and people talk. They also have lives, and interests, and fun, and friends--even friends they meet at work or through other business or professional interactions. Pretending that your employees are robots has never been a winning human resources strategy.

For most people, the human drive to connect and share is stronger than the duty to spend every possible moment "being productive". No matter what, people will  find ways to socialize and share during work hours. It might be best to treat this like sex education: If your employees are going to "do it" anyway, why not encourage them to channel their social-media impulses in smart, safe ways that can potentially help your business?

Today, life and work overlap more than ever before. Technology is making that overlap more seamless. To thrive in this environment, the key is to embrace the trend toward "24/7 work-life" and temper it with basic common sense. This is especially true if you wish to recruit and keep the most talented and creative staff, or to strengthen and grow relationships with your customers, suppliers and partners."

Bringing social media to work.

John Breslin gives plenty of reasons as to why Blogtalk is being held in Cork.

"So why is BlogTalk 2008 coming to Cork, Ireland? You may not know it, but there are a lot of connections between the “People’s Republic of Cork” and the world of Web 2.0 and social software.

• Tom Raftery, BlogTalk 2008 co-chair, social media consultant, and the person behind the hugely successful Thought Leaders podcast series <small>(interviewing the likes of Ross Mayfield, Loic Le Meur, Dave Sifry, Thomas Vander Wal, Chris Messina, Vint Cerf, Michael Arrington and Robert Scoble amongst many other luminaries)</small> is from Cork.
• Conor O’Neill, founder of Argolon (known for their LouderVoice service), editor of blognation Ireland and Web 2.0 Ireland, and co-ordinator of the Cork OpenCoffee Club (we should organise one to co-occur with BlogTalk) is based in Cork.
• Pat Phelan, founder of Cubic Telecom (whose services include MAXroam), and a proponent of Web 2.0 and telecommunication crossovers, has his headquarters in the city of Cork.
• Web 2.0 guruTim O’Reillywas born in Cork.
• Sxoop Technologies, the company (Walter Higgins et al.) behind the Pixenate online photo editor, are located in Cork.
• Donnacha O’Caoimh, co-founder of Automattic and lead programmer for WordPress MU (on which WordPress.com is based) is in Cork.
• Blackrock Castle is home to Ireland’s first “social software” cinema, allowing an audience to influence the design of a space mission so as to divert a comet from colliding with the Earth.
• Damien Mulley, organiser of the Irish Blog Awards, winner of the 2007 IIA Net Visionary award for technology journalist, and former chair of IrelandOffline, is from Cork.
• And there’s a bunch of other companies in this space from Cork: waveson, eWrite, Lukulu, Comhar, Beecher Networks and CIX."
  

"Scott Deitzen, president and CTO of Zimbra, gave the third talk last Friday at Web 2.0 Expo Tokyo. Zimbra has been on the go for four years (so they are Web 2.0 pioneers), and embarrassingly I told Scott that I only found out about them very recently (sorry!). Scott’s aim for this talk was to share the experience of having one of the largest AJAX-based web applications (thousands of lines of JavaScript code). Since their status has changed since they originally signed up for the conference, he mentioned that Yahoo! are the new owners of Zimbra. But Scott affirmed that Zimbra will remain open source and committed to their partners and customers who have brought Zimbra to where it is."

John Breslin reports some more at the Web 2.0 conference in Tokyo.

John Breslin reports from the Web 2.0 EXPO in Tokyo.

"The second talk at the Web 2.0 Expo Tokyo this morning was by Rie Yamanaka, a director with Yahoo!’s commercial search subsidiary Overture KK. (I realised after a few minutes of confusion that Ms. Yamanaka’s speech was being translated into English via portable audio devices.)

According to Yamanaka, Internet-based advertising can be classified into three categories: banners and rich media, list-type advertisements (which was the central topic of her presentation), and mobile advertising (i.e., a combination of banner and listings grouped onto the mobile platform)."

More found here.

Article from Prof Stefan Decker and Dr John Breslin published in the November Edition of the  IEEE magazine.

"SNSs usually offer the same basic functionalities: network of friends listings (showing a person’s “inner circle”), person surfing, private messaging, discussion forums or communities, events management, blogging, commenting (sometimes as endorsements on people’s profiles), and media uploading. With such features, SNSs demonstrate how the Internet continues to better connect people for various social and professional purposes. Yet, fundamental problems with today’s SNSs block their potential to access the full range of available content and networked people online. A possible solution is to build semantic social networking into the fabric of the next-generation Internet itself — interconnecting both content and people in meaningful ways."

Article found here via John's blog.

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The star studded Web 2.0 summit 2007 is to take place in San Francisco tomorrow.

John Batelle and Tim O' Reilly are to co-host it.

Many people that will be present are working hard on Web 3.0.

There is a panel discussion called "The Semantic Edge" with W. Daniel Hillis (MetaWeb), Barney Pell (PowerSet) and Nova Spivack (Radar Networks).

Barcamp Galway is now less than one month away.

Barcamp Galway is an informal gathering of people from technical and business backgrounds, where information and experiences are exchanged. The event is geared towards sharing knowledge and learning from others and there is a policy of encouraging all to participate in all discussions.

There are currently over 55 people registered to attend.

If you feel like giving a talk please feel free to subscribe to the wiki.

Its free and will be held at DERI,Galway on the 22nd of September

The following people are involved in its planning.Please feel free to leave an email at barcampgalway at gmail.com

The planners involved are:

1. John Breslin
2. Aidan Finn
3. Conor Hayes

and there is also a blog for the event.

"World of Warcraft and Second Life are proving a boon to social scientists who are using them as virtual laboratories.

Researchers are getting insights into real life by studying what people do in virtual worlds, reveals a review in the journal Science. It suggests virtual worlds could help scientists studying ideas of government and even concepts of self. Others are looking at behaviours peculiar to online worlds and how they differ from real life."

Via the BBC