Browsing Posts published on February 9, 2006

In what I hope is the first of many by high-quality food producers in Ireland, Ummera Smoked Products have launched their own blog. You can find it over at ummera.wordpress.com.

Anthony seems really enthusiastic about using technology to enable him to do business more efficiently and I hope my (ahem) multitude of readers encourage him to keep blogging regularly by providing him with constant feedback. The big news on their blog is the new packaging/labelling which is a major improvement and really catches the eye on the shelf. Their products are available in most good foodie outlets, particularly in Cork, so check out the new labels and let him know what you think.

There is also mention on the blog of the new Farmers Market in Kinsale which I’ll have to check out (even tho Earl from “My Name is Earl” now makes me feel like a girl dressed in pink).

Unfortunately, the main person trying to set up a similar market in Bandon died recently. Hopefully someone else involved in food in the area (Clodagh? PadraigĂ­n?) will take up the torch. I’d be more than willing to help but my lack of local contacts and the fact that I don’t work in the business means there would be no point in me trying to kick it off.
But in any case, I’m really thrilled that Anthony has leaped into the world of blogging and is at the vanguard of the next generation of food marketing in Ireland. The fact that he is using wordpress.com developed mainly by Donncha from Cork, is just a bonus!
[tags] Ummera, WordPress.com, Irish Food, Kinsale, Farmers Market[/tags]

The ability to search and find information in blog comments has been identified by many “in the know” as one of the bigger challenges in blogland in 2006. But I have a simpler problem – tracking replies to my comments on other peoples blogs. Those who use WordPress and the “Subscribe to Comments” plug-in like me allow commenters to get e-mails when replies are posted. Unfortunately, we are in the minority.

The other day, CoComment was launched to great buzz. Initially I was dubious – why would I go to yet another web-site to find out about replies to things I have written on someones blog? But I was in a hard-of-thinking mode. These guys provide an RSS Feed of replies to your comments.

For non-techies reading this, it means that you have a pseudo-blog which you track in your blog reader (Thunderbird, Bloglines, Rojo etc) and which consists an aggregation of other peoples replies to your comments on yet other peoples blogs.

Once I realised this, I signed up, and now I just click a button in my browser every time I have written a comment. I can then completely forget about what I have written until someone replies and it appears as a new item in my blog reader. Most excellent. This means they can store all of these comments, which means comments will effectively become searchable. Are they going to offer this themselves or wire into Technorati or even Google?
It is invitation-only right now but there are plenty of nice people handing out those invites so it should be easy enough to get sorted.

[tags]coComment, Subscribe-to-Comments[/tags]