LASICA -- The transparency of blogging has contributed to news organizations becoming more accessible and interactive. However, this has not trickled down into regional publications. Lasica sees weblogs as "participatory journalism, or journalism from the edges." One of the purposes of Irish Typepad is to offer snippets of information that assists researchers in the process of collecting, reporting, sorting, and analysing news of use for local media.

CLONMEL -- We are supporting Global PR Blog Week, set for 12-16 July 2004. It's a week-long conference featuring some of the world's most influential public relations, marketing and business bloggers.

LAOIS -- County Laois needs to recruit a Projects Officer to foster an entrepreneurial spirit in the county, provide guidance and support to promoters and motivate SMEs. You need experience with business plans, a track record in business development and a third level quaification. This position closes on 2 July 2004.

LIVING ROOM -- Essential reading from Darren Rowse who scoured the Web for the best tutorials on Photographic Composition and finished with a page full of excellent links for photographers using both the digital and film medium. His resultant listing provides tips on "Composition" which means they centre on how to arrange your subject in the frame and not on other technicalities of shooting digital images like using a flash, shooting in different modes.

RETRO CRUSH -- Loads of mash-up audio clips here. It claims to include the best 10 seconds from the top 50 voted by readers. Your opinion may vary.

SURVEY MONKEY -- While working with some of the most talented teenagers I've encountered in Ireland, I learned about Survey Monkey. This online survey software has a single purpose: to enable anyone to create professional online surveys quickly and easily

RING-TONES -- Starving students have discovered a way to earn pocket money--operate a site offering ringtones.

CLONMEL -- When we being our first year of multimedia degree work, we ask people to write a list about themselves. Most cannot think of more than 30 things, so we set up "about checklists" like this one on Emme's site.

THURLES -- One of the most important facets of web publishing is audience and from the looks of things, Google is considering a syndication feed that expands the audience of the earliest microcontent publishers. It looks like Google is embracing RSS (Really Simple Syndication). If Google actually continues its development aling this line, it will mark a possible return to course for the search engine company in a standards war over technology and it will affect how people read the news.

NATTERJACK PR -- There are a lot of examples where big companies wait for textbook solutions before trying out new technologies. This could be the case in the story Tom Murphy tells about Angelo Fernando, author of the Hoi Polloi blog, who recently attended the IABC conference in Los Angeles. Fernando was surprised that Microsoft PR director Janice Kaplan talked about a whole range of online communication tools but ignored blogs.