Villa81

This day one week ago I finally was able to unite a trophy with its rightful owner after a month on my mantelpiece. In February I accepted the Digital Media Award (DMA) for Best in Blogging on behalf of Ronan Lyons. This was a somewhat unusual task as you see I don’t actually know Ronan, or rather I didn’t at the time.

Our story begins outside of Subway on Nassau St where I was rather classily munching into a sandwich when I saw Darragh Doyle and Stephanie Francis walking by. I said hello and Darragh noticed that I was wearing a tux, uncommon garb for Subway sandwich stores. When I mentioned I was off to the DMAs Darragh asked if I could accept an award on behalf of Ronan Lyons in case he won. Ronan lives in England most of the time and Darragh had volunteered to collect it for him. I volunteered to step into the breach for Darragh and only then realised the oddity of what would happen if I accepted this award on behalf of someone I didn’t know.

So I got to the table and quickly asked fellow tech journo Eamon McGrane to give me a look at Ronan’s blog. You see I hadn’t actually ever read it before then (I have since and it is rather good) and was surrounded at the table by people that know Ronan in some capacity or another.  Sure enough he won and I went home with a trophy and bottle of vodka which very much didn’t belong to me.

I am now happy to say that last week  I met up with Ronan in Trinity while he was over on a break from his PhD studies in England. As you can see from the photo below he trophy and winner have now been united.

As you can also see in the bottom right hand corner of the shot, I also gave him his bottle of vodka as well, despite the strong temptation to yoink it. Congratulations again to Ronan from everyone here at Villa81.com.

Filed under: General by Emmet Ryan
Tags: « award - blog - blogging - digital media awards - dma - ronan lyons »
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Inspired by this Tweet by Caitlin Moran of The Times following today’s successful test of the Large Hadron Collider in CERN we decided to do a little investigating. Will the wave of celebratory nerd sex spread worldwide and could it reach the Emerald Isle to such an extent as to boost performance in Maths and Science subjects in 2028 and 2029? These are the years when children conceived amidst tonight’s drunken nerd joy will sit their Leaving Certificate exams, which for non-Irish visitors are the final exams taken before going on to university.

Paddy Power provided Villa81.com with these odds:

More births in 2010 than 2009
1/3

Leaving Certificate 2028 Top Grades
6/1 Maths
4/1 Science subjects

Leaving Certificate 2029 Top Grades
5/1 Maths
4/1 Science subjects

Nobel Prize for Physics 2030
500/1 Irish Man born 2010
500/1 Irish Woman born 2010

“We at Paddy Power are all pretty excited about the possibility of a successful CERN test tonight. However no one could be more excited than the many physicists and other boffins around Ireland. As a result of a successful test tonight we foresee there could be plenty of happy nerds taking advantage of the euphoria,” said Michelle Daly at Paddy Power.

“Cliched as it may be it looks like there could be a lot of glasses getting steamed up after the launch tonight. Will the nerds get jiggy-jiggy? Could a boffin baby boom be upon us?”

While we certainly like the odds for Maths and Science subjects to rise up the Leaving Cert ladder in just under two decades’ time, Villa81 would advise against the Nobel Prize odds as it would take an exceptional Irish prodigy of globally unprecedented proportions to win the award before they turn 20.

Filed under: Features, General by Emmet Ryan
Tags: « cern - drunk - large hadron collider - leaving cert - leaving certificate - lhc - maths - nerd - nobel prize - odds - paddy power - science - sex »
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Crackdown 2 will be arriving on the Xbox 360 later this year and Villa81 took the chance to chat with Microsoft’s Peter Connelly to see what gamers can expect when the game is launched.

No firm release date has been set but Microsoft say the game will be out some time in 2010.

Filed under: Features by Emmet Ryan
Tags: « crackdown - crackdown 2 - footage - game - gamer - gaming - preview - xbox - xbox 360 »
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Villa81 headed along to the Crowne Plaza hotel in Dublin to see the best and brightest in the Irish technology world do battle at the 2010 Satellite Broadband Ireland Digital Media Awards.

We must extend our sincerest thanks to Ashville Media who provided us with stills, without which we wouldn’t have been able to complete this feature.

Filed under: Features by Emmet Ryan
Tags: « animation - digital media awards - dma - dun laoghaire - grand prix - iadt - kavaleer productions - satellite broadband ireland - short - student digital storytelling »
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We’re moving away from video for this piece but as you’ll see images will still be quite important. Sony Playstation sent out a press release earlier today declaring it had tested the public’s honesty as part of the launch of it’s new game PS3 game Heavy Rain. Any kind of research story by a corporate entity should always be treated with caution, so we were keen to find out how Sony Playstation had conducted the study.

As part of the promotion 100 wallets containing €20 were left across four Irish cities, 40 in Dublin, and 20 each in Limerick, Cork, and Galway over the weekend. While this is far from a substantial sample we’re not going to criticise them for not want to leave €20,000 in cash lying around instead of the €2,000 they did circulate.

Sony Playstation placed a number inside the wallets for people who found them to ring hoping to test the honesty of those that found the wallets. According their results 54 people out of the 100 rang this number and they were duly rewarded with a €20 Gamestop voucher for their honesty.

After viewing the initial press release we had a few questions about the make-up of the wallet. Firstly we asked if there was any other material in the wallet to make it look like it wasn’t planted. A spokesperson for the firm told Villa81.com that extra items were placed inside to make it look more like an ordinary wallet.

There was of course one other important question and that is how the phone number was presented. We asked for an image of the wallets and they provided Villa81.com with such an image promptly. The wallets looked like so:

A sample of the wallets used in the Heavy Rain promotion

Having covered plenty of flawed corporate research stories over the years, I’m the first to scream bad science at the way the card looks. There’s no doubt that it’s a call to action, the likes of which typically would not be found in most wallets.

We accept that Sony Playstation had to put something there in order for the promotion to work but there were more plausible alternatives. A hand scrawled number would have been more authentic and plausible, or even and hand written number on a standardised looking card would have sufficed. It’s hard to believe the professional nature of the business card with the number printed on it didn’t pique the interest of at least some of those that rang it.

On the whole Sony Playstation ran an event that certainly piqued our interest and we have no doubt they didn’t have lofty scientific goals, it was after all a promotion. As a promotion they deserve credit for being open with this website about how it was conducted.

Filed under: Features by Emmet Ryan
Tags: « console - game - gamer - gaming - heavy rain - honest - honesty - launch - playstation 3 - promotion - ps3 - public - sony - sony playstation »
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Canon opted for an Oscar inspired theme for the launch of their latest line of cameras, Villa81 didn’t dress for the occasion but we did bring our own camera along to see what they had to offer.

Filed under: Features by Emmet Ryan
Tags: « 105 - 130 - 210 - camcorder - camera - canon - digital camera - fs306 - fs37 - HF R16 - ixus - launch - legria »
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Villa81 visited London’s Groucho Club to see four of Sony Ericsson’s new phones in action. We took a look at the X10, X10 Mini, X10 Mini Pro, and the Vivaz Pro.

All of these devices are due out in the first and second quarters of 2010.

Filed under: Features, Phones/PDAs by Emmet Ryan
Tags: « cell - demo - ericsson - groucho - london - mobile - phone - sony - sony ericsson - vivaz - vivaz pro - x10 - x10 mini - x10 mini pro - xperia »
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Villa81 has been nominated in the Best Technology Blog (sponsored by BitBuzz) and Best Blog by a Journalist (sponsored by BVisible) categories at the 2010 Irish Blog Awards. On behalf of the rest of the crew here at Villa81 I’d like to thank all our visitors for their support over this, the first year of the website’s existence.

It’s no secret that we’ve had some rocky periods at times in the past 12 months so on a personal note I’d like to thank all of our contributors who have continued to help maintain this site throughout those times to ensure we were still able to deliver a product that was both entertaining and informative to our visitors.

Now that Villa81.com has a sister site in Action81.com up and running this website is in a position of strength to build on the success of this first year on the go and provide the public with yet more information, reviews, interviews and other features from across the world of technology.

Filed under: General by Emmet Ryan
Tags: « action81 - award - blog - irish blog awards - it - nominated - nominee - technology »
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Villa81 headed over to BETT, the top dog in educational technology trade shows. Samsung, Ricoh, and O2 were among the exhibitors at the event.

BETT concludes on the 16th of January.

Filed under: Features by Emmet Ryan
Tags: « bett - computer - education - electronic - event - industry - launch - mangahigh - o2 - ricoh - samsung - tocuhscreen - toshiba - touch screen »
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Ronan Gallagher, Strategy & Planning manager at UPC Ireland, was the first subject of The Blitz. This new series on Villa81 sees interviewees receiving a grilling and they have just 5 minutes to answer all the questions put to them.

A full explanation of the format can be found here but suffice to say there was no room for dawdling.

Filed under: General by Emmet Ryan
Tags: « analogue - broadband - business - digital - freeview - hd - hdtv - interview - television - the blitz - tv - upc »
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