Thumbs up to Visual Glue and Touchpoint Interactive Media for doing their bit to bring the advertising industry into the future!

They’re responsible for bringing holographic media to one of Dublin’s most famous landmarks, St. Stephen’s Green, creating excitement and anticipation in the lead up the Guinness All Ireland Hurling Final.

The installation is on display after 9pm every night up until next Sunday.

Social Networking fans in Ireland can look forward to the launch of a new site, social.ie, which will combine social networking spin-off functions including blogs, ‘friends’ lists, events and photo albums, tailored to an Irish audience.

This new Irish platform is being developed by the creators of boards.ie. Once it is developed they hope to use the existing boards’ user base to launch the platform to an Irish audience. Unfortunately however there is no confirmed timeframe for the launch of this platform.

They will be up against strong competition from established web 2.0 players in the Irish market like Bebo, Facebook and Pix.ie

Irish mapping is now possible on Facebook thanks to UseAMap.com, an Irish company that enables users to create custom maps for their websites or blogs. Users of the popular social networking site can now upload their own custom Irish maps onto their profiles.

Those of you partial to editing entries on online encyclopedia Wikipedia BEWARE… Big Brother is watching you. Wikiscanner is a tool developed to track each of the 34 million amends made to the site in the last five years, back to the user’s computer network.

The tool was created by 24 year old Virgil Griffith, and has hit the headlines due to some interesting revelations… for instance that CIA staff have been dabbling with the President of Iran’s page! And that a user in the Vatican has altered the profile of Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams!

With User Generated Content increasingly on the radar of those in the marketing community, what are the lessons that the Wikiscanner has for agencies? Griffiths’ software has uncovered dozens of companies that have been editing the site in order to improve their public image. The biggest culprit that the scanner claims to have discovered is Diebold which it says has made flattering edits to entries concerning its role in the “hanging chad” controversy. Diebold manufactured machines used during the US election in 2000.

What’s more, a number of culprits were found to be within the PR industry. Over the last week, a a number of leading UK agencies were exposed as continuing to edit entries despite being banned. The message is clear, Web 2.0 is increasingly sophisticated and with the user in control, if marketers want to communicate with them they must interact. Is the age of “engineering of consent” gone?

YouTube have unveiled a new ad model, offering advertisers the option to run rich media and video ads within both professional and user-generated content. The ads are semi-transparent overlays that appear in the bottom 20% of the video player, last up to 10 seconds and have interactive functionality.

Read the full story here.

After months of hard work, the final leg of the Powerade 2007 journey was completed on Saturday afternoon by our new hero, Will Cullen.

Here’s a few words on the event from Eoin Conroy (part of the Powerade NeverGiveUp team!):

Conditions at Lough Neagh were not ideal with a dull start to the day followed by heavy drizzle for most of the day. At about 11.50am Will took to the water with 316 other competitors (wearing his gold swim hat – all other competitors had white) and off they went at 12 noon. Competition was fierce and Will deliberately stayed toward the back of the field to ensure a clear path for the swim. It was an extremely tough swim with Will completing it in 43 mins 33 secs but well down the field in 291st position.

The race commentator kept calling out for him as competitors exited the water and you could only imagine the anxiety of his family and friends as they waited for him. However, considering where he was four months ago with his swimming (ie. fear of open water, could not thread water and a dodgy stroke) it raised the biggest cheer of the day and reduced his Dad to tears.

In the transition area Will looked exhausted but was still pushing hard. He changed quickly and was on the bike within two minutes. Ahead lay 4 laps of a 10km course that was treacherous in areas due to the wet roads and constant drizzle, with several cyclists coming unstuck with bad falls.

However, with the adrenaline flowing after the swim Will began to move through the field getting stronger and stronger. He completed the cycle in 1 hour 19 mins and 42 secs which moved him up about forty places in the field. There was one scary moment when he overshot one of the bends and came close to the cycling barriers. The highlight of the cycle was when Darren Hughes (one of the Ireland’s leading tri-athletes and leading the race at the time) pulled up along side Will pumping his fist and roaring at him to keep going.

Into the transition area for the final time, Will racked his bike and had his runners on within a minute and sprinted out of the transition area. His family and friends were roaring him on and he could smell the finishing line with 4 laps of a 2.5km route ahead. At the end of the first lap Will looked in some bother – pain etched all over his face. By now though the rest of the spectators realized who Will was and he was getting some great encouragement. Laps two and three were quicker than the first and we realized that he had a chance to break the three hour mark. Declan who had shadowed Will throughout the race told him that three hours was a possibility and off he took.

We all moved to the finish line waiting and hoping and sure enough he came bounding down toward the finish line in 2 hours 57 mins (Will’s run time was quicker than over one hundred competitors – a credit to all the training he had done). There were emotional scenes as Will was embraced by his family and friends, absolutely exhausted but elated. A great finish to a great journey.

Will’s time places him 263rd out of the 317 that took to the water earlier that day. 13 athletes did not finish pulling out due to injury or exhaustion with a further 2 disqualified for making mistakes in the transition area.

So not only did he finish, he beat 44 other athletes – an incredible achievement for a first timer.

Online auction website eBay.ie and An Post have launched a new initiative where eBay users in Ireland can get discounts on posting packages.

eBay users, with a positive track record of past transactions, can register on eBay.ie to receive an e-Parcel card they can use at post offices to get favourable prices on parcels weighing up to 5kg, sent using An Post.

eBay and An Post say users can make a saving of up to 45% on national parcels and 75% on international postage.

Earlier this year eBay.ie said it has over 500,000 confirmed registered users in Ireland.

Cybercom recently launched Guinness’ Rugby campaign in the run up to to the Rugby World Cup in September.

Visit the site for a free Guinness Rugby pack, which features an impressive supporter’s collector’s edition hand book along with a free t-shirt and vouchers for Guinness Draught.

Check out the games to help pass the day away!

That’s not all… pick your Fantasy Rugby team to give you even more of a reason to cheer for Brian O’Driscoll (Drico) scoring the winner against France (again!). If you’re any use, you could be heading along to watch the Irish Rugby Team in 2008 in Croke Park.

Speaking of “Drico”, check out “that” incident below…

American Airlines has decided to pursue litigation against Google for allowing rivals to buy pay-per-click ads triggered by its own trademarks. Although there has been a number of high profile cases in the past involving the likes of Playboy and BMW, the industry will be interested in the outcome of this particular case. There is no doubt that a number of leading companies and brands are having problems when it comes to underhand affiliate activity and pay-per-click arbitrage. The question for the legal system is should Google should be responsible or not?

Google has already triumphed in two recent lawsuits on the issue. The Internet giant released a statement saying that “we are confident that our trademark policy strikes a proper balance between trademark owners’ interests and consumer choice and that our position has been validated by decisions in previous trademark cases”.

On Friday, American Airlines issued an official statement saying it supports Google’s overall business model and “values the importance of the Internet and the convenience that companies such as Google create for consumers around the globe”. “In working through this business dispute,” the statement continued, “American is hopeful that it will continue professional, friendly and fruitful relationships with Google, while finding an appropriate resolution to the trademark issues … American wants to make it clear that its dispute does not seek to prevent the display of search results that reflect consumers’ interests or choices.”

In a funny, rather ironic twist, Google UK is threatening to sue a Dutch cybersquatter who has used the name Google cunningly in several domains. Check out the story here.

We’ve been busy blogging about Facebook over the last two months so apologies if you’ve had it at this stage!

However the story keeps getting better. ComScore recently launched its June 2007 figures which confirm that the Facebook trend has kicked off in Ireland. Its user base increased from 7,000 to 55,000 in four months. This is a 700% jump! To put this into context, Bebo’s users grew 22% from 504,000 to 649,000 over the same period. We have already predicted that Facebook would become the number 1 hangout for those of us who are slightly too old for Bebo! You can read that post here.

In other news, Facebook have teamed up with Apple to launch what looks like a very cool iPhone-customised website at iphone.facebook.com – the site is built in javascript and has got rave reviews from users in the States. Come on Apple – Ireland wants the iPhone!

We believe mobile social networking will be huge – especially once the mobile companies launch the web access at cheaper rates. Earlier in the week, we talked about the imminent explosion of user generated content on mobile.