Monthly Archives: October 2012

Irish developer Brian Kenny recently launched his labour of love, Spots.io – a mashup of two hipster favorites: Instagram and Foursquare.

By combining mapped photos from Instagram users with places from Foursquare, it dynamically creates galleries from the publicly shared images.

So what? Well since Instagram pictures tend to be quick snapshots (when not of food/coffee/beer/fixies) you can get an interesting informal view of places you’d not normally get in this world of managed media.

A perfect example of this comes from the gallery of the Playboy Mansion. While there are the typical shots of women standing around in their underwear, you also get they utterly mundane example of people standing around taking touristy shots in front of the house. What ever little mystery the mansion had evaporates with every badly filtered image.

For a less salacious example, there’s always the White House Bowling Alley.

Your thoughts welcome below.

Thanks Des Traynor

No favours, etc were given for this post

The entrance to The Paddocks, Kildangan, Co Kildare.

A paramedic had to hang out the window of his ambulance with a torch while dodging up to 40 potholes to reach an emergency in one of Kildare’s worst ghost estates.
…The Paddocks has been in darkness for five years. The sewage system was connected three years after it was built and the estate was left unfinished after the builder went bust. The receiver is in charge, and the council say they have no authority to carry out work because it is not in their ownership. In the meantime, the residents remain in limbo.

Ambulance Needed Torch To Navigate Kildangan Ghost Estate (Niamh O’Donoghue, Leinster Leader)

And how the development was promoted in 2006:

With only four houses to the acre, a generous landscaped open green area and a cul-de-sac layout young city folk are likely to find this development very tempting indeed.

There are four different house designs ranging in size from 127-205 sqm and in price from  €440,000 to  €550,000.

€550,000.

Paddocks At Prime Prices (Irish Independent, April 28, 2006)

(Leinster Leader)