John Breslin
Male human looking at camera
John Breslin (2018)
Born (1973-04-02) 2 April 1973 (age 50)
The Coombe, Dublin, Ireland
NationalityIrish
EducationCatholic University School
Mary Immaculate Lisdoonvarna
Alma materUniversity of Galway (BE, PhD)
Occupation(s)Academic, entrepreneur, author
EmployerUniversity of Galway
Known forboards.ie, SIOC, PorterShed, Old Ireland in Colour
Websitehttp://www.johnbreslin.com

John Breslin (Irish: Seán Ó Breisleáin; born 1973 in Dublin, Ireland) is an Irish engineer and full professor at the University of Galway. He is co-founder of the Irish websites boards.ie and adverts.ie. He co-authored the Irish bestselling book Old Ireland in Colour in 2020, Old Ireland in Colour 2 in 2021, and Old Ireland in Colour 3 in 2023.

Internet entrepreneur

In 1998, Breslin set up an Internet forum to discuss video games[1] which evolved into boards.ie, one of Ireland's largest indigenous websites.[2] He was awarded Net Visionary awards by the Irish Internet Association in 2005 [3] and 2006.[4]

In 2006, Breslin co-founded adverts.ie, an online classified ads website and spin-off from boards.ie. The adverts.ie site was acquired in a joint venture by Distilled Media Group and Schibsted Media Group in 2015.[5]

In 2007, Breslin met the Collison brothers while Patrick was studying at MIT, and came up with the name for their first company, 'Shuppa', during a brainstorming session over dinner.[6][non-primary source needed]

In 2010, Breslin set up the New Tech Post, an online technology publisher.[7] A San Jose office for the New Tech Post was announced by Breslin in March 2011.[8]

In 2011, Breslin was announced as a co-founder of StreamGlider, a visual real-time dashboard for tracking interests across various types of devices, along with Nova Spivack and Bill McDaniel.[9][10]

Academic research

In 2004, while working as a researcher at DERI, Breslin founded the Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities (SIOC) project, a Semantic Web framework for sharing social data[11] and used in web applications[12] such as Yahoo! SearchMonkey,[13] Drupal 7[14][non-primary source needed] and the Newsweek website.[15]

Breslin's research publications have focused on the Social Semantic Web, and he co-authored two books on this topic in 2009 [16] and 2015.[17]

Startup community

In 2015, Breslin co-founded the Galway City Innovation District to create startup-friendly spaces in downtown Galway.[18] The first space, the PorterShed, is a refurbished former Guinness building that opened to startups in April 2016.[19]

Writing

In 2019, Breslin set up the Old Ireland in Colour project, which uses a combination of artificial intelligence techniques (such as DeOldify) and human artistry to colourise and restore historical photographs of Ireland and Irish people from the 19th and 20th centuries.[20][21] An Old Ireland in Colour book with some of these photographs, featuring captions written by historian Sarah-Anne Buckley, was published by Merrion Press in October 2020.[22] Breslin spoke to Ryan Tubridy about the book on The Late Late Show on 20 November 2020.[23]

Old Ireland in Colour was the number one bestselling book in Ireland from 15 to 28 November 2020 and from 6 to 26 December 2020 according to Nielsen BookScan.[24][25][26][27][28] It was also the official Christmas number one for 2020 according to Nielsen BookScan.[29] It also won Best Irish-Published Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards 2020.[30]

A second volume, Old Ireland in Colour 2, also co-authored with Sarah-Anne Buckley, was published by Merrion Press in September 2021.[31] Old Ireland in Colour 2 was the number one bestselling book in Ireland from 21–27 November 2021 according to Nielsen BookScan.[32]

Other activities

Breslin served as secretary of the American Council on Exercise from 2017 to 2019.[33]

References

  1. ^ Mulley, Damien (5 December 2005). "A New Net Visioned He – Interview with John Breslin". mulley.net. Retrieved 6 December 2009.
  2. ^ Boran, Marie (14 February 2008). "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum". Irish Independent. Retrieved 6 December 2009.
  3. ^ netvisionary.ie (17 November 2005). "IIA Chairman Colm Lyon, Social Contribution winner John Breslin, boards.ie, and Category Sponsor David Curtin of the IE Domain Registry". Archived from the original on 18 November 2007. Retrieved 6 December 2009.
  4. ^ netvisionary.ie (16 November 2006). "IIA Chairman Colm Lyon, Online Trader winner John Breslin, boards.ie/adverts.ie, and Category Sponsor Stephen McDonagh of Realex Payments". Archived from the original on 18 November 2007. Retrieved 6 December 2009.
  5. ^ "Daft.ie and DoneDeal.ie merge in new venture". Irish Times. 9 July 2015. Retrieved 30 August 2018.
  6. ^ "Tweet by John Breslin, 10 years after meeting the Collisons". 2 March 2017. Retrieved 28 April 2017.
  7. ^ Collins, John (18 February 2011). "Web Log". The Irish Times. Retrieved 20 April 2011.
  8. ^ "Galway Firm Announces Second Silicon Valley Office". Irish World. 31 March 2011. Archived from the original on 27 July 2011. Retrieved 20 April 2011.
  9. ^ Rao, Leena (21 December 2011). "StreamGlider Takes on Flipboard And Pulse With Sleek Social Interest And News Reader for the iPad". TechCrunch. Retrieved 24 April 2016.
  10. ^ Spivack, Nova. "The Venture Production Studio Model". Minding the Planet.
  11. ^ Perez, Juan Carlos (21 January 2009). "Data Portability: Reasonable Goal or Impossible Dream?". The Washington Post. Retrieved 7 December 2009.
  12. ^ "SIOC Ontology: Applications and Implementation Status". w3.org. 12 June 2007. Retrieved 6 December 2009.
  13. ^ "SearchMonkey vocabularies". Archived from the original on 23 December 2009. Retrieved 7 December 2009.
  14. ^ Dries Buytaert (19 October 2009). "Just committed RDFa support to Drupal 7!". Retrieved 7 December 2009.
  15. ^ Steven Pemberton (27 May 2010). "Newsweek using RDFa". Archived from the original on 1 June 2010. Retrieved 10 June 2010.
  16. ^ "The Social Semantic Web". springer.com. Retrieved 27 June 2018.
  17. ^ Omitola, Tope; Ríos, Sebastián A.; Breslin, John G. (2015). "Social Semantic Web Mining". Synthesis Lectures on the Semantic Web: Theory and Technology. morganclaypool.com. 5: 1–154. doi:10.2200/S00623ED1V01Y201412WBE010.
  18. ^ Hof, Robert (31 December 2015). "Startup Mecca Rises From Abandoned Guinness Storehouse". Forbes. Retrieved 24 April 2016.
  19. ^ Maher, Rebecca (13 April 2016). "First Companies to Move into PorterShed". Galway Independent. Retrieved 24 April 2016.
  20. ^ McDermott, Stephen (26 April 2020). "'It brings history to life': The project giving colour to Michael Collins, Countess Markievicz and other Irish figures". The Journal. Retrieved 6 October 2020.
  21. ^ McGrath, Pat (27 April 2020). "New lease of life for old photographs". RTÉ News. Retrieved 6 October 2020.
  22. ^ "Old Ireland in Colour". Merrion Press. Retrieved 6 October 2020.
  23. ^ "Old Ireland in Colour". RTÉ. 20 November 2020. Retrieved 28 November 2020.
  24. ^ "Irish Bestsellers 21 November 2020". Writing.ie. Retrieved 10 August 2021.
  25. ^ "Irish Bestsellers 28th November 2020". Writing.ie. Retrieved 10 August 2021.
  26. ^ "Irish Bestsellers 12th December 2020". Writing.ie. Retrieved 10 August 2021.
  27. ^ "Irish Bestsellers 19th December 2020". Writing.ie. Retrieved 10 August 2021.
  28. ^ "Irish Bestsellers 26th December 2020". Writing.ie. Retrieved 10 August 2021.
  29. ^ "Old Ireland in Colour by John Breslin & Sarah-Anne Buckley is the official Irish #XmasBookNo1, as measured by Nielsen BookScan!". Nielsen Bookscan. Retrieved 22 December 2020.
  30. ^ Barry, Aoife (25 November 2020). "'It's a huge thing for a writer': Donal Ryan and Keelin Shanley among Irish Book Awards winners". The Journal. Retrieved 28 November 2020.
  31. ^ "Old Ireland in Colour 2". Merrion Press. Retrieved 6 December 2021.
  32. ^ "Nielsen Top 100 - Week 47". Eason Wholesale. Retrieved 6 December 2021.
  33. ^ "Board of Directors". acefitness.org. Retrieved 27 June 2018.

Bibliography

External links

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