Turns out that the defunct title's publisher Mairtin O Muilleoir has, like many an honourable journo before him, taken refuge in the wilds of the blogosphere.

Writing at http: //apublishersblog . blogspot. com, he didn't give us an insight of the blow-by-blow of the final days of Daily Ireland. A colourladen account would have been far more powerful and generated more sympathy than the party line, but it's got more transparency than most publishers and thus has to be commended at least for that. No word yet on whether O Muilleoir plans to use his web presence to help his 15 former staffers "nd new work.

MALTESE FALCON TAKES WING
Where was Denis O'Brien last Friday morning? The latest resident of, as they confusingly say in the ads, Cead Mile Malta, was rumoured to have been planning to attend the photocall launching the new Newstalk presenter lineup featuring Claire Byrne (above), soon to be formerly of TV3, as the new brekkie personality replacing Eamon Dunphy. But snappers were left wandering around Dublin 2 for a photocall that didn't happen in the end.

Station sources swore on a stack of bibles that it was a previously unknown time clash with Claire Byrne at TV3, rather than any cracking, inspired, shoe-leathergenerated stories on page one of the Irish Times on Friday morning [hattip to Colm Keena], that forced a change in schedule.

CARAT AND STICK
Carat Ireland is almost certainly well pleased with itself this week, having managed to hold onto the strategic media planning and media buying for Bank of Ireland.

Carat
CEO Ciaran Cunningham was still grinning like a cheshire cat last week when he credited the agency's win to investment in people and in coping with changing media habits.

What will make the win sweet with just a hint of schadenfreude will be the fact that they won the business in a pitch against agencies including Starcom Mediavest.

By coincidence, Starcom Mediavest finally got its own new chief executive this week, Alan Cox.

AdLand-watchers will recall, that Cox was the subject of a bitter legal battle as he attempted to assume his new post at Starcom after serving for seven years as CEO for. . . yup, Carat Ireland.

Carat took legal action to enforce its 'gardening leave' clause that prevented Cox from working for a competitor for 12 months.

Carat knew how persuasive Cox could be. The Bank of Ireland business followed him from Ogilvy & Mather's media buying shop when he first joined Carat.

EMPIRE STRIKES BACK?
Universal Music decided to stick a knife in the social networking phenomenon and see if it really is a bubble, when its CEO threatening - aloud at a Merril Lynch investor conference where it counts - to sue MySpace and YouTube for what he said were tens of millions of dollars worth of copyright infringement.

We do seem to recall NBC making some noises about that, right before it sought to cut deals with social networking sites. Publius recognises that we're watching some healthy contrarian thinking at work here, but we don't see YouTube cracking somehow. MySpace, on the other hand, is owned by a man who spent 150m to buy the Crazy Frog, and apparently is not going to kill it off forever, which means he's a monster capable of anything.

HARNEY'S LAST DANCE
Is officially the most-forwarded viral - to Publius - we've received so far this year. A Google should sort out the curious. And the rest of you please stop sending it to me. Thanks.

TIPS, BRIBES & ABUSE all welcome at rdelevan@tribune. ie