November 2006 Archives

For the second time in the last month or so I've received spam from An Fearr Rua. They've obviously been scraping email addresses off websites using a robot. Wow! Aren't they innovative! So now they're spamming the entire country via Eircom's SMTP. Great marketing play guys - keep it up!

Tony Kenny from Beaumont Hospital has been giving an excellent talk on using open source software. What makes his talk so interesting is that he is completely pragmatic. Unlike some of the open source zealots, Tony is able to see how you can combine proprietary AND open source solutions in a real world situation. Fascinating stuff!

I'm heading to Domain Fest in LA at the end of January 2007. At this juncture the organisers haven't announced the lineup, but I don't really mind. As far as I am concerned it's a damned good excuse to take a holiday :) I've booked my flights - my passport is valid, so now all I need to do is reserve a hotel room. I'm not 100% sure what I'll be doing over there, though I'm sure I'll find plenty to do I should probably bring my laptop with me, though I'm in two minds about that.......

I am currently trying to download a site backup for a client that is moving from one of our cheap competitors who basically resells some American hosts servers. God it is painful! I'm getting less than 30k / sec when I should be getting at least ten times that!!! If I had to deal with that kind of connection to this server, or any of the other ones that I deal with on a regular basis, I'd never get anything done and would end up incredibly frustrated. Ping speed from my desktop to this server: Ping statistics for 81.17.240.197: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 16ms, Maximum = 18ms, Average = 16ms Ping to cheap US based host: Ping statistics for xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 146ms, Maximum = 172ms, Average = 159ms Talk about bad connectivity!!! So you really do get what you pay for .. or do you? For €30 ex-VAT you can get an Irish based hosting account with plenty of disk space and bandwidth. The key factor being that it's a service that will work and won't have a bad ping ie. there's no latency On the other hand you could opt to go with a cheap provider and not only pay more but actually get less. There's no point in having loads of disk space and bandwidth if the connection is so bad that you can barely make use of it!!!

I was looking at adding some more links to Armchair.ie this morning and so I thought I'd focus on a couple of sectors in particular. Unless I'm blind there are no indigenous shoe shops selling online. There are plenty of big multinationals selling into the Irish market, but I couldn't find any Irish run solutions... Is the market simply too small?

As I mentioned the other day, my camera was kidnapped, so a number of the photos that were taken have absolutely no meaning to me.. I have only a very vague idea who they are I did, however, take a few photos There are a few others....

Tom mentioned having a dinner the night before the IT@Cork conference next week in Luigi Malone's. It looks like there should be a good crowd going :) If anyone else who is staying in the Rochestown Park Hotel that night is going please let me know so that we can share a taxi (I really don't want to have to drink Coke all night again!).

Similar to last Friday I don't have the energy, mental or otherwise, to post in detail about the Golden Spiders last night. What I will say is that it was an excellent night. Very slick and impressive. There are some photos to be posted, but I have to sift through them first, as someone kidnapped my camera... End result being that I have a load of photos of people that I don't know ..

My views on Xtravision are no secret, so I won't rehash them now. Over the past few months the Irish market has been changing and growing so there is more choice for people like me. I recently signed up for a trial account with ScreenClick.com and am impressed with the concept behind it. The only weakness I've found so far can be attributed to the Irish postal system more than the site itself. Of course ScreenClick aren't alone in the online DVD rental market, though they've been around for several years. A new entrant is Moviestar that seem to have some serious backing, or at least a very good PR and marketing budget. As I haven't tried the service yet I can't comment on how good or bad it is, but I like the idea and the fact that we can choose between companies. Back in the offline world there have also been some interesting changes. Carlow town, which isn't exactly a booming metropolis, but isn't exactly a backwater either, now boasts its first automated DVD rental shop. I've used these systems in the past and they are really handy. After signing up in person you simply credit your account and then it's self-service all the way. Want a DVD at 4 in the morning? No problem. The machines don't care :)

Richard mentioned a new scam that is targetting Irish business. No sooner had I read his post than our postman came by with not one but five of these letters!! The letter is very slick, so I can see how it might fool people Here's a sample one that I made earlier :) The scary thing is that these guys are charging nearly €1000 for the "listing"!

Customer service is a topic that comes up on blogs often. Unfortunately most bloggers complain about bad service instead of talking about great service, but that's probably inevitable. I don't want to sound like a whining blogger, but I am more than a little annoyed with EA Games. Challenge Everything? Maybe their customer service department is a little challenged. They supposedly answer support queries within 24 - 48 hours. I opened a ticket with them over a week ago and still haven't had any form of response. It's not like I can buy from another supplier - if you buy an EA Games title, then you obviously have to deal with them for it.

Thought I'd crosspost this as some of you are clients of ours but may not read our blog normally. We've just upped the bandwidth limits on all our shared hosting plans (all existing clients have had theirs increased) For full details read our blog

The world seems to be caught up in Bond Fever at the moment. Is Daniel Craig any good? I'll be going to see the film at some point over the next couple of days Does it really matter? Bond is pure escapism I've always loved James Bond and would love to get myself one of those ultimate collections with every single DVD, but I really can't justify the expense :) The attache case etc., would be really nice

I finally found the USB cable for my camera.. I must investigate why the card reader I have doesn't like the memory stick.... Anyhow I uploaded some of the photos from the other night onto my underused Flickr account (I think I set it up last year as I was writing an article about the service) Since I like playing with plugins I installed yet another wordpress plugin so that I can embed photos in my blog posts, so if you don't want to see what I look like wearing a tux please close your browser window now :) I really must try harder to get photos of people in compromising positions, though I have to admit I probably wouldn't be able to focus a camera at 5am too well :)

It looks like there maybe another Bar Camp early next year, but this one will be in Waterford. Keith has setup a blog to cover it As it's only a short drive for me I've put my name down. The Cork Bar Camp was good fun and I got to meet a number of really interesting people, so the opportunity to go to another one in Waterford would be cool by me :) However I think this time I'll be dumping my car somewhere so that I can enjoy the post-camp drinks without having to worry about driving....

It looks like one of RondoMondo's sites, muse.ie, is going to be relaunched later this year under new management. I have vague recollections of the original site which went belly up after the dot bomb.... From the holding page:

Can't remember what MUSE is all about? Fresh and colourful since 1997, MUSE is Ireland's most comprehensive online music magazine. It features talented Irish music journalists, open to every genre of music - from rock, dance and pop, to jazz, classical and country. Written with unrivalled enthusiasm, MUSE is aimed at an audience of 16-40 year old music fans looking for informed articles. Content on MUSE is commissioned exclusively for web publication, with special features allowing loyal site members to hop in and add their own gig, music, equipment, gadget, and movie reviews too! MUSE incorporates webcasts and plenty of other interactive features too!

It's yet another production of Mr Durkin, so it should be interesting if nothing else :)

Don't get me wrong - I actually like Flash if it's used properly. However I would expect a Flash powered site to warn me that I need the Flash plugin if I don't have it installed or need a newer version. Not so with Magico! If you visit their site without Flash or without a recent version (not sure which was my case.. ) you end up with a great big black square on the page where their Flash content is meant to be. And these guys got shortlisted as Best Web Design Agency at the Golden Spiders?

This will be a multi-episode blog posting, as I won't be able to upload photos etc., until I get my camera out of my car find the usb cable for my camera ..... In any case the Net Visionary Awards were on the other night.. ... The event kicked off at 7 with a drinks reception downstairs, however quite a few of us were in the main bar of the hotel, so it kind of spread across both sections. I'd love to wax lyrically about the entire evening, but I'm still recovering :) In any case it was nice to spend the evening with friends in the industry and to make some new ones. The list of winners is available on the Net Visionary site and you can see who the losers were as well. I didn't win either of the awards I was shortlisted for, but I wasn't really expecting to either. Twenty Major walked away with the best blogger award, though he didn't pick it up in person. (He's referring to me as "hosting overlord" now ... I wonder should I update my business cards..) I'll post my out of focus photos later.. but in the meantime you can find a few taken by other people online (some are from last year, so watch the posting date) Since I'm still too slow to write anything meaningful I'd recommend reading other people's comments: IQ Content Tom Raftery TCAL Judging by the lack of blog posts about the event I'd guess I'm not the only one who is still recovering :)

Amazon have upgraded their Astore tool / service on both .com and .co.uk (I haven't had a chance to look at .fr yet, but I will do when I get a chance). The official announcement arrived a couple of days ago:

With this version of aStore you can now: * Build and maintain multiple aStores under one Associate ID * Feature up to 54 products in each category * Create custom categories containing products from multiple Amazon categories * Create multiple instances of individual Amazon categories * Control the display order of the products on each page * Specify products to feature on Category and Subcategory pages * Populate products to categories using Listmania lists

I'm going to be playing with the system a bit over the next few days as it's beginning to shape up quite nicely. So far I like what I see, in that I can add multiple stores with custom content for each niche site / interest that I want them to reflect. I'm also in communication with one of the Amazon team directly, so I'm going to try and build up a comprehensive list of features that I like and ones that I don't like. I've thrown together two stores very quickly, but they give some idea of what could be done: One for this blog which uses one of the default templates with no additions. Another one for the webmaster forum with the forum's logo (yes I know it isn't the write size or colour but I was just testing the system) I'll try to post a followup once I've explored it all a bit more

I'm heading up to Dublin shortly to attend the IIA Net Visionary Awards. As the company is sponsoring a category and I've been shortlisted for two awards it would be simply rude not to go :) I've no idea who will walk away with awards this evening, but I intend to enjoy the evening. Last year's event was really good fun and I didn't get to bed until around 5am! Of course last year was not without its drama.. Hopefully everyone will be on their best this year...

Webhost Automation have released Helm 4 but it's premature. It's simply not ready for release. Who in their right mind releases a hosting control panel that doesn't support MySQL? What sane person would leave out modules that are so popular such as Awstats? Want the answer? Simply click here They seem to be going down the route that other software vendors have taken of late, namely: - Announce major update - Hype major update - Change licensing - Launch half-finished product - Omit previously included modules - Promise to include omissions when public get annoyed Their marketing blurb is laughable if you actually know what is going on, like their article on how windows is cheaper than linux (??) Don't get me wrong - the software is not bad, but what's bugging me is their harping on about how "wonderful" v4 is and then releasing it with basic functionality missing...

Does anyone know how I could get tickets to a movie premiere in LA? I'm seriously considering taking a real holiday and LA seems to be the place to go, as I could combine work with pleasure (ie. I'd feel less guilty) by going to Domain Fest. I've no idea what the lineup for Domain Fest will be like, but it should be interesting and it would make a good excuse :) So earlier this evening I did a bit of research into flights and hotels. Aer Lingus have some keenly priced tickets to LA at the moment, so I could probably get a return flight for under €400. Hotel prices vary considerably, but a quick search on 1800 Hotels did bear some fruit. Of course I'd like to actually relax and do touristy things, such as seeing all the famous places and spending money that I don't really have (aren't credit cards great?). As Hollywood is, well, Hollywood and I love films a movie premiere would be a bonus, but is that even possible? Thoughts anyone?

Since Richard started blogging a few weeks ago I've been keeping an eye on his posts and enjoying every one of them. His most recent one hurt. It really did. I laughed so much my sides hurt (or maybe that's just my bad cooking?? ) If you blog you get comments. Unfortunately a lot of them will be spam .. While I find the odd one that gets into my moderation list mildly irritating I never found them amusing. After Richard's post I may have to view them in a completely different light. Maybe Twenty Major has some competition at last?

Thank God I have a car! If I didn't I'd have seen the new Bus Eireann website sooner. I've seen nasty websites in my time, but the Bus Eireann website is truly horrendous. Who in their right mind actually approved the usage of those horrendous things on the main page? On other sites they might be referred to as "buttons". In the case of this "thing" it would be an insult to a button to refer to them with the same terminology. Dear Bus Eireann Please hire yourselves a designer who is not colour blind Thanks Michele PS: Everyone else thinks it sucks too

There's been quite a bit of chatter in the Irish blogosphere over the last couple of weeks in relation to web standards. Unfortunately not even Google seem to give a damn about standards compliance. The main page of Google.ie has 47 errors, including no DOCTYPE!

From the team behind Text Link Ads comes a new monetisation offering for bloggers and a new advertising channel for marketers - Review Me. The idea behind the system is simple. Bloggers write about websites and get paid. What they write about and how much they get paid will depend on various metrics, such as the blog's popularity, page rank etc., The advertiser pays X to Reviewme, who will give half of that amount to the blogger. The review requirements are quite simple: - 200 words or over - full disclosure ie. that the post is being sponsored In case you think that advertisers are buying positive feedback you couldn't be further from the truth:

Can I require a positive review? We do not allow advertisers to require a positive review. The vast majority of reviews are measuredly positive, although many do contain constructive criticism. We view this as a bonus: how else can you quickly and cheaply get feedback on a product or service from influencers?

I'm not sure how well this new service will work out for bloggers such as myself. I can't see me writing a review about something that I have no interest in, so I probably won't be getting rich from it :) The other thing that nagged me already was that you only have 48 hours to write the review. 48 hours is too short in my opinion. I might express an interest in writing an article, but I may not get round to it for several days and I'm sure that I'm not alone in this. I honestly don't think that a couple of days one way or the other is going to make much difference to anyone.. Of course the other side of the debate is whether sponsored blogging is good or evil... A lot of bloggers get up on a high horse about this, but a lot of them forget that they may be blogging for indirect revenue already.. I know I do it to a certain degree (the company blog being the most obvious example) But what difference does it make whether I declare that I am being paid to write this review of a site that I'd probably have mentioned anyway (the money is an added bonus)?

Amazon are running a competition for affiliates that have fully integrated their A-Store into their sites. The conditions of entry mean that you will have to have had some level of success selling via the new store:

Conditions of Entry * Between 1st October 2006 and 31st December 2006, at least 10 units must have been shipped via your aStore (Associates) referrals. * Your aStore must be integrated via an iFrame or a separate Frameset into your existing website. Entries will not be accepted for aStores that can only be reached via the aStore URL of Amazon.co.uk (http://astore.amazon.co.uk/[Your ASSOC ID]). * You must have integrated a permanent link into the main navigation bar of your website that links directly to your Amazon.co.uk aStore. This permanent link to your aStore must be visible on the homepage of your website as well. For the special award Best Christmas/ Holiday-aStore: * Your aStore must have a Christmas/Holiday spirit theme.

(full details) However the prize is pretty good - one thousand pounds !!

I've reverted to one of the themes I used to use ... Why? Well as was pointed out the gravatar plugin was breaking things, so either it went or the entire theme did.. I disabled the theme :) In terms of themes I don't think this one is particularly nice, but at least it isn't full of "issues"....

Earlier this week I got a newsletter from a company that we do business with. As is common with a lot of newsletters the body of the email did not contain all of the articles, so you were invited to click through to read the rest of it. Unfortunately clicking on any of the links led me to the company's main page and not to the articles they were interested in readers seeing. Why did this happen? Putting it bluntly they presumed that we all used Internet Explorer as our primary browser! What a wonderful assumption to make! Imagine you have 20 thousand subscribers to a mailing list. If the mailing list is for a technical product then the percentage of users who have opted for a browser other than Internet Explorer is going to be quite high. Even if you were to conservatively estimate that 10% were users of Firefox, Opera, Safari or some other browser, then that means that 2 thousand readers won't see your content. If they can't see your content they can't read it and be enticed by your special offers, so they won't buy! It doesn't take much effort to check that a newsletter's redirect links work cross-browser (why they wouldn't is beyond me anyway..) and the 5 minutes of testing if it means not losing 10% of your potential customers is obviously worth it.

When you take your car into the garage you expect certain things. You do not need to explicitly ask for them, nor would you expect them to be actually verbalised. What would you expect? Well, naturally, you would expect your car to be serviced to an acceptable standard. If the tyres need to be pumped, for example, then you would expect them to be pumped to the pressure that suits your car's make and model. Of course the person conducting the work on your car is qualified. You don't even have to ask about that!! Or if you were getting your house renovated... Would you ask the plumber to do the wiring? In the internet industry things shouldn't be that different, though I sometimes feel like I am working in an industry peppered with snake oil salesmen. How many times have I seen amateur web "designers" offering "competitive" prices? What about the web companies that are supposedly experts in web design, graphic design, web development, marketing, hosting, seo and search engine marketing? And all this with a staff of two and for under €600 / year? Why am I suspicious? Am I naturally cynical? Possibly, but I've actually been around long enough to know what is and isn't possible. Remember that old adage? "Jack of all trades - master of none" While that maybe fine in some contexts would you really want to entrust your website to Jack? (Not that I have a thing against anyone called Jack..) If you put the costs of a website in tangible terms then you should be comparing it with other "real world" costs.. For example if you were to run a medium sized advert in the Sunday Business Post for one issue you would pay anything from €600 to €1200 depending on where it was placed and how big it was etc., If you are running print adverts with any degree of frequency then your marketing spend can spiral quickly. So what do you put on your ad? Your contact details are bound to feature. While an email address and phone number is perfectly acceptable a website might impress. Of course if the website was done on the cheap you might as well toss the money down the toilet. Another cliche for you - build it and they will come. In the online world that simply won't happen unless you have both a search engine strategy and possibly an online marketing one as well. Should you entrust that work to one of these polyvalent web professionals who supposedly is not only a competent designer, can debug your email problems AND can keep track of the latest trends and quirks in the SEO world? I'd recommend against it If you want a tasty design use a designer who can actually design. You don't see Coca Cola changing their logo every 6 months do you? Why would they? They got it designed properly in the first instance. If you are setting up a company or business of some kind then skimping on the design / identity could cost you a fortune in lost sales. Is it really worth it? Coming back to SEO.... If you invest properly in SEO and use an experienced professional with a proven track record ie. not a good salesman who can sell himself well even though he can't actually deliver, then every cent you spend will be a worthwhile investment. Sorry about the rant :)

Just spotted Harry Potter films 1 to 4 on CD WOW. I am so tempted!!

The shortlist for this year's Golden Spiders was announced last Friday. As usual people are none too pleased with the list and I'd be a hypocrite not to agree with them. Why so much displeasure? Well you could look at the entry criteria...... Even though the awards are sponsored by large companies you still have to pay to nominate a site. Why do I get the feeling that a lot of quality sites don't even get entered???? OR you could look at the shortlist itself.... (which a lot of people have been doing) Either way the merit of the awards is not appreciated in many industry circles. Richard and Peter both commented on how most of the shortlisted sites do not pass the W3C validation test (which tests to see if a website's code is compliant with industry standards). The W3C validator does not care which version of (X)HTML a site is written in, as long as the site's code complies to the chosen standard. Richard has since taken his gripes to the next level by doing some further testing of the shortlist. The results make for interesting reading. Of course previous winners' sites aren't even viewable unless you use Internet Explorer....

The shortlist for the 2006 Net Visionary Awards was announced earlier today. We won't know who the winners will be until the night of the event, so it should be quite exciting. I have been shortlisted in two categories, which I wasn't expecting - blogging and entrepeneur. It's nice to see that there are so many familiar names on the list, though, as usual, there are also quite a few that I don't recognise at all!

I'm not sure when this happened, but I've just noticed that PayPal has suddenly expanded the number of currencies available. You can now maintain your account using the following:

• Euro
• Australian Dollar
• Canadian Dollar
• Czech Koruna
• Danish Krone
• Hong Kong Dollar
• Hungarian Forint
• New Zealand Dollar
• Norwegian Krone
• Polish Zloty
• Pound Sterling
• Singapore Dollar
• Swedish Krona
• Swiss Franc
• U.S. Dollar
• Yen

Handy!