Business: December 2005 Archives

I've posted a couple of times in the last few months about my mixed feeling towards Google. Yesterday I was contacted by an American journalist who was doing a story on Google's customer service - or rather the lack thereof. Yesterday evening was also the evening that I was heading out to meet some of the guys for a pre-Christmas drink, so I replied to the journalist's email very quickly without doing any further digging. This morning when I fell out of bed I got several news alerts for both my name and that of the company. It transpires that the journalist was writing for eWeek and my comments are in one of the articles there: Googleites Gripe About Sloppy Service

One of the more commonly asked questions on both mailing lists and fora is related to e-commerce, or more specifically accepting payments on your website. I've put together this brief guide in order to help webmasters, or at least point them in the right direction. If anybody has any additions or corrections please let me know.

The IEDR made a couple of announcements over the last couple of weeks that are of interest to companies and individuals operating in the Irish internet industry.

There must be something in the air! Nominet recently rebranded and now IEDR are to follow suit.

Unless your site is for a very select number of people whose choice of browser is restricted, such as may be the case on a company network, website developers / publishers / designers need to take into consideration the cross-browser aspect.

According to the latest report from WhoisIreland.com the shift away from the traditional ISPs to HSPs (hosting service providers) continued throughout 2005.

The debacle surrounding data retention in Europe (and Ireland) has been dragging on for the last couple of years.

One of the downsides of automated domain registration systems is that there are no checks on trademark infringement.

The EU domain will enter sunrise 1 later this week, so if you hold a trademark you really should make sure that your request is submitted. If you don't have a trademark you can still apply during the sunrise 2 period if you hold a "prior right". Of course .eu isn't the only "show" in town. A lot of people seem to forget about other regional TLDs. If you are selling into other EU country markets then it makes sense to protect your brand as much as possible.

Some of the photos from the IIA Netvisionary awards are now online. After seeing my photo I've vowed to go on a diet and get more exercise. I look like a beached whale! (Paul suggested a beached penguin.. )

When I spotted a post on another blog about Dell accepting PayPal payments I got quite excited, however it transpires that the new payment method only applies to US customers at present :(

I don't care how much money a company spends on marketing. If their service is rubbish it will not help.