Archive for the ‘technology’ Category

Tuesday Push 23rd September 2008 – DownloadMusic.ie

Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008

Download Music

Probably an established brand in the Irish Web Scene these days, DownloadMusic.ie is a simple service with all the complex stuff hidden away. Buy music off the site or via their SMS shortcode. You get a copy sent to the phone and to an online download link so you can have a copy on your computer too. All for a euro.

I’ve already covered the album that they brought out. One of the guys behind the site is Johnny Beirne who has been a music fan forever and always has been involved with independent music in Ireland so this site sprung from his passion in this area. Some of the best businesses out there have been created by people that have been immersed in their market and want to improve it or see a painpoint that can be addressed.

If you’ve not seen DownloadMusic.ie before, go and have a look.

If you want your technology/product listed on the Tuesday Push, then fill in this form here. We’re not interested in some rebadged or reskinned piece of technology, you have to have added some kind of IP to your service. To see the benefits of the Tuesday Push, read Gordon’s blog post on it.

Oh do come along

Sunday, September 21st, 2008

The Moviestar Irish Web Awards are on October 11th. Registration is now open.

There’s even an unofficial Facebook event page thing for it. Already!

It should be a laugh. If the usual gathering and community building at the Blog Awards gets replicated again at this then without talking it up too much, it should be fantastic. Everyone is welcome too. You don’t need to be nominated, you don’t need a website or a blog. 30 euros in. Rick O’Shea is your wonderful MC for the event too.

Moviestar Irish Web Awards

Last call for Web Awards judges

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

Irish Web Awards

We still need a few more judges for the Web Awards. Why not sign up? Email contact awards.ie, if your site/work has been nominated then you can’t judge any category at all. Sorry!

Tuesday Push – 9th September 2008 – eWrite Lite

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008

This week’s Tuesday Push: eWrite Lite.

eWrite Lite

eWrite Lite is a tool for editing and publishing a website. It can be used to create a whole new website or log into your existing website and make changes, all via a web browser. There’s no need to install anything. They even have a demo that you can use to log into your own site. It’s also very affordable and ideally suits their target market of SMEs.

I’ve actually reviewed eWrite Lite previously so read that. Ideally for such a low charge, eWrite Lite would best be licensed by hosting providers or ISPs as selling to individuals at that price could take a lot of footwork.

Check out eWrite Lite and their other products. If you want your product on the Tuesday Push, fill out this form. Please remember we’re looking for something that was created by an Irish company, not just some technology that was reskinned.

On a side note, someone asked me recently about whether you could give constructive criticism for the Tuesday Push or were you required only to say positive things and talk something up. The idea is to talk the company/person’s effort up and give honest feedback too. I would think the pushees would prefer someone kicking the tyres and looking for leaking oil than saying everything is super.

DownloadMusic is up in two weeks and BookAMeetingRoom

Do Follow – Should you change link policies on your blog?

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

Michele’s kicked off something interesting with his blog post about the IIA’s Blog putting in nofollow or rather using the wordpress default on their blogs for comments.

(For the non techies who are the majority on this blog: the nofollow attribute in links left in comments on a blog means Google and other search engines won’t give these links any weight because they came from your site. See some people/bots had been leaving 1000s of comments on blogs before which linked to certain sites and it resulted those sites getting artificial boosts in Google rankings)

The IIA have since changed that around. Michele himself talks about his moderation policy and how he nukes any soft sell comments. If you have a moderation policy of doing that then removing nofollow makes sense I would guess.

No, not that kinda Link:
Link
Photo owned by metaxin (cc)

However, the way I see it, links without nofollow should be ones that you endorse and they’re not links in comments. I leave plenty of comments through that I do not agree with. I’ll do the same for links but I don’t vote with my site for those links. My own moderation policy is I’ll allow most stuff through soft sell or not (though not all) with the idea being the stupid and bad linking of an individual just makes them look like tits.

When you have IIA in their training classes advocating leaving comments on blogs to boost your Google rankings, maybe nofollow is actually a good idea?

Also wouldn’t spam engines target your blog more if it removes nofollows?

It would be nice though for WordPresss to allow you to have that control. Maybe they’ll bring it out. Meanwhile there’s a Dofollow wordpress plugin for it.

Update: This is what happens when you allow dofollow. The spammers make lists.

Net screwed in Ireland past few days? You’re not alone

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

Update 4th September: BT Ireland officially stating they are unsure what the issue is and will revert when they do know. Been almost a week now. I’ve asked will they compensate us for the month of September for these continued outages. They’ll get back to us on that too.

BT are blaming eircom or some BT staff are. Also affecting Perlico and UTV. Seems to happen mostly in the evenings the past few days. Something is certainly screwy.

Best Web Awards Flyer so far

Saturday, August 30th, 2008

Via Alexia

Irish Web Awards

The first TechLudd Cork was great

Saturday, August 30th, 2008

Techludd Cork

Image nicked from Robin, taken by Donncha.

Go TechLudd in the People’s Republic. I hope we see many more. Disappointing that there wasn’t a large turnout but it is holiday season. Well done to Anton for organising this. And thanks. It was great to get to see people from Dublin, Limerick, Cork and elsewhere. Also nice to see people I hadn’t seen in hours, days, weeks and years!

In the room were three, count em! THREE stars of Techcrunch.com. Can you guess who they were? Robin is destined to be a fourth for definite. SnapScribe should be able to get there too. Great idea and great tech.

We need more events like TechLudd with the demos, drinks and networking. Got some good feedback from people who hadn’t been to tech events in Cork before. They’ll be back and will be bringing others.

Bernie gives his take.
Donncha gives his and has amazing photos of the 2009 home of the Blog Awards. Jaysus it looks great.
Robin talks about his thoughts here.

I’m going to Creative Camp Belfast – What about ye? – Saturday Sept 6th 2008

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

Creative Camp, Nordyland, Saturday Sept 6th 2008.

Creative Camp

Never been to Nordyland. This should be interesting. I marked myself down as not doing a talk but I do have one I’d like to try out after thinking about it more. I won’t say what the talk is but I hope it’s entertaining. For me. Maybe the audience will like it too but getting a reaction is the goal. One hint: It involves air travel. I won’t say anymore.

The Wheel of Belfast
Photo owned by kyz (cc)

I’m reminded of this and stereotypes for some reason:

Tuesday Push August 26th 2008 – Crewger – Bringing Film Crews together

Tuesday, August 26th, 2008

So you have an idea for a film, then what? Well. Crewger might be able to help.

Crewger - Irish Film Crew Discovery

Crewger helps bring people together to create films. Simple idea and apparently very much needed in Ireland. The more official blurb states:

Crewger is an organisation dedicated to the advancement of the Irish film community by facilitating the production, promotion and exhibition of original content by film-makers of all ages and backgrounds working in Ireland today.

While there are discussion forums out there, there’s nothing much webified about the Film Industry in Ireland. Crewger offers a nice way of finding crews for films with their search facility and building a community and forging links. In short Crewger is a social object for film in Ireland.

You can also check out the Crewger Twitter account to get news updates. Please help promote Crewger on your blog and website. Don’t forget you can submit your app or website or company to be on the Tuesday Push too.