Pop on over to the facebook page and make sure to Invite your friends to join.

I’m not too sure about the Candlelit Vigil bit, maybe that’s to keep people warm?

We hope to do another official meet-up on the 16th of Jan, more details to follow. That said, I will be meeting up with people some time in Dec too. Invite only, sorry guys!

On another note, as the Geansai Gorm competition is nearing a close, bluejumperireland.com has joined forces with the recently banned bluejumperirish.com site (in an attempt to pool some link juice resources). Also, as part of our newly invented blogger foreign exchange programme.. I will be joining in as one of the first contributors on “This Week on Irish Blogs” from Roger Galligan (aka IrishBlogs.ie)

The agency was set up last June by Fiona Roche, publicity manager for Lillie’s Bordello and the Porterhouse Group along with her business partner, photographer, Darren Butler. So far they have signed up 35 models, many of whom are well known in Ireland and a number of whom have featured on the international circuit.

The launch event, at Dakota in South William Street, starts at 7pm with cocktails and canapés and continues with a glittering display of designer labels by ten of the agency’s leading models.

Back to the calling on fashion / entertainment bloggers. If any of you fancy any invite to this exclusive event please let me know.

I made this with a heap of brushes in photoshop .. let me know if you like it.  I can confirm that I did not hurt my Geansai Gorm while making this!

DOWNLOAD 1024 x 768

DOWNLOAD 1680 x 1050

It has been suggested that we go for food, followed by drinks. As a bonus, I have some freebies from Wordpress via @donncha to give away (badges and stickers).

If you are interested, drop me an email on jason@jason-roe.com or Leave a comment below.

So far @lexia, Darragh, @czajkowski @mcawilliams, Alan O’Rourke , Elly Parker, Dave Davis, Justin Mason,  Niall Kitson, Anthony,@forbairt @PixieVonDust @TheChrisD @prendio2 @dan.oneill, Neil , Marie and  starfire are on board.. If i missed anyone please drop me a comment..

UPDATED PLAN

The plan is to meet up at the Porter House central from 6pm on Thursday 27th. (PH central located at the bottom of grafton street, across from the molly malone statue).  We will get food, drinks and have our chats. After this (maybe 8:30/9pm ish) we might move on to Soundcheck, South William Street. It seems that Rick O’Shea is doing a DJ thing, we shall be acting as a rent a mob! - the rent

PS: I have approched a sponsor to give us some free drinks and/or food for the night. More info to come laters. Sponsor is a no show! May I suggest that everyone must to buy me 1 pint, per person, per hour

My mobile number is 087 94 80 532, if you need help finding us!

I would also really appreciated if anyone attending could slap up a blog post / and or tweet about this!

View Larger Map

On another note Geansai Gorm has been launched by Damien Mulley, its basically a S E O competition to see who can rank for the term Geansai Gorm also known as Geansaí Gorm and can be translated from Irish to blue jumper.

My Gorm entry had some issues because of DNS problems. The site is not showing up yet and was only verified yesterday evening after the DNS holding page expired from googles DNS cache. Take a look at Google for the upcoming pages.

I assumed that when I moved to a blacknight VPS about 6 months ago something went a bit AWOL. I had a look at the server for CPU usage, memory, write speed & mysql and everything seemed to be fine. The main issue turned out to be with wordpress or a WP plugin.

When I looked at my wordpress database tables and noticed that I had 14,000 rows in the wp_options table. The rows consisted of rss requests from magpie. After I cleared them out I have seen an instant boost. The mysql query to do this is

Delete from `wp_options` where `option_name` LIKE ‘rss_%’;

This got me thinking about how I can speed up the blog a bit more. First port of call was wp-supercache.

Second thing I looked at was moving all my static files over to a CDN (content delivery network). I already had an Amazon s3 account setup, so I set up a new bucket with a CNAME’ed sub domain. I kept the same directory structure and redirected all css, gif, jpg, png & js files over to the s3.

PS: S3 is not a true CDN .. see amazon cloudfront for a real CDN solution.

After all the tweaks I have reduced page load time from 15 seconds to 4/5 seconds.

Let me know if you spot any issues.

I will be there on the night with Carol Sweeny representing the Independent Digital Team. Pop over to us and have a chat .. my mug shot is over here (No, I couldn’t find a better photo!).

PS: thanks to Justins post for reminding me to blog this.

The event will start at 11am on Saturday, September 20th. The location is The Digital Exchange, Crane St., Digital Hub, Dublin 8.

What can you expect?

Talks [approx. 30min. each]

11:00am Doors open - time to explore the venue
11:30am Paul O’Malley - What You Should Know About Software Freedom - from GNU to Ubuntu!
12:00pm Camara - “Who are we and what do we do?
12:30pm Glenn Strong (IFSO) - “DRM and Software Freedom”

1:00pm LUNCH

2:00pm Gareth Eason - “Free & Open Source Software: Why you want it!”
2:30pm Ciaran O’Riordan (IFSO) - “The Free Software Movement in 2008″
3:00pm Break
3:30pm John Looney - “Open Source Engineering in Google”
4:00pm Dermot McNally “The OpenStreetMap Project”
4:30pm Maciej Danielski - “Ubuntu Ireland”

6:30pm Refreshments at the Longstone Pub

I’m going .. are you?

Eamon Leonard who was formally involved in TL01. Is planning to set up a new coworking space in Dublin. He already has Ken Stanley the self appointed “web standards legand” on board.

See coworking.ie for more details.

If your interested in getting involved leave a comment or pop Eamon an email.

Thanks to Laura for pointing out the thread on PHPug. PS: Coworking.ie is still alive!

I added support for vodafone.ie free texts. You can now receive a SMS message (via vodafone.ie free text) when someone sends you a reply or direct message.

Try out the plugin and let us  know what you think!

J.

So going for FREE are the following gems.. Please drop me a comment or contact me.

Special Edition Using Linux®, Sixth Edition by David Bandel; Robert Napier – isbn 0789725436 - http://my.safaribooksonline.com/0789725436

This latest version of Special Edition Using Linux shows how to install, configure, use, and network the latest generation of freeware Linux operating systems. The authors focus mostly on the freeware version of Red Hat Linux 5.1, though Caldera OpenLinux 1.2 and other popular distributions also receive attention.

Networking for Dummies by Doug Lowe -ISBN 0764507729 (Would be a great piss take!)

http://lincolnbookfest.bookcrossing.com/isbn/0764507729

no computer stands alone. Whether you want to hook up to the Internet, set up a business network, or have your home PCs work together, this book will help.

“Networking For Dummies,” 5th Edition provides valuable updates on the latest tools and trends in networking including Windows 2000, NetWare 5.1, Linux 6.2, and home networking.
Learn C Now (Paperback) by Augie Hansen - isbn 1556151306

http://www.amazon.com/Learn-C-Now-Augie-Hansen/dp/1556151306

E-business (R)evolution, The (Paperback) - ISBN 013085123x

http://www.amazon.com/E-business-R-evolution-Daniel-Amor/dp/013085123X

Presents the complete executive briefing on all aspects of e-business, including e-commerce. Discusses planning and implementation techniques that work, marketing, transactions, and legal issues; avoiding the pitfalls, and portals, search engines, and online community-building. Softcover. DLC: Electronic commerce.

Developing Microsoft Excel 95 Solutions: With Visual Basic for Applications (Paperback) by Eric Wells (Author) - ISBN 1556158939

http://www.amazon.com/Developing-Microsoft-Excel-Solutions-Applications/dp/1556158939

Corel LINUX OS Starter Kit: The Official Guide - Joseph Merlino ISBN 0072124598

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=1175747797&searchurl=isbn%3D0072124598

Windows Nt Server 4 Security Handbook (Paperback) by Lee Hadfield (Author), David Hatter (Author), Dave Bixler (Author) ISBN 078971213x

The only book on the market on security alone, Windows NT Server Security Handbook teaches administrators not only how to build a secure NT-based network but also how to add NT to NetWare and UNIX networks. - Covers all the facets of designing, administering and enhancing a secure NT Server

http://www.amazon.com/Windows-Nt-Server-Security-Handbook/dp/078971213X

ONE HUNDRED AND ONE DAMNATIONS [IMPORT] (Paperback) ISBN  0099498812

http://www.amazon.com/ONE-HUNDRED-DAMNATIONS-ANDREW-HARMAN/dp/0099498812

Soul Music (Discworld Novel) (Paperback) - ISBN  0552140295

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Music-Discworld-Novel-Terry-Pratchett/dp/0552140295

Start Your Own Business - Suggested Reference Books ISBN 1860762670

http://www.dublincity.ie/RecreationandCulture/libraries/Library%20Services/Business_Information/Pages/business_books.aspx

Norway (Country Guide) (Paperback) ISBN 1740595203

http://www.amazon.com/Norway-Country-Guide-Anthony-Ham/dp/1740595203

What the dragons said was correct .. its http://ifoods.tv/ not ifood.tv

Strange thing is ive been to the site many times and mixed this up! Time to buy ifood.tv or move domains guys!

ps: I seen you read this from your webmail.

On my travels I bumped into a nice bit of kit that allows you to create a do it yourself SSD Drive (SATA in Raid0 or Raid5) with 3 Compact Flash cards. This comes in two flavours IDE and SATA that will fit in a 2.5” drive slot.

A combination of the CF adapter kit plus 3 x 16gb cards (48GB total) comes to about €180 before shipping/taxes. That is a saving of around €300 odd euro compared to some of the retail drives..

Speeds and costs may vary depending on the quality of the card. The CF kit says that the max/recommended rate is 20MB/s. Not too shabby.. but also not that fast compared to retail drives. The limitation seems to be the cards that you use.

I also found a reference on gizmodo to a SD card solution. This second device seems to be no longer available.

Well that may or may not be true, but I thought it would be an intresting post. Being honest, Im not sure why this came into my head today.

There are some people online who I would like to say thanks to…

This list in no paticular order.

I first met Laura aka @czajkowski at Skycon down in Limerick some time back. A while ago she helped my find an N95 via #linux, Thanks! PS: she also introduced me to pear cider…

I contacted James Corbett aka @EirePreneur out of the blue in relation to coworking. He was one of many people I randomly emailed asking for some help with the project. Thankfully he accepted the request with open arms. When we last checked the site has over 150 active memebers (real people based on our coworking survey). Since then, we have watched the spawning of a number of coworking locations within Ireland. Without people like James and others this may never have happened. Thanks!

From what I remember, I met Damien Mulley via Michele Neylon god knows how long ago. Hes always been a straight shooting no nonsense kinda guy. Via the blog awards, Damien donated 1000 euro of the procedes to st francis hospice (my charity of choice). Thanks dude, a lot more than I ever expected!

Michele Neylon and all his crew in blacknight have kept me a float hosting wise for the last 5 years or more. I may just be a client, but it never feels like that with these guys. As Dave Davis always says, “they are one of the good guys”.

Feel free to pass this blogish gesture on to someone else.. Its good to say thanks.

Many web sites are built around the concepts of features, benefits are often overlooked. Site owners/developers some times confuse features with benefits and this results in an array of complications for the end user.

Knowing what your customers/users want out of your product is essential. It is critical to do your homework before implementing any new feature on your website.

Features must be tested in a controlled way to understand the benefits for end users. Exploring features with qualified users can often bring new insights into how your features are perceived.

In the same way that multivariate testing helps to optimise conversions and improve sales, controlled testing can optimise the benefit to your users. Rapid prototyping methods help enhance the effectiveness of your testing as controlled sample groups can be exposed to a number of variations of the same feature.

Vodafone Example

Here is an interesting example of a feature from vodafone. The Current Vodafone Pay Monthly customers option on the Vodafone store.

This “feature” forces requires users to pass some tests before they upgrade their phone as seen below.

Needless to say .. a method to do this was quite lacking (for some time) .. see below.

However if this did work .. I would be informed that I was not eligible to give vodafone moeny buy a new phone. Some times features like this provide little benefit to the user (other than confusing them). In this example you need to ask yourself .. will this feature benefit you the customer?

Conclusion

Features are an easier sell to customers when the benefit has been clearly defined, tested and proven. Invest time into creating features with a measurable benefit before inflicting them upon your customer/end users.

I poked around on their website for over an hour, not able to actually find any way to buy an n95 (as an existing customer). So I decided to send them an email. Lucky for me, the contact page was dead.

I ring them up to be told, sorry no pass go, please ask in a local shop.. This must be ecommerce at its best. I piss away over 100 euros a month, on minutes that I barely even get through (any more) to be told… Sorry computer says no!?

Well Vodafone, you can f**k off!

Own your very own piece of Irish blogging memorabilia, a poser from the 2008 Irish blog awards that has held in the Alexander hotel Dublin. The blog award has become know as the bloscars among many Irish bloggers.

AUCTION ON EBAY

The poster features a popular political icon who is dressed to impress. The poster was designed to support another popular miscreant and full time disk jockey Rick O’Shea RTE’s 2fm presenter.

The stick on mustache comes courtesy of some t-shirt girl. No facial hair was harmed in the production of this poster.

A white infamous WWMD? sticker is also (What Would Mulley Do. This is a reference to the blog awards organiser Damien Mulley)

All proceeds of this auction will go to St. Francis Hospice.

See my full post on coworking.ie

- J

In other news, the guys in blacknight will be announcing a totally new hosting platform!

I had a sneak peak at the new control pannels / billing today (it is very cool)! Hopefully I will be able to play with my VPS (Virtual private server) account some time soon!

* /me pokes paul!!!

Im not sure about the new green look .. but I guess it works!

So then the whole project gets railroaded by the tel-co’s via the euro commissioner (or so it seems). Yada Yada .. Then yesterday, I see a call from the Dublin chamber of Commerce saying that they want to kick start Dublin with wi-fi on transport. Are they talking about trains and buses?

PS: I love your attempt at the VAT free pc’s lads!

Looking for Kitchen Design? Check out Woodale Designs kitchens.

This all leaves me a little bit confused, does anyone know what the hell is going on with this free WI-FI lark??

Talk about a republic of misinformation!

The second day covered what’s required in a business plan and what investors are looking out for.

We took a bit of a detour mid way through to talk about the advantages of the LTD Company over a partnership, more to come later in the programme. Looks like there is no way to convert earnings from a partnership/sole trader to LTD in a nice way!

At the end of the day we broke up into teams and were asked to evaluate 10 business plans. We had to scan over the Exec Summaries and pick a top 3. We went for some fairly interesting ideas ranging from retail stands, some form of atomic clocks and some kind of micro organism that could possibly take over the world (we were a bit devided on this one).

I was a tad nervous as I haven’t done one of these programmes before. To be honest I was delighted to be accepted in the first place. I’m not sure if it’s normally difficult to get in to this kind of thing, or if anyone has ever been refused, but I was delighted to have the opportunity.

We had to switch to a bigger room as 17 people are in the programme this year. Thats compared to about 10 last year, not a bad jump in numbers! It looks like I am the youngest of the lot, but whats new there! I have always seemed to have been the youngest person in any group since I was about 15. Im not sure what that says about me but I try not to read into it too much.

Note that this will be the summary of my almost illegible scribbles.

First hurdles - inability to share

The group was asked to do pitch their ideas to the group.

At the first hurdle, the reluctance of the entrepreneur reared its head over concerns of patentability and IP. The message here was if you want to protect you IP then keep it to yourself. Intellectual property and protecting you ideas come later in the programme.

Duncan Ballantine * talked about this in his book “Anyone Can Do It: My Story”. This seems to be one of the major pitfalls for a budding entrepreneur is the inability to share their idea with other people. It was noted that sharing with a family member or relation just doesnt count. You will more than likely get the optimistic slant on your idea.

Luckily for me, I have one of the world’s most pessimistic friends to bounce ideas off. (You know who you are if your reading this!) Honestly he can be one of best people to have around when that light bulb moment of inspiration strikes. A no nonsense, hows she cutting attitudes can be a fantastic trait. If you want to stay well grounded find one of these people (preferably someone who will still listen to you after 4 years!).

We were told was that many people do a bit of a spin on protecting their idea by pushing benefits and highlighting what problem you’re solving without actually detailing any processes. That being said, it was noted that the above may conflict when trying to patent, so each to their own.

Wanting to Jump

I wanted to jump out of my seat at times to tell people about my business idea! That time never actually came because honestly, I was shitting bricks. I had visions of someone in the group turning around and going well why anyone would need that kind of an idea?. So for the moment I held of.

End of pitching

After about 7-8 pitches we moved on to why we were all here and what we want out of the programme. There was a really mixed bag response from the group but the main message seemed to be clear.. I have always wanted to do this, but honestly I just never knew where to start?.

Can anyone become one?

The last part of the night the group was split in half. We were asked to have a mini debate on the subject, Can anyone become an entrepreneur?. We were put in two separate rooms and asked to work as a team on this. This was really difficult as I was on the side that had to debate that anyone could become an entrepreneur! Not one person in the room actually believed this was true, yet we struggled on anyway.

I personally dont think that “anyone” can be an entrepreneur unless they are willing to put the time and effort into creating, implementing and following through with an idea. Not to mention my feelings about peoples inability (including my own) to jump ship and risk it all for a chance to make it big. Thats living the dream!

This is where we closed off .. More tomorrow.

Some side notes:

Elevator pitches- The main messages were always and include the following:

Who you are.
The name of your company.
Your target customers / market.
What problem are you trying to fix.
What solution do you have or what can you bring to the idea.
The profitability of the offer you are presenting
What kind of ROI can your idea bring in

Elements of the pitch

The benefit of your idea, is it unique?
Whos in your market space
What category do you fit into (Sales, ops or financial) . You always need the first 2 in some form.

* I may have misquoted/paraphrased the wrong person on this. It was either this book or Seth Godin the idea virus. I didnt have it to hand!

I didn’t really know David terribly well but I have been reading and participating on his blog for about 6 months or so. It turns out that Pete had just hired David for a new role about 3 weeks before his death. His death came as quite a shock to us all.

All I can say is that my condolences go out to his family and friends.

What came first the chicken or the hedge?

This photo was taken while I was staying up in the D Hotel, Drogheda. The picture is a close up shot of a really nice free standing light that they have in all of the rooms.

What I love about this photo is the way that light radiates warmth from beneath the colder outer shells. Natural light from the window also seems to bring out vivid textures.

This photo was also taken in the same hotel. The shot is much darker but radiates from a lamp shaped like a glowing orb. I love the way that the grain in the wood is drawn out, this is also helped by the unusual angle.

On Friday, we will present the findings from our survey and announce the winner.

Click here to Start the Coworking Survey.

If you haven’t already done so, please fill out our coworking survey.

I helped the guys set up a Live SMS feed for the website. The feed and SMS instructions can be found on the top right hand column of the Irishelection.com home page.

While your here make sure to subscribe to my RSS feed.

Alternatively you can stick your email address in the “Subscribe� text box on the right hand column. Make sure press the “Subscribe Me!� button. We will then send you email alerts when my Blog is updated. You can opt-out at any time.

Issues like this highlighted the risk surrounding niche bottom feeder sites. Brand feeders tend to latch onto popular online tends, many feeders leverage bigger brands and target unexplored brand niches. Large corporate brands face this problem on a daily basis.

Feeding your brand.

In the MySpace example, many of the Feeders where not trying to directly compete with MySpace. Smart brands are aware that keeping your brand space busy can sometime be a good thing. A busier brand market place means that the cost for competitors to leverage your brand will often be quite high. This brand cluttering concept will result in competitors costs being driven up.

The downside of brand cluttering is that when a brand becomes too cluttered it can be hard for your clients to see through all of the smoke. While your competitor’s costs will rise, so will the cost of maintaining your brand.

Allakhazam and the brand revolts!

Accountants and CFO’s are the kryptonite for any brand marketer. As soon as a good accountant sees that the maintenance of a brand is becoming too high, they will often look for a solution to the problem. The simplest option is always the first route that will be taken. Simple is not a word I would normally associate with the registering a trademark with Google. Anyone that has been faced with challenge of registering a trademark with Google will understand that the process is long and arduous.

You own the trademark but not the brand

Most companies are unaware that their customers control their brand. This was covered in a book entitled Brand Hijack by Alex Wipperfurth. Alex suggests that the role of a brand marketer is to guide a brand not control it.

The interesting thing about a “simple” solution to a problem is that it will often backfire on the brand marketer. After Dave highlighted this issue, I decided I would keep an eye on void that the Myspace trademark saga left behind.

As brand feeders could no longer buy some of the pie, they were forced to invade the organic space. Using the Mark Alert tool from Domain Tools, I tracked the rate of new domain names being registered with the term “myspace” somewhere in the domain. In total over 2421 domains where identified with matching criteria. The Graph below tracks the rate of growth over a 40 day period. The graph peaks at 229 and dips to 14 at its higest and lowest point.

“Sometimes it is better to guide a brand rather than control it.” - Jason Roe

Coworking Ireland has really taken off over the last month.

We now have 4 active bloggers contributing to the project. Pop over to coworking.ie and take a look at some of the interesting topics being discussed. Don’t forget to subscribe to the Coworking blog.

James Corbett (EirePreneur) reports on Business Class Network looking for locations.

The inside track on Adam Street - Private Members Club in London.

Paul Campbell, Reported from Citzen Space San Francisco!

Irish Independent also got a facelift!

A lot of work went in by the team to get the site up and running. The site migrated fairly smoothly from unison to independent. Personally I don’t see the guardian resemblance with the new indo design.

The layout is much better than the 7 year old design. The site is a lot more accessible and each section now has an RSS feed. Mandatory registration has been removed unlike some other papers.

With a fairly bold move for traditional media, public comments opened up on the site! Make sure to post your feedback on the We Have Changed page. Your opinion is very important, Bad or Good.

LoadzaJobs changed a bit too!

I’m not sure if anyone noticed but Loadzajobs also got some minor cosmetic changes on the front page. The site now has a clearer Featured Recruiters, Popular categories & locations, and a handy list of Industries / Categories down the bottom of the page. I have dug up a snapshot from April of last year to help you compare the changes, Before & After.

More to come next week!

This could be a big blow for some of the social bookmarking services. Form a data mining point of view, this might be another key tool that could be used to identify the value of a page link or service.

From The Google notebook homepage

Clip and collect information as you browse the web.

- Clip useful information.You can add clippings of text, images and links from web pages to your Google Notebook without ever leaving your browser window.

- Organize your notes. You can create multiple notebooks, divide them into sections, and drag-and-drop your notes to stay organized.

- Get access from anywhere.You can access your Google Notebooks from any computer by using your Google Accounts login.

- Publish your notebook. You can share your Google Notebook with the world by making it public.

On the flip side, the area itself was ripe with poverty for decades. Many people were forced to live there and had no real alternatives. Many lives where destroyed because of social deprivation. The idea of “Poverty Tourism” doesn’t really appeal to me in the slightest.

On that note, here is Hotel Ballymun - “Poverty Tourism”.

Home Seamus Nolan:

From 31st of March to the 27th of April 2007 the top floor of the Clarke Tower, one of the last remaining tower blocks in Ballymun, will open its doors to the public in the form of a unique short stay hotel.

Artist Seamus Nolan was commissioned by Breaking Ground, the Ballymun Regeneration per cent for art scheme, to undertake a new work in this changing suburb of Dublin.

With a €2.5 fee to get money back, you might actually lose out ..