Pure Play

Speak now, or forever hold your breath

just been to look at the boards.ie discussion on broadband and out of curiosity went to the BT24Mb thread. To discover that the 24mb offer includes Kilkenny City although it had not been mentioned in the headlined areas in press coverage.

So, keeping in mind that the Eircom DSL 3mb service is pretty reliable and that I do the majority of work from my SOHO so I need a service that is there constantly, is there any reason why I should not switch to a similarly priced but up to 8 times as fast connection???

Please let me know over the next couple of days 'cause I may need to scratch this itch next week :-)

keith

MobileMess - the random sync mode

Ok. I know this. I knew in advance that this was going to be an ongoing pain.

Entered over 40 email details into the Mac address book on Monday in preparation for sending a press release out on Sunday for dbTwang.

Went to them today to select each of them and put them into a Group. Came across one of them with another persons email address in the note field. Strange I thought, must have done that by mistake (unlikely when you are just copying and pasting email addresses into a single field but possible). Came across another and another and another. Then a journalist with an email address belonging to someone else in his primary email field.

Excellent. The sync with de'cloud f**ked up that batch of entries. This has been reported regularly in the Apple mobileme forums.

Off to my laptop to start up Group Mail and run from that.

keith

$30 a month - yes please

Came across Clickable today - they are a business which has just raised $14.5M in Series B finance.

And why would I happily pay them $30 a month? Because they offer the service of intelligently managing online advertising campaigns across multiple platforms - Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. This area is one I am having to come up to speed on for dbTwang - intelligent use of a limited marketing budget to target people interested in classic and antique guitar collecting. I have signed up for a 30 day free trial with Clickable and already I am starting to action some of their recommendations.

Yep - they analyse your account, make recommendations and then give you Action buttons where they walk you through implementing same. Lovely :-).

Will be interested to see if readers who know more about cost per click campaigns than I do (form a long queue) find it as useful a tool or do you prefer to get down and dirty for yourself?

keith

Software developer required for full time position

A good friend of mine is looking for a software developer for his Kilkenny based business. Microsoft SQL and ASP skillsets and experience required for this. They develop online solutions (SAAS CRM'ish) for both the pubic and private sector.

For more information see www.salespulse.com and for further information contact [email protected].

keith

PC to Mac - the mechanics of switching

Finally shifted yesterday. Now working on 2.4 G Core with 1G Ram (that will change shortly - have just ordered 2G from memoryc.com - Irish memory business based in Kildare). Dual monitor setup via Apple dongle that allows my Samsung to connect to the back of this machine.

First step - moving my email.
This one is crucial - do not want to loose any of these files. I took the Thunderbird (V2) folder (just under 2Gb and found at c/document and settings/my profile name/application data) and copied it to the desktop on the Mac. Opened Mail, selected Import, Thunderbird and pointed it at the Thunderbird folder.

This resulted in a single folder called Import with all my mail in sub-folders.

Last thing was to set up the 4 accounts corresponding to each of the addresses. My folder structure is different now and took a small bit of getting used to.

Next - my calendar
In the last 2 weeks I had figured out how to get my Palm calender data into the Google calendar. So yesterday I cracked the export of that data in iCal format and imported it into iCal on the Mac.

My Contacts
These were tricky. Spent ages trying to export them from Palm format (which is years old and does not recognise any other format known to man/woman) before I poked around in the background to discover that the version of Palm desktop I was using (from Access) uses MS Access format for contacts! So opened the file in Access, saved, opened in Excel, saved as csv, moved across to the Mac and used this free utility to bring into Address Book: http://homepage.mac.com/sroy/addressbookimporter/

I am still missing fields occasionally. However for the first time I now have a single contacts list across my computer, email client and mobile device. (when you are on the PC and have decided not to use Outlook then a single list appears to be impossible).

MobileMe
I then set MobileMe up to sync - the calendars worked fine but changing preferences in the online version caused the calendar to be unreachable! I switched to Safari and it worked fine. Contacts took 2 syncs as the first one did not bring all data across. When I get the iPhone I will have to set up email syncing.

Other Files
These were just a straightforward copy across using an external hard drive. I have not yet started working on documents so I am not sure if I will get away with NeoOffice or have to purchase Office for Mac as Neil C suggested in comments previously.
The 2 pieces of paid for software which I know I will need to install on XP on this machine (running Bootcamp) are Mindjet for mindmaps and Adobe Acrobat.

Thats it - getting used to some different ways of doing things but so far so good. I am missing my passwords on Firefox (alth I brought the files across it does not appear to be able to use them) and my extensions are all buggered. May have to do a clean out and restart. I will still run a lot of peripherals via the PC due to the lack of ports on the iMac.

keith

Wait for it, wait for it

UPDATE Friday 18/07, from the O2 forum thread referred to below

Some stock was made available yesterday for customers who had pre-ordered but not received a iPhone. Some more will be on the way soon

From O2 this evening:

IrelandIrelandThank you once again for your request to be updated with any new developments in relation to availability of Apple iPhone 3G. We have seen strong demand for the iPhone 3G since it went on sale on July 11th. We are working closely with Apple to ensure a regular flow of new stock into in the coming weeks. We are confident that everyone who wants an iPhone 3G in will be able to get one. However the stock we are receiving continues to be limited. 

Please take this opportunity to visit our O2 Customer Forum where we are maintaining a thread regarding new iPhone 3G availability.

Meanwhile I have "my people" scouring the capital (that's Dublin for my Cork viewers) to see if I can get an iPhone before the next batch hit us. Unlikely I suspect but worth a try :-)

keith

 

Is your Eircom DSL connection slow?

Mine is crawling - a 3Mb service just came in at 916kb using the Irish ISP speed test and was at 1.2Mb about 3 hours ago.

This is much slower than usual and is impacting on file downloads. Anyone else seeing a reduction in speeds. Could have been deteriorating over the last couple of days - this is the first time I have measured it.

UPDATE - a quick look at this boards.ie thread shows that there appears to be a major South-East issue with Eircom BB speeds over the last couple of days. It maybe an infrastructural issue that they are having although they are not being consistent in getting that out.

keith

Tuesday Push - Time Gentlemen please

While I am fortunate enough to not have to keep detailed track of my time on most projects I was working on something in March 2007 that required me to keep a timelog.

By coincidence I came across 1time - the subject of todays Tuesday Push.

It was an Irish online service and exactly what I needed at the time. Easy to use, free for a sole trader and it had a flexible reporting function. Was it perfect - not even close! But Derek Organ and his crew were responsive and eager for feedback.

The current version looks a lot more developed and continues with the free plan. It then extends upwards into an enterprise edition for €395 a month. And it integrates with basecamp :-)

BTW 1time is where myself and Vinny Glennon of useamap and justroutes fame first came across each other. Great to see micro enterprises working to foster new start-ups within their walls. I have never met either Derek or Vinny - have to remedy that sometime soon.

keith

Whatever you do, don't go to the Apple forums

Feeling a little bit peeved on the day when you fully expected your digital and mobile worlds to seemlessly blend?

Why not go to http://discussions.apple.com and vent off a little steam?

Well - because they are down. Along with major chunks of Apples hosted services and online systems.

Nope - they are back up, but with this notice.

I drilled a little deeper and any attempt to get into an individual thread brought up the top message again.

keith

My iPhone/MobileMe existance off to a bumpy start

iPhones are sold out in Kilkenny in both O2 and Carphonewarehouse. And online according to O2.

On the MobileMe side it is up. Sort of. Attempts to get into the calendar using Firefox were rebuffed with an error message and clicking on the help button did not bring up anything.

Switched to Safari and a little smoother. There is an import option on the contacts side which I used to bring in Palm contacts in Vcard format. However the calendar has no import option whatsoever.

So now (I suspect) I will have to open Outlook on the PC for the first time ever, get my Palm Calendar into that, sync and then what? Break the connection? And then just have the iPhone sync with the online service? Hope it can facilitate that.

UPDATE - MobileMe is very, very slow to use. And the VCard import has only brought over partial records - mobile numbers have disappeared. I need to find a drawing board!

UPDATE2 - Safari with just one tab (MobileMe) is sucking up 160k of memory. That is very heavy.

UPDATE3 - This is a joke - 12.45

keith

Glimpse of MobileMe loginyou b

rom UPDATE2 - having more fun this morning:

http://bohanna.typepad.com/pureplay/2008/07/my-iphonemobile.html

UPDATE: Got up this morning (06.30GMT) fully expecting to be able to log onto MobileMe. To discover that Apple's initial implementation of this service has been plagued with unknown issues:

Outage hobbles new Apple Web service
The MobileMe rollercoaster
Apple's MobileMe shaky, not synched

I came back to the computer and saw mentions of the new iTunes 7.7 so went to MobileMe to see if it was open.

And through a glitch in their system came across this screen - which leads back to the default holding page :-(

Soon I guess

keith

Xp Service Pack 3 out starting tomorrow?

Mary-Jo Foley's blog over on zdnet claims that the third (and last?) service pack for XP starts rolling down the Automatic Update funnel tomorrow (Thursday July 10th).

If true what does this mean?

• Anyone in a SOHO setting with an automatic download and install option is going to see their internet speed be hammered by a download likely to be in 100's of Mb. And your computer may not work the way it should afterwards!
• Network administrators need to be ready for the inevitable side effects of this installation - there will always be some incompatibilities when a service pack hits town.

Watch and wait on this one.

keith

3G iPhone, Friday 8am. Does this apply to Ireland?

Just in from the Apple marketing machine:

Anyone know for sure if O2 will have them in store Friday?

keith

I had no choice Your Honor

I had reckoned on putting off my iPhone lust satisfaction for a while given that my earnings maybe impacted by my sofabound condition.

However fate intervened. My daughter knocked over a glass of water yesterday and took out my Palm Treo 680. I dismantled the battery and took out the SIM card to leave it dry out overnight but it was in vain. A fruitless soft restart was followed by an equally pointless hard restart - both leaving the Palm freezing on startup.

The consequences of this?

• Switched to dumb Motorola V535 as my phone.
• Opened a 60 day trial .Mac account in preparation for MobileMe.
• Found a copy of my calendar on Google which I had synced in there a couple of weeks ago
• Have to figure out how to get my Palm contacts out of the Palm format and into .Mac
• Going to have to get iPhone with bloody O2 data limit next week as will not be able to wait around for cracking options to appear.

keith

Web Services and Data lock in

As a follow up to my last post at my dissatisfaction with Typepad I started the process of moving our personal blogs to another service.

Wordpress.com (to the horror of techies everywhere - yes the hosted service and not my own implementation) is the choice and I discover how long this is going to take. There are nearly 500 photos that have to be exported from the places that Typepad has stored them (at least 4 different locations for reasons that are not obvious to me) and then manually reinserted into the relevant posts.

The automated export/import works for text (and Wordpress takes the Typepad generated txt file and brings it in nicely) but not images.

At least I have the time ;-)

keith

Typepad Security Flaw

When I started using Typepad a couple of years ago one of the attractions was the ability to password protect a blog. This was important because we run a number of family blogs and we wanted them to be both private and also secure. This was because they contain photos of the infants and kids in the family.

In May 2007 I noticed that despite the password protection on my personal blog the photographs that were contained within it were not protected - for some reason they must have been held in a separate and unsecured folder within the Typepad system.

I notified Typepad using their Ticket system on 3rd June 2007 and had it confirmed yesterday (just over a year later) that a change to correct this security issue has not been included in the significant changes to the Typepad platform which are currently being rolled out.

Despite being told on 10th June 2007: "That we are unable to give a specific date before this issue has gone through the development process does not mean that we take it lightly"

I am deeply unhappy at that inability to take a fundamental flaw in implementation of a password protection system seriously. Yes you are taking it lightly Typepad.

Off now to see if the couple of years data held on the Typepad system can be exported and then brought into another blogging service.

keith

Give me Proof

We are using a small number of online tools in our work on finalising the dbTwang business plan which is going to printers next week (yes - printed version! Our target potential angel investors are more likely to be comfortable with paper based documents than pdfs or whatever).

The main one is basecamphq and today we added a second which integrates with that - www.proofhq.com. It is a lightweight, browser based service for Web-based design collaboration, proofing and approval. Sweet - takes documents in a variety of formats and allows you to easily work on them.

Worked well and can strongly recommend it.

keith

Broadband - we have a plan. Or consultation document at least.

Following lifted straight from the Dept website - have not had time to read further. Looks good in principal, consultations follow with an end of Sept close off:

To make this a reality, investment of €435 million has been earmarked under the National Development Plan 2007-2013.

In order to achieve this, Minister Ryan set out a number of policy actions the Government would undertake. These include:

- The National Broadband Scheme would ensure that “all requests” for broadband will be met in areas currently without access to a broadband service. Rollout of this scheme will commence shortly to be completed by New Year 2010.

- Our schools will be at the centre of the new digital age. The Government will deliver high-speed broadband (100 Mbits) to every second level school in the country.

- All new major infrastructure projects will install backhaul ‘ducting’ at the construction phase. The Government will establish a one-stop-shop to give service providers flexible and open access to existing and future ducting infrastructure.

- By the end of this year, new build premises will require open access fibre connections.

- The significant purchasing power of the state would be used to develop far greater access to Government services online. This will stimulate demand, create economies of scale and improve the quality of public service to the citizen.

- Positioning Ireland as a testing-ground for the trialling and development of new digital services and telecommunications technologies

UPDATE - the press release ends with "A full copy of the consultation paper is available at: www.dcenr.gov.ie". The link is not obvious and thanks to Lisa in the Department who has just sent it to me:

Page link:

http://www.dcmnr.gov.ie/Communications/Regulation+and+Postal+Division/Public+Consultations/

Document Link:

http://www.dcmnr.gov.ie/NR/rdonlyres/F063026A-5896-4F44-A4CA-EF2357AA46D6/30908/NGNConsultancyDocumentJuly2008TheFinalversion.pdf

keith

Do you care enough to change your gadget/ICT spend?

Ethical consuming (where you rate potential purchases by reference to the track record of the producing company across a range of metrics) is a pain.

Greenpeace make it easy to apply "green" metrics to your ICT spend. Here is their newly released "Guide To Greener Electronics"

Embed this

keith

How to p**s off and confuse your customers

Eircom are pulling their Broadband Guardian service (parental control service) which I must have signed up for at some point although I do not subscribe now.

They are sending out emails with the following included - a sales pitch for their new replacement service:

e-security gives you complete peace of mind as it has advanced protection against
hackers, viruses, spyware and also gives parental control to ensure that your children
only see what they are supposed to.

So lets wander over to the link supplied http://home.eircom.net/html/esecurity/
where we see that:

eircom eSecurity is provided by Norton Security™ Online. It includes the following
security features:

    * Norton AntiVirus™
    * Norton Firewall™
    * Identity theft support
    * Email anti-virus and spam blocker
    * Anti-spyware protection
    * Anti-phishing protection

Lots of good stuff but no parental control, no filtering, nothing like that at all. So can you imagine how many parents are going to sign up for this service and then spend hours trying to find the filtering option.

Does no-one in Eircom do basic checks and editing of their marketing materials?

keith

Anyone got questions for Benjamin Mosse?

We have the last show in this series of The Bottom Line coming up on Monday and as part of that we will be talking to Benjamin Mosse of Associated Press.

He shared a stage with Steve Jobs at the 3G iPhone launch last week (he is Director of Mobile Products) and the other reason we are talking to him is that he grew up in this area - running an online store for his parents (Nicholas Mosse Pottery) long before it was fashionable.

Anyone any questions that they would like John Purcell to ask Benjamin. For me the stuff around the business case for developing free software on the iPhone is interesting together with the contrast between the Apple approach and the more Open Source angle of the Google Android project.

What else?

keith

Another online service grows on me

I continue to dabble with a variety of tools for helping me to organise myself. This is a category that continues to evolve and in which there exist a number of un-served needs. Myself and Conor O'Neill had a good discussion on this at the IIA conference and we both agreed that there are market opportunities out there.

I have recently switched to Vitalist which I found it by searching blog reference for this category of service. I was attracted to it because I found the user interface more intuitive for me and having used it for the last month I have now signed up for an annual subscription for $49 which allows me to have more than 10 projects.

User Interface continues to be one of the key requirements which I need software and services to meet - despite myself I really enjoy using the Office 2007 suite in preference to OpenOffice and that is because I find it much easier to use.

Would welcome comments from readers on what to-do list software/service you use and why?

keith

Selling Online Subscriptions - First Post

Amazing location - the Museum of Jewish Heritage on the southern tip of Manhattan right on the river and with a view of the skyline and the Statue of Liberty. My hotel is about 15 minutes walk away - close to the 9/11 site. This is the conference site.

There are 9 sessions timetabled for today with the first one being

Title: New Paid Content  Marketing Research: Stats on What Works

Detail: MarketingSherpa's research director reveals paid content data from their updated studies. Gain actionable and up–to–the–minute information on search and email marketing, as well the influence of web design, pricing and payment plans on conversion.

Stefan Tornquist,  Research Director, MarketingSherpa

My notes: 

Predicted revenue sources 2012:(top two)

• Advertising 79%
• Subscriptions 72%

Adverts in email newsletters - from 80% first time it cut 50% each time over 3 viewings. How do you get over this - advert rotation and advert position. Possibly move from graphic advert to text based.

How is economy affecting you?

• B2C - 40% of businesses do not expect any difference. For these the downturn opens up new opportunities if you have a flexible pricing or product model
• B2B economic effects being felt: Lengthening sales cycles, lower new customers each month, lower average purchase.

Sources of traffic (B2B)

• Search engine optimisation
• Paid search marketing
• Viral marketing
• Online sponsorship
• PR
• Offline advertising

There are large differences in the range of effectiveness in some of these - Viral marketing being one of them.

B2C

• SEO
• Viral marketing
• PR
• Offline Advertising
• Paid search marketing

Point made that the SEO dominance may point to success of other channels driving traffic to your business via search

B2B - Web2 activities question

Very interesting in that the majority of the sample who are participating in the various activities do not know if it makes any difference at all.

If they know the effects they are:

• Increased engagement - 74%
• Increased awareness in potential customers - 44%
• Improved customer retention - 21%
• Customers spending more - 18%

Prediction of 50% growth in video advertising through to 2010 - $2.9B by then (PWC figures)

Slide on the testing done over the last year by conference participants with high impact figures after each:

• Homepage redesign - 10%
• Email list cleansing - 25%
• Redefining site architecture for SEO - 29%
• Implementing high end web analytics - 17%
• Redefining internal search - 13%
• Usability testing of registration and/or shopping cart - 19%

Information potentially wanted by a user before making purchase (may reflect a more complex purchasing decision):

• Pricing
• Information
• Comparisons
• Customer Service
• Company information

keith

PS - all 12 of my posts from this conference can be seen here:
http://bohanna.typepad.com/pureplay/selling_online_subscriptions_2008.html

XP Service Pack 3 out

This is the third service pack from Microsoft for their soon to be retired operating system. For many (myself and Ken McGuire included), this will bridge us through to a brand new OS. But it won't be the dogs dinner that is Vista.

Both of us are going to complete the switch to Apple - I am partially there with the third machine in the house (after my main PC and laptop) running Leopard. When I have to replace my main one (currently well spec'd and not anywhere close to needing to be culled) I will try and go for a Mac Pro and use Bootcamp to run the Apple OS and XP (as the iMac does now).

However my dependency on Windows and software that only runs on it has almost vanished as I now work more and more on Web services that are hosted remotely and accessed through the browser. Thunderbird is my main desktop client and that is available for Apple.

For those of you who are running two machines (main PC and laptop for example) be sure to install Service Pack 3 on one of them only and ensure that all is working well before you install on the second. It has been a long time since a Service Pack screwed up a computer on me but it can happen and it is messy.

keith

Creative Camp, wireless speed warning

Due to a collapse in our Plan A - take and distribute a neighbouring DSL feed around the Parade Tower, we hastily cobbled together Plan B.

1. Use the 2M'ish guest network in the Tower for general access (ie people who are not speaking)

2. Use mobile broadband modems for speakers - speed tests today were good although that could deteriorate at the weekend. We currently have three that we  know of - if anyone who is coming can bring one that they are willing to share that would be appreciated.

3. In the case of the mobile broadband speeds tanking we will then use the wireless network for speakers and respectfully ask everyone else to stay off it.

Welcome your patience and assistance with this thanks - not ideal but just right now it is what we have.

And in a numbers update we are now at 115 registrations :-)

keith

(cross posted on creativecamp.barcamp.ie)

 

iPhone - Yes I Will

If it is 3G. I am using the 37signals products so much these days, and they appear to work so well on the iPhone, that if it becomes available in Ireland with a 3G connection then I will buy one.

Since I already have an iMac in the house (although it is the secondary computer and because I am busy I pretty much never get to spend time using it) and an iPod does this then make me a fanboy? I hope not :-)

keith

Not that Smart

One of the things I cover with businesses doing my website design course (where they build their own using Sitekreator) is the importance of good communication.

We use Wufoo for form building and this is one of the things I work with them to avoid:

This is the page that is displayed when you have submitted the form that asks Smart to notify you when their broadband is available in your area. It is completely empty. It should contain a message telling you that your information has been received and reassuring you that an acknowledgement will also be sent to the email address included on the form.

And a couple of minutes later there is no such email acknowledgement. If you are looking to switch customers to your network Smart the attention to detail would make a difference. Especially given your history over the last couple of years.

keith

Ruby, Python or PHP?

Myself and Fintan had a meeting with potential investors in dbTwang (a new web-based service for guitar players, collectors and enthusiasts launching in 2008) yesterday evening and it went really well. We have a revision of the business plan to prepare which will incorporate some of the really good feedback from the meeting and also a heads of agreement to draft.

During the meeting the question of the technology we want to use came up and we briefly explained why we want to develop using Ruby on Rails. They accepted that and we moved on.

However received an email from Aidan Finn in the meantime - who runs the Ruby On Rails group in Ireland and therefore knows what he is talking about :-). Some quotes from his email:

There is a shortage of rails developers around at the moment and good rails developers tend to be expensive......You should also look at python or php developers. Good python developers tend to be in as much demand as good ruby developers. But there are a lot more php developers around and they tend to be a lot cheaper too. I don't think the language/framework used is that important. It's more important to get a good dev with a good portfolio behind them.

So - do we take a decision to stick with Ruby and potentially have a more expensive launch build and probably a remote development team or stick with it and have a more flexible development framework upon which to build additional services in future phases?

TouristR went with Ruby and Jan is happy. What do you think?

keith

BackUp and Sync Solutions.

Short post on two solutions (both in beta so still being developed) that I am using at present.

Putplace - www.putplace.com
This allows you to keep a copy of selected files or folders on a service developed in Dublin by Joe Drumgoole. Once you get over the initial "seeding" of the service (uploading the folders and files for the first time) it runs away happily in the background and adds new or amended files to the backed up ones from your computer.

There are some glitches in the service but the guys in Putplace are very responsive to feedback. Go over there and sign up for it.

Foldershare - www.foldershare.com
This is a service from Microsoft that synchronises files or folders between computers that connect to the internet. In my case I am using it to ensure that the latest versions of our working documents for dbtwang are always available on my laptop.

Again once it is seeded it runs away in the background without any intervention. This one is good because it means that I get those files on the laptop without thinking. And while I know I can store them online I do not always have internet access as I have not yet subscribed to a mobile solution.

keith

SOHO Telecoms - Bundle recommendations?

We are scheduled to move next week and thinking about shifting from Eircom to another supplier. Have to say that Eircom have offered a really good service (it hurts to say that!) - their DSL service has been pretty resilient and they proactively called us to suggest a switch in our landline product to save us money.

The reason for the move is to see what another supplier would be like. I would take the opportunity to sign up for a full business service - so the landline would be registered as a business one rather than domestic and the associated DSL service would also be business level (as we have now).

Welcome suggestions on possible suppliers - want someone who would get faults repaired sharpish so cost is only a part of the consideration.

keith