The Irish Internet Association is organising a half day seminar in conjunction with Carlow County Enterprise Board.

As the event is taking place in Carlow it's only natural that we should be involved

The schedule for the afternoon is as follows:
2.00-2.15: Registrations

2.15-2.30: Welcome and Introductions, CEO Carlow CEB

2.30-3.00: Quality Web Design to drive customers to your site - John Mitchell, Strata3

3.00-3.30: Getting your Website spec and design right for your business - Michele Neylon, Blacknight Solutions

3.30-4.00: Generate Sales Leads Online - Fergal O’Byrne, CEO IIA

4.00-4.15: Panel Q&A

4.15-4.30: Carlow SME Showcase

4.30-5.00: Networking

As you can see I've been asked to give a talk on speccing a website for your business, so if anyone has any particular thoughts they'd like to share now is the time to let me know

If you are interested in coming along let the IIA know

Posted by Michele Neylon at 7:02 AM | Permalink

If you have been following the latest movements in the world of domains, then you may be aware of the imminent launch of the .mobi TLD which becomes available to the public today.

Unlike other TLDs that may be aimed at particular geographic areas or industries the .mobi namespace is targetting mobile devices, or rather content for them.

While the consortium backing the new domain may have the best of intentions it's hard not to feel that this is yet another scam that will lead to widescale speculation and little or no benefit to either business or end users.

A recent thread on the Irish Webmaster Forum shows that some Irish web professionals are still reeling from the fiasco that was the .eu launch.

The thread references a very good article in the Financial Times that sums up people's concerns all too well.

If you are a trademark holder or have a serious online presence for your brand then you wouldn't want a 3rd party to tarnish it. The end result of this can be that you end up registering hundreds of domains that you never actually use or have any need to use.

Who does this benefit?

Not the end user and not the business. The only possible winner is the domain registry and in the aftermath of the EU scandals even that assertion no longer carries as much weight as previously.

Posted by Michele Neylon at 11:25 AM | Permalink

I'll be down in Cork next Saturday for Bar Camp which looks like it could be an interesting event.

Looking at the list of attendees and speakers I recognise quite a few familiar names so it will be nice to actually meet a few of them "in real life".

If anyone wants to say "hi" just keep an eye out for me...

We're also exhibiting this week at the World Ploughing Championships in Tullow, Co. Carlow.

Paul and his team have been working on putting together some interesting demos etc., to liven up the stand.

I don't think I've ever really been to a ploughing championship, so I've no idea what to expect!

Posted by Michele Neylon at 7:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The Irish Internet Association annual awards, the Net Visionaries, will be held later this year.

The Net Visionary award is the only award in Ireland where the public can not only nominate the winners, but also vote for them. You don't need to be a member of the IIA, nor does the nominee.

You can nominate people under any one of the range of categories on the official site.

This year's categories include the introduction of both "blogger" and "podcaster"

Blacknight is sponsoring the "Web Designer Excellence" award.

Posted by Michele Neylon at 11:31 AM | Permalink

We have received a number of phone calls in the past 24 - 48 hours regarding a domain name scam.

A UK company, European Domain Solutions, has been ringing Irish businesses to scare them into registering domain names. They will try to charge you upwards of £150 per domain (over €200!) to register the domains, which is several times what we charge.

If you are contacted by any UK companies offering domain names or trying to persuade you to register domain names please be careful. This kind of scam happens every few months and costs companies money that they could have invested elsewhere.

The kind of line they will use is that a 3rd party has contacted them wanting to register a domain name that is closely linked to your business.

They will offer to "protect" you for a "nominal" fee.

A sample email that one client received is below (identifying details have been removed):

With reference to our telephone conversation regarding an unrelated party wishing to register :-

www.somename.com
www.somename.net
www.somename.eu

The prices are as follows:-

For a 5 year registration: £150 per name (£30 per annum)

For a 10 year registration: £250 per name (£25 per annum)

Included in the package you will have unlimited e-mail facilities if you so wish, we would interlink the names into your current web site or if at any point you wanted to put web pages behind the names we would give you all the web space with full technical support to host that site for the duration of the registration.

At the end of the registration period you will be invited to renew automatically. Registrations will prevent the third party using your company name on the internet or moving on to another registrar without consulting yourselves.

Please contact me as soon as possible on +44 (0)870 XXX XXXX

Kindest Regards

Posted by Michele Neylon at 3:23 PM | Permalink

If you want to hear a bit more about our new Ruby On Rails offering then you may be interested in our first podcast interview with Mario from PR Web.

It's available in mp3, iTunes and Ogg.

Posted by Michele Neylon at 9:17 PM | Permalink