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Since I'm a bit of a coffee addict (as are a lot of our staff) I decided the time had come to upgrade our office coffee machine.

If you recall, we got ourselves quite a nice machine nearly two years ago.

Unfortunately that machine, while excellent in its own right, simply could not cope with our expanded numbers (our staff numbers have gone up quite a bit since we got it).

So I started shopping around for a new machine. Eventually we settled on the Jura Impressa X7. Like the other machine it's "bean to cup". The difference is that the Jura is a lot bigger and can be plumbed in. It also handles capuccino and latte directly ie. no more messing about with steamer nozzles etc.,

The only downside to the new machine is that our office milk consumption has sky rocketed!

Note the tube for the milk on the left of the machine (milk cooler has been ordered):
The coffee we're using at the moment came from Discount Coffee, who offer a good range of coffees at reasonable prices. As you can see in the photo above, the Jura has not one, but two spaces for beans, which means you don't have to refill it as often and you could even try mixing types of coffee if you were adventurous.

So what about mugs?

A few months ago we ordered a batch of mugs from Owen in Mug Revolution. We got mugs for all our own staff and for some clients / friends / partners etc.,

Like so many of these "silly" ideas the feedback has blown me away.

Yes, they are really nice mugs, but I wasn't honestly expecting so many people to be so passionate about them.

One person who got one sent me an email thanking us and, to be perfectly honest, it made it all worthwhile:

Thank You for the great coffee mug!!  It is twice the size of any of our mugs at home, which saves me the back and forth trip when I'm comfortable on the couch watching football. (Only a company run by guys could understand that benefit)

We have a couple of mugs left that we will probably give away in a competition at some point in the next couple of weeks,  but if you want to get your own mug you don't need to wait. Owen, who is a really cool guy, is now offering the Blacknight mug for sale on his site!

If you'd like to find out more about how the mugs are made, then have a look at some of Owen's videos on Youtube. Owen makes really nice mugs, but what's totally captivating from my point of view is his passion for his craft. If you exchange emails with him you'll be impressed with his attitude, but it's only when you actually see him talking about his work that you can get a real feel for it, so I'd recommend you take a minute or two to watch his videos. (And yes - I am a big fan of his work!)

To promote our current .ie domain offer (€14.99 for one year registration OR transfer) we got James from Forbairt Media to do some pixel herding.

I'm really happy with the result:

Leaderboard is 728 pixels wide, so you'll have to click on it to see it full size - sorry! We've also got a "standard" 468 x 60 version of that, but it's just bigger .. ..

A couple of vertical ones look well too:




James produced the graphic in several sizes which conform to the Internet Advertising Bureau standard sizes.

Why?

Because they're standard sizes, which means it's a lot easier to get them into people's banner rotations etc.,

I'm fascinated by statistics. Of course being fascinated by them is one thing, being able to do anything meaningful with them is quite another matter entirely.

So here are a few statistics that I thought I'd share.

Facebook provides quite a bit of data to publishers of pages, so here's some of ours.

(Bear in mind that our page has got less than 700 "fans" at the moment)

Our "fans" are predominately male (73%) and the bulk of them are based in Ireland (over 400 of the current 680 odd).

Of the Irish "fans", the bulk of them appear to be in Dublin, though it's not very clear if the location is based on something that people are setting in their profile, or if it's based on their IP address. I suspect it might be based on the IP address, though if anyone can clarify this it would be interesting.

What else does Facebook tell us?

The bulk or our "fans" appear to be in the 18 to 44 age bracket, which isn't that surprising considering our line of business.

So what about Twitter?

We've been using Twitter for well over a year now.

When I last did a review of our stats we only had about 350 "followers".

One year later that number has grown to nearly 3 thousand! (Graph via TwitterCounter)

We "tweet" 7 days a week, though we're not total insomniacs (graphs via Tweetstats):

What do we tweet about? Follow us to find out!

Some other stats...

According to Google Analytics ...

50% of people visiting our site use Firefox, while 33% use Internet Explorer and just under 9% use Safari. Although Google's Chrome browser is the "new kid on the block", it's already being used by over 5.5% of visitors to our site.

Nearly 80% of people accessing our site use some form of Microsoft Windows, while over 15.5% use Mac. Only 3.5% use Linux.

The bulk of people visiting our site use relatively high resolution settings on their monitors, so we may need to rethink our site's layout the next time we give it a facelift. We probably ought to be doing more with iPhone and mobile users, though admittedly both have been on our "todo list" for quite some time.. ..

According to Alexa our site is the 90th most popular website in Ireland, which is amusing, though probably not that accurate.

Of course statistics are just numbers. It's what you do with them that matters!

Just because it's on the internet does not mean it's free. You may be able to access plenty of content online at no cost, but that does not give you any right to (ab)use it as you see fit.

Unfortunately when it comes to images a lot of people seem to think that you can just grab an image from a site and reuse it.

You can't.

The only exception to this would be if the rights holder has given you permission to use their images, designs or other content.

So what are your options?

Basically there are three:

1. Ask the rights holder for permission to use their content, be that images or other content. There is, of course, no guarantee that they'll grant you permission
2. Use images and content that is licensed under Creative Commons or similar style licenses. There are several different types of license available and each one has different terms and conditions. If you do go down that route it can be incredibly enriching, but remember to respect the content provider's rights. Read the license terms carefully and respect them.
   
3. Use stock images. While the "big boys" may be able to pay out hundreds of Euro for a single image we know that most people can't, so please read on ...
   

We've arranged a very nice little deal with one of the leaders in stock imagery - Fotolia

If you signup for an account with them using our special link you'll get:

• 3 welcome credits for FREE
• A 20% bonus on your first purchase

In order to get the special deal signup using the link from us and make sure that you complete the signup fully ie. confirm your email address and provide full contact details. If you're concerned about privacy have a read over their privacy policy.

The "freebies" should appear on your account either automatically or within one working day.

Since I'm a strong believer in "eating our own dogfood" we'll be using stock images from Fotolia on our sites in the future as well.

We've been running a series of discounts and promotions on a variety of domain extensions for the last couple of months...

We've now added a $random factor into the equation. Well "equation" might not be the best word.. Let's just call if the "mix".

At completely random times throughout the day (and night) we'll be cutting the price on some domain extensions.

In some cases we'll literally be giving away domains for FREE (gratis, no charge etc)

In other cases we'll charge a Euro or two for a domain.

In all cases you're going to get a fantastic bargain.

So how will you find out about these promotions? (Or maybe we should call them "extra promotions"?)

Simplest way is via Facebook or Twitter.

Depending on the promotion it might be time based ie. a particular cctld extension being set to a specific price for 30 minutes OR they might be based on units ie. the next 50 .com domains or whatever.