pressgazette.co.uk reports that Johnston Press halts pay wall experiment:

Johnston Press is to drop the paywalls it implemented on a number of its local newspapers from next week, Press Gazette understands

The regional publisher erected barriers on two of its Scottish and four of its English weekly newspaper websites in November as part of a trial to “get an understanding of what the customer dynamic is around paid-for content”.

Also check out Frank Prendergast’s, Paywalls are not the Enemy blog post. Its an interesting read.

This week a number of Irish regional news websites have started charging for content. Chances are that you haven’t already spotted this. I say that this because if you are anything like me, you probably consume media a lot differently than the masses.

Before I start, I want you to know that I was previously in gainful employment with the Irish Independent and worked in the team and on the platform behind these regional web sites. Although its been over a year since I worked there, I have some understand of why they might have decided to charge for content. Before I start to explain the rationale, I want you to know that I think that this move will prove in time to be a huge mistake. Anyone who is in advertising might tell you that this move will more than likely obliterate most of the traffic and advertising revenue on these on-line publications.

Regional newspapers are hugely different to main stream media, in that the content and its target market is quite niche. This causes a whole array of issues when your business model is based on advertising. The fact that regional publishers have such a niche audience means that your advertising volumes / reach falls to a point where its almost counter intuitive for a main stream brand to advertise there.

The problem that regional publishers have is that, trying to get local regional advertisers to advertises on the web is almost impossible. Many regional publishers and the their advertisers don’t understand the whole on-line advertising thing. If they do understand online, they probably realise that the vast majority of people who read regional papers online aren’t in fact in their target market.

If you did some research on this you might find that a large percentage of people who read regional titles online are in fact from outside of the target market / region. Some might speculate that a large percentage of the readers of such a publication are ex pats overseas or people who have migrated to another part of the country. This is mainly because regional papers have quite limited distribution pattern. If you are outside of Fingal for example, chances are you have never seen a physical copy of the Fingal Independent.

With this in mind, the publishing group might have decided to start charging for content. After all, large websites costs money to run! The reason news papers provide free content online is to get eyeballs that can be converted to advertising revenue. If you can’t sell the adverting then its a bit of a no brainier. You have to make money somewhere right?

This is where the argument gets a bit fuzzy.. Traditional media at this point goes back to what it knows best. If you cant make money from advertising, you have to start charging for the content. If you cant charge for content and cant sell advertising you end up something like the herald AM, now known as the Metro Herald .

My view on this is that the above is all fundamentally flawed. Some might say that the reason they are charging for the content and making it as expensive if not more expensive than the offline equivalent is to drive you back to the traditional publication and boost readership. When you factor in that there is a very low distribution cost online, I cant fathom why else they would be charging in this way.

In my mind, charging more for content on-line only makes sense if you are adding some extra value or providing access to something that you cant obtain in the traditional paper. Where they went wrong was they started trying to charge for something that had previously been provided free of charge. That would be OK, if when you paid they stripped out all of the advertising or provided you with something a bit more substantial. Why not bundle a number if offerings together. IE: When you pay monthly, you should get access to all regional publications including access to all digital supplements, the digital edition and a free download of an improved version of their iPhone app. That seems like a better offer / value proposition to me.

I just wish that Irish traditional media would make up there mind. If it doesn’t work. you do have to fix it .. but I feel there was some old school media bods influencing this decision.

My main question to you is.. Would you pay for regional news content and what would inspire you to part with your hard earned cash? Please leave your comments below.

Also check out Independent introduces paywall for regional titles

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

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!

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!

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!

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

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.

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

I have been toying with the idea of coworking for some time. For anyone that hasn’t heard of coworking yet, the concept is fairly simple:

“Coworking is a movement to create a community of cafe-like collaboration spaces for developers, writers and independents”

The concept itself is nothing new. Freelancers and small business have always teamed up for office shares. What makes coworking any different to typical office share? In my mind the definition of an office share would be simple “A closed group of people spreading the cost of an office”. Whereas coworking is the next evolution of this model.

Think of it this way, what if you could not only spread the cost of your business, but quickly and easily pool resources with a larger community of likeminded individuals? Your office share is limited to a stagnant pool of talent that will rarely change. What if your community was more fluidic? How would that affect your business model?

This is the next revolution of business. Coworking allows seamless collaboration between companies and individuals who may never have met under other more static environments. Our new economy will be built on ideas and ideas need the right environment to grow. When creative minds are provided with an ideal environment and are supported by peer’s ideas with turn from good to ingenious.

Maybe this all sounds a bit too good to be true but every business stated off with one Individual who took a chance. Every company is only made up of the sum of the individuals who work for them. A fluidic structure means that individuals can join forces and all work for individual goals. At the same time they can also leverage the power of the many to help make those goals happen. This is my definition of the future of coworking.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, we need a way to make this all happen. This is where I came up with the idea for Coworking.IE. The goal of the site is to promote coworking in ireland, to provide a community space for coworkers to team up and to serve as a guide to people who are looking to go out on their own. The project is community driven and completely non profit. Everyone is encouraged to contribute to the project in whatever way they can.

To make coworking in Ireland a reality we need to make people aware of the benefits of coworking as a whole. Coworking.ie will provide space for people to team up and contribute to this process. If you are interested in this topic and would like to contribute please contact me on Jason@jason-roe.com .. If you are feeling a bit more passive, you can help by spreading the word.

Also a big thanks to James Corbett from EirePreneur.com to help start the ball rolling.

It seems that I was nominated for Best Designed Blog!! Thanks guys!

Voting will close at 5pm on Friday February 16th. A shortlist will be announced soon after and judging will decide the winner of each category. Winners will be announced at the Irish Blog Awards 2007 event in Dublin on March 3rd in the Alexander hotel. You may be contacted via your email address to verify your votes.

Keep an eye on my blog for more info!

PS: I would appreciate your votes under Best Designed Blog – “Jason Roe’s Blog”!

Full List of nominations:

Best Blog
Alive in Limerick
An Irish Craftworkers Good Life
An Spailpin Fanach
An tImeall
Arse End of Ireland
ArseBlog
Backseat Drivers
Barbara’s bleeuugh!
Beaut.ie
BifSniff
Biz Growth News
Blogorrah
Bock the Robber
ElBlogador.com- The Voice of Irish Nationalism
Fustar
Head Rambles
I Take Photees
Ireland 16 Days
IrishElection.com
Letter to America
Manuel Stimulation
Mcawilliams.com
Mine’s A Jack Daniels
Nialler9
Pygment
RedMum’s Blog
Skinflicks
Snackboxdiaries
StigOnline
The Cedar Lounge Revolution
The Community At Large
The InFactah Blog
The Limerick Blogger
Tir na Blog
Twenty Major
Womans Aid

Best Blog Post- Sponsored by Hosting365
Ach go hairithe – We love Irish we do, but if we want our signs in English
An Cainteoir Dochais – Ag toraiocht na ndilseoiri i mBaile Ã?tha Cliath
andcurve – Cock-blocking beats
Annie Rhiannon – Three years too late
Arse End of Ireland – Where do you get your smoke from?
Arse End of Ireland – The Bertles
Balrog – McDowell should walk over Rape crisis
Bifsniff – Should You Be Laughing At This?
Blather.net Snackbox Diaries – Introducing AbuseOS
Blogorrah – Rochegate: Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?
Bock the Robber – Haughey
Conor’s Bandon Blog – You may feel a small prick
Cruiskeen Eile – Boys will be Boys
Cruiskeen Eile – Phwoarr. How to Report on the Troubles While Getting
David McWilliams – The Dundrum Paradox – Don’t be Paddy Last!
Dervala.net – The Passion-Industrial Complex
Earth and Universe – The day I quit as an Altar Boy.
Earth and Universe – The legend of Uncle Tom and the Bubble Car
ElBlogador – Bloody Sunday In Pictures
ElBlogador – Peter Robinson
Empire State View – Barry Egan, Journalist of the Year
From Bath to Cork with baby Grace – After traffic in Cork
Fustar – David Sque Interview Part 1.
Fustar – Chess with balls
Graham Ó Maonaigh – Ending Gun crime
iQblog – Irish kitchen sink usability
Irelands Few – Corruption WithIn Unionism?
IrishEyes – Richard Waghorne has a closed mind
Letter to America – Drama – Thy Name is Pong
Life is a Journal – Self Help and Personal Development for Lazy People
Madspoon – Sheep 34 Banana
Maman Poulet – 35 going on 13
Minesajackdaniels’ Blog – Pompoms and bottle tops.
Old Bitter Balls – Keeling Time
Political Quote – Bertie Ahern does a ‘Nixon’ over money scandal
Red Cardinal – Golden Spiders – Are These Really Ireland’s Best Websites?
Redfly Marketting – DMOZ Submission Guide
Ricks Breakfast Blog – A Religious Experience…
Ricks Breakfast Blog – Most Extraordinary Day of my Life
Skin Flicks – The JC Skinner guide to drinking
Stig Online – The most painful 12 miles of my life (and the other 14 were hardly easy)
The Adventures of Truculent Horse – Culture Shock III – The Language Barrier
The Dossing Times – The Riots and the consequences.
The Dossing Times – Riots in Dublin
The Great Wee Azoo – Awfully Awfully at Castleward Book Fair
The Midnight Court – Paper Round Exclusive!
The torture garden – the best songs of 2006
Twenty Major – A thousand words
Twenty Major – Countdown to the next election
Young Unionists – Ignoring the Big Issues
Young Unionists – In defence of the Act of Settlement

Most Humorous Post – Sponsored by Beecher Networks
Ach go hairithe – Reasons Behind Australian Rough-House Tactics In International Rules Series (Exclusive)
andcurve – Cock-blocking beats
Arse End of Ireland – Berties Perspiration
Arse End of Ireland – Won’t Somebody think of the children
Backseat Drivers – Sex – Breakfast of Champions
BifSniff – Dry White Seasoning
BifSniff – Spyware
Blogorrah – The Twink Tapes
Blogorrah – Why can’t we all just get along?
Captain Purplehead – Ah Tis All Too Much
Chetwynde Downs – The Naile Raye Quintet
Dublin Opinion – Property Market Causes Ireland to shit its brain
Earth and Universe – Legend of Uncle Tom and the Bubble Car
ElBlogador – DUP In Gay Marriage Shocker
ElBlogador – These are a few of my favourite things
Fustar – Dis-courtesy Call
Fustar – Manky Toy Monday: League of the Transformable
Gingerpixel – Garda Prank Call
Green Ink – Beep Beep Beep
Head Rambles – Giving Up Smoking
Head Rambles – Translation Help Needed
In Fact Ah – The Occasional Diary Entries of German Director Werner Herzog (Removed at request of owner)
Irish KC – A Kansas City Phone Call To An Irish Mother
Irish KC – Irish Conversations
Kav’s Blog – Westside Story Bud
Letter to America – Drama – Thy Name is Pong
Life’s a bastard – Scientists – I’m against them
Manuel Stimulation – From Bad to More Bad
Manuel Stimulation – Victory to Moroccan Imperialism
Old Bitter Balls – Or was this just a dream?
Political Quote – PDs new Spin Doctor
Pure Cork Boy – Music: The Roaring Forties
RedMum – Guilty Pleasures
Rick O’Shea – Ketchup… Catsup..
Rinceoir – Cry Havoc
Skinflicks – Babys called Bad Bad thing
Snackbox – AbuseOS from TwinkSoft
Snackbox – The Story of Jimbob (Remove on request)
The Great Wee Azoo – Awfully awfully
Twenty Major – Countdown to Next Election
Twenty Major – Post Secret
Wayne Ordinary American – Wayne loves you one and all

Best Photo Blog – Sponsored by Pixenate.com – The online photo editor
Caitriona.net
Capture Capture
Dancing Shades of Light
Derek Knight Photography
Donal’s blog
Focus Pocus
Gingerpixel
Glassey Alley
Headphoneland
How your mama now?
I Take Photees
Iced Coffee
I’m never gonna dance again
In Photos
Ireland from a Polish perspective
Kind I Like
Leigh ar mo T-leine e
Letter to America
Mcawilliams
North Atlantic Skyline
PAD – Photo a Day
Photographe à Dublin
Pygment
RedMum
Rymus.net
Seth Wheeler
Snoother
This is Diopter

Best Arts and Culture Blog – Sponsored by Poetry Ireland
Alan in Belfast
BifSniff
Blather.net
Contemporary Arts Review
Dead Beat
Empirestate View
Fustar
Georgiasam
Green Ink
In Fact Ah
KC Irish Fest
Letter to America
Maguires Movies
PaddyC Movie Reviews
Poet Blogg
Sinead Gleeson
Soundtracks for Them
Stunned
The Cat Flap
The Dreaming Arm
The Harlot’s Progress
The Torture Garden

Best Political Blog – Sponsored by Technofutures
1169 and Counting
A Tangled Web
An Caomhach
An Saol
An Spailpin Fanach
Balrog
Best of Both Worlds
Bock the Robber
Damien Blake
Daniel K. Sullivan
Dominic Hanngian’s blog
ElBlogador.com- The Voice of Irish Nationalism
Extra Extra
Graham O’Maonaigh
Green Ink
Harry McGee’s blog
ie-Politics by Gerry O’Quigley
Ireland – The Voice Of The Nation
IrishElection.com
Maman Poulet
Richard Delevan’s blog
Seamus Ryan’s blog
Semper Idem
Sicilian Notes – Richard Waghorne
Skinflicks
Slugger O’Toole
The Cedar Lounge Revolution
The Dossing Times
The Tuppenceworth Blog
The United Irelander Blog
The Young Unionists

Best Group Blog – Sponsored by PutPlace.com
ArseBlog (Removed at request of owner)
Backseat Drivers
Balrog
BifSniff
Blather
Blogorrah
Howth Coastguard Blog
In Fact Ah
Ireland 16 Days
IrishElection.com
Links Heaven
Old Rotten Hat
One Breast Less
Sligo Camera Club
Sligo Rugby Football Club
Team Geared Up
The Cedar Lounge Revolution
The Community At Large
The Dublin Blog
The Limerick Blogger
Tuppenceworth
UCD Science Librarians
Womens Aid Blog
Wow Blog

Best Personal Blog – Sponsored by Interactions – Creative Strategies for Business
Annie Rhiannon
Barbara’s bleeuugh!
Conor O’Neill
Dec’s Rambling
FatMammyCat
From Bath to Cork with Baby Grace
Gerry Gainford
Gingerpixel
Hangar Queen
Head Rambles
Kav’s Blog
Mine’s a Jack Daniels
RedMum
The Newbrowne Blog
The Rambling Man
The Waiting Game
Una Rocks
Wayne Ordinary American
Winds and Breezes

Best Use of the Irish Language in a Blog – Sponsored by Edgecast Media
Ach go hairithe
An Saol
An Spailpin Fanach
Arm Runda na Gaeilge
Blag Shomhairle
Chetwynde Downs
Hilary NY
Leigh ar mo T-leine e!
MH Wombat
nobyegarawn
Roinnt Smaointe
Seo Panu ag labhairt
Smaointe Fanacha Aonghusa

Best Contribution to the Irish Bloggersphere – Sponsored by FirstPartners.net
Bernie Goldbach
Cian and Simon for Irish Election
Conn O Muineachain
Donncha O’Caoimh
Gavin Joyce for Kick.ie
Macdara in the Leb
Michele Neylon for IrishBlogs.info
Rick O’Shea
Sarah Carey
Simon McGarr
Tom Raftery

Best Technology Blog/Blogger – Sponsored by Bitbuzz
5Pieces.com
Aidan Finn
Bernie Goldbach
Clare Dillon
Conor O’Neill
Creative Imagination – Ken McGuire
Donncha O’Caoimh
EdenWeb Blog
Firstpartners.net
Francis Shanahan
Ina O’Murchu
IQ Content Blog
James Corbett – Eirepreneur
John Collins
John Naughton
Justin Mason
Michele Neylon for IrishBlogs.info
Mobileblogr.com
Pat Phelan
Red Cardinal Blog
Robert Burke
Tom Raftery
What Will you see next?
Your Tech Stuff – Adrian Weckler

Best Designed Blog – Sponsored by Equisoft
5 Pieces
Ach go hairithe
Beaut.ie
BifSniff
Clamnuts
Creative Imagination – Ken McGuire
ElBlogador.com- The Voice of Irish Nationalism
From Ireland to Kansas City
Fustar
Ginger Pixel
Inside the mind of an idiot.
IrishElection.com
Jason Roe’s blog
John Handerlaar’s Blog
Kind I Like – Things that look like people
Leigh ar mo T-leine e!
Letter to America
Magooo
Nialler9
Pretty Cunning
RedFly Marketing
Soundtracks for Them
Spoilt.ie
Stunned.org
Team Geared Up
The InFactah Blog
The IQ Content Blog
Twenty Major
UnLaoised

Best Sport & Recreation Blog – Sponsored by Boards.ie
ArseBlog
Billy Lyons
Fustar’s World Cup
In Fact Ah
Irish Go blog
Laois Talk
Liverpool Access
On the Ditch
PaddyC Movie Reviews
Piranha Triathlon Club
Rebel BMX
Sligo Rugby Football Clun
SportCrazy.net
Team Geared Up
The Kop Blog
Tom’s Sporting Almanac
Wiffy Blog

Best News/Current Affairs Blog – Sponsored the Sunday Tribune
Adam Maguire
Alive in Limerick
An Spailpin Fanach
Best of Both Worlds
Dublin Opinion
IrishElection.com
Public Inquiry
Road Deaths.ie
Sarah Carey
Skinflicks
Stephen Spillane
The Limerick Blogger
The NewsWire
The Story

Best Specialist Blog – Sponsored by iQ Content Ltd
4Basra
An Irish Craftworker’s Good Life
Ask Direc
Ball*istic
Beaut.ie
Bibliocook
Burma Review
Clear of Cloud
Clerical Whispers
Graham O’Maonaigh
Green Ink
Howth Coastguard
Ice Cream Ireland
Ireland 16 Days
Irish Go blog
Irish KC
KC Irish Fest
Lean Healthcare Services Blog
Lexferenda
McGarr Solicitors
Munster Pubs
Myers Watch
One Breast Less
PR Matters
Random Grub
Siopa Eile
SSIA Watch
The Good Life
The Waiting Game
Wearie
Whois Ireland
World Debate Website

Best Newcomer – Sponsored by Edelman
4Basra
Alan in Belfast
An Irish Craftworker’s Good Life
An Saol
Arse End of Ireland
Beaut.ie
Betty the Sheep
Blogorrah
Bock the Robber
Dario Sanchez’s Angry Dome
Elly Babes
Fastlad
Harry McGee
Head Rambles
Ireland 16 Day
Ireland from a Polish perspective
Kav’s Blog
Lexferenda
Linkmap
Michael Flangan
Notes on the Front
Peppermint Tea
Skinflicks
Style Treaty
The Cedar Lounge Revolution
The Great Wee Azoo
The Midnight Court
The News Wire
The Waiting Game
What will you see next?
Where’s the Salt?
Womens Aid

Best Business Blog – Sponsored by logic+intuition
Allagi Blog
Argolon
Ask Direct
ATP Blog
Barry Walsh
BH Consulting Blog
Biz Growth News
Bubble Brothers
First Partners
ForestHill Blog
Ice Cream Ireland
ImageFile Blog
Inter-Actions
James Corbett – Eirepreneur
Keith Bohanna
Kevin Kelly Unlimited
McGarr Solicitors
Michele Neylon
Piaras Kelly
RedCardinal
Roam4Free Blog
Voicesage Blog

Best Music Blog – Sponsored by Clubbing.ie
Cumann Carad na Gaeilge
Faoi dhein an dorais
House is a Feeling
In Fact Ah
Kilkenny Music Blog
Magoo
Mp3Hugger
Nialler9
Sinead Gleeson
Soundtracks for Them
Spudshow
The Torture Garden
Una Rocks
Wearie

Best Podcaster – Sponsored by Microsoft
2 Irish Geeks and a TV
An Lionra (Removed on Request)
An Saol
ArseBlog
Cumann Carad na Gaeilge
Doop Podcasting
EdgeCast (Conn O Muineachain)
Faoi dhein an dorais
Kevin Kelly
Letter to America
Okey Doke Football
Oldbones
Open Source Podcas
Podcasting.ie
Podleaders
Richard Delevan
The Persuaders
Twenty Major
Wargeek.net

Best Podcast – Sponsored by Newsletter.ie
An Lionra – 06 12 06
Arseblog – Episode 1
Arseblog – Episode 10
Arseblog – Episode 12
Cumann Carad na Gaeilge – Podchraoladh Caoga a Naoi
IT@Cork – Eddie Hobbs
Letter to America – Chapter 29 – The Lift 2.0
Letter to America – Chapter 43 – The Date
Letter to America – The Irish Blog Awards Podcast
Oldbones – The Favour
Podleaders – Dan Bricklin
Twenty Major – Pizza Delivery
Twenty Major – Scientology

Best Videocast – Sponsored by Cork Internet eXchange
Aine Chambers Dooney Rock, Sligo
Allyn Quigley – DWIC – X-mas No#1
Allyn Quigley – Size Matters
Brody Sweeney on why he decided on politics
Disappear by JP Pagano
Minister to Nowhere – Simon McGarr
PD Election Video
Technolotics #44 – Flying Naked
Technolotics #29 – ZZ Fops
Uisce In New Hampshire
You pay taxes so we don’t have to

If anyone wants to buy me a drink, It would be more than welcomed!

More information can be found over at the Barcamp Wiki and Blog.

Your blog meta data includes all of the e-mail address of every registered user & also ever person who has commented on your blog (if public registration is enabled). This has a potential to cause huge privacy concerns relating to email addresses. A Smart email spammer could latch onto this exploit and spider your blog and all of your users email accounts.

After doing a bit of Google magic I found over 819 Irish blogs and over 292,000 other blogs with the potential to be affected by this problem. Out of the 5 high-profile Irish blogs that I tested, all of them seemed to be vulnerable.

So how do I fix this problem?

There are some blogs that don’t seem to be included in this group. All of them have public registration disabled. So a quick fix would be to disable registration and jump over to Ticket #3142 and get the patch ASAP.
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Improve Online sales with a sharper call to action

“There are two important components that can most impact a sales oriented business Web site. Obviously we spend a fair bit of time teaching students how to get the benefit of enormously improved visibility through search engine marketing.”

Personal Development – Do It Now (Not Dev – Biz Related!)

“When going to college many years ago, I decided to challenge myself by setting a goal to see if I could graduate in only three semesters, taking the same classes that people would normally take over a four-year period.”

“One of the exciting trends in link building right now is leveraging video to increase interest in websites, as well as creating another reason for someone to link to your site.”

.IE domain name dispute Q & A – Trademark Case

“If a .ie is registered and has not even the remotest relevance to their business, is it woth paying the €1,500 fee through the domain dispute resolution procedure?”

The Venture Capital Aptitude Test (VCAT)

“If you want additional proof that we’re in a bubble, here it is: young people are trying to get into the venture capital business again.”

The SEO Marketing Manifesto

“There are plenty of people that understand the process, and don’t “getâ€? SEO. The process of SEO is fundamental in just the same way that there are formulas for headlines in direct marketing that have MUCH higher likelihood for success..”

According to a post over on boards.ie Webmaster/Flash forum, Irishdev.com has been hammering dole.ie with requests for its search RSS feed. As a result dole.ie was forced to shutdown temporarily for about 12/24 hours until a solution could be found.

The interesting fact behind this saga is that irishdev.com seems to have passed all of the content off as its own, with no reference to Dole. Ok come on you steal their content … hammer their box … then pass the content off as your own! Cop on lads!

On the bright side .. IrishDev now say that they will only grab the content once every 3 hours. How nice of them! No mention of credit for the RSS or content.

The experiment itself was simple, take the keywords that I was receiving from the first post and apply it to a second post to get maximum exposure. The first post that was made on Saturday was ranking well on the SERPS by Monday. When I say ranking well, the post wasn’t #1 in any way shape or form but it did show up in the top #10.

The second post was made on Monday and included some (but not all) of the keywords that I had seen. If I had to do it all over again the title would have been more like “Funda Ireland launch, Wasaki Dublin Coastal Development“?. I noticed redcardinal targeting the term “Funda Ireland“? so it probably wouldn’t have been as much fun to target that second term.

On Tuesday the first post had dropped from the SERPS and was replaced by lots of traffic from irishblogs.ie. I can only guess that this was a mixture of me adding other posts “New Template!“?, “RateMyGoat Gets Smutty!“? and the second experimental post getting added. This was the first Yo-Yo that I had seen. The second post was ranking well on Wednesday / Thursday (I was ranking #1 for the targeted term). Domain age & linkbacks helped me achieve this speedy result. The influx of searches also got me some direct link-backs from forums and the like.

Today (Friday) I had noticed something strange. The second post had completely dropped from the SERPS. The weird thing is the post had been #2 for the targeted term this morning (8 am) and then suddenly vanished. This was the second Yo-Yo that I had seen. The only thing that had changed in the post was the comments made by my readers (this may have changed the keyword density slightly). I’m sure there where many other factors in play however these where the most noteworthy. The page seems to be fighting to get back in, dropping and appearing at what seems to be random intervals. I’m sure that after this post gets indexed the second post will completely drop from the SERPS.

Before you ask the targeted term was “dublin coastal development“?.

I would be interested to find out if anyone else has seen this kind of yo-yo with their blog within the last week?

Some information via Spoilt:

Chemistry conceived the idea. They commissioned The Farm for the video piece, and Spline Design was contracted for the website.

I would be interested to find out what you think of the whole “viral” campaign. Please leave your comments below.

Now this extravagant film goes into detail about how the islands will be lit with a series of green lights at night and how they will contain Dublin’s first giraffe only zoo! My guess is that the choice of only giraffe’s was for space saving efficiency! I’m not aware of any giraffe related mauling incidences so maybe they are being safety conscious.

Update: They even have kitchen designs on the site!

Another interesting “development” from “WASAKI Corp” an exact replica of Howth on the south side! Ok, its a PR stunt for a new property website but its worth a look. At least they used their heads and went viral!

[gv data="http://www.youtube.com/v/aaSLNBOphpE"][/gv]

http://www.irishsites.com/

http://www.kilcooledirectory.ie/

http://www.purplepages.ie/site/content/default.asp
http://www.itdirectory.ie/
http://www.irishabroad.com/Directory/
http://www.tipperarydirectory.ie/htmlsite/directory.asp
http://www.fashion.ie/directory/
http://www.gaire.com/dir/
http://www.queer.ie/directory/

http://www.gaycork.com/directory/

http://www.irishbuildingindustry.ie/
http://kildare.ie/business/
http://www.mayodirectory.com/
http://www.letterkennyonline.com/

http://musicdirectory.dfloor.net/directory/

http://www.galwayec.ie/schoolsdirectory.html
http://www.sustainable.ie/directory/index.php
http://www.hotspots.ie/

http://www.progressivetrance.net/directory/

http://www.isearch.ie/

http://www.longford.ie/business/directory.asp
http://www.furniture.ie/directory/
http://www.adlib.ie/directory.asp
http://www.ballyfermot.ie/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=43
http://www.youth.ie/arts/directory/
http://www.dun-laoghaire.com/directory.html
http://www.longford.ie/community/directory.asp http://www.carrickonshannon.ie/carrick_local_business_directory/index.php
http://www.braydirectory.ie/

http://www.weddingsireland.com/directory/

So what’s a link on my site worth? Text link ads produced a cool ill calculator. The tool works out how much you could get depending on what kind of site you have. To be honest if my site was gambling related my links would be worth $69, that’s over twice the price of my current links. So go over to text link ads sign up and start making money!

Also a big hello to iWorld one of our text link advertisers, it seems that you can Buy iPod and iPod Accessories at their site. Some of them look fairly cool too. Please note the nofollow link.. Have to keep them keen after all.

At the moment search engines seem to be ranking sites fairly well that have pages with relevant inbound links. This is not the only factor involved to rank well, however it seem to have a lot of weight behind it. The search engines have also got smatter about identifying people who are playing the system to their advantage.

Link exchanges are no longer as effective as the where in the past and many people have got banned or caught up in a bad neighbourhood by using them. In an ideal world, if everyone followed the rules link exchanges would work perfectly, but this is the real world! Quality is more important than anything else. I found a chart that approximately shows how many links are needed to achieve a certain PR from pages with a particular PR.

“…the meaning of a link has been transformed from a reference to a vote.�
Bill Slawski, from his interview with Aaron.

Link building takes time. I would compare link building to building the foundations of a home. The foundations have to be strong and must withstand the test of time. Everyone has there own theories about the best ways to build links, you need to take time and work out your own linking strategies. I found a great article over on search engine watch regarding linking strategies. “101 (Legitimate) Link Building Strategies�

How long does it take? I found an interesting post over at Link Building Blog that mentioned a “time line� of sorts:

Established Domains (domains that are over 1+ year old or are already ranking for many terms)
*build links -> 10-12 weeks later see results.

New Domains (domains under 1 year old and are showing no strong ranking results) *build links -> 12 weeks to 16 months later see results.

Feed the monster

Start adding news content to your site and make sure to set up an RSS feed immediately. This can be done via a blog, content management systems or custom script. The advantage of a feed over a standard news section is that feed will be picked up and aggregated by many sites. A standard news section will only be read and indexed by major search engines. News is produced to be read, not just to fill up a page on your website.

Bloggers have realised for a long time that Feeds are they way to go. Your news will be out and all over the web in less than 24 – 48 hours. RSS is being picked up and read and indexed by most of the search engines. Most aggregators will also give you link backs thus boosting your rankings.

Make sure that you ping every aggregator site that you can. Many blog tools already have pinging tools build in as standard, make sure to add in all the aggregators that you can find to your list.

Don’t get lost!

Black hats have many ways to help you get removed from search engine indexes. Be careful to watch out for malicious server side includes, comments sections or reviews with direct links without nofollows and link spammers (with irrelevant keywords). There are many more ways to get removed, banned and penalised they just break the rules!
Most of the time there isn’t much you can do regarding external attacks. Try contact the major search engines, describe what is happening and plead that they won’t remove you from the index.

Lee Dodd, owner of Sprint Users and other large forums has agreed to be on the show this week. Lee has mastered the art of making money online and is currently working on a book about it scheduled to be released later this year.

Pop over to Shoemoney’s blog for more info.

For the privilege of this service they change you a 30% fee based on the overall selling price, they also seems to skim money off the shipping and handling fees. To quote the website:

In addition to receiving a commission from the seller (your customer), you will also collect a handling charge that is paid by the buyer. You also get to keep the difference between postage and shipping “rack rates” charged to the buyer and your actual reduced iSold It reduced postage and shipping corporate rate.

According to an article on ENN “Galway eBay store opens its doors�. I went over to the corporate website for iSold It to find that they have no Galway stores listed on the “store locator�. This could just be a sloppy mistake made late on a Friday evening after banging out as many press releases as possible, or maybe its an indication of lack of planning and coordination by the company as a whole.

The one aspect that ISold It didnt describe in they franchise pitch is how they manage dispute resolutions, shipping delays and lost goods. What if the item is damaged before shipping, who picks up the costs then? What about fraudulent or stolen goods? The list of questions goes on. Maybe I’m just nitpicking but it seems like a very unstable investment over all.

I like the idea, to think that someone would pay €25,000 for a franchise with no brand in the Irish market is just insane.

It is believed the typical cost of operating a franchise in Ireland ranges between EUR90,000 and EUR150,000, depending on factors such as rent, labour, size of the store etc.

In my opinion anyone could go out tomorrow and duplicate this business model in a matter of hours. This seems to be a service that you would expect from your local Internet café, its not rocket science.

The one major problem that I have seen with a lot of Irish companies and websites is that they are hosting their website outside of Ireland. Why would this be a problem? Most of the modern search engines over the last few years have implemented geo targeted results. Geo targeted means that the search engine find pages that a most relevant to you by showing you local results first.

The long and the short of this is, If you’re an Irish based company looking for Irish traffic it is better to host in Ireland. In the same respect if you are a UK based company looking to target UK customers then host in the UK or on UK IP space within Ireland (Ask your hosting providers!). Hosting in Ireland won’t guarantee that you will shoot up the SERP’s on the major search engines, however it can help you along the way.

Avoid Duplicate Content

It is well known that the best way to help your rankings is to always have a fresh supply of content. This is why blogs and the like have sky rocketed in the last few years, the search engines love them. However with the adoption of RSS by webmaster has come a plague of duplicate content issues. Duplicate content is an exact copy or a close copy of content from other websites. Search engines frown upon too much duplicate content on a page.

A prime example of duplicate content is news feeds on pages, if your “news section� is made up entirely of this kind of duplicated or aggregated content it won’t help you one bit on your rankings. Most of the major search engines can easily identify duplicated content and if your page is found to have too much it, the page just won’t rank at all or get dropped into the supplemental results. Many webmasters now re-write content feeds by replacing words, terms and by using LSI (latent semantic indexing) theories.

There are some rare cases where this may not be the case. We have all heard stories of 100% duplicated content ranking well, however in many cases these sites have used other methods to help their cause.

Help Spiders do their job

Spiders are automated bots design by search engines to crawl your website. Over time a spider will index your pages many times. The bots are designed to help identify and classify sites so that the search engine can return these results in the SERP’S. There are many theories about how to help these bots along the way.

1. I always suggest that a site should always have text based navigation somewhere on the page. This text based navigation can be placed anywhere on the page, the header, the footer or in the body. A text based navigation is beneficial because the search engines can obtain extra information from the link text. Image based navigation can also use this theory by using image descriptions, however many seem to believe that this kind of navigation is not as effective as a traditional text based link. In many cases a text based navigation can also be used in conjunction with a image based Nav.
2. Don’t use the same title on every page, your title shout be customised to the content on a specific page and should relate to your keyword density. In many cases your page titles should look something like this“Page Name, Company Name – Keyword1, Keyword2, Keyword3, Keyword4, Keyword5�
3. Place your content as high as possible within your pages. Try to place your content above your navigation, the spiders will read this information first and will not get cluttered up with other possibly irrelevant information. In many cases this can be achieved by using a right hand side navigation or by positioning the navigation with CSS.
4. NoFollow all un-trusted links or external links that you are not in control of. You can’t control what a webmaster on an external site may or may not do with their site. If they happen to “Break the rulesâ€? in a search engines eyes you may be left in a situation where you are now unknowingly linking to a “Bad Neighbourhood â€?. So why risk it? Give the link love to sites that you think deserve it. A NoFollow link is a standard link with the attribute rel=”nofollow” added to it . This attribute signifies to search engines that you would not like to take the responsibility of being associated with a site.

O’Reilly trademarks “Web 2.0″ and sets lawyers on IT@Cork!

IT@Cork is a not-for-profit networking organisation for IT professionals. IT@Cork organises regular information and networking events which are free for its members.

One of these events – the upcoming Web 2.0 half-day conference is the target of a cease and desist letter (below) from the legal team of O’Reilly publishers. Basically O’Reilly are claiming to have applied for a trademark for the term “Web 2.0″ and therefore IT@Cork can’t use the term for its conference. Apparantly use of the term “Web 2.0″ is a “flagrant violationâ€? of their trademark rights!

The interface is really easy to use, however it only accessible via Internet Explorer. There is also a requirement for a €5 euro credit card verification fee to verify your credit card.

I found some of the tools quite interesting, the site allows you to Import or export ads via csv. This allows you to quickly update your campaigns. The Keyword research tools allow you to see Traffic Trends, Age and Gender, Wealth Index, Lifestyle, Geography. The only problems I can see about this feature is that it’s not location specific so you get a lot of US generic information.

As far as I can see the adverts themselves are only available on msn.com and not yet available on the localised search engines such as msn.ie. If you want to check adCenter out yourself surf over to http://adcenter.msn.com/

The guys over at SeoRockstars gave a prime example where over 50,000 pages got dumped into the supplemental results. They also stated that this has been confirmed by a source within Google. On the plus side this also means Adsense publishers might have an advantage over normal website as new content might be picked up and indexed sooner.

Listen to the SeoRockstars podcast:

So with all these new fandangle mediums banging about how do you know what one is for you? After working on a re-development of an Irish site called Irish ISP Test I realised how powerful google adsense was for a publisher. Without going into specifics of the project, I realised quite quickly that google adsense advertisements could have paid for the entire re-development costs within less than one month. This could be down to the colossal amount of traffic received every month, or the fact that it was also a useful tool who knows?

The adsense experiences made me think in great depth about this whole advertising situation. From a publisher point of view the “adsense way� seems to be the ideal way to make money, however I feel that the advertiser are getting the raw end of the stick in some respects. Sure the advertisers are getting buckets of traffic that’s targeted, segmented, poked and prodded and then finally delivered but they are also missing out on other opportunities.

Lets go back to basics for a second to an old tradition called link swapping, this was a phenomenon that went on for years and still does to this date, blogs being a prime example of this. Not only does it advertise your site it also boosts your rankings and increases your PR, in some cases its not as targeted but never the less it works. So where am I going with this? I stumbled upon a service called TextLinkAds, I’m sure it’s not completely unique however it uses this kind of link swapping ideology.

TextLinkAds seems to be an interesting alternative to adsense, in some respects it resembles the “Advertise on this site� feature offered by adsense. What makes it different is the fact that TextLinkAds provides you with a full directory of publisher sites. This directory gives you relevant information that can help you choose where you would like to advertise. The advantage of this system is that you pay a flat fee per month (no pay per click) for each site you advertise on, for this fee you get a direct link on the website meaning that not only are you advertising you are also boosting your organic search engine rankings.

So to conclude there are many options for advertiser and publishers alike its best to shop around and get the best all round deal. Try new things explore new services and pick the ones that suit you. Id welcome peoples comments on online marketing and advertising services.

Ireland has received EU permission to spend euro170 million boosting broadband in small towns across the country, the European Commission said Thursday.

Just over 5 percent of the population has a broadband connection, putting Ireland just ahead of Greece for the lowest broadband take-up in the 15 “old” EU member states.

The Irish government now wants to build fibre-optic networks in 120 towns ignored by Internet suppliers so far, using EU money earmarked for improving infrastructure in poorer parts of Europe.

Source: www.businessweek.com

On a side note, for more information on broadband check out www.broadbandforall.ie. Broadband For All is an initiative of IrelandOffline.

“We aim to give you the low-down on everything you need to know aboutBroadband to get you started. We’ll help you determine the best Broadband and whether it’s available in your area, and we’ll provide you with some options if you want to switch Broadband provider, or complain about poor service.”

Looking for broadband availability? check out www.getbroadband.ie

“GetBroadband.ie, your guide to all things broadband. Providing an independent resource for anyone upgrading their broadband connection, or getting a broadband service for the first time. “

This has allowed the operators to offer reduced rates for bulk messaging, some recent quotes for 100k + of messages range from €4000 to €7000. Best estimates being that an average text would cost as little as 4c. This opens up huge marketing opportunities for many SME’s.