Archive for February, 2009
faster, faster, faster!
I’m ALWAYS looking at ways to increase my own productivity and the speed i work at.
On the hardware side of things i’ve made some serious changes from just a year ago when i used a laptop as my main computer…. I’ve gotten myself dual monitors, an XPS 420 desktop, large curved desk, wireless mouse and keyboard, glass mousemat, netbook with 6 hour battery life, ultra portable portable mini mouse….
All of that stuff was bought for a reason – to maximize my own productivity. And i feel it has done….
On the software side of things i’ve made tweaks to vista;
- got rid of widgets
- enabled one click and checkboxes
- installed rocketdock
- installed ultramon to help control two monitors
All of that allows me to work faster. Move on to firefox, and again i’ve made some major changes… here’s some addons i’ve installed and recommend;
- World of Trust
- Ubiquity
- UrlbarExt
- Zemanta
- TwitterBar
- Site Launcher
- Search Status
- LastPass
- Greasemonkey
- Gmarks
- Firebug
- Better GReader
Again, all of those help me ‘speed up’.
Another tip i’ve learned recently is to use ‘pipelines’ to open up multiple homepages in different tabs. For example if i want to open smemon.com, google.com and gmail.com as my homepages, i’ll do the following;
- Hit ‘CTRL’ + ‘T’ to open up two new tabs in Firefox.
- Go to gmail.com and google.com in the two new tabs.
- Now go to tools > options > main.
- In the ‘homepage’ textbox, click the ‘use current pages’ button.
I’ve become so used to working at speed that it becomes extremely frustrating when i have to use other computers or networks – everything is just so slow and set to default settings… Some things don’t even work at all!
Speed has always been, and will always be the main challenge facing IT. EVERYTHING can be done faster and it’s our job to find out how. I’m always looking for ways to save myself time – if you have any more you know about, let me know 
Were it not for wordpress, this blog probably wouldn’t exist. Open source software is free software which can be modified by anyone. No licenses, no fees.
It allows people to try, test and generally ‘mess’ about with software. The end result is a community who end up adding bits and pieces on to the software to enhance it i.e. firefox addons or themes.
Here’s 10 open source clones i’ve picked out which replicate some hugely popular sites. Want to build your own facebook or your own twitter? Here’s where to start…
1. Pligg
Pligg is a a digg.com clone. Digg is a social networking news site which allows users to digg or bury stories. The stories with the most diggs in the shortest amount of time get featured on the frontpage. Pligg is almost a direct clone.
2. Laconica
Want your own twitter clone? Laconica is an excellent place to start. Unlike the real twitter, you can create groups on laconica making it, in many ways, better than the original.
3. Jisko
Jisko is another twitter clone. The reason i mention a second twitter clone is because this one is very cool. Unlike twitter and laconica, it’s all AJAXy which makes for a great look and feel when using the site. It’s spanish however which is the down side. Don’t get me wrong, i’ve nothing against the spanish 
but me no speak espanyole. But where there’s a will there’s a way (google translate).
4. kissa.be
I’m sure you’ve all come across ‘tinyurl’ links before. You simple grab a url like this; http://www.smemon.com/how-to-get-attention-ryanair-style/ throw it in to tinyurl and it’ll give you something like this; http://tinyurl.com/bvnns8. It shrinks url’s which is very handy for the likes of twitter where every character counts.
5. askeet
Ever wanted your own version of yahoo answers? Askeet is the perfect solution. Simple, sleek and free – what more could you ask for!
6. phpBB
When it comes to forums, vbulletin is king. All major forums use vbulletin, but it comes at a price. phpBB is a nice, open source alternative.
7. boonex dolphin
Want your own dating site / social network? Try boonex’s dolphin. This is the base my very own BeerChief was built on.
8. elgg
Elgg is used mainly as an educational type social network. That’s not to say you can’t build a facebook or bebo from it – it’s simple, efficient and won an award for the best open source social networking platform in 2008.
9. Scuttle
Fancy creating your own delicious.com? Scuttle is one of many open source options you could use. It’s a social bookmarking website which allows you to save your favorite links but share them with others too.
10. jobberbase
Want to create your own job site? Sure why not, people are always looking for jobs! Jobberbase is a superb open source solution. Clean, classy, simple but effective – well worth checking out.
The 2nd episode of the Irish Dragons Den aired tonight. Here’s some of the better ideas…
hen-party.ie
Kate was looking for €30,000 in return for 20% of the business (website catering for hen parties). Kate presented very well and much like the pedigree cattle lads last week, came across as passionate and ambitious. I hate when the dragons quiz people on figures and insist on specific figures – the reality is people pick figures from the sky – you cannot accurately predict how a website will do and how quickly it will develop.
Thankfully, two dragons invested though. Kate got €30k but sold 40% of the business. I think it’s a decent idea but again, like pedigree cattle, a limited market. It needs a huge social networking campaign to get going – that’s where the target market is imo – on bebo/facebook etc… even if those people don’t directly use the site, they’ll have friends who will. All it takes is some creativity or novelty value – even a facebook/bebo application to create interest.
Kate also owns henparty.ie without the dash but was worried google would penalize her in the serps. If it were me, i’d cut my losses and switch to henparty.ie ASAP. The hash will kill a lot of potential traffic.
The competition isn’t fierce either in google, starting a new site & hitting the frontpage is do-able very quickly – if i had time i would take it on as a challenge 
but looking at he competition, i think kate is safe switching to henparty.ie – a drop in rankings would only be temporary at worst. Do not fear google – quality and useful sites will always be rewarded, eventually.
sals pizza
Tony gave a decent presentation. He’s got italian links and his business is selling homemade pizzas, mainly to rural areas. Nice idea, but what put me off was the fact he was working from his own converted garage.
Obviously cash is needed to buy proper premises & equipment but it just put me off straight away. One of the dragons picked up on it too and questioned the legality of it all. That effectively killed any interest in the business. But apart from that, the whole set up looked pretty prefessional and i thought it had decent potential, but would need way more investment.
Again, like a lot of these decent ideas / businesses, they would have done well a few years ago but with cash so tight these days, i don’t know many people who would order a pizza (regularly) when they can buy a frozen one for a few euro.
Sals pizza is also on twitter by the way Small businesses could learn a lot from Tony – a website (a useful website with menu, prices etc..) & an active twitter account – that’s how it’s done
Kaylight
Adrian’s ‘kaylight’ (not sure if that’s the correct spelling) is basically a set of LED’s integrated in to bags to illuminate them when opened. Clever. Very clever. None of the dragons asked about water damage or heat etc… i’m not sure how well it would hold up?
Anyway, Adrian had me in stitches. He called it a ‘winter project’, he has other stuff on during the summer and basically he was gonna get a patent and proper plans for the products and then sell them on
He also used some really strange examples of why the product would come in useful; he gave an example of a girl using a lighter to illuminate the bottom of her bag – she could then set fire to her own hair and this product could help solve that problem – WTF!!
He also had literally zero profit projection figures to give which i thought would have killed the dragon’s interest completely, but remarkably, no…
He got the investment – €10,000 for 25% of the business (he was originally giving away 5% – i laughed at that!). Still, this is an excellent idea and although i don’t like the prototype (with wires and batteries hanging out), a slimline, white led version would definitely sell and i’d buy a bag with this feature for sure.
The prototype was using a big battery (not an AA, but a flat one of similar size from what i could tell). It was also using red LED’s??? Why not white LED’s? they would give out more light!
Flaws with show
On the end shot with Richard closing the show, the camera was zooming in and out as if a child was playing with it – looked very unprofessional imo. Also, the word ‘entrepreneur’ is pronounced ‘on-tra-pren-ur’, not ‘on-trop-on-ur’ like Richard keeps saying – surely someone has picked up on this and told him how to pronounce it properly??? At first i thought it was some clever irish term for an entrepreneur but no, other people have noticed it too… maybe i’m missing something though??
On Monday, i published a post titled 18 FREE font resources.
It’s flopped in my view. There was a rise in traffic all right, but it was minimal, not what i had expected.
It’s disappointing, but i won’t concede defeat just yet. It took a few days before my 21 webmaster resources post got any traffic but it’s now turned out to be the most successful post i’ve ever written.
I’ll be publishing another useful webmaster post tomorrow. I’ve changed the topic slightly from ‘general webmaster resources’ to ‘open source clones’. I’m working on it as i write this post. This is more of an experimental post and involves me using my newly aqcuired photoshop skills to compliment the content.
If it doesn’t generate traffic, and if monday’s post fails to generate any major traffic over the next few days, i’ll be surprised. I won’t stop making these killer posts though either way – once i get my new theme sorted you can expect lots more…
I’m debating with myself whether Ryanair’s latest controversial antics are just dirty marketing tactics or just plain stupidity and ignorance on their part.
In a nutshell, they labelled all bloggers ‘idiots’ and ‘lunatics’.
A Ryanair staff member verbally attacked an Irish blogger after he blogged about a bug in the ryanair website. The handbags continued with other bloggers getting involved and commenting on the post. Here’s some quotes from this Ryanair staff member;
- you’re an idiot and a liar!
- what self respecting developer uses a crappy CMS such as wordpress anyway AND puts they’re mobile ph number online
- Website is not perfect, Life is not perfect…
- most important to have usual user behavior scenarios working rather than spending time on improbable and harmless things.
- So keep working on yourself and don’t post bollocks.
- If I would be you I would think of consequences this can have.
- I am not entitled to deal with public nor have time…
So rather than shut up, do his job and fix the bug, this wise guy from Ryanair decided to stick the knife in to Jason. Only after fierce criticism from other people did he start to show any signs of regret;
- Yes, I am wrong, I was stupid that I even got into this debate…
Have a nice day…
The most ridiculous thing about all of this is that Ryanair have confirmed it was indeed one of their staff members that posted this and rather than blast this idiot in public or sack him, they’ve defended him;
- Ryanair can confirm that a Ryanair staff member did engage in a blog discussion. It is Ryanair policy not to waste time and energy in corresponding with idiot bloggers and Ryanair can confirm that it won’t be happening again.
The Irish blogging community is pretty tight knit – irishblogs.ie are tracking over 300,000 irish blogs. It’s not like bloggers have little or no influence or contacts either… they’re probably the most connected people you’ll find. These comments weren’t just aimed at Irish bloggers alone either. Are you listening my American readers? Ryanair will soon be coming to an airport near you.
So either this was an extremely risky, controversial PR stunt or else it was just a foolish employee who thought they could take on a blogger and win. I suspect the latter given the random nature of the post. Not only did the employee generate himself and his company tonnes of negative publicity, Ryanair themselves have defended the situation which is the ultimate two fingered salute.
photo credit: Pascalg_1991
All they’ve succeeded in doing is angering hundreds of thousands of bloggers and done further damage to their own reputation. No link love for them. Try Aer Lingus.
