For the second time in the last month or so I’ve received spam from An Fearr Rua.
They’ve obviously been scraping email addresses off websites using a robot.
Wow! Aren’t they innovative!
So now they’re spamming the entire country via Eircom’s SMTP. Great marketing play guys – keep it up!
Tony Kenny from Beaumont Hospital has been giving an excellent talk on using open source software.
What makes his talk so interesting is that he is completely pragmatic.
Unlike some of the open source zealots, Tony is able to see how you can combine proprietary AND open source solutions in a real world situation.
Fascinating stuff!
I’m heading to Domain Fest in LA at the end of January 2007.
At this juncture the organisers haven’t announced the lineup, but I don’t really mind. As far as I am concerned it’s a damned good excuse to take a holiday 
I’ve booked my flights – my passport is valid, so now all I need to do is reserve a hotel room.
I’m not 100% sure what I’ll be doing over there, though I’m sure I’ll find plenty to do
I should probably bring my laptop with me, though I’m in two minds about that…….
I am currently trying to download a site backup for a client that is moving from one of our cheap competitors who basically resells some American hosts servers.
God it is painful!
I’m getting less than 30k / sec when I should be getting at least ten times that!!!
If I had to deal with that kind of connection to this server, or any of the other ones that I deal with on a regular basis, I’d never get anything done and would end up incredibly frustrated.
Ping speed from my desktop to this server:
Ping statistics for 81.17.240.197:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 16ms, Maximum = 18ms, Average = 16ms
Ping to cheap US based host:
Ping statistics for xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 146ms, Maximum = 172ms, Average = 159ms
Talk about bad connectivity!!!
So you really do get what you pay for .. or do you?
For €30 ex-VAT you can get an Irish based hosting account with plenty of disk space and bandwidth. The key factor being that it’s a service that will work and won’t have a bad ping ie. there’s no latency
On the other hand you could opt to go with a cheap provider and not only pay more but actually get less. There’s no point in having loads of disk space and bandwidth if the connection is so bad that you can barely make use of it!!!
I was looking at adding some more links to Armchair.ie this morning and so I thought I’d focus on a couple of sectors in particular.
Unless I’m blind there are no indigenous shoe shops selling online. There are plenty of big multinationals selling into the Irish market, but I couldn’t find any Irish run solutions…
Is the market simply too small?
As I mentioned the other day, my camera was kidnapped, so a number of the photos that were taken have absolutely no meaning to me.. I have only a very vague idea who they are
I did, however, take a few photos
There are a few others….
Tom mentioned having a dinner the night before the IT@Cork conference next week in Luigi Malone’s.
It looks like there should be a good crowd going
If anyone else who is staying in the Rochestown Park Hotel that night is going please let me know so that we can share a taxi (I really don’t want to have to drink Coke all night again!).
Similar to last Friday I don’t have the energy, mental or otherwise, to post in detail about the Golden Spiders last night.
What I will say is that it was an excellent night. Very slick and impressive.
There are some photos to be posted, but I have to sift through them first, as someone kidnapped my camera… End result being that I have a load of photos of people that I don’t know ..
My views on Xtravision are no secret, so I won’t rehash them now.
Over the past few months the Irish market has been changing and growing so there is more choice for people like me.
I recently signed up for a trial account with ScreenClick.com and am impressed with the concept behind it. The only weakness I’ve found so far can be attributed to the Irish postal system more than the site itself.
Of course ScreenClick aren’t alone in the online DVD rental market, though they’ve been around for several years. A new entrant is Moviestar that seem to have some serious backing, or at least a very good PR and marketing budget. As I haven’t tried the service yet I can’t comment on how good or bad it is, but I like the idea and the fact that we can choose between companies.
Back in the offline world there have also been some interesting changes. Carlow town, which isn’t exactly a booming metropolis, but isn’t exactly a backwater either, now boasts its first automated DVD rental shop. I’ve used these systems in the past and they are really handy. After signing up in person you simply credit your account and then it’s self-service all the way. Want a DVD at 4 in the morning? No problem. The machines don’t care
Richard mentioned a new scam that is targetting Irish business. No sooner had I read his post than our postman came by with not one but five of these letters!!
The letter is very slick, so I can see how it might fool people
Here’s a sample one that I made earlier
The scary thing is that these guys are charging nearly €1000 for the “listing”!
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