Although the exact details aren’t available yet, Vodafone has announced that it will be offering the iPhone early next year.
You can now signup to “express your interest” here
About time!
Image via CrunchBase
While upgrading to Snow Leopard on my MacBook Pro went well I realised that doing a completely fresh install would probably be a good idea.
Why?
When I got the MBP about two years ago it had OSX Tiger on it, which was then upgraded to Leopard and that was upgraded to Snow Leopard. God only knows what kind of crud was left hanging around the system. I also have a habit of downloading software, installing it, playing with and then forgetting that it’s there. The end result – a very messy hard drive.
So a clean install on a freshly formatted hard drive made sense.
It also means that I can now install only the software that I actually need and use. (Of course I’d be kidding myself if I honestly believed that a new “diet” will last!)
So after a fairly uneventful install process, what did I install?
There are probably a few other applications that I was using regularly prior to this reinstall, but I’ll either live without them or install them as I realise how “important” they are.
Update: Also needed to grab a few multimedia addons for audio and video formats that the Mac doesn’t support
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=add1ca10-35f1-4d9d-8783-d0d5ea31c296)
Image via CrunchBase
Now I am not privy to all the inner workings and details of JC Decaux‘s contract / agreement with Dublin City Council…
However …
Fusio, a web development company based in Dublin, released an iPhone application for the Dublin bike scheme. From all reviews I’ve heard of the app it was professional and very slick ie. it reflected well on the bike scheme and anyone involved with it. So I was more than a little taken aback when someone linked to this page on the Fusio site.
There’s more coverage in The Irish Times
The question you’d have to ask is, are JC Decaux for real? (to use the vernacular)
Update: Included link to Irish Times piece – I forgot earlier!
Update 2 – Another article in The Irish Times. This time they’re quoting TJ McIntyre. Seems that legally JC Decaux wouldn’t have grounds for a case…
Update 3 - Now it seems that JC Decaux are going to offer their own app, but it’s not clear if the functionality will be any different to the Fusio app or if it will be free or paid. Based on their “wonderful” handling of the situation with Fusion I wouldn’t hold my breath
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=3c20da98-dd7f-409d-8ca0-e93974c55789)
I vowed to myself earlier this year that I’d do my best to get websites up and running on as many of the domains that I own as possible.
So without further ado I give you freelancejobs.ie – with thanks to James in Forbairt Media for his design skills.
The site’s purpose is pretty obvious, so I don’t think it needs much explanation. If, however, people feel that more categories are needed (or maybe fewer is better?) do let me know.
I get contacted by companies trying to sell me products and services on a regular basis.
Sometimes the “fit” is really wrong – we don’t buy or sell furniture, so trying to sell us wholesale lots of armchairs isn’t going to work too well.
Of course a lot of it is down to technique.
If you can build up a rapport with a client then it’s going to be a hell of a lot easier to sell them goods and services.
Of course if you manage to completely alienate the client they’re not going to want to buy from you and may even take out a barring order.
A couple of years ago we were approached by a software vendor that was selling a content management system. Basically it was a tool for building websites easily. It wasn’t free and it wasn’t cheap. It didn’t integrate easily with our existing software at the time, so it just wasn’t of any interest to us. So we politely declined the “offer”. You’d think that would be the end of the story, or that it is a total “non-story”, but 24 hours later the sales person was in touch with us again saying that he wanted to “speak to someone else” as I obviously “lacked vision”.
Brilliant!
So this “genius” not only lost the sale, but has managed to put himself in the position where I would not do any business with them ever again.
Or how about the sales guy from a particular glossy magazine…
First off he gave us a media pack with totally unrealistic sales projections. Unrealistic in that you’d practically have to clone readers in test tubes to get that kind of readership. We told him that we weren’t interested and that we didn’t think the content was particularly good (it was always about 2 months behind the UK publications in the same vertical). Since it was pretty obvious that we weren’t going to buy ads from him anytime soon you’d have thought that he’d have moved on .. but no, he kept on ringing and ringing and ringing..
Another thing is to actually do a small bit of research before you pick up the phone.
There’s little point in trying to acquire a client that you’ve already got (upselling to them is a totally different matter)
More than once I’ve had over-zealous, but rather silly, sales people trying to sell me things I’m already buying.
Google Adwords – we’ve been using them for years. Yet the first time we got a phone call from Google it was from one of their sales people asking us if we’d be interested in buying any. I think we were paying about 1000 euro / month at the time to Google, so they didn’t make any extra sales!
Or the sales guy from a vendor we’ve been dealing with for about 8 years:
“I believe you might sell domains and hosting” – have you even visited our website?
“I think you’ve done some business with us in the past” – not really – we just enjoy giving you about 5k a month cos we’re really nice that way!
Of course some sales people have a “script”. While that script might be useful to a point, it shouldn’t get in the way.
A couple of months ago we got a call from a company in the UK that wanted to sell us advertising on TV. Of course they didn’t say that – what they said was that they could get us onto the TV – which was a good way to stimulate our interest.
So I pick up the phone – around this time you normally would expect the usual introductions and exchange of pleasantries. Instead I was treated to about 5 minutes of machine gun “spiel” from some girl who wouldn’t let me get a word in edgeways!
Now we may not have been interested in buying the ads, but I was curious as to how it worked and how much it cost etc., – but I don’t think I even managed to ask those key questions.
Some sales tactics are plain annoying, but others are just so incredibly dumb that they leave you speechless.. and then people wonder why it’s hard to get a decision maker on the phone!
I posted this over on the company blog yesterday, but completely forgot to cross-post it here….
Basically – we’re offering .mobi registrations for €6.75 ex-VAT for a limited time
It’s probably one of the lowest prices you’ll find for a .mobi domain online …
I really wasn’t sure what to expect when I headed off to Bled, Slovenia a little over a week ago.
As the plane came into land in Ljubljana I could see the countryside and it looked lovely. Unfortunately the weather on Friday evening was terrible (torrential rain), so I didn’t get a chance to explore Bled until Saturday.
The town of Bled is tiny and dominated by the lake and castle. What there is of the town seems to be a mish-mash of cafes, bars, restaurants and hotels. It’s a lovely spot to spend a couple of days in, though you wouldn’t want to spend too much time there as it’s truly tiny.
The food was fantastic pretty much everywhere (not a fastfood in sight!) and the landscape is truly stunning.
It was great to meet up with a bunch of people from the industry and to make plenty of new acquaintances. Kudos to the guys from the Russian registry for organising it all so well.
I’m always looking for ways to make things more efficient.
At the moment the way we handle development internally is not as efficient as it should be. It’s also quite hard to track “issues”.
So what I’m trying to find is some kind of software solution that allows us to do all that (and more) efficiently.
The kind of scenario we’re dealing with is a bit like this:
Staff requests > Developers
Client requests > Staff
Management > Developers
Management / Staff / Developers > 3rd party vendor
That may not be particularly clear …
Say there’s an application that our staff use internally and they want to either give feedback on an existing feature or request a new one.
Other applications / interfaces are customer facing and again, being able to get feedback and track it properly would be very beneficial.
At the moment someone (be they staff or a client) may make a feature request or submit feedback. It isn’t easy to track the progress of it and it’s impossible to show the user what’s going on with their request.
Ideally the software would allow us to have internal and external projects and expose the bugs / issues for certain ones, but with a reasonable level of control. For example, if there was a security bug you wouldn’t want to publicise it until you’d had a chance to deal with it etc., etc.
Another facet which is very important is triage / management. If you’ve got a finite number of developers working for you then you need to prioritise their workload.
Software that I’ve come across to date include solutions like Fog Bugz. There are two problems with Fog Bugz:
Hosted vs Outsourced?
I’d prefer to be able to host the solution “inhouse”, though I would be open to use some form of SAAS.
Technology?
If it’s “inhouse” then it needs to be using some form of LAMP. No Java or Ruby on Rails please.
So if anyone has any suggestions or recommendations please please share them
Update: Thanks for all the comments. Unfortunately a few of them got trapped by MT’s spam filters, but they’re all published below now.
I’m heading off to Slovenia in a few hours for the 2nd International conference for ccTLD registries and registrars of CIS, Central and Eastern Europe – imagine saying that after a few drinks!
The conference schedule looks pretty interesting, but like most of these events I go for the “networking” opportunities more than anything else.
Hopefully it will be a productive trip and judging by what I’ve heard the location is simply gorgeous.
I’ve never been to Slovenia, so I’m looking forward to it. Hopefully my copy of the Rough Guide will be enough preparation.
As for actual preparation – chaos reigns as usual. I’m definitely getting better at booking flights and hotels in advance, but I somehow doubt I’ll ever be organised enough to pack in advance. It’s always very much a last minute effort to cram clothes etc., into my bag!
My pre-ordered copy of OSX Snow Leopard arrived on Monday, so Monday evening was “upgrade evening”.
I’d love to be able to say something deep and meaningful about the upgrade process, but there’s very little to be said.
The process is painless.
I put the DVD into the Macbook Pro which I keep at home (or for when I’m travelling). A couple of of seconds later I doubleclicked on the installer icon, agreed to the license, and that was it.
About an hour later the upgrade was complete.
How boring!
But that is not a negative comment by any means. Over the last 10 years or so I’ve installed and upgraded desktops and laptops using multiple operating systems and variants. To be able to simply shove a DVD in, click once or twice and let the software do its business (without my intervention) is a lovely experience.
The only thing that was mildly annoying is Apple use time instead of percentages. So you get a dialog on screen telling you that you have X minutes left. The very last phase of the install showed “less than one minute” for at least 5 minutes. Not that it’s a serious complaint, but if they’d used percentages I wouldn’t have been left wondering if Apple’s concept of time and mine were at odds with each other!
As I didn’t check how much disk space I was using prior to the upgrade I’ve no way of knowing if the new version of OSX uses less space or not.
In terms of functionality, pretty much everything I had been using prior to the upgrade with the exception of Neo Office is working fine. The loss of Neo Office isn’t a “big deal” for me, as I can probably put a copy of Office (legally) on the MacBook Pro anyway (it was on my todo list).
What I had been looking forward to was the new functionality in Mail. Snow Leopard promised much better support for Microsoft Exchange and it seems to have delivered. While I had tried to use Microsoft’s Entourage on my deskop my experiences were anything but positive and I’ve always liked the performance of Mail. (Make your Windows based colleagues jealous when you can find an email in seconds!) Unfortunately for me my Exchange box is over 6 gigs in size, so syncing it down to the laptop the first time wasn’t exactly instant on my home DSL line.
I don’t use a very wide range of applications on my MacBook, so it will probably take me a while to discover the new features that Apple have been talking about, but so far I’m happy with the upgrade. No data was lost. This makes me happy!
© 2012 Michele Neylon :: Pensieri. All Rights Reserved.
Powered by WordPress. Designed by 
Recent Feedback