If you’re going to spend money registering domains in target countries and doing targetted pay per click campaigns you should also take the time to do some basic market research. And no, I don’t mean pure figures – I mean cultural stuff.

Jonathan Brazil spotted a really silly mistake this morning:

If you go to the hassle of buying a .ie and sponsored Google links for Irish searches, don’t call it EIRE and price your products in GB£

The ad in question:

And here’s another one I found:
I can’t think of anyone IN Ireland using the term “Eire” or in what context they might even try to use it.

Seriously.

If you’re going to try selling to us then learn to speak to us in terms we understand and use.

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I was using Sweetcron to publish a rather boring “life stream” over on one of my other personal domains.

Unfortunately the script has been pretty much abandoned by developers, so no new features or updates have been made in well over a year.

It also didn’t have ANY caching options whatsoever, so it really wasn’t a “gentle” script to run.

I’m currently looking for a suitable alternative, though I’m experimenting with a WordPress plugin and theme, which seem to work reasonably well.

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For the next couple of days I’ll be in Dublin for the TRAFFIC conference.

It’s the first time that there’s been a serious domain industry event in Ireland, so it’s nice to see so many familiar faces on my “home turf”.

The lineup for the event is good, but I’m really looking forward to seeing how the auction tomorrow afternoon goes. There are some really good names on the list…

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As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I won an Apple iPad while I was at the ICANN meeting in Brussels.

So today was “D Day”, with the latest “shiny object” arriving in my office.

The packaging is very similar to other Apple products, so it’s neat and functional. The guys in Ascio made sure I got the right kind of plug, which was thoughtful of them.

It’s the WIFI model, which was going to be a problem, but the technical team in the office got a WIFI network up and running fairly quickly, so that at least, ceased to be an issue.

The user interface is very similar to the iPhone and a lot of the iPhone apps that were on my desktop happily synced across to the iPad. Unfortunately a lot of apps that “work” on the iPad look terrible.

Playing video or using apps that make full use of the screen real estate is a wonderful experience

I’ll be playing around with it over the next few days, so I’ll be able to get a better idea of how well it suits me

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They’re at it again

UK Food Exports, which claims it’s an independent guide to to sourcing products from the UK, is spamming me and others again.

They’re still using that stupid disclaimer and their phone number goes to a fax machine.

So since I can’t contact them directly I think I’ll just see if the UK data protection lot have anything to say about them …

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Today thousands of Irish teenagers will be collecting / checking their Leaving Cert results (Ireland’s answer to A Levels / Bac / SAT).

Based on the media hype surrounding it you could be easily conned into thinking that the world actually cares.

Reality – they don’t.

The Leaving Cert is a bit of paper. You can use the points / score to get a place in a university.

That is all.

In a couple of years time you won’t care about it.

The rest of us haven’t cared in years. Some of us never cared to begin with.

Putting your LC results on your CV when you’re 17 or 18 is fine. Putting them on it when you’re in your late 20s with a college degree is pointless. Providing details of ALL your grades is just plain wrong.

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Sky have been promoting their Sky Player service for quite some time.
At the moment you can access it on the XBox, though for some odd reason the XBox version doesn’t have access to the “premium” content ie. Sky Box Office.

So if, like me, you don’t have a phone line setup with your Sky box and you don’t run Windows, your options are a bit limited.

You can, however, watch Sky Box Office on your desktop.

Word of warning. To use the Sky Player you will need to have the latest version of Microsoft’s Silverlight installed.

For some bizarre reason the player will load fine in Firefox, but trying to watch anything using Firefox will not work. You might have better luck than me, but I ended up switching to Safari. In Firefox it seemed to be stuck permanently “buffering”.

So what’s the experience like?

To be honest I can’t really complain. I’m using a 27″ iMac, so once I was in a comfortable chair I was able to enjoy a couple of films without any issues. You can easily view the films in full screen view and the quality on a 27″ screen was fine. It wasn’t as good as watching on my TV with my full surround sound, but that was my choice (albeit one dictated by circumstance).

Renting films is pretty easy. Once you have an online account with Sky you can signup for their “wallet”, which you can add funds to in order to watch films and other paid content.

It is unfortunate that the standalone player software is not available for the Mac as I suspect it might give more options in terms of quality and control. The Silverlight powered stream works fine, but has very little in the way of controls.

All in all it’s not an unpleasant way to watch Sky Box Office films legally!

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I get a lot of deliveries to the office. A lot of the time it’s simply because my name is on a supplier account, so the package arrives. Is checked and gets handed over to one of our staff.

Of course I also get deliveries from Amazon and other places.

Yesterday’s delivery was a bit “different”

A white body bag.

The problem now is, what the hell do I do with it?

While some of my staff are annoying at times, I haven’t actually killed any of them *yet*. Besides, if I was going to kill any of my staff I’d want quick lime – not a body bag.

So does anyone have any suggestions on what I can do with it?

It seems like a waste letting it gather dust!

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Earlier today there was apparently some kind of demonstration outside Batt O’ Keeffe’s offices in Cork. Of course he wasn’t even there ..

Why?

Seemingly USI are upset that the minister didn’t drop everything to meet them. Or at least that’s what it sounds like based on their rather whingy press release. I love this bit:

Last week Minister O’Keeffe requested the help of the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) to combat graduate unemployment. However, despite our request for an urgent meeting, the Minister has so far failed to meet with us.

Yeah – getting meetings with important people is going to happen overnight.

In the “real world” getting a meeting with a business or political leader can take weeks. That doesn’t mean that they don’t want to meet you or that they’re not interested, but they have busy schedules (and no – I’m not an apologist for Fianna Fail or O’Keeffe)

But what really gets me is the entire tone of the USI release

Have all the graduates made an effort to get a job? Of ANY kind?

Or are they just sitting there expecting someone to spoon feed them?

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Nominations for the 2010 Irish Web Awards are now open

NOTE: New shiny web address

This year sees the introduction of some new categories as well:

• Best Mobile App
• Best SME/Small Business Website
• Best Facebook Page
• Best Web Only Publication
• Best Guerilla Social Media Campaign (Zero Budget)

The event is organised by Mulley and headline sponsor is Realex Payments

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