Damien Mulley

Fiest is playing on Tuesday September 25th in Tripod in Dublin. G’wan, get tickets. Or try and win some from Nialler.

Via Russell Beattie, live on letterman singing 1234 :

Via Seán. iPhone, iPhone Nano, iPhone Shuffle.

Solved! The lyrics to the battles song – atlas.

If I don’t get an Arcade Fire ticket on Friday I’ll be pissed. I’ll be one of the ones Jim describes.

As seen everywhere: Pitchfork gives music 6.8 out of 10.

Staying with music. Ringles? Seriously? Ringtones on a cd and a single.

Looks like call boxes in the UK could be scrapped with mobile penetration so high. Ireland to follow?

Carl Sagan’s Cosmos – Redneck Edition:

How to deal with death:

Looking at new location for Blog Awards. Looked at the Guinness Storehouse. No bar allowed unless people have a substantial meal due to the Diageo reponsible drinking initiative. They will of course supply the food, for a price. Waiting on price for Gravity Bar for post event boozeup.

Myself and Conor O’Neill, Walter Higgins, Tom Corcoran, Joe Drumgoole and Keith Bohanna have been discussing the idea of creating a kind of showcase event in the next while. The idea is to have a competition which will hopefully have 16 Irish Tech startups show off their wares in front of a judging panel comprised of VCs and tech people from Ireland, UK, Europe and the States and around this event itself would be talks about how to start a business and the various lessons that need to be learned.

There’s a huge lot of stuff that needs to be done though. We’re currently hunting for a location. Digital Hub and Alexander Hotel are options. We are also trying to line up judges and until we have them we can’t confirm a date OR a venue. Chicken and an egg really. One European judge has said she’d get involved. We are also looking for sponsors.

I would think we will need serious sponsorhip money if we have to cover the traveling costs of the judges and we want to give a great prize. We’re hoping that the majority of judges will themselves be VCs and we want to use the event to show off the emerging talent of the Irish tech industry. We do want to see companies get investment, afterall. Know any VCs that would make good judges? I’m currently working on getting a media partner for this event too. My fav part of this is everyone has to send in a video of their pitch so the website should be a bit of fun and will get everyone talking and get attention for everyone that enters.

The organising of this has been hard going and I’m disappointed that many companies will only get involved if their competitors are not involved. Getting enough interest internationally is another issue too and I had hoped to use the Paddy’s Valley trip as a way of talking up the Irish Tech Startups but finding people willing to go to Paddy’s Valley apart from the usual suspects, has been really tough, almost like pulling teeth.

Perhaps we need a more established partner like the Irish Venture Capital Association or someone like that to get involved or perhaps, we are planning too big and for the first few years of this we should grow this “organically” and let the name and reputation build by starting off with a small prize and with local judges. I really do wonder with the lack of feedback from Enterprise Boards and Incubation Centres when contacting them about various things including Paddy’s Valley, whether there are enough quality startups that we could show off to international investors without them saying “Just these 10? That’s all of them?”

Feedback on this is most welcome.

Here’s the current one-sheeter:

What is StartupCamp/Tech Audition Ireland?

A one day competition to find the best new technology service/company in Ireland. Judged by international and national peers. 16 companies will be invited to present their products to a panel of judges. They have a total of 15 minutes to show off their idea and answer questions from the panel.

When: To be decided

Prize: Cash prize.

How to apply: See website for further details.
All companies have to send in an “Audition Tape” to be considered. Judges will then select the best 16 who will go forward on the day to the final round. No restrictions with regard to companies being incorporated, trading, revenue generating but this is for emerging companies/startups.

Offer to review wine is still open. Some nice feedback so far.

Happy Christmas.

Nice post by Harry McGee on the ageing Labour Party.

For those that don’t like clowns. Slushies in Clown brains.

Interviewing for google? Try these fantastic questions.

Hilarious. Nathaniel from I’m Guess I’m Floating plays Valerie by Steve Winwood and people think he’s playing a cover of Call on me by Eric Prydz:

“Dude, this is a sweet cover.”
“Who is this? Covering a techno song takes balls!”

Oh dear.

A bondage duckie. So want.

Via Ben Hammersley, nice idea of making open areas more sociable. Add coffee cup holders to lampposts.

Via the Cybercom blog, remember this Tango ad?

Via Huffington Post, the new Naoimi Klein docu:

As per Cybercom‘s ComScore data: Numbers are in 1000s, for the stickiest websites(ones people spend most time on), see here:

Rank | Site Name | Unique Visitors |Average Daily Visitors (000)

1 GOOGLE.IE 894 288
2 MSN.COM 752 164
3 BEBO.COM 650 211
4 GOOGLE.COM 565 104
5 YAHOO.COM 521 112
6 HOTMAIL.COM 424 89
7 MSN.IE 396 99
8 RYANAIR.COM 366 25
9 YAHOO.CO.UK 359 67
10 MICROSOFT.COM 353 21
11 BOOKRYANAIR.COM 323 21
12 YOUTUBE.COM 322 48
13 EIRCOM.NET 319 87
14 EBAY.IE 278 26
15 WIKIPEDIA.ORG 276 26
16 AERLINGUS.COM 267 21
17 RTE.IE 232 22
18 AIB.IE 225 37
19 EBAY.COM 185 11
20 BLOGGER.COM 175 11
21 O2ONLINE.IE 175 23
22 BBC.CO.UK 174 18
23 888.COM 173 13
24 DAFT.IE 173 16
25 GOOGLE.CO.UK 166 26
26 EBAY.CO.UK 166 13
27 CARZONE.IE 165 17
28 METEOR.IE 157 13
29 MSN.CO.UK 155 28
30 AMAZON.COM 155 9
31 APPLE.COM 153 9
32 ABOUT.COM 151 7
33 VODAFONE.IE 147 19
34 MYMETEOR.IE 145 14
35 MYSPACE.COM 145 13
36 FALCONHOLIDAYS.IE 143 7
37 TRIPADVISOR.COM 131 8
38 BUDGETTRAVEL.IE 130 9
39 ADOBE.COM 128 5
40 AOL.COM 120 8
41 IOL.IE 120 10
42 IMDB.COM 118 9
43 365ONLINE.COM 116 20
44 AMAZON.CO.UK 113 9
45 ROCKYOU.COM 104 6
46 FALCONHOLIDAYS.CO.UK 102 5
47 GEOCITIES.COM 101 5
48 TICKETMASTER.IE 98 7
49 EIRCOM.IE 97 6
50 FAS.IE 96 9
55 GUMTREE.IE 96 5
56 MYHOME.IE 96 7
57 BOARDS.IE 95 6
58 YAHOO.IE 90 14
59 AUTOTRADER.IE 87 6
60 GOLDENPAGES.IE 84 5

Fixed call traffic in Q2 2007 was just over 2.35bn minutes, a decrease of 4% since Q1 2007, and a fall of 9% since Q2 2006. Figure 2.3.1 illustrates trends in fixed voice call minutes since Q2 2005. This decrease in fixed line minutes could be due to the increased use of mobile phones for voice telephony. Another factor which may impact fixed voice volumes over the telecoms network is the use of voice over internet services, such as those offered by Skype.

The year-on-year decrease in total fixed line traffic reported by operators is primarily a result of a fall in absolute volumes of total domestic traffic minutes between Q2 2006 and Q2 2007.

Domestic traffic, right, so we’re going to go on the computer and ring our neighbour or friend up the country on Skype? If we use Skype I bet IM will do instead most of the time. Landline traffic is going down cos it’s a damned ripoff still and people are using mobiles more and more. Dear ComReg, stop throwing buzzwords and the like into your analysis and use actual figures.

Sent this out to a few press contacts too:
The ComReg report is available from here: http://url.ie/5g9

Summary:

* Highest mobile costs in entire EU. €14.67 per month per customer higher than EU average. French talk more than Irish yet pay almost €10 less per month

* Addition of mobile “broadband” numbers is too early. Market is too unsettled with massive ongoing problems with some networks and 100s if not 1000s of customers having severe connectivity issues with speeds just faster than ISDN.

* Line rental once again distinctly missing from fixed line comparisons, making Ireland look much better than what the average Irish phone bill actually reflects.

1. Highest mobile costs in entire EU
Pg 35 and 36 of ComReg survey

The APRU (Average revenue per user) is an indication of average monthly revenue generated by mobile subscribers in each country. Mobile ARPU in Ireland is estimated at €44.07 per user per month.

The EU average for APRU is €29.40, this is €14.67 per month per customer higher than EU average.

Meanwhile the average APRU in Germany is €19.73 a month, well over half compared to Ireland, some €24.34 a month cheaper.

Talk time. Do the Irish talk most and so have highest spend? NO

ComReg compare talktime versus spend in Figure 4.4.2 on page 38 of their report. It only samples a few countries, none of which are the talkative Scandinavian countries, however even in this tiny sample it shows France talks more than Ireland yet pay €34.66 a month for mobile bills. €9.41 cheaper a month per user than Ireland

2. Addition of mobile “broadband” numbers is too early.
See Page 23 and 24 of ComReg survey

While mobile broadband growth has been nothing short of fantastic, it appears the networks have been having problems with the unforeseen demand. Three Ireland have had numerous problems with their network with 100s of people complaining about slower than dialup speeds and blackouts. ComReg have no cut-off points which will remove a slow or disconnected “broadband” product from the stats.

Owning a dead broadband modem should not be shown as a working broadband connection on ComReg statistics as it is not a true reflection of broadband in Ireland. ComReg does not address this.

Obfuscation of satellite numbers is unwelcome

Bundling of “satellite” and “fibre” into a single number (8,900) does not show the low numbers of fibre connections and the high number of an inferior satellite product which continue to grow. Satellite Internet is a last straw “broadband” solution for those desperate for a high speed Internet connection. Install costs range from 700 euros up to 2000 euros with monthly costs ranging from 80 euros to 200 euros. ComReg need to disclose these numbers in a transparent manner in their main report.

3. Line rental once again distinctly missing from fixed line comparisons
Page 16

Line rental is not included in the ComReg landline bill comparisons. Were it included, the pricing would dramatically change, making Ireland appear as one of the countries in Europe with the highest actual phone bills for landline users. Why does ComReg leave out line rental when it contributes to the highest static cost in an Irish phone bill?

Line rental can be found in an old ComReg report here: http://comreg.ie/_fileupload/publications/ComReg0628.pdf (page 17) Since that report, Irish line rental has increased again to €25.36 a month for Ireland.

When last measured, the EU average was €15.10 Making Ireland €10.2 euros more expensive than EU average per month for line rental. Almost €6 more expensive than second most expensive country.

So says John Handelaar. You can now search for pizza in Cork on Google maps and all the other stuff too.

The site reached 600k visitors a few minutes ago. The counter has been ticking away since June 11th 2005. Thanks to all those that visit and especially those that return on a regular basis.

Thanks to Cybercom, they have released ComScore stats on the Top 50 Irish Websites and the amount of time spent on each website. You can read the Top 50 somewhere else later this weekend *cough* but I thought I’d share the top websites in Ireland according to amount of time spent on each site per visit. Search engines are low, of course, with Google.ie having people stay with them on average of 2.3 minutes.

Top ten “stickiest” websites are:
Bebo.com – 25.2 mins
Daft.ie – 18 mins
Amazon.co.uk – 17.5 mins
Carzone.ie – 17.3 mins
Ebay.ie – 16.4 mins
Youtube.com – 15.7 mins
Fas.ie – 11.6 mins
MyMeteor.ie – 9.6 mins
BudgetTravel.ie – 8.8 mins
Vodafone.ie – 8.6 mins

Update: Above are the stickiest sites subset of the top 50 most visted sites in Ireland in July 2007 but for a list of the top 50 sites which people spent the most time on, per visit, then the below list is what is correct. Seems to make sense that betting, kids and social networking sites are in fact the ones that most time is spent on:

PADDYPOWERPOKER.COM – 58.7 minutes
KING.COM – 30.4
DISNEY.CO.UK -27.8
BEBO.COM 25.2
NIH.GOV 24.0
HMV.CO.UK 22.9
MATCH.COM 22.1
STARDOLL.COM 21.4
DEVIANTART.COM 21.3
LITTLEWOODSIRELAND.IE 20.4
PREMIERLEAGUE.COM 20.1
FURNITURE.IE 18.1
DAFT.IE 18.0
UCD.IE 17.6
AMAZON.CO.UK 17.5
CARZONE.IE 17.3
NICK.CO.UK 17.1
NICK.COM 16.9
ANOTHERFRIEND.COM 16.8
EBAY.IE 16.4
YOUTUBE.COM 15.7
NHS.UK 15.4
TESCO.COM 15.3
AUTOTRADER.CO.UK 14.9
BETFAIR.COM 14.6
WP.PL 14.6
QUINN-SECURE.COM 14.4
MYHOME.IE 14.1
CAO.IE 13.9
PROPERTYNEWS.COM 13.9
GAMEFAQS.COM 13.8
CARSIRELAND.IE 13.5
BRATZPACK.COM 13.5
BOI-BOL.COM 13.3
DRIVINGTEST.IE 13.2
PLAY.COM 13.1
MINICLIP.COM 13.0
REACHSERVICES.IE 12.6
MAKEFRIENDSONLINE.COM 12.5
LOADZAJOBS.IE 12.3
ASOS.COM 11.8
FAS.IE 11.6
TOYOTA.IE 11.6
FLIXSTER.COM 11.4
ZWINKY.COM 11.3
CLUBPENGUIN.COM 11.1
GO.COM 10.7
MOUSEBREAKER.COM 10.7
CBG.IE 10.6
AKUMIITTI.COM 10.5
TICKLE.COM 10.4