Damien Mulley

Got this in my mail a while back from Visrez but had no time to blog it.

Well it’s a standalone booking engine system that can be used to sell accommodation online. You can also use the same system to sell events as well but at the moment, we want to test the booking engine side of things. We’re just coming into the beta testing phase and we’re looking for people who are interested in being beta testers and submitting feedback about the usability of the system.

The 3 types of accommodation we’re hoping to test are B&Bs/Guesthouses, Apartments who sell short term accommodation (1 month or less) and hotels who can allocate 10 – 60 rooms to the beta system.

It’s commission-free, no set up costs and no long term contracts. The incentive for beta testers is that they can have the use of the booking engine on their website for 3 months for free once we launch the product.

Photo owned by jimg944 (cc)

Anyone who’s interested can sign up here.

The only requirement is that they have to have a website already and they give Visrez feedback. If you need a booking engine urgently, this isn’t really for you as best testing might go on until 2009.

I did an FOI about Innovation Vouchers recently and Enterprise Ireland subsequently decided it would make sense to publish the stats on their website and so they have. You can now see the knowledge providers who have done projects for companies and the companies themselves.

For me this shows takeup is great but once companies have the vouchers the issue is either lack of vision or else inability to find a knowledge provider to do the work. Some companies I know definitely have no idea how to use them despite some orgs really wanting the custom and willing to suggest things to them but I know other orgs have laughed a company out of it for their “puny” 5k. The stats are interesting too as Carlow is out on top so far yet you’d think a Dublin institution would be getting most trade.

Maybe EI needs to actually give some case studies or the knowledge providers themselves? How many have open days like the NCI?

The Business Post has an article about the numbers here.

For those that are unaware, Innovation Vouchers give limited companies 5k in voucher format that can be redeemed at a College, IT or group for research or development of something that can be used by the company. They’re a great idea.

• Companies that have personalities and a team that adds humanity to their business both online and offline.
• Companies who care enough to monitor what blogs are saying and react, even when people have negative issues.
• Companies who contribute to online discussions and mailing lists without pimping their solutions and help even when the topic matter isn’t in-synch with their business area.
• Companies that ask for help, contributions, feedback.

And then

• Businesses that use domain names to describe what they do instead of using a company name.
• Business people that leave comments on blog posts with their keywordladen website name and not their name and surname.
• Businesses that write blog posts and internally link to their services in every blog post, again laden with keywords.
• Businesses that write blog posts that are neither interesting nor useful but instead are dressed up brochures.
• Businesses that write blog posts that do nothing more than block quote someone else’s blog post and then add one line of commentary.
• Businesses that use Adwords on their business blogs.
• Businesses that don’t name who they are on their About page.

Fran Hollywood via David got in contact with me before the Web Awards, wondering could he help out in any way. Now Ireland is scattered with mini-Ws and a few large ones are about the place too for example:

Now that we’ve used these props this year, we’re going to have to outdo ourselves at both the Blog Awards and the Web Awards 09. Fran doesn’t make props as his main business, it’s a sideline to show what he can do with expanded polystyrene foam, a lot of what he does is for builders and architects that want to create various shapes which can’t be done with wood or might be too heavy for concrete.

I think we’ll have Fran blogging soon enough, right? Meanwhile check out Made in Hollywood and if you need things made in 3D, they might be the crowd for you.