Damien Mulley

He saved Irish soccer, nothing to do with his hatred of eircom of course, you can get his taxi to the matches, while listening to TodayFM or Newstalk (both his), you can thank him for getting you your job and now he can even get you a date. Rides of all sorts. Anything he can’t do? (Apart from stay in the country long enough to pay taxes)

800k on broadband, including 90k on mobile broadband. Means we are yadda on OCED table EXCEPT OECD says no to mobile broadband because it’s shit. But why let that get in the way of a good stat that incorrectly boosts our rankings? In fairness I don’t expect Bertie to know this, that’s Lying Ryan’s job and he does it so well. Bertie’s just cogged his default answers. People really are harping on a lot about broadband of late. There’s another special about it on Prime Time tomorrow night as it happens. Ryan is on as is Shane Ross.

Edit: Oh yes and he mentions the National Broadband Scam Scheme saying it will sort the last 10%. What about the other 10% Bertie? The Department seems to have ignored that figure. The National Broadband Scheme is flawed.

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I hope.

So the Cork one is happening, not the Dublin one. Yet. Now, there’s about a dozen very avid people wanting to learn how to blog. I have the list. They email me a lot. Still avid after all these years. All they need is a room with wifi and either pcs/laptops or perhaps they can bring their own. A meeting room costs, what 300 quid for a half day, maybe? Loads of Dublin hotels for that. As per the conditions, I’ll do it for free, no problem with a sponsor providing that the sponsor does not try and give a hard sell of products to the attendees and the attendees are not chosen by the sponsor and it is not billed as XCorps’s Business Blogging Course. Oh and I’m not free til April. God, lots of conditions. You know what I mean though. People should benefit from this without having to have had purchased something. So there you have it. An opportunity to meet 8-12 new businesses or businesses that are obviously open minded about trying something new.

I previously offered to do a business blogging course in Cork and Dublin. The deal was someone else could do the organising. My giving up half a day and teaching people for free was my end of the bargain. We had a venue in Dublin but lack of insurance was an issue so that fell through. Nobody else has offered a venue (and I looked around too) so nothing has happened with Dublin. But tada, SortMyBooks have paid for a room in the Rochestown Park Hotel, in Cork this Saturday for the Cork event. And it’s full! An all woman gig too as it happens. A very good mix of companies and individuals who I hope to see blogging soon after.

The Dublin offer is still there but will not happen until April at the earliest as I have blog awards and all that. Yes, the waiting list still exists too for Dublin. Up to the general public now to make the effort for that one to happen.

(This post was written during the weekend, well before Digiweb’s CEO sent me a very long email rebuking me for the way I commented about the attitude of one of his employees and telling me how I should report about Digiweb in future. I hope this is not misconstrued as retribution for that bully-like email.)

This really needs someone sadder than me to chronicle all of this because it would make a great damned story. You could even make a TV movie of it with Fair City actors. The hosting providers in Ireland are an interesting bunch. They’re so catty and childish with each other and the bitchfights and electronic slaps make it almost better than some Sky One drama. Hosters wives or something.

Photo owned by m1jp

So the latest bitchathon once again surrounded Hosting365, the undisputed heavyweight of hosting in Ireland and of course the company that gets most attention because of their size. Their chillers went offline the other day and they went all Scottie like, when the data centre couldnae take it anymore and they had to eject the warp core or something. It’s all chronicled here. Update: The 200+ comments on that post have now been deleted.

Digiweb, a mounting competitor with a great track record in broadband has now registereda few perhaps just one domain name which take a few digs at Hosting365. They’ve registered Hosting364.com EDIT: 12.25pm While former Hosting365 employees have registered Hosting365Refugee.com. Hosting364.com goes to an online excuse generator (In need of copy writer) while Hosting365Refugee.com goes to a Swedish chef parody thingymabob. I’m sure Hosting365Refugee will soon turn into the Alumni Association type thing that such a domain suggests. Right? 🙂

Hosting365 themselves snapped up Hosting365Sucks.com. Best to be safe I suppose. This is an interesting move by Digiweb though. To me it says to Hosting365 and others who are watching that they will resort to any means necessary to take some of their business but doing something like this also means you are asking for yourself to be open to scrutiny. This too is good. It almost forces transparency for themselves. Transparency is good. Hosting in Ireland is cut-throat and they are firecly competing with each other while looking overseas other providers are offering much better value services than here in Ireland. The cost of power and broadband here is hurting them a good bit. Shame they can’t pool together and lobby the government on these issues instead of stabbing each other with broken bottles of Buckfast.

Still, get the popcorn and watch them have at each other. Midly entertaining.