This is great to see. So many enterprise boards around Ireland pushing to get businesses online. It’s astonishing how few businesses still dont have a website or a website presence.

If you are in the market for a website then why not get a FREE one from the website listed or by making an appointment with these guys and take part in their workshop.

Attend a 1/2 day workshop and learn how to create your own website in just 30 minutes

Wednesday 29th June, 2pm to 5pm
Westgate Computer Centre, Wexford
Fee: €25

Getting Irish Business Onlinewww.gettingbusinessonline.ie is a partnership between Google, Blacknight Internet Solutions, An Post and the County & City Enterprise Boards and is targeting the 40% of Irish SMEs including sole traders that do not have a website or an online presence. The campaign is calling on all businesses that do not have a website to log on to www.gettingbusinessonline.ie where they can create their own business website for free.

Click here to register for the workshop or to find out more

Great to see Fine Gael and media partners putting into effect their promise about getting Ireland to be a digital hub of Europe.  They are working on this campaign to get Irish businesses to register a domain name and set up a small website and get the site live in 24 hours. Fro details see the Google Video below.

http://www.gettingbusinessonline.ie/

Only two minutes after writing the last blog post the phone rings and its a client who set up a website with us last year and we registered a domain name for them. The reminder renewal was sent out on the first of March 2011. It has since expired and their domain name was bought by another company.

What about our Stationary?

I know, they now have to reprint all their stationary as otherwise they will be advertising a competitor on their headed paper, invoices, business cars, flyers and compliment slips. So today we secured another domain name for them and are in the middle of setting up their emails and changing their website. I could tell you another story of the haulage company who lost their .com and had to reprint all their truck signage. (both sides too!)

Anyway, if you are looking at reducing your annual printing costs I would suggest making sure your domain name gets renewed.

Call Dave on 053 9430748 to secure your domain name now.

I would just like to reminder our own customers, that when you receive a renewal invoice for our services including:

• Spam Filtering
• Domain Names
• Web Hosting
• Web Marketing
• Maintenance
• Support
• Priority Support

Please remember that as this is the Notice of Reminder for the services we provide you. The invoice would be an annual fee that you have accounted for as a recurring costs to running the business. I would suggest making it a priority on your accounting system or a large post it in front of you for future reference.

Unless you have a signed agreement with ourselves to be on a direct debit system, we simply issue the renewal invoice and wait for payment, if payment is not received then the services are not renewed.

38% Costs Reduction

This year we have continued to reduce recurring costs for our clients and at the same time investing in better and faster hosting services. The knock on effect is that we can no longer have a fleet of staff telephoning you to remind you about YOUR domain name and other services we provide you. Remember it’s YOUR domain, take pride in it, use it, be proud of your business name. Even though its only usually a small recurring costs, its has great value to you and your customers.

So if you are a domain owner or a business owner and you want to stay on top of your industry, remember the little things all add up to better business. Start with small recurring costs that are important.

Call dave on 053 9430748 for more details

Great to see that the items I talked about to candidates during the election have been put into the Programme for Government with a great use of the Internet as a means of getting this country off it’s knees and gaining us some respect in Europe.

Some of the items in the new programme include better use of Cloud Computing and making Ireland an digital Island. This document lays out the plans for serious development of digital media i schools and progressing our knowledge base of Internet Technologies.

We have a Bright Future

Quote from the Document:

Innovation and Commercialisation

We will implement innovation and commercialisation policies as outlined below subject to cost benefit analysis.

• We will progressively implement the recommendations in the Trading and Investing in the Smart Economy Report

• We will support our indigenous digital game industry by reforming R&D supports available to the industry, setting aside funding from Innovation Fund Ireland for a seed capital scheme for Irish digital gaming start-ups, introduce a digital media component to Transition Year programmes and promote Ireland as digital gaming hub.

• We will develop Ireland as a ‘digital island’ and first-mover when it comes to information technology by ensuring more progress on e-Government and moving Government services online, investing in ICT in schools, and investing in information technology in the healthcare sector.

• We will make Ireland a leader in the emerging I.T. market of cloud computing by promoting greater use of cloud computing in the public sector, organising existing State supports for cloud computing into a package to promote Ireland as a progressive place for I.T. investment, establishing an expert group to address new security and privacy issues arising from the use of cloud computing and reviewing the adequacy of current legislation and identify what steps need to be taken to ensure a supportive regulatory  environment.

• We will develop a National Intellectual Property (IP) protocol to give predictability about the terms on which business can access IP created in Higher Education Institutions and the wider digital sector.

• We will promote and support investment in technology research, development and commercialisation beyond basic research supported by Science Foundation Ireland, as well as removing barriers to innovation and accelerate exploitation of new technologies.

• We will target key technology areas and sectors where innovation can be applied including but not limited to high value manufacturing, advanced materials, nanotechnology, bioscience, electronics, photonics and electrical systems and information and communication technology. We will also focus on the application of  technological innovation in established sectors of the economy like energy generation and supply, transport, creative industries, high-value services and architecture and construction by identifying challenges, establishing priorities and developing strategies which specify necessary actions to transition to more innovative approach.

• We will promote Ireland’s full engagement with the ‘Innovative Union’ proposals issued by the European Commission in October 2010 as one of the seven flagship initiatives under EU2020 Strategy, with the specific aim of refocusing R&D and innovation policy on major challenges and at turning inventions into products.

• The critical gap between basic research promoted and funded by Science Foundation Ireland and third level institutions and its subsequent development into commercial opportunity for investors can only be closed by making new technologies ‘investment ready’. We will establish a network of Technology Research Centres focused on applied technological research in specific areas, to be linked to appropriate higher- education institutions. The centres will accelerate exploitation of new technologies by providing infrastructure that bridges gap between research and technology commercialisation. We will initially establish 3 additional centres foccussing on biotechnology, nanotechnology and high value manufacturing. Further centres from a number of other areas will be selected at a later time.

• We will support the development of an International Content Services Centre to make Ireland world leader in managing intellectual property.

• We will pioneer within the EU a model of ‘fair use’ in European Copyright Law, like in the USA, which effectively permits the use of portions of a copyrighted work so long as the normal economic exploitation of the originating work is not undermined. This will allow internet companies and other digital innovators to bring their services

End Quote

In local services, we will establish a website – www.fixmystreet.ie – to assist residents inreporting problems with street lighting, drainage, graffiti, waste collection and road and path maintenance in their neighbourhoods, with a guarantee that local officials will respond within two working days.

http://www.finegael.ie/upload/ProgrammeforGovernmentFinal.pdf

Tonight is the final of the Dragons Den Style Event being held in the Ashdown Park Hotel in Gorey. The top finalist have been chosen and they will be pitching in front of our panel of “Dragon’s tonight at 8pm.

Where: Ashdown Park Hotel, Gorey, Co. Wexford

When: Doors open at 6, show starts at 8pm

Who: All welcome, Free in

Our finalist are :  Cosmetic Acupuncture Clinic , Specialist Retail Outlet with an Irish Theme, A Craft/Specialist Food Producer, An Adventure Sports School, A business Services Provider

150 Jobs at PayPal

News out today that the e-commerce payment people Pay Pal are recruiting at the moment. Great news for Ireland and also a great push to demonstrate that the Internet is not a fad but in fact a real business. Each week we get inquiries about setting up websites and ecommerce from people in the southeast  and they are wondering if the Internet is something they should be involved in.

Every business is an Internet Business!

No matter if you are a solicitor or a plumber getting paid for your services is the whole point of doing the work requested. A payment gateway such as paypal allows every business get involved in the whole area of getting paid faster in business. PayPal will allow you to invoice online and this will email your clients to then click on a link and fill in their credit card details etc.

The Jobs that are been created in Ireland now are for support roles are many businesses are calling them to see how they can get payments online. If you are looking for a job at the moment this would be the place to go. Its the fastest growing industry in Ireland and remember jobs don’t disappear they migrate to new areas, on-line payment is where its at these days.

For details about the new jobs at Pay Pay ( who are owned by eBay) then log onto

http://www.ebayjobsireland.com

Yet another business closes it doors in Dublin with the loss of jobs and lively hoods. Waterstone Book Stores closes two of their shops in Dublin. Part of the HMV Group that has been heavily hit by the Recession and the Digital Age.

Traditional shops always amaze me these days as to how they can make money and continue to pay the overheads that come with them. Setting up online shops has really show me that if I had the right product I definitely be thinking about ordering a 20ft container from China and selling them online.

Ipad, Kindle, eReaders and Electronic books

These are devices from “Tomorrows World” showing us how life would be in 2011, but they didn’t tell us the consequences of the technology in terms of how the jobs in the publishing industry would change from counter sales to warehouse/shipping sales or even data centre management. The jobs are moving and people must be ready for their jobs to change. Education and Training in the IT industry is always an asset. People must remember that jobs are no longer for life, we don’t start in the post room at at 15 and retire at 65 with a nice new timepiece.

As sad as it is that these stores are changing, remember that others are been employed in online sales, shipping, downloading etc. Life changes and technology is always making jobs or equipment obsolete. Management of shops move to online management and SEO techniques to help grab attention of viewers and push sales.

I’m not meaning this to sound like a “I told you so” but like the recession in Ireland and the property bubble, did we really think that things would stay the same forever?!?

If you have a shop and are wondering if the Internet is really an option for you call us today on 053 9430748 for a chat or call the Irish Internet Association in Dublin www.iia.ie and get some stats about the increase in Online sales in Ireland

Just watching the the 2011 Irish budget on the net and it looks like the Government has finally seen that money is moving in huge amounts online and that they could part of the action. With online sales in Ireland around €15,000,000 a day, I guess its small compared to the online betting.

Now the Government are taking online businesses seriously and they are taxing the online betting websites the same as the shops. And why not, its a fast amount of money travelling in the clouds over their heads and not being taxed to the same as an actual “real” shop !

More and more we are seeing businesses moving online and being paid by WorldPay and PayPal to pick on a few and this is then spend online, and I wonder if the government are seeing any of this money. I doubt it.

Facebook Money

Facebook are now bringing out their own currency so that businesses can buy and spend money online. It may sound small to some people, but it has an audience of 500,000,000 people !

That’s more than in the Euro zone !

This money is like Disney dollars, sounds silly but really its hundreds of millions that is circulating in a certain circle. The new “circle” is the Internet and the vast amounts of money moving online. We look forward to seeing more and more businesses moving online and using the web wisely.

Did the VAT rate change today?

We are often asked if we can sponsor a website or give a free website to people. We do sponsor websites sometimes, but it depends on the site, if its a registered charity or maybe the local lost pet group then yes we might be in a situation to help, but if you are a small club or group then maybe you could look at using on online web site building tool. We have looked at these before but one that we see being used a good bit in Wexford is one called Weebly.com

Built the website yourself.

Website creations tools are not new, they have been around for many years now, but we hear that weebly.com is an easy to use , fast method of creating a website yourself in a few minutes. Allowing you to update it with images, text and videos.

It’s not what we use and I wouldn’t recommend it for any real business as its just a basic web-page builder. Please don’t mistake this for being the “be all and end all” of website development and think that it’s gonna put us out of business. It’s not. This is for building a basic web-page, its not an online marketing strategy to gain you more sales leads and growing your business over the next 5 years and mentoring your businesses digital strategy. It’s a web-page and only that.

Don’t expect to get support or help in it’s creation or promotion.

It is however a good step for struggling businesses who can’t afford any budget on using the net to help their business.

Once you have the site built you can come to use to help promote it and get it listed in search engines and local directories.