Archive for 'Business'
Food and Health
Posted on June 29, 2008, by Conor O'Neill, under Bandon, Business, Food, Health.
I got an email during the week from Mary Wedel who runs the brilliant An Tobairín Health Food Shop in Bandon. We’ve watched Mary grow this business since we arrived here from a pokey place on North Main Street to the bigger one on Factory Lane to the current flagship on South Main Street. I see no reason why she won’t be as successful as Whole Foods Market in the US.
The range of products on sale there has always amazed me. From vitamins to organic food, chocolate, cosmetics and alt-med stuff, she has something for everyone. Now I’ll be totally open here, I’m not a fan of a large number of alt-med approaches despite having a friend who is a homeopath. However, having said that, there is a huge amount to be gained in the area of health by everyone thinking about the products they use on their bodies, and more importantly, the things they eat.
So her new project, the Fionnuisce Healing Centre (web-site not live yet) in Heron Court on Market Quay holds great interest for me. Apart from the alt-med side, there is a large meeting room with a demonstration kitchen area. So far this space has been used for yoga, dance and various workshops including cookery demonstrations in co-operation with Karen Austin of legendary Lettercollum Kitchen Project.
There are lots of interesting cookery events lined up for September that include a Sushi Saturday and Mediterranean Veg. In October Karen will offer Indian Vegetarian, November Thai and December Christmas Veg. There will be a wholefood cookery night class running Tuesdays from 1st week in October for 10 weeks with Dorothee Clarke.
She had me at sushi 
They are also running a cool 1-day drama workshop on Sunday 13th July by Belinda Wild who describes it as being for anyone with or without experience in Drama who is interested in exploring creative self-expression through the medium of theater - and she guarantees to make you laugh. I’d honestly be tempted, having played Sybil Walling in “Brush with a Body” in the Kieran’s College school play, aged 17.
If you are interested in any of the above, shoot Mary a TXT on 086-3882440. I’m trying to convince her to start a blog since I think any place that has regular events is ideally suited to one instead of a static brochure page. It might be worth her putting all the events up on Yahoo Upcoming too.
UPDATE: Some of the dates for the foodie events are as follows:
- Saturday 6th September, Succulent Sushi with Delwyn Klevenow
- Suturday 20th September, Mediterranean Vegetables from Karen Austin’s abundant garden
- Saturday 18th October, Indian Vegetarian with Lettercollum Karen
- Saturday 15th November, Thai Cookery with Lettercollum Karen
- Saturday 12th December, Vegetarian Christmas with Karen
3 Comments
Spicendipity goes live!
Posted on June 23, 2008, by Conor O'Neill, under Business, Food.
Many of the readers of this blog are surely also fans of The Humble Housewife, Deborah Hadley. She has just launched a fabulous new web-site called Spicendipity selling homemade sauces and 100% natural spice mixes and baking mixes.
Debz had me won over just by saying “BBQ sauce” when she first revealed what she was putting together. We love the idea so much, the prize we are giving away on LouderVoice for the best review at Taste of Cork is one of her BBQ Hampers. This little beauty contains:
- Two bottles of her signature Two Brew BBQ Sauce to slather your chicken, ribs, or steak
- One Italian Seasoning Mix, perfect for dips and marinades
- One Tex Mex Spice Mix, ideal for spicy dips and meat rubs
- One Beer Bread Mix for the perfect accompaniment to your meal
- One Brownie Mix for the perfect ending
- A BBQ cookery book, grill tongs, bamboo skewers and a tea towel to mop it all up with.
You can visit the site right now but it doesn’t officially launch until tomorrow. Get those orders in!
p.s. another fab site design by Sabrina Dent too.
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You going to Taste of Cork?
Posted on June 15, 2008, by Conor O'Neill, under Business, Cork, Food.
It looks like Taste of Dublin this weekend was a big success and a huge improvement over last year. I was thrilled to hear that they are doing a Taste of Cork from Friday 27th June to Sunday 29th. Over on LouderVoice, we’d like to capture the quality of the event by having people review what they eat/drink/encounter by SMS. The most popular review will win a prize (suggestions on what that should be are very welcome).
Don’t worry, you don’t have to be remotely geeky to do the reviews. Both of my parents are very non-technical and they do SMS reviews all the time. You don’t even have to sign up on the site, it’ll happen automatically when you send your first review to 087-9409325. Here’s all you have to do:
There is a good selection of reviews from Taste of Dublin here so you can see the sort of things people were saying. If you want to do it in Cork just follow the instructions above and your reviews will appear on LouderVoice a few seconds later. If you know for definite that you’ll be trying it ahead of time, why not leave a comment here or ask any questions you might have?
The SMS are at your standard rate, they are not premium rate. You can also write long SMS reviews if your phone supports them. We’d love to see the feedback you all have on both the event and the exhibitors, many of whom are local Cork businesses.
By the way, if you run a local biz that is exhibiting at Taste of Cork, we’d love to provide you with mini-flyers to give out to encourage people to review your offerings. Either pop a comment here or mail me on conor AT loudervoice DOT com for more info.
11 Comments
Another Bandon Blogger
Posted on May 27, 2008, by Conor O'Neill, under Bandon, Blogging, Business.
There ain’t many of us so it’s great to see another Bandon Blog start. This time it’s the good people in Kilbrogan House B&B. Already a bunch of good posts. The one about Starbucks is particularly interesting. Check it out!
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Watch out for phone scammers
Posted on May 2, 2008, by Conor O'Neill, under Business.
I’ve just been called by an automated system claiming to be Cork number 021-42790990. The message says that’s I’ve won some bullshit competition and to press 9 now to claim it. You can be damn sure this either results in me calling a premium rate number or they’ll just need get my bank details from me. So if you get some whiny American voice telling you to press 9 now, don’t! Usual rule applies, you will never get anything for free from strangers online or on the phone.
More discussion of the scam.
2 Comments
Companies offering summer work in Bandon?
Posted on March 28, 2008, by Conor O'Neill, under Bandon, Business.
I just had a comment on one of my posts from a girl in Coláiste Na Toirbhirte wondering about summer work vacancies in Bandon. If you have any, or know of businesses that take in summer students, maybe post a comment here or drop me a line at conor AT loudervoice DOT com and I’ll pass the info on.
Are there any sites that provide some sort of service in Ireland for this? Like a lightweight free irishjobs.com? I’d be happy to host one for nothing if there is opensource software available.
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Have a Small Business and need IT help?
Posted on March 19, 2008, by Conor O'Neill, under Business, Technology.
I know there are tons of small businesses out there struggling with IT, even basics like anti-virus and e-mail. Unfortunately, lack of knowledge can often mean you aren’t even aware that there are better and cheaper ways of doing what you are doing.
Last Autumn, the County Enterprise Boards launched Tech-Check to address this widespread problem. It’s a simple but highly effective initiative to help businesses sort out their most pressing technology problems.
For €150, you get up to two 3-hour sessions with an IT expert who will go through every aspect of your IT usage and needs. They then come back with a report highlighting your highs and lows and a small set of specific recommendations to improve things.
Disclaimer: I am one of the people used by the Cork CEBs to provide this service.
Unfortunately, the uptake on Tech-Check has not met expectations. I think there are a few reasons for this and I hope I can clarify things a bit.
- It’s not for IT companies, it’s for any small business (from 1-50 people) who needs guidance on any aspect of technology whether it’s mobile phone usage, internet access, security or even getting a small web-site up for less than €250
- You are getting far more than €150 worth of consultancy, it is very heavily subsidised and I think the value for money is amazing
- The CEBs are very sensitive to conflicts of interest and the consultants cannot offer their services to actually implement the suggestions they make
- The feedback I have received from clients so far has been phenomenal. I’ve advised everything from one man training businesses and solicitors to multi person sports centres and they have all ended up with better setups and in some cases, saving lots of money.
- You do not need to know the first thing about IT or technology to apply for a Tech-Check. The less you know, the more help we can provide.
Ignoring the fact that I help provide Tech-Checks, I genuinely think this is the smartest thing to come out of the public service in years. There are thousands of businesses who can benefit and your entire investment can be just €150. I think you’d be nuts not to sign up, even if you think you don’t need it!
Contact:
- West Cork Enterprise Board
- South Cork Enterprise Board
- Cork City Enterprise Board
- North Cork Enterprise Board
5 Comments
More on Cork Car Sharing
Posted on March 5, 2008, by Conor O'Neill, under Business.
Mike Newham has updated us on Car Sharing in Cork:
We’re pushing out the introduction in Cork till July the 4th because of the massive VRT changes that occur on that date. We’ll start off with eight cars on the road - 3 Ford Focuses (Foci?), 4 Ford Fiestas and 1 Transit Connect for delivery’s and the like.
All will be low emission diesels with extra safety options and lots of helpful gizmos like bluetooth and sat-nav. They’ll all be positioned in and around Cork City Centre.
We’ve made a decision to postpone the new website till about mid-May when it will be fully operational to allow new members to join and book cars.
By the way CarSharing for us is not ride-sharing or car-pooling, its basically the service by which you book a car for a number of hours, use it for those hours and get charged for those hours.
I really hope the mainstream media really pick up on this.
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Ooh, very cool competition
Posted on February 16, 2008, by Conor O'Neill, under Blogging, Business.
John Prendergast from Aonach just let me know about a competition a friend of his is running. It’s pretty damned impressive: Glengarriff Lodge near Bantry in West Cork is giving away a
Luxury Self Catering weekend worth €1175 to one lucky blogger who mentions it! The location looks gorgeous and the Lodge is interesting because the aim was to be both luxurious and eco-friendly/sustainable.
The concept might be of interest to Irish Bloggers who have a deep interest in sustainability like Tom Atkins or Rebecca Hillman.
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Top Google with the LouderVoice Reviews Competition
Posted on January 20, 2008, by Conor O'Neill, under Business.
We kicked off a competition recently over on LouderVoice for the most popular review each week. Your reviews can be via SMS, blog or microblog and it looks like the winner in the first week is a two line SMS review. Not only that, but it is the number one result on Google for its subject!
In fact, we are seeing more and more LouderVoice reviews manage this trick. Here is one I did recently:
I’m sure the BBC are not amused!
The reviews can be of anything that interests you, such as restaurants, movies, music, beaches, TV, gadgets, wine and everything in between. Signing up on LouderVoice just takes two ticks and you can send your first review immediately after that. SMS reviews appear on the site within seconds.
The prize each week is a cool Hairy Baby t-shirt of your choosing. So thumbs to the ready, start sending in reviews and maybe you’ll top Google too.
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Text Your Loves and Loathings to LouderVoice
Posted on November 20, 2007, by Conor O'Neill, under Business, Reviews.
We’re really excited over on LouderVoice by this latest feature. You can now SMS your reviews directly to the web-site. So if you walk out of a terrible movie or wonderful restaurant or just want to get your opinion on any product or service off your chest, now you can. Those reviews will appear within seconds on the LouderVoice site.
The format is simplicity itself:
Review Rating1-5 ItemName: Opinion
It should look like this on your phone:
Then a few moments later, it will look like this on LouderVoice:
We have two numbers you can use: +353-87-9409325 and due to lots of demand +44-778-6205133
Each SMS costs your standard network rate if you are texting your local country number.
And if you are feeling strongly opinionated, we do accept multi-message SMSes up to slightly more than 400 characters.
Just add your mobile number to your LouderVoice account (or sign-up, it only takes a moment), try it out and let us know what you think.
5 Comments
SOHO SOLO Ireland
Posted on July 25, 2007, by Conor O'Neill, under Blogging, Business, Cork.
I gave a talk today about blogging to the West Cork Soho Solo Networking Meeting in Clonakilty. I previous gave the same one to the East Cork group. It was very well received and I hope we see a few new blogs coming from them. If you are not aware of Soho Solo, it is a very worthwhile project. As their site says:
The aims of the project are to identify Small Office Home Office Workers(Soho Solos) in the South West of Ireland, to encourage others to relocate or return to the region, to promote Small Office Home Office Working and to offer support to these “new” entrepreneurs.
If you fit that description, I would highly recommend you contact them as they offer great support for what can be a very solitary endeavour.
Three of the attendees today already had blogs. I didn’t get the details of the third but you should definitely have a look at:
7 Comments
Some bloggy stats
Posted on April 5, 2007, by Conor O'Neill, under Blogging, Business.
My sense of my readership based on the comments is that the majority are non-technical non-bloggers so I thought I’d post some stats on blogging in gerneral as it is unlikely you read Dave Sifry’s blog. Dave is CEO of Technorati, the main blog search engine and the company responsible for things like the tags you see at the end of my posts and microformats, the technology we’re building our business, LouderVoice on. So statto geeks, here’s a summary of what the blogosphere looks like right now according to Dave:
- 70 million weblogs
- About 120,000 new weblogs each day, or…
- 1.4 new blogs every second
- 3000-7000 new splogs (fake, or spam blogs) created every day
- Peak of 11,000 splogs per day last December
- 1.5 million posts per day, or…
- 17 posts per second
- Growing from 35 to 75 million blogs took 320 days
- 22 blogs among the top 100 blogs among the top 100 sources linked to in Q4 2006 - up from 12 in the prior quarter
- Japanese the #1 blogging language at 37%
- English second at 33%
- Chinese third at 8%
- Italian fourth at 3%
- Farsi a newcomer in the top 10 at 1%
- English the most even in postings around-the-clock
- Tracking 230 million posts with tags or categories
- 35% of all February 2007 posts used tags
- 2.5 million blogs posted at least one tagged post in February
Well I bloody thought it was interesting. Off to my bed.
2 Comments
Interested in helping us test LouderVoice?
Posted on December 19, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Business, Technology.
Those of you who know me well also know that I’ve spent the past few months working hard on building a new web-site called LouderVoice. We’re coming close to launching the site properly (probably in late January or early February) but before we do we would really like to have some people help us try out the site and tell us what they think.
The plan at the moment is that we’ll be inviting a very small number of people we know into the Beta1 phase in the next few days. This is because we know there are missing features and some holes in the error handling but it is still a highly functional application and we want to get that initial feedback. The focus in that phase is around features not stability. Questions we will be asking include:
- What features do you like?
- What do you not like?
- What’s missing?
- Would you use the following if we implemented it?
We will then move into Beta2 in January with a much bigger group of people and with the functionality that the early group thought was top priority. We will continue to ask questions about functionality but the main focus will be stability and usability.
So who should sign up? Actually a few different groups of people.
- Bloggers - as many of you as possible. If you have one reader or a thousand, we want to hear from you. If you have ever written valuable information that you think others will find useful, then I think you’ll like what we have to offer you.
- Searchers - During Beta the volume of content will be small but we’d love some enthusiastic testers to sign up and make sure you have everything you need to find and use the information on the site
- The Opinionated - If you don’t blog but are willing to create interesting useful information which will always belong to you building your reputation, then we’ll provide the tools you need to get heard.
So go on, we’re sure you are going to love this site and the only thing you need to provide is your e-mail address. We promise never to use it for any purpose other than inviting you to try the Beta. We will never sell your e-mail address to anyone.
Technorati Tags: LouderVoice, Argolon, Beta
3 Comments
Non-technical unconferences
Posted on October 3, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Blogging, Business, Ireland.
You may have noted my lack of posting on my various blogs recently. The main reason for this is that I was helping to organise a free technology conference in Cork called BarCamp. BarCamps are neither about booze nor barristers but are grass-roots unconferences where the agenda is only decided on the day by attendees putting themselves forward to speak or to moderate sessions on topics they are interested in.
We had the event on Saturday and it was a huge success. Over 80 people attended from all over Ireland and their backgrounds ranged from college students to programmers to Venture Capitalists. We were thrilled to be able to get tons of sponsorship for everything - the building, the wifi, the food, the drink, the t-shirts, the works!
It made me think that this model of a free adhoc grassroots conference is applicable to far more than just techies talking about the web. And of course I wasn’t the first one to have this thought since WineCamp was held in California and I see links to BourbonCamp and ArtCamp.
Rather than having top-down invite-only or pay-through-the-nose events, I highly recommend that people who want to have a get together with like minded others investigate this idea. You could have BookCamp, FoodCamp, FishCamp and with a nod to a very funny gross-out movie: “This one time, at BandCamp…”.
There is general BarCamp info over at BarCamp.org and the info our our event is at BarCamp.org/BarCampIreland. I ran a blog for a few weeks which you can read over at the BarCamp blog. We have the great site set up by one of our sponsors which collects all the blog posts, pictures and links between people. Check it out at the Backnetwork. If this idea does interest you, feel free to contact me with any questions on arranging them. If you’ve ever run a kids birthday party, then you are more than capable of arranging a BarCamp.
Technorati Tags: barcamp, barcampireland, barcampireland1, winecamp
6 Comments
Cully & Sully, the Dragons await
Posted on September 7, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Business, Food.
I just got a mail from Colum over at Cully & Sully to say they are going to be on the TV tonight. If you don’t know them they have two main businesses: The first is supplying lovely pies to pubs whose only cooking apparatus is a microwave. The second is supplying same/similar packaged pies to supermarkets. Now we normally never buy pre-made dinners but their ones are really gorgeous and you get to keep a nice ceramic dish when you are finished.
I’ve just checked and this is a much bigger deal than Sully let on. It is actually a preview of the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year award! This is fantastic and the guys absolutely deserve to be one of the nominees. Here’s hoping they come out on top.
It’s a three parter starting on RTE1 at 11pm. Fingers crossed that Cully got his hair cut 
I believe Brian O’Driscoll has some tips there.
Colum also mentioned their new Rather Portly Beef & Stout Pie. One of our all-time fave winter dinners is Beef and Guinness made with the Sophie Grigson recipe (variation here) and mashed spuds. The boys have a challenge on their hands to beat that, so I’ll definitely have to give it a go.
tags: Cully+and+Sully, RTE1, Ernst+and+Young, Entrepreneur+of+the+Year
2 Comments
Ulster Bank finally joins the 21st century
Posted on July 10, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Business.
Only six years after everyone else.
Their upgraded Internet Banking service now supports Firefox/ Mozilla/ IE7/ dunno_what_else. Previously they only supported Internet Explorer with Microsoft’s own Java VM and, wait for it, Netscape 4.7!
How embarrassing must it have been to work in web development in that company? I sent them stinky mails about once every six months for the past few years including links to the Microsoft site where the continued use of the MS VM was listed as a no-no. It all fell on deaf ears.
The only reason they finally had to upgrade is that Internet Explorer 7 will be released late this year and the site would have been unusable by all their customers. Nothing like a shotgun to the head to motivate the lazy and the gormless.
How many years will I have to wait before they roll out the new site for business accounts too?
Note, it does allow Konqueror to be used but gives a warning that it is not supported - on every shaggin mouse click! Apart from that Konqueror works fine. They may even support Mac users too.
[tags]Ulster Bank, Anytime[/tags]
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YouGetItBack - What a great idea
Posted on June 30, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Business, Uncategorized.
I know they have been around for a bit but I just found out recently about yougetitback.com. It’s one of those ideas that just makes you go “perfect!”. And it is so simple. Sign up with them and pay €9.99 for two stickers which you can attach to valuables like mobile phones. The sticker has a telephone number, code and message about a reward to the finder if it is lost. The chances of it being returned in the case of loss are now far far higher. Bloody brilliant. The €9.99 will give you cover for the items for three years. Bargain.
[tags]YouGetItBack[/tags]
3 Comments
The power of branding
Posted on June 18, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Business, Food.
Yoplait have recently completely changed the labels on their yoghurts. Our kids are now refusing to eat them “cos they are not the same”.
I’m willing to be that a huge percentage of yoghurt sales are for kids. Did any brand manager actually ask any kids what they thought? Any blip noticed in sales? Blip down, right?
Sometimes, just sometimes, leaving things as they are is the smart thing to do.
[tags]yoplait, yoghurt, branding, packaging[/tags]
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Can’t let this pass without comment
Posted on March 3, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Blogging, Business, Technology.
PXN8 creator and Sxoop founder Walter “not Wally” Higgins is interviewed over at eHub.
He is getting 1000 impressions a day at PXN8 - that is damned impressive. If you haven’t checked it out, you really should. It allows you to edit pictures online including pictures you have stored over at Flickr. Can Photobox be far behind?
You da bomb Walter.
[tags]pxn8, Walter Higgins, Sxoop[/tags]
