Tom Doyle :: TALK

As a mark of respect for the Bray firefighters who lost their lives this week in a tragic against while on duty, Bray Chamber of Commerce has issued a call for all retailers and businesses in Bray Town, to extend their sympathies to the families and friends of the two brave local men.

In a statement from the Bray Chamber & District Chamber, they ask all retailers and businesses, including owners and staff to show their repects in one of four ways:

1. Stand outside their premises to honour the Removal and Funeral processions 
2. Close the doors of their business premises 
3. Dim or switch off the lights of their business premises 
4. or Cease trading

The Funeral Procession for Mark O’Shaughnessy is tomorrow, Saturday 29th September; the Cortege will travel via Castle Street at 4pm, through Bray Main Street and along Novara Avenue, stopping at Sidmonton Road, to arrive at 4.30pm in Our Lady Queen of Peace Church. The Funeral Mass will be on Monday 1st October at 10am, and afterwards to Springfield Cemetery.

The Funeral Procession for Brian Murray is Monday, 1st October; the Cortege will travel via Castle Street at 5.15pm, through Bray Main Street to arrive at 6pm to The Church of the Most Holy Redeemer. The Funeral Mass will be on Tuesday 2nd October at 11.30am, and afterwards to Springfield Cemetery.

RTE are allowing users to watch all four episodes of their much hyped drama Prosperity on their website. Unfortunately you need RealPlayer to view them. On this rare occassion, I would recommend installing RealPlayer on your computer just go get a glimpse of what you have missed (if you have of course).

Prosperity is a four part drama series in which each hour long episode looks at the life of four individuals, that I guess you could say have missed out on our so called Celtic Tiger. Although I wasn’t that impressed with the acting, I was actually engrossed in the story behind each episode. It’s definitely worth the watch - View

Read an interesting blog post today about how Gmail can be exploited quite easily with a little backdoor hack. Have a look here >> Google GMail E-mail Hijack Technique

I’m guessing more and more people will want to try bring down the empire that is Google now, just like they have done with Microsoft for so long!

What a sad day in Irish history. A routine stop by a traffic corp Gard, leaves him in hospital with gunshot wounds. The young Gard stopped the car because he had an inkling that it could have been stolen. He was right, but how was he to know they would be carrying a weapon.

Have we finally got to a stage in this country where shotting or killing a Gard is tought to be meaningless by these thugs? There was a time when murdering a Gard held a sentence of death. Now it seems, a Gards life is just another obstacle in our criminal’s minds.

I was on Damien Mulley’s blog yesterday (as I do quite regularly) when I spotted an article that he had posted on The Vulgarities of Web Ads. I agree with a lot of what he says in terms of how some of the advertising options available to advertisers are pretty poor and in some cases very obtrusive. 

However, I can’t understand his reasons for suggesting that those that use ads on their website are money grabbing scroungers. He backs this up with a terrible analargy, “If a friend called over for a cup of tea, I wouldn’t subject them to a charge to use the bathroom, or free usage in return for listening to an ad while they use the bathroom.”

My first response to that is that no, you wouldn’t charge your friends a cent. Why would you? They’re your mates……..

But would you let over 700 strangers into your house on a daily basis?

If you did, would you cover the charge for the upkeep of the facilities?

Well Damien’s blog has on average more than 700 unique strangers per day. These visitors are finding his site looking for things like “broadband ireland” to “arcade fire dublin”. These people also come for free information. Judging by his return visits, never come back.

On top of that, he suggests that the visitor is being charged to view the website. But that is so far from the truth. It costs them nothing to read your blog and it costs them nothing to click on an ad.

He went on to change his stance on it and suggest that you were in fact costing the the reader time, because they have to navigate around the ads. Another lame point in my opinion. How hard is it to spot an advert and move your eye away from it? It would take like all of a split second. Hardly costing them a lot of time. They could blink and lose that time……

He also asks, “Do you walk around dressed like a formula 1 driver with logos all over you?”. My response to that was that if I was in contact with as many people as his blog on a daily basis, I’d certainly consider wearing a t-shirt with a logo on it if I was likely to make a few bob.

Anyway, this article isn’t about Damien Mulley’s post, it’s about posing that question. Is advertising on personal blogs right or wrong?

The pros are:

1. It costs money to pay for hosting. With popular blogs, the traffic is likely to cost them a lot of bandwidth, which costs money.
2. It takes the bloggers time to come up with articles that are likely to provide valuable and free information
3. It’s passive income - the blogger is likely to enjoy writing their blog, so making money for doing something they love is only a good thing.

Cons are:

1. Articles being written or tailored for a monetary return - Suggested by Damien, I can definitely see a lot of people doing this - but that’s if their only aim with their blog is to make money. Those that aren’t interested in making money and doing it for the love or writing are unlikely to do this.
2. It makes you look cheap? Maybe if you are a company, I could agree. But with a personal blog, people are so used to personal websites with ads that it’s hardly going to affect their opinion.

In my opinion, anyone that isn’t monetising their blog, is missing an opportunity to make a few extra bob for doing nothing that impacts on their typical daily life.

What do you think??

As you may know, I have another business as a side line to my day job. Well, only last week we got a strange request from a so called customer.

Basically, a company from France approached us to buy a few works of art from our website. All was going well and we just said we’d ship the goods when we received the cheque (he wanted to pay by cheque).

The cheque arrived promptly, within a day or two. The first signal for us that it could be a fraudulent transaction was that the letter arrived with a stamp from South Africa. The next item of strangeness was the amount on the cheque. It was double the amount we had requested.

On questioning the client about the cheque, he said that the extra cash was to pay for the shipping of the paintings. We noticed a few other small things like the issue date fo the cheque etc. But as this guy had an answer for everything, we decided to have a chat with our bank, to see what they thought.

When my partner went into the bank, the girl behind the counter listened to his story and said she’s have to talk to her boss. So off she went. She came back about two minutes later. She returned and said “that looks fine”. My partner was like “Can you tell me for sure? And what happens if it’s not?”.

Her response was beyond belief for me. Basically, all we could do was lodge the cheque, it would take 6 WEEKS to clear and that if it didn’t we would be held responsible for any false claims. How ridiculous is that?????

Needless to say, when we contacted the client and let him know that we wouldn’t be shipping the art until the cheque clears in six weeks, we didn’t hear back from him………. yet….

It’s that time of year again, the voting for the IIA Net Visionary Awards have begun. Our head designer, Darren Murphy, has been nominated in the Web Designer Excellence category. So please go vote for him today - click here!!

Also on the list of my recommendations are:

Alan O’Rourke - www.spoiltchild.ie
Keith Bohanna - www.bohanna.com
Fintan Costello - www.datacleaneurope.com
Michele Neylon - www.blacknight.ie
Geoff Boyle - www.123.ie
Dave Davis - www.redflymarketing.com

I have to admit, this years list is full of people I’m not that familar with. I also noticed, my old employers, have included their MD under web designer excellence and web developer excellence, when he is in fact an accountant…. weird that. I wonder if there are anymore of those?

Anyway, best of luck to them all!!!

P.S. Please go vote for Darren today - click here!!

I’ve recently taken up cycling to work, on the days that I can. Those days are those that I don’t have meetings, so I’m not suited and booted so to speak. My reasons for taking up cycling to work was because of recently becoming a father. Before my beautiful daughter came along (ahhhhhh), I would spend my evenings working and then trying to fit in a jog or a game of football to keep fit. So I thought the best way to maximise my time was to get a bike and cycle to work at least twice a week.

The cycle to work is just under 8 miles, so it takes me on average, 35 mins to reach my destination. For me this was a good way of getting a workout in and maximising my time in the evenings to spend with the family!

But….. The more I cycle, the more I feel I’m really taking my life into my own hands. Every day since I began cycling, I have had situations which just make me rethink whether or not my cycling idea was a good one for my health.

Irish drivers really don’t have any regard for cyclists on Irish roads. I have had people open the car doors when parked, pulling out in front of me, turning corners right in front of my path and encroaching on me while I’m on a cycle lane.

The closest call I’ve had yet was when a woman was coming out of an estate, where the traffic was built up and the only place she could go was the yellow box. I’ve no problem here coming out, but when she doesn’t even bother to look, now that annoys me. I was easily doing 20 miles an hour on a cycle lane, and she just pulls out in front of me without looking. I didn’t even have the time to stop and I ended up crashing into her. Granted, I did have enough time to slow down a lot, so there was no damage and no injuries, but she thought nothing of it. Looking at me as if it was my fault. I calmly(;)) lost my head at her and told her that she should go and get lessons etc. But she ust brushed it off as if she wasn’t wrong at all.

Now I do agree that no-one has a divine right to the right of way, but this was just pure ignorance and really poor driving. But that has been one of many incidents that I have encountered since taking up cycling.

I also agree that some cyclists are just as bad with their manners on the road, but at the end of the day, cyclists are the ones driving a big piece of metal, so if there is a collision between cars and cyclists, we know which of the two would come out best.

As I am also a driver, I decided to put together a list that will hopefully help both sides see the grieviances on road safety between the two types of road users.

Top 5 driver errors when dealing with cyclists

1. Miscaculating the speed of a cyclist. A lot of drivers think that because it’s a bike, that they can just cut across their path when taking a right turn. Bikes can travel at speeds of easily up to 30MPH, just like a typical car on a public road. Don’t under estimate the speed the cyclist is travelling at.
2. Opening car doors without checking. Happens way too often.
3. When they see a cyclist, some drivers like to move in closer to the path to stop them from passing them…. how childish….
4. Pulling out onto cycle lanes without looking left. Probably another of the most common ones. Drivers come out of an estate right onto a cycle lane as if it’s the edge of the road.
5. Cutting across or speeding up in front of cyclists to turn left.

Top 5 Cyclist Errors when cycling

1. Driving the wrong way up cycle lanes. One of my pet hates. Nevermind the gobshites that cycle the wrong way on cycle lanes that reside on a road, but those that cycle on the pathway ones too. A drivers natural instict is to look right when coming onto a road, this is because that’s the direction the traffic should be coming (closest to them). When someone is cycling the wrong way, it’s likely you won’t be seen.
2. Weaving in front of cars - this is both from avoiding potholes in the road, to traffic hoping. etc. etc.
3. Breaking traffic lights - Traffic lights are there for a reason. Unless there are absoultey no cars coming, you should never break a traffic light. In fact, the rules of the road state that cyclists must obey the laws for all road users.
4. Side by side cycling - Contrary to popular believe, this is illegal. You can’t cycle side by side with other cyclists - especially when it is effecting other traffic. Such as cars not being able to pass you out etc.
5. Hard to find a fifth - maybe it’s those cyclists that don’t think about what they look like from behind when they have big builders bums and stuff…. yuk, enough to make someone crash for sure….

I’m sure you all have your own thoughts - maybe we can add to this list!

It’s been a long time coming, but Google Presentations is finally here! On their official blog, they have a nice movie to explain Googles thoughts on how we all should rethink how we work with sharing documents. Click here to view the article…

Nathan Weinberg has posted a nice article with screenshots of how it looks and functions.

Microsoft must be quaking in their boots…… if this is free, who needs Powerpoint anymore?

I read an interesting article on a small experiment carried out by Brian Clark, who wanted to see if asking someone to “click here” actually made a difference. His experiment showed that using the word “click” increased the click through rate of a link. As much as 8% more chose the link with “click” in the link. For pure SEO’ers that’s a horrible thought, they like to use the anchor text to fill with their precious keyphrases to get maximum weighting from Google.

But worse still, what about those people who are more concerned with accessible websites?

W3C recommend that web designers avoid the use of the phrase “click here” and instead use a more contextual phrase, e.g. “Download this software” etc. The reason they say do this is to help it make more sense to people using screen readers.

Call to actions are so powerful they are hard to ignore, you need to decide what is more important to you!