It’s been just over a year now since I’ve been using Twitter as part of my daily routine. For the initial few months I was regularly updating Twitter with some interesting and some not so interesting tweets.I would set aside at least 15 mins a day to network with people on Twitter or at least post about an article I’ve found or written.

Now however, things have changed quite drastically. I can’t remember the last time I posted a decent tweet or one at all! I know it was sometime last week and it was more of a demonstration to a client as to the power of posting a link on Twitter. Although I want to tweet, I’m increasingly finding it hard to find the time or the will to post something on Twitter. It’s not that I don’t believe in the hype surrounding Twitter, it’s more that I don’t have the time to work at networking through this medium. Sometimes it’s just easier to ring someone and ask them to go for a coffee rather than spend time looking for an opportunity to network with people you know, whether that’s through Facebook, Twitter or any other social network.

Clearly, I’m not the only one feeling this way. In October 2009, the Irish Twitter community was devasted when it appeared that the much loved (and hated) Damien Mulley was no longer using Twitter. How could this be? they asked… One of the most respected online marketing experts in the country had simply given up on Twitter and disappeared into oblivion. It didn’t help of course when he didn’t post on his blog for weeks either. But the reality was, that this wasn’t really the case as he explains on his blog (read here). Damien brings up other things such as privacy in his post which opens up another a whole new can of worms. It’s sad to think that someone can’t just disappear for a couple of says because of their popularity on Twitter!

I read James Forbairts blog today, who too has decided to take a look at the time he spends on Twitter. He takes a more frightening reality on how much time he has “wasted” on Twitter over the past couple of years (read here). To see the amount of time he has spent on Twitter really begs the question as to how worthwhile it really is.

The biggest problem with Twitter is, like every other form of networking, it’s extremely difficult to quantify the value of the work you put into it. One thing is for definite, you will get some sort of return. The problem is you just don’t know how much of it was worth it.

It’s so easy to get distracted by Twitter – I personally use Twhirl to receive all the tweets from people I am following. Most of the time, I completely ignore the pop up messages that appear on my screen each time Twhirl collects the latest tweets for me. But every now and again something does grab my attention and I’m hooked.

Has it been worthwhile for my business – well I guess so, I have got work from it. All of us in business network so people get to know us and hopefully recommend us to someone when they encountered someone looking for our services. The more people you know, the more people are promoting your business and vice versa. Was my conversion ratio high? Not at all, the reality is I’m probably in minus figures at this stage! But that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t me in the long run.

Twitter has now become more spammy than email in terms of my inbox. Most spam emails to my account are filtered out before they even reach my inbox, but the new 5 odd followers my account gets a day go straight into my inbox! Out of courtesy I check out these peoples profiles. The majority are spammers.

Does this mean Tom Doyle now thinks Twitter is dead? Not at all – it’s a new medium and I need to understand it more to enable me to get the most out of it. You need to find the right strategy for your business in order to maximise it’s capabilities. There are numerous examples of how Twitter can help a business promote themselves or “engage” with their clients. But on the flip-side – you can see how quickly people will begin to bore with it.

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Google have yet again started rolling out a new application with stealth for the last couple of days. Users of Gmail are gradually being presented with a new screen when they login to Gmail. Rather than being brought directly to their inbox, they are shown a page promoting their new “Buzz” service. “No sign up required” the message happily proclaims.

But what is it and why would I want it?

Basically, Google Buzz is Google’s take on a Twitter styled system. I guess you could say it has everything that Twitter doesn’t. Do we really need another system like this? I’d have to say no, but it is a great way to get people engaging online. For example, Facebook brought in a similar system last year and it’s use grew substantially. Twitter still lags way behind Facebook in terms of users, but it’s simple system is appealing to a lot of people. People new to Twitter will probably feel that Google is trying to rip off Facebook, but that is not the case.

So where does this leave Twitter? For months there were rumours that Google was on the verge of buying Twitter – but it never it just never materialised. Most people within the online community expected it as a fact, rather than something that was about to happen. Personally, I can’t see Google buying Twitter now that it has built it’s own system that is very similar (or a complete rip!) with a lot more features.

It will be interesting to see if this has an effect on Twitter if any at all! One things for sure, Twitter will have to start working extra hard at trying to build a revenue model for the site as it doesn’t look like anyone will be interested in buying them now… unless of course Microsoft want a piece of this!

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• Follow KevinMD on Google Buzz (kevinmd.com)
• Brands Wasting No Time With Google Buzz. This Could Get Annoying. (techcrunch.com)
• Pixar exec to join Twitter as CFO (news.cnet.com)
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After Sky announced their massive £400 million profit this year, they also announced the launch of their new 3D TV service. The World’s first ever  live 3D TV broadcast will be of the footbal match between Manchester United and Arsenal this Sunday.

It’s set to be broadcast in selected pubs in London, Manchester, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Dublin. The identity of the pub in Dublin is so far not known.

But word on the street is that it is the Q Bar in Dublin City.

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• 3D TV coming to British pubs this weekend, can expect chilly reception (engadget.com)
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• Sky launches 3D channel in pubs (news.bbc.co.uk)

Everytime I need to find drivers for my RS232 cable, it takes an absolute age. It’s so hard to find a link to a trustworthy copy of the driver.

So rather than wasting a lot of time the next time round, I’ve decided to upload the HL-340 drivers to my blog! It’s probably illegal to do this, but I’ll take my chances!

Maybe you’ve been scouring the web yourself looking for them? If so, click here to download HL-340 drivers (rar file)

In the past, when fax machines were in mass use… if your business didn’t a fax number, no-one took you seriously. Nowadays, the same can be said about a company without a website. If any company is serious about succeeding, they must have a website. Unfortunately, web design is a lot more complex than plugging in a fax machine and waiting on it to ring.

It is essential that your business website conveys the correct message that will help with the promotion of your business. Whether that is just a simple brochure website that details your services, phone number and opening hours or if you require something a little more advanced like a fully blown eCommerce system, at the very least, it should add value to your business. And the best way to make sure you are getting the best from your web presence is to find the right web designer.

I think it’s fair to say, Web Designers are a strange breed. Everyone seems to know one and has had OR heard of a bad experience with a web designer. Web designers are notorious for falling off the face of the earth, never to be heard from again. Many leave businesses stranded with websites that they can’t even make the simplest of changes. Others are left with designers who charge the sun, moon and stars for the tiniest of changes to a web page. Well unfortunately it is a very common situation. But there is a common reason for this.

In many cases web designers are highly under valued in terms of the work they do. The reality is that most people don’t actually understand how long it takes to make changes to a website. Although many changes are a simple task (to someone who knows) – most of the time, they are still quite time consuming tasks.

If you ask an electrician for an hour of his time to get your electricity back on, you’d probably be happy to spend €90 for this privilege. But with a web designer, someone who sits at a computer screen all day and “presses a few buttons”, paying them €90 for this seems quite outrageous. Especially when as far as you can see, you just want them to move an image to the other side of the screen.

The reality is that many web designers have plenty of work and can’t be bothered working for someone who refuse to value the work involved in getting your “small change” done. A lot of these cheap web designers come straight out of college or initially started working for you as a nixer. Getting that extra bit of cash is great in the early days. But as soon as they try and make a living out of it, they quickly realise that it’s really not worth it. It doen’t take long to realise that the time spent on your project, would be better spent working for McDonalds, because quite simply, they’d earn a lot more money and get more respect from people enjoying that Big Mac meal than having to listen to constantly justify the bill for the work they have done on your website.

If you are only starting out on the road to web success, you should really read this article to get an idea of the typical situation a web designer endures on a near daily basis : http://www.27bslash6.com/p2p.html – if you think you will easily be able to find the best web designer for your website for next to nothing, think again. The good ones simply don’t come cheap!

Here’s another few tips on choosing the right web designer for your business.

1. Don’t judge the book by its cover
   The first thing most people do when searching for a web designer is look at the company’s portfolio. Although this will give you a good idea of what kind of work they produce, a lot of a web designers work is client driven. Web designers tend to work on the edge of the latest design fashions. They create websites every day and are therefore ahead of most clients taste in terms of design. Generally speaking the clients drive the style they want and most web design companies will give the clients exactly what they want (to a certain extent!).

   However, good web designers will work with the client and help them understand how best to interact with your website visitors. If you find navigating websites on their portfolio to be poor, chances are that they are too.

2. Clear Communication
   We come across a lot of disgruntled customers who were unhappy with their last web designer. Not because they were bad at their job, but because they didn’t listen to the client and understand their requirements. A lot of web designers have a clear idea of how a website works and believe one size fits all, which it clearly doesn’t. If your web designer doesn’t share the same vision as you, it’s unlikely to be a good working relationship – so don’t waste your time trying to convince them to your way of thinking. Get someone on the same level.
   There is also a major we like to call “feature creep”. This is where the initial brief for the project changes as the project progresses. In most cases they are minor and a lot of the time the web designer will take the hit without any complaints. However, if these requirements grow or change on a number of occasions, that can seriously dent the web designers motivation to complete the project and therefore the the relationship can become soured. To avoid this, make sure you are 90% clear from the outset as to what you’d like to achieve and let the web designer advice you on the best possible way to approach the rest.
3. Listen & Learn from their experience
   There’s nothing worse from a web designers perspective than to hear “I read that… so we should really do this”. If the web designer is worth their weight in gold, they would have been around the block and heard this numerous times from their clients.

   This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t question your designer – in fact, it’s the quite opposite. You should constantly ask your web designer for their advice. They will be glad to give it as they will feel happier that they can put their ideas into action and use your website as a great portfolio example.  They work everyday in this business and they have seen what does and doesn’t work.

   Always remember that a lot of what you read is already out of date in terms of web design and web marketing. A good web designer will be ahead of the curve and so detailed in his approach to design that he wouldn’t bore you with the details. But he would get great enjoyment out of explain the reason he used a particular font in a particular part of your site! So my adivce to you is to USE your web designers knowledge as much as possible – but make sure you are prepared to listen and change your mind.

At the end of the day, there’s nothing more a web designer really wants from you other than repeat business and a recommendation to potential clients. It is very much in their interest to make your website a success. It’s the successful clients that recommend them on for more work, which in turn puts food on their table.

The right designer will be passionate about every project they are involved in, to ensure its success. If you don’t feel the passion, don’t use that web designer. Find someone who is – but be very careful, like every industry, there are a lot of fly-by-nights. These web designers just want to make a quick buck from you and they never want to hear from you again. They don’t care if the site succeeds, they are making enough quick cash not to care about repeat business.

At this stage, it’s probably best to wish you all the success with your web project and don’t forget that our company offer web design and web development services – so get in touch if you’d like to discuss your web project with us!

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Back in November 2009, the infamous Matt Cutt’s mentioned in an interview at PubCon that there was a push within Google to make the speed of your website a factor in ranking criteria. Considering that there are many factors that will affect the speed of your website, it seems a little unfair to me. None-the-less if that’s what Google plan to do, we all need to prepare ourselves for this possible ranking factor.

What can you do to ensure your website is running at optimum speed? Well as mentioned, there are a number of factors to take into account some in your control and others not. Here’s my list of things you should work on.

1. Hosting
   First and foremost you should ensure your hosting is with a reputable hosting company that provide fast reliable hosting. Judging by the page speed test in Google’s Webmaster Tools, they will POSSIBLY take the average speed of your website over a set period of time.
2. Reduce use of and optimise your image files
   There’s nothing easier than reducing the use of images on your website. For more complex designs, it may not be the easiest thing in the world, but when designing your website you should be conscious of the fact that larger images increase download times.

   Optimising your images is also of key importance. Make sure you choose the correct file format for the image type you are using. For example, don’t save a photograph as a gif!

3. Clean Code
   Make sure your websites HTML code is as clean as can be, if possible don’t use tables. Apart from the fact that using tables for design is a no no in terms of web standards, tables tend to have a lot of code associated with them. If you can avoid using them, do so.
4. Combine CSS files & Javascript Files
   Another obvious way to reduce the load time of your website pages is to combine your all your CSS into one extermal file rather than placing it all on the page. Similarly you should do the same with with all your javascript.
5. Reduce HTTP Requests
   Following on from point number 4, you should try and limit the number of HTTP requests you make from your webpage. So for example, rather than having 2 or 3 external javascript files, try limit it to one file.
6. Gzip Compression
   If your server supports it, make sure it’s turned on! Need I say more?

Of course, there are a number of other ways to reduce the load time of your website, but by sticking to these simple steps, it should be enough to keep your website running at an optimum speed. There are also a number of free tools available for you to test your web sites page speed. The Page Speed plugin for FireFox is really good as is the website www.webpagetest.org !!

Oh and don’t forget to check out the Page Speed test tool within Google Webmaster Tools to see how your page is currently performing!

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There have been many discussions over the past couple of years about the value of 1890 and 1850 numbers to general public. In the past, when ringing someone outside your area code cost you an arm and a leg, these numbers were of true benefit to both the owner of the phone number and of course the person ringing the phone number.

From a business perspective, offering your potential customers the ability to ring you at local (or lower) call rates was a great and effective marketing ploy. To the customer, you were safe in the knowledge that a call to the said company would not result in a massive phone bill for something that was possibly a small matter.

However nowadays, 1890 and 1850 seem to be nothing but a scam with no more intentions than filling the telecoms operators coffers with vasts amount of money. There isn’t a telecoms company in Ireland today that don’t offer free national calls as part of their home phone packages. Therefore calling 1890 & 1850 numbers should be free right? Wrong….

Even though the number you are dialing may terminate at a local number, you will still be charged the rates associated with calling a 1890 or 1850 number. Whereas, if they had provided you with a landline number, it wouldn’t have cost you a penny.

It’s fair to say that most people aren’t aware of this fact, until of course they receive their monthly itemised bill that states this. For that reason many businesses will continue to promote their 1850 & 1890 numbers as it has the appearance of being a cheap way to contact them. It also removes “location” as an issue. If people don’t see the area code, they will just assume that the company is local.

The reality is that we should be pushing for these numbers to be stopped. The only people making money from them are the telecoms providers and I would hazard a guess that it’s quite substantial.

So if you are a business and want to save your customers some money, why not ditch the 1890 or 1850 number and start promoting your landline number again. If you are someone who rings these numbers, why not stop and starting seeking the landline numbers of the companies you are trying to contact?

There is a list of popular establishments landline numbers on this thread… http://www.askaboutmoney.com/showthread.php?t=74589 – it may come in handy some time!

I was delighted when Ling, the lady who set up LingsCars.com decided to join in on the conversation. Ling is probably best known for her appearance on the original Dragon’s Den TV series. She failed in her bid to get the Dragon’s to invest £50,000 in her Car Leasing business, but has roared to success in the past two years since her appearance on the show.

Her eye impairing (:P) website turns over more than £35 million a year in car leasing deals. It’s a true testament to how a great idea, a terrible looking website, with lots of traffic and constant customer engagement can be really successful on the Internet. Myself and Ling it seems will never agree on how she could improve conversions, but I have to admit that I really enjoyed the conversation with her.

Anyway, I’ve kind of gone of the topic here…

The whole thread made me think a little about the Irish and what makes us tick. Why do we insist on BUYING everything that costs more than a few thousand euro? What is it that makes us think that we must OWN our homes and cars. A lot would suggest that owning our homes relates back to the years of oppression suffered at the hands of the British, but surely that psyche hasn’t passed to owning cars too; or has it?

Car leasing has never caught on in Ireland, even though in many other countries (in particular the US) it is the norm. How many people actually know that their local garage even offer such leasing deals on cars – or do they just think, “if I want it, I have to buy it”.

There are many pro’s and con’s to leasing cars – but in todays world, with the recession still firmly gripped to the Irish economy’s throat, surely this is an option for many people who can no longer get the loan they could have in the past from the banks?

Have you ever considered leasing? And if not, why not?

Here’s another of those Internet Directory scams that is doing the rounds a lot lately.

The Internet Register Ireland is very similar to the European City Guide scam, it looks a little more legit in that it has an Irish phone number to fax the registration form to.

Whatever you do, don’t even think about returning this form. If you do, expect a bill of €958 every year for absolutely nothing (well you may get a link in a useless web directory).

You’ve been warned!

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Although they say that 99% of all statistics are made up, it’s still worth looking at some…

Google Trends is a great tool for researching keyphrase search popularity over a number of years of traffic on Google. So I used this tool to run a few searches on terms relating to web design to see if it could paint any sort of picture of what the state of the web design is in.

As you can see from above graph, the search term “web design” has been on a massive decline since the recording of the statistics began. Interestingly, if you take a close look at the latter quarter of 2009, you can also see a steady decline in searches for “web design”.

December is generally a slow time for new business in web design terms, so there are no surprises when you see the massive dips in searches across all years. Also quite interesting, is the steady performance of the term “website design”. In fact, there’s possibly a slight growth in searches for this term throughout 2009.

Does this mean that the web design industry has finally entered the recession with everyone else?

Only time will tell I guess…

Looking at the other side of our business; online marketing, it appears to be performing quite well. There is an obvious increase in searches for “SEO” – everyone seems to know what it is now or at least know someone that fancies themselves as one. There is a decline in searches for “Internet Marketing” though, maybe a phrase that has been lost to the popularity of “SEO”.

Although it’s hard to see from this graph, there has been a surge in searches for “Social Media Marketing“, which started showing up on the radar in 2007. No surprises there, since it’s the latest and greatest buzz word on the planet!

We’ll never get a true picture of the web design or online marketing industry from statistics like this. For example, the searches for “SEO” are being diluted by people trying to figure out how to market their own websites rather than actually looking for those services. None-the-less it’s interesting reading for anyone in or trying to get into this industry.