Tom Doyle

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Posts Tagged Christmas

The Outbreak of Peace – Join the Cause

Dec 11

Posted by Tom Doyle in Other, Politics

Irish singer/songwriter (and good friend), Francie Conway, has launched his new single “Outbreak of Peace” just in time for Christmas. Rather than waste an opportunity to promote his believe in World Peace, Francie posted Christmas Cards, with a CD of his song attached to the Worlds major leaders.Some of the people that have received this card include Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley, Barrack Obama, Dalai Lama, Gordon Brown and many others.

So why not join the cause for the “Outbreak of Peace”, you can become a member of the Outbreak of Peace Petition on Facebook by clicking here, or you can send the Christmas Card email with a message to your friends by clicking here.

If you’d like to download the track for free or just listen to it – click here

Send it on and let’s see if it makes a difference…..

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Shopping for Jewelry (Jewellery) Online

Dec 8

Posted by Tom Doyle in Bad Sites

As I continue to search for Christmas presents online, I have to admit I still get quite frustrated with Irish retailers online.

Over the weekend I search for an online jewelry store to purchase a gift for my mother. Instantly I was bombarded with jewelry websites that I can only say have been “left behind” in terms of the Internet. It was extremely difficult to find any decent Irish jewelry shop where searching.

I did find one that looked like it did everything I was looking for – the famous House of Ireland store. Everything looked good for a while as I browsed through the site, there was plenty of choice unlike other sites I had visited. One thing stroke me though, the prices were displayed in US Dollars by default. As their shop in Dublin is hugely targeted at the US tourists, I thought, ah no big deal, I’ll just choose Euros from the drop down menu.

After doing this, I noticed the price difference was staggering. A Waterford Crystal vase was $260, but when converted to euro it was a huge €240. With today’s exchange rate, it should have been in the €200-205 price bracket. I assume the difference in price is because they have displayed the dollar price minus the VAT and when you change to euros, it instantly adds the VAT price on. This is all well and good if they didn’t display dollar prices by default.

From a technical point of view, there is quite a lot they can do to prevent this sort of confusion for the customer. IP location software is widely available on the Internet, it would have taken a programmer a few hours to display the currency based on the customers location. Not 100% reliable I know, but in most cases would work pretty well.

The site itself is built in some flavour of either osCommerce or Zen Cart. Both of these packages have ready build modules to handle situations like this.

Better still, a simple notification that the dollar price didn’t include VAT would also prevent people from getting suspicious in the difference in price.

All in all – it looks like there really are no decent Irish Jewelry stores online. If you know of one, please let me know!

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VAT down (UK) : prices down on play.com, well not really…

Dec 3

Posted by Tom Doyle in Other, Technology & Home Entertainment

I wrote an article on Monday about some online stores not reducing their prices in conjunction with the recent VAT reduction in the UK. Original article here >>

Today it seems Play.com have reduced their price on one of the mentioned items; that is the Playstation bundle. So if you are planning on buying a PlayStation for Christmas – follow this link – and not the one posted on the original article – £10 cheaper today! :)

The other items mentioned in the original article have yet to see a reduction in price. Surely this is illegal?

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Buy baby clothes and baby gifts online

Dec 2

Posted by Tom Doyle in Internet & Computers

Another shameless plug today – sure it’s nearly Christmas like. A client of ours has just launched her new website and is looking to get a foothold in the Irish baby clothes and baby gifts market.

HipBaby (www.hipbaby.ie) – featured in the Irish Independant today, is a new site selling premium quality baby clothes from a wide range of brands such as Snuglo, Green Baby, Pudding and NooNoo.

Anyway – prices seem to be cheaper in comparison to high street retail outlets.

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More spammers… Avvio on behalf of Dylan Hotel Dublin

Nov 27

Posted by Tom Doyle in Rantings

I absolutely hate spam, I have no problem with someone emailing me personally to tell me of a product or service they provide, that could in some way be of benefit to me. I much prefer this than a phone-call from them. They have a better chance of me reading it, than taking a call.

So when I get emails about spending Christmas at Dylans Hotel in Dublin, from a so called reputable firm in the shape of Avvio, that has obviously been sent to every business in Dublin, it really annoys me.

I don’t want to know about spending Christmas in a Dublin hotel, since I spend all of my Christmas’s at home with my family in ….. DUBLIN!! I have absolutely no intention of changing this situation because of a spam email you sent me.

I also hate being included on a database of a company that I have no relationship with and then being asked to visit their website to remove me from a list that I never asked to be part of. A huge waste of my valuable time.

If you ever thought I could be a potential customer, well now it’s extremely unlikely that I will ever be a customer. Rant over….


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