Gorgeous Little Spending App
May 13, 2010 at 9:18 am
Well done to iQ Content who created this tidy little personal budgeting app that makes coming to terms with your spending habits actually kind of fun. It hits the right notes design wise and of course it works well. I was thinking mid way through it ‘hmm how much more?’… all I had to do was glance up and I could track my progress.
Here’s a post about the thinking that went into it.
And here’s the Spendometer app.
Tags: spendometer app
Wordpress Person Of The Day
March 19, 2010 at 10:54 am
is Me! Yes I’m extremely honoured and delighted to be number 23 person of the day.
Tags: wordpress person of the day
Laugh Out Loud Funny
March 12, 2010 at 9:40 pm
I have another little business called Simple Assembly Me Hole. We provide an important social service helping people to assemble flatpack furniture they buy (mainly from IKEA).
Sometimes people query how we can charge the large amount of €40 to assemble stuff – well this video – which is laugh out loud funny – should answer that. Poor Max in this video takes 5 hours and a lot of grief to assemble a chest of drawers. We do the same for you, in about an hour, without the bad language and no stress!
Enjoy – but remember, this could be you!
Tags: IKEA furniture assembly
If You Want To Know What Drugs Do
February 5, 2010 at 9:00 pm
If you think that drugs is about having a quick line of coke in slick bar somewhere, wiping your runny nose as you down your vodka. Or dancing all night with your hands in the air, in love with strangers around you who tomorrow will not be your friends. Then read on.
I’ve recently completed a blog site for a community group in my local area. It’s called Sankalpa and they work with people who want to come off methadone and benzos. Methadone rehabilitation Dublin. Inner city areas are no longer riddled with smack (well not as much as they were in the 1980’s), but boy is it easy to get your hands on benzo’s… those horrible drugs that keep you sedated but alive. Imagine being successful coming off smack and then having to live in an area that’s coming down in opportunities for benzos?
Sankalpa work at changing people’s lives. They educate and promote nutrition, herbs, and juicing. They teach people how to cook real food and change habits of a lifetime to keep their bodies healthy. They use art therapy to help people bring out their stories about the why, the what for, and to face some of the memories that have been so long locked away. They provide training in computer skills, maths, art, ceramics… they help to place feet firmly back on the right road again.
There are so many inspiring stories coming out of Sankalpa (and the lots of other local groups around this country). It must be hard for them in this climate and the fact that they are not helping people from Haiti. Sankalpa is run by a team of really open and forward looking people. They’ve started a blog – it makes great reading… from recipes for smokers cough tea, tips on how to use lemon balm and other herbs, and interesting research in this area… but what really gets me are the real life stories.
Fair play to people like Des, David, Lynne and others who tell it like it is in all its ugly truth.
To all the people making a go of it at Sankalpa big RESPECT.
To anyone reading this who has skills in video editing, podcasting, photography… Sankalpa need you. They’ve great plans this year to produce lots of rich media. If you’d like to help in any way at all – you can!
Now for all you people out there who still think coke is cool, read David’s story. And next time you end up in some after hours house party, think about Des - sure you might have even partied in his house?
Tags: Methadone Rehabilitation Dublin, Sankalpa
Irish Web Design On The Global Map
October 27, 2009 at 7:06 am
Ireland is the second country to be profiled by Smashing Magazine in a global review of local market design and designers. Well done to Alan from Spoilt Child , Eoghan McCabe of Contrast, Ray Doyle of The Creative District, and Sabrina Dent who’s so famous she even goes by her own name! I’d be hard pressed to pick my favourite designer out of that bunch; they’re all extremely talented and have their individual styles – both online and in the flesh!
I’m happy too to see some Brightspark projects included in the showcase of beautiful Irish design in this article.
I love Ray Doyle’s answer to whether education is more important than experience when it comes to design:
I personally feel that in the digital media industry experience is more important than education. I often ask myself would I’ve been a better man, designer, drinker if I had chosen the path of the student and not that of bedroom designer/HTML monkey on minimum wage. I like think to not, well, probably a better drinker.
Tags: Irish Web Design, web design ireland
Something for the Weekend
September 18, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Amazing projections on an old stately home. Found on the web via @ciaracrossan. This one’s for you Deirdre!
Augmented Reality: Coming Soon To A Hand Near You
July 14, 2009 at 10:55 am
Just back from London where there’s a lot of talk about social and mobile, two areas that are about to explode according to my sources! One veteran who’s been involved in this space since 1994 as one of the earliest Flash developers said that it’s the ‘first time in 10 years’ she’s so excited about what’s happening in the space. More about social later in the week, but first mobile.
Mobile is not just about getting Twitter on your iPhone, telling your friends to ‘come join me on Qik’. There are way more viable commercial applications going on. One that has particularly captured my imagination is Augmented Reality (see what wikipedia says).
Skip back to 1999 when I first started working in the online space. The ultimate dream back then was to have special offers ‘beamed’ at you as you walk past expensive department stores, or specialist stores in your city. It never quite happened… until now. It’s just about to.
What Is Augmented Reality (AR)?
It’s the blending of what you see around you with digital information onto your mobile phone. The real world mixed with digital into your hand. Augmented reality is already in use in movies, games, military, and medicine. Now it’s coming to a mobile near you. It’s about to explode with a whole host of commercial applications.
Good example of how it will be used in advertising. Thanks to this excellent article from The Next Web where I picked up the vid.
At Wimbledon, Mobilizy worked with IBM to develop an application for the T-Mobile G1 phone that displayed real-time information about matches in progress, as well as dining and transportation options for fans.
Interesting Commercial Applications
Applications like Layar and Wikitude.me, as well as projects in the research stage at Nokia, use a phone’s global positioning technology to determine a person’s location and use the phone’s compass to discern the direction the device is pointed. In this way, the phone can guess what the user is seeing. The augmented-reality application then pulls in information about points of interest in that sight line and displays it on top of the camera view.
Layar is a free download for people in Amsterdam to look through the camera on their phones and see information about nearby restaurants, ATM’s, and available jobs displayed in front of buildings that house them. The information is provided by companies like Hyves, the Dutch social networking site, and ING, the financial services company. The businesses pay a fee to SPRXmobile, the privately held company based in Amsterdam that developed Layar. (That was lifted from the New York Times at the weekend – note this article was in the business section, not entertainment or technology)
I see huge potential for location-based advertising, travel devices, training and education. It will even bring a whole new dimension to working out those opaque Ikea assembly instructions!
Imagine standing on O’Connell Street Dublin. Point your mobile at the GPO and get a history of the building, architectural notes, opening hours, etc. Turn around to face Clerys and you could receive special offers and price comparisons on in-store items. Fancy a bite to eat? Get restaurant reviews, directions on how to get there, even touch the phone icon to book ahead for a good table. Introducing Augmented Reality for tourists will add a whole new dimension to their experience. It will put control back in the hands of the tourist who can guide their own journey around the city. It will make tour guides defunct! It is my belief that Dublin lends itself particularly well to this as the city centre is small enough to get mapped easily. And we are a tech friendly lot – yes really!
Here’s a basic iPhone app for getting tube directions (the sound’s a bit poor):
Gimicky Use in Media
Here’s a gimicky use of Augmented Reality that Radio 1 did last year. They were giving out tickets for a free concert. Anyone who didn’t get a ticket got a commiseration email with a special code in it. Print the code, hold it in front of the computer and hey presto – a band in your hand. Skip to 44 seconds to see it in action:
Sony PSP Augmented Reality Game “Invizimals”
Due to be launched in August for the Christmas ‘09 market, Invizimals is a new hunt and capture game that utilises augmented reality. Developed for PSP, you can have a sneak preview here:
While gaming, education, and advertising lend themselves particularly to AR, my only concern is around imagination. What happens to our children’s imaginations when their consumption of books and magazines displays augmented reality versions of the characters?
PS – read Neville Hobson’s analysis of the Morgan Stanley intern report on what’s hot for teens. Or if you haven’t got the time, let me tell you:
What is Hot?
- Anything with a touch screen is desirable.
- Mobile phones with large capacities for music.
- Portable devices that can connect to the internet (iPhones)
- Really big tellies
What Is Not?
- Anything with wires
- Phones with black and white screens
- Clunky ‘brick’ phones
- Devices with less than ten-hour battery life
Tags: Augmented Reality, Layar, Travel & Tourism
Proposals Tracking App – nice!
July 6, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Not the type for Lotharios in need of proposal tracking. More for businesses and freelancers needing to keep on top of business pitched for. I’ve always used a rather ugly spreadsheet for this purpose. I use one work sheet for the live jobs out. I have a win sheet for the business won. And a ‘no’ sheet for the business that didn’t come my way. I’ve always known I should do the numbers and know my % of business pitched for and won, but I’ve never gotten around to it.
Thanks to Web Strong – now I can easily know my success rate – at a glance. And all my proposal information and docs are handily in the same secure space. TrackPath. Try it. It’s free. And incredibly beautiful in its simplicity. Well done to Iarfhlaith from Web Strong for this little beauty.
There is just one thing that I don’t like: when entering the value of a proposal, it doesn’t give me the option of entering a range. I often put out proposals with options for clients. So now I’m faced with the question of updating TrackPath with the higher end (being optimistic) or the budget end (being realistic).
Read more about how Web Strong created this tidy little app in just 10 days.
This whole proposal tracking thing made me consider the process by which I select expiry dates! I usually choose a date in the future at random. I asked Twitter and the answers varied from ‘30 days for normal people, 60 days for local councils’ to ‘I roll dice for it’ (Dungeons & Dragons ones).
What do you do?
Stick your answer in the box below you!
Tags: Proposal Tracking App, Proposal Tracking Application, Track Path, Web Strong
African Stories
June 12, 2009 at 8:59 am
I’m going to Reboot in a couple of weeks. Last night, I was checking out reboot.dk to see what to expect this year, I landed on Jonathan Marks’ proposal “In Search of African Genius” and got stuck there! It’s a long time since I’ve watched videos from start to finish without scrolling. It’s even longer since I’ve reached a page where I’ve wanted to watch every video posted there (and the related ones on the side!). All credit to Jonathan for the quality of interviews and videos, produced on his travels around the globe working with technologists, management and creatives on the mix of traditional and emerging media.
I’m also attending the Digital Media Forum event at the Kenyan Embassy today. This event is aimed at people with an interest in Africa, doing business in Kenya, and learning about Kenya’s drive into the IT sector. I hope I get a chance to learn more about inspiring people like Salim Amim from A24media.
A24Media (Kenya)
Watch the Jonathan Marks interview Salim Amim.
Salim Amim is based in Nairobi, Kenya. He set up A24Media a few years ago to act as a pan-African source of content for media. Content producers on the ground in Africa supply stories to them. Producers are paid well (60%) and get to keep copyright of their work. Last year about 150 stories were sold yielding €2500 – €3000 per story for the content producers. This money can then be used to buy equipment or to train friends. It’s only the beginning and I think it’s very exciting to think that citizen journalism is being brought to the storytellers of Africa.
Salim’s mission is to ‘build the history of the continent’. He’s doing this by providing distribution of video content, by digitising his father’s archive of images, and by backing up news stories. His father was Mohamed “Mo” Amin, a Kenyan photojournalist noted for his pictures and videotapes of Ethiopian famine. Apart from famine, Mo contributed exclusive photos of the fall of Idi Amin and of Mengistu Haile Mariam, and was author of numerous books, including Journey Through Pakistan, and covered various themes like East African Wildlife and the Uganda Railway. Amin died when his Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 on November 23, 1996 was hijacked and he tried to rally passengers to overpower them.
Human Smuggling Off The Coast of Libya
Mama Mikes (Kenya)
I’m also reminded of Segeni Ng’Ethe of Mamamikes.com who I also met at Reboot last year. His business is about enabling migrants overseas to send remittances home – but they are converted into vouchers for supermarket shopping, school fees, even birthday cakes! Sending cash might fall into the hands of someone who’s fond of the drink, so his business is about getting cash into the hands of those who are doing the caring. I love the concept and looking at the site, it seems they’re thriving! Read blog post with Segeni Ng’Ethe.
I fell in love with Africa when I travelled there in 1997/98. It was this love for the place and the people that gave me such passion for working on The Rose Project website. Today I’m happy to be writing about non-development-aid related stories, positive tales of entrepreneurs going for it. I’m going to keep an eye on Jonathan Marks’ videos – I promise to keep you updated too.
Tags: A24 Media, Africa Video Content, Jonathan Marks, kenya, mamamikes, Reboot 12
Better Than The Radio Ads
May 13, 2009 at 11:30 am
I heard the radio ad this week for Ben Dunne’s latest venture – tenderme.ie. Decided to give it a spin on Monday and was very pleasantly surprised!
Mr D’s age and voice doesn’t make him sound like he would really value good web design. In all honesty I was expecting a template joomla looking thing, so was happy to see a nice fresh and vibrant looking home page, and inside pages are even cleaner:
It’s so easy to use, I actually got confused! I was looking for a register button and couldn’t find one. That’s because you simply have to click the create a tender button, select your category, add your email address and you’re away! I like it.
A mild fail is the fact that the email it spits out with the validation link also has a password in it. I didn’t notice that, so keen was I to click the link and get going. When I later went to post a tender and needed to login using my password I was a stumped for a bit. My suggestion would be to simply bold up the password text in the email and add some text saying “YOU WILL NEED THIS LATER”. Or send the password back in a separate email once you’ve validated yourself.
There are a few annoying spelling mistakes, not just from the users of the site offering “electriction availebel”, but in the category listings:
I’m wondering how they plan to police it?
Do they have a community moderator whose job it is to remove cranks? At the moment there are a few abuses showing on the home page – Aussie Slayer required. Someone else is giving away a colour tv (wrong site go to Dublin Waste). And some dumb ass architect who managed to get through 100 years of architect school doesn’t realise that the tenders section isn’t where you advertise your services.
It’s easy to get the community to police itself by adding ‘report abuse’ links. Every time a member spots something that is blatantly wrong, they click the button and it alerts the administrators who can then either take it down or contact the offender and ask them to edit.
If those kind of annoyances persist, the site will fail. But if they are quickly removed, then I think this site could be a winner. I heard Ben Dunne on the radio yesterday and he mentioned that he set up the site to get business moving again and to bring together buyers and sellers. That is to be commended. I think it’s a great idea. And it is so of our time. It wasn’t so long ago that plumbers, carpenters, and electricians didn’t want to know you for less than €500 and even at that you had to wait 8 months! Now there’s a whole load of jobs on from people who are not prepared to be fleeced anymore. If you’re a skilled person and you want to pick up some work, you’d do well to get on there. There’s a small fee (€3) if you wish to respond to a tender, which I expect is there to stop the messers and ensure that responses are genuine. If a new piece of work is worth more than €3 to you, then get on over to tenderme.ie
Tags: Tenderme.ie
