Author Archives: Dave
Bizcamp Galway, 2010
For the first time, Bizcamp is being run in Galway this September.
I’ve been to those run in Dublin and Limerick in the past, and they’ve been a worthwhile trip. It can be a great place to meet mix of like-minded people – from those who have been through the mill of setting up their own businesses, to those who are thinking about taking the first jump.
The idea behind BizCamp is that it’s a user-generated conference – that means that there are no expensive invited speakers, it’s a free conference, and it’s up to those attending to share what they know with the audience (not sales pitches). You can sign up for a talk on the Speaker Registration page (it’s as easy as entering your name, email, and a title & short description of your talk).
If you’re not sure about giving a talk, you can still register to attend over on the Bizcamp Galway site. This is also one of those times when letting people you know that it’s coming would be great – there’s a lot of empty registration forms to fill, but they won’t be empty for long.
See you there.
Social Bits – Social Media & the Semantic Web (Site Launch)
I recently finished work on the design & development of a website for Social Bits, a new Irish Social Media & Semantic Web consultancy. The Social Bits team have a huge amount of experience, and have come together to help companies understand how Social Media can bring value to their business. A welcome change from some of the self-styled “social media ninjas” out there. With their experience in Semantic Web research, they’re also well placed to help companies understand how to use the Web of Data as it evolves.
This was one of those enjoyable projects. Not only were the team in Social Bits easy to work with, they knew what they didn’t want, and were very open to hearing options & alternatives on things that would work. A great mix.
One of the joys of this type of work is that you get to know the business & services of the people you work with quite well; semantic web technology is one of those things that I had heard about, but never spent any time trying to understand. Having worked with the Social Bits team, learning more about it has definitely become more of a priority.
Social Bits have a number of events coming up, with one in particular that struck me as being a nice idea: a discounted workshop on Social Media for the Unemployed.
Putting it all together
With these type of posts, I’d normally leave it there, but I’ve recently read some useful posts that have given a bit more depth on how the design came about. As this was one of the (admittedly uncommon!) cases where the design of the site didn’t change radically from the first set of sketched drawings through to the live version. I though showing how it came about would be nice. Read More
Discover new music: Spotify and Twitter
A while back I decided to give up on CDs and dive into online music by buying a monthly subscription to Spotify. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s well worth checking out; you can stream whatever music you like, as often as you like for about €10 per month. The subscription is one of those things I see on my bank statement and still think, “it’s well worth it”, which I reckon is a good measure of value.
Spotify Playlists
One of the nice features is the ability to create and share playlists – it’s a great way of discovering new music. However, Spotify don’t (as far as I know) give subscribers a place to share their playlists. I’ve started using a Twitter search to find playlists, and it’s working great – because so many people tweet their playlists you’re never stuck for some good music to listen to. It’s how I’ve been starting my work day for the last couple of weeks: open spotify, search on Twitter for a new playlist to kick things off , start work…
Discovering Playlists via Twitter
To make the whole thing easier, I’ve done a little Twitter search app to look for Spotify listings (you can find it at spoteye.ambientage.com. If you check that out, you’ll get 100 playlists that people have shared through Twitter to keep you entertained. It’s storing playlists for about 10 minutes, so there is usually a good turnover of new music.
More features….maybe
This was a short project that solved one small problem for me (finding playlists), so there is some room for improvement. At the moment it’s displaying only the first 100 play-lists found. I have a version running that loads more automatically from a database. It also collects the hash tags people use to describe their playlists too – they could be published to give a way of narrowing down the playlists.
Building Small
Building this was a one day project that was part experimentation, but mainly just solving a small problem for myself.
Taking on small projects like that are a great way of learning things that may not come up in a paid project. In a way it goes against the fundamental idea of business (creating a product or service with a business model capable of generating revenue), but sometimes value can come in other ways. The experience of creating something new can sometimes be just as valuable. I’ve done a few small Twitter search applications, and the access Twitter give to huge amounts of real-time, user-generated content can lead to really useful things (this may or may-not be be one of them!).
I also want to credit longUrlPlease for providing a great service that expands the many shortened urls found on Twitter. Without it I would have been wary of publishing lots of shortened links without any way for the user to see where they went. I came across longUrlPlease when reviewing the applicants for Outvesting (I didn’t give them any of my points, but I wish I had now. Sorry guys!).
As always, any feedback & ideas for improvement would be great – leave a comment here or through the app’s form, or get me on Twitter @davkell
Good with words? Use Twitter? Check out twg.ie
I recently did some work with Alan from Tribal City Interactive to design & develop a little word-game based around solving anagrams using Twitter – which goes by the name of Twg.ie (Twitter word game).
The idea was for something that was easy to use and let people play using a service that they’re already familiar with. Playing is as simple as following the Twg.ie Twitter account where each day you’ll get an anagram to solve; be the fastest to solve it and you hit the top of the leader-board. Told you it was easy.
Even though the game targets quite a niche audience, Alan’s idea of a word game like this on top of the Twitter platform seems obvious now. There’s a large enough user base on Twitter to make targeting a narrow niche possible, it’s a text-based interface making it suitable for a word-game, and Twitter’s real-time search makes it possible for players to interact on Twitter & see a near real-time leader-board of others playing the game on the twg.ie site.
You probably won’t be seeing my name on the Twg.ie leaderboard too soon – I discovered when developing it that solving anagrams quickly isn’t a talent I have (even in the 24 hours Twg.ie gives you). If you fancy testing yourself, check out the Twg.ie site.
Golden Egg – a new fix of style, beauty & more (Site Launch)
Over the last couple of weeks the new Golden Egg website has been having its some finishing touches. Golden Egg are the brains behind the glossy GalwayNow, LimerickNow and WeddingsNow magazines, as well as the upcoming 2010 Irish Fashion Innovation Awards.
Golden Egg wanted a way to replace their old family of sites which were originally designed as static brochures for each of their magazines. As a producer of high-quality content, these static sites weren’t doing them justice, and weren’t giving readers a reason to return to the site. Instead, they wanted a site that was clean & easy to use, that put the magazines’ articles & readers to the fore, and was easy to update with new content daily.
In addition to the sections they’ve traditionally done in their magazines (like Beauty, Style, People & Parties, Food & Wine and What’s On), Golden Egg have started to embrace the web by getting more interactive with their readers by using features like a blog by their Deputy Editor, a monthly newsletter, and some other new features that will be making an appearance over the next few weeks!
There’s a separate design for the Fashion Innovation Awards section of the site – the finalists for each of the award categories were announced last week, and tickets for the Awards ceremony in March also just went on sale – more details are available on the site.
If you’re interested in keeping up with what’s going on, need some style in your life, or fancy a read of some of their features, check out the new Golden Egg site!
Midlands & West Enterprise Programme, 2010
The MWEP run jointly by Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology and Athlone Institute of Technology is looking for a new batch of start-up companies for the 2010 programme that kicks off in April. From the press release:
This is a one-year programme providing entrepreneurs with business skills, networks, facilities and supports necessary to navigate and execute the business start-up process….The MWEP provides participants with business acumen, office desk space, mentoring, networking, facilities, and supports necessary to help them in establishing and running their own businesses. Participants should have a business idea with growth and export potential.
There’s some more information on the programme brochure [pdf] (including profiles of two recent companies that came through it two years ago – eMedia and Active Mind).
Ambient Age has been one of the participants in the 2009 programme which is coming to an end in the next couple of months, and if you have an idea for a business, the MWEP is a good way of helping you to get it off the ground.
Open House Galway, 2009 (Site Launch)
The website for this year’s Open House Galway event went live yesterday. Running from the 16th-18th of October, Open House Galway gives people a new way to explore the architecture of the city. During the event:
… buildings will be open for a time for special tours given by hundreds of professionals and enthusiasts, who generously volunteer their time. All events are free, and entry is on a first-come basis, with certain events requiring pre-booking. This is your festival and what you think matters.
You can preview the buildings on the site, and make bookings for any that may require it. If you’ve got a young family, there’s also a Children’s event being run in the Galway City Museum to keep them entertained!
Littlequiz.com (Site Launch)
Today Littlequiz.com opened its doors for business. The excellent design is the work of Sabrina Dent, with the front- and back-end development being done by me.
It’s a simple & effective idea – users take a simple (eh, little) quiz every week. Get the 3 questions correct, and win a nice prize. Sign-up to the mailing list, and if you’re name comes out of the hat…win a prize.
For businesses, if you sponsor a quiz you’re getting access to the student market in a way that gets them engaged with your website.
There’s also a Littlequiz blog, packed full of money saving tips & tricks to help poor students through the college year. So, what are you waiting for? Go. Now. Win things.
TwitEye listed on Twitdom
TwitEye has just got a listing on Twitdom, the Twitter applications directory. They gave it a nice write-up, and a good suggestion for improving how it works too:
TwitEye is an outstanding app that can help you find ideas for new applications, services, software and plugins based on tweets looking for something to fill a need.
The UI scrolls with tweets from users. It would be great to have a pause feature! You also can find a selection of ideas plucked from the stream in the Ideas Blog.
The pause feature is certainly something I’ll be looking into adding.
You can see the TwitEye listing, and their full directory of twitter applications, over on the Twitdom site.
TwitEye.com – Now giving you good ideas daily
I’ve added a daily RSS feed to the TwitEye app that was launched a few months back; the RSS will give you one (hopefully good) idea for an application, service, iPhone app, or piece of software each day. TwitEye uses the Twitter search API to look for requests from people for various applications & services, and streams them on the TwitEye homepage.
From looking at how it’s been used so far, there are return visits and people arriving through search. To make it easier to get at the good ideas, I thought an RSS feed with some of the better ones would be helpful. You can grab the feed, or look at the published ideas, on the TwitEye Ideas page. Over there you can also look at different categories of ideas, and search the daily archive to see if there’s anything of interest. Or, if you’re intersted in taking a look at the full stream, check out the TwitEye homepage.
Recent Posts
- Bizcamp Galway, 2010
- Social Bits – Social Media & the Semantic Web (Site Launch)
- Discover new music: Spotify and Twitter
- Good with words? Use Twitter? Check out twg.ie
- Golden Egg – a new fix of style, beauty & more (Site Launch)
- Midlands & West Enterprise Programme, 2010
- Open House Galway, 2009 (Site Launch)
- Littlequiz.com (Site Launch)
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