Web 2 Ireland

Qik and MaxRoam. If you travel and if you like video, then you’ll be a very happy bunny this morning.

Cubic Telecom have just announced announced a partnership with Qik to bring massive savings to Qik users who love to stream video while travelling.  The Qik SIM also provides big savings on voice calls, email, web browsing and texting while they travel. I love their tagline:  ”Go mobile, not broke”.

According to IDA Ireland – “Big Fish Games, Inc., that the company is opening a European Headquarters at City Gate Business Park at Mahon in Cork City. Big Fish Games is the world's leading online destination for interactive entertainment, including downloadable, community and massively multi-player online games. The new office will focus on multilingual European customer support, games testing and localisation, and is expected to create up to 100 new jobs over the next three years. Recruitment is already underway for people with localisation skills and the capability to communicate effectively with its customers, particularly in French, German and Spanish.”

Positive news for Ireland – and for the community.

Ireland’s top SEO guy, Richard Hearne of Red Cardinal, recently announced an amazing offer.

Quite simply:

• 5 websites will each receive a free Conversion Rate Optimisation campaign worth €3,000;
• Red Cardinal will cover the costs of design and development, and pay all fees for a professional MVT software suite;
• Each campaign will be used as a case-study for a new venture Red Cardinal is launching;
• The offer is open to all Irish websites.

All details over on his blog.

He also has a follow-up post here if you want to know more about Conversion Rate Optimization.

The Propel Programme is run by Enterprise Ireland and is designed to provide entrepreneurs with the necessary business skills to establish a successful global business. (Note that URL is not loading for me at the moment)

Propel will run for one year and is open to those currently located, or planning to locate, in one of the six border counties of Cavan, Donegal, Leitrim, Louth, Monaghan or Sligo.

They will provide:

• Financial support of up to €30,000 (was €38k until recent cutbacks)
• Business start-up training
• Specialised expertise and mentoring
• Access to potential investors
• Access to local and global contacts and networks
• Hot desk facilities

I assume Propel was modelled on the huge successes of Genesis, Hothouse, M50, EAC etc rather than being created from scratch by consultants. If you are in Munster, applications for Genesis are still being accepted.

Final date for receipt of applications for Propel is 24 April 2009. Email startup@propelprogramme.ie or call (01) 605 9180

The main Irish property site daft.ie has partnered with eBay.

Check out Irish Property

Maybe the start of more meaningful classifieds activity in Ireland by eBay…

Irish gaming company Jolt Online [previously known as OMAC] have launched Legends of Zork

30 years after its first conception, Zork is back!

Dylan Collins, founder and CEO of Jolt had this to say in press release

We've designed LoZ to be as accessible as possible, hoping to appeal to both original Zork fans (and there's enough of them working on this that we should know what we're talking about), while also trying to bring in a whole new generation of players

We’re very excited to announce the launch of the Web2Ireland SeedFund I.

The fund seeks to

* invest in 30 to 40 seed stage startups
* average bite size of €100K
* able to lead, co-lead or follow other firms or angel syndicates
* focusing on consumer Internet and mobile
* capital efficiency, great teams, differentiated ideas and flexibility
* working hand in hand with the best VC firms in Europe and Silicon Valley
* An advisory board of leading Internet stars
* Address the market need !!

Stay tuned for more news