Web 2 Ireland

Eircom, the biggest ISP in Ireland are adopting web2.0 technologies into their online offerings.

Eircom – who were a recent sponsor of the Web2Ireland DemoBar – are engaging with a lot of Web2Ireland companies. A good example is the new online music store where they are using the MySay service – “tell your favourite Led Zep story!!”.

Mark Taylor and his team are doing a great job of engaging with the local web2.0 community and vendors.

Conor has more details on the Eircom Music Store Launch

Jan and his team rolled out improvements over at TouristR – a really cool travel2.0 service which is morphing into a “travel social network”

Blognation has a more detailed review – do check out the screencast on Touristr.

Travel is a very lucrative e-commerce vertical – as proven by the likes of lastminute.com, hostelworld.com, tripadvisor, etc. See this forrester presentation for some additional information on travel2.0.

Based in Belfast, Swarmteams provides a Community Engagement Platform – which enables mobile groups to store their contact details on the Swarmteams server thus giving them the convenience of single click group messaging without the hassle of each group member having to try and maintain their own sets of group contacts.

check techcrunch coverage and comments from Stowe Boyd

iFoods.tv – a new Web2.0 foodie site is changing the way people cook.

It could also be described as a 'Facebook for Foodies' – which is aimed at everyone interested in cooking from outright beginners to proficient cooks.

Founded by Chef Niall Harbison – who started his career as a chef in Ireland’s premier restaurant, Peacock Alley, under the guidance of Michelin Star Chef Conrad Gallagher. Niall became the youngest Head Chef in Ireland, of a fine dining establishment, in 2001 when he took the reins at Lloyd’s Brasserie (aged 21) where he cooked for the likes of Victoria Beckham and Robbie Williams. Since then, Niall has continued to cater for the rich & famous as a private chef on both super yachts and in their mansions worldwide, cooking for Bill Gates's 50th Birthday party, U2, Lance Armstrong and Mariah Carey.

Some other related points

* iFoods.tv was co-founded by Niall Harbsion and partners.
* The site officially launched on August 23, 2007.
* iFoods.tv currently contains 100 video tutorial recipes:
* iFoods will be constantly adding new videos with the long term view of having a huge resource of online video tutorials.

Don Dodge has a great post on Web 2.0 = web app + 2 founders + 0 revenue

He covers typical business models

1. Freemium
2. Transactions
3. Subscriptions
4. Advertising

Great read.

What do i name my business ? my product ? how do i get a quality domain name ?

Evert Bopp has a great post on What’s in a name? in relation to his startup – 802.eu

802.EU is a next generation mobile Internet & application provider. We have developed a captive portal solution for wireless hotspot/hotzone operators, municipal wireless network providers & Wisp's.

The portal contains a number of modules that enables it to offer a range of web based services and applications. Think of VOIP (voice over Internet protocol), online backup, web based wordprocessing, spreadsheets, image manipulation, shared agendas etc. Additionally the portal application also contains modules for location based services such as location based advertising, geo-location services, tourism information and more.

Last but not least we have included a location based social networking module which will let mobile users network with other users within the same network.

ReadWriteWeb has 2 great posts on funding – New VC Model For Small Scale Financing and The New Rules Of Technology VC

Coupled with the “valley or bust” post from Paul Graham – and Conor’s Valley observations – plenty of discussion on funding and location

Joe has a great post on working with Enterprise Ireland

Based on his experiences with PutPlace – Joe hits all the key points – and the comments are well worth reading.

My $0.02 – the model is still based on classic “enterprise” startup evaluation – what about the Irish web2.0 companies who are springing up all around Ireland. Room for improvement…

Nephin Games are getting ready to launch a mobile gaming social network, according an
article in the Sunday Business Post.

Mobile gaming and Social networks are very hot areas – and once combined present a huge opportunity for the likes of Nephin.

Jeff Clavier, the well know Angel investor in the Valley has this to say about gaming + social network communities -

“I have been looking into the different segments of the gaming space for a few months, trying to understand the trends and opportunities that my kind of investing might have. I have been fortunate to meet and discuss with a number of CEOs in the space, including the talented CEO of Boonty, Mathieu Nouzareth, who gave me a great primer on this industry a few months ago. Kongregate was almost the ideal first investment opportunity for me since it bridges the gap between gaming and passion-centric communities, one of my main area of interest. I am very excited to announce that first dip in the gaming space, which has proven to be fascinating so far even if traditionally it has not been one to generate spectacular returns for investors. We shall see!”

Article in the Indo on Is Cork our new tech capital?

Article mentions Cubic, nitrosell, Pixenate, Loudervoice – with a mention on all the “web2.0″ activity

“Much of the activity among up-and-coming Cork companies is around Web 2.0, a broad term covering social networking and collaborative services delivered on the web. That subject was the theme of last year's annual IT@Cork conference.”