Web 2 Ireland

We pleased as punch to unveil our new design for the Web2Ireland site. A major thank you to James Gallagher who did all the work for us. We’ll be adding a few tweaks here and there in the coming days.

James is hiimjames on Twitter, you should add him.

Now if only there was someone out there who would do us a logo

The Irish are about to hit San Franscisco for Web2Expo

A host of Irish companies are attending the event – and some of the companies attending are supported by the Digital Media Forum, Enterprise Ireland, Invest NI and Momentum

The Irish are organizing a drinks reception at the W Hotel on Thursday, 24th April at 5pm. See upcoming and facebook event for details – feel free to drop by and say Hi at this drinks reception.

The Companies attending Web2Expo

PutPlace
nooked
Pix.ie
Customer Minds
Reva Health
ifoods.tv
Polldaddy
Rucudo
Benchd

Awakin.com
Aurion.co.uk
Beingonline.co.uk
Biznet-solutions
Design by front
EG-consulting
Learning Pool
quadco
synergy-learning
Waddell Media

I predicted that 2008 would be the year of mobile and it seems to be coming true in a big way. I’ve been hearing some very exciting things about not just one but two mobile apps in the social space being cooked up in Ireland!

Both are still under tight wraps but I believe they are getting lots of attention from the investment community. Could we finally be seeing some of that €170m being put to good use?

Hot Dublin based startup dial2do demod their product at CTIA this week. Dial2Do is a spin out from Rococo.

Its a great way to connect with services such as twitter, email, etc.

Information week has coverage CTIA: Dial2Do Uses Voice Prompts For Hands-Free Users — Wireless — InformationWeek

Rumour they are working on a cool twitterfone related project…

PutPlace, provider of automated, real-time back-up, publishing and sharing services for digital data, today announced the successful conclusion of a funding round and the strengthening of its board.

Industry veterans Pat Lynch and Michael O’Callaghan join existing board members Joe Drumgoole (founder) and Brian Caulfield. The funding round was a co-investment between existing and new investors and Enterprise Ireland. Katherine Lucey has also joined the management team as COO.

Pretty impressive line-up – and not to forget Justin Mason [Spamassin creator] is also at Putplace

Mike O’Callaghan (Chairman)
Michael O’Callaghan is COO at Babelgum, where he is responsible for the company’s business operations as well as infrastructure and network operations. Before joining Babelgum, Michael was Vice President and General Manager of Oracle’s European Development Centre in Dublin and Chairman of Oracle’s main operating company in Europe. Prior to Oracle, Michael established and led Microsoft’s European Product Development Centre in Ireland and in total has over twenty five years industry experience in indigenous and multi-national companies. Michael holds a B.E. from University College Cork.

Brian Caulfield (Board Member)
2007 recipient of the Irish Software Association “Technology Person of the Year”, Brian is a Computer Engineering graduate from Trinity College Dublin. In 1992 Brian co-founded Exceptis Technologies where he was CEO and CTO. Exceptis developed dispute management software for the electronic card payments sector that was sold to blue-chip banking customers in Europe, the United States and Asia. Exceptis was sold to Trintech Group (NASDAQ: TTPA) in November 2000. Brian has co-founded two other venture capital backed software start-ups, Similarity Systems and Prediction Dynamics. More recently, Brian has worked with Trinity Venture Capital, representing them on the boards of AePONA and SteelTrace.

Pat Lynch (Board Member)
Pat founded Microtech Cleanroom Services in 1998 having previously worked in senior financial roles with US multinationals Seagate Technology and Summit Technology. Pat is a serial investor in high-potential technology start-ups and has significant experience in bringing companies to scale.

Katherine Lucey (Management Team)
Katherine has a strong track record in international software marketing. Most recently, she led the execution of an aggressive marketing plan for SteelTrace that resulted in a doubling of revenues, quarter-on-quarter. SteelTrace was sold to Compuware in 2006. She previously worked with Openet Telecom and the Irish Software Association.

The Collison brothers were on the Late Late Show tonite – telling the Irish nation the story behind Auctomatic . Auctomatic was recently sold for a reputed $5m – making the lads instant millionaires.

Thanks to Bernie for capturing the interview – some great dialogue, tips and insights into the Irish startup ecosystem

QIK | Streaming video right from your phone

The only words needed are the congratulations of everyone in the Web community in Ireland to Patrick and John Collison. Result!

John Breslin over at DERI in Galway has announced that they are working with Touristr to develop the next big leap forward in trip planning using Semantic Web technologies.

TripPlanr, an integrated trip-planning advisor, is the result: a joint project between Tourist Republic and DERI that will tackle the information overload and planning problems by filtering and making recommendations based on the preferences of the traveller and their social network. The TripPlanr application builds on the existing TouristR platform and DERI's specialised expertise in recommender systems, information mining, the Semantic Web and Web 2.0.

Today, online travel booking is used mainly for trips with few parts, like airline tickets. Unlike existing trip planning applications, it is envisioned that the new TripPlanr application will allow users to book more complex and personalised trips with a number of parts. By collecting relevant data and suggesting it to the right user at the right time, TripPlanr increases the probability for that user to book or purchase the product or service in question.

The project is being funded by Enterprise Ireland.

IBM to establish Europe's first Cloud Computing Centre in Dublin and create 21 new jobs

“The need for cloud computing is fuelled by the dramatic growth in business collaboration, connected devices, real-time data streams, and Web 2.0 applications such as streaming media and entertainment, social networking and mobile commerce.

Using Web 2.0 technology, IBM Idea Factory, one of the Dublin centre’s first offerings to clients allows communities of business professionals to be assembled into social networks to facilitate the development of new business ideas. IBM Idea Factory for Cloud Computing captures business processes – from their beginnings as ideas to commercialization – speeding up brainstorming among employees, partners, software developers and other third party participants.”

One of my favourite mobile social networks, Belfast-based Swarmteams, is based on the the ideas around bioteams promoted by its founder Ken Thompson.

I’m delighted to see that he has published a book which presents a way to build agile, high performing teams based on the communication principles that underpin nature’s most successful groups. In the book Ken explains how “bioteaming” moves from command-and-control leadership to connect-and-collaborate, where every member of an organizational team is a leader.

That’s definitely one for my next Amazon purchase.