Web 2 Ireland

Large US Retailer GameStop (Market Cap – $4bn, 6k+ stores) has acquired a majority stake in Jolt Online Gaming, a Dublin based publisher of free-to-play browser titles, led by founder & CEO, Dylan Collins.

This is the 2nd exit for Dylan, as his previous company Demonware was acquired by Activision in 2007. Original investors in Jolt Online, were founder Dylan Collins, angel investors, AIB Seed Fund and Enterprise Ireland.

We spoke with Dylan earlier this week, and he confirmed the deal. Dylan will continue to lead Jolt Online, and they will be ramping up their operation in Ireland over the next 12 months.

Great result for Dylan and his team – and more proof that the Gaming scene within Ireland is strong.

At the recent Eircom Golden Spiders Awards, Realex Payments founder and CEO Colm Lyon was named as 2009 Internet Hero.

Recognition is long overdue as Colm has built Realex into a leader in the payments sector, whilst also spending four years as director and chairman of the Irish Internet Associationand founding the Internet Growth Alliance in 2009.

In a recent Silicon Republic interview, Colm outlined his vision for

He believes it is vital that Ireland realises the internet is a sure route to overseas markets, which must be exploited by increasing the number of start-ups.

We need to have more and more successful Irish internet businesses. One route I recommend would be to have Enterprise Ireland set up a group focused on accelerating internet start-ups, with a fund of €2 million per annum that would put €50,000 into 40 start-up companies to increase the number of companies being supported, rather than just putting money into existing businesses.

In conclusion, Lyon admits to feeling humbled at being recognised as an Internet Hero. I value it a lot, to be honoured by my peers.

Also check out this recent video from the recent UCD event – BEYOND BORDERS – GOING INTERNATIONAL WITH YOUR BUSINESS

The Alliance Internet Growth Acceleration Programme has kicked off with fifteen Irish internet businesses selected, attending a 2 days residential covering “strategy and value proposition revenue/monetisation models” at the Knightsbrook hotel, Trim.

The launch of the iGAP programme was sponsored by Realex Payments

Companies selected include

Travelaffiliate

Lantenant

Sonru

Getitkeepit

Trezur

Eventelephant

MicksGarage

Cloudsplit

Eurolanguages

dbtwang

Spoiltchild

coclarity

Onformonics

Copperfasten

Panodo

Congratulations to the winners at the recent Irish Software Association (ISA) Awards

Company of the Year 2009: Openet
Emerging Software Business Award: Avego
Sales Achievement Award: Percana
The Technical Innovation Award: iTab
Corporate Social Responsibility Award: Norkom Technologies
Collaboration of the Year Award: Local Social
Software Person of the Year: Paul Kerley, CEO of Norkom,
Student Medal: Yuandong Zhu of UCD

Interesting event titled “Engaging Consumers through Apps, Marketing, Social Media and Entertainment” is on 26th November 2009 at the Radisson Hotel, Golden Lane Dublin from 9am – 4pm

The Speakers and Panelists are Monty Munford, Ex Vice President, PlayerX. Russell Buckley, Vice President, Admob. Mark Congiusta, Head of Interactive, Irish International BBDO. Colm Grealy, CEO,Adforce / Digital Reach Group. Pat Phelan, Maxroam. Barry O'Neill, Namco Games. Alex French, COO, Bitbuzz. Donald Douglas, Managing Director, Return2Sender, Dermot Daly, Founder, Tapado. Karl Aherne, Category Manager, Digital & Entertainment,O2. Daragh Ward, CEO, Axonista. Eanna O’Bradaigh, Ireland Business Development Manager, Apple. Aisling McCabe, Platform Manager, RTE

Tickets are €169 (incl VAT) you can use the code 'webireland' for a discount

Congratulations to Ivan, Sean and Dial2Do team on closing their Series A Funding from the Sean Melly led Powerscourt Capital Partners and Enterprise Ireland.

John Collins has a lot of the details of the deal in the Irish Times

Some highlights from deal

- Success follows Success – Ivan’s previous company Eware – provided Sean Melly and other Angels with nice exit
- White Label model for Dial2Do gaining major traction for team (more news on that later !!)
- Ivan and Sean managed to successfully spin-off Dial2Do from Rococosoft, whilst also raising new capital for Rococo

A business breakfast hosted by Mason Hayes+Curran, in association with the Irish Software Association and the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), about the legal challenges and commercial possibilities of the Semantic Web, the next evolution of the World Wide Web on Wednesday 25th November between 8.00 9.45am. This is a must attend event for anyone in the technology sector as well as those in business and the public sector who use the Internet to interface with their clients and the customers they serve.

Having maintained its position as a world leader in attracting foreign direct investment from the world’s leading technology companies, Ireland must now position itself as a strategic leader in researching and developing new technologies with leading technology companies. Through the work of the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) at NUIG, Ireland has become a central player in developing the protocols and technologies which will play a central role in the development of what are now know as semantic technologies.

Further information about the event can be found here

What: Business breakfast on the legal challenges and commercial possibilities of the Semantic Web

Where: Mason Hayes+Curran, South Bank House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4

When: Wednesday 25th November 8.00 9.45am

Web Reservations International (WRI), owner of the Hostelworld.com and boo.com has today announced its acquisition by affiliates of private equity investment firm, Hellman and Friedman LLC.

Last month, we reported a €275m price tag for WRI.

Congratulations to the team, and to founders Ray Nolan & Tom Kennedy, as well as early Angel investors Paddy Holohan and Paul McGuinness

Plink are a small Irish start-up developing image-driven search engines (you take a picture of something, and we recognise the object in the picture).

Their app PlinkArt just made the finals of Google’s Android Developer Challenge

The Plink Art app is a visual search engine for art – take a picture of a painting and our system recognises it and returns the history of the painting, info about the artist, etc. Right now it recognises tens of thousands of famous paintings. We’re working on building it into a next-generation museum tour guide.

The overall winner of the Google contest is determined by public vote. Anyone with an Android phone can download the “Android Developer Challenge 2″ app (just scan this barcode to get the app) to test out and rank the entries.

Maybe with last week’s launch of the first Irish Android handset (HTC Hero from Meteor), we could get some home-team support for Plink App.

Outvesting.org, the online campaign which has raised a €5,000 fund through donations on Twitter is now seeking applications from Irish entrepreneurs. The entire fund will be gifted, no strings attached, to one lucky start-up after a review and voting process.

“We simply asked people to pledge €50 each in the hope that one hundred others would do likewise. Those pledges came rolling in and over the course of four weeks were converted to donations amounting to the target €5,000″, said John Keyes, one of those behind the project.

Applications can be submitted to the Outvesting.org website until November 21st and the winner will be announced on December 7th. Those who donated to the fund will review applications and vote on the start-up with best potential.

“There’s obviously a groundswell of opinion that entrepreneurs should do more to help ourselves at this time of banking and economic crises. We just tapped into the generosity and goodwill that exists within the start-up community in Ireland”, said James Corbett, the other half of the Outvesting team.

Congratulation to John and James for a brilliant idea – and best of luck to all the entrants.