9th of June 2009 by admin
Ronan Geraghty who works for the BizSpark team in Ireland tweeted about the new CloudApp() developer challenge for both U.S. and International .NET & PHP developers creating cloud applications or services (hereafter “application”) on the Azure Services Platform.
Both U.S. and International winners will be featured on azure.com.
8th of June 2009 by admin
Patrick Collison, founder of Auctomatic, which was acquired last year [and alumni from Y Combinator] has a piece in today’s Irish Times – titled “The Grand Plan”
Patrick hits the nail on the head in his observations about seed funding in Ireland
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Some extracts from article
“Ireland has an abysmal record of encouraging technology companies, especially start-ups. This is masked by our stellar ability to attract companies for financial reasons. Though we have a few truly great companies, we have mostly failed to create a start-up community worthy of the name. (Quick try to think of an Irish technology company with revenues of more than, say, €50 million.)
And we might wonder: How could we possibly create a multitude of companies on the scale of Google, Yahoo, Sun, Facebook, Twitter and Cisco?
Paul Graham, a well-known Valley investor, suggested a would-be start-up hub should give $1 million to each of 50 start-ups, just to get them to relocate. $50 million is a tiny amount of money when weighed against the benefits it would bring (it's less than a quarter of the cost of the regeneration of Croke Park). And yet, such a move would, overnight, turn Ireland into one of the biggest start-up hubs in the world.
Assuming we got start-ups to relocate, many would need funding. Silicon Valley has a huge number of angel and venture capital investors. Though Ireland could probably eventually grow something comparable given enough time, some sort of bootstrapping is likely to be required.
Two final ideas. Though full of good people, Enterprise Ireland still take several months to make most investment decisions. This is crazy it encourages good companies to get their money elsewhere.
5th of June 2009 by admin
Well sort off…
ODCSSS is 12 week undergraduate summer research internship program between the University College Dublin (UCD) and Dublin City University (DCU) Ireland starts on June 2nd 2009. The theme for 2009 is Technologies for bridging the digital-physical divide: sensing the environment.
The name ODCSSS or (Odysseus) stands for the Online Dublin Computer Science Summer School.
In 2009 18 projects, where each student receives a weekly stipend of € 300 which is paid as a tax-free scholarship. [€3600 for 12 weeks]
Biometric response and personal recall in sensed social contexts
Development of novel protocol for inter-vehicular video transmission
Distribution of video services in two-hop wireless networks
Efficient video content distribution in a heterogeneous network environment
Environmental monitoring using mobile sensor movement in cities
Learn to play like Minnesota Fats – augmented reality in the pool-hall
Long-term sensing in aquatic environments using autonomous yachts
Sensetile in the city: road-wær
Sensing and modelling radio channel conditions for mobile users
Sensing handshakes for social network development
Sensing learner interest through eye tracking
Sensing the molecular world of our environment using chemo/bio-sensors
The social life of search
Using evolutionary methods to play a sound synthesizer via camera and microphone
Using your mobile phone to control large screen public displays
Utilising context to provide adaptive, personalised and interactive spatial services
Visualisation of blog sentiment information
Visualising environmental sensor data on the interactive wall
Good initiative and would be interesting to see if any startup activity/commercial relationships build from this mini-research projects.
4th of June 2009 by admin
SiliconRepublic have an interview with Dylan Collins from Jolt Online Gaming
Dylan talks about the Jolt deal with Playboy, the funding for his company and the startup scene in Ireland – and early stage seed funding in Ireland
“At 29, Collins is a consummate entrepreneur who began his first business, a mobile software company, while at Trinity College Dublin. His success with DemonWare and the growing reputation of Jolt shows Ireland can develop its own digital industries.
There's no excuse for this country not to be a successful technology start-up hub. Gaming is just one segment and it is becoming cheaper to get a business off the ground.
With Jolt, for example, virtually everything we do is done through the internet cloud using hosting services. All business processes, including analytics, project management and customer support, are in the cloud. You can scale up pretty quickly for very little money if you know what you are doing.
Collins argues passionately about why Ireland needs to be providing greater support for its young technology entrepreneurs. If Ireland wants to achieve this knowledge economy it should be prepared to invest at low seed levels.
If Enterprise Ireland was to make 200 or 300 grants available every year at €50,000 a pop for entrepreneurs to build an online product and go to market. For €50,000 you can get three or four guys in a room for three or four months and they will build a product and go to market. If we had 300 of these groups every year, you would create a digital ecosystem.
In the US, groups like Y Combinator are funding businesses at low levels and, in Europe, The Founders Fund is doing this.
There are venture capitalists in the US waiting to bet on young businesses. It's remarkable this hasn't happened in Ireland yet.
We should be supporting our young right now, instead of scaring them to death.
For €10m a year, you could have 200 companies a year and 5pc of them could emerge Ireland's answer to Microsoft or Nokia, says Collins.”
4th of June 2009 by admin
Microsoft is hosting its reMix event again in 2009 – follow Mix_ie on twitter for all the latest updates
Mark your calendar for Wed June 24th at the Hilton
27th of May 2009 by admin
Last weekend LouderVoice announced that it has launched its first private beta application for the Google Android platform.
ReadWriteWeb have some great coverage
“It is the first Irish Android application and one of the very first reviewing applications on the platform. The application is “all about writing and finding reviews when you are out and about with your Android phone”. It is live now in countries where Android is available.
lv_android_01.pngIn addition to finding reviews written on the company’s Website and Android, you can also browse or search reviews from its partners and clients. That includes reviews of many of Roomex’s 20,000 hotels, Puddleducks outdoor gear, Klipsch audio products and Bubble Brothers wines.”
Cathal Garvey has an excellent video overview
As per the Loudervoice blog, Loudervoice worked with Irish development partners – Marino Software in Dublin and Yazzgoth in Cork.
27th of May 2009 by admin
Irish Times has details on a deal between Muzu.tv and Warner Music.
This follows the Muzu deal with with Universal
“The agreement enables the website to broadcast thousands of videos from Warner Music’s roster of acts which include artists such as Lily Allen, Green Day, Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Metallica.
The deal means that Muzu has now signed agreements with all the major leading music labels – Warner, Universal, EMI and Sony BMG, giving it a distinct advantage over Google’s popular YouTube site, which recently had to block access to videos from the ‘big four’ due to a dispute over licence fees.
As part of the new deal, Warner Music and Muzu will share revenues generated by advertising through the site and its video player.”
20th of May 2009 by admin
Siliconrepublic has details on a new Industry led organization – Irish Internet Growth Alliance (IGA) which is “a new initiative aimed at helping Irish internet start-ups to navigate the unfortunate red-tape of Irish business and go global fast.”
This group has the support of Enterprise Ireland, the Irish Software Association, the Irish Internet Association and the Institute of International and European Affairs.
Colm Lyon, the founder and CEO of Realex Payments – and founder of the IGA will unveil IGA during his address at next week's IIA Congress in Dublin. Other notable people involved include Ray Nolan, founder of Hostelworld and Dylan Collins of Jolt Gaming
19th of May 2009 by conor
I’ve been reading a lot of Umair Haque recently and with every article, I immediately think of Decisions For Heroes, just launched by Robin Blandford.
D4H is a site/system/service for Rescue Teams. Its aim to is help those who risk their lives carrying out rescues by providing tools and information to do their job better.
As the Zombieconomy collapses around us, it will be valuable, useful and powerful tools that come from ideals which will power the recovery.
Go check out the D4H site and take part in the Tuesday Push to get the word out about this utterly inspirational service that embodies Constructive Capitalism.
15th of May 2009 by admin
Most Web2Ireland companies operate as “lean startups”
Eric Ries has a great blog on Lean Startups – and operates workshops as part of an O’Reilly Master Class
Do check out this video
We do need to share resource in our lean ‘ecosystem’ – who is best to serve lean startups – Angels, VCs, Legal, PR firms, Accountants, Bankers, etc – please share your thoughts in the comments
