18th of October 2008 by admin
The lads in Contrast have launched a cool twitter related serviceQwitter: Catching Twitter quitters
Lots of press coverage – do check out venturebeat and other coverage from techmeme
Ireland certainly has quite a few twitter mashups @ twitter API – check twitterfone, loudervoice and tweetrush
15th of October 2008 by fergus
Congratulation to Lenny aka David Lenehan and Eoin Gallagher on Polldaddy team – and Toni, Matt and Automattic team.
Polldaddy is the default online poll service for leading blogs, social networks and websites – and the acquisition by WordPress parent – Automattic – makes total sense – and the team dynamics is brilliant.
Only 2 developers [Lenny and Eoin] on polldaddy – which was initially incubated within Infacta.
It was spun out as a seperate entity late in 2007 – with angel investment provided by Infacta and Polldaddy founder, Jonathan Hill.
Polldaddy also recruited Scott Rafer as an advisor in 2007 – and Scott played no small part in assisting the project in getting to its current scale.
The Polldaddy is great validation for Web2Ireland – especially given the level of investment, the operations, and the acquisition result.
Given the recent news on Facebook setting up in Ireland – it perhaps set a new model for the IDA/EI – International operations get setup via acquisition [which is what Israel have done for years].
To add more context in terms of WordPress scale – see this post from Fred Wilson on Facebook vs WordPress – and the Polldaddy numbers will drive this further forward.
Disclosure: I’m a personal friend of Lenny, Jonathan and Scott
11th of October 2008 by admin
A call out to Web2Ireland community – the LeWeb’08: StartUp Competition is a great opportunity for folks to connect with the web community in Europe [Le Web is one of the top events globally - so here is your chance].
SeedCamp is helping to select the companies – and facilitating the competition during the conference – 30 companies will be selected from the applications submitted and will demonstrate in front of a panel of expert judges. The winners of this competition will then have a chance to present their companies on the LeWeb main stage during a special session on December 10.
Applying for the competition is free of charge – and the deadline is October 20, 2008.
Check out video from Loic
9th of October 2008 by admin
The smart guys in Contrast have just announcedApp School 2008 – where they take one lucky idea to product in under 1 week.
They will pick an idea submitted by an Irish startup, charity, non-profit or individual and teach it how to be a fully-grown app. And, will cover 95% of the cost.
Great opportunity for some one…. sign up now…
8th of October 2008 by admin
My good friend, Susan Mernit, co-founder Peoples Software and ex-Yahoo Director/VP Netscape/AOL, sent a note in relation to the Knight News Challenge.
Its a US-based foundation giving away $5 million a year for grants in digital, open-source innovation
Some notes
The last day to submit applications for funding is November 1st.
Site is at www.newschallenge.org, with a peer mentoring site at garage.newschallenge.org.
Applications for the 2008-09 Knight News Challenge must follow three simple rules:
1. Use or create digital, open-source technology as the code base.
2. Serve the public interest.
3. Benefit one or more specific geographic communities
Surely we have some Irish startups which should apply…
2nd of October 2008 by admin
In what is a huge boost for the Web2Ireland community, Facebook are setting up their International Headquarters in Ireland.
We had previously covered the proposed setup of Facebook Operations in Ireland.
Dublin will be the centre for Facebook's international operations and will provide a range of online technical, sales and operations support to Facebook's users and customers across EMEA region.
Great validation of the talent pool in Ireland – and congratulation to IDA Ireland folks for attracting Facebook to Ireland.
Facebook jobs in Ireland due are live – and hopefully we will see local collaborations like a Web2Ireland Facebook Developer Garage in the near future.
Update
- press release from Govt
1st of October 2008 by admin
Ryan Carson is hosting his excellent Future of Web Apps Expo next week in London [8-10 October 2008]
We have 1 free pass – and also a discount code [save 15%] for this event.
We’ve decided to run a little survey – to collect some feedback from the Web2Ireland Community.
We will draw a name from the folks who complete the survey – and also provide the discount code to all the participants.
Survey deadline is 5pm GMT Thursday 2nd October
25th of September 2008 by admin
200 folk already registered for Moviestar.ie Irish Web Awards
Event is on on October 11th in Dublin – great opportunity for community to come together and it should be fantastic.
Everyone is welcome too. You don't need to be nominated, you don't need a cool web2.0 service or a fancy blog.
25th of September 2008 by admin
Dial2Do which lets you do common tasks by just calling a number and speaking – for EMAIL, TEXT messages, REMINDERS, updates to TWITTER and even LISTEN to your favourite internet content – has updated its services.
Some new features – and an improved layout. Sign Up its free
23rd of September 2008 by admin
Based on numerous requests for information on Web2Ireland companies [in a structured format] – we’re going to add support for Crunchbase on web2ireland.org
To get this done we need
1. Companies to submit information to Crunchbase
2. make sure you enter in location details
3. tag as web2ireland
4. update all sections – including funding – and references to likes of EI
5. leave a comment on this blog post – when you’ve got it all completed
On Web2Ireland we will
1. add live data to replace http://web2ireland.org/companies/
2. use Crunchbase widget in our blog posts
