Digital Media Island

I saw this tweet from Ryan Carson and I had to give him a call to ask him the story about it.

Ryans been a big Fan of the Irish Scene since the FOWA roadtrip and Web2ireland Demobar last year. So I guess he final got himself an excuse to come back.

When: Future of Web Apps comes to Dublin Friday March 6th 2009! 10am – 5pm

Where: Liberty Hall Theatre Eden Quay, Dublin

After Party: The Dandelion Club and Digital Island Meetup should be doing something with them for that.

There will be a limited number of seats at €115 on a first come first served basis then it goes up to €175.

This is the event link but it’s not live till tomorrow (Thursday 13th): http://events.carsonified.com/fowa/2009/dublin

They really have some great speakers too!

• David Heinemeier Hansson – 37signals and Ruby on Rails
• Blaine Cook – ex Twitter & Yahoo! Brickhouse
• Mike Butcher – TechCrunch
• UK Contrast.ie – UseQwitter.com
• Ryan Carson – Carsonified and DropSend
• Matt Ogle – Last.fm Simon
• Simon Willison – Co-creator of the Django web framework
• Emma Persky – TrampolineSystems.com

It’s great to see these kind of conferences coming to Ireland and shining a light on some of the really great things going on here. I hope to see you there.

Ok folks two things. First of all there’s a change of venue for the Digital Island Meetup on the 6th of November. We’re heading to the (very posh) Four Seasons Hotel in Ballsbridge for the meetup. Sorry for the late change but it’ll be worth it.

The second thing is that Microsoft will be launching a new program for startups at the Digital Island Meetup. Details of the program are under wraps at the moment but Paul Rellis, GM Microsoft Ireland and Cliff Reeves, GM Microsoft Global Emerging Business Team will be there to tell us about the program. So we can safely assume that this is a big announcement for Microsoft.

Here’s some of the admittedly vague details of the program. The announcement is at 6:30pm so get their early to get all the juicy bits and don’t worry it won’t drag on.

Members of the program will get

1. All the software and tools they need to both develop and deploy their solution,
2. Technical and business support
3. Lots more visibility to potential customers, partners and investors.
4. The program also offers start-ups in Ireland and Northern Ireland some great discounts on hardware and hosting packages

After they do the launchy thing we’ll be having a short panel discussion on fostering start-ups and innovation in Ireland, featuring some local start-ups, and representatives from industry bodies and even a few VCs as well. Come along and grill them if you like…

Then we’re back to MoMo territory with some short presentations from three mobile startups and then we’re into OpenDemo and networking.

Go signup to come along now so we know who’s coming.

Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials program has run for some time in the US and more recently, in 2007, it kicked off in Europe. The program is aimed at helping Startups get going and then to help them scale their activities as they grow in a cost effective way. I ran into Sun Startup Essentials EMEA head Stewart Townsend recently at the FOWA conference and here’s what he had to say about the program and their reasons for targeting Ireland as one of the first places to come to as they spread the program across Europe.

AM (Anton Mannering): Hi Stewart you run Sun’s Startup Essentials program in the EMEA region. How long has Startup Essentials been going elsewhere?

ST (Stewart Townsend): Globally it was launched in November 2006 in the US and came to Europe on December 5th 2007.

AM: Who that we’d know has been a client? Give me a few examples..

ST: People like Last.fm, Glasses Direct and fav.ot.it are just some of the services people might know that are Sun Startup Essentials clients.

AM: What problems do you help solve or alleviate for startups?

ST: Discount hardware down to a startup price, so that they can gain access to Enterprise class engineered servers at startup prices, with a global support practice, thus you can ring up, if there is a problem and talk to an engineer. (Here’s Fav.or.it CEO Nick Halstead talking about his experience with Sun and the support they’ve given him)

We also give startups who require hosting, access to discounted hosting for cloud computing, colocation, dedicated and managed hosting, making it easy to scale from Day 1, and we’ll continue talking to them about how to scale their company. (Stewart lists what they offer, I’ve listed it here so you can read it easily)

• FREE technical support, ask a Sun engineer questions on MySQL, Glassfish, and get an answer, to your problem
• Introductions to investors and capital houses.
• Discounts on the latest events…..
• Community hosting offers – FREE hosting for FB, MySpace, Opensocial

Each startup is different so I try to offer as much as I can then tailor where required, if someone wants to grow their business or a channel, I can introduce them to our sales team or channel to market.

AM: Why are you getting into the irish ecosystem now?

ST: We have been running the programme in the UK, France, Germany and Israel for 8 months to trial it, and make certain we have the right offering for the market, now we have all in place,then we are growing out across EMEA over the next two months, and I made certain that Ireland was on the first growth output, as it has such a hot vibrant startup community, that Ive wanted to help and support for such a long time

AM: What is Suns philosophy on this? What are you trying to achieve?

ST: In terms of Startup Essentials, we want to help support the community at large and give them access to our Open Source stack and Enterprise class offerings, so that when they grow and scale, they are prepared for it, and have an infrastructure in place that will mean they wont fail, whilst also by introducing them to our large startup network they can grow as a business as well, and thus benefit not just technically but commercially as well.

AM: And do you have any specific goals for the program in Ireland?

ST: Help grow and support as many startups as possible.

AM: Will there be some sort of official Launch in Ireland? When will it be?

ST: The programme is live in Ireland now at http://ie.sun.com/startupessentials/. We just need to organise a launch event or activity to officially wet the babies head.

AM: Well we’ll see if we can give you a hand with that…

END

So the program is live now in Ireland and it’s free to sign up. It’s definitely worth checking out as their definitely seem to be some great benefits to the program as described here. I’ll certainly be keeping a keen eye on the developments here and I’d love your feedback on any wins and losses.

Thanks to:

We’re delighted to partner with MoMoDublin to bring you another of our joint events. Digital Island Meetup combined with Mobile Monday Dublin on a Thursday night of great mobile, web and Digital Media in general.

From Digital Media Forum and the Digital Circle and partnering for the first time with Mobile Monday Dublin, and open to anyone who wants to attend. There may even be cash behind the bar on the night! Come along and meet new people, and make new contacts and have some fun too.

Update:

Because we’re having the Launchy Thing with Microsoft at the start of the night we’re going to have a discussion panel where I’ll be joined by Brian Caulfield, Cliff Reeves – Microsoft Head of Global Emerging Business, Pat Phelan – CEO Cubic Telecom and some Startup CEOs to talk about technology and innovation in Ireland, this is one not to be missed.

We’ll still have the Mobile speakers too. Some of them will be speaking from around 7:30pm and may be Demoing during OpenDemo running from about 8pm along with other startups. With networking till late…

When & Where:
Thursday 6th November from 6:30PM • Updated: The Four Seasons Hotel, Ballsbridge • Dublin
Dress code, for people who care about such things, is whatever you like.

OpenDemo is now a fixture at DIM for those who want feedback on cool stuff they’re doing right now, only 8 spaces but if a lot of people are interested we’ll expand it. Go register to demo now slots are allocated on a first come first served basis.

Sponsors:
Sponsors get to support a great event but also will get promotion with links and logos via posts on Digital Media Island and via announcements at the event itself although we’re flexible and willing to work with people to run the best events possible.

We’re always looking for new partners and sponsors so please drop me a line at anton [at] digitalmediaforum [dot] net for details.

Who’s coming?

Name	Company	Talk to me about…
Anton Mannering	Digital Media Forum.	Digital Media Forum, Events, Udoogoo, Benchd. Sport, Networking and social network theory and the future of search and social networks. Oh and of course what you’re doing and what you need…
Jimmy Costello		Content, innovation, mentoring and the outlook for Drogheda United with Anton as a center back…
Neil Leyden	Digital Media Forum	Digital Media Forum or my own company Calico Media – a digital media consultancy for content creators. Check out my site: www.calico.ie
Eddie Callaghan	Jinny	Mobile marketing and advertising
Cian Ginty
Keith Bohanna	dbTwang	raising money, pre-startups, a non-tech in a tech world
Paschal Nee	Mobile Travel Technologies	Mobile travel technologies
Jessica Mannering		Holistic Nutrition, natural health, Udoogoo, and what you’re up to…
Peter Crowley		sharing with me a good idea that I can get involved with
Pieter Oonk	Locle	The price of butter
Frederic Herrera	Institute of Art Design & Technology Dun Laoghaire	Collaborations with media and design college in relation to planned business development/training and mentoring. – R&D collaborations with media and design college.
Neil McCall	Digicc	Flash / actionscripting. CSS / XHTML, php/mysql, Adobe products.
Timothy Hawkins	RevaHealth	Clouds
Cristina Suarez	Digital CC	CSS, HTML, standards, usability, accessability, Javascript, Ajax, Design, programming, social, media, free booze…
Naomi Kelly		The recession. And… Front-end dev, twitter.
Marie Carroll	cvizz.com	eh, anything, my first time at this event so i’ll talk to anyone…about anything
Stan Kuznetsov	MiTAG	Mobile technologies. Contacts with MNOs
Adrian Cafferky	MiTAG	Mobile technologies. Contacts with MNOs
Mark Cahill	Consult Mark	Business strategy, IT strategy, online Social networks and marketing.Software, Web 2.0
Matt Johnston	Infurious	Digital Comics / Multimedia delivery on the iPhone, iPod touch, Android. The Digital Content Sector in Northern Ireland. Co-Working.
Irene Kavanagh	Digital Media Forum	Digital Literacy – Learning
J.D. Fitz.Gerald		bears
Pat Phelan	MAXRoam	Mobile tech, emerging mobile tech and telecoms
Liam Lowe	PayByMobile	mobile & payments
Fergal Breen		Mobile & Technology
Conor Lynch	connector.ie	making connections online & offline
Liam Connoly	Small World	Mobile Advertising
Oran Kelly	PayByMobile	Paybymobile, Java, Spring.
Niall Smart	Cloudsync.fm	Ruby, clouds, music, 42, and of course, Ireland’s newest tech startup: CloudSync.fm
Russel Cooper	Changing Worlds	The mobile internet. Or anything else.
David Kelly	Digital Signs	Digital Signage Content and installations.
Ronan Higgins	Locle	your solution for mobile app provisioning over-the-air
David Doherty	3G Doctor	Mobile Health and Lifestyle technologies
Robin Blandford	ByteSurgery	Social Innovation
Karl Deeter	irish mortgage brokers	finance/blogging/ideas
Michael Walsh	GlobalDMX	Digital Media Exchange – trading legal content online
David Hayes	Edenbee	collaboration, carbon calculation, social networking, Ruby, development
Eamon Leonard	echolibre	Building web apps & coworking
Barry Alistair	IrishDev	At IrishDev.com we publish Tech news – Your News
David Coallier	echolibre	Technology, Voip, APIs, Architecture, Music (Traditional),Travelling… Something interesting really.
Ben Sykes	Module Minis	Creating rich user (human) experiences using flash, and javascript based web applications.
Paul Philllip		how the recession will make me richer
Daniel Becker	GlowDay	What ever you like… Ideas/Challenges/Web2.0/Widgets/Technology
Niall Harbison	iFoods	What the food is like!
Ronan Skehill	Cauwill Technologies	Smartphones, PinPoints, GPS and everything related!
Joseph Johnson		IMS, fixed and mobile telecommunications
Campbell Scott	IGOpeople	social media, marketing, mobile, food and beer
johnny Beirne	Opportune Media Ltd.	Selling music via text message, Internet start-up International, Expansion Networking
Ian Rice	Cauwill Technologies	location based services
Iarlaith Kelly	Webstrong Ltd	Building web applications, running your own business, blogging and how to avoid the big ‘R’.
Ger Hartnett	coClarity Ltd	coordination technology, collaboration, startups, funding, ruby rails, adding to coclarity team
Darragh Doyle	Blogger	Charities, using Social media to promote what you do, how posh the Four Seasons is and how out of place I look.
Niamh Smith		Start-ups – advice, necessities and interests.
Enda Madden	Outcomeinformed.com	health 2.0
Brendan Madden	Outcomeinformed.com	Health 2.0, applications, facilitating patient feedback on progress in treatment
James O’Sullivan	Gymlockr	Online Marketing, social media, sport..
Ronan Cremin	dotMobi	mobile internet, anything
Marie Boran	Silicon Republic	anything. I’m listening. Although it helps if you’re also on Twitter!
James O’Leary	Gymlockr	Getting your site SEO friendly quickly or die trying compdadre!
Christian Le Jalle	Ericsson	mobile technologies
Ciaran Bradley	Sentry Wireless	mobile, SIMs. Any cool stuff you are doing in mobile.
Diego Solorzano	Locle	The amazing Locle architecture

RSVP:
This event is absolutely free as always so please register below so you can let us know you are coming and we can ensure we know who you are. Thanks, and we’ll see you there..

SO your twitter followers have left you. But why?

Well Contrast, a fantastic little Web App development shop in Dublin, may have provided the answer.

Qwitter isn’t complex. It just sends you an email when someone stops following you. The clever thing is that it includes the last tweet you sent before they quit, so there’s a fair chance you’ll find out why someone doesn’t want to listen to you drone on anymore.

This has some implications for the way people use twitter. It may give some people pause before unfollowing a friend who’s noisy but it may give those who use twitter as primarily a broadcast tool a feedback loop for when they’re losing their audience.

It’s to early to tell what the effects might be but it’s definitely popular and growing fast. They had server meltdown within the first half hour of launch and got bac up with some amazon instances pretty quickly.

This is only one of a few top class twitter apps to come out of Ireland Lately with Twitterfone, TweetRush prominent amongst a few others.

Update: I’ve just been told by CEO Eoghan McCabe that Hosting365 one of Ireland biggest hosting companies have come to the rescue by donating 2 large cloud servers. Well done to them.

With 3000+ signups in the last 7 or 8 hours on a Friday though it makes you wonder if this is the tip of the iceberg for this little app. Is it going the way of twitterfone? Time will tell.

There is one thing that gets me buzzing before events is seeing new products and services for the first time. So we’re very lucky as we’re in Cork tonight and three, YES THREE new services will, as I understand it, be demoed for the first time at the event.

SnapScribe – SnapScribe turns your photos into beautiful books. It is an online service which lets you turn your photo collection into a beautiful photobook. The software is currently at ‘Alpha’ stage

Decisions for Heroes – Helping emergency services save more lives by making better decisions. The service is aimed at helping rescue services make better logistical decisions.

TweetTweet – Tweet Tweet is a WordPress plugin that archives the Twitter conversation, and also sends notification texts when replies or direct messages are received.

I’ll be talking to the people behind them tonight and I’ll be bringing you some more info and reviews and maybe even an interview or two.

Muzu TV were one of nine companies that demoed recently at the Techludd-Techcrunch meetup CrunchLudd.

You may have heard about this already (it was mentioned by web2ireland amongst others) but in case you missed it, out of that event the Dublin based startup have had some fantastic coverage in both TechCrunch UK & Ireland and in the main TechCrunch.com blogs.

Read more here on Tech Crunch UK and here for the main TechCrunch take

(Note: For those that read this blog that may not be aware, TechCrunch is one of the biggest technology blogs in the world.)

Eircom Innovation Fund has announced it’s winners finally and I’m delighted but not surprised to see two of the companies who demoed from the last CrunchLudd event named as winners. Obviously that has nothing to do with them winning but it just goes to show the great level of companies demoing at the events. Congratulations to all the winners and we wish then every success and will continue to support and try and help them going forward…

TouristR

TouristR who demoed at the meetup at the end of June when TechCrunch UK & Ireland came to town at the end of June is an integrated full-service trip-planning advisor, which cuts out the online information overload and minimises planning problems. It not only helps the traveller to plan a more complex travel itinerary – such as a trip with multiple destinations on a fixed budget and timeline – but it also draws on content submitted by a community of users which will help the traveller to decide on a destination by getting a sense of the type of experience available at their chosen destination.

A new breed of unique Web 2.0 travel service, TouristR will feature stories, adventures and photographs of destinations submitted by users as well as aid the traveller who needs to factor in multiple elements to their trip such as budgetary, geographical, temporal and other personal preferences and restrictions.

Locle

Locle have demoed twice at TechLudd events now back in April and at the June event when TechCrunch were in town. Locle is a social mapping application for mobile phones that combines information from your mobile handset address book with social networks such as Bebo, Facebook and MySpace to create mapping services that show users where their friends are. Locle is an enhanced mobile web experience that facilitates “here’s where I am, and here’s where my friends are” for social networks and groups.

Locle is a combination of a web service and downloadable mobile phone software. When the Locle mobile client is activated, it identifies the user’s location and presents the location of “friends” who also use the application. Friends can be both contacts from your mobile phone address book or contacts from your social networks. As well as letting you know where your “friends” are, Locle can also keep you up to date on relevant information to your location such as local events, news, weather and provide details on local restaurants, cinemas and ATM machines etc.
Locle is a Business Expansion Scheme qualified investment.

HeyStaks

HeyStaks is a new approach to Web search that helps searchers to share their search experiences with friends, colleagues, and other searchers. HeyStaks is a browser plugin that works with Google and provides users with the ability to create so-called “search staks” as a way to organise and share their Google searches. For example, a group of friends planning a holiday abroad might create a “Holiday 2008” search stak. As they individually search for travel, accommodation and entertainment options, their selections will be shared with each other during future searches as specially highlighted search results. In this way all of the friends can see what results have been found to be useful during earlier searches, which may help them during their own searches for that perfect holiday package.

Research shows that HeyStaks can help searchers find information more quickly and in turn allow users to create and share many different types of search staks to reflect different topics of interest. In this way search staks can provide users with access to a form of Web search that is powered by their favourite search engine but customised for a particular topic of interest, based on their own search experiences or the search experiences of others.

The HeyStaks technology has been developed by Prof. Barry Smyth’s research group in University College Dublin and is the first spin-out of the new CLARITY research centre, a €16m Science Foundation Ireland research centre combining researchers from University College Dublin, Dublin City University, and the Tyndal National Institute.

Playza

With most popular online games focused squarely at the adult gaming market, Playza is a new social gaming proposition for “Digital Natives” – our 12 to 24 year olds who have grown up in a digital media environment where mobile phones, social networking, multiplayer online gaming, and music downloading have always been the norm.

Playza is made up of a series of connected mini games in which players complete tasks and earn points. Online game players are encouraged to bring their gaming colleagues to Playza and social networkers can invite their online friends to join. The main objective of the game is to form and control player groups. By getting new members into their group, players will increase their standing and capabilities within the games. Playza users can also create their own page to host their game account and mini games. Within their page, users can create their own game groups, receive feedback and messages and post the game to their other sites or blogs such as MySpace or Facebook.

Playza combines the addictive nature of online gaming with the community features of a social networking portal.

So Pat Phelan of MaxRoam is at it again. The serial entrepeneur and telecoms disruptor has launched a new speech to text service for twitter. It’s not a general lifestreaming tool it’s twitter only and they’ve planned for a million sign ups over the next year.

For those unfamiliar with twitter it is the most popular of the “microblogging” platforms and allows people to send 140 charachter updates to anyone who follows them about what they’re doing right now, and then to respond and converse about that. Many of the A-listers of the blogging world feel it is an indeispensible tool for keeping up to date on what’s going on in the world of the web. (I happen to agree)

The investors behind this are Pat Phelan of Cubic Telecom/MAXroam, Sean O Sullivan and Ivan MacDonald of Dublin based Dial2Do, Florian Seroussi of Global Roaming and David Marcus of Zong. The technology behind these companies is what powers twitterfone. Geneva-based VOX telecom provides calls routing, Redwood City, California-based Zong powers mobile enrollment and transactions, MAXroam powers the telephony intelligence system and Dublin firm Dial2Do supplies the core speech recognition which is at the heart of Twitterfone. Dial2Do CEO Ivan MacDonald who I had the pleasure of meeting recently at the Web2.0 Expo said,

“We’ve been involved in the space where the phone system meets the web for a long time now, and naturally we’ve been fascinated by the rise of Twitter. Increasingly, we’ll see “web 2.0″ services that people use primarily from their phones. Projections are that mobiles will become the dominant way of accessing the Internet, and a lot of this will be done via voice interfaces. We are very pleased to see Dial2Do add even more value to an already extraordinary service.”

Pat himself had this to say “We built this because we are all avid users of Twitter and have made some excellent business connections and friendships from it. We decided to see what we could contribute to the service and with our telecoms backgrounds the Twitterfone idea fitted perfectly”.

Like everything that’s cool, Twitterfone is in invite beta at the moment meaning that only those that have been sent invites can join up. I’m told that there will be regular releases of invites and as I said earlier Twitterfone says they have planned for a million sign-ups over the next year. Naturally enough it’s already on TechCrunch and been covered by Damien Mulley (who has had a deft hand in the PR) and quite a few other blogs and I expect there to be a bit of noise about this one.

It’ll be interesting to see how this develops…