Nov 21 2008

Golden Spiders Awards Winners

Category: Internet — Teknovis @ 20:26

The 2008 Golden Spider Awards were announced last night in Dublin. Congratulations to all of the winners!

The Golden Spider Awards are in addition to both the Net Visionary Awards and the Irish Web Awards. It is impressive (or surprising) that there is room for all three awards in Ireland!

The winners that caught my attention were:

  • TV3, because its website has improved significantly since I last saw it.
  • Ordnance Survey Ireland, because its online mapping facility is really cool! (I wonder will it remain free!)
  • Sentry Wireless, simply because I never heard of it, and it is in an interesting space in the market!
  • Damien Mulley – Irish super-blogger!
  • Boards.ie. I am familiar with this website, and it deserves recognition for taking the generic concept of a bulletin-board and turning it into a popular website. I wonder has this been replicated in any other countries? I am not actually very fond of Boards.ie, because I find it is full of opinionated local trivia that is of little use.

Most of the other winners are easy viewing :)

However, I have to say that I am slightly sceptical of the Golden Spider Awards due to the fact that so much money is involved in them!

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Nov 06 2008

Entrepreneurship in an Economic Downturn

Category: Entrepreneurship — Teknovis @ 23:27

Entrepreneurship is something that I have always been interested in, and it is something that is now part of my everyday work! So it is certainly something that I intend writing about here!

I think that Ireland has improved significantly in relation to entrepreneurship, but there is still a huge way to go! We are currently experiencing an economic downturn (as is most of the world), and this is likely to increase the number of start-up companies. Unfortunately, it also makes it more difficult for these start-up companies to receive the necessary initial investment :(

I read an interesting article on TechCrunch today titled Teen Bloggerpreneur Jessica Mah’s $500 Startup: InternshipIN. The article describes how to start a company for $500! Yes – just $500! It seems impossibly small! The start-up company is based on a website called InternshipIN, which is designed to provide a single portal for university students looking for internships. I think the most interesting aspect of this is the spirit in which it is being created, and it certainly will be interesting to see if it succeeds! Jessica Mah’s blog provides more details (and it is a good read).

Closer to home, I read that Pat Phelan (overall winner at this years IIA Net Visionary Awards 2008) is on a panel at a Digital Media Island event. Therefore, he asks the question “How can we foster start-ups and innovation in Ireland today?“, and some of the answers are very interesting!

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Oct 31 2008

IIA Net Visionary Awards Winners

Category: Internet — Teknovis @ 14:37

The winners of the IIA Net Visionary Awards were announced last night at a black tie event in Dublin. Some of the nominations, and indeed the eventual winners, are very interesting. Congratulations to all involved, and in particular to Blacknight for picking up two awards!

The first winner that caught my attention was Pixie. I heard of them before, but I never actually visited their website. It seems to be very user friendly, and I happily browsed through random photos for a while. I think that they are in a very competitive market, especially if they want to have a global audience rather than an Irish audience.

The other winner that caught my attention was lichens.ie. Yes, this really is an entire website about lichen! The website is well designed, and it is interesting to look at, even if you are not a biologist! I really like the magnifying glass cursor that appears over the photos on the top of each page.

Of course, I am not saying that the other sites are not worthy of a look either!

There are several other similar types of awards during the year in Ireland, such as the Irish Web Awards and the Irish Blog Awards. I think that both of these are the brain children of Damien Mulley. I am not familiar enough with them to know the differences!

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