We are proud to announce the launch of Irish Tea and Coffee Supplies [Classic Tea and Coffee Company / Italian Coffee Company]

They are the approved agents for Lavazza coffee in Munster and supply coffee, tea and related products to bars, cafes, restaurants and bistros throughout the Midwest region.

They also sell a range of quality coffee machines from small office machines to larger cafe and catering models and also offer a coffee machine repair and maintenance service.

Posted: December 10th, 2008 under general news, new website launched.
Comments: none

Change - that was the word that Barack Obama used, more than any other, during his long and hard-fought campaign. A cliffhanger of a campaign that proved that nothing is impossible,  if the will is strong enough. And in the United States that will is certainly there, a yearning for change that resulted in the first black man elected to the White House, a masterfully orchestrated mass mobilisation of people, black and white, young and old, which provided my generation our own “Man on the Moon” moment.

Change -that’s what this election was about. And now as we look back upon it, we can see, at last, how much has truly changed and how the Obama campaign has changed everything we thought we knew about politics, especially in the United States.

Barak Obama has a lot of charisma which he used to great effect to generate this great feeling of hope, this great desire for Change. An irresistable desire to erase the stain of two failed military invasions and eight years of disasterous policies and corporate cronyism at the hands of Cheney and Bush.

All McCain could offer was his brand of the Maverick - which was a sort of watered down version of Change, stymied by the Republican orthadoxy, Christian fundamentalists, hawkish neoconservaties and die-hard down-with-the-ship Freidmanites, not to mention Joe the Plumber, whoever he was. Add to this the economic crisis, and suddenly it began to sound very much like a political slogan from the Simpsons, “The policies of failure have failed! We need to make them work again!”

Only four years ago John Kerry’s hopes were dashed by the seemingly-unstoppable Republican juggernaut, carried by the Christian Right and rallied by Fox News.

Whereas last night the ecstatic citizens of Chicago chanted, “Yes We Can!”, in 2004 we had http://www.johnkerryisadouchebagbutimvotingforhimanyway.com/

Voter apathy had reached such a stage that people no longer saw the point of voting at all. And so the world had to suffer yet four more years of George W Bush.

Obama’s only chance, therefore, was to tackle voter apathy, this he done by force of personality - but that still left one huge logistical obstacle in his path. It wasn’t enough to get people to care about, and believe in, politics again, if they didn’t actually get off their ass on the day and vote. With this foremost in his mind Obama amassed the greatest multimedia arsenal we have ever seen. Everything about it, like the man itself, had the same effortless, striding confidence, from his campaign logo (as seen above) to his website, his Facebook page, et all.

Obama was the first ever candidate to utilise web technologies wholesale.
Anyone who wanted to know where Obama was at any given second could track him on Google Maps or follow him on Twitter. McCain, meanwhile, admitted, quite categorically that he’s only just learning to send Email. And, as a recent article in Time magazine pointed out, a man in his 70s who’s “learning email” may not be the best choice for the America of the 21st century. Not to mention Sarah Palin, who conducted the often-sensitive work of governor of Alaska through gov.palin@yahoo.com

Obama’s website is slick, very slick, you can watch “BarackTV”, you can get text updates to your phone, or web updates to your smart phone, not to mention being able to download Obama ringtones or choose from an array of Obama merchandise.

And this is why I refer to Obama as the Paypal President. Because he refused public funding and instead financed his campaign, not with millions in suitcases from shady lobbyists, but a few dollars here, a few there, from regular folk, both in the US and abroad.

Usually in Washington the price of running for public office is counted in millions and measured in soundbytes. In order to get elected into American public offce prospective candidates need all the airtime they can get. Airtimes costs money. And in order to get that money you have to strike deals.

This is where Obama has truly become an agent of change. It’s all too easy for people to become cynical, apathetic and disillusioned in politics, but by allowing them to contribute to his campaign in this way, Obama made the people the richest and most powerful special interests group of all.

And so Obama paid for his soundbytes and television spots, but, at the same time, invested a lot of time, money, effort and attention into internet media too - something which really paid off for him. In fact this was perhaps the first campaign where the internet might have had more of an impact than television. And indeed historians may draw parallels between the floundering McCain campaign of 2008, with that of the televised Kennedy/Nixon debate of 1960, where many cite Nixon’s inability to make the transition to the new medium as the reason, or at least one of the reasons, why he lost the election to Kennedy.

This is an election where Fox News was superseded by YouTube, an election where ABC, CNN and CBS took a back seat to SNL

The biggest casualty in this was Sarah Palin, who having been repeatedly lampooned on SNL 1 2 3 seemed to be left with no choice but to humiliate herself even further by appearing on it herself - all she could do was laugh, all I could do was cringe.

Not long after this we had the hilarious Nicholas Sarkozy prank call incident and yet another SNL spoof, the so-called George Bush endorsement; “when you think of McCain, think of GW Bush”, the nail in the coffin in my opinion.

Now whilst the SNL sketches appeared on national TV and the prank call on Canadian radio, it was how they were distributed that made the difference. Not so much by the Obama campaign itself, who were busy distributing their own swarms of viral Obama videos through YouTube and elsewhere, but certainly by Obama supporters. In the end, it amounted to the mother of all viral marketing campaigns with links to funny videos, jokes and photoshops making fun of McCain and Palin, alongside speeches by Obama and other pro-Obama video messeges, being distributed throughout the United States and the world at large, from friend to friend, family member to family member, colleague to colleague, copied and forwarded and printed, bookmarked and blogged and added to billions of Facebook and Myspace profiles, treking their way across the country on Google maps, twittering their way into a million iPhones…

And, in the midst of this global cyberspace revolution, John McCain still couldn’t figure out how to reply to his email and the Sarah Palin circus kept on conjuring up hokey apparitions of Hockey Moms and Joe Sixpack and the virtues of sleepy small town unplugged from the reality of a high-speed global information network.

Obama won, because of his understanding and embodiment of the Internet Age, and the spirit of that age is not about With or Against unilateralism, not of Black and White or Red and Blue or Us and Them, but a spirit of community - a global community, where everyone plays a part.

Welcome to the Era of Wikipolitics.

Posted: November 6th, 2008 under politics.
Comments: none

When I first heard the term Celtic Tiger way back in the mid-nineties I didn’t know what they were talking about, it was just a phrase you heard in passing, for a while I thought they were talking about some sort of cat, maybe something like the Tasman tiger, a creature that was thought to be extinct but had been discovered in some dark corner of Connemara. Of course today I know better, and I know, for a fact, that the Celtic Tiger is, in fact, very much extinct.

That’s not really a bad thing though. It’s part of the great circle of life. I know that phrase is from the Lion King but it applies equally to dethroned tigers.

Extinctions are, always have been and always will be, part and parcel of life on Planet Earth; the big lizards died out and made way for the small lizards, which became dinosaurs, then the dinosaurs perished to make way for small mammals, which grew to become megabeasts, like the woolly mammoth or our own giant elk, creatures which, in turn, began to die out with the emergence of man.

Likewise our Celtic Tiger has gone from a sleek, prowling predator in the 1990s to a bloated, ungainly slob in 2008. The only consolation I can give is that now that the tiger is finally extinct it opens up a niche in Ireland’s economic ecosystem for a nimbler, more agile, more compact and efficient creature to emerge.

But for the moment we still have to content with the snarling packs of Hibernian Hyenas who now feast upon the fetid corpse of our once-mighty Tiger. Jobs are being lost, businesses are closing down or downsized, foreign companies are relocating and all the while energy costs, food costs, and the cost of living in general, are all rising.

How long this situation might continue one cannot say for certain, but there are, however, a number of things that can be done to not just bring things back on an even keel, but to create a new economy capable of not just matching, but superseding the Celtic Tiger.

When you think of the Tiger, much of the major industries were service industries. This, in and of itself, was a major step away for an economy that was, for the longest time, primarily focussed on agriculture and tourism. Through the 70s and 80s and right through the Tiger, however, we none the less were wholly dependent on two things, first, understandably, foreign oil and secondly, jobs provided by foreign multinationals.

Considering our lack of natural resources and commodities, therefore, it is not just in our own self interest, but a matter of self preservation, that we really begin to focus on being as efficient and self sufficient as possible. It also means that we must study, very carefully, emerging trends in order to plan for the future.

Climbing about my soapbox in 5…4…3…2…

Tiger Autopsy

Rather than cutting down or downsizing, in these lean months, we should, instead, see it as a chance to shed some of the excess flab we’ve been carrying around with us these past few years. It is also a time for reflection, to look back and ask the hard questions, what worked, what didn’t, what was truly worthwhile and what was more hassle than it was worth?

One of the upsides of the new economic climate, in my opinion, is that, with more companies competing for fewer customers, customer service becomes more and more of an issue. In the boom times many companies, even some of our larger, more prominent companies (I can’t exactly name them here but you know who they are) were smug and secure in the notion that “you need us more than we need you”, and were often, not just disrespectful, but often downright contemptuous to their own customers.

This has a notable trickle-down effect. If the big-wigs of a company don’t care, how can one expect the people manning the customer service line to care? And this is one of the core problems that businesses, the government, and indeed the Irish public as a whole, needs to address; the all-pervasive cynicism and apathy that one finds at every level of Irish life. With the Tiger dead we now, at least, have the ideal opportunity to address this issue, because, quite frankly, we no longer have a choice.

I’m sure everyone who reads this has had the experience of ringing up a company and talking to a customer care representative who clearly doesn’t care or going into a shop and being berated by a bitter sour-puss sighing and rolling their eyes when you ask them for some service. Why is that? The answer is quite simple, a deep-routed and all pervasive feeling of futility, the feeling that even if you bend over backwards to help somebody, the man at the top will give out to you for wasting time, the feeling that whatever you do is never appreciated, by your boss, by your customer, the feeling that whatever you buy or whatever service you use, you’re going to get ripped off, and when you do, you have nobody to complain to, not to the company, not to the government. It’s something that’s penetrated every single organisation in this country, from the smallest corner shop to the largest megasized retail outlet, from the pokiest little offices of the pettiest little civil servants to the Taoiseach himself and it can be summed up in four simple words - “Why should I bother?”

Maybe instead of paying people to deal with angry customers, why not hire people to actually make your customers happy by, first of all, creating a more open and connected organisation, rather than a wasteful one, where every department seems to blunder on with no idea as to what the other is doing.

By simply stepping back and looking at ones entire organisation, managers can reap great rewards. And this, I say, to everyone, be they a small business owner, Michael O’Leary, or, for that matter, Brian Cowen. It’s time we threw open the windows on all these stifling, stuffy boardrooms and dark, dreary little offices, let in some light, for a change, let in some fresh air before we all suffocate.

And we need to get away from the old clichés, too. This is a new millennium with a new kind of recession, it does not make sense for government to tell the public to spend like crazy whilst the government tries to cut-back and save, it should be the other way around. The notion that desperate times call for desperate measures must be debunked. The 80s, they were far more desperate times than now, and the only way we got out of that quagmire was by innovation and coming up with novel approaches and radical solutions to a new generation of problems.

It’s the same story today. We need to go back to the drawing board, now, and come up with a whole new plan of action, and we need to start investing more money in the right areas, rather than pissing it away on useless crap we don’t need.

Oh yeah, and one more thing Biffo, think about things before you make decisions. Like, for example, if you want to try and minimise the number of people on the dole, maybe you shouldn’t be talking about implementing a drastic drop in the minimum wage at the same time. If you could just think about it for a moment you’d realise it was a bad idea. What would you rather do? Option A; you work in McDonalds flipping burgers for minimum wage, you wear a hairnet and deal with stress and fat people day in, day out, on your feet for hours on end before coming and come home, absolutely nackered, with a stench of burger grease you can’t wash off. Option B; for the same amount of money, or possibly more, you just stay at home all day watching Judge Joe Brown or playing Xbox in your underwear. Seriously, perhaps it’s time we appointed a Minister for Reality, though I can’t see how any one of the political parties could ever present a likely candidate.

The bottom line is, during the days of the Tiger mistakes were made, often very big ones, lots of money was wasted, lots of bad decisions and dead-end roads were taken, but it didn’t really matter until now, because the money was always there. The money’s dried up now, and so we simply CAN’T afford any more wastage or any more ill-considered decisions.

Emergence of the Celtic Cheetah.

In any system, be it ecological, technological, economic or social, it is an inescapable inevitability that stagnation will eventually set in. In nature this stagnation is usually dealt with quite forcibly, however as human beings we have the ability to use our own expertise and capability for innovative thought to ensure that these transitions are as smooth as possible. It got us down off the trees, onto solid ground, up on two legs, all over the world and up into outer space. In the coming years and decades we will have to contend with climate change, the further depletion of oil and other resources and a massive economic swing away from the West, towards the Orient. How does Ireland, a small, resource-poor island on the chilly periphery of the Atlantic Ocean, fit into this new world? What will this new world look like? And what products and services will be in demand?

If we are to survive this century with our hard-fought independence intact, we need start asking these sorts of questions now, and we need to work at creating a lighter, more agile community, not a Celtic Tiger, but a lithe and speedy Celtic Cheetah, built on a reliable, nationwide infrastructure of high-speed, low-cost communication. It is imperative for the government not to cut back, but to invest more; in our schools and colleges, in more R&D and resources to scientists, to do more – much more – to encourage entrepreneurs and small businesses, especially those in the IT and communications sector. I’m not just saying that because that’s the industry that I’m in, rather because it is the one industry which is set to continue to boom for decades to come and relies not on raw materials, but infrastructure and raw intellect.

I’ll say it again; Ireland must invest in better communications infrastructure, not just patching villages together with wireless in slap-dash fashion, but by rolling out fibre en masse. Telecom Éireann were on course to do this before being privatised, but afterwards, the initiative was lost. I can’t help wonder what could have been if Ireland had had affordable high speed internet ten years ago, it would have catapulted our economy into the information age and had us neck and neck with our European and American contemporaries.

Who knows, instead of Google, Amazon, Facebook or Ebay, billions of users could be using Irish companies every day. Instead we now face a grim future as more and more American companies, like Dell in Limerick, start to downsize or relocate causing a greater strain on our economy as more and more people sign on.

Better communications would not only improve every aspect of our lives, it would also mean that we can finally reap the benefits of the information age. I am glad to see that, with more competition and more service providers, we’re finally on track but there’s still a way to go. If Ireland can enter this third round of internet innovation prepared, then we might be able to build a new silicon economy focussed on, amongst other things; software, network security, 3G and mobile technology, smart phones, general telecommunications, VOIP, streaming video and IPTV, social networking, third-generation search engines, voice recognition, online financial services, e-commerce and more.

Making Tigers out of house cats.

A cursory look at FÁS or any other job-search site will show a rapid reduction in the amount of jobs available, particularly in rural communities, with as much as 90% of the jobs on offer located in Dublin. With 100% broadband penetration, however, we can spread our jobs out much better. Firstly because a business can now operate just as well in the country as it can in a city. It also allows more and more people to work from home. This is advantageous for numerous reasons; most notably that by creating the conditions for thousands of work-from-home positions people are more likely stay in their own communities, thus improving local social and economic conditions, be it in a small village or a small town with local independent traders who, having struggled for so long, will soon regain custom. With more business in the country and more people working from their homes it won’t be long before the town centre and the local market square become revitalised.

It also means that the person working from home does not need to commute every day, which costs time and money, for everyone, and damages the environment too. Working from home is more conducive to home life too. For those with children it means they have a chance to see more of them. Instead of getting up in the morning at 6 to beat the traffic, they can get up at six, walk down the stairs, start work for a couple of hours, then get the kids out the door around 8-ish, work for six or seven hours more and be finished before they come home, rather than finishing later and spending more time in the car before falling in the door, stressed out and exhausted and snapping at them.

For larger towns and big cities a broadband revolution would means less congestion so that those who still have to commute do not have to contend with as many people every day. This would be particularly welcome in cities like Dublin, Cork, Limerick or Galway.

None the less the government should still focus on improved transportation, better roads, naturally, though the government should also realise that, even with the best roads in the world (which, clearly, we don’t have) Ireland is too small a country to sustain the amount of traffic it now has and so clean, efficient, well-functioning public transport should be a top priority with particular focus on rail transport, not just for public use, but also for transporting freight. The government should also focus a significant proportion of its resources on investment in green energy, on providing better IT education and reducing waste at all levels.

One might ask me where do I think all this money is going to come from? My answer is that a better informed public, and by that I mean a public who are willing to do their own homework, are then in a far better position to ask the government the hard questions. This relates to the problem of apathy and cynicism I spoke of earlier, this is what we need to get ourselves out of. We need to turn this setback into an opportunity and as far as our politicians are concerned we need to turn the heat up. We are paying taxes, we are paying them for a reason but where does this money go and what return on them do we get? With conditions as they are we’re all economising more, we’re spending on what we think is essential and dispensing with the luxuries. We’re making sure we get the most value out of every penny that we spend. Yet, at the same time, we see tax as an expense, rather than an investment. We shouldn’t do this. We should apply the same ridged assessment to the money we give to the government to make sure we’re getting value for money and, once again, the money is being spent on the essentials.

Posted: August 1st, 2008 under economy.
Comments: none

Until relatively recently I ran my own computer shop in addition to running Briongloid, quite a handful too, I can tell you.

One of the benefits of operating a premises that’s open to the public is that you can provide a broad range of products under the same roof. Obviously the more services you offer the more people are going to come into your premises for various reasons. So naturally one is always on the lookout for more and more business opportunities and ways to attract custom.

The trick, to me, is to find something where the dividends far outweigh the work involved, and this is particularly true if you are already running an operation that (like my shop did) already has quite a diverse service portfolio. In other words, you need to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff and see which operations are not just cost-effective, but time effective too.

To me, Alphyra were a perfect example of chaff. Their machines never worked properly, their customer service was poor and I was making only pennies on transactions that took a couple of minutes to process. I can see where grocers and newsagents might make money off selling phone credit, as could phone vendors, but for me it wasn’t worth it. Other services like Billpay and 3V never really took off either. Most people paid their bills in the post office and don’t get me started on 3V.

Another piece of grade-A chaff is Western Union. It’s time and patience intensive and, unless you run a hotel or large hostel, hardly worth bothering with for the amount of hassle involved. Transactions take eons and, in addition to that, you need to have a lot of cash on hand for it and end up running back and forth to the bank all the time. A lot of wasted time for very little commission.

One area where I did make money was in online poker. Not an enormous amount, mind you, but a nice commission, plus it brought in the punters to use my internet computers. It’s a far better option than Western Union, I would say, and whilst it may be limited to the types of operation where it can be implemented is still a great way for computer shops, internet cafes, casinos and bookmakers to make extra money.

Of all the affiliate services I used, however, the most hassle free in relation to the amount of commission earned, was the GLS parcel shop.

I heartily recommend it for anyone whose premises has a high level of throughput and reasonably large amount of space. And by that I mean just space out the back to store boxes. They then provide you with all the materials you need, advertising materials, stickers, banners, flyers, pens, you name it. Plus all the labels and materials needed to start shipping boxes. They also have different sized containers available but they cost extra. In my own experience I never needed them. When orders came for the shop I used to just hang onto the boxes. Most people came with their boxes pre-packed, though, so all that was needed was to measure them and affix the relevant stickers.

You don’t even need a scales, because their parcel shops run on size, not weight , you just have a handy little colour-coded measuring tape which you use to quickly gauge the size parcel it is, small, medium, large, XL, etc, and charge accordingly. Guy comes and collects either that day or the following morning, depending on time and route, and then the money goes out of your account by direct debit, minus your commission. They allow a generous amount of time to deposit the money, so you’re not running to the bank every two minutes, and any problems I did have I’ve found their customer service to be really good, friendly and quickly straightened things out with the customary level of German efficiency.
In fact, as soon as I hung up the GLS sign I started getting German customers who were already familiar with the service. I also got a lot of Polish, Czech and other Eastern European customers who were returning home and wanted to ship their goods back, rather than paying a fortune to bring all their stuff back on the plane. They were especially welcome as the bigger the box and the farther it goes the more commission I made.

Now, people reading this might be cynical as to why I’m singing GLS’s praises so much, I don’t operate the shop anymore so there’s no real benefit to me in saying it anymore. I don’t make any commission from referring people to GLS or anything like that. It’s just that with things getting tight all over and many small shops and traders struggling, I thought it might be a good idea to pass on some info on something that had proved lucrative for me in the past. As well as talking a little about other things that did work and things that didn’t - and why.

The best thing about the GLS parcel shop program is that there are no setup costs, it’s pretty straightforward and doesn’t really take up all that much time to process packages nor is it all that difficult to train a staff member to do so. How much you process and how many people use the service, is, of course, up to you, but I found, myself personally, that word of mouth was all I really needed to promote it and of course all the other promotional materials were already provided.

Posted: July 24th, 2008 under .
Comments: none

We have officially launched the website for The Bruschetta Bar Restaurant.

Located in Limerick City, The Bruschetta Bar offers a broad range of delicious fresh food, mainly Italian and Mediterranean food.

During the day the Bruschetta Bar’s Lunch Menu offers a range of healthy salads, tasty snacks,

sandwiches, and of course Bruschetta, as well as pizza, pasta and great coffee.

The Bruschetta Bar’s Evening Menu offers an even wider selection as well as their famous cocktail menu.

Posted: July 4th, 2008 under general news, new website launched.
Comments: none

Bodrum Tourguide

Bodrum Tourguide explores the various facets of Bodrum and the surrounding region with information on hotels and accommodation, flights and travel information, services and activities, as well as news, weather and information on the economy and buying Turkish property.

Posted: June 19th, 2008 under general news, new website launched.
Comments: none

If you are searching for ways to get rid of spam you’ll find all manner of sites selling spam protection software. Although many of these programs do indeed offer protection, when it comes right down to it, no program, no matter how many stars and rave reviews it might receive, has yet to come close to the human brain when it comes to detecting and recognizing spam.
Caution and common sense - that’s the true secret to stopping spam. Software only offers a cure and a best-guess cure at that. We’re not here to talk about cures, we’re here to talk about spam prevention.

1. Abandon Ship!

If you’re reading this article odds are you’re already dealing with a massive spam infestation and you’re looking for ways stop it. The truth is, when it gets to that stage, you can’t. Your account is already compromised and the spammers have your address so no matter how many senders you block, a hundred more will take their place. That’s why it’s better to just abandon your old email account and start afresh. Backup any data you wish to retain, like your address book data, and migrate it to your new account. Then send an email to those addresses - and only those addresses - that you wish to remain in contact with.

2. Be Obscure.

A popular technique used by spammers is to automatically send emails alphabetically. (Like if you were to pick up the phone book and start ringing every name from A. Aaronson to Zeke Zimmerman.) Choosing a more obscure email address will help prevent this.

3. Filter, Filter, Filter!

When choosing your new email account, be sure to investigate what spam filtering service the provider offers. Talk to your ISP or hosting provider to find out what measures they have in place. Some companies offer far better protection than others, some offer spam protection for free, others expect you to pay so shop around.

Most free email accounts also offer inbuilt filters, some are quite basic whilst others are quite elaborate. The most effective filters are those which you can set and edit yourself. This way as well as blocking specific addresses and domains, you can also block certain keywords. For example if you’re getting a lot of messages selling counterfeit watches, you could create a filter that automatically deletes any email with the keyword “Rolex” in the subject and/or email body.

4. Keep it Private!

Never, under any circumstances, publish your private email address on the web - for example on forums, blogs, groups or social networking sites. Spammers use automated programs known as spiders to trawl through the web harvesting public email addresses. All it takes is for you to publish your address once and get picked up by one of these spiders and before you know it your new account will be submerged in spam.

5. Use a Dummy Account.

Never sign up to anything online with your personal email address. Create a new account (or just use your old account - it’s full of spam anyway right?) and the next time a website sign-up page requires that you give them an email address give them this dummy one instead.

6. No Chain Letters.

You’ve probably got dozens of these, “forward this on to everyone you know and good luck will be your reward.” More than likely, though, spam will be your reward.

These chain letters are a spammer’s dream. Think about it, they’re sent from one person to another, disseminating through offices and companies, multiplying all the while, collecting hundreds upon thousands of addresses in the process.

Beware, too, of chain letters masquerading as petitions. Even if their stated goal seems noble they serve the same sinister purpose. If you receive an email like this from a friend explain to them that you will not be forwarding the email and explain why.
Whatever your beliefs or affiliations may be there’s one thing we can all agree on - the planet doesn’t need any more spam. If you want to fight injustice or change the world you’ll do it far more effectively through acts of charity and conscientious activism than forwarding chain emails.

7. Never, EVER Reply to Spam!

Don’t take it on their honor that they’re going to remove you if you ask them. Spammers don’t have honor, that’s why they’re spammers. If you ask to be removed you’ve basically just told them that your address is active, and you’ll just get more spam.

And whatever you do, don’t ever click on links from any unsolicited emails. These links will either try to download a virus onto your computer, or will lead to a page trying to scam you or steal your personal and/or financial details.

So there you have it, all you need to know to stop spam. You don’t need to fork out huge amounts of cash for spam protection software suites or anything of the sort. All you need to do is use your head and apply what you have read and enjoy your bright, new spam-free future!

Posted: June 15th, 2008 under .
Comments: none

Two brand new projects have just recently gone online showcasing the work of two very different, but equally exciting, up and coming artists.

The first is Dave Alford who specializes in pencil art, primarily drawings of classic cars, race cars, etc, in addition to motorbikes and planes.

Dave’s work is technical in nature, incorporating techniques used in technical drawing, engineering and design, then overlaying this with the human element. Dave loves to draw upon the fashions and styles from whichever era his chosen subject originates, incorporating a range of styles from art deco to pop art. Indeed many of Dave’s subjects are not mechanical at all, rather nostalgic.

Dave also draws portraits and is available for commission work.

From men and machines, to fairies and flowers, Caroline Evans uses a variety of mediums to create mesmerizing new worlds of faries and fantasy. In addition to selling her own fairy pieces, Caroline has provided illustrations for publications and is also available for commission work.

Posted: March 6th, 2008 under general news, new website launched.
Comments: none

Brionglóid Media were recently commissioned to design the new Lahinch Seaworld website

Lahinch Seaworld & Leisure Centre is located on the promenade of Lahinch, County Clare, looking out over the Atlantic Ocean. Inside the complex is a full-sized indoor swimming pool, a gym, shop, cafe and children’s playzone. Lahinch Seaworld also boasts one of Ireland’s largest indoor aquariums, showcasing the rich variety of marine flora and fauna native to our shores.

What we done, in the revamped site, was to focus on the various different services which the company provided, keeping the format of the pre-existing site, but modernizing it radically.

Lahinch Seaworld opted for our photo service, so we took some photos inside and outside the premises, first of all focusing on the aquarium and the various creatures within, before then moving on to Lahinch Seaworld’s other facilities.

Afterwards we processed and edited the photos, and then got to work on the content.
Working with the manager of Lahinch Seaworld we created the textual content of the site, firstly to ensure that the text was satisfactory to the company and also to ensure it was best optimised for search engines. We then put the textual content together with the photos, a newly designed logo and flash menu then validated each page. We also added in a number of Web 2.0 applications and widgets, including a new blog, an interactive map for the contact page and RSS feeds and social bookmarking chiclets.
We also completely reconstructed the printable marine database section. Some of the pages already existed but we recoded the webpages from scratch, giving them greater readability and uniformity throughout. We provided new photos and illustrations and also added to the database with completely new pages. The result, we hope, is a clear, concise resource on indigenous marine flora of use to schoolkids and students and of substantial educational merit overall.

The maintenance of the Lahinch Seaworld will also be taken over by Brionglóid Media. Lahinch Seaworld also opted to renew their domain through us and also to host with us.
Once the site was completed we promoted the new website quite thoroughly, firstly via directories, but also focusing on getting quality links through tourism agencies, as well as state and semi-state bodies pertaining to education, the environment and marine matters, to name a few. We also promoted the swimming pool and gym page separately by getting more from various relevant websites.

(*At present Google searches for “Leisure Centre Clare” and “Swimming Pool Clare” are top of the pile of Google searches)

Later, we shall be assisting them in getting their new webcam feature up and running, and, as their new gym opens in the new year, we shall be called upon to do more edits and changes to the site.

Brionglóid Media would like to thank Lahinch Seaworld for choosing us and for their assistance and support during this course of this project. It was, for us, an exciting, educational and altogether intriguing experience. We hope to continue to work with Lahinch Seaworld in 2008 and we hope that their new websites brings them even more custom and prosperity in the New Year.

Posted: December 14th, 2007 under general news, new website launched.
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1. Less Clouds: even in summer (at least here in Ireland anyway) there is no shortage of cloudy overcast days. Whereas at this time of year, as it gets frostier, you can find beautiful blue skies. This is especially true if you’re taking pictures of rivers, lakes and the sea.

2. Less Crowds: During the summer it can be practically impossible to get nice moody landscape shots, especially in areas that are popular with tourists. After all what’s the point of going trying to capture the awe and majesty of nature only to find it over-run with camper vans and station wagons. Go there in November however, and you won’t find a soul.

3. Later Sunrises: There are two types of photographers, the ones who are more than happy to get up at 4am and hike up a mountain and set up their tripod, and then there’s guy’s like me. See that’s the thing with darker mornings, you don’t have to get up so early to catch the sunrise.

4. Earlier Sunsets: And of course you don’t need to hang around waiting for the sun to set either.

5. Contrast and Shadows: In summertime it’s too bright, in winter it’s too dark and in springtime it’s still too wet. That’s why I find autumn the perfect time to take landscapes. I also advise flash, even in daytime. I just use the camera’s inbuilt flash, which is adjustable and not too bright, so that the foreground is illuminated better, particularly when you are framing objects, or if you have a moody, dusky background but also want to capture the foreground. (Though try it again without the flash too, as you might get some nice, unforeseen silhouette effects.)

6. Shoot at midday!: Generally speaking it’s not always advisable to shoot at midday but it’s actually not a bad idea at this time of year. Though the sun can be quite bright on crisp, frosty days, on most days the light is less severe so you don’t have that intense brightness directly overhead washing out your shots. So if you want to take panorama shots go out and take them now!

7. The Colours: Autumn (that’s Fall to you North Americans) is the best time of the year for colours. I love it. All of a sudden landscapes and cityscapes that looked empty & grey are alive with colour. This is not just the best time to shoot in the country, you can also get great shots in parks and city squares. Just find a good spot, frame it well, then shoot. Experiment with different white balance settings and go for long, deep exposures or try bracketing different exposures as you go along. If possible shoot in RAW format so you can bring out the saturation and vibrancy of the leaves.

8. Winter: As the month progresses, the leaves begin to fall and the weather becomes ever more chilly. Frosty mornings are perfect though, as they ensure bright, blue cloudless skies. Get up early and you can get frozen dew on leaves, or those frosty fronds upon windows - great for macro shots - or my personal favourite, the crystalline strands of a frost-covered spider web glistening in the early morning sun. If you want to take landscape shots with frosty grass, try longer exposures, to capture the crunchiness of each blade.

9. Fog: For creating mood and atmospherics, find a lake or river, or an evergreen forest, at sunrise & go for those “fantasy” shots. Experiment with exposure, however, as every situation is different and don’t be afraid to break the rules. Over-expose, underexpose, or even try shooting INTO the sun for a change. It’s fog; you’re not supposed to see everything!

10. Winter wonderland shots: The later you leave these the busier it’s going to be, especially in towns and cities, as the xmas shopping rush kicks in. When exposing try locking exposure on different elements to see which comes out best, especially where snow is involved. If you lock on the snow the rest will be dark, if you lock on the darker parts the snow will come out like magnesium so try find a happy medium. Avoid flash if at all possible, and if not, try and diffuse it or use natural light. If your camera has white balance bracketing USE IT! It might also be a good idea to experiment with your polarizer too, if you have one, and if not maybe you could put a polarizer on your xmas list.

Posted: November 13th, 2007 under .
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