EirePreneur

Dublin gets its first coworking space

It was easy to see that Paul Campbell was fired up by his recent visit to CitizenSpace in San Francisco. And he hasn't lost that momentum since returning to Dublin. Now he's ready to announce the first coworking space in Ireland's capital, just off its main thoroughfare O'Connell Street -

"In a nutshell, If you’re an internet-y creative type / freelancer and interested in joining a co-working space just off O’Connell street at an introductory price of €200 plus vat per month, get in touch".

See the Coworking.ie blog for more, including pricing, map and photos. Personally I can't wait to drop in on my next visit up to the Big Smoke.

Transatlantic startup company twinning

Damien Mulley gets more granular on his initial idea for twinning coworking locations -

"Maybe some of these American companies will want to expand into Europe and likewise some Irish will want to have a foot in the door in America. Wouldn’t it be nice to be something like an agent in Europe for American companies while these companies are agents for you over there and also accomodate them with a little office space when they make trips over here and likewise when you go over there? It’s just another student exchange programme really. It’s co-working plus knowledge-sharing."

Irish startups making good use of video

Quick on the heels of Tom Raftery's video podcast with Conor O'Neill of LouderVoice, and Fergus Burns introducing Nooked on Podtech it's good to see another Irish startup taking advantage of video sharing services to demonstrate new features. In this case it's MySay, otherwise known as 'Twitter for voice'. Perhaps the sound quality could be better on this clip, particularly for the mobile phone interaction, but it's a good length and suitably informal.

Technorati Tags: mysay, podtech, nooked, loudervoice

Boards.ie where's your OPML? (Part II)

It's approaching a year since Damien Mulley and I started pestering the admins of Boards.ie for OPML export of their forum feeds and, as far as I know, they still haven't capitulated. What a shame that one of the very best online resources for this country doesn't help make it easier to scan the huge amount of information available there :(

After John Breslin told me I could generate an RSS feed for a Boards.ie forum by using the following format...

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/external.php?forumids=ID?type=RSS

eg. http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/external.php?forumids=859?type=RSS

... I tried compiling an OPML file manually but soon found it a Sisyphean task thanks to the ever changing structure of the forums hierarchy. Remembering however that the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time I'm starting again and taking a different approach. Taking advantage of the new bookmarking functionality in Grazr I'm setting up an open account for each Boards.ie sub-forum and using OPML inclusion to compile them into a single hierarchy.

For example, I'm starting (naturally) with the Business forums. The top level menu item in this category is called Biz. So the login for that folder on Grazr is boards-biz with the same password. This allows anyone to edit it wiki fashion. So far I've only completed the Business sub-menu (i.e., Biz -> Business) which has a separate login on Grazr - boards-business (and the same password). Logging into that account you will see the four bookmarks for the feeds corresponding to the forums Accountancy, Business Management, Marketing and Public Relations. Click on either one to confirm the URL format as described above.

What this means is that the Biz menu can now easily be grazed via the Boards Biz Grazr. Much easier in my opinion to bookmark that, drop it into your browser's Bookmarks Toolbar and click on it to keep up to date with the latest discussions therein.

Any volunteers to build and maintain separate menu branches? We can easily bring the whole lot together at a later stage by building a top level OPML.

Sky News simulcasting to Second Life

I was watching Sky News this morning when Adam Bolton introduced what he claimed was a broadcasting first, a simulcast for a TV news channel into Second Life. Second Life developers Rivers Run Red have crafted what is apparently a full replica of the Sky News studio. But with more than 700 avatars competing to gain access at the time I was unable to confirm the similarity.

Ed Miliband MP was in studio (and SL) to talk with Adam about using the new social tools to discuss issues with constituents. Gordon Brown had earlier told Bolton he's more of a book lover and worried in fact about such developments on the internet. Indeed a few of the guests made the same old mistake of dissing Second Life as 'a fantasy life' a 'second existence', instead of understanding it as nothing more than a 3D web. Why so many are making the same mistake regarding virtual worlds as they did with the flat web just baffles me.

Pitch it to a waiter

Paul Walsh is hosting Curry 2.0 in Dublin on 28th May and inviting you to compete for the prize of a trip to OpenCoffee London. All you have to do is pitch your company to a waiter in one minute. Yes, a waiter.

I think that's a terrific idea because, as Paul says, it will encourage participants to perfect their pitches for non-industry people. Sounds like fun.

Nooked on Podtech

Fergus Burns took the opportunity to introduce his company Nooked on Silicon Valley Minute.

Cameo roles in machinima advertising = viral potential

Microsoft developer Scot Guthrie features in the funniest online advert I've seen in ages. See how this works advertisers? This is so funny I'm telling everyone I know about it. All you've got to do is make it entertaining!

You can't stop linkblogging Scoble!

Robert Scoble is wondering if he should stop link blogging because so few people are linking back. Please don't Robert, I beg you! I find it an invaluable filter of the blogosphere, second only to TechMeme. So here's your (belated, I'm sorry) reciprocal link for citing my Bytes 'n' Bobs post :-)

Bytes 'n' Bobs

Joe Drumgoole announces that PutPlace is now in private beta. Congrats Joe.

Speaking of entrepreneurs Web2Ireland.org has news on the Seedcorn competition offering €280k for the best business startup on the island of Ireland.

Tom Raftery publishes his first ever video podcast, an interview with Conor O'Neill of Cork based startup LouderVoice. Looking forward to more of the same with PutPlace, Pixenate, Nooked, etc.

The same Conor O'Neill has posted his impressions of London OpenCoffee which himself and two other entrepreneurs from Cork recently attended. In summing up he said, "I came away from OCC London absolutely buzzing. If we manage to get even 10% of that energy in Cork, we’ll be on to a winner."

Still of the subject of OpenCoffee Clubs, Bernie Goldbach has published the latest episode of Inside View with numerous sound bites from last Thursdays meeting in Limerick.