EirePreneur

Open Coffee Galway this Friday

Ina has news that Open Coffee Galway is on this Friday at 11am in DERI. For anyone interested in startups/entrepreneurship who hasn't yet gone along to an Open Coffee event I strongly encourage you to make it this year. This month! They're open to all and very welcoming. Along with Galway they're held in Cork, Waterford, Dublin and Limerick. Any questions? Just ask (via comment below).

25,000 Points of Interest (in Ireland)

Dublin based MySatNav has launched myPOIs.ie - a map of POI (Point of Interest) data for Ireland. Currently the site has 15,000 POIs with a further 10,000 planned for release in the coming months. Which is just as well considering how Dublin centric much of the information (eg. Pubs and Restaurants) currently is.

"The main purpose of the site is to address the woeful lack of POIs for Ireland available on Garmin and other brands of satellite navigation systems. We have collected POI data from a variety of sources and have spent a considerable amount of time verifying the locations using the latest geocoding techniques."

A number of the databases are available to download for free (to your Garmin GPS) but for others there is an annual subscription fee. Unfortunately my Garmin Geko is not compatible - you need a Nuvi or Zumo - so I can't evaluate further but I'm not sure I'd have much interest anyway with their current price plans -

"Our ‘Premium’ service which includes all our databases excluding the Road Safety Camera database is available for €37.00 per annum while our ‘Premium+’ service, which includes all POI databases + Road Safety Camera database, is available for €50.00 per annum."

LouderVoice.com have recently added basic mapping functionality to their reviews system. Knowing what a mobile tech addict their CEO Conor O'Neill is I'm sure that will be upgraded to GPS waypoint export in no time at all. Then we can look forward to value added Points of Interest for the whole of the country.

Still, if you're hungry for POIs and have no alternative MySatNav fills the gap right now.

18 talks/panels for CreativeCamp Kilkenny

CreativeCamp Kilkenny is on this Saturday and Keith Bohanna has a breakdown of the speakers and panels. As usual there are so many good talks that I'm expecting very tough decisions between the different tracks. But that's hardly something to complain about!

Pleased to really meet you

I'm still recovering after a wonderful evening at the Irish Blogging Awards in Dublin and the residual buzz has prompted me to put finger to keyboard. What made the night really special for me was meeting a load of people in person for the first time whom I'd known virtually for ages. People like Jason, Sabrina, Alan, Ina, Joe, Marcus, Alexia, Paul, Richard and a few others I'm sure I'm forgetting. Not to mention bumping into so many whom I had met previously.

Joe has the full list of the winners and it says everything, for me, about the way the Irish blogosphere has matured in the two years since I last attend the awards gala - I'm familiar with only a handful. Congratulations to all but in particular to the two I know best - Robin Blandford for the best Technology Blog and Sabrina Dent for the best Designed Blog.