An Post Mobile Virtual Mobile Network 'destined to fail' (and other bytes 'n pieces)

Image via Wikipedia- So An Post think they can succeed, where Tesco Ireland have failed miserably, by teaming up with Vodafone to launch their own mobile (virtual) network or MVNO. Pat Phelan of Maxroam explains 'the logic' behind the move - "stupid, stupid idea, the carriers couldn't pay an post enough to do top ups so they launch their own". Pat continues, "[It's] destined to fail, An Post average visitor age way too high to sell them mobiles."

- I'm delighted for Keith Bohanna and team at dbTwang for achivieing the wonderful milestone of a closed Angel round. Keith's been one of the organizers behind CreativeCamp the last few years and recently seconded Conor O'Neills proposal for a BizCamp. When that goes ahead I'm very much looking forward to hearing Keith talk about how the dbTwang team managed to pull off an Angel round, coinciding as it did, with the financial downturn.

- And speaking of camps TeenCamp has a venue!

- Congrats also to Matt and the team at Infurious for getting Masked Marshall into the Apple Store Staff Picks list.

- Paul Campbell has been making great use of screencasting in his work as a web developer and shares some good tips here. I'd take issue with point 2 though - "You shouldn’t do the voiceover while you’re recording the screencast, at least if you don’t want to sound like an idiot." I used to do voiceovers while I was recording my Intruders.tv screencasts but regularly paused after stumbling over myself, then just restated what I was trying to say. Using Camtasia I was then able to edit all the stuttering out fairly seamlessly in post production. I found it much easier to synchronize the voiceover and on-screen activity using this method.

- Frank Fullard explains how Irish Business Women are 'making lemonade' during the current downturn.

- Haydn has a thought provoking post about the Privileges of Communication.

Comments

[keith bohanna]

Thanks for the good wishes James and happy to share the story for what it's worth :-)

keith

[sw]

sorry what is a mvno, what are they trying to do?

[James Corbett]

SW, from Wikipedia: "A mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) is a company that provides mobile phone service but does not have its own licensed frequency allocation of radio spectrum, nor does it necessarily have all of the infrastructure required to provide mobile telephone service." So, in this case An Post will piggback on the Vodafone network.