EirePreneur

Upcoming eBusiness Seminar in Galway

QuickLink: The Irish Internet Association is holding and "Essential eBusiness Seminar" in the Corrib Great Southern Hotel, Galway on 26th May, starting 9:30. Looks like it could be useful but I think the €100 asking price for non-members is wee bit steep I'm afraid.

Mobile content - it might just catch on!

When I was upgrading to a 3G enabled Nokia 6630 on the Vodafone network a couple weeks ago I was almost dismissive of the poor sales assistant behind the counter in Limerick's Crescent Shopping center. I didn't want to hear about the fancy schmancy video calling capabilities, the 3G enhanced Live! or the downloadable football clips - all I wanted was high bandwidth data access for remote working. My phone is a business tool, not a toy thank you..... ahem...

But of course, I couldn't resist subscribing to the free trial access to downloadable sports video, just to see what it looked like..... or so I thought. Didn't really think I'd be bothered using it much - afterall, eventhough I don't have a subscription to Sky Sports I can still watch a delayed recording of most goals in the English Premiership via other sources.

But then, last night after repeatedly referencing page 221 on RTE's Aertel (teletext) service I could tell that the Man. United versus Arsenal match appeared to be rather exciting..... 1-0 Arsenal........ 1-1..... 2-1 Arsenal...... 2-2..... 3-2.... Man U.... unbelievable!!!!....... 4-2 Man U..... incredible!!!!

Damn it! I want to see the goals..... like now!. So of course I downloaded the match review. Even though I was outside of 3G coverage of the time it only took a few minutes on 2.5G (GPRS) to gulp the 2Mb file for 2 minutes worth of a smartly edited and slickly packaged review. And yes, it was as exciting as I'd imagined.

My problem is that I now have to re-evaluate my snotty attitude to this kind of mobile content service. As someone who spends my working day jacked in to the internet I realise now that I've grown to take on-demand access to information for granted. If I want the answer to a question its usually only an email, IM or google away. With my subscription to eircom Music Club I can instantly download a catchy tune I might hear on the radio. With RTE's video streaming services I can watch news video when I've time, not when the TV scheduler decides I should be home from my 9-5 job. And if I can't wait to see the review of exciting football game which 'only' costs 2 euro what am I going to do? Hmmmm..... and I'm only a Chelsea fan!

Pricenoia - compare international Amazons

Pricenoia is an ingenious service that helps you make price comparisons on goods to be purchased, among the various international Amazon stores - UK, USA, France, Canada, Germany and Japan.

It's not always the case that you can get a produt cheapest to your door via the nearest geographical store apparently and this site makes it simple to check what your best source is. It automatically detected that I am in Ireland (via IP address I presume), changed my currency to Euro and drew a coloured graph of the price history (on various searches) after factoring in shipping costs. Absolutely brilliant and a wonderful example of web-service as microbusiness.

More eBay entrepreneurs

Yesterday's Sunday Times carried yet more great stories about eBay entrepreneurs. The figures are staggering -

More than 23,000 businesses in the UK now sell on the online auction site as shopping on the internet rockets to £40bn.

EBAY started in business by helping enthusiasts to swap novelty toys. Now it has become the fastest-growing forum for start-ups in Britain.

The Sunday Times has learnt that more than 23,000 enterprises are trading through the online auction site, with an estimated three-quarters of them using it as the sole way of conducting their business.

Make sure to read through the profiles of these eBay entrepreneurs to see how ordinary the businesses are. No rocket science, just suppliers meeting demand and offering good customer service.

eBay Pulse

eBay Pulse should make a useful research site for many microbusiness entrepreneurs.

Bargains at Dell outlet store?

I'm struggling to find an excuse for upgrading my 4 year old Gateway PC, even though it's only 700Mhz and still running Windows 98. Most of my computer usage these days involves browser interaction. The bulk of my email now comes to me through a GMail console and I'm using Outlook Express less and less. I've also switched from a dedicated RSS application - FeedReader - to the web-based Bloglines. The only Office application I use is Word and then only when I'm sent a Word document.

So as much as I'd like to take advantage of the bargains in Dell's new Irish online outlet store I simply can't justify it.

How to start up an ecommerce website?

On boards.ie Clueless asked a number of questions about starting an ecommerce business in Ireland and set in motion a great debate on the various issues. There has already been some terrific input from experienced business people on items such as tax and vat, website hosting, training, data privacy and accounting.

AOL call on Valista

This looks like something of a coup for Irish mobile payment company Valista -

"AOL, the flagging online division of Time Warner (TWX ), is about to rev up a potential growth business, aiming to boost earnings per subscriber. BusinessWeek has learned that AOL and Irish technology company Valista will announce on Nov. 15 that they're teaming up to enhance add-on premium services."

Entrepreneurs thrive on eBay

Entrepreneur.com has three great stories about eBay entrepreneurs.. In particular the third one, about a couple who both fought life threatening medical problems and were nearly broke, but have since built up their online furniture and antiques business to a projected turnover of $4 million this year, is a truly inspiring story. There's also a useful companion piece about the best products to sell on eBay.

I must admit, in the past I've really been quite sceptical about the opportunities for running a profitable microbusiness on eBay, but I'm coming across more and more stories, like the above, of successful eBay mercants. Are there many Irish merchants making a living through eBay? I'd be very interested to know.

Irish online shopping centres

Tuesday's Irish Examiner pointed out that eDirectory.ie - "Ireland's first one-stop-online shopping facility" has now been launched. Buy4Now.ie might object to that description but after a quick glance I think I can say that it now has some decent competition.

However both online shopping centres still disappoint in certain areas. For instance I'm in the market for an MP3 player but ediretory.ie appears to have nary a one in stock while Buy4Now.ie only has a limited range of iRiver devices on offer. Looks like I'll be sticking with Amazon.co.uk for most of my online shopping then.