EirePreneur

Aspoke 'n for

Great to see more Irish bloggers covering their entrepreneurial exploits. Antoin says that Aspoke.com - his laptop style brand - is moving along nicely:

"There’s a steady stream of orders and interest. We have all the usual problems of growth - space, logistics, capital and so on. But the product is good, and it’s getting better as we learn more about what the marketplace wants."

You know a new coat might just be an ideal birthday present for my drab Dell Inspiron 510m.

Lidl hardware - too good to be true?

I was in the local Lidl today and had my hand on one of those really cheap injet cartridges for my HP Deskjet 640c. Being the skeptic that I am however I put it back down because I couldn't imagine it was anything other than a bit dodgy being so much cheaper than the 'official' cartridges.

Please tell me I'm a fool so I can go back and buy a basket full tomorrow ;-)

Using a Private Residence as a Business Premises

Of potential interest to all microbusiness EirePreneurs is a discussion thread on boards.ie entitled "Turning a Private Residence into a Business Premises".

Thankfully I don't live in a housing estate so the main issue discussed doesn't apply to me, but as Victor points out - "If someone is merely operating a home office (little likelyhood of visitors, few deliveries) there is no problem" - which means my humble node in our worldwide virtual office would hardly pop up on the radar anyway.

Bluetooth Modem for flexible home office

If, like me, you work from a home office you'll probably agree that its very difficult to find that perfect location to setup your desk, shelving and so on. Even if you're lucky enough to have a few candidate options how do you choose between the trade-offs of daylight, peace, space and utility.

When I was setting up I eventually decided on using a wasted corner of an L-shaped bedroom. It was nearly perfect in every way except that there was no phone socket nearby for my dial-up modem connection (believe it or not the lack of an ordinary phone did not pose a problem as I use the internet and my mobile for all my communications needs).

So I ended up buying a 40 foot long extension lead and trailing it through a room and hallway, and up a stairs. I've never made it permanent by nailing it to the wall because I felt it wouldn't look good no matter how carefully I did it and because I've been holding out a hope of setting a wireless network of some sort with my internet gateway in the sitting room next to the phone socket.

Soon however I'll have another option, and a much better one at that. One of the most exciting gadgets I've seen announced at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas is the the Socket Cordless 56k modem using Bluetooth wireless technology. I've been using a TDK Bluetooth adaptor on my PC for a few months now to download photos and video from my Nokia 3650, so the Socket modem seems like an ideal solution.

Of course, the fact that I'll also be able to go online from the garden patio on a fine summer's day, using my laptop, will be a nice little bonus :-)