I strongly recommend you to travel the country and gobble up all the food these festivals have on offer. I also strongly recommend you stay at nearby hotels and book your hotel with GoIreland (the company I work for – surprise!). Since 1996 we have helped thousands of people find cheap and affordable hotels in Dublin, hotels in Kerry, and hotels all across Ireland.

Don’t be a stranger! Check us out!

Check out some of the other inventions below.

The above infographic comes from GoIreland.com – my employer. I moved from my consultancy to become their Head of Digital Marketing in late 2011. GoIreland provides an accommodation booking service in Ireland. Looking for a hotel in Dublin, guesthouse in Cork, or self-catering in Killarney? No problem

Frank recommend a service managed by his friend, Dermot Fehily, called Happy Flat Packs. Happy Flat Packs is an Ikea to Cork delivery service that will purchase, collect and deliver furniture from Ikea Dublin to your home.

Excellent!

I browsed the online Ikea catalogue, selected my purchases, used the form on Happy Flat Packs, had a quick email back-and-forth with Dermot, and I received my delivery 4 days later. The delivery charge was

The cost of the delivery was extremely reasonable when you consider how much it would cost me to travel up and down from Dublin, pay about 6 tolls, and then fiddle my way around Ikea for a few hours.

If you’re looking for Ikea furniture and don’t want the hassle of traveling to Dublin, I recommend using Happy Flat Packs.

How wrong was I? Very.

I can’t believe I can’t find a plugin that:

Posts new blog posts to your Twitter. Uses a URL shortener such as Bit.ly with your Username/API. Allows you to automatically add Google Analytics campaign tracking parameters to your Bit.ly link. Allows you to schedule when you wish to have your tweet tweeted. Allows you to write your tweet from the ‘Add New Post’ page within WordPress.

The above plugin doesn’t seem to exist! I have spent more than four hours researching, searching, installing, and playing with tonnes of plugins.

I guess this means I’m going to have to get the above plugin developed. Unless of course you know a plugin that does the above?

On another note; how annoying is Twitter’s Tweet Button? I use Bit.ly because it is awesome. I can get great stats and insights into how people engage with my short links. But Twitter forces you to use their own crumby URL shortener if you want to use the official Tweet Button. Twitter either need to allow you to use a 3rd party URL shortening service or ramp up their short service with great analytics.

So frustrating sometimes dealing with Twitter.

An Irish broadband comparison site has the answer – and it’s an easy one.

If Juliet was more interested in finding the best broadband in Ireland instead of floundering after an oddly dressed man by the name of Romeo (what a catch!) she would have found the best broadband package for her needs on bonkers.ie.

And it would have been easy.

Bonkers allows you to compare broadband packages offered by all of the providers in Ireland that are servicing your local area. No, not just your county. But your local area. We’re talking about little bitty towns and villages with more sheep than people, and of course counties.

That’s nice.

While most people will compare on price, you can also compare based on upload and download speeds, setup costs, and contract.

This should simplify the broadband choosing process while educating people about what differentiating factors are most important.

Win win win for the confused shopper. Win win win for the choosy shopper. Win win win for all you recession conscience shoppers.

According to what broadband packages are available in Ballincollig (my neck of the woods), I’m one of those recessionistas but I’m also the smart one since I got the best deal – 5mb Fibre Broadband from €22 per month from UPC.

So, did you make the right broadband provider choice? Or were you taken for a ride? Find out for yourself by checking out the broadband deals in your area and make a little switch (see what I did there?).

Next time I’m looking for broadband, I’m either going to try to hack into my neighbours Eircom WiFi (again) or find the best listed deals on bonkers.ie. Whichever is easier!

Disclaimer: I know the guys at bonkers.ie and they’re nice guys.

But their great software is completely undermined by their deceitful and disgraceful behaviour to customers.

One of their key selling points is the provision of free updates for life. That’s right. You pay once and you can use the software for ever and ever and ever. It says so on their site:

“As our customer, you are eligible for FREE bug fixes for life, a 6 months subscription to the Rank Tracker Professional Live! Plan, plus FREE Customer Support Service to answer any Rank Tracker-related request you might have……Enjoy FREE updates for LIFE. (That’s right, all the bug fixes, updates and enhancements are yours free of charge for life!)”

The site also includes this little nugget:

“Free 6 months subscription to the SEO PowerSuite Live! Plan. (The Live! Plan for SEO PowerSuite currently includes algorithm updates for proper interaction with search engines.)”

What the deceitful folk at Link Assistant fail to inform you is that once your “Free” 6 month subscription to whatever extra thing this Live Plan thing does, your software becomes a brick and the only way to unbrick it is to renew your subscription…. for a considerable amount of money.

So what excatly does Free mean to these guys?

At no point ever during paying for the software was I informed that there was a subscription fee involved.

There is a lot of irrate former customers of Link Assistant’s dumping their software and are moving to better search engine optimization software, like Advanced Web Ranking. I’m one of them.

Link Assistant, screw me and I screw you back.

Cork based web designer, and committed tea drinker, Frank Prendergast has upped and moved home from his previous portfolio site to a new one. Frank has decided to rebrand his web design business under his own name.

With the rebranding comes of course, a new design and new content.

The site is strong, bold, unique, and it’s a great type based design.

Two thumbs up.

The rebranding has allowed Frank to add new content and publicise his services in a fresh way.

A redesign is not only a great way to prettify your website but it’s also a great way to rejuvenate your website content.

The content on Frank’s site is exceptional. It’s the hardest thing in the world to write about your own services and the easiest thing in the world to criticise someone else’s for being too waffle-esque and not doing what it says on the tin.

Frank’s content is on the money.

So if you’re looking for an SEO in Cork, a logo designer in Cork, or a CMS based website, give Frank a shout and tell him I sent you.

Hopefully he will repay me in biscuits and tea for the referrals (if any)!

The true purpose of usability is to make money through your site by converting visitors to customers, this in turn makes the designer money as their clients are well chuffed and the cycle of client recommendations gathers momentum. Alan goes on to say that the three characteristics of good usability are obvious, obvious, obvious and that usability trumps features every time.

The below slideshare presentation contains an audio track.