Pat Phelan: Bits, bytes and telecoms

Twitter lists, I am not bothered

Pat Phelan — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 10:58:56 +0000

Lists, Lists and Lists
It appears to have set the world on fire, me?
I am not bothered
Maybe its just me but I really don’t understand the excitement over lists, I have the feature and played with it a few times and that’s it.
Scoble makes a lot of sense, Chris Brogan makes no sense and Todd Zeigler is of the opinion that the more lists you on on the more important you are, I have just added him to my “people that make no sense list”
This is just going to be another circle jerk in my opinion, can you hear it now?
How many followers do you have?
Well you beat me, How many lists are you on though?
Aha, I win
This is not the twitter that I use and love and only adds to the echo chamber

Donal Óg Cusack out of the closet and into the clover

Pat Phelan — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:10:35 +0000

As a sports addict who would support any type of game I could not help but hear the story of Donal Óg Cusack over the last few weeks.
Donal is the goalkeeper for the Cork Hurling team if you didn’t already know that and has just told the world that he is gay, I admire his decision 100% and fair play to him.
It stops there though.
In what I see as an incredible cynical move Donal timed this announcement with the launch of his book “Come what may” and thus ended Cork’s worst kept secret, I mean in fairness lads the dogs on the street knew Donal was gay (not that it mattered a jot to anyone whether he was gay or straight) it wasn’t as if he had gone to any great lengths to hide it.
Donal’s book which was serialised in the Daily Mail, a homophobic newspaper which last week suggested that Stephen’s Gatley’s death was down to his sexual orientation, surely if Donal was as honest and open he would have canned this serialization immediately, no the rumoured €50,000 made it all better.

Declan Cashin in yesterdays Irish Independent practically made me sick
“I cannot convey to you how proud I am of Donal Óg, and how momentous an event this is for gay men and women in this country”
In fucking fairness Declan are you fucking kidding me?
“A momentous moment for gay man and women in this country” Non celebrity people come out to that their family and friends everyday and they don’t get lines in newspapers. They don’t get love from Perez Hilton.
Everyone in Cork knew Donal Óg was gay, this was announced as his career was on the wane and to push sales of what would probably have been a very average book written by a guy who certainly isn’t the most popular in real life.
I spoke to a bunch of gay friends before I wrote this as I was worried it would come across as rather glib but the overall response was very positive.
What do you think?

Free money here

Pat Phelan — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:45:56 +0000

I have a friend whom I haven’t heard from for a while, a fantastically decent chap, we soldiered together when neither of us had a bean between us.
His business is gone slow and he has been looking for other “opportunities” I should add that he has zero internet and computing experience.
He has been hanging out with these “nice folk” and now these “lovely people” are going to help him get rich or should I say help him to get them rich.
These fantastically talented human beings are going to make him rich beyond his wildest dreams in fact one of them named The Rainmaker is making people rich left right and centre already.
Sean Roach according to my friend is the absolute bee knees among them and is going to make him rich beyond his wildest dreams, all sounds amazing right?
Well after sharing stages with Donald Trump, Lady Diana, Rudy Giuliani and other visionaries
Where do I sign up?
My friends personal coach/guidance guru is the wonderful Saj P who is the creator of the amazingly titled “Affiliate Funnel System Bonus and Review” which is an “affiliate marketing guaranteed to generate 6 figures a month in affiliate commissions” it has resulted in Saj P becoming an under the radar millionaire
Wow- again where do I sign up?
Now the interesting thing about these people is that its strictly money up front for these amazing programs, if its all so good why isn’t the course free
They are bound to get it back aren’t they?
I hope you understand this was written tongue in cheek but you can go as mad as you like in the comments, with the economy in its current state we are going to see a lot more of these get “rich” quick schemes with people beg borrowing/stealing or spending their redundancy payments on it.
This was the event in Dublin
Leaves a taste in my mouth.

UPC Broadband, wonderful service unless you want to work at the weekends.

Pat Phelan — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 16:52:03 +0000

I switched to UPC Broadband a few weeks ago and was at first thrilled with their service, 17 megs downstream out of a possible 20 megs, always on, no download limits but it has now become possibly the worst broadband service I have ever used.
I again have no connectivity for the last two hours and yesterday no connectivity for 3 hours (just back up 8hrs downtime)
I am now on almost first name terms with their customer service team who appear to have the knowledge of gnats regarding broadband.
3 weeks in a row I can now almost guarantee it will be down again next Sunday as the company appears to have no clue whatsoever what is going on with their service.
It’s been up and down four times today which beats the three times last Sunday and after 10 minutes of being on the phone with the lovely but brain dead Collette whose best suggestion was” could I call back in four hours” I am probably going to do a Hakka upon their Cisco router.
UPC please don’t sell what you can’t deliver
Please don’t tell me you are “sending a man out”
Please don’t give me stupid stats “there are 94 out of 130 routers in your area working fine”
Please don’t say that” you don’t know what a Traceroute is”
Please don’t put up an IVR informing us of a major fault in my location that was reported at 2.50pm when I reported it at 10.10am
Bring back Cork Multi Channel and Marty Morrissey, all is forgiven

MAXroam goes Dutch, Spanish and WiFi

Pat Phelan — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:47:08 +0000

These multiple releases are now part of our strategy moving forward with lots more to come next qtr.
We are delighted to announce a number of new partnerships today.
MAXroam Spain is now open for business in conjunction with our partner Dr Sim a fantasic company which helps Spaniards reduce their mobile bills. A special word of thanks here to my friend Loic as I first met Dr Sim at Le Web last December. (Highly recommended event)

One item that is constantly requested by our users is WiFi deals, we examined a number of options provided by global companies and went with Trustive.
They have been excellent to deal with and now Cubic Telecom customers can get privileged rates in over 90,000 Trustive hotspots

Coming along last is our partnership with a fantastic Dutch entrepreneur to launch MAXroam Netherlands.
We are really excited to have Netherlands onboard.

iGap, an excellent Opportunity for Irish start-ups

Pat Phelan — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 08:20:44 +0000

I am absolutely thrilled to see the launch today of iGap (The Internet Growth alliance).
“The “Internet Growth Alliance” is a business led initiative that aims to support, in a practical way the international growth ambitions of Irish Internet businesses. We believe that the Irish Internet industry is a key area of potential growth opportunity. There are many excellent role models, experts and associations involved in the industry”
So why the big excitement?
1. Ireland needs this, we need to think outside the box at this stage and this excellent programme has bought together an incredible bunch of people whom Irish start-ups would seldom has access to.
2. The program was conceived by one of my friends Colm Lyon of Realex.
3. I am an advisor to the program.
Full release below
The IGA and Enterprise Ireland are delighted to announce the launch of the Internet Growth Acceleration Programme. This is a new multi-module programme for Irish Internet businesses that wish to grow internationally. It runs over six months allowing participants to complete a deep and intensive review of their internet businesses, resulting in a finale at which each participant will make a pitch to some of the IGA advisors who have pledged to refund the fees for at least four of the participants! Download the pdf here.

The programme has been developed and is being run by Enterprise Ireland - see http://www.enterprise-ireland.com/igap for the application process.
International and local instructors will be involved as will the business advisors from the IGA giving participants the chance to network with both experienced and emerging internet entrepreneurs. Competition for places on this programme is likely to be intensive and interested candidates are advised to apply as soon as possible. Download the full details here.

An excellent brochure on the program is available here.

How to Twitter (no charge)

Pat Phelan — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:52:27 +0000

My discovery yesterday (maybe I’m innocent) that people are charging companies/individuals to teach them to use twitter wasn’t followed by a discovery that people are charging for fresh air this morning.
This is a short post as the good news is, there is nothing to learn.
These people are just slightly shy of ~~shyster~~s fresh air salespeople but of course thats only my opinion but as someone who is on twitter longer than most of these combined I would hope you would take it seriously.
If you are still nervous buy a book by Laura Fitton Twitter For Dummies, but I think that isn’t even necessary.
Yes there are lots of Irish companies on twitter and I 100% believe that it will benefit your business but only as part of an overall strategy and this is where most people could do with some help from a professional.
Alexia Golez has a nice list to get you started, jump in, get your feet wet, sign up here.
You’re not too late and people wont bite but please keep your hard earned cash in your pocket.
One final tip, believe no one who tells you they can help you get more friends/followers on twitter, it shows how much they have completely misunderstood the medium
Me

Vodafone 360-The beginning of cloud mobile?

Pat Phelan — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 11:09:36 +0000

I went along to the Vodafone 360 launch at Bentley’s with an open mind and a sense of excitement on Thursday, you see I have been a fan of Vodafone 360 since it was called Zyb and founded by my friend Tommy Ahlers, I met with Tommy recently in Barcelona and was told to “watch this space” so I did. Funny video from Dennis Howlett from this event
Let’s get the silliest part of the day out of the way first, Dita Von Teese arrived, left without saying a word or allowing a picture so that was really that.
Vodafone Ireland CEO Charles Butterworth made a speech and then it was on to product demo’s

So what is Vodafone 360?
I think we are in the realms of what I like to call “Cloud Mobile” or what we called many years ago in San Francisco “Ken’s phone”.
I obviously due to my zyb experience had a rough idea of what was coming but this operating system connects at a network level that has been previously unseen.
Social networks, it has it, Presence, it has it, IM, it has that too.
This will change mobile in my opinion, the ability to drill this deep and to interconnect, social networks, location, presence has been around for quite a bit now but for a mobile carrier to get it at this level hasn’t and if we see the voice side of it being pushed onto 2G we may be looking at the future data pipe of mobile.

For Vodafone to take the first step indicates a brave new world at vodafone and you have to applaud it.
One small tip for Vodafone- lets know the prices before you guys announce anything, I have no idea on device costs or service costs.

This was supposed to be the “How could I have been so wrong about the iPhone post”

Pat Phelan — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 09:33:46 +0000

So I got a neverlocked iPhone 3GS a couple of weeks ago and have spent two weeks thinking about how am I going to tell everyone I was wrong.
The embarrassment, the shame, me the mobile guy got it completely wrong.
The always connected-check.
The incredible speed of opening and closing apps-check.
The exchange client-check.
The twitter clients- check.
The “this phone could really run my life”-check.
The response of the virtual keyboard to my typing-well almost check.
Until that is my day in Dublin Wednesday
The phone was fully charged 1 hour from Dublin, I attended the vodafone 360 launch (nice pic Johnny) and 4hrs later it was dead as a dodo.
No phone, no email, no effing way of getting the SIM out, no access to a charger and lots of missed calls.
I rushed back to the office dreaming of electricity for my paperweight, gave it a quick charge and my life was good again.
It was gone again 4hrs later, this resulted in a hilarious quest for a paper clip in the Mespil Hotel, (they dont do paper clips) got a result though, bought a packet of safety pins in a chemist and suddenly I was good to go in my E72.
Sorry fanboys I love it, I really do but to be always four hours from a power point is just not good enough for me. (and by the way dont tell me to turn off 3G, etc, etc, the Nokia doesnt ask me to do that)

Ebay’s main problem-Fake goods

Pat Phelan — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 06:55:44 +0000

image Inquisitr

A friend of mine bought an iPhone 3GS a few weeks ago on Ebay, this guy would have saved long and hard for this.
Phone duly arrived and its a fake- €800 down the drain.
This is a huge problem for Ebay at the moment, the fakers will always have good reviews as they have numerous accounts where they sell very cheap items $4-6 and act like the perfect seller.
They then push out 20 fake phones and clear $15,000.
The Irish Examiner has a story on this with golfers being duped out of millions on a fake club scam.
“Fake golf clubs and other goods worth millions of euro were sold to eBay customers around the world in the largest fraud of its kind, a court has heard.One account One received £73,000 (about €80,000) in just a month”
This is Ebay’s largest challenges, I don’t want to buy a bockberry nor a ziphone and neither do any of Ebay’s potential purchasers.

Links for 2009-09-21 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Augmented Reality Pool

Links for 2009-09-19 [del.icio.us]

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Liam Casey Press conference @ International Global Irish Economic Forum

Links for 2009-09-18 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 00:00:00 PDT

50 cent back stronger than ever
JAY-Z and Alicia Keyes New York
From MTV Awards Amazing performance http://www.mtv.com/videos/misc/435686/empire-state-of-mind-live.jhtml#id=1620605 ...
Jajah's @call suspended
It appears that Jajah

Links for 2009-09-15 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:00:00 PDT

And fuck you very much too Bitbuzz
Not only am I ripped off for hotel broadband now they want to limit meSubject: Warning: Your Bitbuzz bandwidth usageDear Bitbuzz user,We have noticed an unusual amount of bandwidth being used by your ...

Links for 2009-09-12 [del.icio.us]

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Another $18,000 mobile bill
When is this going to end? http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/columnists/cellphone-shocker-a-familys-nightmare-59119377.html ...

Links for 2009-09-11 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Jim Corr on The Lisbon Treaty

Links for 2009-09-10 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:00:00 PDT

NYTimes: Bento Boxes Win Lunch Fans
From The New York Times: Bento Boxes Win Lunch Fans They might seem like kids’ stuff, but a sense of fun — and built-in portion control — have helped make the Japanese lunches called bento boxes incre ...
CrunchDeals: T-Mobile myTouch 3G for $99
via mobilecrunch.com ...
New Mercedes Gullwing, stunning
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/09/mercedes-sls-amg/ ...