Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock the last week or so, you’ll have found it very hard to avoid the publishing of the Child Abuse Commission Report, and the public outcry that ensued. The report merely confirmed what anyone with half a brain already knew – that schools and orphanages run by religious orders in Ireland were rampant with child abuse in several ways, be it rape, physical abuse, or emotional torment for the children involved. However, the report did not name names, nor did it initially look like this would happen. On top of this, the maximum amount the religioius orders could be held liable for compensation for was around €128 million – a figure agreed almost ten years ago. Amazingly enough, even today the religious orders have not paid that full amount to victims of their child abuse.
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by Hugh on April 29, 2009
Drupal, as we all know, comes great out of the box in terms of search engine friendly urls and the like. However, the built-in path module doesn’t always handle urls as you’d like, especially on large sites. Pathauto is the module for choice for those of us that are fussy about how our urls are structured, however it does have some shortcomings. One of these is for owners of really, really large sites. If you have a site with tens (or hundreds) of thousands of nodes, updating the url aliases can be a tedius process, only achievable via the admin interface, and you can only create a few (500 or so) at a time. So, how does one automate this tedious process?
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by Hugh on April 21, 2009
Whether you’re looking to sell ebooks, music, or software, there are two ways to make money from selling digital products online – the easy way, and the hard way. The hard way entails spending thousands on set up costs for your ecommerce website with long set up times and legwork. The easy way simply involves finding ‘point and click’ service providers who specialise in payment processing and digital fulfilment, signing up, adding your products, and promoting them! Here’s a few handy sites which can help you sell your digital downloads and products online.
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A friend was on MSN today, and basically asked “What’s this Twitter business, and what use might I get out of it?”. Twitter, unless you’ve been hiding under a big old rock, has been taking the internet by storm and particularly since the start of 2009. It’s been a relatively slow burner having launched in 2006, but several celebrity Twitter stories – including the alleged break up of Jennifer Aniston and John Mayer due to his Twitter fascination – have helped fuel the fire. As of today, Stephen Fry (http://twitter.com/stephenfry) and Jonathan Ross (http://twitter.com/wossy) have over 390,000 and 195,000 Twitter followers respectively. Clearly it’s a growing medium, but how can you use it to drive business or traffic to your websites?
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Remember Letsbuyit.com? Back during the dotcom boom of the late nineties and early noughties it was all over the place, with TV ads, billboards, and all that overhyped jazz. It was basically a ‘co-buying’ site whereby groups of customers got together to purchase goods online. The more people who bought something, the cheaper it was. Sort of a good concept, but only if you were completely mental. In 2000, the whole thing went tits-up. But now it’s back, courtesy of some Frenchies.
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Like it or not, we’re in a period of economic recession and, for some, times are very hard. Even if your business is doing well and you’re at least treading water, you should take this opportunity to make your business a leaner operation. Here’s a few tips to help you save a few quid.
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Setting up a business is one of the most exciting things you’ll ever do, especially when it’s your first time. However the one thing that usually puts a dampener on all the fun of going it alone is the boring process of preparing and filing accounts. I’ve previously blogged about fantastic web based accounting software which makes the processes involved in generating invoices and recording payments outwards slightly more interesting. However, what if you don’t even want to do that? What if you just want to throw heaps of paper at someone once a month and say ‘do that’! Then you’ll need Mazuma Money.
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by Hugh on March 31, 2009
The Fallon brothers don’t surprise me anymore. They’ve just announced an absolute stormer of a deal with the giant that is eBay, to power eBay.ie’s property search section. Not only is this a coup for Daft.ie which will firmly leave the likes of MyHome.ie trailing even further behind, it is a great symbol of just how well known a brand Daft.ie is in Ireland, and the power they have in the property market.
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by Hugh on March 31, 2009
After much fanfare and pre-show hype, the Irish version of Dragons’ Den has turned out to be a very big disappointment. Let’s be in no doubt here, the producers have followed the format perfectly and the production of the show is excellent, but the quality of lot of the participants and some of the Dragons themselves has to be called into question.
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by Hugh on March 31, 2009
Google Adsense has been around for several years now, and in that time Google have refined and expanded the range of tools available to publishers to monetise content. The internet is full of articles – some bullshit, some not – about how to earn more from Google Adsense, but here’s a few tips for you from some of my recent optimization.
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