Copacetic

IN the 1970’s my father ran a newsagent in Artane Dublin (one of his many careers!).  We sold all these things at a fantastic rate, where are they now?

1. Boiled sweets dished out from glass jars into quarter pound bags
2. Slices of ice cream cut and served between wafers straight from the fridge
3. Individual cigarettes
4. Packets of safety razors (just the blades, of course you have a razor!)
5. Broken bits of various cadbury’s products sold by the quarter pound
6. Hapenny chews sold at 4 for a pre-decimal hapenny
7. Large bottles of red lemonade

Check this out,  near realtime tracking of Wikipedia edits using Google Maps to indicate the author location and article. Big brother just got bigger.

Googles rejigging of its page rank has winners and losers. Luckily Copacetic has been a winner and we have been catapulted into the second slot on a search for “copacetic”. We used to snuggle just below the fold behind all the dictionary entries for Copacetic.

Yes, I am a sad page rank measuring sap   I expect to sink back into the void next week, so lets drink a beer and enjoy our day in the sun.

Ok, I did it, against all my better judgement I went an registered PutPlace.ie today. What did it cost?

€54.45!

You are having a laugh? Shurely, shome mishtake?

For comparision:

PutPlace.tv : €28.07

PutPlace.co.uk: €14.07 (for two years!)

PutPlace.mobi: €14.02

PutPlace.us : €5.60

But lets look at a comparable sized nation like Belgium.

PutPlace.be : €12.27

The only other country with a pricing policy as cracked as the IEDR seems to be Denmark, where the domains cost upwards of €40 euro.

And for what? The spurious value of having a “valid” .ie domain. Unfortunately not a single person outside of the staff at the IEDR and the poor saps like me who register domains have any clue that a .ie domain is any more “valid” or “genuine” than any other domain you might register. So the whole effort is wasted except that it fills the IEDR coffers with cash.

I would love to hear from anybody who has chosen to pay or not pay for a service based on the fact that the domain had .ie at the end of it?

Update: looks like Blacknight may be adding to the heat here,  Stephen McCarron of Hosting365 comments,

1. Stephen McCarron Says:
   October 25th, 2007 at 3:55 pm eHey Joe,

   I think you went to the wrong shop – we charge just €25.95 per year (ex VAT).

   www.register365.com

 

So a friend of mine who lives in Cork has a lovely 3 year old daughter with  bowel condition that needs treatment.  They first attended A&E in Cork with the problem in July. After a three month wait, today they travelled from Cork to Dublin to see a consultant and get some tests done in Crumlin.

They waited in Crumlin for three hours, only to be told, just now, no beds, come back next Tuesday and heres the kicker, “maybe we can fit her in”.

God bless centralisation and our third world health care!

If Amazon (AMZN) keeps going at its current rate its going to cross a significant milestone, namely topping out its 1999 .com boom price of 100 $USD and change.  This is from a low of 5.97 $USD in 2001. Is this just down to its fantastic success with S3 and EC2? Or are there other fundamentals at work?

Whats even more amazing is that Jeff Bezos has held onto the reins through this rollercoaster ride.

Via ReadWriteWeb comes this excellent post by Denny K. Miu about what it is to be an entrepreneur and the entrepreneur’s relationship with the VC community. Lots of counter intuitive advice in here, some you (the entrepreneur) won’t like, and some the VC’s won’t like, but its all good stuff, imho.

A typical snippet,

Remind myself that VC’s know that while they occupy a Board seat, their primary objective is not to fulfill their fiduciary duty. VC does not sit on Board to protect the interest of ALL shareholders. VC is there strictly as a portfolio manager and their job is to protect the interest of their investment.

Nooked have unveiled their new product, FeedCommerce, which has been in  production on several sites for sometime now (most notably, Ryanair).

I like the concept, and Nooked have the track record to deliver it as well. Good luck to them.

The Devils Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce is available on Google Books. Some choice quotes,

• Accordion: An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin
• Appetite: An instinct thoughtfully implanted by providence as an answer to the labour question
• Back: The part of your friend which it is your privilege to contemplate in your adversity
• Mayonnaise: One of the sauces that serve the French in place of state religion
• Misfortune: The kind of fortune that never misses
• Riot: A popular entertainment given to the military by innocent bystanders

Evert Bopp is offering a cool prize to someone for helping to rename his Tipperary-based company.

“My main venture at the moment is a company called 802.EU. This venture’s main product is a captive portal solution for use with wireless hotspots, hot-zones, municipal wireless networks & wisps….. We’ve recently heard several comments that the name ‘802.EU’ basically sucks.”

I have to agree 802.eu does suck, black hole style.