Copacetic

I used to slag my buddy Caelen King about the crappy name he chose for his medical tourism search engine RevaHealth.com. Well, he bit the bullet recently and changed the name to the much better whatclinic.com. He also shared some great stats with me,

• Whatclinic.com now has over half a million visitors a month up from 190,000 at the start of the year
• Every day 800 people submit email inquiries to clinics on our site an an additional 900 people call clinics on our site.
• The main treatment categories being looked for are; dental, doctors  plastic and beauty
• The average treatment value being looked for €2,000
• We do business in 20 different countries
• UK is now our strongest market and is growing exceptionally well

Whatclinic.com doesn’t just do overseas, it covers Ireland. For instance here are searches for Dublin and Newry.

With Anglo just having dropped another 8.2bn this quarter its great to see a business thriving amidst all the misery and woe.

Here’s a slideshare of Caelen that shows how they go about there business.

We recently had a blocked drain that required sluicing copious amounts of water through it (as well as a bit of poking with a sharp stick) in order to unblock it. No problemo. Unfortunately the copious water sluicing drained our water tank in the attic.

What does this mean? Well you get airlocks in the pipe system. Airlocks mean no water. A bubble of air sits in the pipe between the tap and the tank and blocks the water getting through. So you need to get rid of the air. God bless Google, lets just whack in “plumbing airlocks” into Google and get lots of hits.

The basic theory is you use the pressure in the working tap to force the airlock out of the the blocked tap. Requires pipes and jubilee clips, basically you need to have been a plumber once.

However nobody seems to get airlocks in mixer taps. Well I had a brainwave tonight. So as indicated in the picture attach a balloon to the tap. Then;

1. Open the airlocked tap
2. Open the tap with water flowing
3. Let the balloon fill
4. Close the tap with water flowing
5. Now with the airlocked tap still open, squeeze the balloon to allow the water to force the air out
6. Rinse and repeat until the balloon starts to fill because water has started to flow

Sorted.

A few hundred quid in plumbing fees saved and me with a big shit-eating DIY grin on my face.

At the recent GeekNRolla event in London there was a panel on how to get more women into IT. One of the (well made) points was women in IT typical don’t describe themselves in IT. Despite working exclusively with or for IT companies they are in marketing or sales or PR or design etc.

So I put this to the test with the four women from Merrion BD who ran an excellent marketing event for tech companies here in the Digital Hub today.

There answers, marketing, sales, PR, business development etc. Not one considered they were working in IT. At most they would grant they were working with IT companies.

If we want to encourage women to work in IT, we need the existing women in IT to start admitting it

Like most Irish people with a pulse my metabolism demands at least one intake of fried pig each week. As a result I eat a fair few fried breakfasts around town. Quality varies enormously and I don’t really have a consistent location I could recommend in the city centre, but recently I have been dropping in on the Woodstock Cafe in Phibsboro.

I cycled past it for years without paying it too much attention until my friend Keith Peters mentioned 6 months ago that it did a cracking breakfast. Since then I’ve never looked back.

Food quality is outstanding with tasty premium sausages, lean thick sliced bacon and the key addition that lifts a fried breakfast, fried potatoes, yum! They also cook eggs to order and offer mushrooms, black pudding, tomatoes and beans (Heinz!) on the side. Hot plates mean the food arrives hot at your table even if you have to queue (which is often, this place gets busy).

What really takes Woodstock to a different place is the friendly and efficient service. Nobody likes to queue for long in the morning and in Woodstock no one has too.

Check it out next time you are in the area, breakfast finishes at 12.00pm.

 Others seem to agree.

The Tallaght IT M50 Incubator program is soliciting for applications to its spring program.

Apply now and get that company started.

A bus hit a tree this morning just past the Five Lamps. Looks like it clipped a tree (notice the damage on the tree just where the branches start to fan out) and it stripped the roof off. Don’t know if there were any injuries.

News report from RTE.

Another picture on pix.ie.

I love EI and both the development advisors I have had have been super, BUT, the web site still sucks. It has always sucked. Why does it suck? Because instead of being organised around customers needs (i.e. the Irish Entrepreneur) it is organised around EI’s needs to publish information on web.

So ten tips for EI to make its web site better,

1. Make it Social: Give you HPSUs a login and create a social network around startups in Ireland. Only you know about all of us. Better still start something on Ning or Facebook or Google Groups
2. Add a Blog: Add an Blog and RSS feed for breaking news that way everybody gets the news rather than the select few who make it through the venn diagram nightmare of EI mailing lists
3. Give Me The Money: We want your advice for sure, but first we want your money Rapid front page “give me the money links” would take visitors right to the core of the matter, CORD, Innovation Vouchers, RTI, Equity Investment, Seed Capital and BES
4. Search more than your Site: Put up a decent search engine that links all the relevant resources. Here’s one I made in ten minutes, Government Websites for Irish Entrepreneurs
5. Automated Mailing Lists: Using a mailing list manager so when I register interest I can also unregister interest without requiring some manual step to remove me from the list. And, wait for it, let me choose what I’m interested in
6. Show us the World: EI has fantastic resources overseas lets seem them on the web site, how do we engage with these people, what can they do for us?
7. Share the Success: EI runs great events all over the world, lets hear about them online
8. IE is not the only browser: Make it look right in Firefox, this is not rocket science lads. 90% of your visiting customers are using Firefox and the rest are using Safari
9. Word is a proprietary format: Stop publishing documents in MS Word. There are far better and more palatable alternatives including OpenOffice, PDF, HTML etc. etc. How long before somebody publishes a new document in Office 2007 and all us poor saps with Office 2003 get screwed?
10. Pick One: Pick any one of these and run with it, then ignore the rest for now

How would you improve the Enterprise Ireland web site?

BTW: All this goes double for the Irish Software Association Web site!

I had the  great pleasure to have one of the founders of Muzu.tv, Ciaran Bollard attend the same HotHouse incubator program as myself, so it was great to get the following via email.

MUZU.TV is LIVE… at last!

MUZU.TV is now open in the UK and Ireland, so you can now Register at www.muzu.tv

WATCH – Gigs, Interviews, Behind the Scenes, Music Videos, Documentaries
PROGRAM – Your Music TV channels
BROADCAST – Your Music TV on the web

-Choose from thousands of legally available music videos, documentaries, live footage and interviews

-Add videos to your MUZU TV Player

-You can also Upload your own music content

-Embed the MUZU TV Player into your site

We pay you half the net revenue of all ad money generated from your stuff on MUZU.TV

WHAT TO DO NEXT:

REGISTER at www.muzu.tv

1. BROWSE the site and ADD videos to your MUZU TV Player (MY TV)

To add a video, simply click the + icon on your MUZU TV Player and the video currently playing will be added to your TV Player

2. UPLOAD your own vidoes to MUZU TV, by clicking on ‘UPLOAD’

3. EMBED your MUZU TV Player onto your site.

Go to ‘MY TV‘ and click the Embed button on the top right of your TV Player and the embed code will appear. Copy and Paste this code into your website or MySpace.

You can also build and customise your own MUZU TV Network and earn revenue on

content you own.  

For a step-by-step guide to all things MUZU TV, just click here, or contact support@muzu.tv with questions or feedback.

To start earning money with MUZU TV just email content@muzu.tv and we’ll send you our contract. 

Thanks,
The MUZU Team

MUZU TV – Your Music Network

Where bands, artists, festivals, venues, broadcasters, music magazines and more broadcast their music TV on the web.

WATCH – Gigs, Interviews, Behind the Scenes, Music Videos, Documentaries
CREATE - Your own Music TV channels
SHARE – Your Music TV on the web

As avid users of Firefox, PutPlace is delighted to help sponsor the FireFox 3 Dublin launch party alongside Blacknight, Segala, Wubud and BT.

The venue is CineWorld on Parnell St.

Registration to attend is required. Over 100 people have already registered so make sure you get your name on the list before it’s closed.