Michele exposes the IEDR in a excellent post. I register domain names pretty regularily (well once every six months or so). On GoDaddy I can whip up a name in next to no time, no questions asked. But for our IEDR no amount of bogosity is a bridge too far.

Their attempts to police the Internet for Ireland have meant that I only ever register a .ie domain when there is absolutely no other alternative (and there is usually an alternative).

The IEDR policy is a classic example of optimising the process to handle the exceptions rather than the common case. So everybody has to jump through the same mind numbing justification process to register names that in any other jurisidiction would be a click away.

How many Irish specific services have .com names just because its cheaper and easier to do it that way?

Check out the Google Stock price over the past few days. Its just batty….

Jarek’s on the same PDC hothouse program as me and he’s just started a blog. Good to see some of the other PDC hothouse founders online….

Blacknight provide an Irish ISP speed test for broadband users. Its pretty good in terms of user interface (requires Java as it’s an applet).
What I’d really like to see (and blacknight may provide this, I just haven’t found it yet) is a comparison across vendors and exchanges so that you can see how fast you are at home and in work and also compare your speed with neighbours, friends, colleagues etc. Then we could really see how the different broadband vendors compare in the trenches as opposed to on the marketing brochures.

Techwire reports on this beergut in reverse. All you need now is a backpack full of ice.

You know your doing something right when the Government feels compelled to respond writing.

Sorry Sarah, fixed the link, thanks for the tip Jarek.

I am usually logged in as admin on my blog, but my public ID should be joe. So how come IrishBlogs reports me as Administrator1086_internal?

Got this error trying to do a google trend on myspace vs bebo.

I run a small startup called Secantus. We are running on a tight budget and are currently focussed on development. I recently inquired as to the price of joining the Irish Software Association. Get this, the special deal startup price for companies like mine is €800!

To put it in perspective, my subversion hosting, and a dedicated hosted server costs about the same price. The loose rule of thumb is you can get a Web 2.0 company started for around $100,000. €800 is about $1000 at todays prices so I’m going to blow 1% of my share capital on membership of a local club.

The HotHouse incubator program in Dublin stamps out ten to fifteen new startups every six months, a significant proportion of which are Software companies. I don’t know of any that have joined the ISA. If the ISA truely wants to represent the Irish Software community then they are going to have to make a bigger effort to include the startups.

Is there even an appetite to recruit this kind of member in the ISA? You would think in this Web 2.0 world they would have a click here to join button on the website with a credit card form and integrated wiki, email and forums. But no its a very sedate email and inquiry form (no mailto: links for these guys, you’ll cut and paste the address like we did in the old days) an once you get access, rest assured its no Alice and Wonderland website in the members area.

So what could they do,

• Drop the fees to something that doesn’t make me sweat, think less than €100
• Take credit card bookings directly on the site
• Add wiki, forums, mail groups, blogs and company editable web pages to this site. All this technology is freeable available and can even be purchased for next to nothing as a hosted option.
• Target the startup companies, these companies are the future of the industry. Where was the ISA are the recent Enterprise Ireland Web 2.0 event? Will they be at the next one in Cork?

If they did this I’d join, what about you?

I was checking the Alexa traffic stats for Flickr.com. Look at the huge spike in traffic in April.

What the hell is that about?

Check out the Yahoo Stats, it gets even weirder…