What is being creative? from Kristian Ulrich Larsen on Vimeo.

We may not always create or invent, but we always learn when we try. If this phone ever goes from concept to production, you can count me in.

The flip phone is based on a concept conceived during a six-week long workshop by Kristian Ulrich Larsen, Ewa Sendecka, Jeppe Vestergård and Victoria Kusk. It was then developed further for a semester by Kristian Ulrich Larsen as part of an MA program at Kolding school of design, online at dskd.dk.

Yanko Design are behind the physical design of the phone. Spot the Android screens then follow it up on Wired and Engadget.

photo credit: Let Ideas Compete

THERE IS so much technology in cycling. I don’t think I realised it at first. But over a month on from picking up a bike and telling myself I’m cycling to Sligo (which is this Friday), I’m finding out that there is an insane amount of technology behind cyling. Between power output monitors, wireless this and ANT that, GPS tracking, speed and cadence monitors, heart rate monitors, ultra light-weight this and paper thin that, percentages here there and everywhere, there’s an incredible amount to take in.

All of this has got me thinking that cycling must be a techie’s dream when it comes to sports.

Admittedly, I’m not the most sporty of people. Yes, I love my sports, but I’m very much the armchair supporter. But spending the last five weeks out on the bike has gotten me wired into the sport (literally) on a completely different level.

I’m logging my routes with a Garmin Edge 500 (and running with a Garmin Forerunner 405). I have fitted wireless sensors to the back of bike and pedal shaft to track my speed and pedal rate over the course of a cycle. I’m wearing a heart rate monitor (quite comfortably) under my jersey which, when monitoring heart rate zones, is driving me on or reeling me in, depening on how things are going. These both talk wirelessly to the Edge unit which sits on the cross bar. Once I get home, I sync the Edge up with Garmin Connect which has been mapping my route under GPS with access to stats on length, time, speed, heart rate (max / min / average / zones), temperature, altitude, grades of hills and a whole lot more. Connect it up with Google Maps or Google Earth and I can play back the entire journey and get a solid overview of where things need to be picked up or where things were going quite well.

These small gadgets are teaching me a lot about my own body and level of fitness, what energy is being used and much more besides.

But I’m only scratching the surface.

Everything about the bike is driven by science and technology. Races are won and lost on the time difference created between bikes that are carrying one kind of bottle holder over another, or the position of a saddle, handlebars, the compounds used in the chains, gears, tyres – it’s like looking at a Formula One car for all the world (without the insane budget, and the fact that it’s a car), but you can see where I’m coming from.

Stepping away from the bike and I’ve spent the past month analysing food – what foods work well in what situations, ways to replenish energies, recover after long rides. Combine the two (the food and the bike) and I’ve got a very different outlook on things food and fitness-wise to where I was a month ago. All of this is building up of course to me cycling to Sligo on Friday. We start Friday, do 80 miles and continue Saturday with another 70 or so. If you had asked me to cycle 150 miles at the start of the summer I would have told you where to go in no uncertain terms.

But the techie in me is being driven towards it as I’m mad for the stats that come out the other side, stats that in a large part have come down to your own physical input. When all is said and done and I get back to the office on Monday morning I’ll get them uploaded here. Even before we get the cycle done we’re already talking about the next trip, and the one after that. God only knows what I’m after letting myself in for…

It’s rare enough that I’ll pop my head up to share an advertising video, but the theatrical side of me really likes this extended viral for Nokia’s SatNav campaign. Between work and new ventures in the past two months I’ve found myself on the road a lot, have taken many wrong turns in Dublin, some wrong turns in Cork, but having a sat nav in the van and on the phone eventually brought me back to Kilkenny.

I’ve strayed from the N95 as my primary handset in recent weeks but for road and street warriors packing any of Nokia’s recently released handsets, there’s some free maps to be had with Ovi Maps.

Now to break out the notebook and get me some blog posts…

APPLICATIONS to be on the third series of TV3′s The Apprentice close on Monday May 3rd. I’ve followed the show for the past two series, loved it and sure enough, while good chunks of the show are shot for a TV audience, you’d have to admit that the series makes for great viewing as the candidates are put through their paces to become Bill Cullen’s “apprentice”.

Last time around saw salesman Steve Rayner beat Steven Higgens to the punch in the show’s finale with Rayner getting a €100,000 contract for is efforts.

From TV’s application –

A selection of applicants will be called to take part in an interview process on Saturday 8th May with the possibility of progressing to a further round of interviews on Tuesday 11th and either Wednesday 12th of May or Thursday 13th of May.

Please be aware that your interview may only take a few minutes due to the large number of applicants. It is essential to come to the interview well presented and with good reasons as to why you should be Bill Cullen’s next Apprentice.

Please note that if you are one of the successful applicants who make it through to the televisions series you will need to make yourself completely available for an extended period of filming between June 14th 2010 and August 21st 2010.

If you’ve been sitting at home watching the last two series, reckon you can do better, why not make the application?

Start your application here at TV3.ie.

SATURDAY took myself and a few hundred bloggers on a journey across the country to Galway or the fifth annual Irish Blog Awards. We had the motorway up, the scenic route home and in between had a fantastic evening / night / morning in the Radisson Blu in the centre of Galway, the shindig organised by some mighty fine people, assisted by other allstars, and attended by bloggers from all walks of life (more on that below).

I’ve made it to the awards the last four years, enjoyed two great years of it in Dublin, last year in Cork and this year in Galway. Shows like this take a hell of a lot of ingredients, time, money, the patience of saints, sponsors, promotors, advertisers, volunteers and more. Behind the scenes there’s an army of people making contributions from writing up the awards, judging, submitting videos, laying out chairs, providing props, music, food, goodie bags – the whole nine yards – but it has to be said, when it comes to showtime, everything is so smooth, so energy filled and runs so well that by the time you hit the bed after the awards you’ll be planning and booking for next year.

Or at least that’s my take on it anyway and nominated or not, I’m already looking forward to 2011.

Each year brings new faces, new conversations and given the majority of bloggers (I would hazard a guess) are Twitter users in some capacity, the ability to recognise people across the room has gotten a lot easier too. I could namecheck people for the night given how you couldn’t move 20 feet at times without running into someone for a chat but needless to say, it was a great night out in Galway and one that anyone with a remote interest in blogging would really benefit from attending.

The video above is one myself and Ross put together as one of the category introductions for the night. Sneaking in the door at 8pm I gave up my (what I would deem) traditional front-row-ish seats for one right at the back of the room, making it quite easy to duck out the door if the video went horribly wrong. Alas, the laughs were there, the comments and feedback for the 60-second piece were great and I didn’t have to prop up the bar as much as I had anticipated. If there’s an opening for more videos next year you can chalk us down in advance.

In the aftermath of everything, there were agreements to meet up for pints, talk of organising trips up to Belfast or getting people to Kilkenny for a session. Some of those on my “pint list” I didn’t get to link up with but we’ll do something soon.

I found, as I’ve done the past three years, that a trip to the Blog Awards is a great motivator for your own work. Come January of this year I started making more time for the blogs I’ve authored over the past few years. This one alone has seen more posts in the first three months of the year than the last six of 2009, DeviousTheatre.com is going strong and expanding its arts coverage, KilkennyMusic.com has had a recent facelift and online strategy put in place and it’s all coming up blogging here in Kilkenny. With the Irish Web Awards just over six months away we should get a nice, timely kick in the arse to look after our bigger sites as well.

In summary, my thanks to the Blog Awards Army. That includes Damien, Rick, Darragh, Steph, Anto, Brian Greene (whose 90s set could be heard no problem on the garden rooftop after midnight), all those who put together videos, all those who accepted awards, all those who attended, all those I got to chat to, the Radisson Blu hotel (who do an absolutely fantastic breakfast, welcome you off the elevator AND put a Sunday paper in your hand), the new faces and usernames I picked up, the old faces who continue to be great people, Edwina for this most excellent photo and all those who continue to read, write, comment and rate Irish blogs. Yes. All of you, and that lot, are in that army.

Now, it’s back to work.

photo credit: SocialGrow

PayPal. eBay. Facebook. LinkedIn and, now, IBM. Between them in recent months they’ve announced hundreds of new jobs.

PayPal had announced recently that they were adding 200 to their Dublin base, Brian Cowen had a smile on his face when he let the news out that eBay would be creating up to 150 jobs, Facebook had announced they would double their Irish-based workforce from 70 to 140 after only one year here while LinkedIn announced yesterday that they were setting up their European HQ in Dublin to link up with new offices in London and the Netherlands. This morning saw The Irish Times carry a story on IBM creating up to 200 new jobs in Dublin.

When I started in college in 2001 we were told we’d be lucky to get any kind of a job in the technology sector. Particularly anything to do with the internet.

If I was sitting back in the canteen in WIT reading the business section of this morning’s national papers I reckon I’d be doing so with a smile on my face. If the big hitters keep investing and reinvesting, something has to be going right somewhere, yes? That said, those hoping to apply for new positions created by the companies would do well to register for their services and brush up on how everything works.

I would be interested to see the figures on LinkedIn’s plans for job creation or its expansion into Ireland but if the big companies keep on coming, how many more from the picture above will we see open doors here? Anyone taking odds on a Dublin-based European HQ for Twitter?

Try as I might, I usually end up walking away from the house or the office without the cable to connect my camera to the laptop. When it comes to transferring photos on the move, that can be a right pain in the neck. Sure enough, you can pick up digital cameras of all shapes and sizes (that might cost you a bit more on the credit card) packing WiFi transfers, GPS, location tagging and the likes. But for those of us looking for a WiFi option, the Eye-Fi might be just the ticket.

According to TUAW, you can set the card “to automatically upload to iPhoto, or just to a specific folder on your computer. You also have the option to have your pictures uploaded to MobileMe, Flickr, Evernote, Picasa, Facebook, and many other places (see chart in new window). Videos can be uploaded to Flickr (only 90 seconds maximum, though), Picasa, YouTube, Facebook, Phanfare, and Photobucket. You can even set it up to send notifications via email, Facebook, Twitter, or SMS when transfers start, finish, or are interrupted.”

It’s a Class 6 wireless SD card meaning it should shift around 6mb a second and Amazon have the new 8GB model on pre-order for the princely sum of $149.99.

It might seem a bit on the steep side for an SD card. Argos are happy to flog them for anything up to €60 for an 8gb SDHC card, and if the Euro conversion rate at €112 or so held up, an extra €50 isn’t a bad price to pay to get full WiFi capabilities for your digital camera.

If you’re thinking on buying, check the Eye-Fi support site for compatible cameras.

Note: Did I actually say “just the ticket”?

FORGOTTEN PASSWORDS can be a pain in the ass. Especially when the security guard to get a new password issued via email includes a zip code field, which you didn’t have to enter to begin with and subsequently the form validation won’t allow the zip code to be empty. Long and short of it, my brother’s password was forgotten for Amazon but they wouldn’t send him a new one using their password reminder feature.

In this situation I’d usually email customer support, wait the few hours and hope that something positive would come out of the correspondence. However, when the delivery is late and you’re a bit anxious about the staus of the shipment from mainland Europe, I’d pick up the phone to try find out what’s going on.

Little did I know that when you go to phone Amazon, they’ll save you the bother and will ring you directly.

Presented with the screen above, you click on “phone”, enter a landline number, choose whether you would like the call now or in five minutes and away you go. It works for UK and Ireland and within seconds of pressing “call me”, the phone on reception here was ringing – a few minutes later and the password issue was resolved, package tracked and all well in the world.

I’m a gadget fan, no doubting that. From carrying multiple smartphones to iPods, iPhones, recording equipment, 3G this, WiFi that, GPS watches and more, I find myself yearning for the latest gadgets and toys. But for some reason, I can’t seem to find a want in me for the iPad.

As it stands, I carry an iPod touch with me on the road, a 3G iPhone in my pocket, a MacBook Pro in my bag and there’s a 24″ iMac sitting on my desk. All taken into consideration, I’ve a feeling that the iPad may well not be targeted at me and if I was pushing it in a shop, I’d be hitting the new home broadband users, the “silver surfers” or even the school kid generation.

It’s not going to do anything for me that I can’t already do. Sure enough, it will carry the apps I use daily, it will allow me to check mail and surf away to my hearts content, but that’s all achievable with the iPhone. I like the flexibility to use 3G access as opposed to WiFi when I’m out and about, something which I would have to fork out a lot more for on release of the European models of the iPad. It won’t make phone calls and won’t pack a video camera for the first generation, so video conferencing is out – though discoveries in the latest iPhone SDK may suggest different.

Yes, it bridges the gap size-wize. In the hands of an very young or elderly user, it’s not so small that you can’t read the names of apps on the screen or have difficulties in viewing the on-screen text when flicking through the New York Times or your latest eBook addition. The interface, as with that of the iPod / iPhone is quite simple to navigate and apps have made web access all the more easier for folk. Want weather? Tap here. Want news? Tap here. View photos? Tap here. Read email? Tap here.

With family connections coming and going from the US over the next few weeks, the question has come up again and again… “can I bring you anything home?”, quickly followed by “what about those ipad yokes?”.

While it would be very easy to say yes, it’s something I genuinely cannot (at least with what we know about the first generation model) justify in buying. It’s not so much the price (I was happy to go and shell out for a pre-paid iPhone 10 months ago rather than take one on contract), just the use, and potential lack of. I can’t carry it in my pocket and at the very most I reckon it could be used for some bedside browsing but then again, the iPhone and laptop take care of that.

I can’t even find a good reason to buy one for the office outside of demoing developments on-site but even that would be scraping the bottom of the reasoning barrel.

To iPad or not to iPad? I think not.

A GUARANTEED good night out, solid entertainment, old faces and new and more have been found at the Irish Blog Awards for the last couple of years. Last year saw the first night to be held out of Dublin when hundreds of bloggers descended on Cork’s International Airport Hotel (cracking venue) and at the end of the month, the annual pilgrimage will be made to the Radisson Blu in Galway for the 2010 Irish Blog Awards.

The long lists came out, then the slightly-longer-that-last-year-short-lists came out and we’ll soon be reading the finalists lists before the awards proper on Saturday March 27th where we’ll find out who the blogging public have deemed the creme of 2009/10 in Irish blogging circles.

Sabrina has details on the L’Onglex Ladies Tea Party, there’s a Galway photowalk being organised, another exhibition from Eolai and no doubt a hell of a lot more.

My last visit to Galway was September 2008 with myself and Ross hitting the road for a Strike Anywhere gig in Cuba. Thankfully this time I won’t have to turn around and drive back to Kilkenny at midnight. If the awards have taught me anything over the last few years it’s if you can stay in the awards venue – stay in the awards venue. The drinking, chatting, storytelling, meeting and greeting never seems to end and as a bonus you get to do it all over again at breakfast the following morning.

If you’re planning on heading along on the night, you’ll need to register in advance. Tickets have also gone on sale for €15. A pre-show text message on Wednesday told me I’d be shortlisted under Best Technology blog, something I’m delighted to see. The second round of judging, where the shortlists become the finalists, gets underway from today but nominated in the end or not, you’ll find me in Galway on the 27th.

Wouldn’t miss a night like it…

CAN’T PAY? WON’T PAY! opened last night at Set Theatre in Kilkenny, the latest offering from The Devious Theatre Company. While I can be seen on stage for the 95 minutes or so of performance, I’ve been working as a producer on the show as well for the past few months so there’s a bit of a bonus feeling of excitement there when you see the fruits of your labour (and those around you of course) take to a stage in full technicolour detail.

(By the way, you can win tickets to Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! here)

As a group this year (and over the last four years) we’ve really tried to grow our online presence, exploring all avenues social. Delighted we are in that people who come to the shows then return their feedback via Twitter, or Facebook. Hell, some people will even email in their thoughts post-show. However the feedback arrives, it’s made all the more possible, accessible, and real time thanks to the embracing of said social tools, tools that have not so much changed how we operate as a theatre company but have certainly shaped how we operate.

On the back of WordCamp, the wifi setup that was created for last weekend’s conference (part of which was held in Set Theatre) is still in place, thus you can access WiFi during the show. No, we wouldn’t want you checking your email or getting lost browsing the web, but with Twitter, Facebook and more at your fingertips (or in your pocket), we’d love to hear the feedback on the night, good or bad, public or private. If you’re sitting in the audience tweeting about the show, why not use the hashtag #cpwp? Feel free to take photos of the performers in action on the stage (just switch the flash off if you don’t mind) and tag them accordingly. Adopting a more open approach last year, we wound up with some fantastic audience photos that were shared via email, Picasa, Facebook and more.

John Morton has been talking about the ingredients of Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! over on the DeviousTheatre.com blog, and now it has added WiFi, so if you’re coming along, don’t be shy, let us know what you think.

Order tickets online for Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay!

WORDCAMP IRELAND takes place this weekend, kicking off this morning in my own back garden (Kilkenny) where hopefully I’ll get to pop my head in for a few minutes over the course of the two days.

Langton House Hotel is the venue for the first Irish WordCamp conference and for bloggers, techies, non-techies and WordPress users of all levels there’s plenty to choose from. Things kicked off informally last night with some nibbles, drinks and a photowalk around Kilkenny and registration has just opened this morning for the start of talks proper. Up first are Hanni Ross & Sheri Bigelow, Leo Ibanez & Loughlin O’Nolan and Daryl Koopersmith all split across the three tracks – Intro, Bloggers and Tech.

Check the full WordCamp schedule.

Langtons are looking after the catering and judging by mentions of croissants and scones for the morning, lunches in the afternoon and the (ticketed) dinners in the evening, along with a special WordCamp cocktail menu, nobody will be going home hungry. There’s full childcare available, free wifi for all and plenty for speakers and attendees to link up with.

For those who haven’t picked up tickets yet, there are limited numbers available on the door with tickets today available for €50 and tomorrow (Sunday) available at €25.

It’s possible I’ll make an appearance this afternoon disguised as a clown (or I could be mistaken for a clown in the garb I’ll be wearing for the day) so if you see a grown man running in the door of Set Theatre wearing lime green dungarees, a bright pink shirt and a very white face, do say hello. To all those visiting Kilkenny for the first time, you’ve got the weather for it, you’ve got plenty to see and do so don’t miss out on what the city has to offer as well!

Follow WordCamp Ireland on Twitter.

GONE ARE the days of getting out of the arrivals area of Dublin airport, crossing the road to the pay stations for the car park before getting on the bus, and passing out at the total displayed on the machine for your few days parking.

Gone too, seemingly, are the days of needing to use your credit card to get in and out of the car park in Dublin airport to validate payments made online.

In fact, so easy was the process that I had to follow up with airport parking online this morning to make sure that I’d been charged for the weekend’s stay in Long Term Red and that they realised the van was in fact now out of the carpark and not lingering in section D12 any more.

Admittedly it’s been a while since I’ve had to drive to the airport, I would usually opt for JJ Kavanagh’s door-to-door service for the airport spin but seeing as I was heading away on Friday and needed more time in Kilkenny than a bus schedule would allow me, it made sense to make the drive to Dublin Airport. Parking was booked and paid for by credit card on Thursday night and on arrival on Friday lunchtime, there was no need for cards or tickets or receipts – simply pull up at the barrier, your registration is scanned, transcribed and displayed on the barrier screen and in you go.

No problem I thought, just don’t lose the credit card in Scotland as you’ll need it on the way out.

But no. On returning last night, albeit close to three hours late and one failed take-off attempt in Aberdeen in horrendous snow and ice, I joined the queue getting out of the car park and no sooner had the barrier come down in front of me then it was up again. So quick was the process that I went off with the receipt of payment for the car in front of me and though the barriers had actually stayed up and maybe there was a fault.

Following things up this morning and all was well in the world, checkout confirmed at the Red exit for 8:54pm, card charged the right amount and payment details available for printing on the the DAA site, fears of parking charges building up allayed. Certainly makes the whole parking thing a hell of a lot easier.

THIS WEEK has been a grand week so far in terms of plotting and planning for the business year ahead. I’d told myself I would take until January to explore a few online options for contact management, entry-level CRM apps, anything that could be tied back to the iPhone.

This morning was the turn of signing up for the Salesforce 7-day trial for their contact manager.

I’m looking for a service that will manage my own business contacts, plus that of the theatre and music side of my work life, and those for another project I’m rolling out over the course of the year. It’s got to be web based, have some element of grouping or tagging and an iPhone app or handy desktop app linking back to the web end of things are a serious plus. More to the point, it’s got to low cost on an annual basis.

Salesforce have a contact manager available online that I’m going to explore over the next couple of days, making use of a seven day trial. Ultimately the service costs $60 a year, or monthly at $5 a month and while I’ve not yet had the chance to play around with it, I had a call from one of their pre-sales team within a half hour of registering online to talk through a few things, introduce the service, suss out my needs and offer further calls if needs be.

Can’t say that I’ve had that happen before so it’s certainly left an impression. We’ll see what happens in a week or so.

Of course, recommendations are always welcome…

KILKENNY BASED startup dbTwang, which I’ve had the pleasure of working on in the past and am keeping a keen eye on, made the TV earlier today. An interview recorded with co-founder Fintan Blake Kelly (co-founder alongside Keith Bohanna) a few weeks back got it’s airing on Ireland AM today with Fintan filmed in Gerry Crowe’s store (Perfect Pitch) on Exchequer Street in Dublin speaking about the ins and outs of dbTwang.

Dubbed by Fintan as a “facebook for guitarists”, the site opened to full public usage late last year and if the RSS feed is anything to go by, there’s been a great uptake in registrations and submissions of guitars of late. For my own sins I’ve now got five guitars from my own collection listed up there (you might need to be logged in to see that link). While the site is gearing itself around the guitarist community with functionality now and in the pipeline to encourage conversation around the guitars, I’ve shied away from the community element but have used the site in its early stages to encourage me to learn more about my own instruments and document them for future reference / insurance purposes.

In a family full of musicians and growing up surrounded by all kinds of instruments, I’ve found myself wanting to learn more about the guitars themselves, the technologies behind them, the woods, the factories used, the whole nine yards – a learning process I’m using dbTwang and it’s records to navigate through.

There’s great things planned for dbTwang and if you’re a guitarist of any calibre it’s worth your while signing up for free and exploring not only the features of the site itself but the impressive and growing collection of guitars from users on board to date.

Check out the video above or here on YouTube.

FOLLOWING ON from yesterday’s foray into the world of online food shopping it’s safe to say that everything arrived, is packed away in the fridge or press and I’m stocked for the week.

From looking at the food on the table (in the above picture), *almost* everything arrived as ordered. As a follow up, I’ve broken the process down to a few areas.

Delivery

On the website I was quoted €4 for delivery, the window chosen being 10:30am to 12:30pm today. True to their word, at 11:50am the driver turned up with two crates, dropped them for unpacking on the table, got me to sign for the delivery and off he went. Charge on the bottom of the receipt reads €4. The bottom of the receipt also indicates that the goods were scanned and paid for at 11:16am this morning, so that’s a pretty good turn around (i.e. the dairy side of the order wasn’t out of the fridge all that long). Might be worth noting too that I didn’t order any frozen food and I’m trying to refrain from ordering anything frozen at all for the year. So far so good.

Substitution

Superquinn provide product substitution on your shopping list, where something you’ve ordered isn’t available. In my case, it was the beef strips for the stir fry. This is possibly due to ordering the beef strips as part of their online meal deal offering beef strips or diced chicken, plus fresh stir-fry veg as a bundle. Knowing I had some chicken in the freezer anyway, I opted for the beef, which now appears to have been unavailable in Superquinn Kilkenny.

That said, the diced chicken was available and it will certainly do. When ordering online, you do have the option of instructing your personal shopper *not* to substitute a product if it’s out of stock and if I was really picky I could have asked for beef regardless, break the special offer etc.

Pricing

On their website, it is noted that

Today’s price is an estimated total and may differ slightly from the original order value due to variables such as weight estimations for meat and produce, weekly specials, price changes or stock deletion

.

My order, at “today’s price”, yesterday, was estimated at €51.04. The final price, including delivery, came to €53.48 and there were a few differences on the final receipt.

The onions were ordered, I’d looked for 700g, the bag coming in at around 550g thus shaving a few cent from the order. Prices fluctuated here and there but most notably in the offers that weren’t adhered to. The site also has various price reductions running up to January 26th including 90c off packet soups (didn’t appear on the receipt), 89c off rocket salad (again, no go), 79c off fresh soup (no go), 95c off lemongrass noodles (again, no discount)… adding up to €3.53, plus the cost of the green tea jumped from €1.89 to €3.99 giving a total increase in prices to €5.63, yet the final discrepancy just €2.44.

Given there were certain things in the order that won’t need to be ordered again next week, I would expect things to balance out in week two and keep in line with my €50 p/w budget.

Overall

Overall, I’ve been impressed with it. Like I indicated yesterday, the online ordering process is a breeze, there’s full details available on everything going into your shopping basket and on delivery they provide you with a list of everything that was delivered

It would be nice if the printed dockets included notes on what was substituted, or differences in pricing, but other than that, I’m set for the week, didn’t have to leave the house and I’m willing to give it another lash next week.

FOOD SHOPPING online. That’s what I’m resorting to. Or perhaps, changing to. Judging from the time between this tweet and the confirmation email I received from Superquinn, I’m guessing my entire weekly shop was done in around 17 minutes.

No driving across town. No parking. No queuing. No impulse buying (okay, maybe a little with the breakfast cereal) and all within a €1 shout of my weekly budget.

The Background

Budgeting is something I’ve got to do more of this year, both through the business and with personal finances. In that regard, a lot of attention was turned towards my food shopping spend during the week. If 2008 was a year for regular grocery shopping, 2009 was a year of convenience shopping. Forget about bringing lunches to work, just nip across the road to the shop near the office and drop €30-40 a week on bits and bobs from the tea / salad / hot food bar. Forget about planning any kind of dinners for the week, just drop into SuperValu on the drive home and pick up something – anything. Or failing that, spring for a takeaway. Week in, week out, same old story. So between the office eating habits, mixed dinner shoping and takeaways I reckon I burned somewhere in the region of €3,700, with maybe €3,300 or so going on convenience lunch and dinner shopping.

So this year, I’ve given myself a budget of €50 for the week to cover food shopping. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, the whole lot. Estimating for 48 weeks of the year that’s €2,400, almost a €1,000 of a difference. I’m hoping too, I can stick to it through online shopping.

The Shopping

The choice was pretty easy in the end. The small local shops like Centra, Freshco etc. are too small for online ordering. SuperValu and Dunnes (both located in Kilkenny city environs) don’t offer such a service. I’ll shop at Lidl but it would be for something very specific (their fresh veg is quite good). There’s no Tesco in Kilkenny, at least of yet, so the only possibility as I see it was to shop at Superquinn. They’ve long been installed in Kilkenny but again, if you’re going food shopping there you need to allocate plenty of time between getting into the multistorey, shopping, the mad queues etc.

So, I skip on over to Superquinn.ie, sign myself up in two minutes, complete the registration for the Superclub card and away I go.

The process is quite straight forward. Shop by department or browse through categorised special offers. Or if you’re feeling adventurous, go for one of their pre-made shopping lists (e.g. New Mum & Baby, Organic, Superior Quality etc.). So I begin to browse, working my way through fruit & veg, meats, groceries, going for what’s tried and trusted or what usually forms part of the weekly-ish shopping.

The layout is as you would expect, and want, to find. Each item displayed gets a box or product shot, the price and choice to add to basket. Once you’ve got the product in the basket you’re able to add notes to yourself or add it to your favourite items, remembered for the next time you shop. Dig a little deeper into the product itself and you’ll get full description, serving suggestions, cooking instructions, ingredients and nutrition information.

You’re also able to add product-specific notes to your personal shopper (assuming this is the person who will be filling your shopping from the store), including whether you would like an item substituted or not.

Skip to the end and within that 17 minute window I’ve completed my weekly shopping, picked my delivery window of 10:30-12:30 tomorrow (Tuesday) – as opposed to a “click and collect” service – and managed to squeeze in eevrything I wanted, and delivery, for an estimated €51.02. Payment options are available for both credit and laser cards. It says estimated, I guess, to allow for substitution or non-substitution, as the case may be, of items on your shopping list. The full shopping list is stored online and emailed direct to your account and I’ll be checking it against the arrival tomorrow.

Why I’ve not opted to food-shop online before I’m not sure but if anything, I managed to stick to the budget (plus or minus a euro) and likely got an hour back in the day for the time spent online. With the list saved for next week’s shopping, barring any small changes, I would imagine there would be more time saved in the day.

I’ll follow up with a part two tomorrow, providing the shopping arrives when it says it should…

THE DEVIOUS theatre company, one of my other / many hats, have announced details of our first major production in 2010, Dario Fo’s Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! and I’ll be on KCLR96FM around 4:15pm afternoon chatting about the show. You can tune in via KCLR96FM.com (live stream link).

We do a lot of things online as a company, given we have no physical premises as such (bar sharing each others offices for the odd rehearsal / recording session). We blog, we connect, we share videos, tweet, hold our meetings online, use private forums for staff discussion, provide online resources, scripts and schedules for cast and crew, we advertise (and have completed a few useful Facebook ad campaigns), we podcast, we’ve an online CRM setup for managing contacts and suppliers and a whole lot more besides. The next logical step of course was to start selling tickets online.

I had long thought about it for the group, given the wide variety of venues we’ve performed in, the growing and varying audiences we’re attracting show-on-show, and the difference in management for pre-bookings or box office practice per venue that it would be good to introduce something online that we could manage ourselves, cost effectively as well.

Enter Eventbrite, which within ten minutes of using I had our December performance of Accidental Death of an Anarchist up and running, with five nights of tickets to buy for, connected out to our Facebook profile to plug the event there and (add on another five minutes or so) tickets available via DeviousTheatre.com with their embedding service.

So with a new show on the horizon and tickets gone to the printers, we figured we’d do exactly the same for our production of Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! in March.

There were a lot of plusses for using the service. To start with, it opened the door to a potential new revenue stream for the group. We decided that 2010 would be the year we focus on turning the group towards a business, the first step for us in bringing the company “professional” (join the queue for the debate between amateur and professional theatre) and as such, revenue streams have to be looked at. We spend a lot of time, as a group, online in promoting and documenting our shows and we felt that online ticket sales would give us the ability to reach those that are the more serious web users, those au fait with booking online. We also wanted a way to provide ticket sales to people traveling from out of town, those who couldn’t travel to Kilkenny before the box office closed at six, or those who didn’t want to give credit card details over the phone. On both, accounts, it worked.

That was the test – would it work. I would have considered it a success if one person had bought one ticket online, at least we know it worked. But one turned into three, turned into 17 and more as the weekend theatregoers turned up with their pre-printed tickets (made available by Eventbrite), our door staff crossing off the checklist of those who registered and paid for tickets online (also made available by Eventbrite) and as a plus for us, we had immediate access for funds to use online in advance of the production. As the payments go from Eventbrite to our Paypal account, and we’re avid eBay users for sourcing props for shows over the years, we’ve created a stream of income we didn’t quite have before.

For some of those people attending Accidental Death of an Anarchist, who bought their tickets online, it was their first time to see one of our productions – a further success in my eyes. Would they have come to the show or traveled 30 miles to Kilkenny if they hadn’t been able to buy their tickets online? Maybe, maybe not, but they came. And as a bonus, we’ve decided that those who did purchase tickets online for our first show will receive a nice discount on the online purchases if they want to buy tickets for Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! online. A token gesture for us, yes, but at the same time we’re hoping it would encourage people to return again and enjoy another night at the theatre.

The tickets for Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay are on sale. You can pick them up online here and here. There is a booking fee of €1.07 per ticket sold online, something that we’re also able to manage ourselves and it’s how Eventbrite (much like the credit card companies or physical theatres) will make their money from box office sales. When Eventbrite deliver funds per show / ticket sold, those funds include the booking fee. Post-event we’re invoiced from Eventbrite to recoup the booking fee, and again, it’s a straight Paypal transaction. Outside of that, there’s no other cost involved. No membership fee, no setup fee, nothing.

So we add online ticket sales to our bow, and we know that it works. I’m still tempted into doing an online theatre production, or live-streaming one of our own productions but we’ll have to talk to the licensing powers that be about that one.

And yes, I’m sure there are other ticket-selling resources available but we’ve tried Eventbrite, made it work, had it generate revenue and open a whole other realm of online promotion for the group so we’re happy to keep going with it.

Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! runs at the Set Theatre, John Street, Kilkenny from Wednesday March 10th to Sunday March 14th 2010. Tickets available online priced €13 ex booking fee. Keep an eye on DeviousTheatre.com for more details.

THE N95 just “ain’t what it used to be” to me any more. When I picked up the handset close on two years ago it was a revolution for me. High quality digital camera (5MP), wifi, and easy use of Twitter and Qik through the S60 apps.

When I picked up the iPhone 3G last May, not long before the release of the 3GS in June, my N95 usage in departments camera, browser and video started to dip noticeably. This largely due to my O2 mobile broadband sim virtually living inside my iPhone instead of the USB modem for the past seven months or so.

And while I’m happy out twittering away from the iPhone or going about my daily online business, the one thing that I was hoping would come about was the facility to stream video, using Qik, without having to either a) jailbreak the iPhone or b) upgrade to the 3GS.

A quick dip into the app store last night, spurred on by this blog post, which I had missed over the festive period, and we’re back in business.

There are two versions of the Qik app available – one for iPhone 3G and one for iPhone 3GS. I’m running the latest firmware available on the iPhone 3G and the video above went off this morning without a hitch.

I’ve also shied away from Qik after my O2 billing fiasco in the summer, a 3 minute Qik clip in Connolly Station at the start of the Kilkenny Arts Festival wound up costing me a few hundred euro – lesson well learned in bringing the wrong sim card with me that day. I’m hoping, given the success of the first video this morning that I might be a bit more fortunate on the live video front this year.

The app itself works a charm, the interface very straight forward, one-button record and you’re set. As per your profile on Qik.com you can tie in your Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or other social accounts, broadcast live or record offline to store videos on the iPhone and distribute later, use the GPS to share your location with the video (by city, street or precisely), and like the S60 version you can make use of the chat.

I wouldn’t install it unless I knew I had the use of it and with Devious Theatre about to kick into action tomorrow for another two straight months, the return of the One Take Sessions (music series I run in Kilkenny), the multitude of festivals happening locally during the year, I’ll be looking forward to capturing – and making use of – video moments throughout 2010.

Try it for yourself, it’s available in the App store since December 24th and it’s going for the grand ole price of free.

All that remains for me to do is upgrade the N95… keeping the eyes peeled for a nice android handset.

photo credit: Let Ideas Compete

FIRST THEY upgraded the trains. Then there was the new seats and the power points (offset possibly by the increase in food and ticket prices for the trains themselves). Now it looks like Irish Rail users on the Dublin – Cork – Dublin service will be able to available of wireless internet access, free of charge, courtesy of Irish Rail and Airappz.

Sure enough, they won’t be the first to offer wifi access on public transport with several coach operators around the country, including Kavanagh’s here in Kilkenny, offering on-board wifi but the development is something that has been long hoped for and though trialling for six months will hopefully stick around and get rolled out across the new fleet.

The trail installation will be for a complete trainset for the duration of the trail. After these 6 months Irish Rail will (together with Airappz) evaluate the usage & performance data and based on this they will decide whether or not to put the provision of a fleet-wide wifi service out to public tender.

I’ve never been one to take long journeys on the bus and up until I started driving I would almost always look to take the train, or a connection of trains to reach my destination. Though the cost of tickets has gone through the roof (I was shocked to pay €32 earlier in the week for a return to Dublin from Kilkenny, let alone the cost of a return from Cork to Dublin – €78.50 monthly return at time of writing), the train is still relied on by thousands of business commuters around the country, particularly those living outside of but working in Dublin.

Watching tweets over the last few months and years from those testing out mobile broadband dongles on the train to much joy / sorrow depending on what mobile operator you’re with and /or where on the map you’re passing through, I could only hope that the wifi service that will be rolled out on the Cork – Dublin line will be strong, consistent and ultimately be taken up by passengers and Irish Rail alike, paving the way for rollouts on other lines.

When I’m not driving, and Dublin bound (like this weekend gone), the train is still preferred. And if I could get a solid connection to work from without having to rely on mobile signal, I’d certainly be a happy traveller.

Congratulations to Evert Bopp, more good news for an Irish company.