Web 2.0 Ireland

The Big Word Project set up by Paddy Donnelly and Lee Munroe, two University of Ulster students from Belfast, get some coverage in Wired.

They have all of the 291,500 Oxford English Dictionary entries in their inventory — so plenty of opportunity to make some money with this venture.

The project allows you to purchase a word from our list to represent your site. Your site will then represent this word in our list and when people click on it, they will be taken to your site. The project is aimed at changing definitions and creating a new tapestry of words, meaning altogether different things.

For example, you may buy the word ‘Donkey’ for $6 and it will link to your site dedicated to donkeys. The word ‘Donkey’ will then be the gateway to your site and the definition will be changed. No longer will the word Donkey mean ‘a woodworking apparatus consisting of a clamping frame and saw, used for cutting marquetry veneers’, instead it will now be represented visually by ‘Chris’s Donkey Site’.

The logos are in and we like them all! Now it’s down to the Irish Web2 community to pick their favourite. To keep it fair, we’re not telling you who did what until the winner is selected. Remember, the winner gets the following:

• One year of PollDaddy Pro sponsored by PollDaddy
• A copy of Microsoft Expression Studio sponsored by Microsoft Ireland
• A year of Blacknight VPS hosting sponsored by Blacknight Solutions

The entries are:

Entry 1:

Entry 2:

Entry 3:

Entry 4:

Entry 5:

Entry 6:

Entry 7:

Entry 8:

Entry 9:

Entry 10:

Entry 11:

Make your choice now:

We’ll announce the winner in a week’s time.

Very interesting post from Sean McGrath on his blog. If you don’t know who Sean is, go right to the back of the class and read this XTech Press Release.

He has five web 2.0 ideas at the moment looking for a home. If you are a business or tech-oriented person looking for a Web 2.0 idea to pursue, he’d like to talk. Or if you have your own Web 2.0 idea but need early stage funding, he’d also like to talk.

Hook up with him at XTech or contact him over on the blog.

PutPlace has been selected for the Under The Radar event in June over in Mountain View.

Check the Under the Radar Blog and PutPlace blog for more details

Pixenate presented in 2006 - and it helped Walter gain lots of valuable attention

We had the pleasure of meeting the Debbie Landa, founder of DealMaker Media, who organize the Under the Radar event series, last week at the Web2Ireland Drinks reception in San Francisco.

Hopefully we will see more Web2Ireland companies present at Under the Radar events.

The Sir Tony O’Reilly controlled Independent News & Media PLC [INM] recently invested in Truphone.

This investment is a very positive sign for the Web2Ireland community - as INM - are very active in the online sector [they have over 100 online services/sites already].

INM could perhaps look at what the Burda Media group do in Germany - stimulating the German internet startup sector with investments, and hosting the world renowned DLD Conference.

Will be interesting to watch out in 2008 for future investments from INM

Loic Le Meur - founder and ceo of Seesmic - hangs out with Lenny from Polldaddy on Loic TV

Check it.

The Roomex guys in Dublin have kindly offered all our readers out there an extra discount on their hotel bookings. Head on over to http://web2.roomex.com/ between now and 5pm on Wednesday to avail of the offer. A big thanks to Jack Donaghy for this.

To complement our lovely new design we thought it might be cool to get a logo to go with it too. This wouldn’t just be for the site but also for events etc.

David Lenehan from PollDaddy came up with the very smart idea on Twitter of running a competition with prizes. Within minutes we had several offers for those prizes. So we’d like to announce the competition now.

The rules are simple, just send us a sample of your logo(s) in one of the standard bitmap formats by Friday May 2nd to web2ireland DOT editor AT gmail DOT com. We will then publish a post showing them all and a poll allowing you to vote on them. The design with the most votes after one week wins!

The winner will not just get lots of publicity here and a permanent credit on the site but they will also win the following:

• One year of PollDaddy Pro sponsored by PollDaddy
• A copy of Microsoft Expression Studio sponsored by Microsoft Ireland
• A year of Blacknight VPS hosting sponsored by Blacknight Solutions

Many thanks to David, Martha, Clare and Michele for the brilliant prizes!

Tubbercurry’s finest Edmund Gray of Omni and Microsoft’s Claire Dillon have made contact regarding the upcoming DDD event in Galway. For the last few years, the UK Microsoft developer community have been running their extremely popular Developer Developer Developer (DDD) events up and down the UK. Now, this popular event is coming to Ireland for the very first time! The Galway Microsoft Technology User Group are delighted to invite you to the first ever Developer Developer Developer community event in Ireland (aka the ‘Craggy Island Techfest’ :).

DDD Ireland website
When? Saturday, 3rd May 9am (with related activities continuing on Saturday night and Sunday
Where? Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, Dublin Road, Galway
Why? Expert speakers; 20+ sessions to choose from; small groups for in-depth topic coverage; plenty of opportunities to network with visiting experts.
Cost? Free – you just have to get yourself there!

This event is being run by the community, for the community – no Microsoft speakers allowed! The speaker line-up has many TechEd and DevWeek regulars as well as up and coming new speakers from the UK and Irish .NET developer community! Speakers will also be joining us from BASTA! and JustCommunity’s NRW conferences.

The event is all about developers learning, sharing and interacting with each other in a relaxed informal atmosphere. With 6 tracks and over 20 sessions from experienced speakers in the .NET community, this event is jam-packed with quality content. Small sessions sizes ensure you can dig deep into your favourite topics with the experts. In addition to all the general sessions, Dominick Baier and Christian Weyer (both from thinktecture ) and Daniel Fisher and Michael Willers (both from devcoach ) will be delivering a full day of WCF in depth training (WCF In Action and Distributed Apps using AJAX and WCF). After the event on Saturday, join the speakers for a trip into Galway’s Spanish Quarter for some more geek-talk and some Galway craic. On Sunday, the organisers are also holding a ‘Geek Walk and Talk’ trip to Craggy Island (Inis Oirr).

All previous DDD events have filled up in record time, so, if you are interested, be sure to register as quickly as you can!