David Behan's Web Design Ireland Blog

As some of you know, it’s been a very busy year. I’ve teamed up with two great partners, Michael Flanagan and Ronan Morris, to move my (our) web businesses to the next level. Everything kicked off at the start of this year and came together at the start of the summer when we opened our office in Ashbourne.

Lots has happened since then, we were part of the iQ Prize, we’ve been migrating clients and working with new ones, and this week we launched our new company website.

I’ve decided it was time for davidbehan.com to come down (well, redirect) but I felt it was best to leave the blog live as there is still a lot of traffic coming to it looking for the content.

Here’s a few links for you if you want to keep following:

• New Company Website: webtogether.ie
• New Company Blog: webtogether.ie/blog | New RSS Feed
• Octopied App: getoctopied.com
• Twitter: @WebTogetherIE | @davidbehan

So, I just want to say thanks for reading, thanks for visiting and I hope you follow us more over the coming months and years.

Rgds, Dave

collab.ie

Yesterday, a colleague of mine pointed me over to Collab.ie as a neat resource to check out for Entrepreneurs. Upon arriving at the site, I was surprised I hadn’t come across it before but I think that’s because it’s quite new. The first thing that jumped out at me was its simple, yet elegant design. After playing with the site for a short while, I had to say I was impressed. Then this morning, while checking my rss feeds, I see that Collab.ie is part of the Tuesday Push. I had to write something.

The site has been set up by SmartCube and the design was done by Lee Munroe who is a freelancer web designer in Belfast. I’ve come across Lee’s work a few times over the past few months and have always been impressed. Another good job done here too.

Their own description of Collab.ie:
Irish entrepreneurs seeking skills and resources now have access to a new free online service that puts them in touch with like minded people. The website, created by Irish start-up software company Smartcube, aims to bring ideas and skills together. Collab is a simple, easy to use, free online tool to help bring ideas and skillsets together. If you have an idea and you need to find a person or people to work with you or if you want some feedback on a project you are considering collab is for you.

Collab.ie in Feed a Fever RSS

Get the RSS Feed:
Without further a do, I advise you to subscribe to their RSS Feed so that you’re getting a constant stream of new projects and businesses looking for skilled people/advice/etc. And indeed if you have a project or business in the pipeline (or even just floating around your head) and you are looking for skilled people to work with, why not post it up and see what comes of it. I’ve just added the RSS feed to my lovely shiney new RSS Reader called Fever. I’ll not miss any new entries on their site now. Oh, they also have a twitter account.

Best of luck with the site guys. Good idea, good design. Credit where credit’s due!

p.s. Ben Dunne should have come to you guys to build TenderMe.ie!!!

IQ Prize

We’re only 11 days into June and what a month it’s turning out to be!!

My freelance business has been successfully rebranded as Web Together. Next, we move into our bright new offices in Ashbourne. Then, we get some really nice weather…

And now, the icing on the cake, we have been shortlisted for the IQ Prize! We’ve been shortlisted for our Freelancer Web Application called Octopied.

249 entries and we are now in the final 8. Happy Days! We now have a Dragon’s Den style pitch to prepare for July 8th but we’ll start worrying about that next week. Last night and today are about enjoying the moment!

Accompanied by Ronan Morris and Michael Flanagan, my associates on this, I went in last night for the shortlist announcement and it was great to meet the guys from IQ Content. They had chosen the aptly named Sky Bar to hold their reception. A great 7th floor view of the city. Great venue for an event.

The Charity auction raised €1,300 for Barnardos which was great. Sale of the night was a €200 voucher for Patrick Guilbaud’s that sold for about €300!

What an unbelievable number of entries to the contest! I hope Enterprise Ireland are watching. It’s great that the Awards have highlighted this potential innovation area which has up to now been pretty much under the radar.

The no-strings-attached-funding prize is a great idea because what normally stops these web application ideas from getting  to launch is the very long lead in times before you start generating any cash.

• First, you need to build your app
• Then, (in most cases) you have to offer a free trial period
• And finally, you have to gradually build up your customer base.

I’m not sure what this adds up to but it feels like about 12 months. The very guys that have ideas like this normally can’t really afford to take the required cashflow hit in order to make it happen.  Anyway, so hats off to IQ Content.

Anyone know where you can get a box set of Dragons Den, Series 1 – 7??? I need to brush up!

Munster Rugby

It’s the Tuesday Push and Munster Rugby is on the agenda with MyMunster.com featuring this time round. I’m going against my own team (Leinster) by supporting this push, but I had the pleasure of meeting Catherine from MyMunster.com, at the Blog Awards, and on this occassion, I’ll let it slide.

MyMunster.com is a rugby social media network that connects you with other Munster Rugby supporters. The site allows users to:

• Converse with other Munster Rugby supporters
• Catch the latest Munster Rugby photos and videos
• Follow the latest news and discussions
• Catch up and interact on the Munster Rugby Blog
• Get their hands on some sought after prizes
• Follow the MyMunster Twitter Account

So, if you’re in to Rugby (or unfortunate enough to actually support Munster), you should check out the site. I’m looking forward to seeing the upgraded version that has Leinster flags and colours all over it. Best of luck to Catherine and the crew over there.

Looking to find out more about the Tuesday Push or want to get involved?

Cigars.ie - Screenshot

Cigars.ie is a little side venture I have going with my cousin, Mark and brother-in-law, Yiorgos. Both Mark and Yiorgos are big time cigar enthusiasts, so last year we set up a blog on cigars.ie, concentrating on cigar news and reviews. Content started to follow, traffic trickled in, and comments began appearing… so we decided it needed a facelift. Last night we launched the new look cigars.ie and we also now have a twitter account that people can follow us on.

If you have any feedback on the site or suggestions for future developments, we’d love to hear them.

David Behan in Foam

One of our clients, Made In Hollywood, is running a little competition on their foam blog. They’re looking for some ideas on articles to write on their blog and ways they should utilise their blog, so they’ve put it out to the blogosphere to help them.

With a little push on twitter and a mention on Damien’s blog, they’ve started to collect up some good traffic and ideas. Fran is offering the first 10 respondents to the post, the opportunity to get their name in foam but he might update that to the best 10, as Michele had some good success on a recent competition on the Blacknight Blog. Hopefully Fran has similar success.

Oh, if you want to see what someone’s name looks like in foam, the image there shows a Christmas present I got from Made In Hollywood. Also, if you want to meet Fran behind Made In Hollywood, you’ll catch us making an appearance at the Blog Awards next Saturday night in Cork. We’ve got some more cool props for you bloggers and maybe a little competition too.

If you’ve every been to a barcamp, I’m sure you’ve an idea of what bizcamp is about. If you haven’t, bizcamp can only be described as an un-conference set up and run by its attendees and targeted at business topics. Here’s the official description of what bizcamp is:

A free conference/ gathering which is happening in Dublin on Saturday 7th March. The venue is the Digital Hub on Thomas St.
It’s a chance for us all to lift ourselves out of the gloom of the endless bad news stories. It’s based on the fact that each of us as entrepreneurs have loads to learn from our peers. And we have a lot to share with them as well. There are a lot of great things happening in the Irish Economy – especially in small and medium businesses and this day will be a celebration of those. And a great place to come for people who have lost their jobs and are actively looking at starting up.

There’s loads more information about the conference, the speakers, who’s attending, etc. on the conference website. Places are filling up fast so if you’re interested in going, you should get your name down under the registration page.

I’m looking forward to meeting old and new faces – I’ll be doing a talk or running a workshop on the day so say hello if you’re there.

While catching up on my blog rss reader this evening, I came across another one of Blacknight’s domain offers. It got me thinking about a good .ie domain to pick up for only €10 so I checked out the deleted domains list on their site. After spending an hour flicking through the list, I came up with these that I thought were the best of the bunch. To save others spending a lot of time going through the list, maybe you’ll find a good one from this list…

• assurance.ie
• award.ie
• barmenu.ie
• basement.ie
• cold.ie
• computersupplies.ie
• creativemedia.ie
• demand.ie
• details.ie
• disclaimer.ie
• dublinhomes.ie
• dublinwedding.ie
• euphoria.ie
• european.ie
• evening.ie
• fireworks.ie
• fullmoon.ie
• fusionmedia.ie
• gaagames.ie
• golfingholidays.ie
• golfteetimes.ie
• gone.ie
• greenfees.ie
• guns.ie
• heinekenrugby.ie
• hireproducts.ie
• holeinthewall.ie
• honey.ie
• impulse.ie
• irishshopping.ie
• irishtowns.ie
• localjobs.ie
• markets.ie
• meathproperties.ie
• mix.ie
• mortgageadviser.ie
• mortgagesdublin.ie
• myfuture.ie
• newhomes.ie
• newhouse.ie
• obair.ie
• offduty.ie
• officemanager.ie
• officesolutions.ie
• officesupport.ie
• oursite.ie
• outandabout.ie
• printdesign.ie
• proireland.ie
• propertyincork.ie
• pubmenu.ie
• recommended.ie
• regions.ie
• renewals.ie
• secrets.ie
• signal.ie
• still.ie
• subscribe.ie
• sunroom.ie
• supply.ie
• surprise.ie
• swimming.ie
• talent.ie
• target.ie
• timetable.ie
• timetravel.ie
• twisted.ie
• visitor.ie
• waves.ie
• weddingbells.ie
• weddingplanners.ie
• weekender.ie
• yourimage.ie
• yourmove.ie

I just wanted to wish all my clients, suppliers, friends (twitterinos, bloggers and offline ones) a Very Merry Christmas this year and all the best for 2009.

I’ll be back officially on January 5th but if there is anything you need, please email or phone me.

Made In Hollywood

Our blog has been pretty quiet over the past couple of months and that’s because it’s been extremely busy here (I’m happy to say) working on existing projects going live before Christmas and with new clients preparing for their projects in the new year. One of the projects we’ve been working on is for Fran Hollywood of Made In Hollywood. I have to say, it’s been a pleasure working with Fran on this website and we really have done a lot with Fran to help him with his online presence. We’re looking forward to working on a few marketing campaigns with Fran in the new year too.

The best way to explain what Made In Hollywood do is to show you, so I advise you check out their Marketing Portfolio or their Architecture Portfolio. They specialise in polystyrene foam and cutting it into any shape you want so they can make lots of versatile results for architects as well as generate over sized marketing props that stand out.

I’d like to wish Fran the very best with the new site but you’ll hear more from them come the new year as we’ve a few things planned. Oh, if you want, you can follow the guys on twitter too.