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

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.

My Options

• Transfer my number to o2 (as they exclusively sell the iphone in Ireland) but I had 9 months left in my contract so that was out.
• Get a new number with o2 and have 2 phones – 1 for business and 1 for personal. Problem with this was that any time I called into either an o2 Store or Carphone Warehouse, they were never in stock and didn’t know when/if they would be.
• Get it from the US but when I had a couple of my friends check it out for me on their travels, all those phones were locked down to the network.
• Get a hacked iPhone on eBay that used iJailBreak or simable or another form of hack but the problem with this is that you can’t do firmware updates without the risk of apple locking the phone when re-activating it.

The Solution

After doing a bit of searching on eBay, I found out that certain countries were selling iPhones unlocked (or simfree) from their network. I did some searching around and it appeared to be true. A number of countries have laws in place that don’t allow Apple to lock the phones to a particular network, one of which is Italy. I did some more searching on eBay and I found a seller in Ireland that had some iPhones from Italy for sale. We agreed a price and I dropped down to Dublin to try before buying.

After unwrapping the packaging, I popped in my Vodafone sim, started up the iPhone and connected it to my MacBook’s iTunes. Apple did its thing and activated the phone. Later that night, I did a full firmware update and the phone re-activated with Apple – no hacks, no worries, no problems. OK, maybe a little bit of worrying while I was waiting those few seconds for it to activate but all was fine.

Setting Up iPhone for Vodafone Ireland

There wasn’t much to do to get the iPhone working with Vodafone Ireland. It picks up the cell information anyway so the phone works perfect. I just needed to get the right settings in for the 3G part. Under Settings > General > Network > Cellular Data Network I’m using the following information:

• APN: isp.vodafone.ie
• Username: vodafone
• Password: vodafone

I also rang Vodafone to see if my data add-on package would cover requests going through this APN. It didn’t but they have a package for 1GB for €10 extra per month. I’ve added that on and it should be through on the next bill date.

Screenshots (click for larger image)

Here’s some screenshots that I took of the phone on Vodafone Ireland. Oh, to take a screenshot, hold down the power button on the top of the iPhone and press the home button once. The screen will flash and add the screenshot to your camera roll. I had to look this up online as the instructions that came with my iPhone are in Italian. That’s the only draw back but I can live with it.

Conclusion

If you don’t want to go to o2 to get your iPhone, have a look on eBay for iPhones that are “legally unlocked” from Apple. They range from €550 to €750. The official price on Vodafone Italia is €569, as far as I remember. I paid €700 for mine, but sure I’m mad like this when it comes to gadgets. Still, I’m with Vodafone with all my free calls and stuff, I’ve got an iPhone and I’m NOT stuck in an 18 month contract with o2 on a worse price plan. I couldn’t be happier! I’m sure this process would work fine for getting an iPhone on Meteor Ireland or Three (3) Ireland. You’d just need to get the correct settings for those networks.

Hopefully this will help someone looking to get an iPhone that are not with o2 Ireland. I believe there is a market of around 2-3 million people in Ireland that are not with o2 and could want one. If anyone has any questions, don’t be afraid to ask.

Irish Web Awards 2008

Irish Web Awards 2008 – October 11th
The Irish Web Awards is the new awards to launch this year. Following the success of the Irish Blog Awards over the past couple of years, Damien Mulley has launched the Irish Web Awards 2008. Categories for the awards include News & Media, Entertainment, Technology, Government &Community, Education & Science, Commerce, Speciality, Technical Awards and an overall Grand Prix. There’s something for everyone in there. Damien is promoting full transparency with these awards and has released the scorecard that will be used to judge nominations. Also, sponsors of the awards cannot have a nomination. These awards will be a bit more casual (as you won’t need a penguin suit) but Damien promises it will be more fun. If the Blog Awards are anything to go by, I’d well believe it. Very nice logo I might add… by Spoilt Child I do believe.

IIA Net Visionary

IIA Net Visionary – October 30th
The Net Visionaries are run by the Irish Internet Association, and according to the IIA, are unique in that they are run and voted on by the Irish web industry. They may not be unique anymore with the launch of the Irish Web Awards this year. A large range of categories are available to get nominated in, including Best Business Blogger, Innovation Award, Internet Entrepreneur, Internet Marketer, Student Project Award, Web Designer Excellence, and Web Developer Excellence. There is something new with these awards this year in that if you (or someone from your company) have won an award in a particular category over the past 2 years, you cannot be nominated in that category. Not a bad idea to allow a rotation of winners. The awards night is a black tie affair and having attended these events a couple of years ago, I must say, it’s a great night.

Golden Spiders

Golden Spider Awards – November 20th
The Golden Spiders are run by Business & Finance magazine and always raise debate about the validity of the awards. So far I haven’t seen anything this year but I’m sure it’s on it’s way! Regardless, I stick to the opinion that the Golden Spiders are a business awards and it is seen as this. We’ve won a Golden Spider award twice in the past for clients and it really does help our business and our clients in promoting their website. The difference with Golden Spider Awards and the other 2 above is that they charge for you to enter and you might not get short listed. The cost of entry is €150. There’s a whole host of categories ranging the business community from finance to professional services, property to recruitment, and many more. There’s a new award this year for Young Designer of the Year. It’ll be interesting to see who gets nominated for and wins this one. This year, the Golden Spiders have published their judging criteria on the website and have added additional information about web standards. The Spiders are a black tie affair as well and having attended the past 2 years, I found it to be a great night for networking with a lot of the larger companies in the web industry. I’ve made a number of contacts from these nights.

Well, I’ll hopefully be putting a couple of sites forward to each of the awards this year and in turn, I should be attending each of them. Hopefully I’ll see you there.