Achill Online Internet Solutions

Broadband Options in the West of Ireland

top10-broadband.co.uk — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:16:59 +0000

Though Ireland is relatively low-down the list of international countries in terms of total number of broadband subscribers, a healthy 22% of the population is still connected at high speeds. As you might imagine, this is limited to the more urbanised areas in which ADSL and Cable broadband are accessible. Fixed line services have their limitations and in more rural areas like the West of Ireland getting access to a broadband connection can be tricky. Controversy and potholes have affected the proliferation of broadband in the West of Ireland and while some people are stuck in broadband black spots, there are still a few ways to get connected.

As part of the National Broadband Scheme, one provider was to be contracted in order to provide broadband to every willing household within Ireland. In December 2008, that contract was won by 3 Mobile. If you are intrigued by the NBS and want to know more there is a dedicated website with all of the details about the scheme. In essence it aims to provide last-mile broadband connections for those unable to receive a connection by traditional means.

However, since the announcement there has been widespread criticism of the assignment of 3 Mobile as the sole beneficiaries. Commentators have highlighted that the deal will allow 3 to develop their existing networks within the region, but will be of little benefit for business users. This is because 3G technology is still of limited use when it comes to broadband connections. Mobile broadband, which requires a USB Dongle, offers varying connection speeds, but 3`s networks and dongles only afford a theoretical maximum of 3.6Mbps. In reality, the actual connection speed customers in the West of Ireland can achieve via mobile broadband will vary and usually will be much lower. This is OK if you are a light broadband users, but for businesses mobile broadband under the NBS is a virtually unviable option. Essential modern services like VoIP are crippled by the slow download and upload speeds that mobile broadband offers. The dongle technology also limits the usability of a connection to a single customer, though with new Mi-Fi devices now available this secondary problem has been somewhat alleviated for domestic customers.

Another issue with mobile broadband`s integration into the NBS scheme is that at the time of writing there are no clear deadlines for a complete rural roll-out of the new technology. It is seen as counter-productive by critics to offer mobile broadband in the areas which are already well supplied with existing fixed line technologies. Rural areas will eventually benefit from mobile broadband, but there may still be a waiting period to endure.

Eircom represent another consideration for broadband in the West of Ireland. They provide a huge range of products for personal and business users and specialise in services for those who are not able to receive a connection via a fixed line. For example they offer a flat rate satellite broadband connection which is suitable for businesses and homes in extremely isolated regions. This will use satellites to beam information to and from your property, so like mobile broadband it is completely wire-free. However, satellite broadband often offers higher costs and lower download speeds than fixed line alternatives. Satellite broadband therefore suffers from the same limitations as Mobile Broadband and it is unlikely that larger scale enterprises in rural regions will be able to gain any meaningful benefits from a satellite connection. Eircom also have mobile broadband options to consider, though it is worth checking a coverage map to see if your area within the West of Ireland is covered before you commit.

Digiweb is another broadband provider in the West of Ireland which offers fixed line DSL as well as Satellite broadband across the region for a flat monthly fee. You will need to consider carefully the download limitations as well as the speed limitations of a satellite broadband connection, but in some cases this may be your only option. Businesses are also well catered for with a range of packages to suit small, medium and large enterprises at all stages of their growth.

Some broadband in the West of Ireland is operated on a regional basis by smaller local providers. For example, County Mayo is serviced by Westnet. Their website gives extensive details about their various services, as well as coverage maps to see if their wireless broadband is available in your area. Westnet`s service requires than an antennae is attached to your property and also that there is a clear line of sight between your antennae and their own wireless broadband base-station. Speeds of up to 2Mbps are available for residential customers, whilst up to 3Mbps for business customers is possible. This means that Westnet offer a step up from mobile or satellite broadband, but is still slightly lagging behind fixed line broadband in terms of speed, at least in areas, where eircoms 7Mbps is available.

In the future, customers in isolated areas in the West of Ireland should expect some alleviation of their broadband woes by the introduction of WiMAX technology. In some areas of Ireland this revolution has already begun, with Dublin and the surrounding regions already privy to a high speed WiMAX network offered by Imagine Communications. WiMAX offers faster speeds than most ADSL landline connections and as such will prove to be an extremely desirable technology, especially for high-end domestic users and business owners. The only way to ensure that WiMAX is rolled out across the West of Ireland as soon as possible is to get online, get on the phone or even write a letter and request it. If suppliers see that there is enough of a demand for high-speed wireless broadband in your area then they will be more likely to bring it away from the cities and into the countryside. It is likely that WiMAX will need government funding to supplement the consumer interest, but it could ultimately provide the perfect solution for broadband in the West of Ireland.

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Halloween Special 33% Voucher for any starter in Ferndale Restaurant

Chris B. Kerndter — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:49:14 +0000

We are very happy to be able to offer you a

33% Voucher

for any one starter ordered with a main course in the Ferndale Restaurant in Keel, Co. Mayo.

With the compliments of Achill Online Internet Solutions.
Enjoy your dinner at Ferndale!

Marketing for Ferndale Guesthouse and Restaurant Since summer last year we have been working on the...

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Westnet now covers most of Achill Island and Curraun

Chris B. Kerndter — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:35:13 +0000

Here is an updated Map of the Westnet Coverage:

Westnet will be reviewing the situation in uncovered areas during the next months. If you are not sure, wether you will get coverage in your location you can call me +353 86 368 5355 or call Westnet 1850 930 305

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The Mayo Open Coffee Club Forum

Chris B. Kerndter — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:24:35 +0000

I have been asked a few days ago, if I could set up a forum for the Mayo Open Coffee Club. I thought, ok, that should not be to difficult.

As the MOCC has a wordpress blog, I thought it might be best to use some forum, that would integrate nicely with it, so lookig for solutions, I stumbled upon …

bbpress.

http://bbpress.org/

Which is based on the same piece of software or principle as wordpress. It even has a similar admin panel. It says that it integrates completely with wordpress. True, BUT the features that bbpress has build in are very basic and there is a big difference to the agility that wordpress has, no build-in plugin- or designbrowser and very basic configuration possibilities. The only real advantage was, that it can use the same user database.

Because of the lack of features I turned to

phpBB,

http://www.phpbb.com/

which is really THE forum software on the open source market. I looked for integration possibilites and found WP-United (http://www.wp-united.com/). I Installed phpBB and manually modded it following carefully the steps that were given with wp-united. Unfortunately it didn’t work out and I got some weird error message coming from the Contact7 wp-plugin I use. Maybe it had to do with the fact, that I installed phpBB in the same webspace, but under another domain, I don’t know…

Anyway, I stayed with phpBB, but just not using any integration. So people will have to sign up twice, but as the blog does not really need any login (except for the editors), thats fine.

phpBB is a fantastic pice of software, with more functionality than you could wish for. The setup is a bit time consuming, but once you get the hang of it, it’s fine.

Do you have any experience with integrating wordpress with either phpBB ode bbpress? What do you think?

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Google adds Irish to Google Translate

Chris B. Kerndter — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 09:12:58 +0000

Yesterday Google added new languages to it’s Machine Translation Services. Good news for the Irish is that “an teanga gaelach” as Google translates “the Gaelic Language” was now added. Unfortunately I do not speak any irish, so I will let you judge about the quality.

Here comes a text from the Irish Government Site about the geography of Ireland, written by Professor William Nolan (http://www.gov.ie/en/essays/geography.html):

Locked in by the turbulent waters of the Atlantic Ocean, which wash its northern, southern and western shores, its geography and history have been shaped by contacts with its eastern neighbour, the United Kingdom, across the narrow passage of the Irish Sea.

The “official translation” reads … ups, no translation provided, so i’ll give it a shot with the Google Translation:

Faoi ghlas i ag an uiscí shruthlamaí riamh ar an Aigéan Atlantach, a nigh a hÉirinn ó thuaidh, ó dheas agus an iarthair, a tíreolaíocht agus stair a múnlaithe ag teagmháil leis a comharsa an oirthir, an Ríocht Aontaithe, ar fud an phasáiste caol na Mara Gaeilge.

Translated back it reads:

Locked in by the turbulent waters of the Atlantic Ocean, a wash to Ireland from north, south and west, a geography and history shaped by contact with its eastern neighbor, the United Kingdom, across the narrow passage of the Irish sea.

Thats not bad, is it? Even though the double translation through Google are usually “cacamas”

Here comes another text: Article One of the Irish constitution

The Irish nation hereby affirms its inalienable, indefeasible, and sovereign right to choose its own form of Government, to determine its relations with other nations, and to develop its life, political, economic and cultural, in accordance with its own genius and traditions.

The official translation reads:

Deimhníonn náisiún na hÉireann leis seo a gceart doshannta, dochloíte, ceannasach chun cibé cineál Rialtais is rogha leo féin a bhunú, chun a gcaidreamh le náisiúin eile a chinneadh, agus chun a saol polaitíochta is geilleagair is saíochta a chur ar aghaidh de réir dhúchais is gnás a sinsear.

And this is what Google makes of it (english -> irish)

An náisiún Gaeilge Daingníonn Leasaítear leis seo a cheart doshannta, indefeasible, agus ceannasach a roghnú a bhfoirm féin an Rialtais, chun a chinneadh ina chaidreamh le náisiúin eile, agus a fhorbairt a saol, polaitiúil, eacnamaíoch agus cultúrtha, i gcomhréir lena genius agus traidisiúin féin.

(irish -> english)

Ireland nation confirms this inalienable right, imprescriptible, leading to such type of Government is to establish their own choice, to relations with other nations to decide, and to economic and political life to promote saíochta by tongue is a rule ancestors.

What do you think? Can it be used?

Amongst irish Google also added: Afrikaans, Belarusian, Icelandic, Macedonian, Malay, Swahili, Welsh and Yiddish, bringing the language pairs to 2550

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The Basics of Visual Communication

Chris B. Kerndter — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 11:16:15 +0000

I just recently read an article about the basics of visual communication and it struck me that the rules that apply to a good speech or offline presentation also apply to your online presentation.

Your Online Presentation: Structured, Meaningful and Modern

Did you know that you actually only 30% remember of what you see? If you are just hearing something the rate drops down to 20%. Combining the two channels brings you up to about 50%. You can increase that rate even more, if you tell somebody about what you saw and heard. If the subject is about something you can do, you can increase the rate to about 90% if you actually do it.

What does it mean for an online presentation or website?

The main channel through which we perceive information online is the visual channel. Through the concentration to one main channel, our brains natural information filter gets even stronger, bringing the purely visual perception down to probably under 10%, unless we manage to trigger some interest, which can loosen the filter. So the question is: How can we catch the interest of a visitor?

Structure

Things that you say on your page should always be down to the point. As visitors hardly read any information on your page, but use what is called scanning, you will need to be very precise on crisp about what you say. You should also structure your information by using headings and lists, where possible. Emphasise important points by putting them in bold letters. Don’t overdo it though.

On the other hand your main navigation should not have more than 5-6 items and should not be deeper than 3 levels. If you can’t fit all you have to say in this structure you should in any case use a breadcrumb navigation, so that visitors don’t get lost. Additionally you should provide an on page search and a site map.

Meaningful

Make a list of 2-3 keywords for your text and write your content around those keywords, if you feel to wander from your subject/keywords, rethink the structure of your site and add another page. As a rule of thumb, you should never write more than 3-400 words per page, as you will inevitably loose your audiences attention.

Modern

Your design needs to be up-to date, otherwise your page will look old fashioned and visitors will deduce that your content is too. At the moment you will find a lot of pages that use horizontal navigation. The classical header image seems to disappear, instead you will more and more large images or videos in the content itself. Another rather popular feature is the footer site map, which will give you easy access from whatever page your on. Using such a site map also makes it easy to reduce the main navigation to the most important points.

What about search engines?

Search engines have evolved so far, that they now recognise things that are positive for human perception, to be good for search engine ranking too. So when you stick to the above mentioned rules, you will have a good chance of not performing to badly in your SERPs.

What can I do to increase the perception of my audience?

Add other perception channels, unfortunately you are a bit limited on your website with regards to that, but you can in any case add some audio. I don’t mean nice(?!) background music that can probably not even be turned off, I mean audio content. Tell the people about your business, let them sit back, relax and deliver the content actively instead of having your visitor do all the work. You can increase the effect even more by adding some meaningful video. But always remember to offer good quality content, may it be text, audio or video.

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eMail Marketing with Mailchimp

Chris B. Kerndter — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 10:17:03 +0000

I have been looking for a good email marketing Solutions quite some time and about three months ago I discovered Mailchimp.

Have used Mailchimp for two newsletter shots so far. I want to give you an overview about those things that make a real difference for me, when I use Mailchimp:

Testing the Newsletter

Beside being able to send you a preview of the Newsletter, Mailchimp has a featured called Inbox Inspection. It is basically a test lab, where your get screenshots of your newsletter made with about 30 different desktop and web mail clients. Especially when you are sending HTML Newsletters this is an invaluable feature, as some email clients are not very good at rendering html emails

Beside the inbox inspection, the test lab also features a spam filter check in which with desktop, server and gateway spam filters are considered.

Last but not least there is a content assessment, telling you about HTML content, HTML code and Text content issues.

Reports

The next very useful feature are the extensive reports, especially the visual implementation, down to a color-coded worldmap, where you can see in which countries you got the most opens is great. Very helpful is that the bounce, open and click ratios are put in relation to the respective industry averages you are in. You also get to see how often your newsletter was forwarded. Besides you also get the list of people that complained (marking your email as spam), unsubscribed, bounced and opened. There is a visual click map of your newsletter, a list of links with total and unique clicks.

Certainly the best feature in terms of marketing analysis is the full integration into google analytics, through wich you get to know everything about the return of investment of your campaign. it shows the camaign view of achieved goals, can be linked to your ecommerce stats and of course simple contetn related information like, how long did visitors of that campaign stay and how many pages did they visit.

One newly added feature as announced in the MonkeyWench July 2009 Newsletter is the ability of tracking twitter tweets about your email campaigns in Mailchimp. Check out the mailchimp blog for further details.

Costs

Mailchimp is not free, but definitely worth every cent it costs. If you don’t go on a monthly plan, the cheapest will be 3 cent per mail, if you buy up to 2000 credits (sent mails) it drops down to half a cent per mail if you buy a 200.000 credits pack. The monthly costs are calculated by number of subscribers of your lists, so for example up to 500 subscribers will cost you 10$ per month. It is pretty straight forward and easy to calculate, when you are better of with the monthly plan or with the pay-as-you-go plan.

Conclusion

I am very convinced of this service and will continue using it. If I every find something more satisfying I will let you know.

Do you know Mailchimp? What do you think? Let me know!

Marketing for Ferndale Guesthouse and Restaurant Since summer last year we have been working on the...

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Marketing for Ferndale Guesthouse and Restaurant

Chris B. Kerndter — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 08:30:51 +0000

Since summer last year we have been working on the Ferndale Guesthouse & Restaurant Page.

The First Step was to bring the page up to technical standards, at the same time, we gave the page a new look, with the option of switching the design, when the restaurant interior is changed about four times a year. At this time, we built a static page, as we did not expect many changes. The traffic over last year’s season was not bad, with most traffic coming from Achill Tourism. At that stage there were not many search engine referrals.

Over the wintertime, we did a little adwords campaign, which brought a bit of traffic, but not with a very high conversion.

In spring of this year, we started to transform the Website into a blog and began an extensive marketing campaign, including a regular newsletter. All print material was updated to the design of the web page, including flyer’s, business cards, menus and ads in different publications.

We sent the first newsletter for the May Bank Holiday and got a fabulous response. We achieved a 42.8% opening rate, which is about double the industry average for restaurant newsletters. The click-rate was 9.2% which was about 250% above the industry average. With the second newsletter send out for the Achill Marathon, we were able to increase the click rate even further. The newsletter was designed to give a good mixture of story, information (activities, recipes, wine recommendations) and offers, which proved very successful.

At the same time we started to build a recipe database, with the possibility of downloading the recipes as pdf. So far different recipes have been downloaded over 220 times in six weeks. Through the newsletter, the new content to the web page and the regular publication of blog articles we were able to increase the number or visitors to the web page by over 50% compared to summer of last year. Of course the conversion rate as suffered a bit, as people looking for recipes will not implicitly come to dine or stay, so at the moment we are working at the exposure.

Lately we have made some usability improvements through simplifying and renaming the contact & enquiry form, as we found out that people seemed to use the contact form less and ring instead. People using the Contact & Enquiry Form now have the possibility of ticking a box for a callback service.

After finding out that the search term “achill hotel” is searched after about 4.5 times more often then “achill guest house”, we registered the domain achill-hotel.com and set-up an specially keyword-optimised landing page, to get some of that traffic too.

If you have any questions regarding the optimisation of your own business page, please feel free to contact us.

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Back on Track

Chris B. Kerndter — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 09:23:02 +0000

After some time I haven’t have time to write anything I am slowly getting back into my old routine. Nearly the whole month of June I was away in Germany teaching at the german Army. But now, as the summer seems to relax my todo list, I have time to use my google reader again…

So in a few days, I will be writing some more stuff in this Blog again.

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Turning the eWrite “How Can I Help you?” experiment into a Wordpress Plugin

Chris B. Kerndter — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 10:21:31 +0000

A few days ago Gordon Murray from eWrite, Cork wrote about an experiment, where he was grabbing the referring query from Google and displaying a “How can I help?” box at the bottom of the screen, telling the people to leave a message if they were not finding what the wanted.

I have picked up the idea, which I think is great for welcoming random google-referred visitors and turned it into a Wordpress Plugin, which I will we releasing, as soon as my own alpha test is over.

Please tell me what you think of this functionality! Thanks!

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