One of the most common questions I see over on the likes boards.ie or iwf.ie is, which domain extension should I get?

I’m always quite surprised by the question I have to admit. Usually people want to know if they should market their business as the .ie (Irish Country Code Top Level Domain – cctld) or the .com and which they should buy. Me being me I think to myself idiots the .com costs about six quid and the .ie costs about 20 quid. You’re talking 26 quid to have both and I mean if both are available I’ll always be saying to take them. So why are people so hesitant on grabbing both? Its something I never understand.

I personally would be telling any of my clients to go ahead and register .ie / .com / .co.uk / .eu / .me and also now the .co (though my verdict is out on it just at the moment but they are selling fast with a lot of good names available its the cctld for columbia but its being marketed as an international tld so hopefully like .tv and .me it’ll join the ranks of international domains read over about .co over on blacknight’s blog - Sick of .com? Meet .co! ). Hell I’d probably even say get the .net / .org / .biz

Why will I do that well rather simply its to protect your brand. Protect my brand but why do I need to do that? Well you’re thinking small at the moment and you’re thinking the Irish market? so the obvious choice is the .ie there in the past has been a certain level of well the .ie was difficult to get and if they are an irish company they have to have their legal details displayed on the website so it must be good and not just a random .com I’ve come across who may be a kid sitting in a basement somewhere. This is changing however .. Irish businesses go belly up .. and I personally hold less esteem for the dot ie anymore.

In the past I’ve put things very simply for a few clients who were humming and hawing wondering if they should buy the two or more domains. The simple question was so you get the .ie and what happens if people go to the .com and discover a porn site with a picture of a gigantic clock on it … ( yes I put it like that to them and let them work out the meaning ). Now if its a childrens clothes store or something like that and people put in xyz.com instead of xyz.ie .. people may be less likely to go back or searching for your store again wouldn’t they ?

Human nature is also weird people can have strange ideas in their heads … the amount of people I know that type urls into google and search for them that way is staggering. Do we ever really remember if a site is .ie / .com or .other ? I know I don’t I kinda expect going to one will take me to the correct site.

So I’ve got to ask why wouldn’t you register a couple of more domain extensions ? I’ve created a number of print adverts before you know the type of thing it goes into a local paper gets sent out and bang there goes 1000 euro with pretty much no way of tracking the return and believe me the return on some of them was rather poor … not that I’d put it down to my advert graphics mind you more so to the target audience they were trying to hit but by using traditional media for the purpose. So that was 1000 euro gone like that and people are complaining that they don’t know if they want to spend that extra fiver on the .com ? get real people.

Anyways just a small rant and a place I’m going to direct people to again … the population of Ireland is 4.5 million (.ie – 20€) … of the UK is 62 million (.co.uk 5€) … of europe is 830 million (.eu – 7€ ) … of the world is 6,700 million (.com 6€) .. if you’re going to be targeting your business at any of these well … you do the maths ?

So why not head on over to Blacknight and protect your brand ? You might even find some very good domain offers

Disclaimer: I do work for Blacknight and all figures are roughly correct at time of posting

Its the kinda thing I’d pretty much like to pass onto all my friends. When an ad makes you laugh and want to pass it on its gone viral (though obviously thats just my opinion and I don’t yet know its reach)

THE SPOILER .. don’t read before watching

Its semi taking two classic stereotypes and dumping them into the one ad. For me its pretty much the reaction I’ve had from women regarding large closet space. Its also the kinda reaction I’ve had before when I told people I had a beer fridge (one of those mini coolers)

Classic!

Ronan Palliser posted a link (RT’d) on twitter to the following video

All I can really say is wow .. much more effective than a lot of the blood and guts ones that have become so popular. At least for me.

This is a nice quick dish and the Ingredients for it are pretty basic

• Onions (I used shallots once again .. softer flavour)
• Pancetta (Bacon / cured ham of some sort you could chop up a couple of rashers if you wanted)
• Mushrooms (I’d have generally used button mushroom but I used some Shiitake Mushrooms here as there’s a nicer flavour from them
• Cream
• Pasta (ideally you’d use tagliatelle in this case I used fusilli)

Steps:

1. Chop the onion and throw it on the pan with a bit of olive oil (I chopped the onion in half and sliced it rather than chopping up really small)
2. Throw the Pancetta onto the pan as well and cook a bit (I usually end up removing excess fatty bits cus I’m like that)
3. Chop the mushrooms up again I kept it fairly big and throw on the pan cook for a few minutes
4. Stick on your pasta (depending on cooking times)
5. Throw the cream in and wait for it to thicken up a bit
6. Drain your pasta and mix the sauce into it in the sauce pan
7. If you’ve got parmesan cheese now would be a good time to use it

And enjoy ..

This turned out rather nicely 9/10 from me .. the Fusilli may not have been the best choice in the world but it was still a really nice dish about 15 – 20 minutes from start to finish.

OK now that the title got your attention no they aren’t free they are pay what you want its up to you (you can even gift it to someone).

These are a number of great games from some Indie developers (one of my favourite being World of Goo from 2dboy.com) I picked up World of Goo before actually and the graphics are beautiful the concept brilliant (connect balls of goo to reach a pipe so you can go to the next level … but its goo so its bendy.

I’ve not played the other games but I’m looking forward to it when I’ve a bit more time. Gish and Penumbra look really interesting to me .. not so much Aquaria or Lugaru but who knows they could be great. They’ve all gotten pretty decent scores on Metacritic as well ranging from 70/100 -> 90/100 I think.

Whats more … you decide how you want your donation / payment split up either to the developers and charities or in any combination you want. So far the average contribution is $7.95 which is not bad. ( Charities are Child’s Play Charity and Electronic Frontier Foundation)

So why not head on over to http://www.wolfire.com/humble and grab the bundle for yourself or watch their video on what its all about.

So it is Ciabatta with tomato,onion, ham and cheese .. you could grill or oven cook this depending on what you want to do

Ingredients you’ll need

• I like to use vine cherry tomatoes they’ve got better flavour
• I like ciabatta though I’ve used a baguette for this in the past as well
• Red onion is a subtler flavour and less likely to repeat … this time I used some shallots
• Butter .. this requires a good chunk depends on the amount of bread / ciabatta you’ve got. (as well as how crunchy you want it all – 50 to 100g)
• A few slices of ham

You’ll want the usual herbs / spices as well (Basil if you’ve got some or maybe parsley .. and black pepper)

1. Start pre heating your oven to 200C
2. Chop up your onion pretty finely and fry up in the pan with some olive oil … (I like to add some water to cook the onion it helps kill some of the sharpness as well)
3. Throw in the chopped up tomatoes
4. Cook for a minute or two and add in the butter you should have a semi runny mix you want this to be runny
5. Slice your ciabatta down the center and spread the mix evenly on it.
6. Place in the over for a few minutes
7. In the mean time shred up your ham (I just ripped it apart with my fingers)
8. If your Ciabatta looks like its starting to brown take it out .. throw the ham on top and sprinkle some cheese on as well (I didn’t go crazy with the cheese) throw on some freshly ground pepper and some basil if you’ve got some (I didn’t have any handy)
9. Back in the oven for another minute or two

And serve

Going to give this one a 7/10 its quick (less than 20 minutes) and tasty

This led me the other day to say **** it I’m going to try it out

So what do you need
(preheated oven to 220C)
1: Asparagus
2: Rashers (we’ve tried this with serrano ham before but its a bit too dry)
3: Olive oil / pepper / salt (though with the rashers you could probably do with out the salt)

So take 2 -or 3 stems of asparagus … hold tightly and wrap a rasher around them

Complicated I know … try to get it so its nice and tight and holds its form
(I varied going straight across … and wrapping diagonally up the asparagus)

Repeat until no more asparagus (I then proceeded to wrap some extra bacon around them)

Place in a baking tray (Next time I’ll be trying on a grill in a baking tray)

Place it all in the preheated oven at 220C and keep an eye on it at the 15 or so minute mark and you should have something that looks like

Bit of kitchen paper to remove some excess grease and hey presto

Bon Appetit

I’d give this one a 9/10

You can of course see more of his sillyness over on his facebook page Squishy

10 years ago my mom lost her battle against cancer.

Mom you are missed

My name is James and I made the Greatest SEO Marketing Guru website ever I also made the theme for the site Social Media Expert

Like most people using “social media” I’m constantly amazed by the amount people seeking advice / how to’s and so on. I’m also heavily amazed by the amount of people offering their services to them. While I realise there is always a need to have some advice with new technology / ways of doing things the social media guru stud guy coaching type thing is a bit extreme no ?

So really what you’re wanting to ask is WTF is social media marketing ?

In a nutshell … its spamming the **** out of your friends initially in the hopes things will take off and you’ll get more people following you. This in turn will lead to every “tweet” / Post / Message you make getting read by an ever increasing number of people.

Wow you make it sound so great where do I sign up?
Well like most things I’d first advise you have a website to redriect your “fans” (people that follow / stalk you) to

This will help and who knows a few might even end up book marking your actual site instead of just seeing the off message from you. I’d also recommend you get and RSS feed onto your site. A what now ? .. ( an RSS feed is simply put … a list of the recent posts / activity on your site) People will see updates from you in an RSS reader of their choice if they use one. I actually being quite computer il… er … literate don’t use one. Why … again its down to time and how much time you have at the end of the day. There are so many posts to read things to check and so on it can be a bit overwhelming.

So you’ve got your site .. you’ve got something that you can drag people back onto your site with (RSS feed) .. what do I do next.

Well you pretty much start telling people about what you do. Its social media … can you be social ? .. can you be social online ( its potentially a lot easier to be social online than in real life) and away you go. Follow people you find interesting .. interact with people … let people know whats happening … open up your “company” to the world and interact. O…. K … you say … erm really thats what its all about.

1. Interact with people
2. People may follow you back if you’ve something interesting to say
3. You’ll follow them back
4. Connections will be made .. you’ll say hey to them they’ll say hey back
5. You’ll update info … people will see it .. some might like it and let their friends know
6. Interact Interact Interact ….

So … erm … that sounds simple enough doesn’t it? This is what social media is about … you’ll have people telling you its all about the number of followers you’ve got following you. NO … this is pure BS for example … I could have 10 people following me who are my customers and who might like to see I’m available for work … or I’m interested in doing XYZ … and there’ll be some interaction … or I could have 10000 people trying to sell their services to me .. following me … me following back … cluttering up my stream ( twitter stream … updates from people ) … which is more useful … well to be honest the 10 people you’ll interact with. Of course if you’re huge and can hire a marketing department and get loads of people involved in your twitter account then go for it. If its just you .. then … erm forget about it … follow people have them follow back or not … and let things happen naturally so to speak.

All this said there are a few things you can do to speed up the interest in you / your product or service …

Special offers … ooooh wow 20% off and save now today only .. <-- you like the look of that no ? well why not make a few discounts available for people. What will it cost you ... hopefully not that much .. you've probably got margins worked out on what you earn / profit and so on already ... so factor in what you've got in your marketing budget as well and go from there.

So all this been said it sounds pretty simple no ? Well hell it is .. its not rocket science ... its basic human interaction ... if you say hi, people will say hi back.

Things not to do:

1. Don’t spam … don’t spam your product .. don’t spam messages …
2. Don’t direct message people about your products
3. Don’t auto message people saying thanks for following
4. Forget about the .. you can earn $50,000 a day with my social media tool!!! click here to find out more … type offers. They are BS
5. Don’t read posts online and think they are the number one way of doing things … Trial and error should be heavily involved in your process ( We all make mistakes .. I’ve made them others have made them .. we try and move on )

Do realise that all the social media interaction is free BUT its damn expensive …
1 Tweet – 20 – 30 seconds of your time … (thats nothing you say)
.. reading the tweets of others … add on another bit of time …

We’ve 5 minutes gone just there like that … what have we done .. posted one message read a few others tweets.

Lets speed up things … how? … erm … social media is about building up a following .. interaction … respect (respect is import .. if people like you or your product they’ll help you promote it .. if they don’t .. you’ll have pointless twitter accounts RT’ing (Re Tweeting .. sending one your message to people who follow them) .. all your messages .. end result you’ll pick up useless followers

You will come across the odd thing which takes on the Viral nature … you say something clever .. you write something clever and suddenly lots of people are linking to you RT’ing your message ad so on … GREAT … WOO HOO and I’m happy for you .. but generally you can’t force this to happen it just does and if it does congrats and well done

So this ends part I of maybe a one part article .. maybe I’ll write a bit more ( For most people reading its hopefully DUH! material .. for others hopefully its something of an eye opener to the magic that is Social Media) Let me know what you think

James

(PS: Please note I’ve been really using twitter as my social media tool of example here … similar would apply to facebook and so on)