Teknovis

Today is Teknovis’s birthday! So it is fitting to celebrate this with a blog post.

I am getting increasingly strange adverts from Amazon.

I do not mind that the adverts are not relevant to me. Indeed, this makes sense, because I generally restrict (as much as possible) my personal information from being shared.

The thing that fascinates me about these adverts is that I do not know what most of these products are, or what function they provide. This seems somewhat like an advertising failure for two reasons:

• If you do not know who your audience are, should you try to advertise something useful to a large proportion of the population?
• If it is not obvious what a product is or does, should you include a title and/or description of the product?

I will include some of the adverts below. My personal favourite is the toilet roll drying machine 🤣

Tags: Amazon

It really has been a long time since I blogged! I was booking flights with Ryanair during the week, and I noticed this recommendation:

In general I think that Ryanair’s website is excellent. However, its recommendations are really bad for the following reasons:

• I have not flown to or from Gatwick ever with Ryanair, so it should not show me flights from Gatwick.
• The vast majority of my Ryanair flights are return flights from Dublin, so it should not suggest that I visit Dublin.
• All my profile details indicate that I live in Ireland, so it is highly unlikely that I will ever fly to Belfast, Shannon, or Cork.
• I am not sure why Alicante is there!

It really seems that Ryanair’s recommendation system is worse than a random suggestion engine!

Tags: Ryanair

I am always interested in statistics relating to Irish incomes, and I often get asked about this while travelling, so I thought the the following statistics from Plans to slash the USC are rash and dangerous – here’s why were very interesting:

• 70% of earners have an income greater than 12,000€ per annum
• 50% of earners have an income greater than 27,000€ per annum
• 22% of earners have an income greater than 50,000€ per annum
• 16% of earners have an income greater than 60,000€ per annum

These figures relate to earned income, so they do not include non-earned income.

Tags: Ireland

A very nice interactive infographic: The Billion Dollar Startup Club

I received this image over the weekend (I assume that it came from How Angry Birds Started):

I must confess that I have never played Angry Birds, but I still like the story of continuously trying!

There are lots of other nice infographics on Funders and Founders.

Tags: Angry Birds

I finished reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell this weekend. For more information about it see Outliers or Outliers (book), and you can buy it at Outliers: The Story of Success.

I enjoyed reading it. It was fairly easy going, and it was always interesting.

There are plenty of reviews online already, so I am not going to add another. However, there was one very interesting piece of information that surprised me, so I will describe it here.

Chapter seven discusses plane crashes, and it describes a concept called the Power Distance Index (PDI). I will summarise this index by stating that a high DPI basically means that a subordinate is unlikely to be confident enough to contradict a superior, whereas a low DPI means that a subordinate sees himself/herself as an equal to his/her superior.

In the context of flying a plane, it is more desirable to have a pilot and co-pilot who come from a low DPI culture so that they can work well as a team of equals. In other words, if the pilot is doing something incorrect, then you want to co-pilot to be comfortable enough to clearly point-out the problem.

The book lists the five countries in the world where the PDI is highest between the pilot and the co-pilot. They are (in descending order):

• Brazil
• South Korea
• Morocco
• Mexico
• Philippines

It is an interesting mix covering south and central America, Africa, and Asia. I am not able to see any pattern there.

However, the book also lists the five countries in the world where the PDI is lowest between the pilot and the co-pilot. They are (in descending order again):

• United States
• Ireland
• South Africa
• Australia
• New Zealand

The thing that strikes me here is that they are all English speaking countries, and all former colonies of the UK. (This makes me wonder why the UK is not in the mix!)

I do not find this in any way surprising, because in a general sense these are all countries that share a language (English) that does not support formalities, and they provide relaxed workplace environments where subordinates and superiors are all friends!

Tags: Ireland, UK

The ISA is organising an interesting event later this week – ISA Techbrew – When Your Market is not Big Enough, Reinvent and Grow.

It look interesting, and if time permits then I will be there!

FRKelly has produced a nice infographic in Ireland as a Patent Nation showing Ireland’s prowess as a patent filing nation (click to see larger version):

I think that the breakdown between academic institutions, individual inventors, and corporate bodies is the most interesting statistic.

Tags: FRKelly, Ireland

A friend brought Amazon‘s latest announcement to my attention today – Prime Air! I think it is really impressive, although I am not sure if Amazon’s goods are particularly suitable. My Amazon orders tend to be bulky, relatively heavy for air lifting, and fragile!

Several people have questioned if this is a hoax, but I think it is believable!

Tags: Amazon

I heard of an interesting situation in a small Irish technology company recently. The company is successful, and it generates a small profit. In previous years some of this profit was redistributed to employees in the form of a bonus.

However, this year management decided to do a cost-benefit analysis on these bonuses. It was not a surprise that they found it was very bad value, due to the punitive income tax rates in Ireland. See Bruton criticises high income tax rates for an explanation, and bear in mind that this does not consider employer’s PRSI. There is roughly 4€ of benefit to the employee for every 10€ spent by the company.

So instead the management allowed employees to choose from a list of alternative incentives that would not incur a tax liability. Some of these incentives included:

• Additional annual leave
• Additional investment in informal employee education and training
  • Travel and accommodation for attending foreign trade shows and conferences
  • Purchasing of new hardware relating to the business (smart phones, tablets, laptops)
• Improved office facilities
  • Free food
  • The creation of a recreational zone
• Donations to charities of the employees’ choosing

There were more, but I cannot remember them all now.

Unsurprisingly, not even one person choose to receive a bonus! So now the government is not going to get even a single cent of income tax from the potential bonus pool. Furthermore, this means that the company’s total income tax bill this year will be the lowest in many years.

So what is the moral of this story? There are two!

Firstly, there are many rewards that employers can offer employees that have a one-to-one cost-benefit balance. It is just a matter of thinking creatively!

Secondly, that by continually increasing income tax rates the government is taking a larger percentage of a smaller amount of money!

Tags: Ireland, Tax