Teknovis

It is getting close to that time of the year when we all start buying Christmas presents! I have not started yet, but more about this in a few weeks time!

I have bought many things from Komplett in the past. I always found it good value, and I thought that the service was good.

However, I have had two incidents in the past few months that are making me rethink this. In both cases I had to email customer service within 24 hours of ordering. In the first case my order actually arrived before customer service responded to me, telling me that my order would be shipped soon. In the second case I got billed several times for a single order, according to my online backing statement. They problem was acknowledged, and I was refunded, but again it took weeks.

The other thing that is making me think about bringing my business elsewhere, is that Komplett charge me the Irish VAT rates. I consider these are excessively high, and hence I normally purchase from low VAT countries.

Tags: Komplett, Tax

The inevitable has finally happened – the EU and the IMF have arrived in Ireland to try to resolve the Irish mess. See Talks with IMF to begin tomorrow for more details.

Personally, I am relieved to see them arrive. I think that our inept politicians are not the right people to be trying to fix this mess for the following reasons:

• They are generally inexperienced and uneducated in financial matters (The minister for finance is a solicitor!).
• They oversaw the demise.
• They act primarily in the interest of their developer and banker supporters.
• They are unable to stand-up to a very loud civil service that is only interested in its own welfare.

I expect to see real, and long overdue, reform now!

Tags: Ireland

Interesting reading reading about the spending habits of Enterprise Ireland, but I am not sure how expected this is – Enterprise Ireland spent most of funding on itself.

Tags: Enterprise Ireland

I read about a new Irish Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) today called JustMobile. The website is very nicely designed, although it is very low on details. It is an interesting, or should I say a challenging, time to be starting a company, so I wish the founders the best of luck!

The most useful information that I was able to find was in New mobile firm is Just about to launch.

Tags: Ireland, JustMobile

I read this fascinating article during the week: 100 ways to spend the Anglo €25,000,000,000.

It is really sad and depressing to see how the Irish Government decided to spend all this money, when they could have used it to make us become the world leader in almost any area of science and technology :(

What a waste!

Tags: Ireland

Electronic Arts (EA) has announced that it is going to create a customer service and operations centre here in Ireland. That certainly is good news for Ireland, as well as for job seekers. The only thing that I do not understand is why it would want to locate in Galway, which is very isolated from the international markets, instead of Dublin.

For more information about this see EA to create 200 jobs in Galway.

Tags: EA, Ireland

Today Webroot announced that it is to create its international headquarters here in Ireland. This will create 50 new jobs, which of course is great news!

For more details about this announcement read Internet security firm to create 50 jobs.

Tags: Ireland, Webroot

I recently received a good recommendation for CafePress, so I decided to buy some t-shirts as presents during the week. I am delighted to report that my order arrived very promptly, and that I am very happy with it.

The two things that particularly impressed me were:

• I can shop in Euro :)
• The company seems very Web 2.0 friendly (check the blog)

Next I will treat myself to some nice t-shirts :)

Tags: CafePress

Today I came across this list of Dot.com website failures: Top 15 Defunct Websites.

I remember hearing about some of them at the time. It is fascinating how many of the websites failed because they were too early, and there now exists successful equivalents.

I have fallen in love with a new eCommerce company! It is called Moo, and it prints all types of business cards!

I received my MiniCards in the post today, and I am really impressed! They are so nice that I do not want to give them away!

Like many Web 2.0 companies, Moo makes great usage of its blog and other popular social networking sites.

Tags: Moo