You’ll also love the free web technology conference – the dot conf - being hosted by the National College of Ireland on July 22nd. It’s a fantastic opportunity to go and listen to some industry experts and a great way for NCI to promote their new MSc in Web Technologies course.

There is a diverse list of speakers, from journalists, educators, web professionals and technology advocates – all experts in their fields. As well as some “deep dive” sessions (hands-on workshops).

Personally I’m really looking forward to checking out the National E-learning Laboratory, who recently published some pretty interesting data on what Irish people pay attention to when using Facebook.

Conferences like these are a great networking opportunity (especially if you are self employed or “between projects” at the moment). Bring you business cards and wear your hottest geek tshirt, you just never know who you might bump into.

NCI is based in the IFSC – possibly one of the easiest places to get to in Dublin, so there’s no excuse not to attend.

It’s self-adhesive (sticking to practically everything), dishwasher-proof, waterproof, resistant from -60C to 180C and yet it cures (hardens into silicon) at room temperature. It was created by an Irish woman called Jane Ni Dhulchaointigh and there’s a great set of videos on Fora.tv where she discusses the product in tons of detail, from its development to its applications. The Sugru blog was also a finalist in the Irish Blog Awards 2010, where you can find ideas on what to do with your Sugru.

We’ve been used to living in a world where we throw things out when they get broken, but with less money in our pockets we should now be turning to versatile and practical solutions such as Sugru. It’s also so much better for the environment. It doesn’t just fix things though, it can improve the usability of your crappy mass produced consumer products. People have already done some clever things with theirs and that’s what I’m planning on doing with mine.

Sugru iPhone Stand

I couldn’t wait to get it out of the packet last week. I already knew what hack I was going to start with. I have a few old iPhone cases lying around so I thought rather than throwing them out I would modify them into iPhone stands so they would stand upright to watch a movie on, handsfree.

I expected the sugru to have the consistency of mala (play doh) but at first feel it was much sticker and not as easy to mould. This changed after a few minutes rolling it around in my hands and making it into a little ball. It did however keep sticking to the table. To stop this happening I lined the table with a little cling-film (which would come in even handier later on).

It took me quite awhile to figure out exactly what shape I would start with, first it was a rectangle, then a v shape, but as soon as I stuck it onto the iPhone case the shape changed and evolved as my fingers worked with the soft texture.

The end result of my hack isn’t as pretty as I would have hoped, but seeing as it was my first time I’m not that bothered (it kind of resembles a shoe or a duck’s beak, but it could be worse).

After 24 hours curing the orange Sugru is now 100% stuck to the old iPhone case, turning it into an iPhone stand. I’m happy it worked and that my first try was a success.

Planned Hacks

I’m planning on adding a permanent coaster to the bottom of a few of my coffee cups, making my flip flops more comfortable, adding soft handles to some cutlery for Mam (who struggles with normal ones as she has arthritis) and adapting the handle of the garden shovel so it stops giving everyone sore hands.

Dad has some plumbing related ideas for the Sugru that I don’t quite understand, but I’m sure they’re great.

The Bottom Line

The only downside to this product is that you must use it within the first 6 months of purchasing. If the makers of Sugru really want this to be the next sellotape, glue or blutac, they’ll have to resolve that problem first.

However, I really do think this product is more than just a sticky substance; it gives each of us the ability to because our own industrial designer. Which is pretty damm great.

Most importantly though, it also helps girls make their high heels less painful to walk in.

There’s nothing more powerful than asking your users what they think.

With that in mind the Kilkenny Pembroke Hotel are running an iPad competition – for every person that gives them suggestions for their upcoming website redesign they get their name entered into a draw for an iPad and a stay at the hotel. Pretty clever, right?

You’re supposed to come up with 2 suggestions, but seeing as website optimisation and landing pages are of particular interest to me I accidentally ran away with my entry, so much so that Facebook refused to let me post it due to it’s length. Hence it now has a home here.

Some of the suggestions I’ve outlined below can be summarised into the following tips for commercial websites.

6 Basic Tips For Good Website Design

1. Make every call to action as obvious as possible.
2. Don’t give the user too many choices.
3. Never ask for too much information.
4. Don’t have too much text.
5. Remove any visual distractions from the calls to action.
6. Build trust by adding credibility logos.

Pembroke Hotel Website Redesign Suggestions

Everyone else seems to have covered most of the internal issues/suggestions for the site (based on the entries on the hotel’s Facebook page), so here are some that are based on the homepage only (the main landing page for most of your visitors, and possibly the most important).

1. The check availability section should be moved to the lower right hand corner of the page (swap with the email newsletter), you could test this change using Google Website Optimizer, and see where on the page it would fit best. Also, there should be more contrast between this section and the rest of the page, less grey and more colour. The “check now” button should be much bigger and with a clearer call to action such as “Check Dates”, this button should also be a striking colour such as red, so it stands out far more.

2. The email newsletter “Sign Up” button, it needs to be bigger, bolder and more colour contrast between it’s box and the rest of the site design. The sign-up section here asks for a full name and for you to pick an “Area of Interest”, these are unnecessary pieces of information – change this so all you need to do is enter your email address and click sign-up. This should increase newsletter subscriptions.

3. The image/link (on the right hand side of the page) to the specials you offer does not stand out enough. The “Book Now” button is not a clear call to action when it follows the text. The text description needs to be more obvious, far more literal. “Midweek Shopping Treat” as an example would be better described as “Special Offer: Midweek Shopping Treat”. Or “Girls Getways” could be expanded to “Take The Girls Away For a Pampering Weekend”.

4. There is too much text on the page. The section “Luxury and comfort re-invented in Kilkenny” has too much text and is difficult to read on the colour scheme chosen. Splitting up the text would be better, or even highlighting in bold the most important information so it is scanable. Or making the background of this text box white, and the text black.

5. Add any trust/credibility logos to this page (credit card security logos etc). Also include other badges of trust – you could mention your excellent review status on Trip Advisor (No 2 hotel in Killkenny) and Booking.com (9.2 out of 10, after 221 reviews), and link to these pages. Trip Advisor even has a badge you can put on your site that links to it’s review page.

Even if I don’t win the much lusted after iPad, hopefully these suggestions will help, and I look forward to seeing the future redesign of the site.

The last few years I’ve really taken to going on city breaks, especially to London. The problem is it’s really expensive to stay there. I’ve had some pretty bad experiences of staying in hostels and 2 or 3 star hotels in the suburbs, and spent an absolute fortune on these awful little places and then transport costs to get into central London and back.

Lucky for me I discovered the websites Hotwire and Priceline (who will accept your Irish credit card, but their listings are in dollars), and also realised how wonderful the Last Minute dot com secret hotel deals were. These sites offer extremely reduced prices on hotel rooms, except they don’t tell you the name of the hotel you’re booking into, until you have confirmed and paid for your booking. These sites take full payment for your stay at the time of booking – so you can’t change your mind, which is great for the hotel because they are then guaranteed you won’t go cancelling your reservation.

What’s The Catch?

What, you thought there weren’t going to be any catches? They’re minor at best (unless you’re prone to cancelling your trips).

For example,  a few years back we stayed at the Le Meridien Piccadilly, an extremely centrally located 5 star London hotel . The reason they were offering a low price was because their hotel rooms were slowly being renovated, and the rooms that hadn’t been renovated yet were being offered at an extremely reduced price. Our room was immaculate, one of the nicest I’ve ever stayed in. Obviously they couldn’t offer these older style rooms at the same price as the modern rooms.

Like most hotels that use Hotwire etc. they didn’t want a low nightly rate associated with their luxurious hotel reputation and name. It’s one of the ways they can try to beat the search engines.

Recently we stayed at a brand new 4 star hotel, the Grange St Paul, very close to Tate Modern, right beside the Millennium bridge and across from the gorgeous St. Paul’s Cathedral. Another amazing location and a cheap deal, this time because the hotel was not 100% completed. It had only just opened but our room was perfect, no problems at all. Although their spa and pool area wasn’t operational – something a fully paying guest may have had a gripe with.

Sites like Hotwire and Last Minute offer hotels the ability to offer cheap rooms, without these cheap online listings being associated with their names. A 5 star hotel that’s having difficulty filling rooms, has just opened its doors or is having some renovations is able to offer a reduced price without tarnishing its reputation as being expensive and elite.

For me the most important thing about a city break is the location, I’ve learned this from all those bad experiences. As long as the room is clean I’m happy.  I’ve been very lucky with all the wonderful hotels I’ve actually ended up in. Obviously I’ve taken many risks booking into theses hotels and not knowing the names, but the location and amenities list (which is given on all of the sites mentioned) is enough for me to make a decision.

I’ve even happily booked into New York hotels using one of these sites.

I’ve heard some people gripe that they were given a small room after booking through these sites, but the staff do still treat you like a 100% paying customer and I personally have never had a bad experience.  I’ve always acted like a 100% paying customer and received equivalent customer service from the hotel staff.

I’ve had worse experiences in hotels where I was paying full price.

How to Figure Out the Hotel Names

If you’re going to use any of these sites listed you can of course try to figure out the exact hotels that are on offer. For Hotwire and Priceline there is a great user forum called Better Bidding where people swap the names of hotels that are currently listed on the site – allowing you to figure out the name based on the location, star rating and amenities listed.  If you’re uncertain about booking you can even try posting on this forum to see if anyone can help you identify the hotel.

With regards to Last Minute dot com, they use descriptions usually taken from either the hotel website or older offers, so you can try googling the descriptions and then match up the hotel info with the amenities list.

For further confirmation, you can check the Trip Advisor hotel listing. If the hotel is indeed on offer on one of these discount sites usually the recent Trip Advisor reviewers will have mentioned this fact. Reviewers will often say “got this as a secret hotel deal…” which is helpful.

Obviously this is a bit risky and I’m sure there are people out there that have had bad experiences. So, if you yourself have ever had a good or bad experience with a secret hotel deal – I’d love to hear your story in the comments.

Though my direction may have changed recently I still have a personal interest in 3D, augmented reality and Location based Services. Also, it’s good business sense to keep up to date with these emerging technology trends.

Talks of Interest to me?

Mark Campbell from eMedia will be discussing 3D iPhone Apps.

From my old haunt IADT, Frederic Herrera from Create Ireland will give an overview of the applications of the VLab (a Cave – Computer-generated Automatic Virtual Environment) based at IADT – something I keep meaning to go and experience for myself.

Speaking of IADT, another 3D orientated talk will be given by my old HCI lecturer Ciaran McGuinness from Computer Clubhouse, the technology centre for young people in the heart of the Liberties.

Members from TOG will be showcasing  3D printing with a CupCake CNC machine – the seriously cool open source 3D printer featured in the video below.

Paul Lee from Viewsion will be discussing the business uses for Google Apps such as SketchUp, Earth, and Maps.

Steve Plunkett from Red Bee Media will be addressing the changes in television, including the effect of 3D and the internet. Should be a really interesting one considering the recent Google TV announcements.

Check out the full list of talks and register to attend this fantastic free technology event here.

… My extensive background in Psychology gives me an insight into human behaviour, in particular online, which will be of great use to me during my work at RedFly, which I am very much looking forward to starting.

I just published my first blog post on the Redfly Marketing Blog.

I’m over the moon to have moved into an industry I can be proud to be apart of and a company I know has a fantastic future ahead of it.

A simple picture exchange system developed by and for non-verbal people allowing the user to communicate their needs by building sentences from relevant images. It can be customised by the individual using their picture and photo vocabulary with the user taking photos and saving pictures to the app.

The application works in real time and allows the user to select their preferences, then rotate the device to present a full sized sentence to the listener – who will read it with them and respond to their request.

The beauty of Grace is that it ensures the interaction of the user with the listener, and mutual understanding of the user’s real needs help to increase communication opportunities and build trust.

The Grace app helps children with autism better develop their communications skills and is available in the App Store worldwide. It was developed by Lisa Domican in conjunction with software developer Steve Troughton-Smith, and with the support of O2 Ireland. The lovely Lisa has blogged about the development of the app and also about the benefits it has brought to her own children which is a great way to demonstrate the importance of such an app. The Grace App is now even available on the iPad, which is fantastic for anyone with motor problems, such as stroke victims.

If you have an old iPhone/iPod Touch or are thinking of upgrading, please consider donating your old iPhone/iPod Touch to a child with autism by contacting Lisa via email: hammiesaysATgmailDOTcom

You can also contact the Irish Autism Action charity direct about iPhone/iPod Touch donation, or you can donate to them directly via the I Want My Iphone for Autisim MyCharity.ie page.

You can learn more about Autism Action on their Blog Award winning group blog.

During this experiment I also had to discontinue using the Meteor network due the 2G to 3G handover problem (there’s a neat little video demonstrating this here) which left with me with no signal far too many times, but the phone worked perfect on O2. Hoping Meteor can fix that issue promptly, as many other HTC users are reporting this issue in the customer forums.

Day 4 With my Android

Day 4 was the day that I really started missing the iPod part of my iPhone, I especially wanted my podcasts back so I attempted to import/export files from the phone. It didn’t go too well. I had no MicroSD card adapter and Windows 7 just plain refused to recognise the SD card inside the phone. There are a few workarounds for this, for instance Google Voice is a great podcast utility for Android, but personally I like to manage things from my desktop (even if iTunes is still a bit rubbish).

I’m also really surprised that a phone of this calibre (and hefty price tag) comes with so little internal memory (384MB). Although, a 2GB SD card came with it, which is more than enough if you’re not going to use the phone as an MP3 player and you can of course upgrade that to a maximum 32GB if you have another €100 lying around. Speaking of music though, the FM Radio reception was exceptionally good, a feature I always miss on the iPhone.

The over-complexity I mentioned refers to the Android operating system. At first I was won over by the ability to multitask and was especially impressed by the taskbar like notification area. Overall I feel that the Android matches more of a desktop like environment than any other phone I’ve used, however, after only a few days I realised this was overly tiring and irksome on a smaller scale and without a physical keyboard. Managing software, settings, and files quickly became a chore. Also, typing on the HTC Legend did not become a forte of mine, I’m not sure if the responsiveness of the touchscreen on the iPhone has ruined me for all other touchscreen devices but I certainly couldn’t get used to the keyboard on the Legend.

Despite the fact that the HTC Legend and I didn’t work out, we’ve parted quite amicably. I still think it’s an extremely well built smartphone, very sturdy, sleek and fits better in the pocket that the iPhone. The physical keys underneath the touchscreen are very usable (though the optical navigation key is fairly useless). The call clarity is crystal clear. You can customise and personalise it to you hearts content. There are thousands of apps available that don’t have to go through the ridiculously moral Apple iTunes app store approval system.

As an alternative to an iPhone it is an extremely strong one, but as I’ve discovered, I quite like the simplicity of the iPhone and won’t be parting with mine anytime soon.

I will however be putting up the HTC Legend up on eBay in the coming days, and donating the proceeds to a really worthy cause that I’ll be writing about in my next blog post.

Only last week I had tweeted about how I really wanted to try out an Android handset to do a compare and contrast against the iPhone. I usually change my phone on a yearly basis, and my iPhone 3G is nearing its first birthday, so trying out an alternative is a great way for me to discover if I should stick with Apple or not.

Before I got my iPhone a year ago I had always been a huge Nokia fan, what changed my mind was trying out Jen’s iPhone (she’s an avid Apple fan, so of course she had one months before me) as I was simply blown away by the web browsing experience, something that previous Nokia smartphones (running the Symbian operating system) I had owned simply didn’t compare to.

First Impressions of Android

My first impression of the Android operating system is that it has definite similarities to Symbian – it’s highly customisable (like crazy customizable, it’s incredible), it’s more like a desktop environment where you are able to do things like create folders and install widgets, and you can run multiple applications at the same time. It’s also very much unlike Symbian because it runs exceptionally smoothly (at least on the HTC Legend), applications open lightening fast and it’s open source software so there are thousands of apps available for free in the Android market.

The big difference between my iPhone 3G and the HTC Legend is of course the ability to have multiple apps running, and it’s no surprise that yesterday Apple announced the ability to multitask in the next iPhone 3GS update (in fact it’s taken many of the great features of Android and applied them to OS 4), but the differences between Android and the iPhone don’t just end there.

Out of the box the HTC Legend just works. No connecting it to a computer, no software updates needed, no need to go register an account to start downloading new apps. The Android market is awash with amazing free apps that do amazing things – unlike the abundance of novelty junk you find in the iPhone App Store.

This is only my first day using the phone so expect more comparisons to come in a later blog post. Admittedly today I do miss some of my most used iPhone apps – like Tweetie, but I guess I just have to find the right collection of Apps for the HTC Legend to make it perfect for me.

What I have enjoyed about it so far though is the 5megapixel camera – the autofocus, a light flash and ISO settings make a big difference, I also love the radio (that actually works – unlike iPhone FM radio apps like Wunderadio that need a consistent 3G signal to run), and the ease at which you switch between apps – there’s practically no lag on this phone either, it’s so fast and it’s a joy to use. I thought I would dislike the physical keys underneath the touchscreen, after getting so used to just the one on the iPhone, but I actually really like them. The menu, back and search buttons all have corresponding actions within each app, them being there means it frees up a lot of screen space, especially when surfing the net. I am however finding it a little hard getting used to the touchscreen keyboard, but as with anything new I probably just need some practice.

I’m very much looking forward to seeing the outcome of this phone experiment, as I’ll be making myself use the HTC Legend for at least a week to make a truly informed decision about my next phone (it’s possible that I’ll stick with the HTC Legend itself). It’s just a pity I’m having some connectivity issues with Meteor, in the first day alone, three times I’ve had to force disconnection and reconnection of the phone from the network because of a loss of any signal, data or phone. I’m hoping they resolve this issue soon or I might have to unlock the phone and put my O2 sim into it.

Recently Fianna Fáil, who runs a public account (obviously) blocked David the editor of Politics.ie. So, out of spite to Fianna Fáil, I have set up a new twitter account for anyone that has been blocked by them, this account will essentially tweet everything they do, except it will never block anyone, ever. You can follow this new account here.

This works because basically any public account on Twitter is the same as an RSS feed, you can even follow Twitter accounts in a feed reader (which is pretty handy if you don’t use Twitter but are interested in one or two people’s daily mutterings). To follow someone in a feed reader simply find the link to the RSS feed of their Tweets (underneath their followers mosaic) and add this URL to your feed reader the same way you would with a blog.

Now I’m no political analyst and won’t get into how ghastly it is for Fianna Fáil to block any member of the public from viewing their “informative” messages, but let this be a small lesson to them that they’ve absolutely no idea what they’re doing online.

Have you been blocked by Fianna Fail on Twitter? Has any other Irish political party started blocking members of the public online?