Recently I had the good fortune of getting to go to Le Web, the biggest digital conference in Europe. As I wandered the booth section, I came across an interesting participant: Enterprise Ireland and some of the start ups they are helping to support and promote. Enterprise Ireland is the Irish State Development Agency.
EI reports that The Economist Intelligence Unit ranked Ireland 17th in the world in digital activity. Not impressed? Well, consider that it’s 4.6MM population ranks it 119.
As a deeply committed Hibernophile who actually once turned down a trip to Hawaii to vacation in Cork -- in February -- I am never above giving shameless publicity to Irish things. So I thought I’d give some ink -- err, electrons to some of the interesting companies emanating from the Emerald isle. There are clearly some sharp people working away every day there.
PinPoints
Pinpoints is a mobile application from Limerick-based Cauwill Technolgies that automatically programs your mobile phone’s navigation software to provide turn by turn directions to a destination. It converts a given location to a shortened url, and when you click it, it uses the native GPS in your phone to plot your starting point, your end point, and the best available route. It works on all smartphone platforms.
Teamwork PM
TeamWork PM is a web based project management platform that I found very easy and powerful. Simple, intuitive, and graphical, it offered great usability versus other platforms I have tried. Pricing ranges from a free limited features edition to an enterprise version costing €149/month. From the nine year old (that’s 63 in Internet years – a testament to good products) Digital Crew Developers in Cork.
Feed Henry
FeedHenry offers a development and deployment platform that makes it easy to create and distribute apps across all types of smart phones, and across the organization. “Build once, deploy to all.” Further, it makes it easier to integrate with existing business systems, report and optimize, and defend via enterprise quality security.
Gruupy.com
Gruupy.com is a Groupon-style deal a day site focused on offering Europe’s best deals on electronics and gadgets. Discounts of 50%+ seem to be the norm, though it’s a bit challenging to evaluate because most stuff is cheaper over here, what with VAT and all. What interests me here is the vertical play – that with Gruupy you will generally know what sorts of things to find ad you go back every day. And because the deals are relevant across Europe, it’s focused on goods rather than local services.
Louder Voice
Louder Voice is a tool that adds reviews, ratings, and commenting to a web site in just a few minutes. With offerings for everything from SOHO websites to enterprise ecommerce sites, Louder Voice is focused on improving sales for businesses by including personal endorsement and recommendation in more selling experiences. Integrated with FaceBook profiles, registration for consumers is easy, which increases the number of comments on a site. The reviewer also has the opportunity to send their review to their own FB page or twitter stream. The tool also offers SMS and Android review tools.
LouderVoice Customer Reviews Overview from Conor O'Neill on Vimeo.
Me really likey.
Weedle.com
Weedle is a massive network of “people with skills.” You join, quickly create a skills summary web page, and connect it to pages and profiles of people you know. Photography, web development, catering, you name it. The personal networks feature is important because it serves to highlight your profile when someone looking for your skills is just a degree or two of separation away from you. Their studies indicate that, not surprisingly, these sorts of connections can be very valuable ways of improving your close rate.
There are lots of other companies – these are just a few of the ones I felt qualified to briefly describe. It appears that there is also a robust sector for enterprise security and SaaS offerings in the snake-free land. While many of the companies are in Dublin, there are also a surprising number in the other cities and towns.
The economic news from Ireland has been rough of late – but it appears that whatever happens to the budget and relationship with the IMF, Ireland’s tech sector is going to continue to perform well.
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