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Blue Star have a proven reputation for building
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Diarmuid Ryan & Associates

Archive for December, 2009

99 Blue Star Web Design Facebook fans! Who’s gonna be the 100th! Google Apps set-up on a domain of your choosing free for 1 year for the 100th fan!

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

99 Blue Star Web Design Facebook fans! Who’s gonna be the 100th! Google Apps set-up on a domain of your choosing free for 1 year for the 100th fan!

This will provide you with all the Google products you are familiar with such as Gmail, Calendar, Docs and more; all hosted on a domain of your own choice. You can get me@mydomain.com and use the familiarity of Gmail to manage your mail, with a simple login like http://mail.mydomain.com and you can add up 200 friends, colleagues or co-workers, you can also login to your mail from an internet phone and never miss an important email. Similarly you can store your documents on http://docs.mydomain.com and have access to them online from anywhere including your mobile phone.

After year free service, the yearly cost is only €25 (€65 for .ie domain)

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Two-thirds of Irish firms have an online presence

Monday, December 7th, 2009

Two-thirds of Irish firms now have an online presence, new statistics released today by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show.

The CSO’s information society statistics shows that 66pc of Irish firms had a website or a homepage in 2009.

Online connection

Internet use is nearly universal for Irish businesses, according to the CSO report, with 95pc of Irish enterprises having a computer connected to the internet in 2009.

Access to the internet using broadband remained high in 2009, with 84pc of all businesses having a broadband connection.

High-speed DSL broadband saw a boost in 2009, with 45pc of enterprises using it compared with 41pc in 2008.

Mobile broadband use by Irish firms has also increased, with 27pc of businesses using it in 2009 compared to 24pc in 2008.

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/14614/business/two-thirds-of-irish-firms-have-an-online-presence

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Gmail annoyances and downtime

Saturday, December 5th, 2009

I am beginning to loose faith in Google’s services, perhaps they are getting too big for their own boots and letting quality and engineering standards slide.  There was a time one could always rely on Gmail but increasingly over the last year there have been numerous Gmail outages.

At the moment I cannot send/delete/view emails on either my Google Apps or personal Gmail account.  As email is vital to my business this is most unacceptable, these problems have been going on for 5 days now, I tried the usual troubleshooting such as disabling Gears and Labs, alas to no avail.

In the end I fell back on my in-house SMTP server running in tandem with Gmail so I can at least get mails out to clients and other contacts.  Of course not everyone has the luxury of their own mail server and I really feel for those who are currently totally without email.

Any clients who are using Google Apps who are affected by this outage can contact us to setup a temporary webmail account on our data-centre so they can send out emails for the duration of this  outage.  You will still receive mail on your Gmail account, but can send from http://webmail.bluestar.ie.

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Social Media Marketing Seminar

Friday, December 4th, 2009

We are organising a Social Media Marketing seminar for the new year.  Firstly we would like to guage interest and see if their is sufficient demand before setting a date and venue.

Social Media has erupted in the last two years, the power to directly engage and get feedback from your customer base is now a reality.  A social media campaign can be launched to promote your business and build your brand, even if you do not have a company website.  The great advantage of social media is its viral nature and how quickly word spreads.

The seminar will include coverage of business use for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.  This will include setting up accounts with these services.  We will then demonstate how to go about posting to these sites and where and how to locate information to post, we will also present strategies for gaining a following and encouraging interaction with your client base.

Many businesses find Social Media a bit overwhelming and often struggle to gain ground and exposure, our goal is to ease people into these services so that they know the tips and tricks to further their reach online.

If you are interested in attending this event please get in touch by email, phone or DM @bluestarweb on twitter. Places will be limited to 30 people.  Given that there will be sufficient demand we are aiming to host this event mid-end Janurary.

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