Blob 2.0

This weeks Push comes from the fine people at Spolitchild design , who also bring you the likes of toodle , and sheepstealer clothing.

FineTuna is Definitely  one of the most simplistic and easy to use apps currently out there. As someone that has outsourced design work,  finding this app is going to make things far far easier in future. Before i would review a design and then provide a emailed list of what i want changed , then the designer would ignore half the list and send back another re-hashed design and again i would forward another email with a list of changes.

Thankfully that has all changed , with finetuna all you need to do is upload the design , click on where i want the changes and how i want them and email back.

Simple as that!

Well done Alan and his team on a really great App.

Im happy to say that our control panel interface is nearly ready for launch, via the cp users will be able to manage their full accounts , including all dedicated and virtual private servers.

It will also provide the functionality for;

OS installs
OS re-installs
Application stack installs
Network traffic graphs
Remote reboots
Power shutdown
SSH functionality
CPU usage
Disk Usage
Back-ups
Monitoring
Full system logs
Add or remove additional nodes to your set-up
Assign additional IPs
View all invoices through your control panel , and make payments via , lasercard , visa , mastercard or paypal
Edit contact and payment details
Open and Submit Support Queries.

We will be constantly adding additional functionality when we deploy , as i get feedback on what people want to see.

To hear about our launch register your details at DediServe.com

Im happy to announce that Dediserve Ltd now has a place to call home after just signing for office space based out of the Digital Hub in thomas street.

“The Digital Hub is an Irish Government initiative to create an international centre of excellence for knowledge, innovation and creativity focused on digital content and technology enterprises.”

As such it will provide dediserve with access to some of Irelands best and brightest innovators which will prove invaluable in terms of feedback to our products and services.

Feel free to drop by for a cup of coffee if in the area , or head over to Dediserve and sign up for latest news as to when we officially launch.

After 3 or so months of working full time on DediServe things are starting to come together. I have decided on a look and feel for the website as well as the colour schema.

I have uploaded the new parking page reflecting the new colour schema. The website is also getting there and hopefully i’ll have some screenshots in the coming weeks.

Over the years one of the most over looked aspects of all web based developments and ideas is the nuts and bolts of what makes the internet run and thats the very nesscary but unsexy hosting side of things.

When people and companies develop a plan of action , its the idea itself that tends to get all the attention and excitement and the “boring” aspect of actually making it all physically work tends to get shunted into the background as something that can be dealt with later in the process.

I have seen this many times over the years , where a company spends thousands of euros on development and marketing and advertising and then rings their hosting company with the news they need it live on a fairly complex architecture within a day or two.

This becomes even more apparent when watching shows like dragons den , where people are presenting there web based idea and the url is  being beamed to millions of viewers. nine times out of ten the website then crashes due to the volume of traffic. straight away leaving a bad impression to the visitor and potentially costing that company tens of thousands in lost advertising/product revenue.

With my new company that is currently being built out , im working on a way of rapidly deploying a standard VPS node with  a custom built control panel on xen , after all people tend to buy hosting for the environment not for the operating system , so my interface will allow you to not only select what OS you want , but also what environment , want LAMP , Ruby , just MySql?  All done with the click of a button which massively reduces deployment times. Additional templates will be launched in the coming months depending on feedback.

Drop me a mail if you have any queries or let me know what platforms you would best like to see.

Im happy to say my new business venture , dediserve.com , is still very much on course for a May launch day.

I’ve been working on the hardware Infrastructure for the last two months and it should be finished early next week. My main aim with the Infrastructure was redundancy , reliability and speed. I believe this has been acheived. I’ll put together a nice network diagram in the coming weeks.

My development team are working away on the site and back-end software systems which will make everything tick. For payments i have gone with realex as simply there the best out there for visa , mastercard and lasercard payments as well as paypal.

The longest amount of development time is currently being spent on building the control panel for the xen interface. This is completely custom built and will provide all the functionality of virtuozzo plus alot more  , all on xen. In terms of how i approached it , it was mainly from a personal perspective , broken into three groups.

• What it definitely needs to be able to do
• What would be cool if it could do
• How will it be different from whats out there today.

I will also have a selection of dedicated servers , these will be nicely spec’d out machines for the cheapest pricing you can get in Ireland all with KVM over IP access, the  KVM is a choice of KVM, Serial Console or ILO/DRAC Aggregator ,

If you interested in the spec’s and pricing drop me a mail, and i will be happy to reserve as i have a feeling they’ll sell very quickly.

As always let me know what you’d like to see , what is Ireland currently lacking in the VPS market? what cool add-ons / apps would you like to see in your VPS control panel?

One of the most important things for any new business owner is getting the accounts working correctly from the start. As such i have been researching the different solutions currently out there.

Sage

The most immediate annoyance was the fact it only runs on windows as a mac user this put me off straight away , the second being i would need to install the actual software on my machine. Meaning if my laptop / PC died i could lose all my financial records.
Secondly it seemed more designed for accountants to use due to the hugh selection of functions it can perform making it too large a learning process , rather than designed for someone like myself, that just want to keep a decent track of things to hand over to my accountant.

Price: €156.00 (Excl. VAT) once off , additional charges for updates

Bigredbook

A nice simple solution with easy to use interface, however not as comprehensive as i would like , and far to expensive at €45 per month. However they do have a Dublin office should you require any support.

Price: €45.00 per month (Excl. VAT)

Excel

As a speadsheet , excel is unrivalled around the world to a point where it’s taken for granted , however i have rarely come across anyone that can fully utlise the full potential of the excel software. It’s a powerful program that gives you all the tools you need to manage your accounts. The downside being the amount of work intially needed to set – up everything, as well as the manual work involved in the day to day updating

Price: Comes Free with most PC’s

Xero

Xero is a web based accountancy package , that has a very clean and polished interface. Allows for the easy import of bank statements as well as reconciling your payments with your bank statements and exporting these spreadsheets to excel to be printed off and handed to your accountant.
I was very impressed with this solution and the fact it was web based meant i could easily manage my accounts on the go , as they have a nice iphone app as well.
see www.xero.com for more.

Price: €13 per month (New Zealand based so no VAT )

Im glad i made it down to bizcamplimerick on saturday 21st March , after missing the one in Dublin , i was keen to see what benefits such events can have for someone such as meself , currently in the middle of setting up my own company. Im glad to report it was a great success and made the 6.30am start to drive to limerick worthwhile.

Some of the talks i caught and enjoyed were;

” How one can use linkedin to grow business” by Ted Vickery.
“10 proactive ways to cope and thrive through a recession” by Padraic O Maille.
“Reinvention & innovation, keys to survival and growth” by Caelen King
and ” How to sell your product and service” by Pat Hough

Big congratulations to all the organisers especially Evert.

After over seven years working for Hosting365 (i was employee number 1 ) i have finally taken the plunge into the world of entrepreneurialism and decided to set-up my own company – Dediserve ltd

This was not an easy decision as working for yourself can be a risk, more so in this environment than in the last ten years and it also eradicates the stability of a guaranteed monthly income , but what you do get in return is the joy and excitement of starting something from nothing and growing that business into something hopefully successful.

So at the moment , im running around completing business plans, incorporating the company , meeting bank managers/accountants , sourcing office space , looking for staff. I hope to keep my progress on this blog as a source of help to other entrepreneurs, wondering what exactly is involved in getting everything up and running.

I’ll also divulge more detail on products and services as things progress. I have a provisional launch date for the end of may 2009, so watch this space

I’d also love to hear from people in a similiar situation or those that have “made it” , on advice and tips they can offer.

You can follow updates i make about dediserve on twitter here http://twitter.com/dediserve

Or on my own personal twitter account , http://twitter.com/aidanmcc

EyeOs is described as “the Cloud Computing Operating System. Work online -personally or collaboratively- with your files, office, calendar, contacts and much more. Your data is safe and always available”

aldo it’s described as a cloud operating system , it’s more of windows sharepoint based set-up. It overlooks the basic fundamentals of what cloud computing is and that is the hardware back-end, The multiple hardware nodes spread across geographical diverse locations running Vmware to spread the load and replicate the data all stored via fiber channels to a back-end SAN.

However it does include a nice intuitive interface in which to manage your files/applications and mail across multiple online devices but it does fail to provide the redundancy and security of an actual hardware based cloud platform.

It is however an nicely designed application which has real uses for small businesses or freelancers on the go and best of all its opensource.

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