Sub €600.00 Budget Build

Long gone are the days where you should immediately budget at least a grand for a decent self-built system. Unless you absolutely have to have a top of the line PC, this budget system will serve you well for most everyday tasks, some gaming, streaming movies and music from the web, and even those bigger projects like organizing the family photos or editing home movies.

The parts

This parts list assumes that you’ll need the basic components: a case, a motherboard, processor, memory, storage, graphics card of some type, power supply, and an optical drive. We’re going to assume you have a perfectly good USB keyboard, mouse, and display you can repurpose for use with your new system. Before you blindly buy what we’re about to suggest, take a moment and look at our Build a €1,000 gaming rig and articles on choosing PC components, where we discuss some of the things you should think about before buying your components. For example, our €600 PC here is made with bang-for-the-buck in mind, not necessarily silent operation or tons of expansion bays. Remember to consider what you’ll use the system for before buying.

The case

Antec three Hundred Case

Antec Three Hundred – EU – Tower – ATX – no power – €54.95 :

The Antec three Hundred is a tried and true mid-sized case that, with luck and care, will last you for more than just one system build. It’s large enough to accommodate all but the largest components, and roomy enough to you’re your hands around inside without too much of a squeeze. Front-side audio and USB ports are a nice bonus in this budget case.

The power supply

A-Data HM-650 - 650 Watt - ATX

A-Data HM-650 – 650 Watt – ATX – €59.00

Most PC builders, especially starting off, tend to completely overestimate how much power their components will actually need. At the same time, you don’t want to buy a power supply too weak for the components in your build, or buy one from a flaky manufacturer or a no-name brand. Stick with trusted vendors on this one, and spend a little more if you have to. This 650-watt power supply from A-data should be more than enough for our components, and A-data is a trusted name. Pay attention to warranties and return policies as well, but try to make sure you’re getting the right amount of juice for the system you’re building. There are some great calculators on the web that will help you determine how big your power supply should really be, like the

The motherboard

• 

  Asus P8H61 Motherboard

  ASUS P8H61-M LE B3 Rev – Socket 1155 – Micro-ATX – €69.95 :This ASUS motherboard is actually used in a number of corporate desktops, has an easy to configure BIOS, and most importantly is rock-solid. The board sports 6 USB ports, 4 SATA ports, gigabit Ethernet, and on-board sound, so we won’t need to pick up a separate sound card. It doesn’t have integrated video, so you’ll definitely need the video card we’ll discuss later.

• If you’re willing to spend a little more, consider this MSI motherboard for €77.00, which is more expensive but packs on-board video, (so you could ditch video card below and save some more money,) but more importantly has USB 3.0, which is a huge benefit.

The CPU

Intel i5 2400 Processor

• Intel ProcessorIntel Core i5 2400 / 3.1 GHz – €162 :Yes, we’re going Intel with the budget system. No, there’s no reason you couldn’t sub this out for an AMD processor if you wanted to (in fact, we discussed it at length, and the first version of this build actually carried a AMD Black Edition – Processor – 1 x AMD Phenom II
  X4 955 / 3.2 GHz under the hood) save some more money or stand with a brand allegiance. We’re going to ignore those allegiances here and focus on the facts: while the AMD processor offers impressive bang for the buck, the Intel Core i5 is a solid processor that fits in our budget and can be found under the hood of desktops much more expensive than this one from commercial OEMs. The i5 will serve you well.

The memory

A-Data 2048 MB DDR3

A-Data 2048 MB DDR3/1333 (PC10600) – €39.90 (2 x €19.95) :

One of the most important things about buying memory is to make sure you get RAM that’s compatible with your build, and that’s from a reputable memory manufacturer. This is one area that we’ve been slightly let down by our portfolio. Our board is dual-channel, so we want to make sure we want take advantage of it but unfortunately the above isn’t possible with the above selection.

The storage

Samsung Spinpoint F3

Samsung SpinPoint F3 Desktop Class – HDD – €53.50:
Hard drives are so large and affordable at this point that you have plenty of leeway here as well. 1TB is large, and the price is right, so there’s no reason to skimp on the storage unless you really want to, or don’t plan on using this much space.

The graphics card

Sapphire RADEON HD 6750 Graphics Card

Sapphire RADEON HD 6750|Gigabyte GeForce N450OC2
We’re offering up two suggestions here to try and stave off the AMD/ATI versus Nvidia battle. Like so many other components, it’s easy to get caught up in which brand you prefer, but both of these cards pack enough power for everyday tasks and some casual gaming that they’re decent entries to the field. Don’t expect to fire up the latest titles with the settings turned up here, but if you have a couple of older titles you can’t give up, or if you don’t really play PC games at all, these will be just fine.

[http://lifehacker.com/5840963/the-best-pcs-you-can-build-for-600-and-1200]

The Wi-Fi only Series 5 Chromebook is now selling for $399.99, down from $429.99, while the 3G + Wi-Fi Chromebook is available for $449.99, down 10% from the original $499.99. The prices for Acer Chromebooks are however unchanged.

While a price drop is always welcome, why would anyone prefer a stripped-down Chrome OS based laptop over these netbooks that are much more versatile?

• Have you ever wanted to build your own PC?
• Would you like to upgrade components on your PC?
• How about setting up your Home theatre/Entertainment system?
• Are you interested in overclocking but need someone to show you how?

If you answer is yes, then why not sign now up for one of classes?

Class schedule:

18-Aug-2011 – O/S Installation & Maintenance
25-Aug-2011 – System Optimisation & Troubleshooting
30-Aug-2011 – Build your own PC
01-Sep-2011 – Overclocking

Visit the events page for updated info on locations and class times.

Location & time

Note

Location and time are subject to change. You will be notified of any changes in advance of the classes. Limited class sizes so book your place early.

How to register

To book your place on a class, find out more information and register @ Build & Upgrade PC Classes or send an email to Byopc@komplett.ie detailing your name and the class you wish to be registered for.

PS – If you require mobility assistance please contact Byopc@komplett.ie.

Built on a rock-solid UNIX foundation, OS X is engineered to take full advantage of the technologies in every new Mac. And to deliver the most intuitive and integrated computer experience.

Hardware and software made for each other.

Since the software on every Mac is created by the same company that makes the Mac, you get a fully integrated system in which everything works together perfectly. OS X works with the processor in your Mac to deliver the best possible performance. The Multi-Touch trackpad on every Mac notebook gives you more than enough space to pinch, swipe, and tap your way around most of the apps on your system. OS X gives you long battery life by dimming the screen in low-light conditions and even regulating processor activity between keystrokes.

Apple OSX Lion Hardware

Interact with your computer in a whole new way.

Tap, scroll, pinch, and swipe using Multi-Touch gestures, directly controlling what’s on your screen in a more fluid, natural, and intuitive way. When you scroll down on your trackpad or Magic Mouse, your document scrolls down. When you scroll up, your web page scrolls up. When you swipe left, your photos move left. And there are many more gestures that make all you do on your Mac the best experience you can have on a computer. Hands down.

Easy to use and incredibly powerful.

From the desktop you see when you start up your Mac to the applications you use every day, everything is designed to be simple and intuitive. Of course, making amazing things simple requires some seriously advanced technologies, and OS X is loaded with them. Not only is it built on a rock-solid, time-tested UNIX foundation that provides unparalleled stability, it also delivers incredible performance, stunning graphics, and industry-leading support for Internet standards.

MAC OS X Lion Ease of Use

Easy access to all of your apps.

Working and playing on a Mac is all about apps, so OS X makes it simple to find and open those apps fast. The Dock is a handy place on your desktop for storing and launching your favorite apps, and it makes switching between them a breeze. The Dock also includes Stacks, folders that give you quick access to documents, files, and downloads. Launchpad is a full-screen home for all the apps on your Mac. It lets you arrange them the way you want, group them in folders, and delete them with ease. And apps purchased from the Mac App Store automatically appear in Launchpad, so you can browse thousands of apps and start using the ones you buy right away.

Getto dock

Find, organize, and share files fast.

The Finder gives you easy access to all the files on your system. It lets you find, organize, and access practically everything on your Mac — including applications, files, folders, discs, and shared computers on your network. You can sort files by kind, application, date modified, date added, or size. But with so many files on your computer, finding a specific one can be a challenge. Not on a Mac. Features like Spotlight and Quick Look make locating the file you’re looking for effortless — even if you don’t know the filename. Say you’re searching for a document, and the only thing you recall about it is the phrase “surrealist painters.” Open Spotlight, start typing “surrealist painters,” and your Mac generates a list of files that contain those words. And with Quick Look, you don’t need to open an application to verify that you’ve found the right file — view a full-screen preview by hitting the space bar. Want to share a file with someone nearby? Just drag and drop to send it to the person wirelessly with AirDrop.

Get quick access to drives, servers, and shared computers from the sidebar.

See everything running on your Mac. In an instant.

OS X offers systemwide support for gorgeous, full-screen apps that use every inch of your Mac display. You can have multiple full-screen apps open at once — along with multiple apps in windows. And it’s easy to switch between full-screen and desktop views. Mission Control gives you a bird’s-eye view of all your windows and full-screen apps, and allows you to instantly navigate among them.

Dashboard gives you quick access to your widgets.

Built-in apps you’ll use every day.

OS X also comes in a single version that includes a collection of Apple-designed applications. Not only do they let you surf the web, make video calls and have text chats, manage your contacts, and accomplish other day-to-day tasks, they also work together to make you more productive — and let you have more fun.

And even if you find the first 40 seconds boring, be sure to watch the video until the end!

The perfect crime...

Yep, someone really is that dumb.  This all happened in the Bergerhausen district of Essen, West Germany and in what is possibly the saddest element of the whole thing, it’s been reported that the misguided scamps also taped notes to the mailboxes of conscientious objectors stating, ‘Google’s cool’.

Obviously, Lena Wagner, a Google spokeswoman, said the company “distances itself completely” from such behaviour. She told local press, “We’ve clearly given people the possibility to blur out their house, and naturally we respect their wishes. Those people who want to make use of the function should do so.”

Of course, as PC World points out, Germany and Google haven’t been getting along lately. After the Street View scandal wherein Google was snatching sensitive personal information over unencrypted Wi-Fi networks, roughly 250,000 Germans requested their homes be blurred out on Street View.

Whether the guys who carried out this attack have enough eggs for all those houses is questionable. Though hopefully they’ve looked at their actions, seen the stupidity of them and decided that from now on they’ll make omelettes, not war.

Detective Nordberg not pictured.

Their target was a 20year-old California resident Yasir Afifi, who, while fiddling about with his car, spotted a cluster of suspicious looking wires in close proximity to the right rear wheel of his vehicle. He then found them to be connected to an ancient looking tracking device (pictured above).

TG Daily picks up the story from here: “Pictures of the device were then posted online, which prompted half-a-dozen FBI agents and police officers to swoop down on Afifi’s Santa Barbara apartment and demand the return of ‘federal property’. The tracking device has been tentatively identified as the Orion Guardian ST820, which is manufactured by an electronics company known as Cobham.”

A former FBI agent told Wired the GPS tracker was an “older model” that had long been replaced by newer devices which are typically placed in an engine compartment and hardwired to a car’s battery.

CNN then reported that Afifi, a 20-year-old US-born citizen, cooperated willingly and said he’d done nothing to merit attention from authorities. However, comments the agents made during their visit suggested he’d been under FBI surveillance for three to six months. The full rundown of his back and forth with the FBI can be seen here.

The big question for everyone other than Afifi though is why the FBI is employing the use of outdated technology such as ST820?

Notes the good folks at TG Daily, “a GPS-based chip could have been placed in the smartphone, which would have allowed FBI personnel to intercept data while accurately following Afifi’s movements, regardless of software status, OS or device model. Clearly, tracking a vehicle (with sub-par equipment), rather than a person, makes little – if no sense – in the fast-paced digital world of 2010.”

Who knows, this could herald a return to long-gone spy gadgets like daggers in shoes, tear gas cartridges disguised as talcum powder, homing pills and mini-rocket cigarettes. Or maybe that’s just me being nostalgic for the Cold War after that defeat to the Rooskies on Friday.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee

Calling the raft of new legislation around the globe “a blight”, in a major speech in London, Berners-Lee added, “There’s been a rash of laws trying to give governments and Internet service providers (ISPs) the right and the duty to disconnect people.” He added that a French law that comes into effect this year and the British Digital Economy Act passed in April could see people lose web access without a trial.

The Inquirer reports that Berners-Lee warned that in one possible scenario a French family can be forcibly disconnected from the Internet by law for a year because one of their children downloaded something that ‘some company asserts that they should not have downloaded’.

For his part, he added – pretty sagely in our opinion – that ISPs should not be responsible for the content they were carrying other than in cases of anti-terrorism and serious organised crime where they had a duty to help.

Whether his opinion can make a difference in how any government approaches the thorny subject web-based law is up for question; however, one would hope that law-makers might listen to experienced hands like Berners-Lee rather than serve up knee jerk reactions (which was the main accusation thrown at those who created the Digital Economy Act).

Coming to a war zone near you… well hopefully not that near you. Still cool though.

US defence technology firm Raytheon Sarcos are developing the suits – called the XOS2 and pronounced ‘exos’ – which will apparently allow the soldier to carry 70kg with apparently little or no effort and punch through four planks of wood at once. Whether it will help if Mickey Rourke comes after them in a bigger, stronger suit is unknown, though we’re guessing if that situation arises just offering him a bottle of Jack Daniels as a peace token should suffice.

The Telegraph reports that the exoskeleton has been designed with two applications in mind: firstly, the combat variant, which is a waist-down suit intended for use supporting heavy backpacks; and, secondly, the logistics version, which is a full suit intended to be used by personnel carrying water, supplies and ammunition boxes or tank shells.

Raytheon test engineer Rex Jameson said: “If you push at the boards (planks), you are, like, “I’m never going to be able to do that” but then you walk up and do it and away they go.”

The XOS2 is the second prototype of the model, which has been made more fuel efficient. The firm expect to release a version of the suit which is “tethered” first, which means it is attached to its power source permanently, before improvements are made to allow the wearer full independence of movement.

Dr Fraser Smith, the firm’s vice-president of operations, said: “We would expect them to appear in theatre [war zones] probably in about five years for the tethered version and perhaps three to five after that for the untethered version.”

In a swish publicity stunt, Raytheon last week asked Iron Man actor Clark Gregg, who plays Agent Phil Coulson in the films, to try the suit at the firm’s research lab in Salt Lake City, Utah.

He said: “It’s the closest thing we have at the moment to the Iron Man suit. That it’s becoming real so quickly is remarkable.” We’re not sure about Coulson’s background with regards to advanced weaponry but if he says it’s awesome that’s enough for us.

But critics say the move gives the government a new tool for monitoring its citizens as emerging economies still struggle to come to grips with information sharing and privacy.

With India recently demanding greater access to the information held by Blackberry, the issue of governmental access to information is again on the agenda in the east.

The China Daily newspaper reports that the rules will apply to everyone wishing to buy any new handset in the country, including tourists.

The paper said the regulation was “the latest campaign by the government to curb the global scourge of spam, pornographic messages and fraud on cellular phones”.

Low-cost mobile phone sim cards are readily available in China, at convenience stores, newspaper stands and airport kiosks. They can be used straight away, as they can in Ireland, but this makes the perpetrators of spam difficult to track.

The ID requirement is raising new privacy concerns and is likely to upset some customers unwilling to give out personal information for fear it will be resold.

China censors internet content it deems politically sensitive and blocks many websites, including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

Following ethnic riots in western China’s Xinjiang, international phone and internet links to the region were suspended for months.

Making Shelton jealous since 2010

With that in mind, I figured I’d venture down to the Pick-Up Point and RMA Lab and find out just what it is that the hearts of men desire.

3. Paul-(Social Media stand-in) wants a home theatre:

My room at home has a pretty nifty set up, if I do say so myself. Blu-Ray, XBox 360 and digital TV combine to make it a bit of a slackers paradise. I do a lot of work there and get distracted from doing even more!

The one thing I don’t like, however, is the sound from my tv. It has no front facing speaker and for some reason regular tv and movies have a huge disparity in the sound needed.

So, I’ve been looking at this Sony BDV system, which at €518 is a very good saving.

You can stream music, video and the latest Catch Up TV direct from the internet via the BRAVIA Internet Video platform DLNA Ready for streaming music, video and pictures from a PC.

Auto calibration for perfect acoustics regardless of speaker location, make this a product that I would have already, were it not for my crippling poorness!

2. Ross (Pick-Up Point Manager) wants a 750GB hard drive

Ross likes hard drives. Or, rather, he likes what drives can do; hold lots of files.

“I record a lot of music and being able to move it around easily is a pretty big concern.”

The item Ross has pointed out to me in between bites of his chicken roll is this Western Digital My Passport hard drive.

For €115 and having 750GB, it allows you synchronize files between home and office and encrypt everything on the drive for added security and is a steal.

1.Shelton (RMA Manager) wants a BIG TV!

“When my old room-mate moved out, he got custody of our jointly owned TV. So right now there’s a gaping hole in the living room.”

Shelton says “living room” because he’s Canadian. And as such, doesn’t bother with RTE, but he does want something to watch Blu-Rays on and he’s got his massive, lumberjack-sized sights on this Samsung 55″ LED TV.

At €2,249, it’s not cheap, but it is very, very desirable.

Inspired by designs from the automotive and fashion industries, Samsung’s molding process eliminates the need for glue or screws to construct the television cabinets. The result is an LCD HDTV with a clean, smooth finish infused with a hint of a translucent color.

I for one welcome our new musical overlord.

The bad news for MySpace, which essentially stays relevant due to bands, is that Apple has launched a social network as part of the latest version of its iTunes software.

Ping, as it is known, allows users to build networks of friends and professional musicians and lets users build playlists based on what friends are listening to.

Analysts said it represents a challenge to existing music-based social networks such as MySpace and LastFM.

“It’s a social network all about music,” said Steve Jobs, launching the application.

“We think this will be really popular very fast because 160 million people can switch it on today,” he said.

With that amount of people being able to access the technology straight away, Ping has potentially a user base nearly three times that of MySpace, which has stagnated at around 60 million.

The top men in Apple were keen to distance themselves from any Facebook comparisons.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak told BBC News that Ping was not about taking audiences away from other networks.

“It sounds like a subset of Facebook, but Facebook is life and this is music.”

Jobs billed it as a new way to discover music.

Basically, the system will allow people to add a profile to their iTunes account and share top 10′s, playlists and favourite bands with their friends.

Obviously a MASSIVE drill would be a huge advantage, but in terms of what is realistic to be sent down, what would make the time down there a little better?

On a personal level, it’s got to be a music player. My iPod has single handedly (processor-ly?) gotten me through transatlantic flights and, without it, I’d probably go spare. But what do my colleagues think? What can’t they live without? Or, to be more precise, what would they do with four months in a hole (clean answers only).

Our Pick-Up Point Manager Ross kicks it old school; “Maybe a DS… becuase it IS a handheld device.

“In fact, screw that, I want a gameboy colour with 4 months worth of batteries and any of the pokemon games!”

The burliest Canadian I know, our RMA Manager Shelton is a man after my own heart, though he is notoriously Apple-phobic.

“I’d want an MP3 player with built in speaker, like my Creative Zen. That, or an eBook reader.”

So games and music are essential, apparently. Nobody looking to get a mini-DVD player or take the time to build their own PC.

We really should spend our time a little better, shouldn’t we?

What about you folks? Feel free to leave a comment and let us know what you’d take into a Chilean copper mine for four months.

Little people all dressed the same. As if they were in uniform. Then I realised they were headed for the old schoolhouse! So I put away any notion of this being some kind of uprising at hand and left down my trusty sword and realised it was just the first day of school!

We at Komplett have been running a Back 2 School offer over the last few weeks, complete with funky spelling and two of the biggest bargains to be found are a notebook and a netbook, which sparks a whole other debate.

On the notebook side, we have an Asus Eee PC 1001PX for €279. Powered by an energy-saving Intel Atom N450 CPU, the ultra-light Eee PC 1001PX delivers a little bit of everything, including up to 4.5 hours* of battery life. With a very competitive price, it is an excellent fit for costumers looking for great value for money.

In the notebook corner, we have a Toshiba Satellite C650 for €499.

With  a generous 15.6” diagonal display, the Satellite C650 is ideal for everyday computing and features a stylish textured matt black finish.

Essentially, the question of net vs note comes down to what you want to do. Surfing, basic word processing and little else? The netbook is your only man. Light enough to bring in and out of college on buses and trains, generally excellent wireless cards and decent battery lives mean it is more student friendly.

If, however, you want a more all round computer for games, music and video, a notebook is your only option in this battle. More powerful processors mean multi-tasking is actually capable and the having an optical drive is a bonus for CDs, DVDs and so on.

So, as with everything, it all comes down to your needs.

Yes, the site that brought us fat kid on rollercoaster and the kid after the dentist is to launch a free movie service after striking deals with US studios including Sony Pictures and UK service Blinkbox.

The new section, www.youtube.com/movies, is offering films ranging from horror titles, such as Night of the Living Dead, to ‘classics’ such as The Clan of the Cave Bear and Bollywood hits.

“This is one of many efforts to ensure that people can find all the different kinds of video they want to see, from bedroom vlogs and citizen journalism reports to full-length films and TV shows,” said the YouTube head of video partnerships, Donagh O’Malley. “We hope film lovers enjoy the range of titles in this free library, whether catching up on a mainstream hit or delving into the vast archive of classic films from decades past.”

The deal with Blinkbox, which charges from £1.99 for the rental of movies and TV shows, will see about 165 films made available for free. Blinkbox will advertise around the films, building their brand and opening a new revenue stream.

“The size and scope of YouTube’s audience is immense and this exciting tie-up allows us to reach film fans and potential users outside of our usual audience and helps us build on our already rapidly growing customer base,” said the Blinkbox chief executive, Michael Comish.

Youtube movies launched in the US in April and has a mix of free and paid movies.

So much so, that US Smithsonian agrees.

Starting March 16, 2012, the Smithsonian American Art Museum plans to stage an exhibit titled “The Art of Video Games,” featuring game footage, video interviews, classic systems and selected games for visitors’ enjoyment.

It claims to be “the first to examine comprehensively the evolution of games as an artistic medium.”

The exhibit also features “Get Lamp,” a documentary about classic text adventures, offering fans a glimpse at the history and culture surrounding the field’s earliest smash hits.

In an excellent piece on CNN, Scott Steinberg of the Game Theory web show examines the cultural effects of games and how the Smithsonian exhibit falls short of being the homage most hardcore gamers will have hoped for.

Speaking in the CNN piece, Bob Bates, founder of Legend Entertainment says that the art form is still in its’ infancy.

“Classic TV shows got taped over to save a few bucks. Movie prints deteriorated in vaults and no one cared for a long time,” he said. “If we survive as an art form, at some point someone is going to look back at the early days and say, ‘Why didn’t anyone preserve all that material?’ ”

Whatever happens, 2012 in the Smithsonian will be an intriguing time.

Sonic references in the gauge in Scott Pilgrim’s brain, fight scenes dissected, comic/movie comparisons – there are loads of nice touches in the new trailer.

Here, all you have to do is click on the footage, and you get a raft of information about the film from director Edgar Wright alongside some of the stars of the movie. There’s also information on some of the subtle, and not so subtle, classic Sega and Nintendo references that litter the film.

If you know nothing about the movie it’ll be a real treat, if you’ve already seen the trailer and decided you want to go anyway… well there are plenty of extras here to make you count down the days until its Irish release on 25 August.

The ambient sensor will allow just enough brightness in the TV as the ambiance of the room demands.

Sony KDL-40EX600 – 40″ BRAVIA LCD-TV

For the size you’re getting and the picture quality included, this high-definition television really is great value at €799, down by a huge €140 in our sale. Sony uses ‘edge LED’ backlight technology in this series helping with both contrast levels and achieving “energy excellence” as the company puts it.

As one review we caught noted, the screens are also much thinner than previous series owing to the backlight, while several commented positively on the fact that on this model Sony didn’t go for the controversial ‘new look’ that it favours on higher-end versions; ie it preserves the same flat rectangular stand instead of the fancy four legged stand of the newer models.

On the downside, you can’t connect to the Internet and access content; however, other connectivity options are great with 4 HDMI ports and a USB one to boot. Another interesting feature is the ambient sensor which will allow just enough brightness in the TV as the ambiance of the room demands. For those of us who have witnessed that bright orange glow from older TVs (particularly when older people are watching them… what, it’s true) this will be a welcome addition.

Price: €799

Full specs here.

Philips is very proud of the ‘HD Natural Motion’ feature included here.

Philips 42PFL5405H – 42″ 5000 Series LCD-TV

Philips has done an excellent job here, and at €689 for a 42-inch TV there really is a lot to love. Alongside the Pixel Plus HD feature, viewers will be very happy with the 100Hz LCD refresh rate which creates “extreme motion sharpness” as it increases the sharpness of motion reproduction to more than twice that of conventional LCD.

Philips is also very proud of the ‘HD Natural Motion’ feature included here. “Philips invented HD Natural Motion to minimize juddering effects that are visible with movie based picture content. The award winning algorithm estimates motion in the picture and corrects juddering movements in both broadcast and recorded movie material (such as DVD and Blu-ray Disc). The resulting smooth motion reproduction and excellent sharpness take the viewing experience to a higher level,” says a company statement.

Audio wise, there’s the standard ‘Clear Sound’ audio technology and Virtual 2.1 speaker system. “This virtual 2.1 speaker system manages power intelligently to deliver twice the original power supplied and produces an excellent bass,” added Philips, “Enjoy the purity and detailed sound with the additional dome tweeter which delivers uncompromised sound in a slim invisible speaker design.”

In addition we have a USB connector, integrated DVB tuner, PC Input, 3 HDMI inputs and an Easylink feature to allow you to control operations on your TV, DVD, Blu-ray, set top box or home theatre system from one remote control. Packed with great features, it may not have absolutely everything that other models its size possess but Philips has certainly taken care of all the essentials and for this price it’s hard to argue with their logic.

Price: €689

Full specs here.

Sony brings families together don’t you know. Its TVs will cause rows over the remote eventually though.

Sony KDL-40EX40B – 40″ BRAVIA LCD-TV

Not a million miles away from the 40EX600, the 40B Series HDTV features an integrated Blu-ray disc player, alongside a Bravia Engine 3 video processor that “delivers superior, life-like images with amazing contrast and colour”. Elsewhere, Bravia Internet Video lets you instantly stream a wide-variety of movies, TV shows, music and more.

As with the EX600, there’s the Ambient Sensor, while this time around there’s three HDMI inputs. In addition you can connect your digital camera, USB-enabled MP3 player or USB flash drive directly in to this TV’s USB input and view your photos on the big screen, or you can also listen to the tunes stored on your MP3 player. The 40B also includes the Bravia Internet Video feature, allowing you to instantly stream a wide variety of movies, TV episodes, videos and music from a large selection of entertainment apps. A bucket load of features and great value at €799, down from €899 for this sale.

Price: €799

Full specs here.

The Samsung LE32B450 4 Series LCD-TV: "great level of depth in the pictures with some subtle shading".

Samsung LE32B450 – 32″ 4 Series LCD-TV

Called a “perfect blend of style, performance and value” by one review, this 32-inch model is down from €399 to €349 for this week’s sale. This Samsung model has ports and connectivity both in the rear and the left side of the unit, while in terms of picture and sound the LCD-TV-Reviews rundown of its merits says:

“Samsung has included the Wide Colour Enhancer 2 engine which is a unique feature of Samsung that offers more of natural and convincing colours by strengthening the primary colours of red, green and blue. Samsung has also given it a high contrast ratio that gives LE32B450 32-inch Widescreen LCD TV a great level of depth in the pictures with some subtle shading. DNIe+ Engine technology performs to optimise overall picture qualities.”

With regards to sound, they point towards the built-in SRS Tru Surround system as an “excellent boon to the audio quality of the TV”. Adds the review, “The spacious audio created by the hidden speakers is well complimented by the SRS Tru Surround sound system. With Samsung’s Down-Firing Speakers, now you can fill your room with deeper and clearer sound levels.”

In addition, the Samsung LCD TV series B450 is ‘Energy Star certified’, which means that both you and your TV are doing your part to protect the environment. Give yourself a pat on the back… don’t whack the TV over after that though.

Price: €349

Full specs here.

Bravia models may cost that little bit more but they tend to be worth the extra outlay.

Sony KDL-32EX40B – 32″ BRAVIA LCD-TV
The second most expensive 32-inch model in our sale this week, the Sony KDL-32EX40B has however has dropped in price by 10% to €649, and like nearly all of Sony’s Bravia offerings it’s a superb piece of work.

Another model with Energy Star certification, the 32-inch full HD LCD HDTV is ideal for use with HD sources like the integrated Blu-ray disc player, HD satellite, and HD gaming consoles. There are four HDMI inputs for optimal HD connectivity, and a USB port for access to video, music, and photos on a laptop, thumb-drive or MP3 player.

Gaining a 9/10 ranking on TestFreaks, definitely take a closer look at this one, a superior offering from the good folk at Sony.

Price: €649

Full specs here.

The 32PFL5605H from Philips - down to €579 this week from €699.

Philips 32PFL5605H – 32″ 5000 Series LCD-TV

Philips has been gaining a bigger footprint in the LCD TV market over the last two years, with the impressive 5000 series – aimed squarely at the mid range consumer – being a particular success. This model – the 32PFL5605H – comes with a shed-load of “image improvement technologies”, which sort of sounds like a high tech way of saving someone’s media career after they’ve ran over someone or made a questionable home movie.

The actual image improvement technologies include Pixel Plus HD and 100 Hz clear LCD, which, according to Philips, means “you’re guaranteed clear, fluid video displays”, adding, “you can even enjoy digital channels in high definition via the MPEG4 tuner”. The 32PFL5605H has one USB port for MP3 and JPEG files as well as three HDMI sockets and this week it’s down by a huge €120 to €579.

Price: €579

Full specs here.

Samsung LE32C530 – 32″ 5 Series LCD-TV

The second cheapest deal on offer in this week’s Komplett TV sale, the LE32C530 is an excellent LCD option for just over €400. The PR bluster promises that viewers will be “immersed in a picture with incredible colour and crystal-clear detail when viewing the Samsung LE32C530, thanks to powerful image processing from Samsung’s HyperReal Engine”.

One of the Komplett office folk has one and in between cigarette breaks he’s confirmed that the aforementioned hyperbole is just about on the money.

There are three HDMI ports while thanks to the USB 2.0 Connect Share Movie feature you can enjoy your videos, photos, and music through the TV. Elsewhere, sound is provided by Dolby Digital Plus.

Amongst the versatile selection of connectivity options in the LE32C530 you’ll find a VGA port, which allows almost universal compatibility with PCs. While, yet again, eco concerns are shown off as the LE32C530 includes an ‘Eco Sensor’ which automatically adjusts screen brightness to suit ambient light levels – thus avoiding unnecessarily high power consumption.

Big, beautiful and bloody nicely priced.

Price: €425

Full specs here.

Samsung may pay some of this git’s wages but this week’s offers on the LE32C530, UE32C5100 and UE32C6700 are too good to let morals get in the way.

Samsung UE32C5100 – 32″ 5 Series LED-TV

One of the best value options in the 32-inch bracket, the high-spec UE32C5100 comes with a depth of only three centimetres, and a shed-load of superb features. Samsung is very proud of the EDGE LED technology which ensures light is distributed evenly across the screen, while a colour enhancer provides good contrast ratios for “deep, intense displays”.

As well as an MPEG4 tuner, the UE 32C5100 has four HDMI ports, two USB 2.0 sockets and a number of video entries, so you’ll be able to hook up loads of A/V devices. Our favourite from the whole sale to be honest. Another month ‘til payday unfortunately… and those loans seemed like a great idea at the time.

Price: €629

Full specs here.

Samsung UE32C6700 – 32″ 6 Series LCD TV

Check out the company bumf on this baby… “Inspired by designs from the automotive and fashion industries, Samsung’s moulding process eliminates the need for glue or screws to construct the television cabinets. The result is an LCD HDTV with a clean, smooth finish infused with a hint of a translucent colour. On the wall or off, these sets give the impression it is floating, with soft lines that complement any home decor.”

No pressure eh.

You have to admit though it is a beautiful machine – despite the grey colour. There are four HDMI ports; there’s a PC entry; ethernet connectivity; and a WiFi port. Plus, you’ll be able to hook up a range of devices to the UE32C6700 and enjoy online content on the big screen in HD. This fella – down by €140 this week – also has an HD digital TV tuner to boot.

Price: €859

Full specs here.

“Are you seriously defending the new phone by saying that it almost performs as well as the old phone? Is that what the plan is?”

Yep, Darth Vader’s complaints echo those of millions of iPhone 4 users – while there are also a few digs at the Droid X, HTC Evo, AT&T as well as a porky rank and file Empire guard. Enjoy!

Clearly hoping that this might get a few employees to ditch the iPhone – there are plenty of them swimming around Microsoft’s Irish offices anyway – some feel the move looks a little desperate but overall, we think the (mostly) good press it creates will be worth it.

All signs coming from Microsoft have indicated that they are delighted with the new mobile phone OS – though they are in something of a race to get as many apps developed for its October launch as possible.

Being delighted with it doesn’t mean that all Microsoft employees were going to go out, buy a new smartphone and ditch their iPhone contract though. Indeed, how many adopt the new devices and how many stick their freebie on eBay should be interesting to note.

As a Cnet blog on the matter notes, this all echoes something Apple did back in 2007 when the iPhone was first announced; Apple called an all-hands company meeting, where Steve Jobs announced that all full-time employees who’d worked at Apple for more than a year would be getting free iPhones.

No details have been released yet on when or exactly which models will be available.

There seems to be widespread good vibes for the rumoured directions the company is said to be taking however, this is tempered with plenty of (in our opinion, knee-jerk) concern that Microsoft may have been paying a little too much notice of what Apple is doing.

“Microsoft’s successor to Windows 7 is taking shape – and that shape looks suspiciously like an iPad supplementing a diet of media with online services,” says The Register, echoing the views of several others, including Cnet’s Ina Fried.

But just what was on those slides, which supposedly come from a company presentation in April? Well, they indicate that the next version of Windows, expected to be released to the world in 2012, may offer:

* Fast startup: A new feature combining Logoff and Hibernate to result will give the look and feel of boot/shutdown be faster;

*Slates mentioned specifically as a target form factor: “It will be interesting to see how Microsoft distinguishes between slates running Windows Embedded Compact and slates running Windows 8,” notes Cnet;

* Push-button reset: A button “that will essentially reinstall Windows while maintaining all of your personal files, applications, settings, etc. without the need for the user to back all of that stuff up,” as Stephen Chapman of Microsoft Kitchen apparently describes it;

* Support for facial recognition as one of the ways identity management/log in will be handled;

* IE 9, with another confirmation of August as being the target for the first beta;

* More thorough help and support, enabling users to do more fixing of issues on their own;

* A Windows App Store.

There’s no comment from Microsoft so far but as regards similarities to Apple products,  Fried notes one slide in particular is titled ‘How Apple Does It: A Virtuous Cycle’, in which Microsoft talks about the need for simplicity in design. “The Apple brand is known for high quality, uncomplicated, ‘it just works,’” the slide says, adding that, “this is something people will pay for!”

Is Microsoft simply playing it safe, with memories of the public rejection of Vista still relatively fresh in their memories (even if Windows 7 exorcised many of those demons)?

Well, first off we should emphasise that even if all this is 100% real and was the focal point of a high level meeting on Windows 8, all Microsoft is doing is looking through ideas for the next version of the OS, not committing to all of this. This may be just one document among dozens where ideas for Windows 8 are kicked about, and wouldn’t it be foolish to ignore what Apple is getting right anyway?

Come 2012 we’d imagine there will be more of a Microsoft stamp on the product than this one leak suggests.

Zuckerberg driven ‘not just by money or fame but also sexual insecurity’.

A Times article on the impending movie – which is being directed by David Fincher and is adapted from ‘Accidental Billionaires’ by Ben Mezrich – says that 26 year-old Facebook co-founder Zuckerberg is portrayed as an “untrustworthy sex maniac” throughout.

One of the opening scenes of the movie – which is told in flashbacks recalled in the drama of a court hearing – sees a 19 year-old Zuckerberg being dumped in a Harvard bar by his girlfriend, Erica.

She tells him he will “go through life thinking that girls don’t like you because you’re a tech geek”. The reality, she says, is rather more upsetting: “I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won’t be true. It’ll be because you’re an asshole.” She’s obviously not a fan of the whole ‘it’s not you it’s me’ approach to break-ups then.

Stunned by this rejection, Zuckerberg heads to his dorm room and writes the code that turns Harvard’s annual collection of student photographs and biographies into a website where he and his male friends rank Harvard women as barnyard animals. Thirty minutes after ‘Thefacebook’ goes live, it is so popular that it crashes Harvard’s computer network.

The film goes on to show how Zuckerberg, played by Jesse Eisenberg, drops out of college and moves to Silicon Valley where he builds Facebook with Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster, played in the film by Justin Timberlake.

The film claims that after Zuckerberg quit Harvard his personal life spun out of control, with Parker helping him indulge his fantasies with a stream of “groupies”. Sorkin’s screenplay suggests Parker knew Zuckerberg was driven not just by money or fame but also sexual insecurity.

While the creators of the movie have been keen to note that this is a highly dramatised version of events, Zuckerberg could do without the hassle at present. Considering the privacy rows that have dogged the site in recent weeks, along with him being accused of calling some of the original site members “dumb f**ks”, a movie portraying him as a sexually insecure prat can’t be good for business either.

Though, one major thing in Zuckerberg’s favour is Eisenberg who, outside of Michael Cera, is just about the most likeable man in cinema. Those who’ve seen the script have yet to see his performance and as anyone who’s seen ‘Zombieland’ will tell you, hating Eisenberg is very difficult indeed.

Late last week, SFI, along with the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Innovation, Batt O’Keeffe TD, announced more than €25 million in funding for a variety of projects that will run over the next five years. All told, SFI said that 139 researchers, working on 27 projects, will benefit from the research funds, which is handed to various researchers as part of the Principal Investigator Programme.

Batt O’Keeffe TD with Dr Evelyn Murphy, UCD, who received a Principal Investigator Award.

SFI already directly supports more than 3,200 researchers who are collaborating with almost 400 indigenous and multinational firms here. O’Keefe was beating the drums at the announcement of the funding, saying that the projects had “the capacity to create new jobs in the ‘smart’ economy because they targeted high-growth areas at the cutting-edge of innovation”.

“The wide range of projects on which the selected researchers are working capture the calibre of work under way in our higher education institutions,” he said.

So just where are the funds being funneled?

Well University College Dublin (UCD) seems like a good place to start considering nearly one third of the money being released in SFI funding is heading towards the Belfield campus. In all, €8 million will make its way to UCD researchers – across eight separate projects – under the Principal Investigator Programme. The awards range from around €630,000 to €1.6m.

Among the projects that will hope to make a mark over the next five years there’s one from Professor Joao Marques-Silva of the UCD School of Computer Science and Informatics, who was awarded €865,193 for a project entitled – BEACON (or ‘BoolEAn-based deCision and OptimisatioN procedures’). BEACON concerns how the fabrication of consumer products needs to guarantee that the resulting products work as expected and are safe for human beings to use.

“Computer models are used to develop new treatments for diseases by studying biological systems. The BEACON project develops more efficient computer-based solutions for a number of tasks related with system design and analysis, including asserting product safety or analyzing biological systems,” says a UCD statement.

The ESB and Eirgrid are backing a project from UCD’s Dr Damian Flynn.

One project being done in conjunction with the ESB and Eirgrid should also be of interest. Headed by Dr Damian Flynn of the UCD School of Electrical, Electronic, and Mechanical Engineering, the project (which received €666,482) is focused on the “the enhancement of short-term power system flexibility at high wind penetration levels”.

Considering the nation’s obsession with power usage at present, such a project could attract major interest if successful. The justification for getting the award is on the back of a proposal that focuses on how power systems worldwide are adopting increasing levels of renewable energy sources and thus displacing conventional (fossil-fired) generation.

“Ireland defined a target of 40% of energy from renewable energy sources (mainly wind generation) by 2020,” says Flynn. “However, as more renewable sources are introduced, conventional methods of balancing electricity supply and demand need to be replaced. This research will explore the use of enabling technologies such as demand side management (smart electricity meters and home area networks), electric vehicle transportation and wind farm flexibility to facilitate high renewable energy levels to be achieved without compromising power system reliability.”

The majority of UCD’s other awards focused on the biotech area including one intriguing project from Dr Evelyn Murphy who is based in the UCD School of Agriculture, Food Science and Veterinary Medicine. Murphy is acting as principal investigator on a €600,000 project attempting to analyse receptor activity “during distinct phases of acute and chronic inflammation” which “may potentially open new avenues in the diagnosis and treatment of chronic inflammatory disease”.

It may not be what the tourists come for but TCD were pretty happy to get in the SFI awards all the same.

Heading towards Dublin City Centre, Trinity’s biggest SFI award went to Professor Nick Campbell, Professor Ailbhe Ni Chasaide and Dr Christer Gobl who will get over €1.2 million  to work on ‘FASTNET’, which is short for ‘Focus on Actions in Social Talk: Network-Enabling Technology’. The project revolves around “computer speech recognition and in particular finding ways that will help enable a machine to know what that person is doing with each utterance in a conversation”.

The idea, they hope, is that the research will produce a device for processing human speech, as part of a robot, an information-providing service, a translation service, or an entertainment system, which is able to process not just the text of that speech, but also able to interpret the intentions, or acts, of the speaker.

Focusing more on the life sciences end, one major award went to Professor Martin Hegner. His project – focusing on the nanomechanics of molecular motors and cantilever array bio-diagnostic devices – was awarded €1,408,933 (and 20 cent:o) of SFI funding. His research focuses on the rapidly advancing area of bionanotechnology, “where biology provides the inspiration, and often the materials, for the design of new technologies at very small scales”.

Explaining a little further, Hegner’s proposal was based on two main themes: In the first part, state-of-the-art techniques will be used to understand the mechanics and forces existing in motor proteins and mitochondria, which are viewed as ideal biological models for utilisation in future nanotechnology-designed devices. The second theme utilises very small electromechanical systems and cantilever-based sensors and diagnostic devices for such areas as vaccine screening and immunological assays.

Leaving Dublin behind, NUI Maynooth were delighted to announce the SFI award of just over €630000 to a project from Professor Barak Pearlmutter of the Department of Computer Science, entitled ‘Higher-Level Efficient Numerics and Machine Learning’. No one said they had to be catchy to get something from SFI.

The project, NUIM says, will build a prototype compiler to extend and optimize numerical computing software for use in scientific and engineering applications. The resulting improvements will have industrial, commercial and scientific importance in areas ranging from systems biology and climate modelling to speech recognition and computer vision.

Overall, Director General of Science Foundation Ireland, Professor Frank Gannon, said the Principal Investigator Programme has been “the cornerstone of the agency’s work agenda”.

“The track record shows that by selecting excellent researchers, we can develop key partnerships with leading industries in Ireland, as well as producing high-quality publications and highly-skilled workers,” he added.

The work of those above will hopefully continue to prove Gannon right.

AT A GLANCE

Some other SFI funded projects to look out for at other third level institutions…

Principal investigator: Max Ammann (DIT)

Project:  ‘Footwear Telemetry Antennas for the Next Generation of Body-Centric Sensor Networks’ -  This research will tackle the challenges to antenna design which footwear sensors require for emerging medical, occupational and leisure applications. Addressing these challenges it is anticipated that new sensor devices will reduce health service costs for fall-prone patients, will offer in-depth analysis to high-calibre athletic training, will extend interactions to electronic game consoles and will allow hazardous gas monitoring for personnel in the fire services

Principal investigator: Simon Elliot (UCC)

Project:   ALDesign – ‘Process design for atomic layer deposition’ – The ALDesign project led by Dr Simon Elliott will, in collaboration with the multinational companies Sigma Aldrich, Intel and Seagate, design new chemical processes that will be used in the development of electronics components significantly smaller and faster than those manufactured today.

After a while talking to, Dr Theo Lynn – a lecturer in management in the DCU Business School – you get to learn that he often likes to answer a question with a question. To answer this one though, I tell him that I do know what Sex Panther is, and more importantly I know it’s illegal in nine countries.

Dr Theo Lynn (on the left): “It’s not that important that you understand the minutiae of how search algorithms work but rather the importance of what you need to maximise your impact on a search”.

He’s not interested in just rattling off Anchorman quotes though, rather he’s talking about a type of marketing called ‘defictionalisation’, a concept that is among the various methods of modern marketing that pepper his lectures at present. Other topics of note include deconstructing the idea of search engine optimisation, the possibilities of virtual worlds and how businesses approach social media, be they “marketing bereavement” or selling homes.

When we catch up with Lynn he is sitting in his office where he explains that he is dividing his afternoon between answering calls to his door from undergraduates and post-grads, taking calls from colleagues and eating a lunch of a panini and vegetable soup. With the last bit of his lunch done away with, he sits back to talk about some of the work that is interesting both himself and his students at present.

That’s where we come back to that pesky panther.

After appearing as an aftershave in Anchorman, it’s now being made by a real company eager to trade off on the name made famous in the Will Ferrell vehicle. People buy it because they recognise the name. they obviously know zero about the real product though. Lynn takes a six pack of Duff beer down from above a locker in his office as another example of the phenomenon.

“Defictionalisation is part of a wider thing now we’re looking at in lectures; how do you build a billion dollar brand? If you look at the top 100 worldwide brands over the last 20 to 30 ears there’s actually been very little movement. So how do you get in there? Particualrly if you haven’t got much money, this could be one shortcut, but it’s one of a lot of things we’re looking at.”

Duffman’s opinions on defictionalisation are unknown. Oh yeah.

Lynn himself holds a PhD in law from UCD, not to mention being a founder of a number of companies including Enki Information Systems, Educational Multimedia Group and most recently Atomic Assets. He advises a number of domestic and international companies. Dr. Lynn is the Director of LiNK and is the Principal Investigator on the Global Grid for Learning project.

Knowing that one of Lynn’s key interests at present is the potential effects of a social media strategy for businesses, we bring up the recent study that found that a mere 10% of Irish companies run a blog or have a Twitter account. Surely they’re missing a big opportunity?

“Well,” says Lynn, “one of the things we participate is Google Online Marketing Challenge, where students run a three-month campaign for a company who have never used Google AdWords before. This year we had a hundred small businesses in North County Dublin who wanted us to run those campaigns; they included IT companies, retail companies, and social organisations. We took 68 of them so we’re running 68 AdWords campaigns for companies who’ve never used it before and then we’ve done about 12 to 15 projects with companies on SEO and social media marketing for small businesses.”

Lynn continues, “Anecdotally, to be honest I could sit here and I could go through, 60, 70, 90, small businesses who want to get involved but they don’t have the time. Part of the problem is there’s a whole load of people who – and this is a slightly controversial topic – but there are a whole load of people going out there and calling themselves SEO experts, social media marketing experts.

“No offence, but marketing bereavement is a different kettle of fish to what any of the students will have done before.”

“They sell the thing as a much more complex thing than it really is; they sell it as a large workload. But, what we try to do with small businesses in DCU is say well first of all let’s see where the business is and then let’s see where you’re going. Then we have a process that we bring them through called the Social Media Marketing Playback. What we work with small businesses to get them to do is to get them from zero to where they spend five minutes an hour working on their social media plan.”

Lynn says that for the vast majority of businesses they’re dealing with, this is a very different reality to the normal sales routine that dominates most businesses, whether they sell pencils or Porches. “It’s very different in that if you were doing a normal sales and marketing plan and you were an entrepreneur or an owner manager of a company, normally if you were coaching them you’d say well you need t spend an hour every morning emailing or calling ten contacts, blah… blah… blah…,” he says.

“Social media marketing and search engine marketing is different. We’re trying to bring the idea across that you don’t need to spend five hours a day doing this, you need to spend five minutes every hour. But spend that time in a very focused way, in a very scheduled way. We work with them to schedule out their time and we break it down in a very structured type of way.”

At this point he produces some examples of spreadsheets which put a company’s social media campaign into context, various timing and profit targets are pointed out, while the document is littered with names like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and more.

Generally they’re dealing small businesses, he picks out one – a funeral home – as an example of the varied nature of businesses coming to DCU for help getting off the ground in the social media universe.  “Now,” says Lynn, “no offence but marketing bereavement is a different kettle of fish to what any of the students will have done before.”

Surely most businesses can afford five minutes per hour to prop up their social media presence?

So just how is it done then? “You stand back; you look at what’s their focus, what’s the focus of the promotion, what’s the focus of their domain name, lots of little things. Bring them through Twitter and show them how to build themselves up there. Then how to build up Facebook, then go over to LinkedIn, then it’s blogging, media aggregation, social bookmarking, YouTube, location based stuff and then monitoring and measuring all that. At the end of the process, the businesses we’re dealing with are able to do about 180/190 tasks that at the beginning of the process they thought were completely complex but once they finished with us they won’t have an issue with any of them.”

Asked if it’s hard to convince businesses to stick with it once the students end their time with them. “If you get impact it’s not, if you don’t it’s difficult but you could say the same thing about any sales process,” says Lynn.

Lynn says that the various colleges and “marketing institutes” cropping around the country are largely just “selling the mechanics of digital marketing”. There is, he says, “a writing burden” for any company taking on a blog, or even deciding to create a strong Twitter presence.

“All these elements are very different and then you’ve got the overall strategy and at the end of the day the strategy should tie all these things together with your traditional marketing anyway. At the end of the day it’s about the returns, what are those KPIs (key performance indicators), how do we value them? That’s why a measured approach is needed but there’s no ‘one way’, that’s the thing, all this is still relatively new so we’re trying things and these businesses are on board with us as we do and that’s great.”

Second life may not be an attractive idea to this generation but what about ten years down the line?

Reigning himself back for a second, Lynn then discusses another interesting avenue of digital marketing, one that some may think has already had its day – virtual worlds. While Second Life is hardly many people’s cup of tea, it is, he points out, the “only real virtual world for over 35s”. Though, it’s where these worlds will be in ten years that’s really interesting.

It is, he argues, the kids playing Club Penguin who will move on to “Barbie World or Habbo Hotel” in the next few years that are of interest. “What’s interesting is that there are loads of kids playing in these virtual worlds now and they’re going to grow up with that type of interaction seeming natural.

You’re teaching kids to buy things already through the currency in these games and be a virtual consumer and that whole area of virtual goods will be intriguing over the next decade as it becomes more normal, more accepted to pay for virtual items. Already, people have been found hacking into virtual game accounts, stealing virtual goods and selling them off to other users; people have been prosecuted for that.”

While Lynn himself is clearly enthusiastic about the subject, are his students quite as pumped up about ideas such as consumer habits in virtual worlds or digital marketing as a whole? Is the DCU business school producing leaders in this area or are the students not quite buying in on the ideas as opposed to traditional marketing and business ideals?

“I think first of all it’s very difficult to do research in this area as it’s largely phenomenon which you’re looking at. You’ve a choice, if you want to write and research about it then it’s difficult to get publications to publish in because it’s all so new, you’re coming up with new hypothesise and you don’t have a lot of quantitative research behind it.

“So went tend to get half the class thinking this is really interesting and they like what we’re doing and then the other half is saying there’s no 20,000 surveyed on this topic so there’s no basis for what we’re doing.” So that’s a yes and no then?

“Well even at lecturer level, you’ve got academics writing about social media and marketing but they’re talking about it in an abstract way quite often. The difficulty for those who want to grapple with it though is you have to keep up.”

He concludes, “It’s not that important that you understand the minutiae of how search algorithms work though, but rather the importance of what you need to maximise your impact on a search. Bing operates in a different ay to Google, Twitter works in a totally different way, all of this is important. Some people gobble this info up, I certainly do and hopefully we’ll produce some good research on the area over the next while.”

In a meeting room in DCU’s School of Computing, Dr Alistair Sutherland is trying to explain the difficulties of producing a piece of software that can recognise hand gestures via video and translate them in real time. Before he gets into the full details he carries the expression of a man who has maybe had to give this explanation to perspective investors and interested colleagues on several occasions down through the years.

Some images from the hand tracking experiments that make up part of Sutherland's gesture recognition work.

“It’s a long road,” he says first off, indeed it’s a road that Sutherland has travelled down for over a decade, through work with both Hitachi and in his current position as a DCU lecturer. The essential idea is to create a video-based piece of software that can read sign language, translate it and produce the words on screen, or indeed using a voice synthesiser, producing the sentence in question out loud.

“The big thing,” says Sutherland, “is that most sign language is full of dynamic gestures where the shape changes within a word. We have to incorporate both shape and motion. Then there are common problems to be faced – perhaps the one hand moves in front of the other or the hand touches the face.”

Sutherland goes back to how he got involved in the area in the first place, when he was working for Hitachi in the mid-‘90s. Back then, the company had a small lab in Trinity College. Amongst a myriad of different projects being knocked about there, a sign language recognition idea caught his attention and his work has continued in the area ever since.

“One thing to note is that the work I do is video based, using a camera, say a straight forward webcam, to recognise gestures, it doesn’t use any special sensing equipment. However, there are a number of aspects to the idea,” he says, “sign language is a completely different language from any spoken language, it’s specifically designed for gestures and each gesture had three components, a hand shape, a hand location and  hand motion. So different parts of the project have been looking at recognising hand shapes, other parts have bee looking at tracking and recognising motion and I’ve even had one project that looked into recognising lip shapes – in collaboration with Prof Paul Whelan of the School of Electronic Engineering at DCU – as deaf people often mouth words as they’re signing them.”

Sutherland’s work is based in DCU’s School of Computing.

While his work on cracking that particular problem continues, Sutherland mentions that he has also recently teamed up with a company called Movidius, who produce video processor hardware and application software designed to ‘suit low power mobile phone and consumer electronics’.

“At the moment we’ve kind of shifted on to more commercial applications like doing gesture recognition for mobile phones, for games and devices like switching on and off a TV,” says Sutherland, “We’ve talked to Movidius who have a Dublin office and who make video processing chips for mobile phones and they were interested in gesture recognition and in showcasing the power of their chips; it seems like a natural fit.”

Sutherland continues, “The (mobile phone) screen can already be bigger than previosuly thanks to touch-screen technology though the disadvantage is that you’re still touching the screen so it gets scratched, smudged etc, and so the advantage of using hand gestures is controlling from a distance, saving the phone from those marks and of course, more importantly, there’s a greater flexibility. You have your hand moving in and out and so you’ve got three dimensional control there. The three dimensions mean that you can control some sort of virtual space.”

3D mobile phone displays are a big discussion point this year but can Sutherland’s work with Movidius take things on a few notches?

Warming to the subject, Sutherland continues, “You can have a 3D virtual space and ‘on the phone’ as it were you can go in and out of that space; you can pick up objects, move them around in the virtual space. There are a number of great possibilities in terms of gesture recognition.” The attraction of Sutherland’s work to mobile phone companies he says is that it relies upon utilising existing hardware such as a phone camera and bringing it on with new software, rather than adding an infrared scanner or, as Nokia are rumoured to be using in the near future, a type of ultrasound technology.

Adds the DCU man, “You could use two cameras for stereoscopy and I gather from Movidius that that will be coming along quite soon in a lot of phones. A lot of mobile phones already have one camera on one side and another on the opposite side. But they could have two cameras on the same side to give you this 3D stereoscopic effect.”

Movidius’ own David Moloney, the company’s CTO, reveals that it is concentrating on the possibilities of combining gesture recognition and 3D as it’s an area “where you can create some intellectual property that you can defend in a new area that’s opening up rather than in a mature area such as 2D”.  He continues, “We feel that the platforms we’re working on would be a very good match for gesture recognition and particularly when using two cameras, with 3D starting to become very interesting in TVs and so on, driven by the film industry, it’s something that a lot of people evidently want.”

Both Sutherland and Moloney are hopeful then that their work can produce something special in the coming years, however, as the former notes, competition will be fierce. “There’s quite a lot out there, hundreds of people trying to tackle this, you’ll see lots and lots of papers in the last few years on it for one thing. However I think our work is developing nicely so who knows.”

In 2002 she was behind the research document ‘Loading …Please Wait: Ireland and the Global Games Industry’ which included 15 face to face interviews with representatives of companies including Funcom, Havok, Kapooki, Eirplay and Vivendi alongside government agencies, retail and media commentators.

‘Operation Flashpoint’ – one of the games Havok has been involved in. Will they hire many more Irish employees in the near future though?

In that report, she estimated that there were just over 300 people employed in the games industry in Ireland. Kerr was co-author of another report from last year – simply entitled ‘The Games Industry in Ireland 2009’ – in which she estimates that the games industry here had expanded to 1,277 full time permanent employees plus 170 contractors and twenty-two freelancers.

Her book ‘The Business and Culture of Digital Games: Gamework/Gameplay’ was published in 2006 by Sage publications, while other recent publications include this year’s collaboration with Stefano De Paoli entitled ‘We Will Always be One Step Ahead of Them’ which is a case study on the ‘Economy of Cheating in MMORPGs’.

Komplett talked to her about the health, or lack thereof, of the Irish gaming industry, how to expand the industry and what she would do if she were put in charge of making things happen in this sector.

Why did you set up GameDevelopers.ie initially?

I set it up nearly eight years ago as my post-doc research in DCU was on games and the games industry.  Then coming out of writing up ‘Loading …Please Wait’ we realised that the games companies didn’t really know each other and there was obviously a need for them to start networking and maybe share information.

So, that was where GameDevelopers came out of. I got two students from DCU to help me and also some funding from different companies and we set it up. It went live in April 2002 so it’s just about to become eight years old.

In terms of the gaming industry, considering you did a follow up document last year as well, how different is the gaming business landscape here now to what you found in 2002?

There are a few of the same players, obviously Microsoft is still here and still involved but there’s been a lot of change in terms of the companies, the multinationals who have come in, some of which have been bought out; then new Irish companies which have been established and subsequently bought out like Havok and Demonware. From a technology generation standpoint too obviously things have changed quite a bit there, with mobile games and other leaps forward.

We have a new generation of iPhone apps companies, companies starting to look at browser, social and casual games. The one or two companies that we did have at that time in the console/PC games space we don’t have any longer so there’s been a lot of change. Microsoft is one of the few companies that are still around and still doing what they did at that time which was localisation.

According to Kerr's 2009 research, of those working in the games industry here, a great number are not Irish.

Recently Dublin-based Havok created 26 jobs in the US “because the quality of talent coming out of computer science” is not what they would like in Ireland. Is that a sign that we’re really falling down in some areas despite a decade of growth in people working in the games industry?

Well Havok are involved in a very specialised space obviously with middleware and software development for game development companies, so they have a very particular high-end technical need. Though the fact that they can’t source their workforce with the particular skills they’re looking for here clearly signals there may be some gaps.

But I don’t think that would apply to all game development given all the different areas of game development which we have now so I think we probably have the skills to move into certain areas but there are perhaps niche areas that we may not providing or we may not have the kind of adequate graduates for.

Can moves like the creation of DIT’s new gaming MSc help in that regard?

Well I don’t think any one course will ever create an industry, we’ve now had ten years of trying to build things up… I mean when I started my research, that would be the other thing that concerned us, the only course that were available would have been the Diploma course in Ballyfermot and maybe one other. Now, every IT in the country and practically every University have either a stream within an undergraduate computer science degree, and/or perhaps a Masters that’s relevant.

Whether you’re looking at the programming side, whether you’re looking at the design side or whether you’re looking at the animation side there’s work going on. Then obviously the other courses which would feed in to gaming such as localization, there are now a lot of courses across all the institutions in the country.

If Bertie Ahern can get tax free exemption for his autobiography surely a few games developers should benefit too.

There was a suggestion on the Your Nation Your Call website to give games developers artist status and in turn tax exemption, could something as radical as that help develop the industry here?

Well other countries are doing it, it’s just been announced in the UK budget that they’re looking at tax relief, the French Government give tax relief on game development and both the Canadian and South Korean governments give support so it’s not a particularly ‘out there’ suggestion.

Going back to the roll of these games courses though, we obviously need people with the appropriate skills so, that’s one element of helping to grow a games industry we also need people with the business skills and we need the seed and enterprise capital so while a course will provide one element – provided its content is appropriate and they keep up to date with what’s happening in the industry –there are the other elements, the other players have to provide. I would think that more could be done in regards to public agencies to support the development of indigenous companies in this space.

Is that help from public agencies happening at all in your opinion?

The multinationals coming in here seem to be attracted by various things that are here and the numbers that are coming in would suggest that the IDA is marketing the country well in that respect. We have Activision for instance, so that shows some work is being done to get the right people here.

For the indigenous start ups though, I still think that we should be looking at what the challenges are for these companies in terms of establishment, in terms of publishing, in terms of distribution because this is a global market space. They’re not developing these products for the Irish market per se. So, potentially these companies can be the high value added, or whatever the latest buzz word is, ‘high potential international start ups’ or whatever. Anyway they’re intentionally focused, they’re service industries and it can be an application or it can be a game distributed over the web. We have to see what are the challenges for these companies and see where we can help them to generate jobs.

It’s not just games, it’s other areas of digital media as well but you do find that it’s difficult to get the seed capital to get particularly bigger projects off the ground.

The Government seems to have a steering group for everything these days but if you were to sit on one that was developing the games industry what would be the first things on your agenda?

I would probably have some sort of seed funding similar to what the Irish Film Board provides to film and animation so that developers can get to a stage where they can have a product that they can pitch to the international market. I think for original IP projects we need to have some supports in place so that companies can get to stage where they can pitch it to international publishers certainly.

Then there’s obviously companies who should be pitching for service work which is not original IP work. There’s different things that can be done to help the industry and also to get students who are coming out as graduates to gain some experience and get some projects into their portfolio so that can start building things to pitch internationally.

I think for graduates who want to create games for the console space, not casual games, but TripleA type games, you’ll have to go abroad to the UK or Canada increasingly. However, it’s no bad thing if we can get them back when they have experience and they can set up teams and bring that back with them it’s something we need to keep an eye on I think.

With only a few, snow interrupted, weeks to prepare for their appearance in front of the camera, it didn’t come as a huge surprise to them that they didn’t get investment for their wedding services site and its ‘Ultimate Job’ idea.

The ultimate job has gained newspaper coverage in China, Croatia, Brazil, USA, Australia, UK and Korea in the last week.

However, they are now fully up and running as a destination wedding and honeymoon service, and indeed only a day after their appearance on the Den was aired they announced that they had gained the required investment for their idea from First Ireland, one of Ireland’s largest Insurance and financial service providers.

The major stumbling block with the Dragons had been that, in order to promote the site, they would have to fund a competition to win the ‘Ultimate Job in Ireland’, which Runawaybrideandgroom.com is offering in conjunction with The Irish Times. The ‘job’ involves six months of travel, researching and writing about the most romantic wedding and honeymoon venues around the world – with your partner in tow. Meleady and Stassin have started a worldwide search to fill the position and have seen candidates flood in since.

We chatted to Meleady about the ‘big idea’ and how finding themselves on the show forced her and her business partner into action.

Komplett: So , when did you get the idea to go on to Dragon’s Den in the first place?

Rosemarie Meleady: I was sitting watching the repeat of last year’s shows on 29 November and at the end of it they said they were looking for people for the next series and I just had the laptop in front of me, I went in and saw the application closing date was 30 November. We had been sort of playing with the idea of Runaway Bride and Groom for about the past year thinking ‘oh we must get around to it and we must get it up and going’. So I just sort of said to myself feck it, filled in the details and then sent it off.

Then they came back to me two days later and said ‘okay can you send over your figures, your projections and your business plan if you have one’ and I said ‘oh yes of course we do’ and it was sort of great in a way that it made us sit down and put things down on paper and push forward with it. It gave us a deadline I suppose, we had to get everything in within a short space of time. I had a meeting with the production company and we got accepted to be on the show. That was around 19 December and it was being filmed on 6 January so I spent all of Christmas – well I took Christmas Day off – from morning ’til night prepping stuff and getting it ready.

So you weren’t up and running when you applied?

We’d got a designer to start designing the site, we had the idea for the Ultimate Job there and we’d got The Irish Times involved, they were very excited about it and said they wanted to go ahead with articles in their travel supplement. So we firmed that up before we went on Dragon’s Den.

Runaway Bride and Groom has investment secured before they faced the Dragons, says Rosemarie Meleady.

So you spent Christmas working on the idea and then like everyone else at the start of this year the snow affected your preparation.

Yep, I was rushing around all Christmas and then it started to snow so myself and Zara didn’t have time to rehearse, we couldn’t meet up. We eventually got together on New Year’s Day to rehearse and we were rubbish, we didn’t know what we were talking about. We got a business person that we know in and our husbands and they were looking at us saying ‘you’re not going on telly are you’. And we were in five days’ time. But we literally couldn’t get together, we made arrangements three or four times but with the snow and ice it stopped it as we live in different counties.

Then the day before the filming it started pelting snow down in Wexford (where I live) and the police were warning not to travel unless it was completely necessary. I had to get in the car and head to Dublin for the night but it took me something like six hours to get there. The next day we took off and went up to Taylors Three Rock studio in Rathfarnham (where Dragons Den is filmed). I’d called the production company beforehand asking if this was still going ahead, they said it was but as soon as we reached Rathfarnham it was like ‘7up on Ice’ there and the car was going all over the shop and then they rang and said ‘listen we’re thinking of canceling and leaving it until tomorrow’. I think it was my screams down the phone that made them decide not to cancel.

But you finally made it anyway and got to do the pitch, tell us about finally facing the Dragons themselves?

It was an hour and a half I think we were talking to them but to begin with I don’t usually wear high heels but I was this time and my legs went numb. I think they lowered the screams on the sound mix as I was walking up the stairs. But anyway, it was a bit surreal as you walk up the stairs and you’re there, feeling like you’re in a TV screen.

Niall O'Farrell (nearest to camera), felt the 'Runaway' idea didn't promote weddings in Ireland, Meleady and co disagree.

In the end they didn’t go for it though, but have you had much reaction to the appearance since?

We’ve had a good lot of traffic but I’m not sure how much of that is Dragons Den and how much of that is our link with The Irish Times, plus since we filmed Dragons Den we launched the Ultimate Job properly and have had worldwide media follow us and it’s hard to gauge where they’re coming from. We’ve been on radio stations and everything else across the world. We‘ve had a few people say they saw us on TV and asking about weddings in Ireland. Niall (O’Farrell, one of the Irish Dragons) sort of slated me for doing weddings abroad in the show but my main business is weddings in Ireland so all the people who’ve actually applied to us are interested in weddings in Ireland.

You have got the investment you needed since the appearance on Dragons Den though haven’t you?

That’s right, after Dragons Den, we had somebody (First Ireland ) interested in it, we knew they were interested already and so they said if you don’t get investment from the Dragons, we’ll invest in you’. So we said ‘right, fair enough’; so, I suppose if you watch us in the show that’s why we weren’t overly desperate, we knew we had the money in the bank anyway to go ahead. We knew it was a good idea.

No harm in asking.

Exactly! To be honest it was the publicity we were doing it for, but in saying that we didn’t really need that either as we’re all over the place as well between papers, news reports and everything else.

Happy couples can apply at Runawayrideandgroom.com.

How many people have applied for the Ultimate Job?

In four weeks, since we launched the website, because we launched on the same day as we launched the Ultimate Job we have had over 120,000 unique visitors to the website, we’ve had about 1,500 inquiring and applying for it but not all of them did videos, I put up some that didn’t send in videos just to show the diversity of countries that are applying for it though. So, we’ve had masses of interest from Brazil, Croatia, Macedonia, Korea and China amongst other places.

And who would be the ideal candidate?

We really need someone with a bit of a flair for writing obviously and someone who can speak fluent English. It doesn’t necessarily have to be an Irish couple but I suppose we’ll have ten finalists and we’ve been looking at them and it’s quite hard to choose. We’ve had some great ones, including a really strong one from Brazil earlier today.

How will you get a shortlist together?

First we’ll shortlist a maximum of around 50 then we’ll put that to a public vote for two weeks and it will be up to them to get people on to the website to vote for them in their country or region so they’ll have to run their own little PR campaign themselves I suppose. We’ll choose nine of the finalists but the one with the highest public vote will be the tenth finalist and if they’re from Brazil or wherever we’ll have to bring them over.

We’re hoping Tourism Ireland will come on board as well and give us some support. They’ve sent out press releases to their people around the country but we’re hoping that they grab the opportunity and see it for what it is but we’ll wait and see. As for choosing someone, we’ll have a panel of judges, one is the editor of The Irish Times travel section, and then there’ll be ourselves as we’ll have to work with the person and there’s talk of celebrities getting involved as well. We’ll see who comes up with the goods I suppose.

The final is on 2 May, that’s the grand finale and then on 16 May they’ll be on a flight to Tanzania.

Give us a little more detail about the job itself.

It’s six months, broken up into six different trips… we’ll be bringing them back to Ireland at the end of each three or four week period just to debrief and catch up and we’ll be announcing where they’ll be going for their next trip.

We’re just telling them what the first trip is just to give them a flavor of it but because the interest has gone up we want to hold back on announcing all locations. The first trip is to Zanzibar, Kenya and Maritius though.

From a business point of view what’s the overall target for yourselves?

We want to be seen as the best place to book your honeymoon and you destination wedding and also to get the word out about Ireland as a wedding destination around the world and that’s what’s happened already thanks to the press we’ve gotten abroad so it’s great. It’s basically to promote Ireland as a wedding location and also so that people in Ireland, when they’re considering their honeymoon Runaway Bride and Groom is the first place they go.

Before you know it you could be regretting the fateful moment when you fell victim to the new wave of DIY; getting mildly frustrated with the performance of your machine, opening up the PC case and thinking ‘you know what, I could upgrade myself…’

The Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 is pretty robust for under €100, suiting most casual users’ needs.

For high end users (and let’s face it a lot of Komplett customers tend to fit into this particular group) there is, without doubt, a difference that justifies the spend but do casual gamers or just Regular Joes really need some of the features that come in medium-price boards upwards?

Our RMA team downstairs at Komplett – while admitting that they certainly don’t fit into the ‘normal user’ bracket – commented that when it comes to comparing a €93 mobo to a €345 one: “to the normal, or even gaming user there is no difference performance wise”. With this in mind, we thought we’d give a rundown of what to look out for if you’re thinking of getting a motherboard and trying to make it suit your needs.

We decided to take a look at three of the models you can pick up with us to see where the differences are, where the rise in outlay is justified and what exactly you should be looking out for should you choose to buy a new mobo with Komplett, on another site, down the local electronics shop or even from some dodgy tech-centric Del Boy type (not that we’d recommend any of the last three).

Our three choices are the:

Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2, P55 (€93.62)

First up we had a look at this little fella, it’s got an Intel P55 Express chipset, is compatible with Intel Core i7/Core i5 processors and has an LGA 1156 CPU socket. The full specs are here but seeing as this is for beginners we won’t go too deep into the dirty details.

Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD5, P55 (€189)

A step up from the previous model, again this has a LGA1156 socket, an Intel P55 Express chipset, and in fact it’s pretty similar to its cheaper sibling all round. With most ‘deluxe’ models of the same motherboard, the only difference is usually BIOS (basic input/output system which is boot firmware, designed to be the first code run by your notebook, PC et cetera once it’s turned on), along with bundled software and maybe a few extra USB ports or Sata ports. “It’s still the same performance, just a few more features,” says one trusted Komplett head.

The ‘Big Bang’ from MSI.

MSI Big Bang-Fuzion, P55 (€345)

The daddy of the three on offer, as one review puts it, “There’s certainly enough adapters and add in bits to suit everyone’s needs, not to mention more driver discs and manuals than you can shake a stick at. You’ll need them too, to use the Big Bang-Fuzion properly.”

All three have 64-bit processors compatibility and Intel P55 Express chipsets; all are compatible with the core i5 and i7, though the MSI also has core i3 capability; memory wise, all support DDR3 SDRAM and there’s more out there that marks them as similar models. So what exactly is different?

Well to begin with, there’s form factor, referring to the size and shape of the board. True enough if you are buying in a board you have to make sure that it will fit the machine you’re putting it into but be aware that most machines have very similar requirements.

If the corner of your living room looks like this, chances are you’ll be going for something above the €93 option.

In this respect the fact that the cheapest model of our three – the Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 – is a microATX as opposed to the longer ATX form factor of the MSI Big Bang-Fuzion and mid-range Gigabyte models, may concern some buyers wondering if this means they’re getting something that will be too small for the size of their machine.

However, ATX derivatives are based on the same CPU section, so smaller boards are able to fit into larger cases if desired. Does the form factor size make a difference in the performance anyway though? Well, not really, if it’s the same chipset – and it is across all three – it’s more or less the same performance.

Do note though that some reviewers only recommend microATX for home theatre systems and not general usage PCs so opinion is somewhat divided. For someone who plans on meddling with the mobo, the microATX as well is most likely too small a case to work on as there’ll be difficulty in swapping components in tight spaces.

Both Ryan and Shelton mentioned that the “hardcore over-clocker” will see the benefits of the ATX form factor but if you’re this far into this piece and haven’t been put off by the baby steps then we’re pretty certain you’re not that hardened overclocking fan the lads are speaking of.

Your gaming expectations may rule which mobo you end up choosing.

Where else then in the list of capabilities does the more expensive model come out with something new? Well the MSI mobo has high speed Sata 3 and USB 3.0 capabilities, however there isn’t actually much technology out there at the minute to take advantage of these features so whether or not this is particularly needed is doubtful for the casual user just looking to upgrade.

As Ryan said, “If you’re running a machine with two high-end graphics cards then that’s when you will you notice the difference, there are other examples but again nothing that will apply to the day to day user.”

And this really is the key point, if you are a basic user, most of the expensive bells and whistles on costly motherboards are just wasted money, if you however have a bit of expertise and a passion for high-end gaming then spending the extra cash will be logical.

Beginners then beware of too much marketing bumf and also know exactly what you want from your machine before you buy. For our money, if you’re thinking of buying a mobo, go for the Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 if you’re a casual user tinkering around with the machine but with no great gaming aims.

Otherwise, head towards the P55A-UD5 if you’re a little more ambitious gaming wise or, in the case of home workers for instance, have high performance expectations.

Then of course for the high end folk who know what they want, MSI should get your money. Open that PC case then and choose where it is exactly along that line-up you fit.

"The last thing they want is a couple of chancers going up there."

With the latest series running on RTE we thought it might be good to catch up on some of the more interesting Irish folk who’ve been on with the Dragon’s and either got investment, flopped horribly or at the very least got close to a buy in from the venture capitalists.

The latter category certainly fits Niall Harbison who two years ago went on the BBC version of the programme to plug his site iFoods.tv with business partner Sean Fee. The pair’s site, where short, snappy video tutorials show people how to cook a  series of meals (as well as offering a wealth of foodie tips), nearly got investment but the Dragons eventually pulled out due to the domain name sounding a bit too much like an industry competitor.

The publicity though – along with a name change for the site to LookAndTaste.com – has seen other investors com on board, and in addition Harbison is now also running a PR company called Simply Zesty, specialising in “online PR and social media” with another business partner, Lauren Fisher.

We chatted to the former chef about condensing a negotiation that last for hours down to seven or eight minutes of TV, his stated interest in social media development and how the appearance on Dragons Den has changed his life.

KomplettBlog: Thanks for talking to us Niall, how did the appearance on Dragons Den come about?

NH: Well we’d no marketing budget and we just wanted to get the word out about it in anyway possible without spending much money because we didn’t have it. We just looked at it and said here’s an opportunity to get the idea out to five or six million English people and get ourselves exposed to that kind of audience. That’s the main reason we did it and applied for it online.

You came very close but in the end it was the fact there was a site called iFood.tv that put them off, it’s bizarre in way that people remember you when it’s usually only complete disasters or products that get an investment that stick in people’s minds.

True enough, off the back of that we changed the name obviously and really you couldn’t have a better lift off for changing the domain name that what happened to us. We were very lucky, I don’t think we realised how powerful it would be and it only dawned on us afterwards. As far as people remembering us, I think it sort of that people liked the whole ‘so close yet so far’ thing.

Niall Harbison spent around three hours with this lot, the resulting seven minute clip changed his life.

How tough of a process is it before you go on? Do the producers go through the business to see you’re worthy of a place on the show?

You are vetted yeah, you nearly sort of do a due diligence before you go on, and they really look at you quite a lot to make sure that you are who you say you are. The last thing they want is a couple of chancers going up there.

What we see on TV is very different from the actual negotiations right?

Yes definitely, I think we were in there nearly three hours ourselves, it was a huge amount of back and forth with lots of talking and it was a long, long afternoon. Then it’s edited down to maybe seven eight minutes.

You must’ve been a little concerned as to which six or seven minutes they’d keep out of three hours when you sat down to watch the show then?

I was kinda nervous because I didn’t know what to expect yes; they could edit it anyway and there’s a lot that went on that wasn’t in there. But I think it was very favourable editing, I won’t do any complaining on that front at all. We were lucky that we got a tonne of good press on the back of it but if you’re caught out looking like an idiot it could be the exact opposite and I don’t know what state the business would be in had anything bad happened to us after getting torn to shreds. It is nerve wrecking and you really would want to do your homework.

LookAndTaste is doing quite well these days though, and besides for that you’re also you’re also involved in Simply Zesty online PR so you’ve been busy since.

Yeah, I split my time between the two companies, I run both of them and there’s a good few of us all together. There are six in Simply Zesty, four of us in LookAndTaste.com so I split my time between the two of them basically.

So it was iFoods/LookAndTaste that first got interested in utilising social media for PR?

Yeah that’s when I first saw the benefits of it social media, as I mentioned before, I mean before we went on Dragons Den we didn’t have a marketing budget or much cash at all so we had to use whatever was at our disposal. The first idea we had was to get onto the homepage of Digg and we got passed around online and got a couple of hundred thousand views.

That was a real eye opener around three years ago and from then on I guess it just felt like the whole of Ireland was asleep in terms of social media up until maybe a year ago, that’s when it really started to get a lot bigger. I mean it’s gone crazy in the last three or four months but a year ago is when most clued in people started getting it

Tell us about Simply Zesty then.

We only started in May of last year, we saw a gap in the Irish market – the service was out there yeah, a lot of PR companies or SEO companies were adding it on as a service. But there wasn’t a dedicated agency out there to look after a client’s social media needs which there clearly is a need for.

There are a good few people out there – consultants etc – who claim to be social media experts as well though so what makes Simply Zesty different?

Yes I take your point that any Tom, Dick or Harry with a Facebook account can claim to be a social media expert. I was just talking to somebody about that the other day though. It’s the same in any industry. It’s same with guys building websites some are excellent and some are chancing their arm.

We are honest about what it takes to make social media work for you though, the amount of hours that have to be put in. I mean I was in a meeting this morning and we we’re pitching towards this company and they wanted the a ‘quick, bang, loads of followers’ approach and it’s a really tough job educating people that it’s a long, slow build up and you’re not going to come in over 24 hours and make a dent very easily.

It’s scary for brands to jump into this for sure, but we’ve clients like Nokia, Vodafone and the Body Shop who have realised the benefits to opening themselves up.  We find that doing simple things, the odd baby step and then they can see the benefits. People are going to be slagging off brands so they might as well be in there defending themselves and engaging than letting people bitching about them.

Sounds like you’re online all day?

It’s very, very tough in way, your life nearly becomes living online. I mean me and Lauren who runs Simply Zesty with me are in front of the computer for nearly 18 hours a piece every day and it’s like a little bubble online there. You do struggle to get back into the real world and I’d be worried about it long term the amount of time spent on there!

So are you a few tweets away from heading back to your old job as a chef?

No I think those days are gone I still enjoy it but I’m a bit too busy at the moment.