Joe Lennon

I bought an iPhone (unlocked UK model from eBay) back in April and unlike any other phone I’ve ever owned, I can honestly say that the novelty has yet to wear off. This is in no small part due to some of the brilliant applications available from Apple’s App Store. Here are my ten favourite iPhone apps:

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Home Screen

Sudoku

If I had to pick a favourite app, I would probably say the paid version of Sudoku from Mighty Good Games. With 400 different puzzles spread over 4 different levels, there’s enough Sudoku in this game to keep you going for a long time. My girlfriend complains about how long I take in the bathroom sometimes, and it’s usually because I’m playing this game! So far I’ve gotten through all the easy puzzles (with my record time at 1 minute and 55 seconds) and 19 of the Medium puzzles (my Medium record time is 5 minutes 17 seconds). I imagine I’ll be playing this one until my iPhone dies! I must admit I’m slow to upgrade my iPhone’s firmware as I don’t want to lose my Sudoku records!

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Sudoku

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Sudoku

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Sudoku

TwitterFon

An essential app for any twitterer, TwitterFon has improved with each release and in my opinion is the best Twitter client for the iPhone. This app provides every feature I want from my mobile twitter client.

Top 10 iPhone Apps: TwitterFon

Top 10 iPhone Apps: TwitterFon

Top 10 iPhone Apps: TwitterFon

Remote

If you use iTunes to manage your music, TV shows and movies, and especially if you have an Apple TV, the Apple Remote iPhone app is absolutely essential. I have a Mac Mini and Apple TV in my house and I control both using this brilliant app. My home computer setup is centered around one monitor, keyboard and mouse that I switch between my Mac Mini and my Windows work laptop using a Belkin KVM switch. The great thing about the Remote app is that I can find and play the music on my Mac Mini while I’m working on my laptop.

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Remote

Trace

Other than Sudoku, Trace is my favourite iPhone game. The graphics are very simple but it’s such an addictive and playable game that will provide hours of fun. One night I stayed up until 3am to finish this game off! If you haven’t got this on your phone, I’d advise you get it!

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Trace

Pool

Before I made Sudoku my bathroom game of choice, Pool was the king. I’ve been playing this game since the Installer.app days and while newer versions have brought some new features and improvements, I feel it has lost some of its original charm. Still a great game though! Some prefer the graphics intensive Virtual Pool and others, but the raw simplicity and playability makes this one the winner for me.

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Pool

Level

I bought a house last May and since then I’ve found myself needing to put up pictures, paintings, mirrors and so on up on my walls. Now I’m no DIY man so my toolbox doesn’t contain much other than the obligatory hammer and screwdrivers. One thing I don’t own is a spirit level. Why would I when I have this excellent little iPhone app?

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Level

iSSH

I sometimes find myself nattering on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and at the time of writing I have yet to find a good IRC app for the iPhone. My favourite client is irssi and I use the iSSH app to connect to my home Mac Mini and use irssi from there. It’s also great for checking that my VPS is up and running OK when I’m having issues there.

Top 10 iPhone Apps: iSSH

Top 10 iPhone Apps: iSSH

Clowdy

I’m not a photographer by any means and although I have a Flickr Pro account, I rarely find myself using it. The thing I like about Clowdy is the raw simplicity of it. You take a picture with your iPhone and it appears on the web instantly. You can then access your photos on your computer via the Clowdy website or via an RSS feed.

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Clowdy

Shazam

This neat little app is a definite crowdpleaser at parties – especially when some music comes on the telly and everyone is trying to name the artist. Open Shazam, let it listen to the track and in less than twenty seconds, you’ll have the answer. It has a very high accuracy rate and is great for those songs on adverts that you want to get hold of.

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Shazam

Top 10 iPhone Apps: Shazam

LinkedIn

Last but not least for me is the LinkedIn app. A stunning example of how iPhone apps should be made, LinkedIn provides you with on demand access to your connections wherever you are in the world. I love the feature that allows you to add any of your connections as a contact on your phone, with LinkedIn prepopulating the photo and email address fields when possible.

Top 10 iPhone Apps: LinkedIn

As is usual with posts like these, people are bound to agree/disagree with me on the above apps, and I’m sure you all have your own favourites. Feel free to voice your opinion and leave a comment with your own favourites.

Today, I upgraded my blog to WordPress 2.7, and while most of the upgrade went smoothly, I did notice that my Twitter plugin wasn’t showing new tweets anymore. I initially thought maybe it was a caching issue, or I had run out of API calls or something, but I returned hours later to find it in the same state. I tweaked with the function call to see if changing it would refresh the cache but nothing I tried made it work. I looked for a solution on the official plugin website and on WordPress.org, but none was available, so I decided to try and fix it myself. The following will fix the bug, but it involves turning off the MagPie cache used by the fetch_rss function. I don’t really know what this means, but the cache is likely there for a reason and turning it off is probably not ideal, or recommended. However, this did get my new tweets appearing again, so it will have to do until an official fix is released. If you want to do the same, here is how I did it:

1. Log in to your WordPress Administration Interface (usually http://www.yoursite.com/wp-admin)
2. On the navigation bar on the left hand side of the page, click on the Arrow next to Plugins. You should see an expanded submenu.
3. From this submenu, click on “Editor” to bring up the Plugin Editor
4. You should now see a large text editor with the code for the first of your plugins showing in it (Akismet in my case). On the right hand side should be a list of plugins. Find “Twitter for WordPress” in this list and click on the link.
5. You should now be able to edit “twitter.php” in the text editor. Scroll down just below the copyright notice until you find the line:  define('MAGPIE_CACHE_AGE', 120);
6. Add a new line under this and paste the following: define('MAGPIE_CACHE_ON', false);
7. Click the “Update” button at the bottom of the page to update the plugin file. That’s it, your twitter plugin should now be showing new tweets once again.

Note: your plugin file will need to be writable in order to perform the above procedure. If it’s not, either make it writable using an FTP client or SSH, or else simply edit the file manually by downloading it with FTP or via SSH. As I said above, this is almost definitely not the best solution to this problem, but one that should make do until an official fix is released by the plugin author.

To follow up on yesterday’s post on the different Irish companies that provide shared web hosting, I decided to put together a similar piece on Irish companies that offer domain name registration services. I have listed the companies in alphabetical order, and the minimum criteria for listing is that the company provides .ie domain name registration.

Unless otherwise specified, prices are per year and include VAT @ 21.5%. Please note that all .co.uk prices are for 2 years, as this is the only registration period allowed for these domain names.

If your company is not listed here and you believe it should be, please leave a comment and I’ll add it to the list.

AlwaysAmber

Website URL: http://www.alwaysamber.ie/
Sales Email: office@alwaysamber.com
Sales Phone (Ireland): 066 916 6091

.ie – €24.99 per year
.co.uk – €13.98 every two years
.com/.net/.org/.info – €7.49 per year

Blacknight Solutions

Website URL: http://www.blacknight.com/
Sales Email: sales@blacknight.ie
Sales Phone (Ireland): 1850 929 929
Sales Phone (UK): 0844 484 9361

.ie – €30.36 per year
.co.uk – €9.72 every two years
.com/.net/.org/.info – €7.23 per year

BT Ireland

Website URL: http://www.btireland.ie/
Sales Phone (Ireland): 1800 924 929

.ie/.co.uk/.com/.net/.org - €60.75 per year

Darklite-SCE

Website URL: http://www.darklite.ie/
Sales Phone (Ireland): 021 436 9317

.ie – €54.68 per year
.co.uk – €30.38 every two years
.com/.net/.org/.info – €30.38 per year

Digiweb

Website URL: http://hosting.digiweb.ie/
Sales Email: hosting@digiweb.ie
Sales Phone (Ireland): 1800 941 000
Sales Phone (UK): 0800 196 6436

.ie – €36.44 per year
.co.uk – €12.14 every two years
.com/.net/.org/.info – €8.49 per year

Eircom

Website URL: http://business.eircom.net/
Sales Email: Business.solutions@eircom.net
Sales Phone (Ireland): 1800 242 508

.ie – €81.41 per year
.co.uk – €24.30 every two years
.com/.net/.org/.info – €12.15 per year

IrishDomains.com

Website URL: http://www.irishdomains.com/
Sales Email: sales@irishdomains.com
Sales Phone (Ireland): 1800 366 246

.ie – €83.84 per year
.co.uk – €11.54 every two years
.com/.net/.org/.info – €11.54 per year

LetsHost.ie

Website URL: http://www.letshost.ie
Sales Email: sales@letshost.ie
Sales Phone (Ireland): 1890 719 461

.ie – €24.29 per year
.co.uk – €12.14 every two years
.com/.net/.org/.info – €7.28 per year

MyHost.ie

Website URL: http://www.myhost.ie/
Sales Email: sales@myhost.ie
Sales Phone (Ireland): 061 749 922

.ie – €36.39 per year
.co.uk – €24.28 every two years
.com/.net/.org/.info – €12.14 per year

Register365

Website URL: http://www.register365.com
Sales Email: sales@register365.com
Sales Phone (Ireland): 1890 944 500
Sales Phone (UK): +44 1905 342 333

.ie – €30.31 per year
.co.uk – €16.89 every two years
.com/.net/.org/.info – €9.66 per year

Register.ie

Website URL: http://www.register.ie
Sales Email: sales@novara.ie
Sales Phone (Ireland): 1850 668 272

.ie – €85.04 per year
.co.uk – €24.28 every two years
.com/.net/.org/.info – €18.21 per year

SpiralHosting.com

Website URL: http://www.spiralhosting.com/
Sales Email: sales@spiralhosting.com
Sales Phone (Ireland): 01 657 1821
Sales Phone (UK): 028 9002 5008

.ie – €48.60 per year
.co.uk – €17.01 every two years
.com/.net/.org – €10.02 per year
.info – €8.51 per year

WebHost.ie

Website URL: http://www.webhost.ie/
Sales Email: sales@webhost.ie
Sales Phone (Ireland): 01 494 8034

.ie – €35.24 per year
.co.uk – €24.30 every two years
.com/.net/.org/.info – €10.94 per year

Web World

Website URL: http://www.webworld.ie/
Sales Email: sales@webworld.ie
Sales Phone (Ireland): 01 495 1112

.ie – €35.24 per year
.co.uk – €21.87 every two years
.com/.net/.org/.info – €9.72 per year

On a previous iteration of my blog I wrote an article on the different Irish companies that offer shared web hosting services. Many people have asked since about this article and I said I would put it back up once I got my blog sorted out. As I have decided not to port over my previous blog posts, I decided to create a new version of this guide.

The services offered and prices listed in this article were taken directly from each service provider’s website on Wednesday, 10th December 2008 at 8:51pm. The providers are listed in alphabetical order. All prices include VAT @ 21.5% unless otherwise stated. I have listed prices per month where a monthly price was available. In cases where a monthly price was not available, I have quoted prices per year.

If you want your company to be added to this list, or if any of the information I have listed below is incorrect, please leave a comment on this post and I will update it.

Blacknight Solutions

Website URL: http://www.blacknight.com/
Sales Email: sales@blacknight.ie
Sales Phone (Ireland): 1850 929 929
Sales Phone (UK): 0844 484 9361

Blacknight offer three shared hosting packages. All of these packages offer a choice of Linux or Windows operating systems, and offer MySQL 4/5, PostgreSQL 7 and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 databases. Their Minimus package allows up to 30 databases, Medius allows 60 and Maximus allows 90. PHP support is included, and .NET 2.0/3.5 support is there on Windows packages.

Minimus (€6.01 per month) – 10gb disk space, 100gb/mo bandwidth, unlimited email accounts
Medius (€10.87 per month) - 20gb disk space, 200gb/mo bandwidth, unlimited email accounts
Maximus (€18.16 per month) - 30gb disk space, 300gb/mo bandwidth, unlimited email accounts

Darklite-SCE

Website URL: http://www.darklite.ie/
Sales Phone (Ireland): 021 436 9317

Darklite-SCE offer Linux and Windows web hosting. All of their plans come with MySQL databases included, and their Windows Business and Windows Enterprise include a Microsoft SQL Server database also. On their Linux platforms PHP and Perl is supported, and on their Windows packages is support for .NET 2.0.

Personal (€4.80 per month) – 200mb disk space, 3gb/mo bandwidth, 100 email accounts
Basic (€15.19 per month) – 500mb disk space, 10gb/mo bandwidth, 250 email accounts
Business (€30.38 per month) - 1gb disk space, 20gb/mo bandwidth, 500 email accounts
Enterprise (€42.53 per month) - 5gb disk space, 50gb/mo bandwidth, 1000 email accounts

Digiweb

Website URL: http://hosting.digiweb.ie/
Sales Email: hosting@digiweb.ie
Sales Phone (Ireland): 1800 941 000
Sales Phone (UK): 0800 196 6436

Digiweb offer four shared web hosting packages, with prices varying from €24.29 per year to €364.49 per year. With the exception of the Starter Hosting package, all of Digiweb’s hosting plans offer a choice of Windows or Linux operating systems, PHP and MySQL support on Linux, and ASP.NET and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 support on Windows. There is no option to pay monthly for the StarterHosting or AdvancedHosting packages.

Starter Hosting (€24.29 per year) – 10gb disk space, 30gb/mo bandwidth, 50 email accounts
Advanced Hosting (€48.59 per year) – 15gb disk space, 100gb/mo bandwidth, 250 email accounts
Business Hosting (€12.14 per month) - 20gb disk space, 150gb/mo bandwidth, 500 email accounts
Enterprise Hosting (€36.44 per month) - 30gb disk space, 250gb/mo bandwidth, unlimited email accounts

Host.ie

Website URL: http://www.host.ie/
Sales Email: sales@novara.ie
Sales Phone (Ireland): 1850 668 272

Host.ie (a division of Novara.ie) offers six different shared hosting plans. Three of these are Linux-based packages, and three are Windows-based packages. The Linux packages feature support for PHP and Perl, and in the case of the Business and Professional variants, also include 5 and 10 MySQL databases, respectively. Their Windows packages feature ASP.NET 2.0 support and Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database support is an optional extra on the Business and Professional variants (though MySQL databases are included with these packages, as per the Linux packages). If you choose to pay for a Host.ie package on a monthly basis, a setup fee will apply. At the time of writing, there appeared to be no option to pay monthly for Linux packages listed on their website.

Linux Basic (€121.49 per year) – 150mb disk space, 3gb/mo bandwidth, 150 email accounts
Linux Business (€242.99 per year) – 300mb disk space, 5gb/mo bandwidth, 300 email accounts
Linux Professional (€364.49 per year) - 500mb disk space, 8gb/mo bandwidth, 500 email accounts
Windows Basic (€12.14 per month) - 150mb disk space, 3gb/mo bandwidth, 150 email accounts
Windows Business (€24.29 per month) - 300mb disk space, 5gb/mo bandwidth, 300 email accounts
Windows Professional (€36.45 per month) - 500mb disk space, 8gb/mo bandwidth, 500 email accounts

HostIreland

Website URL: http://stresa.hostireland.com/
Sales Email: sales@hostireland.com
Sales Phone (Ireland): 1800 925 262

HostIreland have two hosting packages on offer – the Clubman and the Business Premier. HostIreland’s plans run on Linux servers and feature PHP and Perl support with unlimited MySQL databases included in both hosting packages. HostIreland’s website only shows prices per year.

Clubman Plan (€115.36 per year) – 1gb disk space, Bandwidth not specified, 100 email accounts
Business Premium Plan (€182.19 per year) – 1gb disk space, unlimited bandwidth, 100 email accounts

IEInternet.com

Website URL: http://www.ieinternet.com/
Sales Email: sales@ieinternet.com
Sales Phone (Ireland): 01 280 5000

IEInternet.com have four hosting plans available, three of which run on Linux servers along with a single Windows-based option. IEInternet do not quote any prices per month on their website. PHP and Perl are supported on all three of their Linux plans, and MySQL databases are included with their Business and Application plans. The Windows plan includes support for ASP and support for Microsoft SQL Server databases. There are no SQL Server databases included with the plan, however – these are available as an optional extra.

SOHO (€138.51 per year) – 20mb disk space, 1gb/mo bandwidth, 1 email account
Business (€291.60 per year) – 100mb disk space, 2gb/mo bandwidth, 20 email accounts
Windows (€291.60 per year) - 50mb disk space, 2gb/mo bandwidth, 1 email account
Application (€554.04 per year) - 250mb disk space, 4gb/mo bandwidth, 100 email accounts

IrishDomains.com

Website URL: http://www.irishdomains.com/
Sales Email: sales@irishdomains.com
Sales Phone (Ireland): 1800 366 246

IrishDomains.com offer four Linux-based shared hosting packages. All of their packages offer PHP and Perl support. Their Business 10, Advanced 15 and Developer 25 packages all come with unlimited MySQL databases. MySQL is an optional extra on the Starter 5 package. At the time of writing, there did not appear to be an option to pay on a monthly basis.

Linux Starter 5 (€181.04 per year) – 1gb disk space, 10gb/mo bandwidth, 50 email accounts
Linux Business 10 (€241.79 per year) – 2.5gb disk space, 15gb/mo bandwidth, 100 email accounts
Linux Advanced 15 (€363.29 per year) - 5gb disk space, 20gb/mo bandwidth, 150 email accounts
Linux Developer 25 (€606.29 per year) - 10gb disk space, 25gb/mo bandwidth, 250 email accounts

LetsHost.ie

Website URL: http://www.letshost.ie
Sales Email: sales@letshost.ie
Sales Phone (Ireland): 1890 719 461

LetsHost.ie offer one main shared hosting packages, the Lets Host “Complete” Plan. This hosting plan is offered on a Linux platform and includes PHP support, SSH access and unlimited MySQL databases.

Lets Host “Complete” Plan (€9.60 per month) – 12gb disk space, 100gb/mo bandwidth, unlimited email accounts

MyHost.ie

Website URL: http://www.myhost.ie/
Sales Email: sales@myhost.ie
Sales Phone (Ireland): 061 749 922

MyHost.ie offer four shared web hosting packages, two Personal oriented plans and two Business oriented plans. All of MyHost.ie’s plans are available on either a Windows or Linux platform. Depending on your OS choice, standard features include PHP and Perl support (Linux) and ASP.NET support (Windows). All packages comes with MySQL databases, and the Windows Personal Pro, Business Basic and Business Pro plans all come with Microsoft SQL Server databases included. The Personal Mini plan does not have an option to pay monthly.

Personal Mini (€60.69 per year) – 500mb disk space, 5gb/mo bandwidth, 25 email accounts
Personal Pro (€17.62 per month) – 3gb disk space, 50gb/mo bandwidth, 300 email accounts
Business Basic (€22.48 per month) - 5gb disk space, 75gb/mo bandwidth, 150 email accounts
Business Pro (€36.45 per month) - 10gb disk space, 100gb/mo bandwidth, 300 email accounts

Register365

Website URL: http://www.register365.com/
Sales Email: sales@register365.com
Sales Phone (Ireland): 1890 944 500
Sales Phone (UK): +44 1905 342 333

Register365 offer four shared web hosting packages. These are split into two Windows hosting packages and two Unix hosting packages. Their Windows packages feature unlimited MySQL, PostgreSQL and Microsoft SQL Server databases, and include support for ASP.NET 2.0 and PHP on an IIS6 web server. Their Unix packages offer unlimited MySQL and PostgreSQL databases with support for PHP and Perl on an Apache web server. Their Enterprise packages include a dedicated IP address.

Windows Business (€4.80 per month) – 5gb disk space, 50gb/mo bandwidth, 250 email accounts
Unix Business (€4.80 per month) – 5gb disk space, 50gb/mo bandwidth, 250 email accounts
Windows Enterprise (€12.09 per month) - 10gb disk space, 100gb/mo bandwidth, 250 email accounts
Unix Enterprise (€12.09 per month) - 10gb disk space, 100gb/mo bandwidth, 250 email accounts

SpiralHosting.com

Website URL: http://www.spiralhosting.com/
Sales Email: sales@spiralhosting.com
Sales Phone (Ireland): 01 657 1821
Sales Phone (UK): 028 9002 5008

SprialHosting.com offer five shared web hosting packages, each with support for PHP, Perl and Ruby on Rails. Their packages include between 2 and 20 MySQL databases. Their Size XS plan does not have a monthly payment option.

Size XS (€30.00 per year) – 1gb disk space, 10gb/mo bandwidth, 125 email accounts
Size S (€8.00 per month) – 2gb disk space, 20gb/mo bandwidth, 250 email accounts
Size M (€19.95 per month) - 4gb disk space, 40gb/mo bandwidth, 500 email accounts
Size L (€29.95 per month) - 8gb disk space, 80gb/mo bandwidth, 1000 email accounts
Size XL (€39.95 per month) – 12gb disk space, 120gb/mo bandwidth, 2000 email accounts

WebHost.ie

Website URL: http://www.webhost.ie/
Sales Email: sales@webhost.ie
Sales Phone (Ireland): 01 494 8034

WebHost.ie offer shared web hosting packages on a Windows Server 2003 platform. All WebHost.ie’s packages feature a dedicated IP address, ASP.NET 3.5 support, PHP and Perl support, MySQL and Micorosoft SQL Server 2005 databases.

Budget Hosting (€10.81 per month) – 600mb disk space, 10gb/mo bandwidth, 300 email accounts
Basic Hosting (€18.10 per month) – 1.2gb disk space, 15gb/mo bandwidth, 400 email accounts
Business Hosting (€24.18 per month) - 1.8gb disk space, 20gb/mo bandwidth, 500 email accounts
Professional Hosting (€30.25 per month) - 2.5gb disk space, 25gb/mo bandwidth, unlimited email accounts

Web World

Website URL: http://www.webworld.ie/
Sales Email: sales@webworld.ie
Sales Phone (Ireland): 01 495 1112

Web World offer four shared hosting packages, including from 25 to 100 MySQL databases, PHP, Perl and ASP.NET support. Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database support is available as an optional extra. If you want to pay monthly for a Web World hosting package you will need to pay a €15 setup fee.

Value (€4.80 per month) – 25gb disk space, 25gb/mo bandwidth, 250 email accounts
Enterprise (€12.09 per month) – 50gb disk space, 50gb/mo bandwidth, 500 email accounts
Business (€18.16 per month) - 75gb disk space, 75gb/mo bandwidth, 750 email accounts
E-Commerce (€24.24 per month) - 100gb disk space, 100gb/mo bandwidth, unlimited email accounts

In November 2008, a tutorial I wrote titled “Implement a Facebook photo album using the Flex SDK” was published on IBM’s developerWorks website. The tutorial begins by introducing the Facebook platform and explaining how a Facebook application is created. It then moves on to the open source Flex SDK and the MXML markup language and ActionScript scripting language that are used to develop Flex applications. At this point, a simple Flex application is created to introduce the reader to the development and deployment of Flex applications. After this, the tutorial shows the user how to create a feature-rich photo slideshow (with transitions and controls) that uses the reader’s Facebook photos and is deployed to their Facebook profile.

The following is the description of the tutorial on the IBM developerWorks website itself:

Adobe® has released the free, open source Flex SDK framework to enable developers to create Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). The Flex framework provides you with a method of creating cross-browser, cross-platform Web applications that is quick and simple. Flex applications run in the Flash player, which is installed on the majority of Internet-connected computers, but Flex also provides you with an object-oriented user interface framework similar to Javaâ„¢ Swing. In this tutorial, develop a Facebook application in Adobe Flex that displays a slideshow of a user’s Facebook photo albums. The Facebook application will contain a profile box listing all of the user’s photo albums, each a link to a Flex slideshow of that album. The Flex application will use the Facebook REST API to fetch the photos of the selected Facebook album and dynamically generate the slideshow.

Read the tutorial at http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/wa-dw-wa-facebookflex.html