The idea behind is is that you can upload an image directly, or by a web address, add your comments, and FineTuna sends a link to it off to someone else by email for review….easy.  There’ s a screenshot of a quick one I did below when I was checking out the service (see the original here).

As a way of showing people design work as you go it’s a handy tool. I also installed the Firefox plugin which is really useful – it allows you to send screenshots from your browser into FineTuna for commenting; if I was going to use the service again, it would be because of this tie-in.

Having said that, I think there are a couple of areas that could be improved:

• Because the url to the image is public, I wouldn’t be comfortable sharing commercial design works-in-progress in a way that’s publicly accessible; I’ve seen a few other people mention too…so offering this as a paid service could be a good way to bring in some cash;
• I’m terrible at drawing using a mouse (a sometimes shaky hand). Some basic shapes, such as lines & arrows would make the marked-up image look a lot better than my shaky hand-drawn efforts;
• I saw mentioned on Twitter that a desktop app that ties in with the service would be useful. I’d definitely agree. An alternative service is Skitch, but because I don’t use a Mac, I can’t use Skitch…a FineTuna alternative I could use would be great!

Now, off you go and check out FineTuna.

The Tuesday Push

The Tuesday Push is a community-driven approach to promote innovative Irish tech companies & services. You can nominate your company or product (if it fits the guidelines) using this form linked on this page.

Have a look at some of the other Irish services that got a Push on this blog.

We’re helping emergency services save more lives by making better decisions. Decisions for Heroes is a collaborative rescue team management tool, that helps record and analyse rescue operations

When they say they’ve launched a web application “that saves lives”, it gets you thinking! It does look like they’ve got something that is useful, helpful & worthwhile. I haven’t played with the system itself, but based on the comprehensive system tour given on their site, it looks like a fantastic piece of work.

The service is the first product launched by Bytesurgery, a Dublin based digital media company, who’s founder Robin Blandford is a mountain rescue volunteer. Creating an application based on your own experience gives you a great insight into the needs of those you’re serving, and judging by the early uptakes of the service by rescue teams around the world, it seems to have worked well here.

I saw a very good 120 second pitch by Robin to a panel at Future of Web Apps in Dublin, where he said Decisions for Heroes “was like BaseCamp for Danger” (one of the panel was David Heinemeier Hansson, part of the company behind Basecamp). Based on how he described the market’s size and needs in that pitch, it looks like he’s got a great niche to target.

I particularly like that the application is targeted at a market outside the technology area – there aren’t many web applications that are so far removed from the office environment; it’s something that I think will start to happen more and more as the technologies & the SaaS approach to delivery continues to mature.

Generally when doing these Tuesday Pushes, I try to give some areas for improvement with the application or the interface design. As I haven’t played with the system itself, it’s difficult to do this. I will say that having looked at the screenshots, they’ve gone for a clean & simple design which will suit their users perfectly. It’s summed up in a line on their homepage that says “Nobody likes reading manuals, so we’ve made things really easy“; that’s the perfect way to approach how an application should look & function. Nice work Decisions for Heroes.

[Edit]

Forgot to mention – nice foresight by them too on buying the mis-spelling of their domain name decisionsforheros.com (which is what I linked to earlier on Twitter  ).

The Tuesday Push

The Tuesday Push is a community-driven approach to promote innovative Irish tech companies & services. You can nominate your company or product (if it fits the guidelines) using this form linked on this page.

You can see a listing of other Tuesday Pushes done on this blog.

…healthcare search engine. We gather the information you want about health clinics in the UK and Ireland, and further afield, and display it all comparably.

I’ve come across RevaHealth in the past when looking for a dentist in Galway. It is handy to have a listing of lots of them all in once place; the only problem with services like this, however, is that as not a  lot of Galway dentists seem to have signed up, it’s difficult to compare prices. The same is same of reviews (in Galway) which is a shame. I suppose this is a difficulty of building this type of service, you need to bring in users to get clinics involved, and visa versa. Having said that, there are reviews of services in some of the other cities I took a look at.

The foreign services sections on the site is really useful (and they have a handy information pack on Dental Tourism (pdf)). This is something that I’ve investigated before (before I heard of RevaHealth), and I found getting useful information, such as others’ experiences, very difficult. (I got a frosty reception from my dentist when I asked for advice on going elsewhere for cheaper services!).

The site itself is fairly well laid out. I found some issues with the results pages, for example, I found myself using the browser’s back button to get back to the search listing after viewing individual clinic details. I also think that a useful addition would be to make the Google Map on the search results page (in the tab “Dentists in Ireland Info”) clickable. At the moment, you can see the clinic name, but can’t get to the clinic’s details by clicking on it.

Although I’ve concentrated on dentists, RevaHealth provide listings for a wide range of health care clinics throughout the world; a full listing is on their homepage. Given the scope of the services being offered by RevaHealth, I think they’re a useful addition to niche search.

The Tuesday Push

The Tuesday Push is a community-driven approach to promote innovative Irish tech companies & services. You can nominate your company or product (if it fits the guidelines) using this form linked on this page.

I took a break from Tuesday Pushing activities for the last couple of pushes for a few reasons, but you can see a listing of other Tuesday Pushes done on this blog.

This time around, MyMunster.com is getting the Tuesday Push treatment.  MyMunster is a social network for Munster rugby fans; given all the success the team’s been having in recent years, I’m sure they’ve got a  lot to be talking about on it. Their pitch is:

On mymunster.com you can discuss matches, enter competitions, and check out our library of cool Munster rugby photos and videos

I know from speaking with Ant (one of the team running the site) that they’ve got a large and active community going. It looks like they’ve got a novel business model too, where users can buy credits to enter competitions – they also say that buying credits helps support rugby development in the province.

Not being from Munster, I haven’t played too much with the site in the past. It’s recently been redeveloped, and now allows users to interact using a model that’s similar to Twitter’s in some ways – you have followers & follow people; you can post messages publicly, and reply publicly or privately to people.  There are also message boards, and a space to hold video and photos.

There are parts of the site that I found a little difficult to use, and I think that users not familiar with the “Twitter” way of interacting might have some problems with it. The Discussion area too could do with some redesign work. I don’t think they make a great use of space, and they could also provide some more information on users which would help with the social side of interactions (e.g. how long people have been a member, how many posts they have).

There have been moves away from “niche” social networks and towards ones that offer everything, but which allow users to group around specific topics (that would be Facebook). But I do think that niches like this still have a place in the social-network-scape; sharing a common interest, and not just the idea of “friendships”, is a good motivator to get people to group together and interact.  Between that, and that I know from living in Cork for a number of years that Munster people aren’t short of opinions when it comes to Munster rugby, the community should be active for some time to come.

….and for those not from Munster…you can check out the competition whose community isn’t as active  , or take a look at the other Tuesday Pushes on this site.

So, this time around the Tuesday Push is….The Tuesday Push. The  idea started in July last year as a way of drawing attention to new products & services being developed by the Irish Tech community; it’s:

…a way for the small but growing tech community in Ireland to make some noise about ourselves by picking a good example of an Irish Tech Company and highlighting their product(s) every second Tuesday. This co-ordinated way of highlighting our abilities will hopefully get tech companies heard a bit more and also foster more community spirit as we help each other out by getting everyone greater attention.

Since it started, 10 companies have been promoted on blogs around the country (I’ve covered 9 of the 10). Those getting a push need to be offering a unique product or service, and should be taking part in the push themselves (…the idea is for a co-op mentality, rather than just taking advantage of some cheap marketing). For companies starting out offering something new, getting a bump in coverage, having people use and review their offerings, and getting lots of links gives a great way of promoting & improving their services.

So, if you’re an Irish Tech company that’s offering something new and have a blog, contributing to the promotional effort and putting your name forward for a Push of your own is worthwhile (just take a look at the feedback of some of those that have had a push). There’s also a new Tuesday Push site.

Related articles

• Huge Push for IGOpeople (web2ireland.org)

I first saw this being linked to on Twitter when it started out a while ago, and since then, Sxoop have gone into Twitter merchandising by adding a way to get your mosaic printed onto a t-shirt, coffee mug or bag, or having your Twitter profile information added straight onto a business card.

While the service isn’t pretty, it’s a nice & novel way of bringing together people’s growing use of twitter with life away from the computer.  This is the second app I’ve seen by Sxoop to do with Twitter – the first was responsible for putting lots of Santa hats on people’s Twitter profile pictures in the run-up to Christmas.

Watching the development of the service from the outside was also a nice look at how an innovation develops – I’m not sure that they had selling merchandise in mind when developing the application (but maybe I’m wrong).  Creating a simple application like this that ties in with inexpensive products and that will appeal to the millions of Twitter users was a great idea. Also, given the promotion that Twitter is receiving in the media, I’m sure user numbers will keep rising, which is good news for Sxoop and other companies offering services like this.

Staying with the Twitter theme, if you’re in Galway this Thursday, check out Galway’s Twestival; it’s on upstairs in Nimmos and is part of the global Twestival that’s being run for charity in over 175 cities.

[Update (12/2): I said above that the service isn't pretty.....well it is now, after some work by Sabrina Dent it's looking way better.]

I’m doing this based on the Irish web applications I’ve seen released over the last few weeks that I thought were both well designed, and were useful applications; not always an easy combination to have.

Qwitter

First up were two developed by the guys at Contrast in Dublin, for which they’ve already received lots of attention. They released Qwitter a while back which is a really simple tool that lets you know when someone stops following you on Twitter. The design of the service is great, in that it focuses only on the service it provides, and doesn’t make you jump through lots of hoops to use it – you simply add your email address & twitter user-name, and that’s it.

If I had one (small) criticism of the design, it’s the character’s arm that obscures part of the interface. While it’s an innovative idea that I haven’t seen before, I don’t see the value it adds, and it seems to go against the simplicity of the service. The service itself is useful in its simplicity, a fantastic marketing idea, and suitably damaging to your ego when you get one of their mails (I’ve had two, and each made me feel like I died a little). Well, not really. I don’t really think it’s actually likely to damage anyone.

TaskFive

Their second one was the product of Contrast’s App School – TaskFive (above). While the application itself has a great clean design, what impressed me was how it was developed. Taking an application from an idea to a full commercial implementation in 5 days is extremely impressive. And doing it openly (using twitter, blog posts and posting images of the process) was great to see. Although, having worked on an application for a lot longer than 5 days, it’s easy to get jealous! Again, a great marketing idea.

WeddingDates.ie

The next application worthy of a push is a service that helps find a hotel for a wedding reception – WeddingDates.ie. WeddingDates is based in Cork, and launched a couple of weeks ago. The service provides couples with a way to search hotels in their area for the date they’d like to get married, see hotel details, and find other services they’ll need for their big day.  Again I think it has a great design; the site is clean and bright, with its selling points easy to see, and how to use it clearly presented.

Having seen some of the web applications that have been launched in Ireland recently, and the numbers that attended Barcamp Cork, there is a lot happening in the web industry in Ireland at the moment. That is even despite the economic problems, which is great to see.

If you’re interested in some other interesting web applications, you can take a look at other recent Tuesday Pushes on this site.

In the last few days they have launched business services. The pitch for their new offering being that their:

…solutions put customer reviews on your site. We offer a range of systems which scale from one-person companies to global businesses. In every case they help grow your sales and retain customers

Again, another good idea. I think people are always more likely to accept independent reviews, rather than a blurb on a website. By offering companies a simple way to collect and display reviews over the web, as well as providing a way to gather SMS reviews from customers, I think they’re offering some useful services. By moving the way they accept reviews off the web (by SMS), they’re giving companies such as bars and restaurants a way to benefit from technologies that they would not have had experience with in the past.

The last time I wrote about Loudervoice, I said I was impressed with the innovative ways in which they offer their services. As they’ve added more, and a business model that looks sustainable, they deserve the success I’m sure they’ll get. A good starting point for that is that they’ve been short-listed for an Irish Web Award in the Best New Web Application/Service category.

Having had a browse about the eWrite site, I was especially impressed with the novel CMS demo being offered (and I’m not the only one that liked it). It allows you to play with the eWrite Lite features by editing the content of any live site. Considering the product is aimed at small business owners who generally won’t have the ability or interest in installing CMS software to try it out, this type of demo is an excellent idea.

I also like the look of their other Messenger product that allows site owners to manage email newsletters; especially as it offers integration with email newsletters generated by another of the Tuesday Pushee’s: Toddle.

Coincidentally, I subscribed to the RSS feed of eWrite’s blog a week ago and there’s some interesting stuff there (with the exception of the invention idea of coffee flavoured porridge! ).

I think their products have a broader appeal than they’re currently being marketed towards. The site’s tagline is “Helping Cork Business Get on the Web”, and I think they may be selling themselves a bit short. I’d guess that there are a lot of small businesses outside the “People’s Republic” that would be interested in getting their hands on their products.

Had a hectic week this week. On Tuesday and Wednesday I was down in Cork for a few bits and pieces. I did a half day of Media Training on Wednesday in an excellent session run by Damien Mulley. PR & the media is an area that I didn’t know a huge amount about. I learned a lot, and met a nice bunch of people too. Always an added bonus.  The course was run in the Cork International Airport Hotel….it’s got nice food, free wifi, and décor that for some reason reminds me of Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas!

In the middle of it all I forgot to do anything for the Tuesday Push – this time around it’s for Crewger. Not being a film maker, I haven’t had any experience with Crewger, so, In their own words they are:

…an organisation dedicated to the advancement of the Irish film community by facilitating the production, promotion and exhibition of original content by film-makers of all ages and backgrounds working in Ireland today.

I was looking through the site, and I think one of the most useful functions (for filmmakers) will be the ability to find film crew in Ireland. I’m sure budding film makers will appreciate access to a directory of actors, directors, editors, etc. There’s also a community section where members can show off some of their work to whoever’s passing by. The site is yet to fully launch, but I’m sure that when it does it will be a big help to their community.

As an aside, I wonder if non-tech people understand what “Beta” means when they see it on a site?

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• Media training in Cork with Damien Mulley
• Tuesday Push : Crewger.ie