“Your Country, Your Call” is pleased to announce a series of innovation, inspiration & ideation workshops designed to inspire creative thinking and help people bring their ideas to life.

The workshops, which are open to the public are free of charge and one will take place in Cork as follows:

Cork: 9th April 11.00 am, National Software Centre Campus, Mahon.

I’m thrilled to see YCYC come to Cork OpenCoffee and talk to the startup community in Cork.

Fantastic job by Gordon Murray in putting this together with everyone involved.

I also think it’s a great opportunity for everyone who has issues with and criticisms of YCYC to express them out in the open and have them addressed clearly by those involved in it.

I’ll definitely be there and I hope to see all of you too.

Once you’ve created your JumpBox account and entered your AWS Security Credentials, you can launch a polished and easy to manage application with just a few clicks.

I haven’t used JumpBox in anger yet but it’s has been brilliant for quickly deploying Drupal, Joomla etc to test things out. I was literally up and running with a configured system in minutes.

From recent Tweet by @VodafoneIreland to actual announcement in under two weeks. Nice job VF, for real.

Think of it as a Nexus One with snazzy user interface and optical “trackball”.

Or think of it as an iPhone where you are in control, not someone in Cupertino.

All things being equal, this will be my next phone. The only things that might prevent that are:

• Vodafone being stupid and charging a fortune for it on upgrade. *cough* N900 *cough*
• Vodafone being stupid and locking it to O2-style iPhone price plans
• Google congratulating LouderVoice for launching the first ever Irish Android application and giving me a Nexus One for free
• Vodafone congratulating LouderVoice for launching the first ever Irish Android application and giving me a HTC Desire for free
• Sony Ericsson magically fixing multi-touch on the X10 and it being available at the same time for the same price with Android 2.1. I really would like an 8MP camera.
• Nokia somehow pulling a rabbit out of a hat in the next couple of weeks and announcing a N900++ with 12MP camera and capacitive touch screen, for the same price.
• Someone else announces yet another Android phone with just enough knobs on to make me wait even more.

Head on over to the Vodafone site to sign-up for notification when the Desire is launched.

Business Boot Camp is a service where you provide me with a limited amount of information about your existing site or your startup plan, and I give you very practical feedback and suggestions for:

• Site presentation, call to action and navigation
• Messaging and communication
• Product definition and price point
• Marketing strategy, online and off
• Search engine friendliness and optimisation
• Blogging and social media strategy

Sabrina really really knows her stuff. Do your business a favour and sign-up for this.

Keynoir is an exclusive buying club that gives its members access to a great lifestyle
packed with indulgent and fun experiences in major cities around the world.

I’m delighted for Phil Wilkinson and the rest of the team involved in the launch of Keynoir.

One benefit of the recession is the number of sites being created around special offers. We already work with Luckebox in this area in LouderVoice and I know of several others in the planning and Alpha stages.

Keynoir looks like a winner to me and has the team to deliver on it.

The phone will be available to customers from 8th April and will be free for some, assuming they sign up to the right bill-pay package.

Hurry up @vodafoneireland or you may lose me as a customer. How long before the HTC Desire or Nexus One arrives on VF?

But just try not watching it, or worse still turning it off before the end. You’ll see Gregg Wallace’s big testicle-like head, goading you about your inability to deliver strong flavours.

One of their very finest.