It’s called ‘The Line King’ and it sets out to solve a problem for accountancy and business students in Ireland (and presumably further afield as well).

Here it is :

It’s a stencil that a student can use to turn any standard lined page into an accountancy record book, thereby saving money that would otherwise be spent on buying pre lined accountancy books. I know from my school days that I would spend ages ruling pages with a standard ruler and making a bit of mess of it in the process. All a student has to do now is take the Line King stencil, place it on the page, and run a pen through the lines to create their accounting book page. I’d say it would take all of 10 seconds to line the perfect page like the one below.

There are 3 different stencils available, one for each of the accounting record books. I would LOVE to have had something like this back in the day. It’s one of those ideas that make you wonder why no one has thought of it before. Great to see students coming up with ideas like this and I hope it sells well for them.

Links

The Line King Facebook page

@accountingking (The Line King Twitter)

Fantastic win by Dublin yesterday. Only black mark is the amount of free advertising Vodafone got out of it.

Ah well. It’s not a perfect world I suppose.

Been meaning to set a blog like this up for a while now. It’s basically a blog where I can share quotes and stuff from business books I’m currently reading.

Check it out and see what I’m reading right now.

“Good morning, Bill.”

“Your task this week is to generate sales leads for the Renault Dealer network using the Internet. The winning team will be the one that generates the biggest number of leads. Good luck with the task.”

That could very well be a task that Bill Cullen might set for the new batch of candidates in this year’s Apprentice. As far as I know, it’s not an actual task, but it could very well be if the current competition being run by Renault is anything to go by.

Having seen it tweeted a couple of times, I shuffled on over to the site to enter the draw for one of 50 free car services.

A couple of things struck me about the page. First and foremost was the fact there were no terms and conditions governing the competition. This is (as far as I’m concerned) a basic minimum for any large company running a competition.

• I’d like to know such things as
• What location can I get my car serviced if I won
• What does a “service” actually mean. Is it a mini service, full service, parts excluded.
• Has the service to be completed before a certain date
• Can a service be pre-booked or is it limited to certain days of the week.
• When is the closing date for the competition

The second thing that struck me was the little tick box next to the submit button saying “Keep me updated with Renault News & Special Offers”. That’s fair enough on a competition website. Having it ticked already just screams “spammer” to me.

Not suggesting Renault Ireland WOULD spam people but I much prefer to tick the box myself to “opt in” to receive marketing material. This was the general consensus from others when I asked the question on Twitter recently. “Sneaky” was a word used to describe the practice. Web designer Irishstu made a very good point that by not having an opt-in, a company leaves itself open to spam accusations if people click submit and don’t realise the tick box was checked.

I tweeted Renault Ireland 3 times to ask about the terms and conditions and received no reply, which prompted me to write this blog post.

Whoever is running the competition for Renault needs a few basic lessons in operating a Twitter account and running a competition. If this were an Apprentice task & they were back in the boardroom with Bill Cullen, I definitely think they failed and should hear the words “You’re fired.”

See that? It’s a Dublin City Gift Card. An iniative of the Dublin City Business Association and the Dublin City Business Improvement District. It’s been available for some time now and the aim of the card is very simple – helping retain and promote Dublin business.

If you’ve been out and about in the city you might see another initiative of the Dublin City BID in action – street ambassadors. This dedicated group of men and women provide directions and advice for visitors to the city throughout the year in all weathers. They also report on any litter or graffiti problems.

The street ambassadors and the gift card are just two of the ways organisations in Ireland are doing a good job helping promote Irish business and, ultimately, create jobs.

I stumbled on this thread on boards.ie where someone has discovered the Dublin Gift Cards can be used online as well. It’s the ultimate two finger salute to Irish business. “Hey, we’ll take the card intended to be spent in Dublin shops and spend it online instead.” The same types will whine and moan when their purchases from overseas get hit by customs coming in to the country.

I hope that the DCBA and Dublin City BID are getting accurate readings on where the money on those cards is spent. If it turns out a lot is being spent online, they should pull the plug on the whole thing.

This new ad from Fáilte Ireland has grown on me. The music, by The Heathers, is a great choice – dynamic, energising and different from what you’d expect in an ad like this. With hotel prices in Ireland now the cheapest in Western Europe, there’s never been a better time to take a break at home. The fun definitely starts here.

I’ve been keeping an eye on the price of the Sony Reader Touch and see that D.I.D. Electrical are offering it for €249.95 in store this weekend. Oddly, if you buy it direct on the website it will set you back €278.95.

The Power City price has been pegged at  €249.95 for a couple of months now. Today I noticed that it’s now selling for €232.45, presumably in reaction to the D.I.D. offer.

If you’ve been thinking about investing in an electronic reader I don’t think you can go wrong with the Sony offering. At this price, I think I may upgrade my old PRS-505.

The touch model retails at £249.99 in the UK and was set to go on sale for €359.99 in Ireland. The Sony Pocket model (retail £179.99) was due to hit the shelves here for €249.99.

I forwarded my blog post and questions about pricing to Waterstones and I’m happy to report that as a result of these enquiries Waterstones have rectified the pricing issue. The new Sony Readers will go on sale in Irish stores with these prices:

Sony Pocket : €225 (€249.99 before)

Sony Touch  : €315 (€359.99 before)

Thanks to Neil at Waterstones for getting to the bottom of the issue.

So next time you see a price that looks wrong to you, it pays to make enquiries with the retailer. Light a candle rather than curse the dark.

There was the mother with her newborn along with the Dad, brother, grandad, grandmother, and 2 or 3 others of unknown relationship to the previous. What’s that they say – two’s company but eight is a nightmare? Yep, certainly is. Especially when the memory card they shove into the machine for doing keyrings is stuffed with a gazillion images.

Experience has dictated that a crowd like that all giving their opinion on which photograph of Baby Borat to use can turn into an epic battle of opinions.

“Oooh, I like the one where he’s dribbling snot down his nose”

“No, no. The one where his face looks like a bulldog is much better than that one”

“Ahhh, look at the little fella fast asleep – doesn’t he look like an angel”

And so on, and so forth ad infinitum. It’s all very well to wax lyrical about the little bundle of joy in your own home, but when you’ve got a ton of work to do and can’t tie up your keyring making machine for too long, you kindof have to “move things along”.

That’s when the battle plan for such scenarios come into play.

First part of the plan is to remove all non essential combatants. The mother is the target and a well placed suggestion of “perhaps the family would like to do some shopping while you choose the pictures yourself”. In this case some stern words in a foreign language from the mother resulted in the family members looking very hurt and shuffling off with shoulders slumped.

Second part of the plan is to narrow down the selection of favourite images to maybe 3 or 4. This can be done very quickly. Smiley ones are winners, sleepy ones are a good backup. Dribbly snotty nose ones are generally only selected by the father, but handy to have in reserve for the not-so- photogenic baby.

The last part of the plan is the final selection. The key here is to agree vigorously when the mother indicates a photo is nice or cute. It’s a bit like the reflex response to “Does my bum look big in this”. Any hesitation and you’re doomed. In a relationship it means you’re in the doghouse for a while. In my situation, it’s time – precious, precious time when it’s a busy day.

With those 3 steps executed to perfection, I had the order “in the bag” (sounds all Dragons’ Dennish doesn’t it?). “Grand so, they’ll be ready in about 15 minutes”. I finish off another order I was working on and who appears by my side after a couple of minutes? Grandad Borat.

Obviously bored with the delights of all the wonderful shops to browse in, he took up residence to my right hand side. This I do not like. Someone standing over me impatiently while I hurry to make up the order. The hovering impatiently was bad enough. Much worse was his incredibly annoying habit of sucking his teeth every 10 seconds. Drill.To.Brain.

I have not yet worked out a good way of dealing with a teeth sucking, hovering, impatient Grandad Borat type. If I ever come up with one, I’ll let you know.

Order complete and money transacted, Grandad Borat heads off with a hop, skip, jump and a suck of the (not so plentiful) teeth to rejoin the extended family. They all lived happily ever after and I waved heartily as I watched them leave. Buh bye now Grandad, Buh bye Mary Ellen, Jim Bob, Baby B, Cousin Ernest, Michael, Granny B, Daddy B – all the B’s – Buh bye.

If you use a pre-paid credit card (such as Payzonemoney) you should be aware of this.

When you place an order on a website for items not currently in stock, the seller will quite often “pre-authorise” your credit card to ensure there is adequate funds in the account. The transaction will be flagged as “pending” by the credit card company.

When your item comes into stock and is ready to be shipped, the seller the charges the card and the amount is then part of your outstanding balance.

With a regular credit card, all of this will never cause you any issues – but with a pre-paid credit card it might do as I discovered today.

I ordered a hard to find book from the UK (€100 value). The book company pre-authorised my Payzonemoney card for the full amount which went through fine as I had loaded the card with €150 to cover the cost of the book.

Just over 2 weeks later the book has come in and is ready to ship but I got a notification of payment failure. That’s when I discovered that to handle this “pre-authorisation” process, the card needs at least €100 on it for the charge to go through.

So this is something you will need to watch out for when placing orders online for items not currently in stock or pre-ordering goods. Just make sure that you have double the amount on your pre-paid credit card to ensure there are no delays when it comes time for the items to ship.