We’ve all, at one time or another, needed to find a phone number of a local tradesman, or business. Now, the first thing I do is google it. However, before the advent of google, the first thing you picked up was the golden pages or some other local directory. Even now, alot of local businesses just dont have a web presence so the only way to find them is through the Golden Pages. And even the companies that do have a web presence, can’t totally cut their directory listsings as many people’s first port of call is still the local directory.

Recently however, that has started to change. More and more companies (especially companies that conduct their business mostly online) have been foregoing a listing in the local offline directories and even the national directories like the golden pages. This is because they believe it is impossible to tell whether they have achieved anything from their ad in the golden pages. They don’t have the same transparency that they get from their visitors coming from Google, Digg or Twitter.

I believe this trend is largely similar to what we are seeing in other industries like advertising. A large number of advertisers are focusing on the forms of advertising where they can easily track their results. This is why big online ad companies like google aren’t seeing the huge hits in revenue that printed advertisers are seeing.

However, just the other day, during a discussion someone asked me if it was possible to find out how much traffic was coming from these offline resources. And although it might take a little bit of work I think it might be possible to tell. All you really need is a little creativity and some way to track your websites statistics – like Google Analytics.

The easiest way, first off, if you haven’t already run the ad, is to use a slightly different URL for your offline ad. I’d even go as far as to suggest a different domain. You can then redirect from this URL to you normal address with little or no fuss. You can then easily work out numbers coming from offline resources. And even if for some reason your offline URL is being used somewhere online, you’ll nearly always have a referrer. Since all of your ‘offline’ customers, will show as a direct connections, you can work out whether your offline ads are worth it. I believe a number of companies already do this. However it seems to be more tailored to specific advertising campaigns then to particular ads but the premise is still valid. You’ll often see companies like Coca-Cola have a different URL on certain ads – A different URL for each campaign. Its a way of seeing how successful a particular campaign was. I’m sure huge advertising companies have completed studies that are able to work out the number of people who actually see an ad from the number of people that actively go out and type out the URL, however this is beyond my means as a one man development team. Plus in our case, only the people that use the URL are important as they are potential sales, or offers, or whatever it is that you do. Coca-Cola also have the luxury of being able to correlate sales to campaigns, and I’m sure have very intelligent statisticians working it out for them.

This is not always going to work though. And it’s not always good in every situation. One situation where I’d advise against providing users with a different domain, is when the brand is ultra important and you’re trying to create brand loyalty. While its ok for Susan who owns and graphic design company to have a couple of domains, as its her name and work that is important not exact brand recognition. And its definitely ok for a huge brand like Coca-Cola because they already have all the brand recognition that they’re going to get. If you have to keep the exact brand, you could offer your offline resourses a slightly different landing page. In the offline ad list http://example.com/golden as your domain name. Again this has a couple of problems in that it has a much better chance of being found in the wrong manner and if that happens it might take a lot of effort to work out the approx numbers coming from offline resources.

As I pointed out earlier, Coca-Cola have correlation between sales and ad campaigns as a perfect measurement of ad success. If you’re deciding whether to drop that offline ad and suspect its doing absolutely nothing for you then the easiest thing you can do is drop the ad and see if there is a correlation between the amount of work you lose. Risky, especially if you’re wrong. But in certain businesses you’re going to be able to do this with very little risk.

One last thing to take into consideration however is demographics. And what a huge thing to throw in at the end. I could have written a whole post about demographics and will do so in the future. The key is to think about what your normal customer is. Are they an old couple from a rural town? Don’t bother with the web (unless of course you’re looking to change your normal customers – again depends on the business). Are they young “bebo-ers”? Don’t bother with offline directories – They’ve never picked up the golden pages. You need to look at your customers and work out who who want or need to target and work out your advertising from there. Not the other way round.

Twinkle. Still at the top of the list and still one of the best iphone applications out there. Brought to us by Tapulous, it’s a great twitter app with a little bit more on top. Anything more to add to my original post? Not really, its still a great app and one that I use every day.

The Google App is, of course, still there. And still very useful even if more semantic information is not hugely available around Ireland. Handy for Dublin, not so much for everywhere else.

The NY Times iPhone application is still my source for American news when I’m on the move and there still isn’t a better news application on the iPhone in terms of usabilty and functionality. The news stories aren’t bad either…

Another news application but one a little closer to home – the BBCReader from “New Way to See News“(The website is pretty dreadful by the way). A handy application that I use to read my favorite news site. It’s very handy and once opened will download all the headline stories in the background so you can read any news story even if you are out of signal or in a EDGE(instead of 3G) area. And as this happens more you would like his is very handy.

Eirtext from Vinny Coyne’s “Lack of Concept” software. It’s a very handy piece of software and very useful. Unfortunately, you have to move back and forward between the iPhone text and this software and for that reason I don’t use it an awful lot. However with many people now on “Pay as you go” iPhones this will become even more useful for those people.

All in all, There’s a very healthy iPhone application market out there, especially on the free apps side of things. The above apps are just the ones that I think Irish users will most appreciate. However, I have been known to have been wrong in the past… so let me know if there are any apps that you think should be in the list?

Its not often that I’ll come out and say something like this but at this morning I really am embarrassed to be Irish. Last night was Halloween and for whatever reason some people saw this as a reason to go mental and start burning everything from cars to buildings, and attacking emergency services that showed up to try and help.

Some examples from the local news websites…

http://www.herald.ie/national-news/15-knife-attacks-on-night-of-chaos-1516756.html

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/1101/breaking4.html?via=mr

http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5gdV7lOhgqzMWdYdNHzk-diMaZPrg

http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/1101/halloween.html

All over Dublin and the surrounding area’s, vandalism was rampant and violence against other people seemed to be at the top of peoples list of priorities. The major Dublin hospitals are this morning trying to deal with stab, burn, and otherwise beaten victims of last nights Halloween “celebrations”. Last night the Fire Services were called out to 800 incidents! A number of incidents were deliberate attempts to draw out the emergency services so they could be attacked. One area, O’Devaney Gardens in Dublin, a number of empty blocks of flats were set alight to draw the emergency services. As soon as the Fire Service arrived, bottles and other missiles were launched at the Fire service vehicles that arrived.

Other incidents involved a number of Gardai being savagely attacked on the streets of the city centre. Numerous Gardai had to be hospitalised with fractures and lacerations. In one attack a female Garda was hit so hard as to fracture her eye socket. In another, 2 Gardai on foot patrol in the city centre were attacked by a large group of youths and had to be hospitalized. 10 arrests were made at that incident. Nothing would be better than to make an example of this scum. Lock them up and make their families pay for the medical bills. Make their families pay for the damage caused to the surrounding areas.

Same goes for the area’s were youths caused damage to businesses and buildings in their own area’s. Make the families pay for the clean-up. Why should law abiding tax payers have to pay for the inability of parents to control their children. And I know what certain groups will say – “disadvantaged backgrounds” and “underfunded area’s”… Hold on a second. I come from one of the poorest area’s in Dublin and in my day I wasn’t out throwing missiles and abuse at the emergency services.

A strong statement needs to be made – that civil disruption will not be tolerated, that attacks on people who work to protect and help us will not go unpunished. However, I dont believe any political party in Ireland has the stomach to do what needs to be done. Sure, there will be token gestures… and next year will be the same all over again.

Twinkle

One of the best applications out there. Brought to us by Tapulous. It is the best twitter application that I’ve come across but with the added benefit of location aware twittering. Really useful for finding local interesting people to follow – especially now that so many people are twittering. It can be quite daunting to watch that “everyone” feed on the twitter website, so many people… so many people saying not a whole lot. This cuts down on the noise while still allowing you to find very interesting people. It has a nice filter ability so that you can change the range that you allow tweets to come from. Unfortunately the recently changed to local distance measurements. It used to be 100 miles, which allowed me to see updates from Belfast and a couple of other places (I’m in Dublin). Now, however, its changed to 100km which doesn’t reach that far. Not that much of an issue though as a good few Dublin iPhone users have found this great application. I should also point out that you can change it to 500 or 1000 or everyone but out that far and you’re back to the noise of the unintelligible crowd.

Palringo

The App that saves me a fortune in text messaging bills. It allows you to log into a number of chat applications(like gchat and msn to name but a few.) and instant message your friends. An easy to use interface, and native to the iPhone so you don’t have to have the browser open to use it. Apparently it will stay active even if the screen turns off, as long as its the only third party app running(This is an Apple limitation – linkage). I can’t exactly vouch for that as I’ve only used it for short periods of time to get a good few IM’s out.

Google App

Let Google help you find the nearest hotel. Or pizza place. Or bar. The possibilities are really endless. Location aware searching along with all the normal google goodness. Need I say more?

Facebook Application

As much as I lothe it, most of my friends spend their entire days on this website. The application has a very good messaging system and its for that reason that i recommend this one as its very handy for talking to users on facebook. And the messages appear in the profile chat box so you can add multiple facebook users to the chat. Something that no other chat app does on the iPhone as far as I can tell. I have a very brief profile for this very reason. And even though Bebo still owns the lion share of users in Ireland, Facebook is growing here and most people have both so it wont be hard to convert anyone that doesn’t over to it.

NY Times App

This is going to be a controversial pick for 5th place as its for a American newspaper. However, as a regular user of this application its great for those of us here with an eye to the Americas as well as those with interests closer to home. It covers international news and sports as well as editorial features which having read a few are quite interesting and entertaining. I have used this app to get through my fairly boring commutes on the train. Easiest way to catch the world news if you don’t mind missing the local stories.

Conclusion

So there you have it. Have I missed anything? Probably. Actually – Definitely. I’d love to be able to add the Pandora iPhone app to the above list but it isn’t available here(Either is the website, technically). Which is a real pity as its one of the greatest internet applications that I’ve ever come across. Post a comment if there’s anything that you think that Irish iPhone users would be interested in or if there’s anything hugely glaringly obvious that I’ve left out.

Edit 17/08/2008: As pointed out in the comments (Thanks Michael), I should have included EirText in here. Silly me. What a nice little application. Very handy if you want to text a number of people at the same time For Free. Very handy. However i don’t believe it is a replacement for then in built iPhone SMS application as it… well… just doesn’t look as good. And you have to go back and forward between the iPhone’s messaging application and the Eirtext application. Which, although would save you quite a bit of money, would get quite annoying. However I definitely feel I should be mentioning it here after using it to organise a night out on Saturday…