Octopus New Media is a dynamic young agency that has a passion for creative design and the technical skills to deliver results. We work across a wide range of media skills, including print design, web design, branding, video production and motion graphics.

Some of our latest work includes:

A traveling exhibition for the Department of Foreign Affairs ‘The Life and Works of W.B Yeats’. Branding and website design with additional marketing materials for Astral Plains a new Irish music festival (www.astralplains.ie) and website design for Recuerdo Global a new Irish software development company. (www.recuerdoglobal.com)

Services Include:
Web design
Web development
Web banner design
Graphic design
Logo and branding
Video Production
Motion Graphics
Animation

Please check out our portfolio for more work.

Contact Details
Rowan Clancy – Designer

Octopus New Media.
308 Media Cube,
Kill Avenue,
Dun Laoghaire,
Co. Dublin,
Ireland.

Email: info@octopusnewmedia.com
Web: www.octopusnewmedia.com

Directed by Thomas Heffron, the Pool reveals slowly the actions and rivalries of a gang of boys while breaking in to a local swimming pool and whose internal rivalries spill over with life-changing consequences.

Warrior Films was established in 2007 and “The Pool” follows the critically acclaimed “Tufty” a short film with a teddy bear that satirised the killing of endangered species.

The Pool had also been selected for the following Festivals:

Tribeca Film Festival 2010 (World Premiere)
Newport Beach Film Festival 2010
Palm Springs International Film Festival 2010
Traverse City Film Festival 2010
Galway Film Fleadh 2010
Williamstown Film Festival 2010

Merriontech

Founded in 2005 with capital from its directors, Merriontech supplies financial business process and billing consultancy services to utility companies. The company is developing software to visually represent dynamic financial data. Clients include Microsoft, Cable & Wireless, Demon Internet, SPSS & Paddy Power.

Website: http://www.merriontech.com/

The brainchild of former Riverdeep technical director Simon Lunt, the Bgate software is called Smart Business and connects buyers and suppliers over the web while eliminating replication of entry across the supply chain.

According to Lunt this is eliminating unnecessary tasks for their customers and increasing efficiencies by several orders of magnitude.

Industrial design background before Riverdeep

After graduating with a degree in industrial design from the National College of Art and Design and the University of Limerick, Lunt went to work for design firm Hood Associates.

There he learned to master computer-aided design and helped to design consumer devices for global companies. After three years we went to work for Irish e-learning firm CBT Systems, which later became Smart Force. He also worked as a graphic and multimedia designer before helping to found Riverdeep, the educational software company, in 1996.

He worked there for three years and left to pursue other interests shortly before Riverdeep completed its stock market listing. He says he has tried to adopt much of the design ethos from his Riverdeep experience to suit Bgate, specifically with regard to usability.

System now in operation
The Bgate system is now in operation and John O’Connor, CFO for Burger King’s 27 restaurants in Ireland says: “Bgate’s Smart Business exports directly into our accounts system. We no longer have valuable staff time tied up with the monotonous task of manually inputting thousands of invoices each month.”

Bgate is now negotiating with over 50 Irish-based organisations that want to use the system and plans are underway to roll out the system internationally.

Sorcha Corcoran, Bizstartup.ie

Dublin mobile app agency Furious Tribe has launched a new ‘App Builder’ platform to allow businesses to create apps and gain a share of the US$17.5bn mobile market.

Furious Tribe’s new ApptivateHQ platform will allow anyone to easily and inexpensively build mobile apps for their company or organisation.

While ApptivateHQ will initially focus on the iPhone platform, Furious Tribe has plans to add iPad and Android support in the near future.

With more than 4.6 billion mobile subscribers worldwide, the launch of Apptivate is a strategic move that will position Furious Tribe as a leader within in the European app market, claims its managing director, Patrick Leddy.

About Furious Tribe
Furious Tribe has already done well in the enterprise market, acquiring accounts ranging from O2 to Citibank, EMI Music, Royal Sun & Alliance, RTE, TV3 and more.

“While we have always seen a strong demand in the enterprise market, we have witnessed an ‘insatiable demand’ for mobile apps in the SME market,” Leddy said.

“We realised that SMEs needed to go mobile, as well, but more often than not, they lacked the budget to deliver meaningful mobile experiences. We identified this gap in the market 12 months ago, and work on ApptivateHQ.com began,” Leddy added.

ApptivateHQ is provided as ‘platform as a service’ and is entirely web based and allows anyone to build and manage iPhone applications.

“The product is based on a ‘freemium’ business model, meaning that ApptivateHQ.com is completely free to sign up to and build your first app. You can build a fully functional app and then preview it in the web-based simulator before publishing to the Apple App Store.

ApptivateHQ.com charges a US$399 submission fee for the publishing of apps, plus a US$25 monthly fee.

The monthly fee includes hosting of the app on the ApptivateHQ cloud and ongoing access to the ApptivateHQ content management system.

“Thanks to our patent pending technology, this means that you can update your content at any time without the need to resubmit your app to Apple,” said Leddy.

Disruptive business model
He said the new platform is a perfect example of a disruptive business model. Currently, developers charge up to $500 per day for iPhone development services.

“Our product aims to ‘level the playing field’ and turn the market on its head.

“Now everyone can have a mobile app to represent their business and engage customers on their own terms. It’s a simple, pay-as-you-go service, said Leddy, no need for contracts and you can cancel at any time.

“It is the simplicity of the offering that allows brand managers to bypass their IT departments, and simply sign up with the company credit card. The platform is completely self-contained, we manage the servers, technology and submission to Apple. We will substantiate a monthly fee through continually adding value to our offering – with improvements added weekly, meaning everyone is always on the latest version.”

The platform will be targeted primarily at the North American market and will focus initially on launching apps for newspapers, popular blogs, bands and events.

Yesterday, Furious Tribe signed a deal with EMI Music Ireland to publish a number of artists on the Apptivate platform, starting with the artist Codes.

“Mobile is the future, and companies that do not adopt a mobile strategy in 2010 will become reactive followers in 2011,” Leddy warned.

By John Kennedy

Photo: Furious Tribe managing director Patrick Leddy

“The craze that we are witnessing among users of apps will have a huge impact on the way companies market themselves going forward,” explained Patrick Leddy, managing director of Furious Tribe.

“As more people access information ‘on the go – anywhere’ through their mobile phones, fewer will use their desktop to log on to the internet.

“Then as many more newspapers and broadcast media will use the App Store to publish content, the onus will be on the marketer to look at innovative ways to promote their brand through the mobile platform. Or be left behind!”

Leddy claims that mobile apps users tend to be more willing to pay for their content and are more responsive to branded messages than the average online web user.

Because of this he says: “Companies who do not feature on the App Store will lose out big time. But the secret to a good app must be to ensure that the content is simple, creative, stimulating, informative and entertaining.

“More importantly, it must deliver the information the user wants – and not ‘hard sell’ messages that the company wants to ‘push’ at the user. This approach just won’t work,” Leddy warned.

This initiative will allow Ingenico customers and potential customers across Northern Europe reduce their card payment processing costs while implementing a secure PCI DSS approved online payment solution. This agreement also provides Ingenico customers with a single point of contact for their card payments across all delivery channels by adding the sophisticated WorldNet multi-channel, multi-currency, eCommerce solution to their existing terminal-based payment infrastructure.

The WorldNet solution is functionally rich and supports many Card Not Present (CNP) channels including Online, MOTO, Multicurrency (DCC) and much more.

Cillian Wright, Global Business Development Director at Ingenico, commented, “We’re delighted to partner with WorldNet TPS and offer their eCommerce solution to our customers. Ingenico’s partnership with WorldNet will allow our customers to reduce their costs and meet the challenge of PCI DSS compliance. Furthermore, this means our customers have a single point of contact for all their payment solutions including a sophisticated multi-channel, multi-currency eCommerce solution.”

John Clarke, Head of Product Innovation at WorldNet TPS, added, “We’re proud to partner with Ingenico, the world leader in payment solutions. The partnership means that we can offer our flexible payment solutions, which meet the needs of all sizes of merchants, into Ingenico’s customer base, allowing them to reduce their costs while implementing a leading-edge solution supporting payments for mail order, over the phone, online and even using an iPhone with our new ‘iPhone Virtual Terminal’ solution.”
Organisations wishing to find out more about the WorldNet TPS solution and our introductory offers should contact their Ingenico sales representative or email info.uk@ingenico.com

This joint announcement with Ingenico, the World leader in payment hardware solutions, is a significant development in the growth and expansion of the WorldNet business and represents the first major initiative in our ‘white label’ strategy.

“Sales of garden equipment and barbecues have jumped by a massive 25% in the last two weeks, as temperatures remained high last week.”

Ted Laverty, who runs online store Handyhardware.ie and supplies home and garden wares to a variety of stores, says the increase is purely down to last week’s warm snap.

“Business has been very vibrant over the last two weeks in terms of barbecue and garden equipment. Sales are up 15% on this time last year for barbecues which is very good news. Gardening items and furniture sales have risen as much as 25%.”

Laverty says this is the first year that he can remember the public buying garden equipment so early.

“Normally we would not be seeing these kinds of figures or any sales in garden equipment until at least June, so it is highly unusual.”

“We and other department stores are all praying for the good weather of the last week to continue and for a good summer. Our suppliers are telling us that it has been a disastrous 18 months and that this is just what we need now.”