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From: PJ
Time: 10:43:08 PM
Date: 12/7/99
Jees I spent the last half an hour in Ennis.ie and quite frankly I can't say very much good about it but more significantly it proved to me again what a team and what a fine resource we have here in Castlebar with M and the crew, Well done yet again dudes and take a sincerely deserved bow.
It was the first time I really did much looking at Ennis.ie. Admittedly it's pretty and flashy and has all the required image and PC graphics and corporate projection to make Eircom look good too, but in terms of Content and Flesh and Bones it's total crap. The Bulletin Board is a complete nightmare and a deterrent for anyone to post a message with all the registration and login requirements (And then all the different categories). They don't appear to have even a simple Guest Book (Like everything else, if they have it's damn hard to find - I couldn't anyway)
If this is what winning the top prize and becoming a PR puppet for TE/Eircom means all I can say is I'm glad Castlebar didn't win. Mind you two years ago working in Killarney I really couldn't see how Ennis was even in the running against Castlebar or Killarney. I always cynically suspected it was politics and a major lobby from the Shannon Free Development Company that won it for them.
The Digital Cash Card experiment (thought they don't admit it directly on the site) appears to have been mostly a damp squid (I'd even go so far as to say an ill recieved disaster). Few of the regular retailers in the town have embraced it in anyway so it's reduced to being a high tech way of paying for carparking, Well Yippie!. Finally, I've talked to some people from Ennis over here and enquired whether they were in touch with their family at home by email now that every house in Ennis had pretty well got a free computer and internet a/c. They looked at me kinda strange as if to say "What?" I think the computers have been grabbed up alright just "cos they're free" but very few people have moved beyond that to making much use of them, and to go beyond that I actually think Ennis has always been a relatively blessed prosperous rural town not as cursed by emigration as say rural Clare (or Co Mayo) so there isn't a great deal of mammy's in Ennis embracing the wonderful innovation of e-mail to keep in touch with their Johnny in Seattle or their Mary in Sydney. As they say, that's my opinion, Care to comment M? Of course admirably as usual I'd say you're far too dignified and diplomatic to comment, in public anyway! Over a few pints in the Y2K compliant pub on the 30th perhaps?
Message posted to Castlebar Bulletin Board. Views expressed are the responsibiity of the person posting the message.