Archive for April, 2008

Musgrave’s Daybreak

Daybreak - one of the many franchise brands in the Musgrave Plc stable - is Ireland’s newest convenience store chain. The name already adorns 120 stores.

But it seems Musgrave Plc did not devote any of their franchise fees to purchasing the logical domain name daybreak.ie

The reason perhaps lies in the recency of the name. A sole trader trading as Daybreak appears to have registered the domain before - although because the IEDR do not include a registration date in their WHOIS output we cannot be sure. The domain daybreak.ie has a single Frontpage Express style HTML page with a mobile phone number for a course.

Had the domain been a gTLD - com/net/org/info/biz - I imagine Musgrave Plc would have made an offer, but in our experience offers are rarely made for .ie domains. There is little data on the IEDR website over how a sale would be handled.

Regardless of the interactions - if any - between the sole trader and Musgrave Plc the ultimate action of the latter was to register daybreak.eu

In the franchised retail business image is everything. Shopfitters love this, as their bread and butter is ripping out last years shade of plastic signage and installing this years, from the psychologist approved plans. It thus doesn’t gel that Musgrave Plc would not splash out on the .ie for appearances sake.

.eu is not a ccTLD, yet is it not a gTLD, it falls somewhere in between perhaps it will make sense if the branch expands into the UK, although a .eu can do more harm than good in a euro-skeptic country.

Food for though.

Huge in Asia?

UCC Boole library is like for Fort knox

When I say UCC I refer to my alma mater of University College Cork, Ireland. Since the library extension circa 2006 on entering the building there is a turnstyle that only unlocks when an RFID card is put near a reader.

The automatic way to get a card is to become

  • a student
  • a member of staff

But what happens after graduation, what if you want to consult some works of excellence from time to time? Well, the Graduates Association website boasts one can then one must be engaged in scholarly research but

  • it cannot be for profit
  • it cannot be part of one work
  • it cannot be research required as part of a course in another college
  • personal interest reading does not meet the criteria for membership

Those criteria exclude everything for example

  • writing a book? (that would be for profit)
  • researching family history?/local history? (that would be personal interest reading)

Needless to say when I make my (further) millions I will not be donating any to the Cork University Foundation.

If you have managed to get a card please let me know how you swung it.


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