The Saba Cookbook

If you're a regular reader of Digitology you'll know that I love Thai food, and in particular I love Saba here in Dublin. So you can imagine how incredibly delighted I was to hear that Saba have just launched a cook book, The Saba Cookbook. To tell you the truth, this isn't a new idea and has very much been on the cards for Tweesak Trakoolwattana (known as Tao), Saba Executive Chef, and Saba’s owner Paul Cadden for some time. The two have always wanted to create a cook book that would showcase their restaurant's authentic Thai food.

What makes this a particularly noteworthy endeavour, beyond the absolute deliciousness of the offerings therein, is that all proceeds are to be split between an Irish charity, Our Lady’s Hospital for sick children in Crumlin, and a Thai charity, the Thai Red Cross (who help with the recent floods in Tao’s hometown, Bangkok).

The book will offer us budding Thai cooks nearly different authentic 100 recipes and will cover everything from Tao's tasty Thai soups and salads to his now famous curries and stir fries. You'll also find some desserts in there to create the perfect, complete Thai meal.

I definitely recommend this as the perfect gift this Christmas for anyone you know who loves Thai food!

Ireland's Favourite Book

This Tuesday, Eason launched the search to find Ireland’s Favourite Book. As part of their 125th anniversary celebrations, Eason has compiled a list of the top 125 books over the years and has invited the public to cast their vote to crown the nation’s favourite book of all time.

Speaking about Eason’s search to crown Ireland’s favourite book, Maria Dickenson, Head of Book Purchasing at Eason said “As part of our 125th celebrations we have carefully compiled a list of the top 125 books over the years which includes a wide range of favourites from the childhood classic Roald Dahl’s ‘BFG’, William Goulding’s modern classic ‘Lord of The Flies’, much loved Irish fiction Patrick McCabe’s ‘Butcher’s Boy’, Oscar Wilde’s ‘Picture of Dorian Gray’ and Cecelia Ahern with’ PS. I Love You’ and many more.”

Maria continued “We are a nation of book lovers and our team at Eason’s are really excited about hearing from the people all around Ireland as to what their most loved book is. Books often evoke very vivid memories or milestones in our lives. The fun is thinking about all the books that we have read and why it made such an impact on us – it can often tell a lot about a person when they reveal their favourite book so we are really interested to see what comes out top as the nation’s choice.”

Some of the much loved authors who feature on the list of 125 books have shared their personal favourites with Eason;

“I will say that I could die happy if I'd written ‘His Dark Materials’ by Philip Pullman” - Emma Donoghue author of Room

“I’m a sucker for doomed romance – ‘Great Gatsby’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald-” - Patrick McCabe, author of Butcher Boy

“I feel honoured and so incredibly proud to be included in this list of 125 favourite books. Every day I appreciate how people have welcomed PS I Love You into their hearts. My favourite book of all time is ‘The Time Traveller's Wife’ by Audrey Niffenegger - it's a modern classic, a quirky love story which is so beautifully written” – Cecelia Ahern, author of PS I Love You .

“One of my favourite books is John McGahern's masterpiece ‘Amongst Women’. I love its quiet faith, its insistence on its own terms. It conjures a world that is absolutely specific to itself, down to the most minuscule, seemingly inconsequential detail, but in so doing manages the alchemy of saying something about every life. The family it depicts is somehow every Irish family of a certain era, held together by its secrets, bound by its evasions, by a web of loyalties, only one of which is love.” - Joseph O’Connor, author of Star of The Sea

Eason’s is now calling on people throughout the Island of Ireland to have their say and vote for their favourite book by logging onto their new look website www.easons.com/bookpoll. Each voter will automatically be entered into a draw where one lucky winner will walk away with the entire collection of 125 books! Entry is open until Sunday 18th December 2011.

‘S’Up Santa?’

Back in August I posted about Three Ireland's latest campaign, 'S'Up'. The advertising campaign featured Jedward and saw the two pop stars become advertising foremen for the mobile brand.

Now as Christmas quickly approaches Three have launched their seasonal campaign, which also features the duo and promotes their limited edition Jedward handset. The handset, a limited edition Samsung Galaxy Europa I5500, will be the brands Christmas hero handset and feature prominently on all advertising. The above the line campaign of which commenced last Monday (14th November) and runs for six weeks until 22nd December 2011. This consists of 20 second TV advertisements on RTE, TV3, 3E, Sky packages, Comedy Central, MTV E!, Living and E4, and on Video on Demand on 4OD.

The TV ad was directed by Damien O’Donnell, who has directed the films; ‘East is East’, ‘Heartlands’, and ‘Inside I’m Dancing’, and produced by Russ Russell of Russell Curran Productions. The campaign was developed by McCann Erickson.

The Samsung Galaxy Europa I5500 handset is available from all 3Stores and stockists and online at Three.ie from now. The handset comes in a giftbox with some additional Jedtastic goodies including; a signed Jedward postcard, a Jedward phone sock and a limited edition ‘S’Up’ badge!

Commenting on the launch, Sales and Marketing Director, Elaine Carey at Three, said: “We at Three are very excited to be launching an exclusive ‘Jedward’ Samsung Galaxy Europa Christmas gift pack, for just €69. This Christmas we have something for everyone, from handset offers to broadband and bundle offers. Given the popularity of the Jedward ‘S’Up’ phrase in the last instalment of the campaign, we expect lots of people to be asking ‘S’Up Santa?’ in the run up to Christmas.”

Andrea Galligan, Senior Account Manager at McCann Erickson commented ‘All of us at McCann Erickson are very excited to bring Jedward back for Christmas. Jedward and Santa on the same couch, you know it’s going to be magic! We really think this campaign captures the festive mood and we have a feeling that the limited edition Jedward Samsung Europa will be on quite a few wish lists this Christmas.’

Via the 2.8” Capacitive touch screen and Android Froyo 2.2 on board, the Samsung Galaxy Europa is ideal for social networking with direct photo upload to Facebook, Twitter and Picasa Web Albums and direct video upload to Youtube for instant sharing on the move. The handset features a 2MP camera with 4X digital zoom, an MP4 video player, GPS, WiFi, and a music player and comes with a 3.5mm stereo headset.

For further information on Three visit www.three.ie.

ESB Electric Ireland - Tweet 'em Home For Christmas

Last Thursday, 17th November, ESB Electric Ireland announced the launch of their latest campaign, ‘Tweet Em Home for Christmas’. The campaign sees three teams, each representing a different charity (the Irish Cancer Society, Concern Worldwide and the ISPCC), taking part in a two day drive across Ireland on the 8th and 9th December in cars powered by tweets and likes.

As part of this campaign, ESB Electric Ireland are running a competition on Facebook to give three people the chance to drive one of three teams of ‘star navigators’. The teams will include broadcaster Brent Pope, musician Mundy, comedians Andrew Stanley and Joe Rooney, magician Keith Barry and ‘Juice’ presenter, Katie Van Buren.

Team 1: Concern – Mundy and Katie Van Buren in the DeLorean
Team 2: Irish Cancer Society – Andrew Stanley and Joe Rooney in the New York Taxi
Team 3: ISPCC – Brent Pope and Keith Barry in the Ecar

Full details are on the Facebook Page with a closing date for entries of the 1st December 2011.

Each of the charities will receive €10,000 from ESB Electric Ireland and then the three teams will compete to receive an additional €20,000. The celebrity teams will compete to generate Tweets using a hashtag, with the tweets powering their cars as they cross the country. People can show their support for one of the charities by tweeting or posting on Facebook to top up their “tweet tank”.

The teams will be assigned one of three fantastic vehicles for the drive; an Ecar, a DeLorean and a New York yellow taxi cab. The vehicles will travel from Dublin to Galway and back again over two days with ‘star navigators’ taking it in turns to help the drivers cross the country and to generate power using their own social media channels. The teams will compete in a number of challenges along the way to earn additional Tweet energy for their cars and additional details will be announced in the coming weeks. People can follow the progress of each of the teams in real time using the Facebook App on the ESB Electric Ireland Facebook page.

Ken McKervey, Commercial Manager, ESB Electric Ireland commented, "ESB Electric Ireland Tweet Em Home for Christmas gives people the chance to have some fun while also supporting charities - particularly important at this time of year - simply by using social media like Twitter and Facebook. The use of Tweets to power the cars makes this extremely innovative, and we’re delighted to have so many personalities on board for the drive as well as three incredible cars, which will be a sight to behold along the three routes from Dublin to Galway and back."

For further details on ISPCC visit www.ispcc.ie, on Irish Cancer Society visit www.cancer.ie, and on Concern Worldwide visit www.concern.net.

TV Guide Ireland iPhone App

"What's small and smart and sits open on 40,000 sofas every evening? Yep, the new and improved TV Guide Ireland Version 1.1 from entertainment.ie which now includes programme reminders and is iOS5 compatible."

TV Guide Ireland, which launched two months ago and has over 40,000 users, has undergone an upgrade and released a new version. The latest iteration of the popular app now features integrated programme reminders. This is an awesome new feature and completes the app in my opinion - not only can you check TV listings for over 60 channels but with the new reminders feature you won't miss them!

The app includes a 7 Day TV listings guide with full programme details and descriptions. It also allows you to create a personalised channel list. The app's most popular section, "Now & Next", is still there and tells viewers what's on each channel 'now' and what's coming up 'next'. For those of you that are on Twitter the app is also fully integrated.

Managing Director of entertainment.ie Julian Douglas said, "It's fascinating to see how this app has become an indispensable companion to TV watching in the evenings. It's a really useful app, has strong usage and traffic and is a powerful tool for both users and advertisers."

Download the latest version of the app here.