Stephen Mc Carron announced Stephen Mc Carron (formerly of host.ie/register.ie/novara.ie) has established www.hosting365.ie which is now open for business.
Lowest cost .ie domains in the world, shared hosting, dedicated boxes and colo.
Would be grateful for any comments, critical or otherwise, on the design and content of http://hosting365.ie and http://register365.ie

Eoin Costello says the site bears a remarkable resemblance to www.affinity.com, a large American hosting company, in terms of layout, graphics(the colours have been changed a bit) and navigation. Also, http://register365.ie appears to be very similar to our website www.register.ie and contains register.ie's content with a few changes of colour.

Jonathan Morton Hmmm - asking for criticism from the people who's website you're ripping off ? Truly amazing.

Geoff Boyle can't see any resemblance between hosting365 and affinity.
One major difference between register.ie and hosting365 is that hosting365 appears to be cheaper. Other than that I can't see any graphical similarity.

Gary Stephens recommends Geoff make an appointment to see the optician.
P.S. I once dropped a line to the Daily Star pointing out the similarity between http://www.megastar.co.uk/news/index.html and http://www.nycbp.com/news/index.html - they seemed quite chuffed that their design had been copied! Plus i got a free "Megastar" t-shirt...

Brian O'Neill knows there is no love lost between you and novara but he thinks it is a direct rip out.
Please tell us they have invested in you and that you haven't copied their design wholesale.

Jonathan Heron assumes that hosting365.ie is the Irish arm of Affinity, or at least strongly connected to it. The layouts are virtually identical (from a grid point of view, they are identical); some of the images have been re-used unaltered.
Register365 and Register.ie are also very similar in terms of grid layout. Some imagery has been blatantly copied: look at the step one box for example ? the miss-alignment of some of the boxes in the icon on the top-right has even been reproduced pixel perfect.
Stephen, unless you are associated with these two companies and you have approval to re-used their designs, you are violating copyright. It is particularly bad here because you can be accused of diluting the brands of the companies whose sites have been copied.

Jonathan Morton thinks http://www.pirated-sites.com/ is a topical URL.

Eoin Costello says he was just offering a review request published to the list. My contribution was based more on a closer look at the textual content of our site www.register.ie versus www.register365.ie . They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but we are really too flattered by the similarity of www.register365.ie to www.register.ie .

Stephen McCarron explains that Hosting365.ie is currently being re-designed, lest there be any confusion between it and affinity, a similarity which we were not aware of before today.
With regard to register.ie, as most of those on-list know, the situation between Novara and I is complex and not yet fully resolved. As the copyrighter of all the content on both sites, and as their function and service is identical, albeit register365.ie is significantly cheaper, similarities in textual content are obviously going to happen. At the end of the day, all domain registration sites have the same basic content, function and navigation.
Thanks again for all the comments, we will be submitting the all new site design for your viewing pleasure in a few weeks now that we are aware of some slight similarities with those mentioned by my former colleague at Novara, who's not-so-hidden agenda is clear,

Eoin Costello says the situation between Novara and Stephen McCarron is very straightforward.
You resigned as a director of Novara on 28/11/01(I have your resignation letter in front of me) and set up in competition with Novara. From that date you have been sending scare mongering emails to Novara's customers on a regular basis with no concern for the jobs of the staff working for Novara.
You ceased to be a shareholder in Novara on 10/01/02 as you had not made the requested payment for your shares.
My only agenda is to protect the jobs of the staff who currently work for Novara. In any case I know you will agree that this is not the forum for debating this matter and it is far better left in the hands of our respective solicitors. I only posted to the list in response to your open request for reviews of your sites and as such I do not propose to respond to any further emails you make to the list concerning the private negotiations between our solicitors.

Stephen McCarron deeply regrets using a public mailing list a forum for these issues as, of course, there are two sides to every story and nothing is ever straightforward. Yes, I resigned as a Director, after I was illegally locked out, by you, of the business I had founded, but I am still a 50% shareholder and my shares are fully paid up. I was forced to set up again on my own after your actions and no, the situation is far from resolved.
I'm sure everyone onlist will appreciate the in-appropriateness of your post, and I respectfully suggest that any further communication comes from your solicitor directly to me.

Jonathan Brazil and Davitt Waldron think a public list is not the place to talk about problems between two people.
Get your solicitors in action against each other because that's where you're heading at the moment. I don't think that I'm the only one considering requesting "a third party disconnection for misuse of a public mailing list" at the moment. Given that you both subscribe to a mailing list you both have email addresses; use them!