aspoke.com is growing , and it isn’t always been easy. We have the same problems as every other small business, maybe worse, because so much of what we do depends on making items to order, and on getting goods made economically and with the best suppliers who may be hundreds of miles away.

So in the last two months, we’ve installed a completely new order management system which allows us to track every individual order. As a result of that and some other changes, we’re now able to ship many orders within two days of when we receive them. We’re grateful to Amergin, who wrote the system for us and worked with us on the spec.

Soon we hope to have a facility that will allow customers to check the status of their own orders.

We have some great new designs for skins on the site - For example:

This is another one that was put up a while ago that doesn’t get the sales it deserves:

A new version of a popular laptop skin design.

If you are at Barcamp in Cork, Ireland, and you have a blog, you can avail of this offer to get a free aspoke.com laptop in any of our designs, with a special Digital Rights Ireland logo.

This offer is open to everyone until October 30 2006, but we are expecting a lot of demand, so we are giving priority to barcamp attendees. If you are at Barcamp, write your name, email and blog address on a piece of paper and give it to Simon McGarr to make sure your order goes out soon.

All you have to do is put the following image and link in a prominent, permanent place (such as one of the side columns) on your blog page:

HTML code is as follows:

<a href="http://www.digitalrights.ie/support">
<img src="http://www.digitalrights.ie/images/support.gif" /> </a>

Then send the following information to customerservice@aspoke.com in an email with the subject-line ‘DRI offer’:

Web address of your blog.

The skin design you want

The size you want it (in inches or centimetres).

Your name.

Your address.

Where you heard about this offer.

Oh yes, it would be great if you contributed to Digital Rights Ireland too.

Disclosure: I am a director of Digital Rights Ireland, but this is aspoke.com’s initiative.

Most of our designs are at least a bit crazy and whimsical. We’ve decided to do something for the more serious-minded professional. This is one I really like.

Greg added this new design to the site this week. I think it looks great. Our other flower designs, such as the Blue Night Flowers notebook skin have been massively successful.

We love watching the competition, and it’s great when we spot something we’ve done that they’ve followed. For example, the Schtickers.com Zebra design, which was added after we introduced our very popular Zebra laptop skin. I still think our design is way cooler though!

The film ‘An Inconvenient Truth‘ is now in cinemas in the UK and is coming to Ireland next week! We are repeating our previous free skins offer, with a few changes.

We think the message of this film is important and we want to get it out to as many bloggers as possible.

Basically, all you have to do to get your free skin is to follow these instructions:

1. You have to have a blog.

2. You have to be in a European Union country.

3. You have to apply for the offer before the end of October 2006.

2. You need to post a blog post containing a link to www.aninconvenienttruth.co.uk/ or http://www.climatecrisis.net/blog/ and to this offer at http://aspoke.com/blog/.

For example, your blog post might read as follows (text here is from the film website, but the text is up to you).

‘Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If the vast majority of the world’s scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced. An Inconvenient Truth offers a passionate and inspirational look at one man’s fervent crusade to halt global warming’s deadly progress in its tracks

Aspoke.com has a special offer which I have taken up. If you have a blog, you should check aspoke.com’s offer of a free laptop skin if you mention ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ on your blog.’

Remember, you can say whatever you like about the film or the offer, providing you include the two links

then send us via email:

* the web address for your blog
* what design you would like (choose from our products page)
* what size of skin you would like or what model of laptop you would like the skin for

One skin per household, one skin per blog. You don’t have to say anything nice about the film. Your blog has to have been in operation for at least 28 days. Send it to customerservice@aspoke.com with the Subject ‘Inconvenient Truth Offer’.

Greg, our designer, has redesigned the aspoke.com site, and the results look pretty cool - check out http://aspoke.com/newsite/. The ordering process is easier to follow, although there is still some thinking to do.

This morning’s Sunday Times has an article featuring aspoke.com’s startup laptop skins venture. (Pointed out by Walter at Sxoop.)