So once again I am setting off on the “A blog post a day, for 30 days” challenge. I have attempted this before and have failed miserably, but am hoping that this time better time management will help me succeed.

I am going to see if I can identify a blogging format that works better for me than my past formats. I think I place an onus on blog posts to be lengthy and well argued (whether I achieve this is questionable), and therefore I am put off by the time commitment necessary to write a post.

I am going to try something relatively new for me: rather than post on one topic, I am going to try and post many short paragraphs on various topics. My inspiration will come mostly from my news reader, which is as good a place to start as any. I won’t limit myself to this format, but expect to see it more often here.

“TsFTD” stands for Thoughts of the day, by the way.

Here goes.

In Google’s words, the service…

..is designed to develop mobile applications that serve the needs of poor and other vulnerable individuals and communities, most of whom have limited access to information and communications technology.

The power of the Internet extends beyond cool mapping technology, wikipedia at our fingertips and online shopping. We should not forget that it offers the potential to save lives, improve economic conditions, educate and uplift. It’s heartening to see Google spend efforts to connect the poor, and it is another example of how the Seacom cable is already affecting and improving Africa.

Sticking with the Google (which owns Youtube). From tomorrow you will be able to include a link with any video you post, so that your viewers can click on it and be taken to another website (preferably one that has *something* to do with the video itself. This will drive traffic away from Youtube of course, but since it seems Google has a footprint everywhere, they probably really don’t care. My understanding is that the link will be in the format of the layover ad we are used to seeing already..but you’ll have full control over the text.

Super insightful article from Techrunch exploring the potential of Bitly as a competitor to Digg. Digg gets 20,000 unique URL submissions per day. Bitly gets close to 3 million. Now both services are trying to emulate each other, and I will be watching with interest to see this unfold.

I love bookshops. Even the pathetic excuse-for-ones in Pretoria are my favourite hangouts. So when in New York, I feel as if I am in heaven. Here, the book shops seem to have every title imaginable, spanning multiple storeys of floor to ceiling shelves. I could get lost in one for days.

There is a 3 floor Barnes and Noble a couple of blocks from my hotel. I pass it often, and go in at least twice a day. There is a small Starbucks on the top floor, and I sit and read, while my feet take a well deserved break from all that walking. Mostly, I stumble on the books. (A cover sells the book, at least to me).

But someone tweeted a link to an excerpt of the latest Guy Kawasaki book, and I was intrigued to see it in full glory. Now, the quantity of books in the shop can be a drag when you want to buy something specific, because how do you actually find it? Barnes and Noble have a novel (ha! a pun!) idea: there are computers all over the place, and you search for the book you want much as you would on Amazon. When you find it “online”, you click on “Show me where” and the screen displays a map of the store, with the exact location of the book. You can even print the “map” if you want to.

Stunning. I found the book in no time, and it seemed to live up to all expectations. So you would think that by making the shopping experience as painless as possible, Barnes and Noble are gaining a new client, right?

Wrong.

The 5 books I chose today would have cost me $111.84 at Barnes and Noble. But guess what? At Amazon.com they only cost me $72.10. So with free shipping and next day delivery, I still save $40.

And because Amazon have this built in intelligence where they harness other people’s shopping patterns, they can recommend other titles to me too, and I will probably end up buying some before final checkout. So possibly the total profit for Amazon is still pretty much what it would have been for Barnes and Noble had I stuck with them.

I don’t think this spells the doom of bookshops, of course. But it does not bode well for them either.

(Note: Had I bought the books at Exclusive Books, I would have paid R1,890!!! That means I got them at 30% of the price!!! I’ll save comment on that for another blog post!)

(What have I bought so far? Click on title for Amazon page - no affiliate sales here, lol.

• Stumbling on Happiness
• Nudge
• The Art of the Start
• Reality Check
• How the Mighty Fall

)

So I’m in New York.

I’m no travel noob, but there is something about visiting New York that is different to visiting any other city. It’s almost as if it is “The.City”. And in a way I guess it is.

Last time I was here (eons ago) I was a student in Boston, about 4 hrs north of New York. Even then I remember it took a couple of visits for the City to grow on me. At first I found it too haphazard, too busy, too lonely. But that soon changed. The energy of the City takes over, and there is a definite promise of potential in the air. I would walk past the 5th Avenue shops, knowing that one day they would be mine. My boyfriend’s apartment was slightly bigger than his bed, and that was great too, because I knew that that would all change when we grew up to be responsible adults.

So here I am, the responsible adult. With no apartment on 5th Avenue yet, and with great disdain of the shops that charge $400 for a belt. So at least the responsible adult worked out right ;-). As I walk the streets of New York now, impressed by little that is in the shops but more by the sheer energy and life of the place, I find myself wondering if I could live here permanently. I am still not sure, but I suspect the answer is “No”.

It’s just too busy. I think that that works in ones favour when one is at the beginning of a career, or at the end (with retirement). But in the middle, it must just be exhausting. Life is a battle here, that much is quickly obvious. People are focussed on money. Most conversations I eavesdrop are related to job security, money issues and so on. It’s on the people’s minds all the time.

It doesn’t help that New York is ridiculously expensive. To rent an apartment that could even mildly compare to my living conditions in SAfrica would cost about $5,000 per month. And I must emphasise “mildly compare” … that would get me 2 bedrooms in about 100 square meters, which is about a quarter of what I have now, minus the garden and pool. Kid’s school would be another $3,000 pm and the other costs are equally astronomical. A coke in a restaurant is $4, a movie $12.50 and so on. So the bottom line is…you need to be pretty loaded.

Of course, New York offers you the opportunity to get loaded pretty fast. Be good at what you do, and recession or not, you are going to take home the salary that is needed to pay those bills. My problem is that I have never been the salary kind of girl.

So in some ideal wish-I-wish-I-might world, I guess I could have an apartment here, and visit for short trysts of shopping and theatre, maybe a bit of business but always with the option of going back home. I wouldn’t mind spending a full summer here though, especially with my kid. She would definitely benefit from the very different cultural environment.

And I guess that is new York’s biggest pull: there is just so much to do here. You could never be bored…at worst you could simply be overwhelmed. In that ideal world I mentioned earlier, I would sign up for photography classes, explore museums, take up roller blading again, learn French, take some college classes at NYU…maybe even learn to cook. But I am smart enough to know that the reality would be far harsher, because the pace of life needed to keep head-above-water here would probably not allow me to do many of those things.

One caveat that needs to be mentioned: I purposefully wrote this before I had any business related meetings etc, which start tomorrow. I am fully aware that once I meet people in my industry, or potential future business partners my enthusiasm for the city could increase drastically. And if it does, I will note it duly here.

Photo by Sunsurf, via Flickr

I’ll be flying to New York shortly, and on a whim walked into a travel agent this morning to see what kind of fares an expert could get me. After typing for a good 20 minutes while I twiddled my thumbs (and twittered), this is what she offered:

SAA: R10,252
Delta: R10,432
Air France: R9,652

Not bad, but I’d prefer to fly through London and have three meetings there while in transit. I had already researched this possibility, and knew that Virgin offered a good deal. I asked the travel agent to investigate, and she came back with a fare of R13,855. She said the taxes alone are over R5000, and it just wasn’t worth it.

Now, normally, you’d take her at her work, right? After all, she is a professional, an expert in her field. She must have some connection to a database of flights that you could never hope to have. Right? Wrong.

I got back to my office, logged into Travelstart.co.za, plugged in my dates and within 2 minutes was booked on a Virgin fight, via London to NYC for R8,317, all inclusive!!!

So: without having to drive to a mall, find parking, wait for an available agent, wait for 20 minutes while she types and types, give away my contact details etc etc, I was able to get a fare at about 40% LESS than she could.

Online travel booking - what a pleasure. Travel agents: Bon Voyage.

I’ve got a new project! It’s a “Who’s who in SA” portal, and I’ll give you more info shortly. First I thought I’d share how the project came about. It’s rather unconventional.

Some of you may have heard that I recently came second in the global MIT startup pitch. So not only do I have a pretty cool idea for an online startup, but I also have proof that I am not the only one who thinks so. Now I need to get it off the ground asap, and launch. It’s.A.Big.Project. Even though I was offered access to funding at the MIT event, I opted to take it to launch phase out of my own pocket. In order to raise some more money, I wanted to sell a domain I had had for eons: myzone.co.za.

Personally, I think it’s an awesome domain even if its history is slightly tainted (it was a startup in its previous life, and shut down from one day to the next, with salaries unpaid etc. Although the investors bailed, I managed to keep the domain). Anyway, since I think its an awesome domain, I thought it was worth some money. Apparently, I was wrong. I contacted two major players in the online space who could really work with the domain (you figure them out), but their offer wasn’t really exciting at all.

So I decided to leave it, and carry on focussing on the startup. But then, in a moment of some madness, I figured that the domain would be perfect as a “consolidating” site for SAfricans’ online presences. So I set it up quickly, and managed to build a revenue model in as well. So there you have it.

At first glance, MyZone.co.za looks like another social network, but I assure you it is not. Although it has the functions of a social network (you can befriend people, etc) it’s real value lies in the fact that it isn’t a social network at its core. What it is is a place for you to create a profile, and add links to all your other online spaces (facebook, twitter, linkedin,etc. More will be added as they are suggested). This, I know, is hardly original. What makes it unique though is exactly what makes Zoopy.com unique: it is targeted at the South African audience.

So in theory, if I market it properly, in time it should become the primary place to have yourself “checked out” by other South Africans: the ones most likely to hire you. You meet someone at a conference and want to learn more about them? Look them up on MyZone, where the info will be presented in a local context. And since users can post their skills, if you are looking for an Architect in your city, you could in theory (eventually) search for one on MyZone.co.za, see his links to his other online spaces and read the recommendations others have given him.

In other words, it’s a marketing site for You. I was toying with the tagline of “The best business card you will ever have“.

Btw, if you are asking what the point of this is since you already have your own website, you are missing the point that most people will never have a website of their own, but that they still deserve to have a professional online presence.

Someone asked me today why they need to be on MyZone if they are already on three other social networks. My answer: “You need to be on MyZone BECAUSE you are on three other social networks.” You need to give others the opportunity to explore all your online spaces, if they are interested.

So, I present you with MyZone.co.za. Please join. Spread the word and all that good stuff. See you there!

It goes without saying that we live in a world of information overload. So anything that gets news to us quickly and efficiently, is a bonus. I guess that is why Twitter is popular (although the efficiency of Twitter is highly deceptive).

Our inbox (or at least mine) is my efficiency downfall. Right now I have 300 emails in my inbox, with 100 of them unread.

I thought it would be interesting to point out how I deal with emails.

Since I use Gmail, I have mostly these options:
1. Leave email in inbox unread for now
2. Read and delete
3. Read and leave in inbox
4. Read and archive.
5. Archive unread.
6. Delete unread.

I can also label and star the email, which I tend to do through filters (the labels get applied automatically as the emails come into the inbox).

Options 5 and 6 are my preferred ones, since they require minimum effort on my part. But here’s the thing: My Gmail shows me the first line of the email in my inbox. So very often, that is all I read before performing action 5 or 6. So, for instance, if I see an email in my box that says in the first line

“Thanks for the info! Cheers, Bianca”

I know I can delete it without actually opening it. I’ve already gathered all the info I could from that email.

Or have I?

What if Bianca had added a PS after her signature, along the lines of

“Oh, btw, the meeting tomorrow has been moved from 11 am to 10 am. Let me know if that’s a problem”

Well ..yeah… it’s a problem. I wouldn’t see the postscript, since I would have assumed this was a simple “Thank you” email, and would have deleted it. That could lead to big problems. Far better for Bianca to send two separate emails, with short texts in each. Of course, Bianca really has no way of knowing that.

That’s why I am a fan of Twitter. I will never, ever ignore a DM twitter message. For starters, I know it’s only at most 140 characters, so it’s a quick read. My email inbox, on the other hand, is growing and growing in size. I have already declared email bankruptcy more than once (and the world continued to turn!)

Anything that simplifies life is a clear winner in my box. And keeping news short is a good start. But in the meantime, please prioritize your email content: the most important info should come first, to grab my attention. Otherwise, we might just have a big problem, for which we will blame each other.

I have a lot of online accounts to 3rd party services. Some of them are irrelevant to me, and some not. Many of them have content that I have created, and that cannot be found anywhere else (such as this blog). When I die, and especially if my death is going to be unexpected, my family will have a hard time to access these services, should they wish to do so. That’s because I am not in the habit of writing down my passwords etc. They are simply stored in my head.

So I was intrigued to come across Legacy Locker. It’s an ingenious service. For a fee, my family will be given the logins and passwords to services, as stipulated by me. They will also receive a “last email”. There is a strict procedure for determining that I am really dead, so there is little chance of security breach.

The fee is quite hefty though, at $300 (or $30 annually, if you don’t think you have that long :-) )

In theory, I guess if my family had access to my principal email account, they could get access to all my other services, by simply requesting a new password, and receiving it via that email. But we have to remember that not everybody is as online savvy as you and me, and sometimes it is nice to have it delivered in black and white. Of course, I could also just type it all up and attach it to my will, for free. (I do after all, have to inform the Executor of the existence of my info with Legacy Locker). But I still believe that there will be people who are eager to signup for this service, and there will be scores of people who will be grateful for that foresight.

The price point is also interesting. In theory, since the service does not really store any serious files itself, the infrastructure cost is minimal. Yet the price is not. The founder could easily have priced this at $10 or $15 and probably still make a hefty profit. On the other hand, since this goes hand in hand with estate planning, one wants to know that the company is serious, and will stick it out for the long run (or at least longer than you). I wonder if we are slowly going to move away from the “Should it be free?” question to the very opposite side of “Should we charge a premium because it will enhance the perception of value ?”. Or if, in true web 2.0 style, there will be a plethora of copycats who are going to compete on price, and bring the price down to an almost free product?

So by now you probably have heard that Gmail.co.za launched as a free webmail service in South Africa. Previously, the few times I typed that url instead of the .com one, I got the front page of the Gardale website, which I thought was opportunistic and annoying.

But, as it turns out, the www.gmail.co.za domain was registered a long time before the gmail.com concept was launched. So, in theory, they are fully entitled to do whatever they want to do with it, and spotting a free webmail opportunity is not illegal, or even unethical. It just makes sense. If you owned iphone.co.za or ebay.co.za and you had registered them *a long time before* either of the US businesses were launched, I suspect you could do with those domains as you please. And you would be silly not to link the www.ebay.co.za to some sort of auction house.

Of course, there are lots of things to do with a gmail.co.za domain other than offering a webmail service. For starters, you can sell it off to Google, or maintain a blog about clever use of webmail systems etc. With good planning, either of these would be more lucrative than the chosen offering.

Personally, I dislike Webmail and its parent or sister company Easyinfo vehemently. I am annoyed regularly by their telesales team, and I have heard of very dissatisfied customers. (search Hellopeter for details).

Also, I do not think they are going to get much traction out of this. Anybody who types in gmail.co.za knows about gmail.com and will quickly rectify the error. The sign up page for gmail.co.za is tedious, and frankly quite scary (Why all that info?).

BUT BUT BUT!!!!!!! If you have a gmail.com address, do yourself a favour and register the the gmail.co.za address too!!!!! Just in case people make a simple error when emailing you. Or before “someone” decides they are going to hijack “your” email address. Don’t forget to forward the .co.za address to your.com address, and flag it upfront, “in case” you start getting spam.

Btw, below is the press release that Gmail.co.za released. It is smug to a point of pukeness, has enough spelling and grammar errors to make me want to scream, and just a poor example of PR. But, hey…they are getting airtime out of this, so something must be working :-)

Here is the official press release:
SA companies beat internet giant to the pinch

If you thought the South African internet domain Gmail.co.za was owned by Google, then think again. Owning what could be considered the internet giant’s most valued asset - it’s name, two of South Africa’s homegrown IT companies have beat Google to it by offering SA internet users a locally-focused free email offering.

Webmail International, South Africa’s leading free email service and IT solutions company Gardale Solutions, have combined forces to form a local free email solution on the www.gmail.co.za domain.

Gardale have owned the domain since July 2003, before Google launched its Gmail offering to Google users. Abbreviated from Gardale Mail, the .co.za website has been running its Internet Service Provider (ISP) division for the past five years.

2009 will see the company teaming up with established and well-loved ISP Webmail International which has been running its own local email service for 10 years and that successfully launched the newest version of its website in 2008. The provision of a local free email solution by Gardale Mail was decided on due to numerous requests from users.

This new combined product called Gmail will be launching in Feb 09 and will offer features that compare to the best international offerings of the same:

* 10Gb of storage
* Free VOIP calls between users
* CHAT
* Webtunes and Webradio
* Free fax to email services
* Free SMSes, Video and Voicemail services coupled with social networking and file sharing abilities

Drawing from its wealth of experience in the field, Webmail’s Marketing and Business Development Director, Dennis Armstrong comments that Webmail’s strengths are well-suited to Gardale Mail’s aim of offering an international solution for users. Dale Hurwitz, the owner of Gardale Solutions shares Armstrong’s sentiments, “Gardale’s vision to provide it clients with complete corporate and private IT solutions is well supplemented by the partnership with Webmail.”

The local Gmail will be offered as a free service to users to make use of just as they would any free email service provider. “We intend keeping the revenue derived from advertising on this product to continue with development and with the aim of going mobile by mid-year. This will allow more users the opportunity to access this service via their mobile phones,” Armstrong explains, indicating that internet and mobile communication will continue evolving.

Nothing like a need for self promotion to make one dust off their much-neglected blog….

I’ve launched my latest baby, the Internet Guide. It’s an online e-mag in .pdf format, aimed at South African Internet users, focused on all things web.

I’ve wanted to do a magazine like this for a long time - a while back I came *this* close to doing a tangible, printed one, but it didn’t happen. The idea stuck around though, and launching it online is an acceptable alternative, for now.

To those who have asked why it’s a .pdf file, as opposed to a simple blog, here is my reasoning:

• A pdf file can easily be printed and taken offline. It’s the best compromise to not having a printed magazine, as the reader can decide whether he will read it online, or whether he wants to read it at leisure when not in front of the computer. The magazine is designed to be as printer friendly as possible ie. not too many graphics, colour blocks etc. I print it in black and white, and it looks great.

• The alternative was to simply publish a blog. But I felt that was counterproductive. I want the magazine to be read by people who are not yet too familiar with blogs, rss feeds etc. The whole point of the magazine is to bring those people “up to speed”. We have a lot of catching up to do in South Africa, and I want to play an active role in helping the masses become very comfortable in the online world.

• A pdf file is the easiest way to ensure compatibility with various platforms. It is also easy  to distribute, pass on etc. And since I have Indesign, it is also relatively easy to create.

You can download the file from Scribd.com here, or print/view it below (although a bit too small to read here!).

If you want to get involved, please contact me directly at eved@ideabank.co.za.

The magazine does have a blog, but it’s not very active. You can find it at www.internetguide.co.za. If you subscribe to the feed, you will not miss a single issue (pheww…I sound like  a publisher already!).

And please, please, please: if you like the e-mag, spread the word. It’s not going to be easy to reach the very people I am writing this for (the less-than-savvy-Internet-users) so I need all the help I can get!

Internet Guide 01, January 20 2009

The era of user generated content is, of course, well upon us. And the one thing that users generate more than almost anything else is criticism.  So it make sense that we learn how to deal with it effectively. And yet, the way criticism is given, and the way it is received is still a cause of much discomfort on the web.

Giving criticism is easier than receiving it, and yet even here I have noticed the South African blogosphere struggle. I know from my own experience that I have no problem criticising – sometimes rather aggressively, I admit – corporations, or people I do not personally know. And yet, I am very loathe to hand out criticism, of any kind, to my online friends and acquaintances, whether in public or in private.

I suspect that the reason we struggle to criticise those we know is because few of us can be trusted to handle criticism well.  Most of us get very defensive, with the minimum of provocation. Witness these two comments (which really made me laugh) as an example, taken from an iMod blog post:

Reader in a comment : “Hi. I have also blogged about this at http://xyz”

Author: “Oi Walter, you trying to hijack my thread? ;)”

Reader: “Dont be silly - why would I try do that? just adding my 2 cents worth.If you think I am hi jacking your thread - and its not of benefit to the cause please delete my comment.”

Ironically, it is essential to receive constructive criticism at all stages of a business’ lifecycle, even if your business is simply your personal brand. So by withholding it from those of our friends who need it the most, we are in fact causing them more harm than good.

The situation actually gets worse before it gets better. because not only do we not criticise each other effectively, but we also tend to do the opposite, which I’ll formally refer to as “ass-kissing”. A friend or colleague launches a new feature on his website that he is sooo proud of, and we all trip over each other to congratulate him, and to tell him “It rocks” or that he’s “a genius” or “wow, awesome, dude!”. Whereas, in fact, maybe the new feature is not really all that hot at all. Maybe, in fact, it is quite awful.

I guess it is a two sided game: we have to be able to receive criticism before it is given to us. And certainly not everybody does. Witness some of these examples of how differently criticism was handled:

• QVC
  Donn Edwards wrote a blog post that was critical of the way in which QVC (Quality Vacation Club)lured him to a timeshare presentation with the promise of a prize. Instead of ignoring the blog post, with the hope that it would go away, the QVC CEO decided to sue with a vengeance (for anything between R450,000 to R1,500,000 depending on the mood of the lawyer).  The result has been so much negative online discussion regarding QVC, that they got themselves into a mess they will never come out of. Or at least not for a very long time.

• Blog Survey
  I (and some others) wrote a very critical post about the original botched result of the SA Blog survey. Although the parties in question did not appreciate my view point, or my tone, they both reacted with utter professionalism and acted on some of my criticism. Specifically, I had private communication with Amanda Reekie (whose company did the survey analysis), where she made it very clear that she was committed to righting all wrongs, and would welcome as much criticism as it took to get there. How mature. I certainly learnt a lot from the way she handled her crisis, and I commend her for it.

• Google story
  When Entelligence issued a press release saying that basically they were screwed over by Google with respect to their Yellow Pages account, I wrote a story on the matter for Thought Leader titled “Google does evil”, and outlined the story from Enteligence’s point of view. I was ripped apart by journalist friends who, in an email thread, made it very clear that such allegations cannot be made based on a one sided press release. I stuck my ground, defended myself throughout the day, alleging that as a blogger I had the right to draw my own conclusions, and was not bound by the same limitations as a newspaper journalist. Yet as the day wore on, I actually took the time to think about their points, and ended up amending the post. And I do think that was the right thing to do, although it took a lot of people a lot of emails to get me to see that. I hope I listen more often!

• Web assessments
  A big part of my services as a web strategist is a site assessment review, which is a thorough analysis of a client’s website. Before I take on the project though, I have a long conversation with my clients to make sure that they understand that I am going to be truthful, and therefore invariably harsh. I always say that if they think their website is close to perfection, and will not stand to hear anything but, then I am not the person to deliver this particular task.  The funny thing is, that every one of my clients thus far has absolutely, and completely declared themselves open to criticism. And they paid good money to receive it. And almost every single one was taken aback and become defensive about the points I made. (Although, in the long run, I think it is safe to say that most of them will admit I was right, or at least “righter” than them. That’s because an outsider who does not have emotional involvement with a project can be more objective about it.)

So, my hope for us online colleagues for 2009?

• That we become more open to, and welcoming of, criticism.
• That when we do criticise, we tone down our displeasure (this is what I need to work on!)
• That we do not blindly support our colleagues, but that our praise is sincere and heartfelt. That we voice loudly our objections when they are justified.
• That we think for ourselves and shed our sheep-mentality of following the opinion of the crowd.
• But that, if after listening to others’ criticism we still maintain our original point of view, we have the power of our convictions to defend it.

And that we have  a rocking 2009, of course!